From porn surfer to freedom fighter: How Zhang Kun became a democracy activist | South China Morning Post - "Have you thought of leading a quiet life like most of your peers, with nice clothes, good food, going on dates?
Actually, I've been quite happy throughout the campaign. I would get depressed if I just played around like the others, because I would not feel very accomplished if I cared only for my material well-being. The authorities have tried to use my parents to talk me into giving up what I've been doing. My parents actually already have a villa ready for me to settle down in, along with a beautiful girl, but I told them to trust me about what I've been doing, because it's for a good cause, as time will tell. Of course, I love my parents and I keep them informed about where I go and what I will do."
People Actually Watch Less Porn on Valentine's Day - "It shows that for one night a year at least, people are busier with their significant others than they are with Pornhub"
We Read Salon's Interview with Suey Park So You Don't Have To (and So Your Brain Won't Explode) | The Daily Banter - "I can’t tell how much of what Park says is serious, how much is performance art, how much is mindless repetition of the buzzwords and narratives drilled into a willing mind by a modern humanities and critical race theory education, and how much is just social media-fueled Millennial narcissism, her personal “brand” cranked to 11 because it’s what her fans expect and it keeps the spotlight on her. Regardless, if you’re a reasonable, sane person, it’s almost impossible to read the interview from start to finish and still take Park seriously... Suey Park is the Shia LaBeouf of activism...
Did you watch the Monday night segment on the “Colbert Report”?
No, and I think that’s an irrelevant question...
Park’s almost staggering narcissism takes over as she puts her work writing Twitter hashtags on the same level as civil rights pioneers who truly put their lives and futures on the line to advance noble causes...
Would it be inflammatory to say that you think white men are sort of the enemy?
Um. I mean I think they are, and we might as well label it. Whiteness will always be the enemy"
#CancelColbert and the politics of being offended - "For someone who is always on bed rest and suffers from a severe anxiety and eating disorder Suey sure likes making herself the center of attention. When the pressure becomes too much to bear she uses her chronic illness as an excuse to not engage with people who disagree with her... Calling for someone to be fired solely because he hurt your feelings by calling your opinions stupid is weak, immature, and shows intolerance against those who dare question your intelligence and alleged outrage. Who’s the real bully here?... To disagree with Suey Park is to be a racist, white, mansplaining liberal outraged that a Woman of Color dare speak her mind... Suey has a tendency to be triggered (a reflex stemming from mental instability) when people criticize her... Suey tends to ignore valid arguments against her because she’s incapable of disproving their points and her knack for trending hashtags and calling it activism is a cop out for not doing the real work... To sum this all up, when white people laugh at satire they are racist, but when they don’t laugh at Suey Park’s racist remarks about them they need to lighten up"
This is just a more developed version of what many people do
Put the Sex Back in Sex Ed - "Fertility is the missing chapter in sex education. Sobering facts about women’s declining fertility after their 20s are being withheld from ambitious young women, who are propelled along a career track devised for men. The refusal by public schools’ sex-education programs to acknowledge gender differences is betraying both boys and girls... Too often, sex education defines pregnancy as a pathology, for which the cure is abortion. Adolescent girls must think deeply about their ultimate aims and desires. If they want both children and a career, they should decide whether to have children early or late. There are pros, cons and trade-offs for each choice... The present system is too vulnerable to political pressures from both the left and the right–and students are trapped in the middle... Sex education has triggered recurrent controversy, partly because it is seen by religious conservatives as an instrument of secular cultural imperialism, undermining moral values. It’s time for liberals to admit that there is some truth to this and that public schools should not promulgate any ideology. The liberal response to conservatives’ demand for abstinence-only sex education has been to condemn the imposition of “fear and shame” on young people. But perhaps a bit more self-preserving fear and shame might be helpful in today’s hedonistic, media-saturated environment... public schools have no business listing the varieties of sexual gratification, from masturbation to oral and anal sex, although health educators should nonjudgmentally answer student questions about the health implications of such practices. The issue of homosexuality is a charged one. In my view, antibullying campaigns, however laudable, should not stray into political endorsement of homosexuality or gay rights causes"
The Pantheon of Dunces - "Standing in front of a bare-breasted statue at the Justice Department, Ed Meese accepts the 1,960-page report from his $500,000 pornography commission. Available in two volumes from the government for $35, the report becomes something of a cult item for its 100-plus page listing of book, movie and magazine titles (Teenage Dog Orgy, Cathy’s Sore Bottom, Lesbian Foot Lovers – The Movie) and 200 pages of detailed descriptions and excerpts from said material."
John Paul II crucifix crushes man in northern Italy - "Part of the 30m-high (100ft) sculpture collapsed at a ceremony ahead of the Pope's canonisation... It is not the first death caused by a falling crucifix in Italy. In 2004, the Associated Press reported that a 72-year old woman had been crushed to death by a 7ft-tall metal crucifix in the town of Sant'Onofrio in the south of the country."
Accused KKK Killer Was Once Caught Having Sex With a Black Male Hooker
“No platform” was once reserved for violent fascists. Now it's being used to silence debate - "No platform might be enacted in a number of ways: it could mean an institution refusing to host speakers associated with particular violent groups (something the NUS has historically done), or established political parties forbidding their representatives to share the stage with figures from far-right organisation. As a last resort, it meant taking direct action to prevent the proponent of an abhorred position from speaking. But it was traditionally about rejecting the rhetoric of violence – especially when that rhetoric was liable to inspire leagues of smash-happy skinheads. Now, no platform's remit appears to be broader. Witness the recent video from a debate at Galway University, where writer and editor Alan Johnson attempted to make the case against a boycott of Israel. Johnson’s speech is barely audible above the noise of the crowd, who boo and drum the desks. The loudest opponent, dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag, shouts: “Fucking Zionist fucking pricks […] Get the fuck off our campus”... “I have to pay for the rest of my life because of a very small group of trans women,” she says. “I haven’t said anything hateful to any of these people, ever. All I have ever said was question the essentialist meaning of transgenderism, because, by positing gender as fixed it flies in the face of feminism.” Subsequently, Bindel has been prevented from speaking not just about transgender issues, but also about violence against women and girls. The no platforming has taken the form of direct intimidation – “I had death threats […] I was shouted at, physically attacked on stage,” Bindel tells me – as well as coming in more official guises. In 2011, the NUS GLBT conference voted to no platform her, and approved the extraordinary motion “this conference believes Julie Bindel is vile”. (Meanwhile, various tyrants and dictators have been hosted by NUS venues)... Intimidation is at the core of no platform – both the arguments for it and, increasingly, its practice. Why should a woman speaking for feminism, or a man speaking for Zionism, be deemed such a threat that they have to be shouted down, condemned as “vile”, or told to “fuck off”? Why, in the new economy of outrage, have people like Bindel and Johnson attracted the opprobrium that was formerly reserved for hypermasculine, anti-semitic white power movements? No platform now uses the pretext of opposing hate speech to justify outrageously dehumanising language, and sets up an ideal of “safe spaces” within which certain individuals can be harassed. A tool that was once intended to protect democracy from undemocratic movements has become a weapon used by the undemocratic against democracy."
When 'structural violence' is 'violence', anyone can be censored
Answer to I am 29 years old, living in Manhattan. I am surviving now with an okay income, but I'm slowly losing my motivation. How do I keep up my greed? How do I push myself to become stronger? - Quora - "Start snorting cocaine. You will eventually lose all your money and will have to start sucking dicks to buy more coke. Then you will automatically find the motivation to earn more."
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
On the one hand, I hate spam. On the other...
"Maybe tomorrow it's you...
Hello, we simple ukrainian people.
We don't want war with Putin.
Putins army now in Doneck, Slavyansk, Kramators
and other cities of Ukraine.
Don't be indifferent! Please, help us!
For donate :
Bitcoin wallet - 1HWH84ZQCChXvFBoMYD6SmXhbGq9GUbBRx
PayPal, credit card or banking donation , please send e-mail to ukrainethebest2@gmail.com or call us +380972946950
Thank You!...
Copyright © 2014 Aztech Technologies Pte Ltd, All rights reserved."
(link while it's still up)
Post ID: 1256986020675219733
Links - 29th April 2014
Claire used £1 Nivea cream on half her face - and £105 Crème de la Mer on the other. The results are VERY revealing - "While I felt that both creams made my skin look great, if you can get better results for a fraction of the price of Crème de la Mer and a lot less hassle in the morning, the winner is obvious."
Eric Pepke's answer to Sexism: Why do some men hate women? - Quora - "whatever you hate or dislike, women are somehow supposed to be exempt. This is terribly sexist, of course, but this is a kind of sexism that hasn't been challenged much by feminism and has been embraced by quite a lot of feminism. As the influential Marilyn French said, "women are great, and men are awful." In the words of Frank Zappa, "if you want to believe that women are a wonderful species that: [1] never goes to the toilet; [2] can't possibly do anything wrong; [3] is completely superior to men, then believe it -- whatever makes you feel good." Add to this the expectation that if you dislike one woman, you must hate them all. The result is a kind of reality distortion field around any and all women. It's OK to hate a man for what he's done. It's also OK to hate men in general. But if you say anything against any woman, let alone anything against what women tend to do in a culture, you're a misogynist. I'm sure that there exist men who hate all women as a sex, just as there are women who hate all men as a sex. However, I've never actually met one, and I've met a lot of people. It's usually something that men are accused of, mostly because nobody is really willing to listen to, let alone discuss what they say."
Crystal Linn's answer to Feminism: Is feminism making women meaner? - Quora - " I have always ended up feeling attacked and harassed by feminists. The ones I've met (which have unfortunately been a large number) have been openly hateful of women that aren't feminist or are against the feminist movement (there goes the whole "It's equality for both sexes" argument if they're that upset about anti-feminist women), have been disrespectful of different opinions and are unwilling to have a calm debate that doesn't include insults, and are generally very offensive. I've been called a woman-hater, a misogynist (sooooo many times I'm just starting to call myself that at this point), and I've even been called a "pathetic excuse for a woman," just to name a few of the insults that have gotten thrown at me. Just because I'm not a feminist... I wouldn't even categorize some of these women (many of them who were classmates of mine) as radical feminists. They were the ones that were preaching about how feminist is equal rights for both sexes, etc., etc., and yet...if you are a woman and argue with them, they attack you faster than a wolf would a sheep. I'm sorry, but that's not right. I get attacked by women who are neither feminist nor anti-feminist because of my views regarding this ideology. In what world are we living in where a woman cannot simply state that she doesn't agree with modern feminism? If even women that don't consider themselves part of the feminist ideology are willing to turn on women in their own gender that disagree, then yes, feminism has made women meaner."
McDonald's sued for $1.5m by customer given just one NAPKIN - "A McDonald's customer is suing the fast food restaurant for $1.5million because he was given only one napkin with his meal. Webster Lucas claims he is now unable to work because of the 'undue mental anguish' and 'emotional distress' caused by the incident... Mr Lucas, who is African-American, says the he was racially abused by the manager when he went back to the counter to ask for more... The employee, who is named only as 'Angel' and is said to be of Mexican-American appearance, is alleged to have mumbled something that sounded like 'you people', Mr Lucas claims"
It seems many Americans are very mentally fragile
17 Mouthwatering Photos From The Legendary Sushi Restaurant Where Obama Just Ate Dinner
Vegetarian, vegan or meat eater: Which is correct? - "Even though I was an expert in vegetarian eating, after 21 years it caught up with me. I started getting really ill. My protein levels were plummeting, and the more protein I ate, the worse I got. Finally after some tests, we discovered I had become allergic to all the vegetarian sources of protein! I was in a serious quandary - my kids were raised vegetarian, my friends were all vegetarian, I encouraged vegetarianism in my practice - my whole life was wrapped up in it! This was to be a major life change, but I had no choice. Once I started eating meat again, my health drastically improved. The evidence was there. Something else surprising happened. There were eight of us women who hung out together. We were all health care practitioners, very active and "healthy," and all vegetarian. When I confessed to eating meat, I found all seven of the other women had been secretly eating meat too because they were also getting sicker and sicker."
