The Hilliard Ensemble does "the most bored, beyond perfunctory rendition of any set of Bach chorales ever"
If one of your feet is in a cast, the other shouldn't be on heels - even kitten heels
Quite sure the AWARE takeover was partly inspired by the hullabaloo about 377A.
Annoyed by SUTD's sexist advertising. It took a misogynist to point that out.
"personally, i'm ok with activists, it's the "angry" prefix i have a problem with... why cannot be activist in a chill manner????"
"hk dramas have a lot of cops. Taiwan dramas have bitches fighting. Korean dramas have designers acting cute"
Friend: "Korean dramas have a lot of effeminate/emasculated men, whiny/unreasonable women and ridiculous love triangles"
Me: No wonder they're so popular. People like melodrama (it was said Jap dramas fell out of favour for being too subtle)
"If you don't feel sorry for yourself, who will?" (turns out I'd thought of this 11 years ago, when it hadn't registered any hits on Google yet)
Since we see ourselves reflected in the faces of our children, having children is the epitome of narcissism.
Seen online: "I really detest ghetto Meleis. Its a very class divide thing. I come from middle class educated Malay family. I feel very disgusted even TOUCHING an uneducated Malay. Yucks yucks yucks ghetto people should all be exterminated. They like to steal wallets and cellphones."
Hurr hurr. Sometimes framing issues as race-based is less helpful than looking at them through the lens of class. And a wilful obsession with the lens of race means one will be unable to solve problems that aren't really (or not only, at least) about it (North vs South Indians being another issue)
“If abortion is murder, then a blowjob is cannibalism”
"In the spirit of International Women’s Day, go forth and buy a nice little something for yourself"
???
RT @maarimekko Pakistanis have fucking weird names. Akbar Zeb means Biggest Dick in Arabic. Bhutto means Clitoris in Malay. Hina means Insult in Indonesian
"TIL if you run a windows virtual machine on your mac, your ipad wont charge even though ITS THE SAME PHYSICAL PORT #macisstoopid"
RT @sickipediabot: I have a cold shower every morning. Right after my wife and daughters have finally finished having fucking hot ones.
RT @ImLeslieChow: Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes. We can put a stop to this, together! Please Retweet.
RT @eskimon If you need to give away an iPad in order for people to notice you, there's a good chance your product simply isn't engaging enough.
RT: @9GAG: If video games make you violent, does monopoly make you a millionaire?
Me: More like: does it make you avaricious and scheming
"A vile bug fest that is a testament to corporate greed" - Review of @stcom's Android app
@eisen: "Why do some people tweet in reply to others, then delete those tweets? It puzzles me. When I retrieve those conversations I only get replies from one party, which kind of defeats the purpose of social networking then, no?"
L'origine de Bert
Showing posts with label mac sucks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mac sucks. Show all posts
Friday, July 06, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Malcolm Gladwell on Steve Jobs
"Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face." - National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
***
Steve Jobs’s Real Genius
"Our natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes...
He was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.” Smart phones started coming out in the nineteen-nineties. Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, more than a decade later, because, Isaacson writes, “he had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to.” The idea for the iPad came from an engineer at Microsoft...
Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for others’ ideas... Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive...
The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue...
In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”
Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special...
Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.
Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism...
Vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man...
The architects wanted the windows [of the new Apple HQ] to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’”"
***
Steve Jobs’s Real Genius
"Our natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes...
He was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.” Smart phones started coming out in the nineteen-nineties. Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, more than a decade later, because, Isaacson writes, “he had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to.” The idea for the iPad came from an engineer at Microsoft...
Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for others’ ideas... Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive...
The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue...
In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”
Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special...
Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.
Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism...
Vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man...
The architects wanted the windows [of the new Apple HQ] to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’”"
Post ID: 9131034510704148731
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
An instance when Siri fails
iPhone user to Siri: "What is the time difference between Hong Kong and Las Vegas?"
Siri: "Just a minute..."
iPhone user: "Thanks!" and proceeds to turn off the iPhone.
(via)
Siri: "Just a minute..."
iPhone user: "Thanks!" and proceeds to turn off the iPhone.
(via)
Post ID: 4255471363387390466
Friday, October 14, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Why aren't there any Android auto-correct mishaps?
"Because android users are smart enough to turn off stupid features."
Post ID: 8276905071365992881
Monday, September 19, 2011
Links - 19th September 2011
Apple bans satirical iPhone game Phone Story from its App Store
More Apple censorship! Of course, it's available on the Android Market. Even if it's banned from there the case is different since you're not banned from going elsewhere to download it.
Comment: "I hate these evil corporations, gobbling up the world's resources just so rich Westerners can own the next 'must have' thow-away gadget. The manufacturers and the purchasers of these items are all going to hell.
Sent from my iPhone"
The Disappearing Spoon - "A Russian-Canadian team pulled an even neater trick in 1937 with pure helium. When cooled down to −456°F, helium turned into a superfluid, with exactly zero viscosity and zero resistance to flow—perfect fluidness. Superfluid helium defies gravity and flows uphill and over walls. At the time, these were flabbergasting finds. Scientists often fudge and pretend that effects like friction equal zero, but only to simplify calculations. Not even Plato predicted someone would actually find one of his ideal forms... Returning to the theme of The Symposium and Plato’s theory of erotic longing for a missing half, we find that virtually every element seeks out other atoms to form bonds with, bonds that mask its nature... Before about 1890, scientists judged acids and bases by tasting or dunking their fingers in them, not exactly the safest or most reliable methods... the strongest solo acid is still the boron-based carborane (HCB11Cl11). And this boron acid has the best punch line so far: It’s simultaneously the world’s strongest and gentlest acid"
The Four Myths of Inequality in Singapore - "Myth #1: Inequality is a necessary counterpart of economic dynamism and competitiveness
Myth #2: The best way to help the poor is to help the rich
Myth#3: Inequality is not really a problem as long as there isn’t extreme poverty and incomes are rising across the board
Myth #4: Since pay is tied to ability, rising inequality is simply the result of increasing differences in people’s ability"
Why do women who have anal sex get more orgasms?
American diplomatic memo outlined rules for Yeti hunting in Nepal
Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science - ""Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination... Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains... some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation... the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past... we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings"
They even find that sometimes there is bias in favour of women. And I liked "female PIs fared well when rated by male reviewers at NSF, but less well when rated by female reviewers". Interestingly they recommend part-time tenure track positions for women - but not for men
New Dutch Game Show Has Immigrants Compete to Reveal Unjust System - "The show Weg van Nederland, which translates to Far from the Netherlands, involves five asylum seekers that have failed all legal avenues and are set for deportation. The first show that aired last week included questions on Dutch culture, history and language. The winner took home £4,000 Euros ($5,774 USD) to “to make a fresh start outside the Netherlands.” But one of the losers took home a bullet proof vest as a consolation prize... the intention of the program was to demonstrate how well-integrated many immigrants are in Holland"
“Iconatomy”: Celebrities and Reification - "In “Iconatomy”, Art Student George Chamoun, from Sweden, mixed movie icons from two different eras in a collage that’s even more outstanding because the pictures were not distorted in any way."
Breast-feeding mothers are more aggressive finds study that reveals 'mama bear' effect - "Mothers who breastfeed their babies are twice as aggressive as bottle-feeding moms and women without children when confronted by a threat"
Do Voters Discriminate Against Obese Candidates? - "Obese male candidates were actually evaluated more positively than non-obese male candidates... these findings dovetail with previous work by Miller and Lundgren, who also find an “obesity penalty” for women candidates but not men"
Brother and sister in lift sex
And incestophobia continues to reign unchecked; unsurprisingly, it seems only the brother was placed on the sex offenders' register
Lab chimps freed after caged fior 30 years and injected with HIV - "Like prisoners emerging from a lifetime behind bars, a group of chimpanzees step blinking into the sunlight with what appears for all the world to be a wave and a smile... Though a few of the chimps were born in captivity, most were kidnapped from African jungles as babies... Hooked up to machines and pumped full of chemicals, they were truly prisoners of utter despair. With no stimulation, no nurturing love and no hope, many were driven to the brink of madness and sometimes beyond
The anthropomorphic language is interesting; Just because you have concern for animals does not mean you are a nice person.
Comment: "Stop this cruel practice of experimenting on animals immediately. There is a vast species out there who will give very accurate results of how drugs, cosmetics etc will react on humans. They're called the scum of the earth and they inhabit our jails. Let's see if they can still play electronic games after having caustic substances dropped in to their eyes or are fit and able enough to function after they've been injected with various viruses. As for the bleeding heart liberals and the lawyers who defend this scum why don't you step up and join them and do the world a favour. Leave our innocent wildlife alone and perform some definitive research on a captive bunch of low lifes. Accurate results and suffering caused to those who made others suffer. Now bring on the red arrows."
More Apple censorship! Of course, it's available on the Android Market. Even if it's banned from there the case is different since you're not banned from going elsewhere to download it.
Comment: "I hate these evil corporations, gobbling up the world's resources just so rich Westerners can own the next 'must have' thow-away gadget. The manufacturers and the purchasers of these items are all going to hell.
Sent from my iPhone"
The Disappearing Spoon - "A Russian-Canadian team pulled an even neater trick in 1937 with pure helium. When cooled down to −456°F, helium turned into a superfluid, with exactly zero viscosity and zero resistance to flow—perfect fluidness. Superfluid helium defies gravity and flows uphill and over walls. At the time, these were flabbergasting finds. Scientists often fudge and pretend that effects like friction equal zero, but only to simplify calculations. Not even Plato predicted someone would actually find one of his ideal forms... Returning to the theme of The Symposium and Plato’s theory of erotic longing for a missing half, we find that virtually every element seeks out other atoms to form bonds with, bonds that mask its nature... Before about 1890, scientists judged acids and bases by tasting or dunking their fingers in them, not exactly the safest or most reliable methods... the strongest solo acid is still the boron-based carborane (HCB11Cl11). And this boron acid has the best punch line so far: It’s simultaneously the world’s strongest and gentlest acid"
The Four Myths of Inequality in Singapore - "Myth #1: Inequality is a necessary counterpart of economic dynamism and competitiveness
Myth #2: The best way to help the poor is to help the rich
Myth#3: Inequality is not really a problem as long as there isn’t extreme poverty and incomes are rising across the board
Myth #4: Since pay is tied to ability, rising inequality is simply the result of increasing differences in people’s ability"
Why do women who have anal sex get more orgasms?
American diplomatic memo outlined rules for Yeti hunting in Nepal
Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science - ""Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination... Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains... some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation... the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past... we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings"
They even find that sometimes there is bias in favour of women. And I liked "female PIs fared well when rated by male reviewers at NSF, but less well when rated by female reviewers". Interestingly they recommend part-time tenure track positions for women - but not for men
New Dutch Game Show Has Immigrants Compete to Reveal Unjust System - "The show Weg van Nederland, which translates to Far from the Netherlands, involves five asylum seekers that have failed all legal avenues and are set for deportation. The first show that aired last week included questions on Dutch culture, history and language. The winner took home £4,000 Euros ($5,774 USD) to “to make a fresh start outside the Netherlands.” But one of the losers took home a bullet proof vest as a consolation prize... the intention of the program was to demonstrate how well-integrated many immigrants are in Holland"
“Iconatomy”: Celebrities and Reification - "In “Iconatomy”, Art Student George Chamoun, from Sweden, mixed movie icons from two different eras in a collage that’s even more outstanding because the pictures were not distorted in any way."
Breast-feeding mothers are more aggressive finds study that reveals 'mama bear' effect - "Mothers who breastfeed their babies are twice as aggressive as bottle-feeding moms and women without children when confronted by a threat"
Do Voters Discriminate Against Obese Candidates? - "Obese male candidates were actually evaluated more positively than non-obese male candidates... these findings dovetail with previous work by Miller and Lundgren, who also find an “obesity penalty” for women candidates but not men"
Brother and sister in lift sex
And incestophobia continues to reign unchecked; unsurprisingly, it seems only the brother was placed on the sex offenders' register
Lab chimps freed after caged fior 30 years and injected with HIV - "Like prisoners emerging from a lifetime behind bars, a group of chimpanzees step blinking into the sunlight with what appears for all the world to be a wave and a smile... Though a few of the chimps were born in captivity, most were kidnapped from African jungles as babies... Hooked up to machines and pumped full of chemicals, they were truly prisoners of utter despair. With no stimulation, no nurturing love and no hope, many were driven to the brink of madness and sometimes beyond
The anthropomorphic language is interesting; Just because you have concern for animals does not mean you are a nice person.
Comment: "Stop this cruel practice of experimenting on animals immediately. There is a vast species out there who will give very accurate results of how drugs, cosmetics etc will react on humans. They're called the scum of the earth and they inhabit our jails. Let's see if they can still play electronic games after having caustic substances dropped in to their eyes or are fit and able enough to function after they've been injected with various viruses. As for the bleeding heart liberals and the lawyers who defend this scum why don't you step up and join them and do the world a favour. Leave our innocent wildlife alone and perform some definitive research on a captive bunch of low lifes. Accurate results and suffering caused to those who made others suffer. Now bring on the red arrows."
Post ID: 7287754922483275389
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Links - 20th August 2011
"I am not sincere, even when I say I am not." - Jules Renard
***
The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time
3 are from Microsoft - but 2 are from Apple
Apple’s Evidence In European Galaxy Tab Injunction Was Seriously Misleading… As In False - "Apple had some serious alone time with the judge when presenting this evidence. Meanwhile, Samsung didn’t even have the opportunity to dispute the image. Whether the deception was intentional or not, “complete and truthful” evidence is a requirement in the German court system. At a surface level, this doesn’t look good for Apple. It’s entirely possible that the picture they used of the GalTab was an outdated pre-release image. Even so, the fact that false evidence was submitted at all makes Apple look sneaky and weak"
Google, Motorola, and a Patent War - "Apple—with a legal department as innovative as its design department—got all of Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs pulled from stores in Europe. Motorola, last week, threatened to sue everyone else using Android. The mobile-computing industry resembles the Balkans in the nineties. Everyone has deep grievances against everyone else, the shifting alliances are inscrutable, and the end results are likely to be bad. Meanwhile, patent trolls play the role of freelance snipers, firing totally unpredictable lawsuits at everyone"
MediaCorp censors segment of Penny Low looking down at her HP in replay of National Day Parade - "During the National Day Rally last night, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong lashed out at the new media: “The Government will be more active and adept at engaging Singaporeans online but engagement online lends itself to many negative views and ridiculous untruths.” He should first take the state media to task for churning out 50 years of spins, lies and hogwash to brainwash Singaporeans so as to keep the PAP in power forever"
French-language crusader pops Air Canada for $12,000 - "The Federal Court of Canada on Wednesday ordered Air Canada to pay $12,000 to Ottawa French-language rights crusader Michel Thibodeau in part because when he asked an English-speaking flight attendant for 7Up in May 12 of 2009, he got Sprite... It is Thibodeau's second successful legal action against the airline and its subsidiaries. In 2000, he was refused service in French when he tried to order a 7Up from a unilingual English flight attendant on an Air Ontario flight from Montreal to Ottawa"
This isn't actually as ridiculous as it sounds; as he explains, Anglophones would be very pissed off if they were in his shoes, and he has no problem if only one attendant can serve him in French. Some people say Quebec doesn't offer Anglophones the same courtesies, but then it is not the Federal Government so it is not required to
snopes.com: Scientists Cure Cancer, But No One Takes Notice
"bleach also kills cancer cells in petri dishes, why don't people drink bleach? so easy + cheap. ^_^"
Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements
The Professor of Parody - "Feminist thinkers of the new symbolic type would appear to believe that the way to do feminist politics is to use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity and disdainful abstractness. These symbolic gestures, it is believed, are themselves a form of political resistance; and so one need not engage with messy things such as legislatures and movements in order to act daringly... Judith Butler seems to many young scholars to define what feminism is now... It is difficult to come to grips with Butler's ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are... obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on... Last year Butler won the first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature"
Neuromarketing - "Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product"
Liow dismisses Utusan’s Christian Malaysia report as ‘rumours’ - "Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai has described Utusan Malaysia’s report that Christian leaders and the DAP are planning to supplant Islam as the official religion as “rumours”, saying Malaysians do not hatch such plots... Umno-owned Utusan carried a front-page article yesterday titled “Malaysia, a Christian country?” (Malaysia, negara Kristian?) based entirely on blog postings by several pro-Umno bloggers. The bloggers had charged the DAP with sedition for allegedly trying to change the country’s laws to allow a Christian prime minister, pointing to a grainy photograph showing what they described as a secret pact between the opposition party and pastors at a hotel in Penang on Wednesday."
