Links - 13th May 2019 (2)

JurongHealth - Media Releases Details - "One in three Singaporeans have moderate-to-severe OSA and up to one in 10 Singaporeans suffers from severe sleep apnea. Despite the prevalence of OSA among Singaporeans, the condition is often underdiagnosed, as up to 90% of moderate-to-severe sleep apnea subjects in this study were previously undiagnosed. In particular, the prevalence of OSA varies across the three major ethnic groups of Chinese, Malays and Indians. The study found that Chinese and Malays had higher rates of OSA compared to Indians and the estimated population prevalence of moderate-to-severe OSA for Chinese and Malays were 32.1% and 33.8% respectively, and only 16.5% for Indians. Principal investigator, Dr Adeline Tan, Consultant, Respiratory Medicine, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (JurongHealth) shares, “Obesity is one of the risk factors for OSA. Interestingly, the study showed that the Chinese have high OSA rates among the three major ethnic groups even though they have the lowest obesity rates. This study, done in the local context, collaborates with previous studies performed in the West, which also found that Chinese appear to be more at risk.” Dr Tan adds that craniofacial structure is one of the key determinants of predisposition to OSA, and the Chinese have been shown to have more severe craniofacial restriction as compared to caucasians in previous studies."

Let Us Vote: New campaign launched to give everyone living in UK the right to vote in elections - "A new campaign has been launched to give everyone living in the UK the right to vote in elections and referendums, with MPs saying current voting laws should "shame us as a society"... UK citizens who have lived abroad for more than 15 years are also not allowed to vote."
Why would people want to become citizens if you could vote despite not being one?
Combine this with open borders and...
The same people who push for this also think old people shouldn't be allowed to vote since they won't be around to see the results

I,Hypocrite - Posts - "Without immigration, Canada's growth could be close to zero in 20 years if low fertility rates persist"
"Serious about stopping climate change? Have one less child, UBC study says"
This doesn't help the case against the "white genocide" people

How much water should you drink a day? - "Fuelling this appetite for water is the “8x8 rule”: the unofficial advice recommending we drink eight 240ml glasses of water per day, totalling just under two litres, on top of any other drinks. That “rule”, however, isn’t backed by scientific findings – nor do UK or EU official guidelines say we should be drinking this much. Where did it come from? Most likely, it seems, from misinterpretations of two pieces of guidance – both from decades ago... Years of unsubstantiated claims around the 8x8 rule have led us to believe that feeling thirsty means we’re already dangerously dehydrated. But experts largely agree that we don’t need any more fluid than the amount our bodies signal for, when it signals for it... our thirst mechanisms lose sensitivity once we’re over 60."

Who arrived first on the Malay Peninsula? That depends on whether you’re Indian or Malay - "newly appointed human resources minister M. Kulasegaran found himself in hot water with the Malay majority by claiming the country’s Indian ethnic minority were among the original inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula... Kulasegaran cites Kedah state’s Bujang Valley, with its ancient Hindu temples, as proof of Indian presence on the Malay Peninsula more than two millennia ago... What sparked the bigger uproar was Kulasegaran’s assertion that Malays are the pendatang, or newcomers. “We are equal. This is our homeland,” he said... [The Malaysian] “social contract” fails to acknowledge the descendants of Indian and Chinese merchants who arrived long before Europeans set foot on the peninsula... V.S. Maniam, an ethnic Indian NGO worker who attended the forum, is firmly of the view that Indians have been living on the peninsula since at least 1025, the year Rajendra Chola, a Tamil king from southern India, sacked the cities of the ancient empire of Srivijaya."
Given that the Malays immigrated from Indonesia and, longer ago, from Taiwan anyway...

The Tyranny of the Minority—and How to Prevent It - "the conclusion that the internet has made things more democratic is less clear than it might seem. As well as allowing more people to have a say, the web has enabled small bands of especially vocal activists to dominate the conversation. And not only that—persistent complaints by activists have even led to books being withdrawn from publication, shows being cancelled and people being sacked... numbers are the only thing that can ultimately adjudicate one of the key principles of liberalism: the harm principle, formulated by J. S. Mill. Put simply, the harm principle states that we should all be able to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. As generations of Mill’s critics have pointed out, what counts as harm is often a matter of interpretation. If I tell a dirty joke in public, and you complain about it, have I harmed you or not? Who’s to say?The answer, ultimately, is the people. That is, on a pragmatic level, we deal with the ambiguity of Mill’s principle by passing laws which reflect most people’s idea of what constitutes harm... Some companies have started trying to gauge the broader public’s views on certain issues in a more systematic way: for example, a US radio station recently put the wintertime classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” back onto its playlist after running a poll that found that 95% of respondents had no problem with the song. (It had previously been labeled problematic)."