Study: Vegetarians Less Healthy, Lower Quality Of Life Than Meat-Eaters - "Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts. A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index. But the vegetarian diet — characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products — carries elevated risks of cancer, allergies and mental health disorders. Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50 percent increase in incidences of cancer."
Paper: "When analyzing the frequency of chronic diseases, we found significantly higher cancer incidence rates in vegetarians than in subjects with other dietary habits. This is in line with previous findings, reporting that evidence about cancer rates, abdominal
complaints, and all-cause mortality in vegetarians is rather inconsistent... Several studies have shown the mental health effects of a vegetarian diet to be divergent"
» Report: Cops Continued Beating Dead, Unarmed Suspect Alex Jones'
Time to pack in your job: Someone FINALLY needs a cat vids curator
Sensitivity is a two-way street - "Indonesians never tire of reminding Singapore that we should be "sensitive" and "neighbourly". But Indonesians do not seem to believe that they should be equally "sensitive" to their neighbours. "Sensitivity" and "neighbourliness" are to them a one-way street... What would Indonesians think if the Singapore Navy were to go crazy and name one of its warships after Noordin Top, the terrorist behind bombings in Jakarta in 2004 and 2009 and who may have assisted in the 2002 Bali bombings?... as the respected American scholar of Indonesia, the late Dr George McTurnan Kahin, wrote in 1964 while Konfrontasi was still ongoing, that episode of aggression towards its neighbours was the consequence of the "powerful, self-righteous thrust of Indonesian nationalism" and the widespread belief that "because of (the) country's size… it has a moral right to leadership"."
Computer learns language by playing games - "“Games are used as a test bed for artificial-intelligence techniques simply because of their complexity,” says Branavan, who was first author on both ACL papers. “Every action that you take in the game doesn’t have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do. So you need a technique that can handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways.” Moreover, Barzilay says, game manuals have “very open text. They don’t tell you how to win. They just give you very general advice and suggestions, and you have to figure out a lot of other things on your own.” Relative to an application like the software-installing program, Branavan explains, games are “another step closer to the real world.”"
Porn addiction isn't real research suggests - "After reviewing current studies into pornography addiction, he discovered that 37 per cent of studies describe excessive use of porn as an addiction, while 27 per cent of articles contain no data at all. His study published in the journal 'Current Sexual Health Reports', also suggests that there are no negative side effects for a person who excessively uses porn, and that there is no link between erectile dysfunction. Dr Ley added that experiments into the condition based on these articles are therefore carried out poorly and without scientific rigour. When these factors are combined, he claims that the pool of evidence proving porn addiction is real is very shallow... Dr Ley instead claims that porn can improve attitudes to sexuality, increase quality of life and pleasure in long-term relationships, because porn gives an outlet for illegal sexual desires and leads to a decrease in sexual offences. However, Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychotherapist and sex addiction, and the chair of the Association for the Treatment of Sex Addiction and Compulsivity, disagrees with Dr Ley’s findings and told The Independent that porn addiction not only devastates the person’s life, but the lives of those around them. “The clients are very very real, and comments like this dismiss and belittle the very real pain that people suffer."
"Suffering" trumps data and science
Study: The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model - "Since a large, lucrative industry has promised treatments for pornography addiction despite this poor evidence, scientific psychologists are called to declare the emperor (treatment industry) has no clothes (supporting evidence). When faced with such complaints, clinicians are encouraged to address behaviors without conjuring addiction labels."
Porn users don't realise they are being watched - "in the Denver area, fans experienced a 70% swing in porn use as their team staggered towards a crushing 43-8 defeat to the Seattle Seahawks. At the start of the game, porn use in Denver was 51% below national average; by the time the drubbing was complete, it was 10.8% above. Figures for Seattle - where jubilant Seahawks fans were too busy doing old-fashioned things like drinking beer, laughing, talking and watching action replays - were 17.1% below national average, post-game... most men turn to porn not when they are happy, but when they are at their most vulnerable"
France - French chefs tell customers ‘no more food porn’ - "Gilles Goujon, whose "L’Auberge du Vieux Puits" restaurant in southern France holds three Michelin stars, says photos posted on social networks can ruin the experience for other diners. “If people take a photo and put it out on social media, it takes away the surprise,” he told AFP, citing the example of his dish “oeuf de poule pourri de truffles” (chicken egg laden with truffles). “It takes away a little bit of my intellectual property too. Someone could copy me,” he continued... Gauthier believes the constant snapping of dishes by smartphone-wielding customers detracts from the dining experience. “They used to take family photos, of their grandmother, and now its photos of food,” he told AFP. “We tweet, we ‘like’, we comment, we respond. And the food is cold... But chefs should not be so quick to shirk the free publicity that social networks bring them, says French food blogger Stéphane Riss, of the “Cuisiner en Ligne” website. “The more we talk about chefs, the better it is for them,” he said. “Photos increase visibility and therefore revenue.”"
Eric Pepke's answer to Sexism: Why do some men hate women? - Quora - "whatever you hate or dislike, women are somehow supposed to be exempt. This is terribly sexist, of course, but this is a kind of sexism that hasn't been challenged much by feminism and has been embraced by quite a lot of feminism. As the influential Marilyn French said, "women are great, and men are awful." In the words of Frank Zappa, "if you want to believe that women are a wonderful species that: [1] never goes to the toilet; [2] can't possibly do anything wrong; [3] is completely superior to men, then believe it -- whatever makes you feel good." Add to this the expectation that if you dislike one woman, you must hate them all. The result is a kind of reality distortion field around any and all women. It's OK to hate a man for what he's done. It's also OK to hate men in general. But if you say anything against any woman, let alone anything against what women tend to do in a culture, you're a misogynist. I'm sure that there exist men who hate all women as a sex, just as there are women who hate all men as a sex. However, I've never actually met one, and I've met a lot of people. It's usually something that men are accused of, mostly because nobody is really willing to listen to, let alone discuss what they say."
Crystal Linn's answer to Feminism: Is feminism making women meaner? - Quora - " I have always ended up feeling attacked and harassed by feminists. The ones I've met (which have unfortunately been a large number) have been openly hateful of women that aren't feminist or are against the feminist movement (there goes the whole "It's equality for both sexes" argument if they're that upset about anti-feminist women), have been disrespectful of different opinions and are unwilling to have a calm debate that doesn't include insults, and are generally very offensive. I've been called a woman-hater, a misogynist (sooooo many times I'm just starting to call myself that at this point), and I've even been called a "pathetic excuse for a woman," just to name a few of the insults that have gotten thrown at me. Just because I'm not a feminist... I wouldn't even categorize some of these women (many of them who were classmates of mine) as radical feminists. They were the ones that were preaching about how feminist is equal rights for both sexes, etc., etc., and yet...if you are a woman and argue with them, they attack you faster than a wolf would a sheep. I'm sorry, but that's not right. I get attacked by women who are neither feminist nor anti-feminist because of my views regarding this ideology. In what world are we living in where a woman cannot simply state that she doesn't agree with modern feminism? If even women that don't consider themselves part of the feminist ideology are willing to turn on women in their own gender that disagree, then yes, feminism has made women meaner."
McDonald's sued for $1.5m by customer given just one NAPKIN - "A McDonald's customer is suing the fast food restaurant for $1.5million because he was given only one napkin with his meal. Webster Lucas claims he is now unable to work because of the 'undue mental anguish' and 'emotional distress' caused by the incident... Mr Lucas, who is African-American, says the he was racially abused by the manager when he went back to the counter to ask for more... The employee, who is named only as 'Angel' and is said to be of Mexican-American appearance, is alleged to have mumbled something that sounded like 'you people', Mr Lucas claims"
It seems many Americans are very mentally fragile
17 Mouthwatering Photos From The Legendary Sushi Restaurant Where Obama Just Ate Dinner
Vegetarian, vegan or meat eater: Which is correct? - "Even though I was an expert in vegetarian eating, after 21 years it caught up with me. I started getting really ill. My protein levels were plummeting, and the more protein I ate, the worse I got. Finally after some tests, we discovered I had become allergic to all the vegetarian sources of protein! I was in a serious quandary - my kids were raised vegetarian, my friends were all vegetarian, I encouraged vegetarianism in my practice - my whole life was wrapped up in it! This was to be a major life change, but I had no choice. Once I started eating meat again, my health drastically improved. The evidence was there. Something else surprising happened. There were eight of us women who hung out together. We were all health care practitioners, very active and "healthy," and all vegetarian. When I confessed to eating meat, I found all seven of the other women had been secretly eating meat too because they were also getting sicker and sicker."
Study: Vegetarians Less Healthy, Lower Quality Of Life Than Meat-Eaters - "Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts. A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index. But the vegetarian diet — characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products — carries elevated risks of cancer, allergies and mental health disorders. Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50 percent increase in incidences of cancer."
Paper: "When analyzing the frequency of chronic diseases, we found significantly higher cancer incidence rates in vegetarians than in subjects with other dietary habits. This is in line with previous findings, reporting that evidence about cancer rates, abdominal
complaints, and all-cause mortality in vegetarians is rather inconsistent... Several studies have shown the mental health effects of a vegetarian diet to be divergent"
» Report: Cops Continued Beating Dead, Unarmed Suspect Alex Jones'
Time to pack in your job: Someone FINALLY needs a cat vids curator
Sensitivity is a two-way street - "Indonesians never tire of reminding Singapore that we should be "sensitive" and "neighbourly". But Indonesians do not seem to believe that they should be equally "sensitive" to their neighbours. "Sensitivity" and "neighbourliness" are to them a one-way street... What would Indonesians think if the Singapore Navy were to go crazy and name one of its warships after Noordin Top, the terrorist behind bombings in Jakarta in 2004 and 2009 and who may have assisted in the 2002 Bali bombings?... as the respected American scholar of Indonesia, the late Dr George McTurnan Kahin, wrote in 1964 while Konfrontasi was still ongoing, that episode of aggression towards its neighbours was the consequence of the "powerful, self-righteous thrust of Indonesian nationalism" and the widespread belief that "because of (the) country's size… it has a moral right to leadership"."
Computer learns language by playing games - "“Games are used as a test bed for artificial-intelligence techniques simply because of their complexity,” says Branavan, who was first author on both ACL papers. “Every action that you take in the game doesn’t have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do. So you need a technique that can handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways.” Moreover, Barzilay says, game manuals have “very open text. They don’t tell you how to win. They just give you very general advice and suggestions, and you have to figure out a lot of other things on your own.” Relative to an application like the software-installing program, Branavan explains, games are “another step closer to the real world.”"
Porn addiction isn't real research suggests - "After reviewing current studies into pornography addiction, he discovered that 37 per cent of studies describe excessive use of porn as an addiction, while 27 per cent of articles contain no data at all. His study published in the journal 'Current Sexual Health Reports', also suggests that there are no negative side effects for a person who excessively uses porn, and that there is no link between erectile dysfunction. Dr Ley added that experiments into the condition based on these articles are therefore carried out poorly and without scientific rigour. When these factors are combined, he claims that the pool of evidence proving porn addiction is real is very shallow... Dr Ley instead claims that porn can improve attitudes to sexuality, increase quality of life and pleasure in long-term relationships, because porn gives an outlet for illegal sexual desires and leads to a decrease in sexual offences. However, Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychotherapist and sex addiction, and the chair of the Association for the Treatment of Sex Addiction and Compulsivity, disagrees with Dr Ley’s findings and told The Independent that porn addiction not only devastates the person’s life, but the lives of those around them. “The clients are very very real, and comments like this dismiss and belittle the very real pain that people suffer."