Malaysia Boleh!
Home Ministry reprimands The Star over supplement - "Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein has reprimanded The Star over the publication of articles on non-halal restaurants with buka puasa stories in its “Dining Out” supplement. He said the newspaper should be more sensitive on such matters and exercise extra care on issues related to race and religion."
Malaysia Boleh!
Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture - "Myth #1: Organic Farms Don’t Use Pesticides
Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use... Many natural pesticides have
been found to be potential – or serious – health risks... Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry
Myth #2: Organic Foods are Healthier
Organic foods did, however, have higher levels of overall fats, particularly trans fats
Myth #3: Organic Farming Is Better For The Environment
Organic proponents refuse to even give GMOs a chance, even to the point of hypocrisy... switches to organic farming will result in the creation of new farms via the destruction of currently untouched habitats, thus plowing over the little wild habitat left for many threatened and endangered species"
All Man’s Land - Rakesh Mani - "Education and wealth have nothing to do with it – in fact, some of the worst-affected areas are in India’s wealthiest cities. However discomfiting a possibility, the real culprit might be Indian culture and tradition itself... The novelist Salman Rushdie once put the question to supporters of abortion rights: “What should be done when a woman uses her power over her own body to discriminate against female fetuses?”... Niall Ferguson, the British
historian, cites scholars who attribute Japan’s imperial expansion after 1914 to a male youth bulge, and who link the rise of Islamist extremism to an Islamic youth bulge"
Photo of bag-carrying ambassador charms China - "A photo of the new U.S.
ambassador to China carrying his own backpack and ordering his own coffee at an airport has charmed Chinese citizens not used to such frugality from their officials"
Malaysia a failed state – The writings are on the wall?
Malaysia Boleh!
Secularism and Its Discontents - "It doesn’t follow from the successes of post-Galilean science, he suggests, that our attributions of value are merely arbitrary... When our neighbor doesn’t agree with us that murdering scores of people at an island camp in Norway is wrong, we do not shrug and say, “Chacun ses goûts.” When Tolstoy calls Shakespeare a poor writer, it is a judgment that judges Tolstoy, and
marks his eccentricity... Once a tendency has been put in place by nature, he writes, “it is not essential that each and every expression of it serve survival and reproduction. It is a bit as with the sex drive: it evolved to serve reproduction, but that does not mean that humans and animals have sex only in order to reproduce. The behavior follows its own autonomous motivational dynamic.” De Waal warns against conflating “the reasons why a behavior evolved and the reasons why individual actors show it, a distinction as sacred to biologists
as the one between church and state in modern society.” As he says, “The evolutionary reasons for altruistic behavior are not necessarily the animals’ reasons.” In other words, human morality can be explained without being explained away."
Dr. Neil Clark Warren: On Second Thought, Don't Get Married - "It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a
lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure."
Areleh Harel: The Orthodox Rabbi Helping Gay Men to Marry Lesbians - "Six years ago, Areleh Harel, an Orthodox rabbi from the West Bank, devised a plan to help an Orthodox Jewish gay man fulfill his dream of becoming a husband and father while keeping him in good standing with
the Jewish law and his community of believers. The solution: Marry him to a lesbian."
This is very screwed up
Believing in bondage - "Opposition to fox-hunting and a commitment to combat climate change may now be protected under the law – but the UK is not yet ready to recognise "consensual slavery"... [The judge's] very real difficulty was whether a way of life sometimes described as "consensual slavery" or "consensual non-consent" could possibly be worthy of recognition in a democratic society... Christianity, for instance, has had its own issues as critics have represented its practice of eating the body of Christ as cannibalism. And as for the Masonic oath… D/s is not sexist: there are probably far more male
submissives than female ones. Nor is it truly inequal. It embodies different and, in the everyday, unequal roles. But its cornerstone is equality and formality: it is preceded in most cases by highly protracted negotiation; there is agreement of rules and boundaries; and an absolute recognition that "no" means "no". Could we claim as much for the average marriage?"
Bigotry!
The murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn: does left-wing animal rights activism lead to terror? - "Shortly after Pim Fortuyn's violent death, various sympathizers directed emotional reproaches to "left-wingers". Left-wing politicians and personalities were said to have 'demonized' Fortuyn, and to have incited hatred"
This makes for interesting comparisons with Anders Behring Breivik and claims of [non far] right wing influence
***
The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time
3 are from Microsoft - but 2 are from Apple
Apple’s Evidence In European Galaxy Tab Injunction Was Seriously Misleading… As In False - "Apple had some serious alone time with the judge when presenting this evidence. Meanwhile, Samsung didn’t even have the opportunity to dispute the image. Whether the deception was intentional or not, “complete and truthful” evidence is a requirement in the German court system. At a surface level, this doesn’t look good for Apple. It’s entirely possible that the picture they used of the GalTab was an outdated pre-release image. Even so, the fact that false evidence was submitted at all makes Apple look sneaky and weak"
Google, Motorola, and a Patent War - "Apple—with a legal department as innovative as its design department—got all of Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs pulled from stores in Europe. Motorola, last week, threatened to sue everyone else using Android. The mobile-computing industry resembles the Balkans in the nineties. Everyone has deep grievances against everyone else, the shifting alliances are inscrutable, and the end results are likely to be bad. Meanwhile, patent trolls play the role of freelance snipers, firing totally unpredictable lawsuits at everyone"
MediaCorp censors segment of Penny Low looking down at her HP in replay of National Day Parade - "During the National Day Rally last night, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong lashed out at the new media: “The Government will be more active and adept at engaging Singaporeans online but engagement online lends itself to many negative views and ridiculous untruths.” He should first take the state media to task for churning out 50 years of spins, lies and hogwash to brainwash Singaporeans so as to keep the PAP in power forever"
French-language crusader pops Air Canada for $12,000 - "The Federal Court of Canada on Wednesday ordered Air Canada to pay $12,000 to Ottawa French-language rights crusader Michel Thibodeau in part because when he asked an English-speaking flight attendant for 7Up in May 12 of 2009, he got Sprite... It is Thibodeau's second successful legal action against the airline and its subsidiaries. In 2000, he was refused service in French when he tried to order a 7Up from a unilingual English flight attendant on an Air Ontario flight from Montreal to Ottawa"
This isn't actually as ridiculous as it sounds; as he explains, Anglophones would be very pissed off if they were in his shoes, and he has no problem if only one attendant can serve him in French. Some people say Quebec doesn't offer Anglophones the same courtesies, but then it is not the Federal Government so it is not required to
snopes.com: Scientists Cure Cancer, But No One Takes Notice
"bleach also kills cancer cells in petri dishes, why don't people drink bleach? so easy + cheap. ^_^"
Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements
The Professor of Parody - "Feminist thinkers of the new symbolic type would appear to believe that the way to do feminist politics is to use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity and disdainful abstractness. These symbolic gestures, it is believed, are themselves a form of political resistance; and so one need not engage with messy things such as legislatures and movements in order to act daringly... Judith Butler seems to many young scholars to define what feminism is now... It is difficult to come to grips with Butler's ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are... obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on... Last year Butler won the first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature"
Neuromarketing - "Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product"
Liow dismisses Utusan’s Christian Malaysia report as ‘rumours’ - "Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai has described Utusan Malaysia’s report that Christian leaders and the DAP are planning to supplant Islam as the official religion as “rumours”, saying Malaysians do not hatch such plots... Umno-owned Utusan carried a front-page article yesterday titled “Malaysia, a Christian country?” (Malaysia, negara Kristian?) based entirely on blog postings by several pro-Umno bloggers. The bloggers had charged the DAP with sedition for allegedly trying to change the country’s laws to allow a Christian prime minister, pointing to a grainy photograph showing what they described as a secret pact between the opposition party and pastors at a hotel in Penang on Wednesday."
Malaysia Boleh!
Home Ministry reprimands The Star over supplement - "Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein has reprimanded The Star over the publication of articles on non-halal restaurants with buka puasa stories in its “Dining Out” supplement. He said the newspaper should be more sensitive on such matters and exercise extra care on issues related to race and religion."
Malaysia Boleh!
Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture - "Myth #1: Organic Farms Don’t Use Pesticides
Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use... Many natural pesticides have
been found to be potential – or serious – health risks... Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry
Myth #2: Organic Foods are Healthier
Organic foods did, however, have higher levels of overall fats, particularly trans fats
Myth #3: Organic Farming Is Better For The Environment
Organic proponents refuse to even give GMOs a chance, even to the point of hypocrisy... switches to organic farming will result in the creation of new farms via the destruction of currently untouched habitats, thus plowing over the little wild habitat left for many threatened and endangered species"
All Man’s Land - Rakesh Mani - "Education and wealth have nothing to do with it – in fact, some of the worst-affected areas are in India’s wealthiest cities. However discomfiting a possibility, the real culprit might be Indian culture and tradition itself... The novelist Salman Rushdie once put the question to supporters of abortion rights: “What should be done when a woman uses her power over her own body to discriminate against female fetuses?”... Niall Ferguson, the British
historian, cites scholars who attribute Japan’s imperial expansion after 1914 to a male youth bulge, and who link the rise of Islamist extremism to an Islamic youth bulge"
Photo of bag-carrying ambassador charms China - "A photo of the new U.S.
ambassador to China carrying his own backpack and ordering his own coffee at an airport has charmed Chinese citizens not used to such frugality from their officials"
Malaysia a failed state – The writings are on the wall?
Malaysia Boleh!
Secularism and Its Discontents - "It doesn’t follow from the successes of post-Galilean science, he suggests, that our attributions of value are merely arbitrary... When our neighbor doesn’t agree with us that murdering scores of people at an island camp in Norway is wrong, we do not shrug and say, “Chacun ses goûts.” When Tolstoy calls Shakespeare a poor writer, it is a judgment that judges Tolstoy, and
marks his eccentricity... Once a tendency has been put in place by nature, he writes, “it is not essential that each and every expression of it serve survival and reproduction. It is a bit as with the sex drive: it evolved to serve reproduction, but that does not mean that humans and animals have sex only in order to reproduce. The behavior follows its own autonomous motivational dynamic.” De Waal warns against conflating “the reasons why a behavior evolved and the reasons why individual actors show it, a distinction as sacred to biologists
as the one between church and state in modern society.” As he says, “The evolutionary reasons for altruistic behavior are not necessarily the animals’ reasons.” In other words, human morality can be explained without being explained away."
Dr. Neil Clark Warren: On Second Thought, Don't Get Married - "It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a
lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure."
Areleh Harel: The Orthodox Rabbi Helping Gay Men to Marry Lesbians - "Six years ago, Areleh Harel, an Orthodox rabbi from the West Bank, devised a plan to help an Orthodox Jewish gay man fulfill his dream of becoming a husband and father while keeping him in good standing with
the Jewish law and his community of believers. The solution: Marry him to a lesbian."
This is very screwed up
Believing in bondage - "Opposition to fox-hunting and a commitment to combat climate change may now be protected under the law – but the UK is not yet ready to recognise "consensual slavery"... [The judge's] very real difficulty was whether a way of life sometimes described as "consensual slavery" or "consensual non-consent" could possibly be worthy of recognition in a democratic society... Christianity, for instance, has had its own issues as critics have represented its practice of eating the body of Christ as cannibalism. And as for the Masonic oath… D/s is not sexist: there are probably far more male
submissives than female ones. Nor is it truly inequal. It embodies different and, in the everyday, unequal roles. But its cornerstone is equality and formality: it is preceded in most cases by highly protracted negotiation; there is agreement of rules and boundaries; and an absolute recognition that "no" means "no". Could we claim as much for the average marriage?"
Bigotry!
The murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn: does left-wing animal rights activism lead to terror? - "Shortly after Pim Fortuyn's violent death, various sympathizers directed emotional reproaches to "left-wingers". Left-wing politicians and personalities were said to have 'demonized' Fortuyn, and to have incited hatred"
This makes for interesting comparisons with Anders Behring Breivik and claims of [non far] right wing influence
Post ID: 8883296059033979389
Monday, July 25, 2011
Steve Jobs: Il rend indispensable ce dont vous n'avez pas besoin
Steve Jobs: Remember when I said that netbooks aren't good at anything and that they're just cheap laptops?
Bill Gates: Yup.
Steve Jobs: Well, I fixed the cheap part.
(Steve Jobs on netbooks (funny) | GoGeeks.tv)
Post ID: 4510755083367162902
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Links - 28th May 2011
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." - T. S. Eliot
***
Apple upgrades leave bitter taste - "A pricey but stylish MacBook laptop, a variety of iPods and now a wallet-busting iPhone 4 … I've bought them all. So why is Apple now penalising me and thousands of other loyal customers by effectively declaring that our computers are obsolete?... Yet my MacBook isn't ancient: it's only about four years old. And it's not as if I'm trying to hook up one of the latest devices to a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. What adds insult to injury is that if I had a 10-year-old Windows PC, I wouldn't be experiencing these problems. I'd be able to happily download the new iTunes. But my four-year-old Mac? 'Fraid not... I thought one of Apple's selling points was that its products don't require much technical know-how to set up or use"
Apple can do this because it knows its customers are suckers
The hard drives in new iMacs can't be self-upgraded - "Apple generally tends to overcharge for its hard drive upgrades and replacements. Now customers have no choice but to pay up. It couldn't be more clear-cut that Apple does not want you tampering with their hardware guts. For most Apple customers, this might be fine, but as a person who's replaced a hard drive on every single Mac I've ever owned, whether that was due to to failure or an upgrade, I can say losing the ability to replace the stock drive is a big downer"
Singapore reeling from murder spree, drug scourge - "Between 2007 and 2009, there were fewer than ten a year, compared to an average of 27 or 28 executions a year between 1999 and 2003, and 76 in 1994... something changed. It was international pressure wasn’t it? Yeah, it works"
MP "horrified" after bus spot checks - "Mr Lim told Channel NewsAsia he was "horrified" that three bus services -- 158, 12 and 197 -- took half an hour to arrive, and said he has written to the Public Transport Council"
Why Monogamy Matters - "There are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered... Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution... Liberals argue, not unreasonably, that Planned Parenthood’s approach is tailored to the gritty realities of teenage sexuality. But realism can blur into cynicism, and a jaded attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy"
I am amused to see the "self-fulfilling prophecy" invoked in this scenario
Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists
YouTube - Understanding GIRLS!!!
