Links - 1st May 2019 (1)

Ethical veganism could be considered 'protected belief' akin to religion in landmark case - "Ethical veganism could be given the status of a protected belief in a landmark employment tribunal, as experts have said “it is more than just a lifestyle choice”... Mr Casamitjana's lawyers said ethical veganism "comfortably" satisfies the series of tests required for it to be classed as a philosophical or protected belief, meaning it would be protected under the Equality Act 2010."
This is why Singapore doesn't have much anti-discrimination legislation - the slippery slope (and mountains of lawsuits) is real

« After Fish, Milk Do not Wish ». Recurring Ideas in a Global Culture - "the association of leprosy with fish and milk existed amongst many other communities and peoples"

Do Rabbits Really Love Carrots? - "In reality, bunnies don’t eat root vegetables in the wild, so things like carrots should only be an occasional treat. The RSPCA found that 11 percent of all pet rabbits have tooth decay as a result of hitting the orange stuff too hard. So if rabbits don’t eat carrots in the wild, where did the idea come from? Most blame Bugs Bunny.While many thought Bugs got the habit from his furry peers, he actually adapted the carrot munching from the King of Hollywood, Clark Gable. Creators Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett have explained that Bugs' trademark love of carrots was inspired by a scene in the 1934 film, It Happened One Night. In it, Gable's character leans against a fence and eats a carrot while explaining the rules of hitchhiking. In 1940, Bugs Bunny made his debut in a cartoon called "A Wild Hare," and exhibited similar behaviors. At the time, the movie had just come out so the satire was likely obvious to viewers"

Singapore special report - ""The last thing the Singaporeans want is to fight last-ditch battles on Singaporean soil," he adds. "A lot of this goes back to the fall of Singapore in 1942. That history is very poignant to them - the idea that once the Japanese crossed the straits of Johore, it was all over. They never want to have this happen again. They will take the war to the enemy.""

2015 Commencement Address by David Brooks | Dartmouth News - "There are two paths ahead of you. One leads to a soul-crushing job as a cog in the corporate machine. The other leads to permanent residence in your parents’ basement. I’m here to help you navigate these exciting opportunities. I start by reminding you that you are in a beautiful spot in your lives. You are more mature than the freshmen, still sexier than the faculty... we’re supposed to give you a few minutes of completely garbage advice: Listen to your inner voice. Be true to yourself. Follow your passion. Your future is limitless.First, my generation gives you a mountain of debt; then we give you career-derailing guidelines that will prevent you from ever paying it off. I especially like all the Commencement addresses telling graduates how important it is to fail. These started a few years ago with a Steve Jobs address at Stanford built around the message. Well, failure is wonderful if you’re Steve Jobs. For most people, failure just stinks. Don’t fail... Happiness research suggests that after your 60s, your 20s are your happiest phase of life. People are happy in their 20s and then it dips down until it bottoms out at age 47—which is called having teenage children—and then it shoots up again."

Plebcomics | Know Your Meme - "Plebcomics is a webcomic blog known for its satirical commentaries on various stereotypes and rhetorics associated with the social justice activist community on Tumblr. In December 2014, the creator of the series was doxxed by critics who posted her personally identifiable information on the microblogging and social networking site."

Ravi Philemon - Have a look at this article. The 'people' who... - "Have a look at this article. The 'people' who flamed Madam Tan, who are they? One uses the picture of a Tamil actor as his profile picture. Another has no profile picture at all.
The one thing all 4 flamers have in common is that they share posts from Fabrications About the PAP extensively in their own Facebook.
This is how the PAP's Internet Brigade work to skew conversations on important topics like CPF, and often-times make the aggrieved feel that they have somehow done something wrong."

The 3 Minutes It Takes To Read This Will Improve Your Conversations Forever - Josh Spector - Pocket - "Don’t ask yes/no questions.
Ask “why” three times.
Ask about specifics, not generalizations.
Ask about reactions.
Ask follow-up questions.
Ask about lessons.
Ask for a story.
Ask like a kid.
Ask what else you should ask."

Tactical Assault Smirk 2.0 - Posts - "Liberals: Don't be silly we are not trying to destroy traditional families that's just a Right wing conspiracy theory, like cultural Marxism.
Also Liberals:
CNN International: The *traditional Western concept of family* can oppress women, entrench dogma and exclude LGBTQ people, writes journalist @MsAfropolitan. So is it really fit for the modern age? #IWD2019"
"Minna Salami is a Finnish Nigerian journalist who has propagated information on African feminist issues, about the African diaspora, and Nigerian women through her award-winning blog MsAfropolitan"
She probably blames the "West" for Nigeria's oppression of women, entrenched dogma and LGBTQ exclusion