"Suffering" trumps data and science
Study: The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model - "Since a large, lucrative industry has promised treatments for pornography addiction despite this poor evidence, scientific psychologists are called to declare the emperor (treatment industry) has no clothes (supporting evidence). When faced with such complaints, clinicians are encouraged to address behaviors without conjuring addiction labels."
Porn users don't realise they are being watched - "in the Denver area, fans experienced a 70% swing in porn use as their team staggered towards a crushing 43-8 defeat to the Seattle Seahawks. At the start of the game, porn use in Denver was 51% below national average; by the time the drubbing was complete, it was 10.8% above. Figures for Seattle - where jubilant Seahawks fans were too busy doing old-fashioned things like drinking beer, laughing, talking and watching action replays - were 17.1% below national average, post-game... most men turn to porn not when they are happy, but when they are at their most vulnerable"
France - French chefs tell customers ‘no more food porn’ - "Gilles Goujon, whose "L’Auberge du Vieux Puits" restaurant in southern France holds three Michelin stars, says photos posted on social networks can ruin the experience for other diners. “If people take a photo and put it out on social media, it takes away the surprise,” he told AFP, citing the example of his dish “oeuf de poule pourri de truffles” (chicken egg laden with truffles). “It takes away a little bit of my intellectual property too. Someone could copy me,” he continued... Gauthier believes the constant snapping of dishes by smartphone-wielding customers detracts from the dining experience. “They used to take family photos, of their grandmother, and now its photos of food,” he told AFP. “We tweet, we ‘like’, we comment, we respond. And the food is cold... But chefs should not be so quick to shirk the free publicity that social networks bring them, says French food blogger Stéphane Riss, of the “Cuisiner en Ligne” website. “The more we talk about chefs, the better it is for them,” he said. “Photos increase visibility and therefore revenue.”"
Post ID: 2496126797196661923
How do atheists profess their "faith"?
Glenn Anderson's answer to Atheism: How do atheists profess their "faith"? - Quora
"I have one of these in my back yard. All atheist have something like this, tucked in a corner somewhere. It's my Darwin Shrine.
Let me tell you the good news about the origin of species."
"I have one of these in my back yard. All atheist have something like this, tucked in a corner somewhere. It's my Darwin Shrine.
Let me tell you the good news about the origin of species."
Post ID: 7542017008715387297
Monday, April 28, 2014
Links - 28th April 2014
French cafe offers discounts to polite customers - "A sign outside the establishment states:
"Un café - €7 [£5.90]
"Un café s'il vous plaît - €4.25
"Bonjour, un café, s'il vous plaît - €1.40.""
Allah can't be substituted with Tuhan in Bible translation - "Both the terms Allah and Tuhan are used in the Malay Bible. Following the precedent set by Arab Christians, Allah is used to translate el/elohim and Tuhan (or TUHAN in caps) is used to translate Yahweh (YHWH). The two words are sometimes paired together as Yahweh-Elohim in 372 places in the Old Testament (14 times in Genesis 2-3; 4 times in Exodus; 8 times in Joshua; 7 times in 2 Samuel; 22 times in Chronicles; 12 times in Psalms; 32 times in Isaiah; 16 times in Jeremiah and 210 times in Ezekiel etc.). More importantly, the word Tuhan is also applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Thus we read of the LORD Jesus as Tuhan Yesus (The word LORD was used to translate the word kurios 8,400 times in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament."
China's internet vigilantes and the 'human flesh search engine' - "The internet vigilantes were wrong, Yin insists. He tried to defend himself to anyone who would listen, explaining he wasn't guilty of spitting on anyone. But as soon as Yin hung up with one angry caller, his phone would ring again. And again. And thousands of times again... "All of my private information was made public. My ID card number, name, phone number, address, even my mother-in-law's phone number was dug out and posted online," Yin remembers. "I even received phone calls blackmailing me, threatening to burn my house down if I didn't pay them 200,000 RMB [$33,000; £20,000]"... But at the highest levels, it seems the government is taking notice. Last month, Liu Zhengrong, a top Communist official in charge of China's internet surveillance, said the government believed the human flesh search engine was "illegal and immoral". His caution was soon echoed in China's major state media outlets - a signal, Chinese lawyers say, that flesh-searching tactics won't be tolerated in the courts. Legislation might soon follow... In 2009, Zhang Zetian was an ordinary high school student. One day, as she was leaving class, a friend snapped a photo of her with a Chinese milk tea drink in her hand, backpack slung over one shoulder. Zhang's photo was then posted on Renren.com, a popular social networking site. Complete strangers then forwarded the photo hundreds of thousands of times, proclaiming the "Milk Tea Girl" to be "adorable!" and "fresh faced!"... Years later, Zhang remains an internet celebrity. Photos of her doe-eyed face are in regular circulation. When she was admitted into Tsinghua, one of China's top universities, her profile rose again. Sitting in a cafe near her campus, Zhang seems embarrassed by her unlikely rise to celebrity status. "No matter where I go, people attempt to take secret photos of me," she says. People follow her with cameraphones on campus and sometimes in class. Admirers have even tried to break into her university dormitory."
Why Oreos Are As Addictive As Cocaine To Your Brain - "“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do,” Schroeder said. “It may explain why some people can’t resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them.”"
Another reason why men like curves - "It is already known that curvaceous women live longer and that men find them more attractive but the new research suggests that they are also cleverer."
IEPlus: Skandia International poll: the price of happiness is $162,000 - "The research, conducted across 13 territories, found that the highest levels of aspired income were quoted by individuals living in Dubai who would need more than a quarter of a million US dollars to feel happy - or $276,150 to be precise. The next highest financial aspirations were recorded in Singapore and Hong Kong, where the levels of desired annual income are as high as $227,563 and $197,702 respectively. Generally, respondents from Europe feel that much less is required to keep them satisfied"
Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer - NYTimes.com - "mammography’s impact is decidedly mixed: it does reduce, by a small percentage, the number of women who are told they have late-stage cancer, but it is far more likely to result in overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment, including surgery, weeks of radiation and potentially toxic drugs. And yet, mammography remains an unquestioned pillar of the pink-ribbon awareness movement... “mammograms save lives.” But how many lives, exactly, are being “saved,” under what circumstances and at what cost? Raising the public profile of breast cancer, a disease once spoken of only in whispers, was at one time critically important, as was emphasizing the benefits of screening. But there are unintended consequences to ever-greater “awareness” — and they, too, affect women’s health... After years of bombardment by early-detection campaigns (consider: “If you haven’t had a mammogram, you need more than your breasts examined”), women, surveys showed, seemed to think screening didn’t just find breast cancer but actually prevented it... According to a survey of randomized clinical trials involving 600,000 women around the world, for every 2,000 women screened annually over 10 years, one life is prolonged but 10 healthy women are given diagnoses of breast cancer and unnecessarily treated, often with therapies that themselves have life-threatening side effects... There is so much ‘awareness’ about breast cancer in the U.S. I’ve called it breast-cancer overawareness... Despite the fact that Komen trademarked the phrase “for the cure,” only 16 percent of the $472 million raised in 2011, the most recent year for which financial reports are available, went toward research... Before the pink ribbon, awareness as an end in itself was not the default goal for health-related causes. Now you’d be hard-pressed to find a major illness without a logo, a wearable ornament and a roster of consumer-product tie-ins... “These campaigns all have a similar superficiality in terms of the response they require from the public,” said Samantha King, associate professor of kinesiology and health at Queen’s University in Ontario and author of"Pink Ribbons, Inc.” “They’re divorced from any critique of health care policy or the politics of funding biomedical research. They reinforce a single-issue competitive model of fund-raising. And they whitewash illness: we’re made ‘aware’ of a disease yet totally removed from the challenging and often devastating realities of its sufferers”... Wearing a bracelet, sporting a ribbon, running a race or buying a pink blender expresses our hopes, and that feels good, even virtuous. But making a difference is more complicated than that... all that well-meaning awareness has ultimately made women less conscious of the facts: obscuring the limits of screening, conflating risk with disease, compromising our decisions about health care, celebrating “cancer survivors” who may have never required treating. And ultimately, it has come at the expense of those whose lives are most at risk"
More benefits of "awareness"
Jungle Warfare: A Basic Field Manual for Christians in Sales: Christopher Cunningham: Amazon.com: Books - "“Paul admonished all of us to ‘fight the good fight.’ In Jungle Warfare, Christopher Cunningham tells us how to not only fight but how to actually win. This book is recommended reading for Christians in the arena of sales.” —Tim Lee, Evangelist, Marine Sergeant from the jungles of Vietnam, www.timlee.org"
???
Pay gap: Why female doctors earn less than male doctors -- and why it's good - "The answer, they speculate, is that women are choosing lower-paying jobs on purpose because they offer greater flexibility in hours and are generally more family-friendly. The researchers acknowledge they don't have the data to prove that this is the case, but the data they do have is consistent with this theory. If so, they say, that would be a victory for women (and even men.) Studies show that many doctors are burned out and would rather take jobs that allow them to have a good quality of life. Now -- thanks in large part to the growing ranks of female doctors -- such jobs are available. They just come with lower salaries."
Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidencefrom Young Lawyers - "Unlike most high-skilled professions, the legal profession has widely used objective methods to measure and reward lawyers’ productivity: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten-percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue compared with female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law-firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. These performance gaps have important consequences for gender gaps in earnings. While individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder"
Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling - "Another study quizzed graduating master's degree students who had received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men -- 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women -- said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded -- they got 7.4 percent more, on average -- compared with those who did not negotiate... The traditional explanation for the gender differences that Babcock found is that men are simply more aggressive than women, perhaps because of a combination of genetics and upbringing. The solution to gender disparities, this school of thought suggests, is to train women to be more assertive and to ask for more. However, a new set of experiments by Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles, who studies the psychology of organizations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, offers an entirely different explanation... Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice""
The Mystery of the Bible’s Phantom Camels | TIME.com - "Last week, archaeologists Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University released a new study that dates the arrival of the domesticated camel in the eastern Mediterranean region to the 10th century B.C. at the earliest, based on radioactive-carbon techniques. Abraham and the patriarchs, however, lived at least six centuries before then. The New York Times, in a story about the finding today, announced, “There are too many camels in the Bible, out of time and out of place … these anachronisms are telling evidence that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it narrates and is not always reliable as verifiable history.” Behold, a mystery: the Case of the Bible’s Phantom Camels... The new study again raises the age-old question of biblical accuracy. The phantom camel is just one of many historically jumbled references in the Bible. The Book of Genesis claims the Philistines, the traditional enemy of the Israelites, lived during Abraham’s time. But historians date the Philistines’ arrival to the eastern Mediterranean at about 1200 B.C., 400 years after Abraham was supposed to have lived... These anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, however, do not trouble biblical scholars. People in biblical times understood and wrote about their past differently from people in the modern, post-Enlightenment world. “We expect history to provide an accurate narrative of real events,” Carol Meyers explains. “The biblical authors, composers, writers used their creative imaginations to shape their stories, and they were not interested in what actually happened, they were interested in what you could learn from telling about the past”... The study is going to ruffle the feathers of people who believe in biblical inerrancy, a doctrine popular among evangelical and other right-orthodoxy movements that says every word in the Bible is literally true. Liberal Judaism and Christianity, says Carol Meyers, often contribute to the problem when they do not look at the complexity of how ancient narratives were formed"
Probable fundamentalist explanation: 'camels' in the Bible refers to a similar animal (which we have no proof existed)
"Un café - €7 [£5.90]
"Un café s'il vous plaît - €4.25
"Bonjour, un café, s'il vous plaît - €1.40.""