PM Lee now and in 1984 - "Support for the PAP dropped even lower, however, in the 1988 elections, when it won 63.2 per cent of the votes. In the 1991 elections, it won just 61 per cent – almost the same as this year. In 1997, it won 65 per cent. In 2001, after the national security scare following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, the PAP won an astonishing 75.3 per cent of the votes. But in 2006, the PAP vote slipped back to 66.6 per cent"
Plus ça change...
Girl refuses to give up seat to old woman, even after being asked repeatedly - "Given no choice, I took out my mobile and took pictures of her and the old lady, and announced openly and publicly that I was going to post this on STOMP"
Given no choice, she should've threatened to call the police unless he deleted that photo
Atheists have 'better sex than religious followers who are plagued with guilt' - "Both groups of people admitted that they carried out the same activities such as masturbation, watching pornography, having oral sex and pursuing affairs. But followers of religion did not enjoy the experiences as much due to the stigma... the stronger their religious beliefs were the more powerful their feelings of sexual regret... Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents... People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction... 'Of course, they have to return to their religion to get forgiveness. It's like the church gives you the disease, then offers you a fake cure'"
The report is actually more complicated than reported (for example all the respondents were currently secular) - but that's to be expected
The stupidity of our copyright laws is finally laid bare - ""Could it be true," he asks, "that laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators' rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth? The short answer is: yes." The notion that laws framed in an era when copying was difficult, imperfect and expensive could work in an era when copying was effortless, perfect and cheap was a proposition that only imbeciles and industry lobbyists could entertain. But up to now, our politicians subscribed to it."
Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II - wow this is amazing!
Google’s in-house philosopher: Technologists need a “moral operating system” - "To illustrate how ethics are getting short-shrift in the tech world, Horowitz asked attendees whether they prefer the iPhone or Android. (When the majority voted for the iPhone, he joked that they were “suckers” who just chose the prettier device.) Then he asked whether it was a good idea to take data from an audience member’s phone in order to provide various (and mostly beneficial) services, or whether he should be left alone, and the majority of audience voted to leave him alone. Finally, Horowitz wanted to know whether audience members would use the ideas proposed by John Stuart Mill or by Immanuel Kant to make that decision. Not surprisingly, barely anyone knew what he was talking about. “That’s a terrifying result,” Horowitz said. “We have stronger opinions about our handheld devices than about the moral framework we should use to guide our decisions.”"
23 Amazing Examples Of Military Photography
Being a slut, to my mind, was mostly fun – wearing and doing what you liked - ""Slut" seems mild to me. But now I see people getting fairly worked up about this very bad word used by men about women. I have only ever heard it used by women about women"
'Slutwalks' are just like the campaign to get men to stop committing "violence" against women - selective focus which results in men-bashing
Singapore's People's Association — Central Intelligence Agency - "The program deliberately confused the roles of government and party so that the people tended to praise the party for activities undertaken by the government, Funded by the government but exploited by the ruling party, it cultivated an image independent of both. Thus Singapore's unique People's Association was born."
Le boom de la pornographie en Afrique - "« En Côte d’Ivoire, au Cameroun… les acteurs porno sont adulés et présentés comme des modèles de réussite pour la jeunesse, qui ne se fait pas prier en cas de sollicitation »"
Is Singapore boring? CNN list sparks debate - "Singaporeans know more about food and English football than anyone in the world, but they are not so keen on the arts or culture"
Feminists hopping mad over Bunny Girls
Comments: "'Women dressed as bunnies is not empowering'. Maybe not, but the £1000 a night they can clear in tips most definately is."
"Did a single man protest when the Chippendales first appeared?"
"Girls, well done for publicising the opening of a new Playboy Club. Mr Heffner is, no doubt, very pleased."
"I reckon those two didn't get the job." [Ed: We can use a sociological tool here - asking 'who benefits?'
The line between party and nation - "There is a vast difference between many Third World countries and First World countries in how the political system works. In some Third World countries, it is not just wholesome rivalry between parties but deep hostility that often
manifests in assassination, detention and persecution. One admirable feature of some First World democracies is that when the election is over, the opponents shake hands and get down to work together for the greater good of the nation with little personal ill feelings. The interest of the nation prevails over that of the party... On National Day, I feel something amiss when People's Action Party parliamentarians show up in party uniform"
Idol Otaku Spends $110,000 on 5500 AKB48 CDs
Comments: "“If you just offered this Yuuko girl 5 million yen to sleep with you she’d most likely go for it…”
“You could get a handjob from all 48 for that much.”
“How many times could you go to a soapland for that?”"
Residents fear long-time contamination in Woodlands water tanks - "Residents suspect that workers bathed frequently in the water tanks, and in extreme cases, washed there after having sex with their female companions!"
The fact that there wasn't a rash of poisoning incidents tells you that either Singaporeans (or at least Woodlands residents) have stronger stomachs than we give them credit for, or that people are paranoid
One-third of girls in the United States get pregnant before the age of 20.
Socialite Jamie Cuaca's extensive fashion collection - "Her favourite movie is Breakfast at Tiffany's and Marie Antoinette. These two movies have a common theme - a woman's desire for luxury living, and expensive taste in clothes and items."
Robots have an odd job to do in China – Collect Semen! - "This very-unique gadget has a monitor which would show you exotic pictures, with audio. Down-under is a “semen-collection sheath” which stimulate the movement and the feel. If this is not all, another company which sells the same product promises temperature control. They come with an additional “infrared heating to stimulate the feeling and temperature of a female vagina”. Once attached the “semen-collection sheath” vibrates, until, the donation process is completed... If this does not tickle your funny bone then wait to hear this. There’s a bonus feature: “premature ejaculation training function.”"
This sounds like a cover for a masturbation machine. The patent for the Fleshlight is very funny also
***
Apple upgrades leave bitter taste - "A pricey but stylish MacBook laptop, a variety of iPods and now a wallet-busting iPhone 4 … I've bought them all. So why is Apple now penalising me and thousands of other loyal customers by effectively declaring that our computers are obsolete?... Yet my MacBook isn't ancient: it's only about four years old. And it's not as if I'm trying to hook up one of the latest devices to a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. What adds insult to injury is that if I had a 10-year-old Windows PC, I wouldn't be experiencing these problems. I'd be able to happily download the new iTunes. But my four-year-old Mac? 'Fraid not... I thought one of Apple's selling points was that its products don't require much technical know-how to set up or use"
Apple can do this because it knows its customers are suckers
The hard drives in new iMacs can't be self-upgraded - "Apple generally tends to overcharge for its hard drive upgrades and replacements. Now customers have no choice but to pay up. It couldn't be more clear-cut that Apple does not want you tampering with their hardware guts. For most Apple customers, this might be fine, but as a person who's replaced a hard drive on every single Mac I've ever owned, whether that was due to to failure or an upgrade, I can say losing the ability to replace the stock drive is a big downer"
Singapore reeling from murder spree, drug scourge - "Between 2007 and 2009, there were fewer than ten a year, compared to an average of 27 or 28 executions a year between 1999 and 2003, and 76 in 1994... something changed. It was international pressure wasn’t it? Yeah, it works"
MP "horrified" after bus spot checks - "Mr Lim told Channel NewsAsia he was "horrified" that three bus services -- 158, 12 and 197 -- took half an hour to arrive, and said he has written to the Public Transport Council"
Why Monogamy Matters - "There are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered... Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution... Liberals argue, not unreasonably, that Planned Parenthood’s approach is tailored to the gritty realities of teenage sexuality. But realism can blur into cynicism, and a jaded attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy"
I am amused to see the "self-fulfilling prophecy" invoked in this scenario
Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists
YouTube - Understanding GIRLS!!!
PM Lee now and in 1984 - "Support for the PAP dropped even lower, however, in the 1988 elections, when it won 63.2 per cent of the votes. In the 1991 elections, it won just 61 per cent – almost the same as this year. In 1997, it won 65 per cent. In 2001, after the national security scare following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, the PAP won an astonishing 75.3 per cent of the votes. But in 2006, the PAP vote slipped back to 66.6 per cent"
Plus ça change...
Girl refuses to give up seat to old woman, even after being asked repeatedly - "Given no choice, I took out my mobile and took pictures of her and the old lady, and announced openly and publicly that I was going to post this on STOMP"
Given no choice, she should've threatened to call the police unless he deleted that photo
Atheists have 'better sex than religious followers who are plagued with guilt' - "Both groups of people admitted that they carried out the same activities such as masturbation, watching pornography, having oral sex and pursuing affairs. But followers of religion did not enjoy the experiences as much due to the stigma... the stronger their religious beliefs were the more powerful their feelings of sexual regret... Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents... People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction... 'Of course, they have to return to their religion to get forgiveness. It's like the church gives you the disease, then offers you a fake cure'"
The report is actually more complicated than reported (for example all the respondents were currently secular) - but that's to be expected
The stupidity of our copyright laws is finally laid bare - ""Could it be true," he asks, "that laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators' rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth? The short answer is: yes." The notion that laws framed in an era when copying was difficult, imperfect and expensive could work in an era when copying was effortless, perfect and cheap was a proposition that only imbeciles and industry lobbyists could entertain. But up to now, our politicians subscribed to it."
Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II - wow this is amazing!
Google’s in-house philosopher: Technologists need a “moral operating system” - "To illustrate how ethics are getting short-shrift in the tech world, Horowitz asked attendees whether they prefer the iPhone or Android. (When the majority voted for the iPhone, he joked that they were “suckers” who just chose the prettier device.) Then he asked whether it was a good idea to take data from an audience member’s phone in order to provide various (and mostly beneficial) services, or whether he should be left alone, and the majority of audience voted to leave him alone. Finally, Horowitz wanted to know whether audience members would use the ideas proposed by John Stuart Mill or by Immanuel Kant to make that decision. Not surprisingly, barely anyone knew what he was talking about. “That’s a terrifying result,” Horowitz said. “We have stronger opinions about our handheld devices than about the moral framework we should use to guide our decisions.”"
23 Amazing Examples Of Military Photography
Being a slut, to my mind, was mostly fun – wearing and doing what you liked - ""Slut" seems mild to me. But now I see people getting fairly worked up about this very bad word used by men about women. I have only ever heard it used by women about women"
'Slutwalks' are just like the campaign to get men to stop committing "violence" against women - selective focus which results in men-bashing
Singapore's People's Association — Central Intelligence Agency - "The program deliberately confused the roles of government and party so that the people tended to praise the party for activities undertaken by the government, Funded by the government but exploited by the ruling party, it cultivated an image independent of both. Thus Singapore's unique People's Association was born."
Le boom de la pornographie en Afrique - "« En Côte d’Ivoire, au Cameroun… les acteurs porno sont adulés et présentés comme des modèles de réussite pour la jeunesse, qui ne se fait pas prier en cas de sollicitation »"
Is Singapore boring? CNN list sparks debate - "Singaporeans know more about food and English football than anyone in the world, but they are not so keen on the arts or culture"
Feminists hopping mad over Bunny Girls
Comments: "'Women dressed as bunnies is not empowering'. Maybe not, but the £1000 a night they can clear in tips most definately is."
"Did a single man protest when the Chippendales first appeared?"
"Girls, well done for publicising the opening of a new Playboy Club. Mr Heffner is, no doubt, very pleased."
"I reckon those two didn't get the job." [Ed: We can use a sociological tool here - asking 'who benefits?'
The line between party and nation - "There is a vast difference between many Third World countries and First World countries in how the political system works. In some Third World countries, it is not just wholesome rivalry between parties but deep hostility that often
manifests in assassination, detention and persecution. One admirable feature of some First World democracies is that when the election is over, the opponents shake hands and get down to work together for the greater good of the nation with little personal ill feelings. The interest of the nation prevails over that of the party... On National Day, I feel something amiss when People's Action Party parliamentarians show up in party uniform"
Idol Otaku Spends $110,000 on 5500 AKB48 CDs
Comments: "“If you just offered this Yuuko girl 5 million yen to sleep with you she’d most likely go for it…”
“You could get a handjob from all 48 for that much.”
“How many times could you go to a soapland for that?”"
Residents fear long-time contamination in Woodlands water tanks - "Residents suspect that workers bathed frequently in the water tanks, and in extreme cases, washed there after having sex with their female companions!"
The fact that there wasn't a rash of poisoning incidents tells you that either Singaporeans (or at least Woodlands residents) have stronger stomachs than we give them credit for, or that people are paranoid
One-third of girls in the United States get pregnant before the age of 20.
Socialite Jamie Cuaca's extensive fashion collection - "Her favourite movie is Breakfast at Tiffany's and Marie Antoinette. These two movies have a common theme - a woman's desire for luxury living, and expensive taste in clothes and items."
Robots have an odd job to do in China – Collect Semen! - "This very-unique gadget has a monitor which would show you exotic pictures, with audio. Down-under is a “semen-collection sheath” which stimulate the movement and the feel. If this is not all, another company which sells the same product promises temperature control. They come with an additional “infrared heating to stimulate the feeling and temperature of a female vagina”. Once attached the “semen-collection sheath” vibrates, until, the donation process is completed... If this does not tickle your funny bone then wait to hear this. There’s a bonus feature: “premature ejaculation training function.”"
This sounds like a cover for a masturbation machine. The patent for the Fleshlight is very funny also
Post ID: 4006732337022530201
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Links - 26th April 2011
"There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good." - Robert Pirsig
***
iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go - "Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised... "Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been... We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this"... Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously"
A woman to do the job - "Is someone racist? Homophobic? Or misogynistic? You wouldn't have a clue when things are rosy. But when the stakes are high and people get desperate, facades of propriety start to unravel... Will the opposition parties field women in these wards, for example? This will be a key test in whether gender diversity is a priority for them... the current gender diversity in Singapore's parliament is depressing... By not having a larger number of women in parliament, Singapore is missing out on a key source of diversity which could lend it the insight to steer it through any choppy waters ahead... if the opposition parties will not or cannot field the a woman in these contests, will their man on the ground subsequently lean on sexist logic to score points?... all of the above reactions apply only to people who believe that women have an equal status in Singapore. For those who think otherwise, I can only hope they are well and truly outnumbered in this country"
Among the many problematic aspects, it's not clear that being the target of sexist political point-scoring is worse than being the target of normal political point-scoring. Luckily, I don't think his attempt to stir up gender identity politics will work - and the commenters called him out on it, for example:
"If 50% of citizens have less than undergraduate degrees, does it also mean we need 'enough representation' of less educated in the parliament? Get REAL. "
"I think candidates should be judged by whether they have the relevant experience, ability, commitment and empathy to serve their constituents, not by their age, gender, oratorial skills or tv presence"
"The author forgot to mention that in the build up to the 1991 election, Seet Ai Mei was seen scrambling to wash her hands after shaking hands with a fishmonger... don't misrepresent lah, just to push your feminist agenda"
"If we studied the 1991 results... Gender was either a non-issue or a minor issue"
A letter: "it is superficial to judge a person based on race or occupation [or gender]"
Addendum: I just found out that Tan Hui Yee is a woman. It all makes sense now!