NPR - Posts - "Radio stations are pulling the plug on "Baby, It's Cold Outside," the holiday earworm with lyrics that, to some, ring date-rape warning bells."
Comments: "In that film, the song was performed twice with a gender swap in who sings what lines; Richardo Montalbán sings the cat to Esther William's mouse and later in the film Betty Garrett sings the cat to Red Skelton's mouse. That's a pretty balanced gender role representation. As to the "what's in this drink"...that's when a need for historical context comes into play. This song was written in the 1940's, at a time when it wasn't socially acceptable for women to drink alcohol the way men did, it was also a time when it wasn't acceptable for a single woman to stay late or stay over at a man's place unchaperoned. The lyrics poke at those social taboos. It's not about spiking drinks, it's about being sharp to drinking anything unadulterated, it's not about forced sexual contact, it's about the rigidity of the social propriety of the time. It's bans like this that white wash the past and the progress since a time that is long gone...long gone for now,.. The censorship is BS. I'd also like to point out that the song lyrics were half written by a woman at a time when women weren't given many chances to write musical hits. It was bought by a studio, though owned by men, was at that time kept afloat in large part by the hits Mae West put out, another woman. The song is then first publicly performed twice in the film and by formidable women each time. So, by shooting down this song and censoring it, the work product of several impressive women goes down with it. That's not my definition of feminism or women's lib, that's just short sighted censorship.""
"I feel that these other holiday songs must also be removed as they are offensive as well. Do so immediately.
1. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: subjecting minors to softcore porn
2. The Christmas Song: Open fire? Pollution. Folks dressed up like Eskimos? Cultural appropriation
3. Holly Jolly Christmas: Kiss her once for me? Unwanted advances"
"I don’t like the song because it plays into climate denial."
"Always thought this song was about a man and a woman finding an excuse to have premarital sex without the woman being shamed over it"

Students who say 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' is 'suggestive' are asked if misogynistic rap should be banned. The hypocrisy is glorious.

In ancient China, an emperor enforced the Chinese language to strengthen his state, what is Singapore’s reasoning? - "One of the most extreme aspects of Xiaowen’s sinicisationpolicies was the banning of the Xianbei and other languages in government in favour of Chinese. He was recorded as saying: “We wish to put an end to the various northern tongues and use only the orthodox language. For those older than 30, whose habits have formed over a long period of time, we grant that they cannot make a sudden change. To those who are younger than 30 and who serve at our court, we must not hear them speak the old tongue. If they revert to their old habits, they shall be demoted or dismissed.”He also decreed that his people could no longer wear Xianbei dress and even made them change their family names into Chinese ones. He led by example and changed his own from Tuoba to Yuan. Just as contrived and problematic as Xiaowen’s forced deculturation of his own Xianbei people through the championing of the Chinese language over 1,500 years ago, are the Singapore government’s attempts at the “re-culturation” of Chinese Singaporeans by making them learn Mandarin, a foreign language to the older Chinese Singaporeans whose mother tongues are Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and other southern Chinese languages, as well as to those from younger generations whose first languages are Singapore English and “Singlish”."

Ignoring the elephant in the room, or in this case, on the streets. : singapore - "That unusual koi fish tank: 'The authorities do not allow this'
'Why?'
"There were some safety concerns, it seems.'
*People being knocked down by personal mobility devices*"

A Brief History of How Curry Ended Up in Japan - "According to Japanese food writer Morieda Takashi, as of 2000, the average person in Japan ate curry more frequently than sushi or tempura. In a survey of almost 10,000 Japanese participants—which called curry “a national food of Japan”—most people reported eating curry and rice several times per month... By the late 19th century, the Royal Navy had been feeding its sailors curry tailored to British tastes for years. White speculates that was because adapting English food for the high seas would have likely caused offense to British sailors, so “using a ‘foreign’ food made sense.” For that matter, it was likely also later adopted by the Japanese Imperial Navy for similar reasons: curry and rice favored no specific region of Japan, making it less likely to alienate any particular battalion."

Dangerous Minds - Posts - "Aaron Philip made history as the first black, trans, disabled model to sign with Elite Model Management. And she's just getting started."
Comments: "So much intersectionality it's in danger of collapsing upon itself into a singularity of Wokeness."
"This reminds me of the Modern Family episode when the gay dads, Cameron and Mitchell, were trying to get their Asian adopted daughter into a prestigious school and were pretty confident they were a shoe-in; only to discover their only competition were a disabled lesbian couple with an adopted child from Africa"
"Because being an able bodied gender binary is so last year."
"So, you read the headline and then you kinda say to yourself, well, let's see if that works, so you look for a picture that looks, well, modeled and actually showing off clothing but nope. It is a stunningly ugly picture and outfit. And I do not mean an ugly model, but an ugly picture, it is grainy and not in a great arty way, it uses an uninspired backdrop and not great lighting, it feels underexposed and framed like someone used an Iphone but an older one at that. The glitter is hideous and the models expression constipated, really, if this is showing that disabled people can compete, it fails."
"I thought this was an onion article at first."
"Is there a line that can be crossed by the left when they will finally say WTF? Come on now people."
"Hire me, I will tick all your virtue signal box's. Talk about bang for ya buck."
"If only it was vegan and midget... so close!"