Allah can't be substituted with Tuhan in Bible translation - "Both the terms Allah and Tuhan are used in the Malay Bible. Following the precedent set by Arab Christians, Allah is used to translate el/elohim and Tuhan (or TUHAN in caps) is used to translate Yahweh (YHWH). The two words are sometimes paired together as Yahweh-Elohim in 372 places in the Old Testament (14 times in Genesis 2-3; 4 times in Exodus; 8 times in Joshua; 7 times in 2 Samuel; 22 times in Chronicles; 12 times in Psalms; 32 times in Isaiah; 16 times in Jeremiah and 210 times in Ezekiel etc.). More importantly, the word Tuhan is also applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Thus we read of the LORD Jesus as Tuhan Yesus (The word LORD was used to translate the word kurios 8,400 times in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament."
China's internet vigilantes and the 'human flesh search engine' - "The internet vigilantes were wrong, Yin insists. He tried to defend himself to anyone who would listen, explaining he wasn't guilty of spitting on anyone. But as soon as Yin hung up with one angry caller, his phone would ring again. And again. And thousands of times again... "All of my private information was made public. My ID card number, name, phone number, address, even my mother-in-law's phone number was dug out and posted online," Yin remembers. "I even received phone calls blackmailing me, threatening to burn my house down if I didn't pay them 200,000 RMB [$33,000; £20,000]"... But at the highest levels, it seems the government is taking notice. Last month, Liu Zhengrong, a top Communist official in charge of China's internet surveillance, said the government believed the human flesh search engine was "illegal and immoral". His caution was soon echoed in China's major state media outlets - a signal, Chinese lawyers say, that flesh-searching tactics won't be tolerated in the courts. Legislation might soon follow... In 2009, Zhang Zetian was an ordinary high school student. One day, as she was leaving class, a friend snapped a photo of her with a Chinese milk tea drink in her hand, backpack slung over one shoulder. Zhang's photo was then posted on Renren.com, a popular social networking site. Complete strangers then forwarded the photo hundreds of thousands of times, proclaiming the "Milk Tea Girl" to be "adorable!" and "fresh faced!"... Years later, Zhang remains an internet celebrity. Photos of her doe-eyed face are in regular circulation. When she was admitted into Tsinghua, one of China's top universities, her profile rose again. Sitting in a cafe near her campus, Zhang seems embarrassed by her unlikely rise to celebrity status. "No matter where I go, people attempt to take secret photos of me," she says. People follow her with cameraphones on campus and sometimes in class. Admirers have even tried to break into her university dormitory."
Why Oreos Are As Addictive As Cocaine To Your Brain - "“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do,” Schroeder said. “It may explain why some people can’t resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them.”"
Another reason why men like curves - "It is already known that curvaceous women live longer and that men find them more attractive but the new research suggests that they are also cleverer."
IEPlus: Skandia International poll: the price of happiness is $162,000 - "The research, conducted across 13 territories, found that the highest levels of aspired income were quoted by individuals living in Dubai who would need more than a quarter of a million US dollars to feel happy - or $276,150 to be precise. The next highest financial aspirations were recorded in Singapore and Hong Kong, where the levels of desired annual income are as high as $227,563 and $197,702 respectively. Generally, respondents from Europe feel that much less is required to keep them satisfied"
Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer - NYTimes.com - "mammography’s impact is decidedly mixed: it does reduce, by a small percentage, the number of women who are told they have late-stage cancer, but it is far more likely to result in overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment, including surgery, weeks of radiation and potentially toxic drugs. And yet, mammography remains an unquestioned pillar of the pink-ribbon awareness movement... “mammograms save lives.” But how many lives, exactly, are being “saved,” under what circumstances and at what cost? Raising the public profile of breast cancer, a disease once spoken of only in whispers, was at one time critically important, as was emphasizing the benefits of screening. But there are unintended consequences to ever-greater “awareness” — and they, too, affect women’s health... After years of bombardment by early-detection campaigns (consider: “If you haven’t had a mammogram, you need more than your breasts examined”), women, surveys showed, seemed to think screening didn’t just find breast cancer but actually prevented it... According to a survey of randomized clinical trials involving 600,000 women around the world, for every 2,000 women screened annually over 10 years, one life is prolonged but 10 healthy women are given diagnoses of breast cancer and unnecessarily treated, often with therapies that themselves have life-threatening side effects... There is so much ‘awareness’ about breast cancer in the U.S. I’ve called it breast-cancer overawareness... Despite the fact that Komen trademarked the phrase “for the cure,” only 16 percent of the $472 million raised in 2011, the most recent year for which financial reports are available, went toward research... Before the pink ribbon, awareness as an end in itself was not the default goal for health-related causes. Now you’d be hard-pressed to find a major illness without a logo, a wearable ornament and a roster of consumer-product tie-ins... “These campaigns all have a similar superficiality in terms of the response they require from the public,” said Samantha King, associate professor of kinesiology and health at Queen’s University in Ontario and author of"Pink Ribbons, Inc.” “They’re divorced from any critique of health care policy or the politics of funding biomedical research. They reinforce a single-issue competitive model of fund-raising. And they whitewash illness: we’re made ‘aware’ of a disease yet totally removed from the challenging and often devastating realities of its sufferers”... Wearing a bracelet, sporting a ribbon, running a race or buying a pink blender expresses our hopes, and that feels good, even virtuous. But making a difference is more complicated than that... all that well-meaning awareness has ultimately made women less conscious of the facts: obscuring the limits of screening, conflating risk with disease, compromising our decisions about health care, celebrating “cancer survivors” who may have never required treating. And ultimately, it has come at the expense of those whose lives are most at risk"
More benefits of "awareness"
Jungle Warfare: A Basic Field Manual for Christians in Sales: Christopher Cunningham: Amazon.com: Books - "“Paul admonished all of us to ‘fight the good fight.’ In Jungle Warfare, Christopher Cunningham tells us how to not only fight but how to actually win. This book is recommended reading for Christians in the arena of sales.” —Tim Lee, Evangelist, Marine Sergeant from the jungles of Vietnam, www.timlee.org"
???
Pay gap: Why female doctors earn less than male doctors -- and why it's good - "The answer, they speculate, is that women are choosing lower-paying jobs on purpose because they offer greater flexibility in hours and are generally more family-friendly. The researchers acknowledge they don't have the data to prove that this is the case, but the data they do have is consistent with this theory. If so, they say, that would be a victory for women (and even men.) Studies show that many doctors are burned out and would rather take jobs that allow them to have a good quality of life. Now -- thanks in large part to the growing ranks of female doctors -- such jobs are available. They just come with lower salaries."
Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidencefrom Young Lawyers - "Unlike most high-skilled professions, the legal profession has widely used objective methods to measure and reward lawyers’ productivity: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten-percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue compared with female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law-firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. These performance gaps have important consequences for gender gaps in earnings. While individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder"
Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling - "Another study quizzed graduating master's degree students who had received job offers about whether they had simply accepted the offered starting salary or had tried to negotiate for more. Four times as many men -- 51 percent of the men vs. 12.5 percent of the women -- said they had pushed for a better deal. Not surprisingly, those who negotiated tended to be rewarded -- they got 7.4 percent more, on average -- compared with those who did not negotiate... The traditional explanation for the gender differences that Babcock found is that men are simply more aggressive than women, perhaps because of a combination of genetics and upbringing. The solution to gender disparities, this school of thought suggests, is to train women to be more assertive and to ask for more. However, a new set of experiments by Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles, who studies the psychology of organizations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, offers an entirely different explanation... Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice""
The Mystery of the Bible’s Phantom Camels | TIME.com - "Last week, archaeologists Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University released a new study that dates the arrival of the domesticated camel in the eastern Mediterranean region to the 10th century B.C. at the earliest, based on radioactive-carbon techniques. Abraham and the patriarchs, however, lived at least six centuries before then. The New York Times, in a story about the finding today, announced, “There are too many camels in the Bible, out of time and out of place … these anachronisms are telling evidence that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it narrates and is not always reliable as verifiable history.” Behold, a mystery: the Case of the Bible’s Phantom Camels... The new study again raises the age-old question of biblical accuracy. The phantom camel is just one of many historically jumbled references in the Bible. The Book of Genesis claims the Philistines, the traditional enemy of the Israelites, lived during Abraham’s time. But historians date the Philistines’ arrival to the eastern Mediterranean at about 1200 B.C., 400 years after Abraham was supposed to have lived... These anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, however, do not trouble biblical scholars. People in biblical times understood and wrote about their past differently from people in the modern, post-Enlightenment world. “We expect history to provide an accurate narrative of real events,” Carol Meyers explains. “The biblical authors, composers, writers used their creative imaginations to shape their stories, and they were not interested in what actually happened, they were interested in what you could learn from telling about the past”... The study is going to ruffle the feathers of people who believe in biblical inerrancy, a doctrine popular among evangelical and other right-orthodoxy movements that says every word in the Bible is literally true. Liberal Judaism and Christianity, says Carol Meyers, often contribute to the problem when they do not look at the complexity of how ancient narratives were formed"
Probable fundamentalist explanation: 'camels' in the Bible refers to a similar animal (which we have no proof existed)
Post ID: 2115667384134384500
Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars
Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars
"Though Mukhopadhyay continues to believe in the empowering potential of online feminism, she sees that much of it is becoming dysfunctional, even unhealthy. “Everyone is so scared to speak right now,” she says.
Just a few years ago, the feminist blogosphere seemed an insouciant, freewheeling place, revivifying women’s liberation for a new generation. “It felt like there was fun and possibility…a momentum or excitement that was building,” says Anna Holmes, who founded Jezebel, Gawker Media’s influential women’s website, in 2007...
Even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists...
In some ways, the fact that people are being mean to each other on Twitter is hardly worthy of comment. Still, as the #Femfuture report attempted to point out, the Internet is where a lot of contemporary feminist activism is happening...
As the radical second-waver Ti-Grace Atkinson famously put it: “Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.”
In “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” a 1976 Ms. magazine article, Jo Freeman described how feminists of her generation destroyed one another...
For feminists today, knowing that others have been through similar things is not necessarily comforting. “Some of it is the product of new technologies that create more shallow relationships, and some of it feels like this age-old conundrum within feminism,” Martin says. “How do we disentangle what part is about social media and what part is about the way women interact with one another? If there’s something inherent about the way women work within movements that makes us assholes to each other, that is incredibly sad”...
Being targeted by other activists, she says, “leaves you feeling threatened in the sense that you’re getting turned out of your own home…. The one place that you are able to look to for safety, where you were valued, where there is a lot less of the structural prejudice that makes you feel so outcast in the rest of the world—that’s now been closed to you. That you now have this terrible reputation… I know a lot of friends that live in fear of that.”
If your professional life is tied up with activism, the threat is redoubled. “To suddenly be tarred by the very people that I’m supposed to be able to work with, my allies, as being a sellout or being infatuated with power or being an apologist for this, that and the other privilege—if that kind of reputation gets around, its extremely damaging,” says Cross.
The dogma that’s being enforced in online feminist spaces is often called “intersectionality,” but in practice it’s quite different from the theory elaborated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the UCLA law professor who coined the word. In a 1989 article in The University of Chicago Legal Forum, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” Crenshaw described how the failure to consider the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of women of color left a lacuna in civil rights law. She cited a failed lawsuit by a group of black women against General Motors; the court ruled that while race discrimination and sex discrimination are both causes of action, “a combination of both” is not. Another of Crenshaw’s articles described a women’s shelter balking at accepting a Latina victim of domestic violence because she wasn’t proficient in English and thus couldn’t participate in mandated group therapy sessions. Her work can be theoretical, but it’s focused on legal and material conditions far more than patterns of discourse.