Kenan Malik - Test-tube truths - "In his new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, [Sam Harris] sets out to demolish the traditional philosophical distinction between is and ought... Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as “adaptation”, “speciation”, “homology”, “phylogenetics” or “kin selection” would “increase the amount of boredom in the universe”. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?... The insistence that because it seems obvious that rape and murder are bad, and that wealth and security are good, so there must be objective values seems about as plausible as the argument that because there are gaps in the fossil record, so God must have created Adam and Eve... why should morality self-evidently relate solely to the “wellbeing of conscious creatures”? Why not, as some insist, to the wellbeing of the planet? Or of ecosystems? Or, as others argue, to the wellbeing of humans, as autonomous moral agents, rather than to that of all conscious creatures? I can think of rational arguments that can help distinguish between these claims. But I can think of no empirical test that can do so. Nor does Harris suggest any... The issue is not so much that wellbeing is a fuzzy category as that it can, in specific cases, be well-defined but in a number of different ways that are often conflicting in a manner that science cannot resolve... The difference between a consequentialist and a non-consequentialist view of torture, for instance, cannot be resolved empirically... just as we do not need the false certainty of a divinely sanctified moral code, neither do we need the false certainty of a morality rooted in science... The significance of the Euthyphro dilemma is that it embodies a deeper claim: that concepts such as goodness, happiness and wellbeing only have meaning in a world in which conscious, rational, moral agents exist that themselves are capable of defining moral right and wrong and acting upon it.It is the existence of humans as autonomous moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values"
Trends in use of complementary and alternative medicine by US adults: 1997-2002. - "Factors associated with highest rates of CAM use were ages 40-64, female gender, non-black/non-Hispanic race, and annual income of dollar 65,000 or higher"
UK: 'Waste of time and money' - GPs deliver damning diagnosis on fad health-styles of the rich and famous - "more than three quarters (79%) of women use alternative health treatments favoured by celebrities... to try each treatment on the GPs’ list could cost women more than £800* on average – with upgrades to practitioners used by the celebs themselves seeing the costs running to thousands... Seven in 10 (70%) would try alternative treatments rather than visit their doctor"
Interestingly this research was conducted on "over 1,000 full-time UK workers" but there're no results reported for men; women are more into alternative medicine because they reject the racist, patriarchal basis of modern medicine which is run by white men, ignores the ideas of traditional minority medicine and privileges tangible, measurable outcomes like quality-adjusted life years
For Many Bachelors in China, No Deed Means No Dates - "more than 70 percent of single women in a recent survey said they would tie the knot only with a prospective husband who owned a home... “It’s the guy’s responsibility to tell a girl right away whether he owns an apartment,” she said. “It gives her a chance not to fall in love.” With such women on the prowl, even men who do have their own homes have come up with techniques to weed out the covetous and the inordinately materialistic. Liu Binbin, 30, an editor at a publishing house in Beijing, said he often arrived at first dates by bus, even though he owned a car. “If they ask me questions like ‘Do you live with your parents?’ I know what they’re after,” he said... he knew she was the one after passing the three-month mark. “The whole time she thought I didn’t own an apartment and she still wanted me,” he said. “Someone like that is rare.”"
Food Raves Gain in Popularity - "Here, where the food rave — call it a crave — was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become “members” (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected... many friends could not afford to sell at farmers markets, which requires business and product liability insurance (around $250), space rental ($40 to $55 a day), yearly member fees (around $110), and a health and safety permit (about $500). The use of commercial kitchens would cost an additional $45 to $75 an hour, Mr. Rabins noted, and making jam can take eight hours or more"
Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Minister Mah attacks WP's affordable housing plan.... - "Minister Mah calls WP irresponsible for its plan to provide more affordable flats. He says that cheaper flats means more housing subsidies and less money for education and healthcare. Let me ask you a simple question. In the past few years when the price of HDB flats surge by more than 50% , by Minister Mah's logic, the govt should be awashed with more money from selling HDB flats for healthcare and education - if that is so, why did the govt implement means testing to cut subsidies for healthcare and why did they have to raise school fees for universities and cuts subsidies for education of children with special needs etc? The fact is budget has little to do with HDB selling price. If anything, when the HDB prices go up, the HDB actually shows more losses due to "market subsidies" which increase proportionately with price"
Students don’t need protection from ideas - "The University of Westminster had elected [two] linked to the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that is pretty keen on establishing a global Islamic state... ‘Our rules state individuals or members of organisations or groups identified as holding racist and fascist views are not allowed to stand for election, or go to, speak at, or take part in conferences, meetings or any other events’... [Some] suffer from some sort of Kim Jong Il-esque paranoia that the BNP or Islamofascists are at the gates of our university campuses just awaiting the opportunity to turn the nation’s students racist. This patronisingly assumes that students are an uncritically receptive bunch capable of being whipped into a crazed mob at the merest hint of BNP or Islamist rhetoric. The other camp of students in favour of No Platform, while less obviously hysterical than their fellow no-platformers, is in fact far more insidious. This group talks of creating a safe space to ensure that people do not feel intimidated or feel unable to make their voices heard... The types of student that need protection from such radical views range from the traditional, such as black students or women, right through to the absurd, such as socialist or ‘nervous’. Yet I have seen black, women and even nervous students take the stand, as I have myself at the NUS annual conference, and say ‘I don’t want or need your “protection”’. And they have argued this for a good reason. The idea of ‘protection’ assumes that people have a right not to be offended, that they have a right not to hear students with views influenced by Hizb ut-Tahrir. But there is no right not to be offended. Why should there be? These are students after all; they are at university to experience new and often offensive ideas""
This is a more nuanced issue than he puts it - elected members of the body may be misconstrued as representing it
Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman? - Quora - "The genius of Batman is that it pretends to be realistic, it lets us convince ourselves that with enough money and training, we could become Batman, too. But it's still fantasy... The police draw their guns and order you to stop. You turn and grab for the smoke pellet on your belt to help hide your getaway, but unfortunately for you the cops see you reaching for something and open fire... and you suit's armor is already a mess from the shotgun blast earlier. Uh oh. When you wake up in the ICU, your mask and costume are gone, you're in a lot of pain, but the doctors successfully removed the bullets and re-inflated your lung. The downside is the set of handcuffs trapping you in the bed"
www.AncientAfricanVoodoo.com - "My name is Odongo Baakoo. I am one of the most powerful, and recognized Voodoo Master Priests. “My Powerful gifts have amazed the world”... WARNING: “Ancient African Voodoo Spells” invoke the power of Spiritual Forces which are Real and Powerful. You must consider Ancient African Voodoo Spells very seriously. I will not assume responsibility for the wrong use of my Ancient African Voodoo Spells... 30 Day Money Back Guarantee... Your prices are quite low comparing to others, why? First, I am a real African Voodoo Priest. Most voodoo’s websites are scams."
***
iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go - "Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised... "Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been... We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this"... Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously"
A woman to do the job - "Is someone racist? Homophobic? Or misogynistic? You wouldn't have a clue when things are rosy. But when the stakes are high and people get desperate, facades of propriety start to unravel... Will the opposition parties field women in these wards, for example? This will be a key test in whether gender diversity is a priority for them... the current gender diversity in Singapore's parliament is depressing... By not having a larger number of women in parliament, Singapore is missing out on a key source of diversity which could lend it the insight to steer it through any choppy waters ahead... if the opposition parties will not or cannot field the a woman in these contests, will their man on the ground subsequently lean on sexist logic to score points?... all of the above reactions apply only to people who believe that women have an equal status in Singapore. For those who think otherwise, I can only hope they are well and truly outnumbered in this country"
Among the many problematic aspects, it's not clear that being the target of sexist political point-scoring is worse than being the target of normal political point-scoring. Luckily, I don't think his attempt to stir up gender identity politics will work - and the commenters called him out on it, for example:
"If 50% of citizens have less than undergraduate degrees, does it also mean we need 'enough representation' of less educated in the parliament? Get REAL. "
"I think candidates should be judged by whether they have the relevant experience, ability, commitment and empathy to serve their constituents, not by their age, gender, oratorial skills or tv presence"
"The author forgot to mention that in the build up to the 1991 election, Seet Ai Mei was seen scrambling to wash her hands after shaking hands with a fishmonger... don't misrepresent lah, just to push your feminist agenda"
"If we studied the 1991 results... Gender was either a non-issue or a minor issue"
A letter: "it is superficial to judge a person based on race or occupation [or gender]"
Addendum: I just found out that Tan Hui Yee is a woman. It all makes sense now!
Kenan Malik - Test-tube truths - "In his new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, [Sam Harris] sets out to demolish the traditional philosophical distinction between is and ought... Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as “adaptation”, “speciation”, “homology”, “phylogenetics” or “kin selection” would “increase the amount of boredom in the universe”. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?... The insistence that because it seems obvious that rape and murder are bad, and that wealth and security are good, so there must be objective values seems about as plausible as the argument that because there are gaps in the fossil record, so God must have created Adam and Eve... why should morality self-evidently relate solely to the “wellbeing of conscious creatures”? Why not, as some insist, to the wellbeing of the planet? Or of ecosystems? Or, as others argue, to the wellbeing of humans, as autonomous moral agents, rather than to that of all conscious creatures? I can think of rational arguments that can help distinguish between these claims. But I can think of no empirical test that can do so. Nor does Harris suggest any... The issue is not so much that wellbeing is a fuzzy category as that it can, in specific cases, be well-defined but in a number of different ways that are often conflicting in a manner that science cannot resolve... The difference between a consequentialist and a non-consequentialist view of torture, for instance, cannot be resolved empirically... just as we do not need the false certainty of a divinely sanctified moral code, neither do we need the false certainty of a morality rooted in science... The significance of the Euthyphro dilemma is that it embodies a deeper claim: that concepts such as goodness, happiness and wellbeing only have meaning in a world in which conscious, rational, moral agents exist that themselves are capable of defining moral right and wrong and acting upon it.It is the existence of humans as autonomous moral agents that allows us to act as the bridge between facts and values"
Trends in use of complementary and alternative medicine by US adults: 1997-2002. - "Factors associated with highest rates of CAM use were ages 40-64, female gender, non-black/non-Hispanic race, and annual income of dollar 65,000 or higher"
UK: 'Waste of time and money' - GPs deliver damning diagnosis on fad health-styles of the rich and famous - "more than three quarters (79%) of women use alternative health treatments favoured by celebrities... to try each treatment on the GPs’ list could cost women more than £800* on average – with upgrades to practitioners used by the celebs themselves seeing the costs running to thousands... Seven in 10 (70%) would try alternative treatments rather than visit their doctor"
Interestingly this research was conducted on "over 1,000 full-time UK workers" but there're no results reported for men; women are more into alternative medicine because they reject the racist, patriarchal basis of modern medicine which is run by white men, ignores the ideas of traditional minority medicine and privileges tangible, measurable outcomes like quality-adjusted life years
For Many Bachelors in China, No Deed Means No Dates - "more than 70 percent of single women in a recent survey said they would tie the knot only with a prospective husband who owned a home... “It’s the guy’s responsibility to tell a girl right away whether he owns an apartment,” she said. “It gives her a chance not to fall in love.” With such women on the prowl, even men who do have their own homes have come up with techniques to weed out the covetous and the inordinately materialistic. Liu Binbin, 30, an editor at a publishing house in Beijing, said he often arrived at first dates by bus, even though he owned a car. “If they ask me questions like ‘Do you live with your parents?’ I know what they’re after,” he said... he knew she was the one after passing the three-month mark. “The whole time she thought I didn’t own an apartment and she still wanted me,” he said. “Someone like that is rare.”"
Food Raves Gain in Popularity - "Here, where the food rave — call it a crave — was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become “members” (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected... many friends could not afford to sell at farmers markets, which requires business and product liability insurance (around $250), space rental ($40 to $55 a day), yearly member fees (around $110), and a health and safety permit (about $500). The use of commercial kitchens would cost an additional $45 to $75 an hour, Mr. Rabins noted, and making jam can take eight hours or more"
Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Minister Mah attacks WP's affordable housing plan.... - "Minister Mah calls WP irresponsible for its plan to provide more affordable flats. He says that cheaper flats means more housing subsidies and less money for education and healthcare. Let me ask you a simple question. In the past few years when the price of HDB flats surge by more than 50% , by Minister Mah's logic, the govt should be awashed with more money from selling HDB flats for healthcare and education - if that is so, why did the govt implement means testing to cut subsidies for healthcare and why did they have to raise school fees for universities and cuts subsidies for education of children with special needs etc? The fact is budget has little to do with HDB selling price. If anything, when the HDB prices go up, the HDB actually shows more losses due to "market subsidies" which increase proportionately with price"
Students don’t need protection from ideas - "The University of Westminster had elected [two] linked to the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that is pretty keen on establishing a global Islamic state... ‘Our rules state individuals or members of organisations or groups identified as holding racist and fascist views are not allowed to stand for election, or go to, speak at, or take part in conferences, meetings or any other events’... [Some] suffer from some sort of Kim Jong Il-esque paranoia that the BNP or Islamofascists are at the gates of our university campuses just awaiting the opportunity to turn the nation’s students racist. This patronisingly assumes that students are an uncritically receptive bunch capable of being whipped into a crazed mob at the merest hint of BNP or Islamist rhetoric. The other camp of students in favour of No Platform, while less obviously hysterical than their fellow no-platformers, is in fact far more insidious. This group talks of creating a safe space to ensure that people do not feel intimidated or feel unable to make their voices heard... The types of student that need protection from such radical views range from the traditional, such as black students or women, right through to the absurd, such as socialist or ‘nervous’. Yet I have seen black, women and even nervous students take the stand, as I have myself at the NUS annual conference, and say ‘I don’t want or need your “protection”’. And they have argued this for a good reason. The idea of ‘protection’ assumes that people have a right not to be offended, that they have a right not to hear students with views influenced by Hizb ut-Tahrir. But there is no right not to be offended. Why should there be? These are students after all; they are at university to experience new and often offensive ideas""
This is a more nuanced issue than he puts it - elected members of the body may be misconstrued as representing it
Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman? - Quora - "The genius of Batman is that it pretends to be realistic, it lets us convince ourselves that with enough money and training, we could become Batman, too. But it's still fantasy... The police draw their guns and order you to stop. You turn and grab for the smoke pellet on your belt to help hide your getaway, but unfortunately for you the cops see you reaching for something and open fire... and you suit's armor is already a mess from the shotgun blast earlier. Uh oh. When you wake up in the ICU, your mask and costume are gone, you're in a lot of pain, but the doctors successfully removed the bullets and re-inflated your lung. The downside is the set of handcuffs trapping you in the bed"
www.AncientAfricanVoodoo.com - "My name is Odongo Baakoo. I am one of the most powerful, and recognized Voodoo Master Priests. “My Powerful gifts have amazed the world”... WARNING: “Ancient African Voodoo Spells” invoke the power of Spiritual Forces which are Real and Powerful. You must consider Ancient African Voodoo Spells very seriously. I will not assume responsibility for the wrong use of my Ancient African Voodoo Spells... 30 Day Money Back Guarantee... Your prices are quite low comparing to others, why? First, I am a real African Voodoo Priest. Most voodoo’s websites are scams."
Post ID: 1288168365556322963
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Links - 17th March 2011
"First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
***
Use a Mac, they never have problems. Right? Right?!
What Does An iPhone With a Bullet Hole Look Like? - "A controversial new photography show from artist Michael Tompert features high-res photographs of destroyed Apple products — iPhones with bullet holes, iPads melted by blowtorches and iPods run over by a train — and it’s all to make you question your obsession with gadgetry... the idea came to him after seeing his two children fight over their iPod Christmas presents. Fed up, Tompert says he grabbed one of the devices and smashed it on the ground. “They were kind of stunned""
NUS: Employment Rate1 and Gross Monthly Salary of Graduates By Bachelors Degree, 2009
More safeguards to be introduced to curb gambling addiction if needed Dr Balakrishnan - "He added that there is also a need for Singaporeans to be more self reliant. Mr Goh said: "How many of you followed the latest tragic events in Japan with the tsunami...and then put into context our floods in Singapore against that kind of disaster. "I am not saying we shouldn't do anything about the flood. But the amount of noise you made with just sporadic flood compared to the Japanese. I saw them on TV. Very stoic looking. You don't see them crying. This has happened, just get on, that's the kind of spirit you want to have and you call it nation building.""