Whisper - Posts - "People Are Outraged Over This ‘Sexist’ Viral Photo Of A Little Boy And Girl In Scrubs: "Twitter account Medical Shots, which tweets out health-related images and videos, posted a picture recently of a little boy and girl in scrubs. The boy is dressed in green with the words “Doctor in Training” printed on his back, whereas the girl dons all pink, the back of her shirt reading “Nurse in Training.”"
Comments: "As a nurse, the only thing offensive about this is the fact that so many people apparently think that being a nurse isn't good enough, and is not as good as being a doctor. If people would just open their eyes and their minds, they'd realize that nurses and doctors are a team and one is not better than the other. If you think being a nurse is easy, we've got bigger problems "
"Didnt realize that being a nurse meant I have a glass ceiling over my head that I need to break in order to become a doctor!
Nope.
If I wanted to be a doctor, I'd be a doctor. I wanted to be a nurse, so here I am.
Stop making this into something it's not."
"I know the family who's kids these are. The little boy in this picture has Down Syndrome, and was being treated for leukemia. His sister, by his side, is hanging out with him, helping him through it all in the hospital. The family posts a cute picture that is then used without their permission to be dragged by random, self-satisfied strangers on the internet. The family has seen and been hurt by the backlash. Nice job internet, as if the family hasn't had enough to deal with!!"
"Do people not realize nursing is a FEMALE dominated field? Statistics don’t lie."
"This is why you lose elections."
"Maybe those are both girls. Are you implying that only boys have super short hair? Maybe they’re both boys and the one in pink really likes 80’s metal."

Phil Kerpen on Twitter - "Quick search of presidential donors among people indicted today for allegedly bribing their kids into college:
Hillary Clinton: 6
Mitt Romney: 6
Barack Obama: 5
Marco Rubio: 1
Donald Trump: 0"

Why Elites Dislike Standardized Testing - "federal prosecutors exposed a crooked college admissions consulting operation that bribed SAT administrators and college athletic coaches in order to get wealthy, underqualified applicants into elite universities. Also charged were 33 wealthy parents who had paid for admissions bribes, including actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, Gordon Caplan, a co-chair of the international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Douglas Hodge, the former chief executive of Pimco. As this story unfolds, there will be numerous takes and analyses about what the exposure of such widespread corruption in college admissions could mean. People are going to say that this scandal is proof that the meritocracy is broken and corrupt. And it’s likely that many commentators will use this event as an opportunity to attack the SAT and the ACT. Progressives view test-based admissions as inequitable because some marginalized groups are significantly underrepresented among the pool of top-scoring college applicants. But millionaires and elites also hate standardized admissions tests, because their children’s admission to top colleges is contingent upon test scores.Under pressure from both the academic left and wealthy parents, hundreds of colleges have become “test optional,” allowing students to submit applications without test scores... It is absolutely true that the SAT is the reason this scandal occurred. But for standardized testing requirements, the millionaires and celebrities charged in this scheme would not have needed to search for “side doors” to get their children into elite colleges; they could have walked right in through the front... while it’s true that higher-income students get better scores on average and lower-income students do worse, it doesn’t necessarily follow that money raises test scores. This is a mere correlation, and, as anyone who did well on the SAT knows, correlation doesn’t imply causation. SAT scores correlate strongly enough with IQ that the SAT is interchangeable with IQ as a test of general cognitive ability. Cognitive ability is highly heritable... If rich people could just spend their way to high test scores, then they wouldn’t be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to bribe their way into elite schools... It is phenomenal that CEOs and power brokers and celebrities are getting indicted for desperately trying to bribe someone to get their mediocre kids into good schools, because that means meritocratic systems are throwing barriers in front of the children of elites when they can’t compete on an objective test"

How Adding Iodine to Salt Boosted Americans' IQ - "Iodized salt is so commonplace in the U.S. today that you may never have given the additive a second thought. But new research finds that humble iodine has played a substantial role in cognitive improvements seen across the American population in the 20th century.Iodine is a critical micronutrient in the human diet—that is, something our bodies can’t synthesize that we have to rely on food to obtain—and it’s been added to salt (in the form of potassium iodide) since 1924. Originally, iodization was adopted to reduce the incidence of goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland. But research since then has found that iodine also plays a crucial role in brain development, especially during gestation.Iodine deficiency today is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation in the world. It’s estimated that nearly one-third of the world’s population has a diet with too little iodine in it, and the problem isn’t limited to developing countries—perhaps one-fifth of those cases are in Europe (pdf), where iodized salt is still not the norm."

Second Shot: Our Singapore Flag with its Communal and Communist Origins - "A paragraph in Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Abridged Edition) reveals the origin:
There had been much ado over the flag, for again racial sentiments had to be respected. The Chinese-speaking wanted red for good fortune, the Malays red and white, their traditional colours for courage and purity. The Chinese, influenced by the five yellow stars on the flag of Communist China, wanted stars. The Malays wanted a crescent moon. We settled for a crescent moon with five white stars instead of the traditional one star for Islam. The five stars represented the five ideals of the country: democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality. Thus we reconciled different racial symbols and ideals."

Woman Who Falsely Accused Brian Banks of Rape Ordered to Pay $2.6M - "A woman whose false claim of rape sent former prep football star Brian Banks to prison was ordered to pay a $2.6 million judgment in connection with the case.A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Friday ordered Wanetta Gibson to pay a $1.5 million, plus an additional $1.1 million in fees, including for making a false claim and court-related costs... Gibson was a former high-school acquaintance of Banks in 2002 when she accused him of raping her at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, according to the California Innocence Project, an organization that helped exonerate Banks.Gibson sued the Long Beach Unified School District claiming the school was not safe and won a $1.5 million settlement."