“My own efforts to create a voice and a perspective on these failures haven’t really been about chastisement, or a certain set of assumptions about what the articulation that I’m critiquing should have been, or what the failure of it represents in the person,” Crenshaw says, “but rather a collective effort to build a feminism that does more of the work that it claims to do.”
Online, however, intersectionality is overwhelmingly about chastisement and rooting out individual sin. Partly, says Cooper, this comes from academic feminism, steeped as it is in a postmodern culture of critique that emphasizes the power relations embedded in language. “We actually have come to believe that how we talk about things is the best indicator of our politics,” she notes. An elaborate series of norms and rules has evolved out of that belief, generally unknown to the uninitiated, who are nevertheless hammered if they unwittingly violate them. Often, these rules began as useful insights into the way rhetorical power works but, says Cross, “have metamorphosed into something much more rigid and inflexible.” One such rule is a prohibition on what’s called “tone policing.” An insight into the way marginalized people are punished for their anger has turned into an imperative “that you can never question the efficacy of anger, especially when voiced by a person from a marginalized background.”
Similarly, there’s a norm that intention doesn’t matter—indeed, if you offend someone and then try to explain that you were misunderstood, this is seen as compounding the original injury. Again, there’s a significant insight here: people often behave in bigoted ways without meaning to, and their benign intention doesn’t make the prejudice less painful for those subjected to it. However, “that became a rule where you say intentions never matter; there is no added value to understanding the intentions of the speaker,” Cross says.
There are also rules, elaborated by white feminists, on how other white feminists should talk to women of color. For example, after Kendall’s #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag erupted last fall, Sarah Milstein, co-author of a guide to Twitter, published a piece on the Huffington Post titled “5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism.” At one point, Milstein argued that if a person of color says something that makes you uncomfortable, “assume your discomfort is telling you something about you, not about the other person.” After Rule No. 3, “Look for ways that you are racist, rather than ways to prove you’re not,” she confesses to her own racial crimes, including being “awkwardly too friendly” toward black people at parties...
The expectation that feminists should always be ready to berate themselves for even the most minor transgressions—like being too friendly at a party—creates an environment of perpetual psychodrama, particularly when coupled with the refusal to ever question the expression of an oppressed person’s anger.
“I actually think there’s a subset of black women who really do get off on white women being prostrate,” Cooper says. “It’s about feeling disempowered and always feeling at the mercy of white authority, and wanting to feel like for once the things you’re saying are being given credibility and authority. And to have white folks do that is powerful, particularly in a world where white women often deploy power against black women in ways that are really problematic.”
Preening displays of white feminist abjection, however, are not the same as respect. “What’s disgusting and disturbing to me is that I see some of the more intellectually dishonest arguments put forth by women of color being legitimized and performed by white feminists, who seem to be in some sort of competition to exhibit how intersectional they are,” says Jezebel founder Holmes, who is black. “There are these Olympian attempts on the part of white feminists to underscore and display their ally-ship in a way that feels gross and dishonest and, yes, patronizing”...
Jamia Wilson was one of the black women involved in the Barnard meeting, and she has since become part of the four-woman leadership team for the #Femfuture project... insensitivity. One self-described white feminist tweeted at her to explain that no women of color had been at the Barnard meeting “and that I needed to be educated about that,” Wilson recalls. Somehow, activists who prided themselves on their racial enlightenment “were whitesplaining me about racism,” she adds, laughing...
In a revolution-eats-its-own irony, some online feminists have even deemed the word “vagina” problematic. In January, the actress and activist Martha Plimpton tweeted about a benefit for Texas abortion funds called “A Night of a Thousand Vaginas,” sponsored by A Is For, a reproductive rights organization she’s involved with. Plimpton was surprised when some offended Internet feminists urged people to stay away, arguing that emphasizing “vaginas” hurts trans men who don’t want their reproductive organs coded as female. “Given the constant genital policing, you can’t expect trans folks to feel included by an event title focused on a policed, binary genital,” tweeted @DrJaneChi, an abortion and transgender health provider. (She mentioned “internal genitals” as an alternative.) When Plimpton insisted that she would continue to say “vagina,” her feed filled up with indignation. “So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?” asked one self-described intersectional feminist blogger...
Mikki Kendall is unmoved by complaints about the repressive climate online... She seems warm and engaging, but also obsessed—she talks at length about slights made in the comment threads of blogs more than five years ago...
Few people are doing that, but they are disengaging from online feminism. Holmes, who left Jezebel in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, says she would never start a women’s website today. “Hell, no,” she says. The women’s blogosphere “feels like a much more insular, protective, brittle environment than it did before. It’s really depressing,” she adds. “It makes me think I got out at the right time.”"
Comments:
"It's not just feminism that has this infighting going on, at this point this seems to be a problem with all activism in social media - there's the tendency to react first and ask questions later, the tendency to assume the worst intentions of everyone, never forgive, pile on mercilessly, leave no room to respectfully disagree.
On twitter it's just generally cruel because 140 characters is great for writing the perfect cutting retort, but not at all for explaining context or your intentions...
Only through activism and religion are good people so capable of being such dicks in the name of being a better person. Until there's room to forgive and disagree and move on with the knowledge there will be a different fight another day you can unite and work together on, the left is going to be plagued with infighting."
"It's as if the belief is that oppression will be eliminated if only everyone can be beaten down with insults and yelling, until they no longer dare to speak lest they use the wrong terminology."
"Judean People's Front.... We're the People's Front of Judea!!"
"I really am very bothered by the idea that nastiness can be justified because it already happened in the other direction. I don't personally like it when someone's response to being victimised is to victimise someone else. I believe the only way to change minds is to prove you're better, whereas too much of the online discourse surrounding feminism is about slinging mud at people with differing beliefs"
"Though Mukhopadhyay continues to believe in the empowering potential of online feminism, she sees that much of it is becoming dysfunctional, even unhealthy. “Everyone is so scared to speak right now,” she says.
Just a few years ago, the feminist blogosphere seemed an insouciant, freewheeling place, revivifying women’s liberation for a new generation. “It felt like there was fun and possibility…a momentum or excitement that was building,” says Anna Holmes, who founded Jezebel, Gawker Media’s influential women’s website, in 2007...
Even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists...
In some ways, the fact that people are being mean to each other on Twitter is hardly worthy of comment. Still, as the #Femfuture report attempted to point out, the Internet is where a lot of contemporary feminist activism is happening...
As the radical second-waver Ti-Grace Atkinson famously put it: “Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.”
In “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” a 1976 Ms. magazine article, Jo Freeman described how feminists of her generation destroyed one another...
For feminists today, knowing that others have been through similar things is not necessarily comforting. “Some of it is the product of new technologies that create more shallow relationships, and some of it feels like this age-old conundrum within feminism,” Martin says. “How do we disentangle what part is about social media and what part is about the way women interact with one another? If there’s something inherent about the way women work within movements that makes us assholes to each other, that is incredibly sad”...
Being targeted by other activists, she says, “leaves you feeling threatened in the sense that you’re getting turned out of your own home…. The one place that you are able to look to for safety, where you were valued, where there is a lot less of the structural prejudice that makes you feel so outcast in the rest of the world—that’s now been closed to you. That you now have this terrible reputation… I know a lot of friends that live in fear of that.”
If your professional life is tied up with activism, the threat is redoubled. “To suddenly be tarred by the very people that I’m supposed to be able to work with, my allies, as being a sellout or being infatuated with power or being an apologist for this, that and the other privilege—if that kind of reputation gets around, its extremely damaging,” says Cross.
The dogma that’s being enforced in online feminist spaces is often called “intersectionality,” but in practice it’s quite different from the theory elaborated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the UCLA law professor who coined the word. In a 1989 article in The University of Chicago Legal Forum, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” Crenshaw described how the failure to consider the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of women of color left a lacuna in civil rights law. She cited a failed lawsuit by a group of black women against General Motors; the court ruled that while race discrimination and sex discrimination are both causes of action, “a combination of both” is not. Another of Crenshaw’s articles described a women’s shelter balking at accepting a Latina victim of domestic violence because she wasn’t proficient in English and thus couldn’t participate in mandated group therapy sessions. Her work can be theoretical, but it’s focused on legal and material conditions far more than patterns of discourse.
“My own efforts to create a voice and a perspective on these failures haven’t really been about chastisement, or a certain set of assumptions about what the articulation that I’m critiquing should have been, or what the failure of it represents in the person,” Crenshaw says, “but rather a collective effort to build a feminism that does more of the work that it claims to do.”
Online, however, intersectionality is overwhelmingly about chastisement and rooting out individual sin. Partly, says Cooper, this comes from academic feminism, steeped as it is in a postmodern culture of critique that emphasizes the power relations embedded in language. “We actually have come to believe that how we talk about things is the best indicator of our politics,” she notes. An elaborate series of norms and rules has evolved out of that belief, generally unknown to the uninitiated, who are nevertheless hammered if they unwittingly violate them. Often, these rules began as useful insights into the way rhetorical power works but, says Cross, “have metamorphosed into something much more rigid and inflexible.” One such rule is a prohibition on what’s called “tone policing.” An insight into the way marginalized people are punished for their anger has turned into an imperative “that you can never question the efficacy of anger, especially when voiced by a person from a marginalized background.”
Similarly, there’s a norm that intention doesn’t matter—indeed, if you offend someone and then try to explain that you were misunderstood, this is seen as compounding the original injury. Again, there’s a significant insight here: people often behave in bigoted ways without meaning to, and their benign intention doesn’t make the prejudice less painful for those subjected to it. However, “that became a rule where you say intentions never matter; there is no added value to understanding the intentions of the speaker,” Cross says.
There are also rules, elaborated by white feminists, on how other white feminists should talk to women of color. For example, after Kendall’s #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag erupted last fall, Sarah Milstein, co-author of a guide to Twitter, published a piece on the Huffington Post titled “5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism.” At one point, Milstein argued that if a person of color says something that makes you uncomfortable, “assume your discomfort is telling you something about you, not about the other person.” After Rule No. 3, “Look for ways that you are racist, rather than ways to prove you’re not,” she confesses to her own racial crimes, including being “awkwardly too friendly” toward black people at parties...
The expectation that feminists should always be ready to berate themselves for even the most minor transgressions—like being too friendly at a party—creates an environment of perpetual psychodrama, particularly when coupled with the refusal to ever question the expression of an oppressed person’s anger.
“I actually think there’s a subset of black women who really do get off on white women being prostrate,” Cooper says. “It’s about feeling disempowered and always feeling at the mercy of white authority, and wanting to feel like for once the things you’re saying are being given credibility and authority. And to have white folks do that is powerful, particularly in a world where white women often deploy power against black women in ways that are really problematic.”
Preening displays of white feminist abjection, however, are not the same as respect. “What’s disgusting and disturbing to me is that I see some of the more intellectually dishonest arguments put forth by women of color being legitimized and performed by white feminists, who seem to be in some sort of competition to exhibit how intersectional they are,” says Jezebel founder Holmes, who is black. “There are these Olympian attempts on the part of white feminists to underscore and display their ally-ship in a way that feels gross and dishonest and, yes, patronizing”...
Jamia Wilson was one of the black women involved in the Barnard meeting, and she has since become part of the four-woman leadership team for the #Femfuture project... insensitivity. One self-described white feminist tweeted at her to explain that no women of color had been at the Barnard meeting “and that I needed to be educated about that,” Wilson recalls. Somehow, activists who prided themselves on their racial enlightenment “were whitesplaining me about racism,” she adds, laughing...