We should be like the Japanese in other ways, like throwing out one of the world's longest-ruling parties and having ministers resign to take responsibility
19-Year-Old Is Charged in Hamster's Death - "After a nine-month hunt for a suspect they described as evasive and uncooperative, law enforcement agents from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals arrested Monique Smith, 19, along Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick. She was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals — a felony that carries a sentence of up to two years in prison — along with two misdemeanors, torturing animals and endangering the welfare of a child... Animal cruelty laws apply equally to creatures large and small, said Joseph Pentangelo, assistant director of humane law enforcement for the society"
One comment: "Really, to an ant? A flea? How about a Cockroach? Joseph, are you being misquoted?"
"Wouldn’t this make anyone that uses a mousetrap a felon?"
"I’m assuming they’ll jump on the factory farming industry next… and the millions of Americans who eat meat – right? Just to be consistent."
"Send these PETA/animal welfare people to Sierra Leone, where they can learn what real cruelty is and maybe decide to spend their useless lives doing good that actually matters…"
"This kind of thing is one of the major reasons I moved out of the US, so my son would not be raised with the possibility of having his life destroyed for a mistake"
The Economics Of Prostitution - "Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine. This may explain why prostitution is less common in wealthier countries... according to data assembled from a wide variety of times and places, ranging from mid-15th-century France to Malaysia of the late 1990s, prostitutes make more money--in some cases, a lot more money--than do working girls who, well, work for a living. This held true even for places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. In short, streetwalkers aren't necessarily being paid more for their increased risk of going to jail or the hospital... 'prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of forgone-marriage market earnings'... 'This begs the question of why married men go to prostitutes (rather than buying from their wives, who presumably will be low-cost providers, considering that they can sell nonreproductive sex without compromising their marriage)'... the economic analysis of marriage explains one age-old phenomenon: gold digging"
McKinsey & Company - Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch - ""Consider the results of a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of global executives on the impact of participatory Web 2.0 technologies (such as social networks, wikis, and microblogs) on management and performance. The survey found that deploying these technologies to create networked organisations that foster innovative collaboration among employees, customers, and business partners is highly correlated with market share gains. "That is just one example of how these trends transcend technology and provide a map of the terrain for creating value and competing effectively in these challenging and uncertain times""
Why being up close with poverty can bring positive benefits - "When I was 18, I worked for six months with street children in Medellin, the second biggest city in Colombia. I was meant to be helping them but, predictably, did very little of concrete value. I spent most of my time being ridiculed for my bad Spanish and having my clothes stolen... The anti-poverty industry is a multibillion-dollar money spinner... The longer you stay in the anti-poverty business, the less likely you are to know anyone who is poor"
Gender discrimination must end for Singapore to flourish, says AWARE - "Gender discrimination still exists in Singapore today. This, it said, was the unanimous view of about 200 participants at the Women's Choices, Women's Lives: Shaping the Next 25 Years conference... this discrimination must be eradicated and gender equity achieved if... the challenges of the low fertility rate and the ageing population are to be tackled effectively. It is pushing for a quota of 30 per cent to be set for women in Parliament... [It] also recommends that gender studies be added to the core curriculum for all students, and in the Civil Service"
You know AWARE has really lost the plot when they call for compulsory gender studies classes; you know what else reduces fertility? Educating women
What do you do after you make a ZILLION dollars? - "1.) The One-Year Rule. Don’t change your lifestyle at all for at least one year.
2.) The No-Friends Rule. Don’t lend money to old friends. Don’t be so quick to make new friends. Once you make money, everyone will approach you about new investments you can make. Or people will want to borrow money from you.
3.) Don’t Invest.
4.) The 2% Rule. If you really feel that Google is going to $5,000 per share and you have to buy some stock at $500, don’t put more than 2% of your money into it.
5.) The Good Health Rule. Believe it or not, your health is now at risk if you just came into sudden wealth.
6.) Try Not To Burn Out."
www.dumpert.nl - Nieuw! De TietPlakkerT
An easy trick to get support with some sticky tape. NSFW
Letting your mind wander is a major cause of unhappiness - "Our minds are wandering about 46.9 percent of the time in any given activity, and the mind-wandering rate was at least 30% for all but one activity. Thankfully, the only activity that generally got people's undivided attention was making love. That was also one of the activities that made people happiest, along with exercising and conversing with others... Only 4.6% of a person's happiness could be attributed to what they were doing, but 10.8% of it was caused by what they were thinking about at the time, and people consistently reported being happiest when their minds were on what they were doing"
Dreamers are unhappier than people who focus on the present
China wants extra compensation for Christchurch quake victims - "The Chinese Embassy has asked the Government to give special compensation to Chinese families who lost children in last month's Christchurch earthquake... Mr Lei said there was a very notable difference between Chinese families and other foreign families, which needed to be taken into consideration when providing compensation to families who lost their only child"
Simply, China is a piece of shit. Whose fault is it that they only have one child?
Rethinking Nuclear Power - "If xenophobia had not killed nuclear power in the United States in the late 1970's, there's a good chance that we'd have all been driving electric cars for the past 20 years; and uncounted billions of tons of carbon dioxide would never been sucked out of the ground, burned in power plants, and exhausted into our atmosphere... Three Mile Island can (and should) be characterized as a shining example of how well the safety systems work, even in the face of human error and old-fashioned reactor design... Chernobyl-type disasters are not possible in most reactors around the world. Only a very few Generation I designs are still in use, all in the former Soviet Union, and all have been retrofitted with improvements intended to prevent this type of accident... How do the dangers of nuclear energy compare to the dangers of fossil fuel energy? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is... the plants we're designing now produce less waste than ever... Lobbying against future cleaner plants won't make the existing waste go away"
All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate - "My putative status as the 50th most important person on Planet Earth derives in part from a belief that the editor of an important newspaper does not merely harvest the initiative of hard-working journalists but personally directs a vast, global conspiracy. I don’t. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?... Some once-serious news outlets give pride of place not to stories they think important but to stories that are “trending” on Twitter — the “American Idol”-ization of news. And we have bestowed our highest honor — market valuation — not on those who labor over the making of original journalism but on aggregation... “Aggregation”... too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model. The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come... if everybody is an aggregator, nobody will be left to make real stuff to aggregate"
***
Use a Mac, they never have problems. Right? Right?!
What Does An iPhone With a Bullet Hole Look Like? - "A controversial new photography show from artist Michael Tompert features high-res photographs of destroyed Apple products — iPhones with bullet holes, iPads melted by blowtorches and iPods run over by a train — and it’s all to make you question your obsession with gadgetry... the idea came to him after seeing his two children fight over their iPod Christmas presents. Fed up, Tompert says he grabbed one of the devices and smashed it on the ground. “They were kind of stunned""
NUS: Employment Rate1 and Gross Monthly Salary of Graduates By Bachelors Degree, 2009
More safeguards to be introduced to curb gambling addiction if needed Dr Balakrishnan - "He added that there is also a need for Singaporeans to be more self reliant. Mr Goh said: "How many of you followed the latest tragic events in Japan with the tsunami...and then put into context our floods in Singapore against that kind of disaster. "I am not saying we shouldn't do anything about the flood. But the amount of noise you made with just sporadic flood compared to the Japanese. I saw them on TV. Very stoic looking. You don't see them crying. This has happened, just get on, that's the kind of spirit you want to have and you call it nation building.""
We should be like the Japanese in other ways, like throwing out one of the world's longest-ruling parties and having ministers resign to take responsibility
19-Year-Old Is Charged in Hamster's Death - "After a nine-month hunt for a suspect they described as evasive and uncooperative, law enforcement agents from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals arrested Monique Smith, 19, along Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick. She was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals — a felony that carries a sentence of up to two years in prison — along with two misdemeanors, torturing animals and endangering the welfare of a child... Animal cruelty laws apply equally to creatures large and small, said Joseph Pentangelo, assistant director of humane law enforcement for the society"
One comment: "Really, to an ant? A flea? How about a Cockroach? Joseph, are you being misquoted?"
"Wouldn’t this make anyone that uses a mousetrap a felon?"
"I’m assuming they’ll jump on the factory farming industry next… and the millions of Americans who eat meat – right? Just to be consistent."
"Send these PETA/animal welfare people to Sierra Leone, where they can learn what real cruelty is and maybe decide to spend their useless lives doing good that actually matters…"
"This kind of thing is one of the major reasons I moved out of the US, so my son would not be raised with the possibility of having his life destroyed for a mistake"
The Economics Of Prostitution - "Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine. This may explain why prostitution is less common in wealthier countries... according to data assembled from a wide variety of times and places, ranging from mid-15th-century France to Malaysia of the late 1990s, prostitutes make more money--in some cases, a lot more money--than do working girls who, well, work for a living. This held true even for places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. In short, streetwalkers aren't necessarily being paid more for their increased risk of going to jail or the hospital... 'prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of forgone-marriage market earnings'... 'This begs the question of why married men go to prostitutes (rather than buying from their wives, who presumably will be low-cost providers, considering that they can sell nonreproductive sex without compromising their marriage)'... the economic analysis of marriage explains one age-old phenomenon: gold digging"
McKinsey & Company - Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch - ""Consider the results of a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of global executives on the impact of participatory Web 2.0 technologies (such as social networks, wikis, and microblogs) on management and performance. The survey found that deploying these technologies to create networked organisations that foster innovative collaboration among employees, customers, and business partners is highly correlated with market share gains. "That is just one example of how these trends transcend technology and provide a map of the terrain for creating value and competing effectively in these challenging and uncertain times""
Why being up close with poverty can bring positive benefits - "When I was 18, I worked for six months with street children in Medellin, the second biggest city in Colombia. I was meant to be helping them but, predictably, did very little of concrete value. I spent most of my time being ridiculed for my bad Spanish and having my clothes stolen... The anti-poverty industry is a multibillion-dollar money spinner... The longer you stay in the anti-poverty business, the less likely you are to know anyone who is poor"
Gender discrimination must end for Singapore to flourish, says AWARE - "Gender discrimination still exists in Singapore today. This, it said, was the unanimous view of about 200 participants at the Women's Choices, Women's Lives: Shaping the Next 25 Years conference... this discrimination must be eradicated and gender equity achieved if... the challenges of the low fertility rate and the ageing population are to be tackled effectively. It is pushing for a quota of 30 per cent to be set for women in Parliament... [It] also recommends that gender studies be added to the core curriculum for all students, and in the Civil Service"
You know AWARE has really lost the plot when they call for compulsory gender studies classes; you know what else reduces fertility? Educating women
What do you do after you make a ZILLION dollars? - "1.) The One-Year Rule. Don’t change your lifestyle at all for at least one year.
2.) The No-Friends Rule. Don’t lend money to old friends. Don’t be so quick to make new friends. Once you make money, everyone will approach you about new investments you can make. Or people will want to borrow money from you.
3.) Don’t Invest.
4.) The 2% Rule. If you really feel that Google is going to $5,000 per share and you have to buy some stock at $500, don’t put more than 2% of your money into it.
5.) The Good Health Rule. Believe it or not, your health is now at risk if you just came into sudden wealth.
6.) Try Not To Burn Out."
www.dumpert.nl - Nieuw! De TietPlakkerT
An easy trick to get support with some sticky tape. NSFW
Letting your mind wander is a major cause of unhappiness - "Our minds are wandering about 46.9 percent of the time in any given activity, and the mind-wandering rate was at least 30% for all but one activity. Thankfully, the only activity that generally got people's undivided attention was making love. That was also one of the activities that made people happiest, along with exercising and conversing with others... Only 4.6% of a person's happiness could be attributed to what they were doing, but 10.8% of it was caused by what they were thinking about at the time, and people consistently reported being happiest when their minds were on what they were doing"
Dreamers are unhappier than people who focus on the present
China wants extra compensation for Christchurch quake victims - "The Chinese Embassy has asked the Government to give special compensation to Chinese families who lost children in last month's Christchurch earthquake... Mr Lei said there was a very notable difference between Chinese families and other foreign families, which needed to be taken into consideration when providing compensation to families who lost their only child"
Simply, China is a piece of shit. Whose fault is it that they only have one child?
Rethinking Nuclear Power - "If xenophobia had not killed nuclear power in the United States in the late 1970's, there's a good chance that we'd have all been driving electric cars for the past 20 years; and uncounted billions of tons of carbon dioxide would never been sucked out of the ground, burned in power plants, and exhausted into our atmosphere... Three Mile Island can (and should) be characterized as a shining example of how well the safety systems work, even in the face of human error and old-fashioned reactor design... Chernobyl-type disasters are not possible in most reactors around the world. Only a very few Generation I designs are still in use, all in the former Soviet Union, and all have been retrofitted with improvements intended to prevent this type of accident... How do the dangers of nuclear energy compare to the dangers of fossil fuel energy? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is... the plants we're designing now produce less waste than ever... Lobbying against future cleaner plants won't make the existing waste go away"
All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate - "My putative status as the 50th most important person on Planet Earth derives in part from a belief that the editor of an important newspaper does not merely harvest the initiative of hard-working journalists but personally directs a vast, global conspiracy. I don’t. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?... Some once-serious news outlets give pride of place not to stories they think important but to stories that are “trending” on Twitter — the “American Idol”-ization of news. And we have bestowed our highest honor — market valuation — not on those who labor over the making of original journalism but on aggregation... “Aggregation”... too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model. The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come... if everybody is an aggregator, nobody will be left to make real stuff to aggregate"
Post ID: 7061115110043031526
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Links - 22nd February 2011
"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated." - George Santayana
***
Why Are You People Defending Apple? - "The sinking feeling I’ve got in my stomach as I imagine a world where a significant number of the world’s computer users are locked behind a 30% toll being enforced by one of the most monolithic companies around."