In a revolution-eats-its-own irony, some online feminists have even deemed the word “vagina” problematic. In January, the actress and activist Martha Plimpton tweeted about a benefit for Texas abortion funds called “A Night of a Thousand Vaginas,” sponsored by A Is For, a reproductive rights organization she’s involved with. Plimpton was surprised when some offended Internet feminists urged people to stay away, arguing that emphasizing “vaginas” hurts trans men who don’t want their reproductive organs coded as female. “Given the constant genital policing, you can’t expect trans folks to feel included by an event title focused on a policed, binary genital,” tweeted @DrJaneChi, an abortion and transgender health provider. (She mentioned “internal genitals” as an alternative.) When Plimpton insisted that she would continue to say “vagina,” her feed filled up with indignation. “So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?” asked one self-described intersectional feminist blogger...
Mikki Kendall is unmoved by complaints about the repressive climate online... She seems warm and engaging, but also obsessed—she talks at length about slights made in the comment threads of blogs more than five years ago...
Few people are doing that, but they are disengaging from online feminism. Holmes, who left Jezebel in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, says she would never start a women’s website today. “Hell, no,” she says. The women’s blogosphere “feels like a much more insular, protective, brittle environment than it did before. It’s really depressing,” she adds. “It makes me think I got out at the right time.”"
Comments:
"It's not just feminism that has this infighting going on, at this point this seems to be a problem with all activism in social media - there's the tendency to react first and ask questions later, the tendency to assume the worst intentions of everyone, never forgive, pile on mercilessly, leave no room to respectfully disagree.
On twitter it's just generally cruel because 140 characters is great for writing the perfect cutting retort, but not at all for explaining context or your intentions...
Only through activism and religion are good people so capable of being such dicks in the name of being a better person. Until there's room to forgive and disagree and move on with the knowledge there will be a different fight another day you can unite and work together on, the left is going to be plagued with infighting."
"It's as if the belief is that oppression will be eliminated if only everyone can be beaten down with insults and yelling, until they no longer dare to speak lest they use the wrong terminology."
"Judean People's Front.... We're the People's Front of Judea!!"
"I really am very bothered by the idea that nastiness can be justified because it already happened in the other direction. I don't personally like it when someone's response to being victimised is to victimise someone else. I believe the only way to change minds is to prove you're better, whereas too much of the online discourse surrounding feminism is about slinging mud at people with differing beliefs"
Post ID: 7297079543327988980
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Links - 27th April 2014
LeighAlert: Free Alerts And Reminders - "Countdown Reminder sends you an email message with number of days remaining till your particular life event. For example:
165 days remaining till My Vacation
You can set your own frequency (daily, weekly or monthly)."
Forbidden love - "There is a surprisingly wide range of literature concerning incest for us to draw on when we try to understand the mindset of the participants. Consensual incest has been portrayed sympathetically in popular fiction for centuries, from John Ford's masterful 17th-century play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore to Ian McEwan's novel The Cement Garden and Steven Poliakoff's film Close My Eyes. The writer Kathryn Harrison caused a sensation in 1997 when she published The Kiss, a memoir of an affair with her father, and even in the popular medium of TV, from Jerry Springer (who has featured incestuous sisters on his show) to Brookside (which featured a love affair between siblings Nat and Georgia), incest has been depicted in a not unsympathetic, if somewhat salacious, manner... To prohibit two people from having sex because their offspring may be "defective" or "inferior" is to adopt the standpoint of a eugenicist. Indeed, Dr Sean Gabb has clearly shown that the impetus behind the 1908 Punishment of Incest Act was just that: the proponents of the act were exactly the same figures who advocated the "sterilisation" of the "feeble-minded". If we prohibit incest on the grounds that it risks producing "defective" children, we must also prohibit reproduction by haemophiliacs and the carriers of a host of other "defects""
Robin Thicke backs Blurred Lines lyrics after criticism - "He says Blurred Lines refers to blurring the lines between men and women and also between a good girl and a bad girl. When asked about the video which features naked women, he said he wasn't sure about it but admitted his wife made him put it out."
Magnet - The People's Funny Pictures Blog - Quora
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Fan Trailer Is…Gritty? | Giant Freakin Robot
Charities losing out thanks to Facebook and Twitter 'slacktivism' - "social media addicts are happy to puff themselves up by supporting causes with a ‘like’ – but then contribute nothing financially. It may be because slacktivists are more concerned with letting others see how charitable and fashionable they are without having to put their hands in their pockets. Report author Kirk Kristofferson said: ‘Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on.’ Social media campaigns do raise awareness but that could be at a cost to how much is raised from rattling tins in the high street"
"Awareness" - the solution to all problems
Japan’s first masturbation bar for women opens in Shibuya - "Love Joule, located in the Shibuya entertainment district, opened in July and provides Japan, according to its Web site, with its first “love and sex bar dedicated to women.”"
An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine - Deadline.com - "I’m told that the Walt Disney Co is currently attempting to trademark the character name “Princess Aurora” for all media: stage, sound, film, TV, video, Internet, photographs, news. In short, everything except literature. The name comes from the 1697 Charles Perrault fairy tale and Aurora is the Princess’s daughter (and thus a princess herself). The first use of “Princess Aurora” was in the 1890 Tchaikovsky ballet “The Sleeping Beauty,” which Disney turned into the 1959 animated film. It has been used continuously since then in the ballet as the title character’s name. The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie. “This would be like a film studio trademarking the character name “Ebenezer Scrooge” for all media (no one has) and then no one could perform “A Christmas Carol” on a stage, TV, in a film, radio, etc without first securing the right to use the name from the trademark owner”"
Evaluating Drug Decriminalization in Portugal 12 Years Later - "The Portuguese experiment has been in action since Law 30/2000 went into effect nearly 12 years ago, and Goulão's staff is currently calculating how much money the country's judicial system has saved, in its courts and prisons, now that it no longer has to process individuals the police catch with a few grams of drugs. "The police still search people for drugs," Goulão points out. Hashish, cocaine, ecstasy -- Portuguese police still seize and destroy all these substances... When Portugal's parliament was debating the proposed Law 30/2000, representatives of right-wing parties declared that planes would start arriving in the country daily, full of people looking for an easy opportunity to pump themselves full of drugs. Our entire country will become a drug-ridden slum, these parties said. The left-wing parties in parliament held a majority, though. Goulão sits in his office and pages through charts, tables and graphs that are just some of the great quantity of data his team has collected over the years. The data show, among other things, that the number of adults in Portugal who have at some point taken illegal drugs is rising. At the same time, though, the number of teenagers who have at some point taken illegal drugs is falling. The number of drug addicts who have undergone rehab has also increased dramatically, while the number of drug addicts who have become infected with HIV has fallen significantly. What, though, do these numbers mean? With what exactly can they be compared? There isn't a great deal of data from before the experiment began. And, for example, the number of adults who have tried illegal drugs at some point in their lives is increasing in most other countries throughout Europe as well. "We haven't found some miracle cure," Goulão says. Still, taking stock after nearly 12 years, his conclusion is, "Decriminalization hasn't made the problem worse.""
A blonde chick with a cute pussy. | Mortal Online Forums
Bad year for US Congress - "To call this one a "Do Nothing Congress" is really generous, she said. “Because, rather than simply do nothing, they have done real damage to the country. They’re hurt our economy, they’ve hurt the international economy, they’ve left children out in the cold, not going to school, They’ve made sure that people aren’t eating and they’ve made the Defense Department not ready. These are just a few of the things that have happened"
Isaac Asimov's 2014 predictions.
20 online dating cliches - and what they really mean - "I'm easy-going
Variations on this are "I'm laid back" and "I'm down to earth." In his list of 10 things he hates about Plenty of Fish profiles, Greg Hendricks writes that these are so common that he ignores profiles that include them. "What are any of these even supposed to mean? These stock traits are in so many profiles, I practically skip right over them." Plus, who would ever describe themselves otherwise, says Foxton. "No-one thinks, 'I'm really uptight.'""
All Norwegians become millionaires as oil fund balloons - "in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere. Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic. It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work. "One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working," Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent."
The London 'Anti-Cafe' Where Everything Is Free But You Pay 5 Cents A Minute Just To Be There
In normal cafes food and drinks are overpriced to cover the cost of lurkers anyway
Hospital Shame - "I was at the Changi hospital, where the tent stands as a sore thumb, over the past week visiting a relative, and the A and B1 class beds were only about half filled. To fill A class beds, our restructured hospitals actually send missions to Myanmar, the Middle East and Africa to advertise our services. At the out-patient level, appointments for B and C patients can take months, whereas those for A class patients only take a week. There is clearly a very inefficient use of our current resources. In the shorter term, taking into account our severely-stretched resources, restructured hospitals should no longer be in the medical tourism business and should concentrate on providing care for citizens. There should be only one standard of care. Private healthcare should be provided by private hospitals. This would leave our public hospitals with increased capacity to deal more efficiently with over-crowding."
Dear Straits Times, a simple apology would have sufficed - "even as the Straits Times enjoins critics to "ask themselves why they would dismiss this version of events, and believe the first" and treats Pyongyang with such scepticism, the Straits Times should probably start by applying that same kind of scepticism to itself."
This Man's Homemade Sex Doll Is Absolutely Horrifying
British film set in a storage facility earned £44 at US box office - "Storage 24, a British horror film based in a self-storage facility, took the smallest amount of money at the American box office last year: a paltry $72, or £44 after being shown in just one cinema for a day."
Balik Cina - Discover the best Malaysia has to offer - "Balik Cina has the finest collection of beautiful and inspirational quotes by Malaysian politicians. 220 right now. Start by searching for a name, topic or phrase."
Group wants to shun Silicon Valley and revive 40-hour working week - "Frederick W. Taylor, the 20th century originator of “scientific management,” prescribed reduced work times and achieved remarkable increases in output per worker... “Research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual labourers do – on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight.”"
Woman stalker who tried to kiss victim gets probation and told to stay away - "A former relief teacher was yesterday placed on 12 months' supervised probation for using criminal force on a teaching intern"
If she were a guy, she'd almost certainly have gotten jail
The Inequality Problem - NYTimes.com - "If you have a primitive zero-sum mentality then you assume growing affluence for the rich must somehow be causing the immobility of the poor, but, in reality, the two sets of problems are different, and it does no good to lump them together and call them “inequality”... the income inequality frame contributes to our tendency to simplify complex cultural, social, behavioral and economic problems into strictly economic problems... Low income is the outcome of these interrelated problems, but it is not the problem. To say it is the problem is to confuse cause and effect. To say it is the problem is to give yourself a pass from exploring the complex and morally fraught social and cultural roots of the problem. It is to give yourself permission to ignore the parts that are uncomfortable to talk about but that are really the inescapable core of the thing."
Study says using plus-size fashion models could make women fat - "the research posits that the use of overweight models on fashion runways and in ads may encourage women to get fat by influencing them to think that being overweight is normal and healthy."
What's sauce for the goose...
165 days remaining till My Vacation
You can set your own frequency (daily, weekly or monthly)."
Forbidden love - "There is a surprisingly wide range of literature concerning incest for us to draw on when we try to understand the mindset of the participants. Consensual incest has been portrayed sympathetically in popular fiction for centuries, from John Ford's masterful 17th-century play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore to Ian McEwan's novel The Cement Garden and Steven Poliakoff's film Close My Eyes. The writer Kathryn Harrison caused a sensation in 1997 when she published The Kiss, a memoir of an affair with her father, and even in the popular medium of TV, from Jerry Springer (who has featured incestuous sisters on his show) to Brookside (which featured a love affair between siblings Nat and Georgia), incest has been depicted in a not unsympathetic, if somewhat salacious, manner... To prohibit two people from having sex because their offspring may be "defective" or "inferior" is to adopt the standpoint of a eugenicist. Indeed, Dr Sean Gabb has clearly shown that the impetus behind the 1908 Punishment of Incest Act was just that: the proponents of the act were exactly the same figures who advocated the "sterilisation" of the "feeble-minded". If we prohibit incest on the grounds that it risks producing "defective" children, we must also prohibit reproduction by haemophiliacs and the carriers of a host of other "defects""
Robin Thicke backs Blurred Lines lyrics after criticism - "He says Blurred Lines refers to blurring the lines between men and women and also between a good girl and a bad girl. When asked about the video which features naked women, he said he wasn't sure about it but admitted his wife made him put it out."
Magnet - The People's Funny Pictures Blog - Quora
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Fan Trailer Is…Gritty? | Giant Freakin Robot
Charities losing out thanks to Facebook and Twitter 'slacktivism' - "social media addicts are happy to puff themselves up by supporting causes with a ‘like’ – but then contribute nothing financially. It may be because slacktivists are more concerned with letting others see how charitable and fashionable they are without having to put their hands in their pockets. Report author Kirk Kristofferson said: ‘Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on.’ Social media campaigns do raise awareness but that could be at a cost to how much is raised from rattling tins in the high street"
"Awareness" - the solution to all problems
Japan’s first masturbation bar for women opens in Shibuya - "Love Joule, located in the Shibuya entertainment district, opened in July and provides Japan, according to its Web site, with its first “love and sex bar dedicated to women.”"
An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine - Deadline.com - "I’m told that the Walt Disney Co is currently attempting to trademark the character name “Princess Aurora” for all media: stage, sound, film, TV, video, Internet, photographs, news. In short, everything except literature. The name comes from the 1697 Charles Perrault fairy tale and Aurora is the Princess’s daughter (and thus a princess herself). The first use of “Princess Aurora” was in the 1890 Tchaikovsky ballet “The Sleeping Beauty,” which Disney turned into the 1959 animated film. It has been used continuously since then in the ballet as the title character’s name. The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie. “This would be like a film studio trademarking the character name “Ebenezer Scrooge” for all media (no one has) and then no one could perform “A Christmas Carol” on a stage, TV, in a film, radio, etc without first securing the right to use the name from the trademark owner”"
Evaluating Drug Decriminalization in Portugal 12 Years Later - "The Portuguese experiment has been in action since Law 30/2000 went into effect nearly 12 years ago, and Goulão's staff is currently calculating how much money the country's judicial system has saved, in its courts and prisons, now that it no longer has to process individuals the police catch with a few grams of drugs. "The police still search people for drugs," Goulão points out. Hashish, cocaine, ecstasy -- Portuguese police still seize and destroy all these substances... When Portugal's parliament was debating the proposed Law 30/2000, representatives of right-wing parties declared that planes would start arriving in the country daily, full of people looking for an easy opportunity to pump themselves full of drugs. Our entire country will become a drug-ridden slum, these parties said. The left-wing parties in parliament held a majority, though. Goulão sits in his office and pages through charts, tables and graphs that are just some of the great quantity of data his team has collected over the years. The data show, among other things, that the number of adults in Portugal who have at some point taken illegal drugs is rising. At the same time, though, the number of teenagers who have at some point taken illegal drugs is falling. The number of drug addicts who have undergone rehab has also increased dramatically, while the number of drug addicts who have become infected with HIV has fallen significantly. What, though, do these numbers mean? With what exactly can they be compared? There isn't a great deal of data from before the experiment began. And, for example, the number of adults who have tried illegal drugs at some point in their lives is increasing in most other countries throughout Europe as well. "We haven't found some miracle cure," Goulão says. Still, taking stock after nearly 12 years, his conclusion is, "Decriminalization hasn't made the problem worse.""
A blonde chick with a cute pussy. | Mortal Online Forums
Bad year for US Congress - "To call this one a "Do Nothing Congress" is really generous, she said. “Because, rather than simply do nothing, they have done real damage to the country. They’re hurt our economy, they’ve hurt the international economy, they’ve left children out in the cold, not going to school, They’ve made sure that people aren’t eating and they’ve made the Defense Department not ready. These are just a few of the things that have happened"
Isaac Asimov's 2014 predictions.
20 online dating cliches - and what they really mean - "I'm easy-going
Variations on this are "I'm laid back" and "I'm down to earth." In his list of 10 things he hates about Plenty of Fish profiles, Greg Hendricks writes that these are so common that he ignores profiles that include them. "What are any of these even supposed to mean? These stock traits are in so many profiles, I practically skip right over them." Plus, who would ever describe themselves otherwise, says Foxton. "No-one thinks, 'I'm really uptight.'""
All Norwegians become millionaires as oil fund balloons - "in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere. Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic. It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work. "One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working," Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent."
The London 'Anti-Cafe' Where Everything Is Free But You Pay 5 Cents A Minute Just To Be There
In normal cafes food and drinks are overpriced to cover the cost of lurkers anyway
Hospital Shame - "I was at the Changi hospital, where the tent stands as a sore thumb, over the past week visiting a relative, and the A and B1 class beds were only about half filled. To fill A class beds, our restructured hospitals actually send missions to Myanmar, the Middle East and Africa to advertise our services. At the out-patient level, appointments for B and C patients can take months, whereas those for A class patients only take a week. There is clearly a very inefficient use of our current resources. In the shorter term, taking into account our severely-stretched resources, restructured hospitals should no longer be in the medical tourism business and should concentrate on providing care for citizens. There should be only one standard of care. Private healthcare should be provided by private hospitals. This would leave our public hospitals with increased capacity to deal more efficiently with over-crowding."
Dear Straits Times, a simple apology would have sufficed - "even as the Straits Times enjoins critics to "ask themselves why they would dismiss this version of events, and believe the first" and treats Pyongyang with such scepticism, the Straits Times should probably start by applying that same kind of scepticism to itself."
This Man's Homemade Sex Doll Is Absolutely Horrifying
British film set in a storage facility earned £44 at US box office - "Storage 24, a British horror film based in a self-storage facility, took the smallest amount of money at the American box office last year: a paltry $72, or £44 after being shown in just one cinema for a day."
Balik Cina - Discover the best Malaysia has to offer - "Balik Cina has the finest collection of beautiful and inspirational quotes by Malaysian politicians. 220 right now. Start by searching for a name, topic or phrase."
Group wants to shun Silicon Valley and revive 40-hour working week - "Frederick W. Taylor, the 20th century originator of “scientific management,” prescribed reduced work times and achieved remarkable increases in output per worker... “Research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual labourers do – on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight.”"
Woman stalker who tried to kiss victim gets probation and told to stay away - "A former relief teacher was yesterday placed on 12 months' supervised probation for using criminal force on a teaching intern"
If she were a guy, she'd almost certainly have gotten jail
The Inequality Problem - NYTimes.com - "If you have a primitive zero-sum mentality then you assume growing affluence for the rich must somehow be causing the immobility of the poor, but, in reality, the two sets of problems are different, and it does no good to lump them together and call them “inequality”... the income inequality frame contributes to our tendency to simplify complex cultural, social, behavioral and economic problems into strictly economic problems... Low income is the outcome of these interrelated problems, but it is not the problem. To say it is the problem is to confuse cause and effect. To say it is the problem is to give yourself a pass from exploring the complex and morally fraught social and cultural roots of the problem. It is to give yourself permission to ignore the parts that are uncomfortable to talk about but that are really the inescapable core of the thing."
Study says using plus-size fashion models could make women fat - "the research posits that the use of overweight models on fashion runways and in ads may encourage women to get fat by influencing them to think that being overweight is normal and healthy."
What's sauce for the goose...
Post ID: 3661724051590003183
UNESCO World Heritage Site Tally April 2014
World Heritage List
Australia: Great Barrier Reef; Tasmanian Wilderness; Sydney Opera House; Kakadu National Park; Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park; Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
Austria: Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg; Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn; Historic Centre of Vienna
Belgium: Flemish Béguinages; La Grand-Place, Brussels; Belfries of Belgium and France; Historic Centre of Brugge; Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta (Brussels)
Cambodia: Angkor
China: West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou; Classical Gardens of Suzhou; Historic Centre of Macao; Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing and Shenyang; Mount Taishan; Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian; The Great Wall; Temple and Cemetery of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion in Qufu; Ancient City of Ping Yao; Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing; Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial Altar in Beijing; Yungang Grottoes; Mount Emei Scenic Area, including Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area; Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries - Wolong, Mt Siguniang and Jiajin Mountains; Mount Qingcheng and the Dujiangyan Irrigation System; Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area; Dazu Rock Carvings
Czech Republic: Historic Centre of Prague
Estonia: Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn; Struve Geodetic Arc
France: Palace and Park of Versailles; Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct); Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Former Abbey of Saint-Remi and Palace of Tau, Reims; Paris, Banks of the Seine; Historic Centre of Avignon: Papal Palace, Episcopal Ensemble and Avignon Bridge; Chartres Cathedral; Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay; Palace and Park of Fontainebleau; Bourges Cathedral; The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes; Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs; Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France; Strasbourg – Grande île; Historic Site of Lyons; Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments; Roman Theatre and its Surroundings and the "Triumphal Arch" of Orange; Canal du Midi; Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne; Episcopal City of Albi
Germany: Aachen Cathedral; Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin
Greece: Acropolis, Athens; Archaeological Site of Delphi; Meteora; Archaeological Site of Olympia; Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns
Holy See: Vatican City
Indonesia: Borobudur Temple Compounds; Prambanan Temple Compounds; Sangiran Early Man Site
Italy: Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie with "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci; Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura; Historic Centre of Florence; Venice and its Lagoon; Historic Centre of Naples; Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna; Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata; Portovenere, Cinque Terre, and the Islands (Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto)
Japan: Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area; Himeji-jo; Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (Kyoto, Uji and Otsu Cities); Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome); Itsukushima Shinto Shrine; Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara; Shrines and Temples of Nikko; Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range; Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration
Latvia: Historic Centre of Riga
Lithuania: Vilnius Historic Centre; Curonian Spit; Kernavė Archaeological Site (Cultural Reserve of Kernavė)
Luxembourg: City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications
Malaysia: Kinabalu Park; Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca
Netherlands: Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout; Rietveld Schröderhuis (Rietveld Schröder House); Seventeenth-century canal ring area inside the Singelgracht, Amsterdam
Poland: Historic Centre of Warsaw; Cracow's Historic Centre; Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945); Wieliczka Salt Mine; Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Architectural and Park Landscape Complex and Pilgrimage Park; Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork; Medieval Town of Toruń
Spain: Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain; Las Médulas; Monuments of Oviedo and the Kingdom of the Asturias; Mudejar Architecture of Aragon; Roman Walls of Lugo; Route of Santiago de Compostela; Santiago de Compostela (Old Town); Tower of Hercules; Vizcaya Bridge; Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada; Aranjuez Cultural Landscape; Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida; Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville; Historic Centre of Cordoba; Historic City of Toledo; Historic Walled Town of Cuenca; La Lonja de la Seda de Valencia; Monastery and Site of the Escurial, Madrid; Old Town of Cáceres; Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct; Palau de la Música Catalana and Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona; Palmeral of Elche; University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá de Henares; Works of Antoni Gaudí
Thailand: Historic City of Ayutthaya
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd; Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites; Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey; City of Bath; Frontiers of the Roman Empire; Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret's Church; Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine's Abbey, and St Martin's Church; Tower of London; Maritime Greenwich; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Durham Castle and Cathedral; Old and New Towns of Edinburgh; New Lanark
United States of America: Grand Canyon National Park; Independence Hall; Statue of Liberty; Yosemite National Park
Viet Nam: Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long - Hanoi; Ha Long Bay
Total: 143
Current number of sites: 981
Australia: Great Barrier Reef; Tasmanian Wilderness; Sydney Opera House; Kakadu National Park; Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park; Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
Austria: Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg; Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn; Historic Centre of Vienna
Belgium: Flemish Béguinages; La Grand-Place, Brussels; Belfries of Belgium and France; Historic Centre of Brugge; Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta (Brussels)