Stop worrying that your twentysomething is lost - "Do you know what a loser is today? A loser is someone who doesn't take the time to get to know herself. A loser is someone who saw his parents earn a lot of money and not get happiness from it and still deludes himself that money will make him happy. A loser is someone who looks for fame or prestige. A loser is someone who lets someone else tell them what success looks like"
Belgian senator calls on 'sex strike' until political deadlock is broken - "Marleen Temmerman, a Socialist senator, has urged the bed partners of MPs, senators and party political leaders to keep their "legs closed" until the deadlock, which is closing in on a world record of 249 days, is ended... many Belgians fear that market turmoil could bring down their highly indebted country if it fails to end the crisis by Feb 17, when it will beat war-torn Iraq to set a new world record of more than 249 days without government... [When Kenya did the same,] "Kenyan prostitutes were offered financial compensation if they showed sisterly solidarity and participated in the sex strike. The impact has never been scientifically proven, but after just one week there was a stable government." Catherine Fonck, a Christian democrat senator, rejected the call. "I don't want to take part in a sex strike," she said. "Politicians are not there to strike, on the contrary, politicians are there arouse the country""
Plastic surgery is the next must-have career tool. Maybe - "All else being equal, a good-looking woman will negotiate better for a company than anyone else—even a good-looking man, according to research by Sara Solnick of the University of Miami and Maurice Schweitzer from Wharton. Good-looking women drive harder bargains than everyone else, and good-looking women get more concessions than anyone else"
The secret life of salesgirls - "Williams thinks that cheerleading talent does, in fact, correleate with talent for sales: "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want"... Men who are attracted to you are more likely to buy from you. So what? Men who like to play golf are more likely to do business with other men who play golf. People have been given unfair preferences forever. Be glad you are the recipient of some of this... Do not tell human resources if you can help it. The job of human resources is to protect the company, not you, and when you have a harassment complaint, you are a problem to the company"
This blog is really good
Skirting the Line - "People of both sexes rate women who forgo makeup as less committed to their jobs... Few workers are likely to set a badly dressed colleague straight. In fact, competitive female coworkers often relish a rival's wardrobe faux pas... Both sexes perceive women with long, straight, blond hair as being sexy and those with short, highlighted hairstyles as smart and confident, but not sexy, finds Marianne LaFrance, a Yale psychologist. "More hair equals more femininity, but also less intelligence," she says. Likewise, high-maintenance hair makes others suspicious about a woman's competence"
The Fame Motive - "The urge to achieve social distinction is evident worldwide, even among people for whom prominence is neither accessible nor desirable. In rural Hindu villages in India, for instance, widows are expected to be perpetual mourners, austere in their habits, appetites and dress; even so, they often jockey for position... “Many compete for who is most pure,” Dr. Shweder said. “They say, ‘I don’t eat fish, I don’t eat eggs, I don’t even walk into someone’s house who has eaten meat.’... [those] who focused on goals tied to others’ approval, like fame, reported significantly higher levels of distress than those interested primarily in self-acceptance and friendship... famous people in particular are forced to judge themselves against ideals set by others"
John R. Malott: The Price of Malaysia's Racism - "The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib's political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed... Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country... TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees"
A Preliminary Report on an Intervention Designed to Reduce Grandmother Death Resulting From College Exams - "The rate of grandmother mortality rose 10-20 times just prior to the period of exams... Adams (1990) speculated that the most likely cause of death was inordinate grandmotherly stress at the thought of her grandchild taking a difficult exam. This interpretation was further strengthened by findings that the worse students had been performing in the class, the greater the likelihood of at least one grandmother dying prior to an exam. Grandmothers probably experience particularly acute stress at the thought of their grandchildren taking a test in which they are unlikely to do well... we have instituted the following intervention, designed to reduce the frequency of premature grandmother mortality. Students are informed that, should they miss a major multiple choice exam, they will have an opportunity to take the brutal essay makeup... The main intervention -- simply informing students that, if they miss the main exam they could take the brutal essay makeup -- dramatically reduced the grandmother mortality rate"
Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked - "If you sign in as a 15-year-old girl and look under the Sixth Commandment, one of the questions is: “Do I not treat my body or other people’s bodies with purity and respect?” If you sign in as a 33-year-old married man, that commandment offers this query: “Have I been guilty of masturbation?”... The app also tailors the questions if you sign in as a priest or a “religious.” For instance, if you say you’re a female and try to select “priest” as your vocation, a dialogue box appears that says “sex and vocation are incompatible.” So much for modernity. Under the Sixth Commandment, men and women are asked: “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?” Priests, however, are not. They are asked if they flirt"
Parisians are 'rude and smelly' - say their own tourist chiefs - "The charter of committments for Parisians reads:
• I will take the time to give information to visitors.
• I will make use of my foreign-language skills to reply to them in their language.
• I will recommend to visitors things I appreciate about Paris.
• I am proud of my city, the No 1 tourist destination in the world."
Homeopaths Without Borders
I thought this was a joke. PZ Myers suggests calling it "Quackery Without Scruples"
IT'S OFFICIAL: The Smartphone Market Is Now Bigger Than The PC Market A question I asked: Why are there crazy cat ladies, but no crazy dog men? | Formspring - "Cos women tend to have an inherent inexplicable need to take care of something after a while. Men don't. Or at least there's a much lower occurrence of such cases"
Customs officers 'destroy World Cup shirt' - "the customs officers wrongly believed it was a counterfeit"
One Man, One Vote, One Time - "As exhilarating as revolution can be and as desirable as elections are, in the Middle East they have too often ended in tyranny"
So Egypt is now 'free'. Time to see hope turn to disappointment once again. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... (see also: Obama and The Vacuity of 'Hope' from 2008)
Poll shows Egyptians favour democracy and stoning for adultery - "95%: Say it’s good that Islam plays a large role in politics
54%: Believe men and women should be segregated in the workplace
82%: Believe adulterers should be stoned
84%: Believe apostates from Islam should face the death penalty
77%: Believe thieves should be flogged or have their hands cut off"
John Zogby: 2010 Poll: Egyptians Dislike Obama, See U.S./Israel as "Threats," Want Clergy More Political
Hurriyya - WikiIslam - "According to the late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003), Islamic culture historically has nothing corresponding to the Western concept of freedom as "a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes." A Muslim “was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior”"
***
Why Are You People Defending Apple? - "The sinking feeling I’ve got in my stomach as I imagine a world where a significant number of the world’s computer users are locked behind a 30% toll being enforced by one of the most monolithic companies around."
Stop worrying that your twentysomething is lost - "Do you know what a loser is today? A loser is someone who doesn't take the time to get to know herself. A loser is someone who saw his parents earn a lot of money and not get happiness from it and still deludes himself that money will make him happy. A loser is someone who looks for fame or prestige. A loser is someone who lets someone else tell them what success looks like"
Belgian senator calls on 'sex strike' until political deadlock is broken - "Marleen Temmerman, a Socialist senator, has urged the bed partners of MPs, senators and party political leaders to keep their "legs closed" until the deadlock, which is closing in on a world record of 249 days, is ended... many Belgians fear that market turmoil could bring down their highly indebted country if it fails to end the crisis by Feb 17, when it will beat war-torn Iraq to set a new world record of more than 249 days without government... [When Kenya did the same,] "Kenyan prostitutes were offered financial compensation if they showed sisterly solidarity and participated in the sex strike. The impact has never been scientifically proven, but after just one week there was a stable government." Catherine Fonck, a Christian democrat senator, rejected the call. "I don't want to take part in a sex strike," she said. "Politicians are not there to strike, on the contrary, politicians are there arouse the country""
Plastic surgery is the next must-have career tool. Maybe - "All else being equal, a good-looking woman will negotiate better for a company than anyone else—even a good-looking man, according to research by Sara Solnick of the University of Miami and Maurice Schweitzer from Wharton. Good-looking women drive harder bargains than everyone else, and good-looking women get more concessions than anyone else"
The secret life of salesgirls - "Williams thinks that cheerleading talent does, in fact, correleate with talent for sales: "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want"... Men who are attracted to you are more likely to buy from you. So what? Men who like to play golf are more likely to do business with other men who play golf. People have been given unfair preferences forever. Be glad you are the recipient of some of this... Do not tell human resources if you can help it. The job of human resources is to protect the company, not you, and when you have a harassment complaint, you are a problem to the company"
This blog is really good
Skirting the Line - "People of both sexes rate women who forgo makeup as less committed to their jobs... Few workers are likely to set a badly dressed colleague straight. In fact, competitive female coworkers often relish a rival's wardrobe faux pas... Both sexes perceive women with long, straight, blond hair as being sexy and those with short, highlighted hairstyles as smart and confident, but not sexy, finds Marianne LaFrance, a Yale psychologist. "More hair equals more femininity, but also less intelligence," she says. Likewise, high-maintenance hair makes others suspicious about a woman's competence"
The Fame Motive - "The urge to achieve social distinction is evident worldwide, even among people for whom prominence is neither accessible nor desirable. In rural Hindu villages in India, for instance, widows are expected to be perpetual mourners, austere in their habits, appetites and dress; even so, they often jockey for position... “Many compete for who is most pure,” Dr. Shweder said. “They say, ‘I don’t eat fish, I don’t eat eggs, I don’t even walk into someone’s house who has eaten meat.’... [those] who focused on goals tied to others’ approval, like fame, reported significantly higher levels of distress than those interested primarily in self-acceptance and friendship... famous people in particular are forced to judge themselves against ideals set by others"
John R. Malott: The Price of Malaysia's Racism - "The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib's political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed... Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country... TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees"
A Preliminary Report on an Intervention Designed to Reduce Grandmother Death Resulting From College Exams - "The rate of grandmother mortality rose 10-20 times just prior to the period of exams... Adams (1990) speculated that the most likely cause of death was inordinate grandmotherly stress at the thought of her grandchild taking a difficult exam. This interpretation was further strengthened by findings that the worse students had been performing in the class, the greater the likelihood of at least one grandmother dying prior to an exam. Grandmothers probably experience particularly acute stress at the thought of their grandchildren taking a test in which they are unlikely to do well... we have instituted the following intervention, designed to reduce the frequency of premature grandmother mortality. Students are informed that, should they miss a major multiple choice exam, they will have an opportunity to take the brutal essay makeup... The main intervention -- simply informing students that, if they miss the main exam they could take the brutal essay makeup -- dramatically reduced the grandmother mortality rate"
Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked - "If you sign in as a 15-year-old girl and look under the Sixth Commandment, one of the questions is: “Do I not treat my body or other people’s bodies with purity and respect?” If you sign in as a 33-year-old married man, that commandment offers this query: “Have I been guilty of masturbation?”... The app also tailors the questions if you sign in as a priest or a “religious.” For instance, if you say you’re a female and try to select “priest” as your vocation, a dialogue box appears that says “sex and vocation are incompatible.” So much for modernity. Under the Sixth Commandment, men and women are asked: “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?” Priests, however, are not. They are asked if they flirt"
Parisians are 'rude and smelly' - say their own tourist chiefs - "The charter of committments for Parisians reads:
• I will take the time to give information to visitors.
• I will make use of my foreign-language skills to reply to them in their language.
• I will recommend to visitors things I appreciate about Paris.
• I am proud of my city, the No 1 tourist destination in the world."
Homeopaths Without Borders
I thought this was a joke. PZ Myers suggests calling it "Quackery Without Scruples"
IT'S OFFICIAL: The Smartphone Market Is Now Bigger Than The PC Market A question I asked: Why are there crazy cat ladies, but no crazy dog men? | Formspring - "Cos women tend to have an inherent inexplicable need to take care of something after a while. Men don't. Or at least there's a much lower occurrence of such cases"
Customs officers 'destroy World Cup shirt' - "the customs officers wrongly believed it was a counterfeit"
One Man, One Vote, One Time - "As exhilarating as revolution can be and as desirable as elections are, in the Middle East they have too often ended in tyranny"
So Egypt is now 'free'. Time to see hope turn to disappointment once again. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... (see also: Obama and The Vacuity of 'Hope' from 2008)
Poll shows Egyptians favour democracy and stoning for adultery - "95%: Say it’s good that Islam plays a large role in politics
54%: Believe men and women should be segregated in the workplace
82%: Believe adulterers should be stoned
84%: Believe apostates from Islam should face the death penalty
77%: Believe thieves should be flogged or have their hands cut off"
John Zogby: 2010 Poll: Egyptians Dislike Obama, See U.S./Israel as "Threats," Want Clergy More Political
Hurriyya - WikiIslam - "According to the late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003), Islamic culture historically has nothing corresponding to the Western concept of freedom as "a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes." A Muslim “was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior”"
Post ID: 6136541383599897571
Monday, February 14, 2011
Links - 14th February 2011
"It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." - Jerome K. Jerome
***
STOMP - Singapore Seen - So stupid! Guys destroy iPad to build skateboard - "STOMPer iMad thought that it was stupid of these guys to wreck an expensive iPad just to use it as a skateboard."
Comments: "apple product sucks thats why you can find so many ipads, iphones being smashed and destroyed on youtube"
"Ppl got money they can do whatever they wan also can with their own things lik that also wan comment go home sleep la"
"They do this just to screw Steve Jobs, I remember another video of a iPad and a iPhone 4 during it's release date last year, where those American dudes used a .50 (12.7x99mm) Caliber Rifle to shoot the appliance."
"its called being creative u dumb f u c k"
How smartphone users see each other, Android vs. BlackBerry vs. iPhone [COMIC]
Apple says NO! to iPad Cutting Board - "A few months back we received a call from Apple lawyers and we were told to stop selling them. The reason given was based on “likeness” issues. A Wood cutting board. Lord have mercy on my soul."
"We didn't call it anything like that with name iPad in it."
What Is Academic Work? - "The [good] paper does not say to its audience, “Go out and change the world,” but “Here is my take on these issues and what do you think?”... The kind of questions asked also marked the occasion as an academic one. Not “Won’t the economy implode if we do this?” or “Wouldn’t free expression rights be eroded if we went down that path?”, but “Would you be willing to follow your argument to its logical conclusion?” or “Doesn’t that amount to just making up the law as you go along?”"
This is why scholarship and activism are inimical (at least when practised simultaneously)
The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union
Plans to help older low-wage workers - "One proposal is for Individual Unemployment Credits to support workers during their involuntary unemployment period. Workers who are involuntarily unemployed should be allowed to take a loan from their CPF account based on a percentage of their last-drawn salary, with a cap for three months... The loan has to be paid back upon employment"
Even when you're above 65 you have to pay back money borrowed from yourself? CPF is such a scam
What is the name of the extinct plant that may have inspired the symbol for heart-shaped Valentines? - "Ancient coins from Cyrene, a city-state where Libya is now, show an impression of a silphium seed, and it’s a shape that you know very well... Silphium only grew in the wild and could not be cultivated. Much like the heart it symbolizes, attempts at domesticating the plant may have been the cause of its demise"
What I want from a restaurant website - The Oatmeal - "What I get instead... Can't copy/paste anything because it's in flash"
Average female face: The Face of Tomorrow Mike Mike project - "Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment. But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese. More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features"
White blood cells pitted against each other in ‘Blood Wars’
Vietnam rings in Year of the Cat - "Exactly why and when Vietnam dumped the rabbit and adopted the cat for its version of the 12 signs of the horoscope taken from China is up for debate and may have been partly the result of a complex translation error... “It’s appropriate that the Vietnamese swapped the cat into the calendar in place of the rabbit. Rabbits are a kind of rodent and the rat is also a rodent. The animals should be different... This expresses a balance of yin and yang in the cosmos that is more complete, that better unifies the contradictions, and so it is richer and better to have the cat”... In Vietnam, rabbits are considered food. Cats also appear on the occasional menu as “little tigers,” although the practice of eating them is technically banned"
They should pit a Chinese and a Vietnamese and let them argue over their mumbo-jumbo, post-hoc rationalisations
What effect has the internet had on our sex lives? - ""Older media are dominated by a view of sex as scandalous and dangerous, and its whole depiction of sex has been pretty predictable"... Our exposure to a seemingly bottomless pit of debasement doesn't mean we're becoming more adventurous, however. Dr Petra Boynton, a sex educator and online relationship agony aunt, says that people still come to her with exactly the same questions and concerns that they always have – men about their anatomies and women about their relationships – it's just that the language they use now is more explicit. And there's no evidence that people who meet online are more likely to hook up quicker than people who meet offline... Boynton believes [online sexual content] is far more intimate than what you can get from the pages of a magazine and reflects more closely the entirety of the sexual experience. This is potentially transformative... in a culture that ridicules, vilifies and commercialises sex, this is laden with politics"
Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist. - "The judges couldn't tell the impostor from one of their own. Collins argues that he is therefore as qualified as anyone to discuss this field, even though he can't conduct experiments in it... if a sociologist can understand physics, then anyone can understand anything... "You can be a great physicist and not know any mathematics," he said. To take an extreme example, you needn't have solved gravitational equations to know that you shouldn't jump out a window... [Sokal] is famous for an experiment a decade ago that seemed to demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science"
Sokal's hoax did not demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science, but of people talking rubbish (in particular, of using literary techniques to shoot off and make wild claims)
Unshielded Colliders: Faraday, Feynman, and Philosophy - "As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Faraday thinks we should aspire to be philosophers. By the middle of the twentieth century, Feynman is happy to ridicule philosophers... I find this change in attitude very puzzling. All the more so, since Feynman routinely complained that physics students were learning computation without having any real understanding because they weren't asking why the calculations went the way they do, which is basically the philosophical spirit that Faraday wanted to encourage!"
One comment: "Perhaps part of what happened was that scientists co-opted the parts of philosophy that they found interesting and tractable and left to the philosophers the parts that never really interested them anyway."
What Is Your Organization’s Productivity (how many man-days per month do you work)? - "Projects are immediately 25% behind schedule when they start. As a result, project teams need to work 25% over time every day in order to catch up. Which means, instead of leaving the office at 5:30pm, they need to leave at 7:30pm at the earliest. OT should only be used to handle unexpected problems and unforeseen work that lands on one’s lap, and to handle these promptly, project staff end up leaving for home at 8:30 or 9pm. If they were to take a quick rest or meal break in the evening, their knock-off time would be pushed back to 9 or 9:30pm"
In Malaysia, Youth Group to Educate Against Valentine's Day - "Valentine’s Day “promotes sinful activities,” says Mr. Nasrudin. Indeed, it’s the only day that does so... In recent years, the government has drawn widespread criticism for allowing Islamic religious officials to sentence a woman to caning for drinking beer (the caning sentence was commuted by the Sultan of Pahang to a stint at a children’s home)... Government officials last February said they had caned three women for having sexual intercourse outside of wedlock"
Nothing short of Talibanisation will stop people proclaiming that a country is a moderately Muslim country
Addendum: Malaysia Arrests 100 Muslim Couples for Celebrating Lovers' Day
Dear Straight Dude: My Girlfriend Is Pissed At Me « Thought Catalog - "I understand your need for logical, reasonable discussion of emotions but the first thing you need to know about emotions is that they follow a very sort of convoluted, not-immediately-apparent logic... if you try to force your logic and “facts” on your girlfriend – the two of you are likely to quickly become estranged"
Bacon jam recipe: make it at home
How to render lard - "People think that cooking with lard will make everything taste of pork, but this is not true; its flavor is neutral. What it does, however, is create incredible texture and structure. With lard, you’ll fry chicken that is both moist and crisp. With lard, you’ll make a tender pie crust that flakes. With lard, you’ll make airy French fries that crunch. With lard, you’ll cook refried beans that caress your mouth like velvet. With lard, you’ll steam tamales that are soft and fluffy. And with lard, you’ll bake ginger cookies that snap. But the best thing about lard is that it’s not bad for you. It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has none of those pesky trans fats—that is, if it hasn’t been hydrogenated to prolong its shelf life"
Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences - "Understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive"
Accessing WikiLeaks Violates Espionage Act, USAF Says - "“That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career,” said William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office"
To their credit, they quickly retracted it, unlike what might happen in some other countries
Salaries top out at age 40 - "People eventually start to realize that they are not going to get to the very top. They see that only one out of 100 web designers is the director, and only one out of 50 directors is a VP. Al calls this the funnel effect, and he says many people recognize this and start to trade time for money; people see that chasing the increasingly smaller raises is not as fulfilling as doing a wide range of other things with their time... One of the most common but least-talked about career moves is to get to a relatively high spot and then see how much you can cut back in terms of effort and still maintain that level of salary and/or prestige"
***
STOMP - Singapore Seen - So stupid! Guys destroy iPad to build skateboard - "STOMPer iMad thought that it was stupid of these guys to wreck an expensive iPad just to use it as a skateboard."
Comments: "apple product sucks thats why you can find so many ipads, iphones being smashed and destroyed on youtube"
"Ppl got money they can do whatever they wan also can with their own things lik that also wan comment go home sleep la"
"They do this just to screw Steve Jobs, I remember another video of a iPad and a iPhone 4 during it's release date last year, where those American dudes used a .50 (12.7x99mm) Caliber Rifle to shoot the appliance."
"its called being creative u dumb f u c k"
How smartphone users see each other, Android vs. BlackBerry vs. iPhone [COMIC]
Apple says NO! to iPad Cutting Board - "A few months back we received a call from Apple lawyers and we were told to stop selling them. The reason given was based on “likeness” issues. A Wood cutting board. Lord have mercy on my soul."
"We didn't call it anything like that with name iPad in it."
What Is Academic Work? - "The [good] paper does not say to its audience, “Go out and change the world,” but “Here is my take on these issues and what do you think?”... The kind of questions asked also marked the occasion as an academic one. Not “Won’t the economy implode if we do this?” or “Wouldn’t free expression rights be eroded if we went down that path?”, but “Would you be willing to follow your argument to its logical conclusion?” or “Doesn’t that amount to just making up the law as you go along?”"
This is why scholarship and activism are inimical (at least when practised simultaneously)
The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union
Plans to help older low-wage workers - "One proposal is for Individual Unemployment Credits to support workers during their involuntary unemployment period. Workers who are involuntarily unemployed should be allowed to take a loan from their CPF account based on a percentage of their last-drawn salary, with a cap for three months... The loan has to be paid back upon employment"
Even when you're above 65 you have to pay back money borrowed from yourself? CPF is such a scam
What is the name of the extinct plant that may have inspired the symbol for heart-shaped Valentines? - "Ancient coins from Cyrene, a city-state where Libya is now, show an impression of a silphium seed, and it’s a shape that you know very well... Silphium only grew in the wild and could not be cultivated. Much like the heart it symbolizes, attempts at domesticating the plant may have been the cause of its demise"
What I want from a restaurant website - The Oatmeal - "What I get instead... Can't copy/paste anything because it's in flash"
Average female face: The Face of Tomorrow Mike Mike project - "Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment. But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese. More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features"
White blood cells pitted against each other in ‘Blood Wars’
Vietnam rings in Year of the Cat - "Exactly why and when Vietnam dumped the rabbit and adopted the cat for its version of the 12 signs of the horoscope taken from China is up for debate and may have been partly the result of a complex translation error... “It’s appropriate that the Vietnamese swapped the cat into the calendar in place of the rabbit. Rabbits are a kind of rodent and the rat is also a rodent. The animals should be different... This expresses a balance of yin and yang in the cosmos that is more complete, that better unifies the contradictions, and so it is richer and better to have the cat”... In Vietnam, rabbits are considered food. Cats also appear on the occasional menu as “little tigers,” although the practice of eating them is technically banned"
They should pit a Chinese and a Vietnamese and let them argue over their mumbo-jumbo, post-hoc rationalisations
What effect has the internet had on our sex lives? - ""Older media are dominated by a view of sex as scandalous and dangerous, and its whole depiction of sex has been pretty predictable"... Our exposure to a seemingly bottomless pit of debasement doesn't mean we're becoming more adventurous, however. Dr Petra Boynton, a sex educator and online relationship agony aunt, says that people still come to her with exactly the same questions and concerns that they always have – men about their anatomies and women about their relationships – it's just that the language they use now is more explicit. And there's no evidence that people who meet online are more likely to hook up quicker than people who meet offline... Boynton believes [online sexual content] is far more intimate than what you can get from the pages of a magazine and reflects more closely the entirety of the sexual experience. This is potentially transformative... in a culture that ridicules, vilifies and commercialises sex, this is laden with politics"
Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist. - "The judges couldn't tell the impostor from one of their own. Collins argues that he is therefore as qualified as anyone to discuss this field, even though he can't conduct experiments in it... if a sociologist can understand physics, then anyone can understand anything... "You can be a great physicist and not know any mathematics," he said. To take an extreme example, you needn't have solved gravitational equations to know that you shouldn't jump out a window... [Sokal] is famous for an experiment a decade ago that seemed to demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science"
Sokal's hoax did not demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science, but of people talking rubbish (in particular, of using literary techniques to shoot off and make wild claims)
Unshielded Colliders: Faraday, Feynman, and Philosophy - "As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Faraday thinks we should aspire to be philosophers. By the middle of the twentieth century, Feynman is happy to ridicule philosophers... I find this change in attitude very puzzling. All the more so, since Feynman routinely complained that physics students were learning computation without having any real understanding because they weren't asking why the calculations went the way they do, which is basically the philosophical spirit that Faraday wanted to encourage!"
One comment: "Perhaps part of what happened was that scientists co-opted the parts of philosophy that they found interesting and tractable and left to the philosophers the parts that never really interested them anyway."
What Is Your Organization’s Productivity (how many man-days per month do you work)? - "Projects are immediately 25% behind schedule when they start. As a result, project teams need to work 25% over time every day in order to catch up. Which means, instead of leaving the office at 5:30pm, they need to leave at 7:30pm at the earliest. OT should only be used to handle unexpected problems and unforeseen work that lands on one’s lap, and to handle these promptly, project staff end up leaving for home at 8:30 or 9pm. If they were to take a quick rest or meal break in the evening, their knock-off time would be pushed back to 9 or 9:30pm"
In Malaysia, Youth Group to Educate Against Valentine's Day - "Valentine’s Day “promotes sinful activities,” says Mr. Nasrudin. Indeed, it’s the only day that does so... In recent years, the government has drawn widespread criticism for allowing Islamic religious officials to sentence a woman to caning for drinking beer (the caning sentence was commuted by the Sultan of Pahang to a stint at a children’s home)... Government officials last February said they had caned three women for having sexual intercourse outside of wedlock"
Nothing short of Talibanisation will stop people proclaiming that a country is a moderately Muslim country
Addendum: Malaysia Arrests 100 Muslim Couples for Celebrating Lovers' Day
Dear Straight Dude: My Girlfriend Is Pissed At Me « Thought Catalog - "I understand your need for logical, reasonable discussion of emotions but the first thing you need to know about emotions is that they follow a very sort of convoluted, not-immediately-apparent logic... if you try to force your logic and “facts” on your girlfriend – the two of you are likely to quickly become estranged"
Bacon jam recipe: make it at home
How to render lard - "People think that cooking with lard will make everything taste of pork, but this is not true; its flavor is neutral. What it does, however, is create incredible texture and structure. With lard, you’ll fry chicken that is both moist and crisp. With lard, you’ll make a tender pie crust that flakes. With lard, you’ll make airy French fries that crunch. With lard, you’ll cook refried beans that caress your mouth like velvet. With lard, you’ll steam tamales that are soft and fluffy. And with lard, you’ll bake ginger cookies that snap. But the best thing about lard is that it’s not bad for you. It has less saturated fat (the bad fat) than butter, while it also has more than twice as much monosaturated fat (the good fat) than butter. And it has none of those pesky trans fats—that is, if it hasn’t been hydrogenated to prolong its shelf life"
Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences - "Understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive"
Accessing WikiLeaks Violates Espionage Act, USAF Says - "“That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career,” said William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office"
To their credit, they quickly retracted it, unlike what might happen in some other countries
Salaries top out at age 40 - "People eventually start to realize that they are not going to get to the very top. They see that only one out of 100 web designers is the director, and only one out of 50 directors is a VP. Al calls this the funnel effect, and he says many people recognize this and start to trade time for money; people see that chasing the increasingly smaller raises is not as fulfilling as doing a wide range of other things with their time... One of the most common but least-talked about career moves is to get to a relatively high spot and then see how much you can cut back in terms of effort and still maintain that level of salary and/or prestige"
Post ID: 7995426868106463108
Monday, January 03, 2011
Links - 3rd January 2011
"This year I've resolved to stop regretting the past and start dreading the future instead" - Pickles
***
Music Is Better Off On BitTorrent, Than With Apple or Big Music - "[Giving away my music] expanded the amount of people who pirate my music, therefore it has expanded those who bought CDs, donated to me, or came out to shows. Another interesting thing is that it wound up in some licensing company’s hands that I’ve never worked with before, and got me additional placement in TV/film/etc, which is a good portion of my income... [Apple] might single handedly be the worst thing that has happened to entertainment media in the last 3 years... iTunes completely screwed up the track listing of my last album Arboreal. Their network is so influential that over half of the people who have bought the CD from my label now have botched track titles on their mp3 players. Apple doesn’t have ANY accessible artist support to deal with things like this... If I want to sell a 30 minute long track (Louisiana Mourning, for example), they require me to split it up into a bunch of separate tracks. Their distribution system is so unorganized that artists have to pay business like Tunecore upwards of $40 per album (and annual fees) to do Apple’s job for them"
YouTube - iPad Shower, Steve Jobs Apple's Keynote Parody : iPad Shower (Guignols) - "steve joBs. il rend indispensable ce dont nous n'avons pas besoin"
De Les Guignols de l'Info
Did George Lucas change cinema with ‘Star Wars’ prequels? - "We see the water-opera sphere in “Revenge of the Sith,” which appears to be reenacting the last battle of the next film, while Palpatine explains Anakin’s origin without directly telling him. Look carefully and follow the patterns: Overall, there is a transforming flow of identities that take spherical form, a path from nature into the mechanical"
I think he took too many Lit classes
Harry Potter was a good Christian?
Fantasy & Mythology: Fisher-Price Little People Noah's Ark Playset
Murder in America - "He has determined that four factors correlate with the homicide rate: faith that government is stable and capable of enforcing just laws; trust in the integrity of legitimately elected officials; solidarity among social groups based on race, religion, or political affiliation; and confidence that the social hierarchy allows for respect to be earned without recourse to violence... in using quantitative methods to make an argument about the human condition, Roth has wandered into a no man’s land between the social sciences and the humanities. After a while, arguments made in that no man’s land tend to devolve into meaninglessness: good government is good, bad government is bad, and everything’s better when everything’s better... Although the crime rate today is fifteen per cent lower than it was twenty-five years ago, the incarceration rate is four times as high"
Pope Benedict XVI Visits Britain - "When he's not staring at worshippers with his hypnotic demonic gaze or sacrificing babies to Baal in the Vatican crypt, Pope Benedict likes to take trips abroad to convert more people to the ways of the Catholic church... He is rarely seen outside in public, but when he is, he scares people with his diabolical grin and sinister stare... On Friday, the Pope visited Westminster cathedral where it was reported that he inspected the choir to see if they were up to the same standard as his boys back in Rome"
This one is pure gold - must be the funniest thing I've seen this year (and possibly since Asian Prince)
Hunch Blog | The Bullying Epidemic: Does it really get better? - "Whether you’re more into Heathers or Saved by the Bell, you’re probably familiar with the stereotypes of bullied high schoolers... [Data] Stereotypes exist for a reason, huh?... We’re happy to report that Hunch users who were bullied in high school have found that life after graduation is, in fact, better... people who were bullied grow up to be just as happy and successful as people who were not bullied. (They are however, somewhat more likely to be naturally compassionate than impartial and are slightly more likely to support charities.) We wouldn’t wish bullying on anyone, but might it be one of those bad experiences that can build character?"
Really short stories - "She was the wife every man could ever hope for; smart, sexy and with a mute button at the back of her neck."
"Little did prince charming know, that Rapunzel's curly locks came not from her head, but from her.."
"I spent the day in the confession box, seeking forgiveness from God for all the bad things I had done for the government. But before I left, I spent a second seeking forgiveness from the priest, having planted 2 bullets in his head for knowing too much."
Malaysia: Church officials told to remove crucifixes and avoid hymn singing when Prime Minister attended Archbishop's Christmas party - "Among the directives given were:
. To remove any overt Christian symbol, such as crucifixes, from the party premises
. That carollers not belt out hymns
. Not to quote from Scriptures or say any Christian prayer during the visit."
Where Are The World's Best Choirs? Not In America - "There's nothing like the depth of choral tradition in the U.S. that there is in the U.K., thanks to the Anglican church... The Anglicans rule choral music. The Catholics, on the other hand, to whom much of the repertoire rightfully belongs, have not sustained their music traditions as well, and their choirs mostly sound bad when they're not doing some guitar mass or something"
Letter urges Israeli girls to avoid dating Arabs - "It urges Jewish girls not to go out with non-Jews or work in places that employ non-Jews"
Considering Muslim girls are forbidden to marry non-Muslims, it is not so outrageous that Israeli girls are advised not to date Arabs
All social media experts “are actually the same person,” Wikileaks documents reveal - "“Paul from Miami,” as he is identified in Wikileaks documents, appears to be the source of an entire industry of Twitter experts who seemingly give the same advice and yet somehow all have over 20,000 Twitter followers each... The documents also revealed trust funds, spam, wealthy spouses, and jobs at Starbucks to be the top ways in which those social media experts who are real people pay their bills... “Social media experts could not be responsible for these [DDOS] attacks,” theorized CC Chapman, a content strategist, whatever that means. “Social media experts just don’t know enough about the internet to make it happen,” he concluded"
China preparing for armed conflict 'in every direction' - ""In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction," said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed newspapers in China. "We may be living in peaceful times, but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away""
China will talk about peace... until they ram your boat without provocation - and then blame you for it
Why your child's school bus has no seat belts - "Modern school buses are already remarkably safe, and because seat belts don't work the same way in buses as they do cars... "Costs far exceed benefits, and school bus seat belts appear to be less cost-effective than other types of safety treatments"... If the West Brook bus had been equipped with seat belts on that day in 2006, "I'm certain Ashley would have survived and many of the other girls would have escaped serious injury. Parents expect better""
Big cases make bad law
The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 - How-To Geek
These are mostly for Windows 7; "I often need to crash Windows 7 for testing purposes. Also, being that this is primarily used for troubleshooting hard hangs, it does improve windows by creating a memory dump, which can be used to help diagnose the issue"
Another useful tip elsewhere to remove the ATI Catalyst Control Center: regsvr32 /u "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\atiacm64.dll"
Skip the Annoying "Use the Web service to find the correct program" Dialog - How-To Geek
Delaying Sex Credited for Making Marriages Stronger - "Those who had sex with their spouses within the first month of dating were much less satisfied with their marriages than those who had waited longer or waited until after marriage... 50 percent of [American] couples initiate premarital sex within a month of the first date... [Yet] people who wait until after marriage to have sex may find themselves sexually incompatible... She advises couples to wait to engage in sexual relations until they've established an emotional bond. "Love at first sight is a lot of baloney," she adds, "and usually based on superficial criteria"... It's not just the cheapening of the experience, however. Busby points out that sex early on in a relationship may confuse the decision-making process in couples and lead them to continue relationships that aren't really working"
A defense of "May-December" marriages like Hugh Hefner's. - "There's little evidence that marriages with wide age gaps between partners turn out any worse than marriages between people born around the same time... A Canadian study found that an age gap can correlate with a higher likelihood of divorce—especially if the woman is older—but it can also make divorce less likely... every relationship has power imbalances, whether in terms of income, intelligence, or social status. The age gap is different only in that it may be more visible. It therefore gets blamed when a marriage goes bad... There's also a squirm factor"
Origins of Christmas Gift Giving: The Feast of Saturnalia - "The origins of Christmas gift giving are rooted in ancient Roman times during the Feast of Saturn, or Saturnalia"
No, it has nothing to do with the 3 Wise Men giving incense, myrrh and gold
Un drive-in au sex shop: "Alors je voudrais un vibro pocket et un oeuf vibrant" - "La loi d['Alabama] interdisait les jeux sexuels pour adultes "sauf pour besoins médicaux, scientifiques, éducationnels, législatifs et judiciaires"... On imagine les réponses: "Mon vagin est complètement coincé, j'ai du faire un faux mouvement", "Je souffre de solitude, un lapin m'aidera à sortir de ma dépression" ou encore "J'ai des petites pannes, je me suis dit qu'un anneau m'aiderait à tenir plus longtemps plutôt que du Viagra""
Bocca della Verità - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "The most famous characteristic of the Mouth, however, is its role as a lie detector. Starting from the Middle Ages, it was believed that if one told a lie with one's hand in the mouth of the sculpture, it would be bitten off"
I just discovered that "the Mouth of Truth" is not JUST a cheap scam, but also a real Roman sculpture!
Trevi coins to fund food for poor - "The thousands of coins thrown into Rome's Trevi fountain are to be used by an Italian charity to set up a supermarket for the city's poor"
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (a blog on statistical issues in social sciences)
Mortality and immortality: The Nobel Prize as an experiment into the effect of status upon longevity - "We estimate that winning the Prize, compared to merely being nominated, is associated with between 1 and 2 years of extra longevity."
An alternate explanation: "Not getting the Nobel Prize reduces your expected lifespan by two years"
Referees' quotes – 2010 - 2010 - Environmental Microbiology - "'reading a well written manuscript before X-mas makes me feel like Santa Claus'
'The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.'"
the truth about job interviews - "Going on a job interview is like going on the worst first date ever. You have to be able to answer questions without actually revealing anything bad about yourself, while insuring your doubletalk sounds sincere... We all hide ourselves in some way throughout the day, but completely shield ourselves on interviews. I’m starting to think that the point of them is to see how adeptly one can dodge and weave, how good one is at judging what needs to be said and what needs sidestepping, which (after all) are all important qualities in forging a promising career"
Comment: "HR has as its priority to hire employees who will create the least amount of work for HR. In creative industries they usually the get the complete opposite of what the business genuinely needs."
***
Music Is Better Off On BitTorrent, Than With Apple or Big Music - "[Giving away my music] expanded the amount of people who pirate my music, therefore it has expanded those who bought CDs, donated to me, or came out to shows. Another interesting thing is that it wound up in some licensing company’s hands that I’ve never worked with before, and got me additional placement in TV/film/etc, which is a good portion of my income... [Apple] might single handedly be the worst thing that has happened to entertainment media in the last 3 years... iTunes completely screwed up the track listing of my last album Arboreal. Their network is so influential that over half of the people who have bought the CD from my label now have botched track titles on their mp3 players. Apple doesn’t have ANY accessible artist support to deal with things like this... If I want to sell a 30 minute long track (Louisiana Mourning, for example), they require me to split it up into a bunch of separate tracks. Their distribution system is so unorganized that artists have to pay business like Tunecore upwards of $40 per album (and annual fees) to do Apple’s job for them"
YouTube - iPad Shower, Steve Jobs Apple's Keynote Parody : iPad Shower (Guignols) - "steve joBs. il rend indispensable ce dont nous n'avons pas besoin"
De Les Guignols de l'Info
Did George Lucas change cinema with ‘Star Wars’ prequels? - "We see the water-opera sphere in “Revenge of the Sith,” which appears to be reenacting the last battle of the next film, while Palpatine explains Anakin’s origin without directly telling him. Look carefully and follow the patterns: Overall, there is a transforming flow of identities that take spherical form, a path from nature into the mechanical"
I think he took too many Lit classes
Harry Potter was a good Christian?
Fantasy & Mythology: Fisher-Price Little People Noah's Ark Playset
Murder in America - "He has determined that four factors correlate with the homicide rate: faith that government is stable and capable of enforcing just laws; trust in the integrity of legitimately elected officials; solidarity among social groups based on race, religion, or political affiliation; and confidence that the social hierarchy allows for respect to be earned without recourse to violence... in using quantitative methods to make an argument about the human condition, Roth has wandered into a no man’s land between the social sciences and the humanities. After a while, arguments made in that no man’s land tend to devolve into meaninglessness: good government is good, bad government is bad, and everything’s better when everything’s better... Although the crime rate today is fifteen per cent lower than it was twenty-five years ago, the incarceration rate is four times as high"
Pope Benedict XVI Visits Britain - "When he's not staring at worshippers with his hypnotic demonic gaze or sacrificing babies to Baal in the Vatican crypt, Pope Benedict likes to take trips abroad to convert more people to the ways of the Catholic church... He is rarely seen outside in public, but when he is, he scares people with his diabolical grin and sinister stare... On Friday, the Pope visited Westminster cathedral where it was reported that he inspected the choir to see if they were up to the same standard as his boys back in Rome"
This one is pure gold - must be the funniest thing I've seen this year (and possibly since Asian Prince)
Hunch Blog | The Bullying Epidemic: Does it really get better? - "Whether you’re more into Heathers or Saved by the Bell, you’re probably familiar with the stereotypes of bullied high schoolers... [Data] Stereotypes exist for a reason, huh?... We’re happy to report that Hunch users who were bullied in high school have found that life after graduation is, in fact, better... people who were bullied grow up to be just as happy and successful as people who were not bullied. (They are however, somewhat more likely to be naturally compassionate than impartial and are slightly more likely to support charities.) We wouldn’t wish bullying on anyone, but might it be one of those bad experiences that can build character?"
Really short stories - "She was the wife every man could ever hope for; smart, sexy and with a mute button at the back of her neck."
"Little did prince charming know, that Rapunzel's curly locks came not from her head, but from her.."
"I spent the day in the confession box, seeking forgiveness from God for all the bad things I had done for the government. But before I left, I spent a second seeking forgiveness from the priest, having planted 2 bullets in his head for knowing too much."
Malaysia: Church officials told to remove crucifixes and avoid hymn singing when Prime Minister attended Archbishop's Christmas party - "Among the directives given were:
. To remove any overt Christian symbol, such as crucifixes, from the party premises
. That carollers not belt out hymns
. Not to quote from Scriptures or say any Christian prayer during the visit."
Where Are The World's Best Choirs? Not In America - "There's nothing like the depth of choral tradition in the U.S. that there is in the U.K., thanks to the Anglican church... The Anglicans rule choral music. The Catholics, on the other hand, to whom much of the repertoire rightfully belongs, have not sustained their music traditions as well, and their choirs mostly sound bad when they're not doing some guitar mass or something"
Letter urges Israeli girls to avoid dating Arabs - "It urges Jewish girls not to go out with non-Jews or work in places that employ non-Jews"
Considering Muslim girls are forbidden to marry non-Muslims, it is not so outrageous that Israeli girls are advised not to date Arabs
All social media experts “are actually the same person,” Wikileaks documents reveal - "“Paul from Miami,” as he is identified in Wikileaks documents, appears to be the source of an entire industry of Twitter experts who seemingly give the same advice and yet somehow all have over 20,000 Twitter followers each... The documents also revealed trust funds, spam, wealthy spouses, and jobs at Starbucks to be the top ways in which those social media experts who are real people pay their bills... “Social media experts could not be responsible for these [DDOS] attacks,” theorized CC Chapman, a content strategist, whatever that means. “Social media experts just don’t know enough about the internet to make it happen,” he concluded"
China preparing for armed conflict 'in every direction' - ""In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction," said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed newspapers in China. "We may be living in peaceful times, but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away""
China will talk about peace... until they ram your boat without provocation - and then blame you for it
Why your child's school bus has no seat belts - "Modern school buses are already remarkably safe, and because seat belts don't work the same way in buses as they do cars... "Costs far exceed benefits, and school bus seat belts appear to be less cost-effective than other types of safety treatments"... If the West Brook bus had been equipped with seat belts on that day in 2006, "I'm certain Ashley would have survived and many of the other girls would have escaped serious injury. Parents expect better""
Big cases make bad law
The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 - How-To Geek
These are mostly for Windows 7; "I often need to crash Windows 7 for testing purposes. Also, being that this is primarily used for troubleshooting hard hangs, it does improve windows by creating a memory dump, which can be used to help diagnose the issue"
Another useful tip elsewhere to remove the ATI Catalyst Control Center: regsvr32 /u "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\atiacm64.dll"
Skip the Annoying "Use the Web service to find the correct program" Dialog - How-To Geek
Delaying Sex Credited for Making Marriages Stronger - "Those who had sex with their spouses within the first month of dating were much less satisfied with their marriages than those who had waited longer or waited until after marriage... 50 percent of [American] couples initiate premarital sex within a month of the first date... [Yet] people who wait until after marriage to have sex may find themselves sexually incompatible... She advises couples to wait to engage in sexual relations until they've established an emotional bond. "Love at first sight is a lot of baloney," she adds, "and usually based on superficial criteria"... It's not just the cheapening of the experience, however. Busby points out that sex early on in a relationship may confuse the decision-making process in couples and lead them to continue relationships that aren't really working"
A defense of "May-December" marriages like Hugh Hefner's. - "There's little evidence that marriages with wide age gaps between partners turn out any worse than marriages between people born around the same time... A Canadian study found that an age gap can correlate with a higher likelihood of divorce—especially if the woman is older—but it can also make divorce less likely... every relationship has power imbalances, whether in terms of income, intelligence, or social status. The age gap is different only in that it may be more visible. It therefore gets blamed when a marriage goes bad... There's also a squirm factor"
Origins of Christmas Gift Giving: The Feast of Saturnalia - "The origins of Christmas gift giving are rooted in ancient Roman times during the Feast of Saturn, or Saturnalia"
No, it has nothing to do with the 3 Wise Men giving incense, myrrh and gold
Un drive-in au sex shop: "Alors je voudrais un vibro pocket et un oeuf vibrant" - "La loi d['Alabama] interdisait les jeux sexuels pour adultes "sauf pour besoins médicaux, scientifiques, éducationnels, législatifs et judiciaires"... On imagine les réponses: "Mon vagin est complètement coincé, j'ai du faire un faux mouvement", "Je souffre de solitude, un lapin m'aidera à sortir de ma dépression" ou encore "J'ai des petites pannes, je me suis dit qu'un anneau m'aiderait à tenir plus longtemps plutôt que du Viagra""
Bocca della Verità - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "The most famous characteristic of the Mouth, however, is its role as a lie detector. Starting from the Middle Ages, it was believed that if one told a lie with one's hand in the mouth of the sculpture, it would be bitten off"
I just discovered that "the Mouth of Truth" is not JUST a cheap scam, but also a real Roman sculpture!
Trevi coins to fund food for poor - "The thousands of coins thrown into Rome's Trevi fountain are to be used by an Italian charity to set up a supermarket for the city's poor"
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (a blog on statistical issues in social sciences)
Mortality and immortality: The Nobel Prize as an experiment into the effect of status upon longevity - "We estimate that winning the Prize, compared to merely being nominated, is associated with between 1 and 2 years of extra longevity."
An alternate explanation: "Not getting the Nobel Prize reduces your expected lifespan by two years"
Referees' quotes – 2010 - 2010 - Environmental Microbiology - "'reading a well written manuscript before X-mas makes me feel like Santa Claus'
'The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.'"
the truth about job interviews - "Going on a job interview is like going on the worst first date ever. You have to be able to answer questions without actually revealing anything bad about yourself, while insuring your doubletalk sounds sincere... We all hide ourselves in some way throughout the day, but completely shield ourselves on interviews. I’m starting to think that the point of them is to see how adeptly one can dodge and weave, how good one is at judging what needs to be said and what needs sidestepping, which (after all) are all important qualities in forging a promising career"
Comment: "HR has as its priority to hire employees who will create the least amount of work for HR. In creative industries they usually the get the complete opposite of what the business genuinely needs."
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