Cambodia: Angkor
China: West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou; Classical Gardens of Suzhou; Historic Centre of Macao; Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing and Shenyang; Mount Taishan; Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian; The Great Wall; Temple and Cemetery of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion in Qufu; Ancient City of Ping Yao; Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing; Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial Altar in Beijing; Yungang Grottoes; Mount Emei Scenic Area, including Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area; Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries - Wolong, Mt Siguniang and Jiajin Mountains; Mount Qingcheng and the Dujiangyan Irrigation System; Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area; Dazu Rock Carvings
Czech Republic: Historic Centre of Prague
Estonia: Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn; Struve Geodetic Arc
France: Palace and Park of Versailles; Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct); Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Former Abbey of Saint-Remi and Palace of Tau, Reims; Paris, Banks of the Seine; Historic Centre of Avignon: Papal Palace, Episcopal Ensemble and Avignon Bridge; Chartres Cathedral; Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay; Palace and Park of Fontainebleau; Bourges Cathedral; The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes; Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs; Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France; Strasbourg – Grande île; Historic Site of Lyons; Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments; Roman Theatre and its Surroundings and the "Triumphal Arch" of Orange; Canal du Midi; Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne; Episcopal City of Albi
Germany: Aachen Cathedral; Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin
Greece: Acropolis, Athens; Archaeological Site of Delphi; Meteora; Archaeological Site of Olympia; Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns
Holy See: Vatican City
Indonesia: Borobudur Temple Compounds; Prambanan Temple Compounds; Sangiran Early Man Site
Italy: Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie with "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci; Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura; Historic Centre of Florence; Venice and its Lagoon; Historic Centre of Naples; Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna; Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata; Portovenere, Cinque Terre, and the Islands (Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto)
Japan: Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area; Himeji-jo; Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (Kyoto, Uji and Otsu Cities); Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome); Itsukushima Shinto Shrine; Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara; Shrines and Temples of Nikko; Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range; Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration
Latvia: Historic Centre of Riga
Lithuania: Vilnius Historic Centre; Curonian Spit; Kernavė Archaeological Site (Cultural Reserve of Kernavė)
Luxembourg: City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications
Malaysia: Kinabalu Park; Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca
Netherlands: Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout; Rietveld Schröderhuis (Rietveld Schröder House); Seventeenth-century canal ring area inside the Singelgracht, Amsterdam
Poland: Historic Centre of Warsaw; Cracow's Historic Centre; Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945); Wieliczka Salt Mine; Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Architectural and Park Landscape Complex and Pilgrimage Park; Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork; Medieval Town of Toruń
Spain: Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain; Las Médulas; Monuments of Oviedo and the Kingdom of the Asturias; Mudejar Architecture of Aragon; Roman Walls of Lugo; Route of Santiago de Compostela; Santiago de Compostela (Old Town); Tower of Hercules; Vizcaya Bridge; Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada; Aranjuez Cultural Landscape; Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida; Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville; Historic Centre of Cordoba; Historic City of Toledo; Historic Walled Town of Cuenca; La Lonja de la Seda de Valencia; Monastery and Site of the Escurial, Madrid; Old Town of Cáceres; Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct; Palau de la Música Catalana and Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona; Palmeral of Elche; University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá de Henares; Works of Antoni Gaudí
Thailand: Historic City of Ayutthaya
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd; Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites; Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey; City of Bath; Frontiers of the Roman Empire; Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret's Church; Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine's Abbey, and St Martin's Church; Tower of London; Maritime Greenwich; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Durham Castle and Cathedral; Old and New Towns of Edinburgh; New Lanark
United States of America: Grand Canyon National Park; Independence Hall; Statue of Liberty; Yosemite National Park
Viet Nam: Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long - Hanoi; Ha Long Bay
Total: 143
Current number of sites: 981
Post ID: 7976025924572788061
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Links - 26th April 2014
Barbarians at the Campus Gates - "student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone, and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had the guts to put a stop to these storm-trooper tactics. Nor is it likely that there will be any punishment of those who put their own desires above the rights of others... Back in the 1960s, the University of Chicago was a rare exception. As Professor George J. Stigler, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, put it in his memoirs, “our faculty united behind the expulsion of a large number of young barbarians”... Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other “studies” was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these “studies” are about propaganda rather than serious education. Academic campuses have become among the least free places in America. “Speech codes,” vaguely worded but zealously applied to those who dare to say anything that is not politically correct, have become the norm. Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other “studies” courses. Why did all this happen? Partly because of the lure of the path of least resistance, especially to academic administrators and faculty. But there was no such widespread surrender to every noisy and belligerent group of student activists prior to the 1960s. Moreover, the example of the University of Chicago showed that surrender was not inevitable. The cost of resistance to the campus barbarians may not have been the only factor. Resistance requires a sense that there is something worth defending. But decades of dumbed-down education have produced people with no sense of the importance of a moral framework within which freedom and civil discourse can flourish"
America’s future racial makeup: Will today’s Hispanics be tomorrow’s whites? - "Trayvon Martin was black, but is Zimmerman white? For Martin’s sympathizers, the answer was yes. For Zimmerman’s, the answers ranged from “it doesn’t matter” to he “is actually a Hispanic nonracist person who acted in self-defense”... while we see the 19th century as a world of blacks and whites, that wasn’t true for Americans at the time. They saw their United States as diverse as we see ours—a hodgepodge of races and ethnicities, with blacks as the insoluble element. The difference was their construction of race, which placed various Europeans on a convoluted hierarchy of racial difference."
Some dude on Craigslist wants you to sit in a bathtub of ramen noodles - "Every talented chef holds fast to two pieces of conventional wisdom: A watched pot never boils, and noodle soup tastes better when a woman’s been soaking in it."
This website will write your filthy Craigslist hookup ad for you
Cheating Survey Finds That People Cheat With People Less Attractive Than Their Spouses - "Interestingly, male respondents said they consider their significant others superior to their affair partners in other ways as well. Only 30 percent of men cheated with women younger than their current partners, and only a quarter of the men found their mistresses more interesting or more in shape than their partners. So why cheat at all? Men admitted that they found their mistresses to be more passionate, better listeners and more caring than their significant others. Over half of the female respondents also found their significant others to be more attractive than their affair partners, but 50 percent said their lovers were in better shape. Similar to the male respondents, women reported that their affair partners listen better and are more passionate than their man at home. And a whopping 89.6 percent of the women indicated that the man they're cheating with makes them feel more appreciated than their significant other."
Kill The White People from NiNo - "Eddie Murphy at his best, old school"
Manufacturing Female Victimhood and Marginalizing Vulnerable Men - "Toxic victim-consciousness is the process by which women are made into class “acted upon” by emphasizing a disproportionate victimhood where none actually exists or isn’t proven. In “Women Do Not Benefit: The Science“, I outlined how toxic victimhood limits women and socializes them to undermine their own achievements. Toxic victimhood promotes the perception that women are “acted upon” rather than actors. When a society is promoting toxic victimhood, there is no need to limit women overtly through legal, financial or social restrictions. Instead women will limit themselves through their own mental foot-binding. Here I will look at a recent and very successful effort to manufacture toxic female victimhood whole-cloth, the CDC’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The much publicized figure on rape from this survey is that 1 in 5 women versus 1 in 71 men are victims of rape in their lifetime. (If the rate men are raped is reported on at all)... The first thing to note is that the NIPSVS decided that men being forced to have sex with women isn’t rape... If the act of forced envelopment is correctly classified as rape—namely a woman forcing a man to have sex using her vagina, the vagina being one of the two most commonly used instruments of sex—then you get an equal risk of rape between men and women in the last twelve months... Comparing the lifetime rate of sexual abuse for men and women is misleading in determining their relative risk of sexual violence, simply because men disclose childhood sexual abuse four times less often than women... In a study on the effects of retention interval and gender on the perception of violence, Ahola et al. (2009) found that eyewitnesses rated female perpetrators less violent than male when reporting after an interval of one to three weeks as opposed to ten minutes. Ahola et al. (2009) proposed that over time eyewitnesses reinterpreted the behavior of perpetrators in order to conform to gender stereotypes regarding violence... That works out to about 40% of rapists being female and 60% being male. A far cry from 95+% of rapists being male"
Los Maracuchos - "How is it that the world’s fifth largest oil exporter has come to this? How is it that 70 percent of its population lives in ranchos—the slums and shantytowns? How is it that the streets here are not paved with gold? Who is to blame for all this? At the root of Venezuela’s woes is its class conflict, the gap between rich and poor. .. we won’t invite Jimmy Carter and, even though it is completely unprecedented, we will assume there is no corruption. Repeat the following: “I [insert your name] will turn Venezuela’s oil wealth into riches for all Venezuelans, including you [point finger]. I will SOW THE OIL so that you can fly to Miami to shop. The government of [insert existing president’s name] is corrupt. He [it’s always a “he”] is stealing the oil money for himself and his cronies.” That’s it! Just say it over and over again and spend a little bit more money than your competitor and you’ll win. Decade after decade—for almost a century now—Venezuelans have fallen for this... what you have is perhaps the best educated, best connected, best electrified, moderately well medicated poor in the world with attorneys, engineers and nurses living among them... When offered subsidized housing, most Venezuelans will say thanks but no thanks. Living with no rent and no utilities is much better than being on the grid and paying more, even if it means more security. Hence, Venezuelans use their college-level reasoning skills to conclude that free is better than cheap... Venezuelans are still, to this day, so desperate to believe this Arthurian Legend, to believe that they will someday enjoy fabulous oil wealth, that they have finally surrendered their democracy in pursuit of the delusion, allowing Chávez to change and rechange the constitution, pack the Supreme Court and Election Council with his cronies, make laws by decree, place gag rules on the media, and otherwise systematically undermine Venezuela’s democratic institutions. All in the name of a fantasy that can never come true... As a student of Latin American history I have, for many years, excused this country’s fate as something beyond the control of most, if not all, Venezuelans; that the continuing social decay was the work of macroeconomic forces, oil prices, Structural Adjustment Programs, even meddling from the CIA and the State Department. Yet, the more I learn, the more I see that the history of Venezuela is not the history of its neighbors, not the history of coups and puppet governments, of flagrant economic imperialism and exploitation. There was no Pinochet here, no Batista, no Trujillo. The history of Venezuela is the history of Venezuelans cheating, defrauding, and robbing other Venezuelans and then trying to blame someone else for their crimes."
City utility drops 'Duck Dynasty' contest over LGBT fears - "Tolerance and diversity does not include men who wear camouflage or beards, according to Michigan’s largest municipally-owned utility. The Lansing Board of Water & Light has decided to cancel an upcoming "Duck Dynasty" look-alike contest off because the contest might offend people, a spokesman for the utility told me. “The decision was made in light of controversial remarks by a Duck Dynasty cast member against the LGBT community,” the public utility said in a statement. “The BWL is committed to diversity and respect community differences, and we regret if the contest offended anyone”... Serkaian told me there were concerns about "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson’s comments about homosexuality... You would think that BWL had been overwhelmed with a deluge of customers furious about the "Duck Dynasty" contest – but that’s not the case at all. In fact – only one complaint was lodged"
Video: Miley Cyrus 'Wrecking Ball' Chatroulette parody goes viral
OECD Better Life Index - "On average, people across selected OECD countries, spend 4 minutes per day in volunteer activities. People in New-Zealand, Ireland and the United States spend more than twice that time volunteering. In several countries, however, people spend hardly any time volunteering. This is the case in Hungary, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, France, Estonia, Spain and Mexico. Would you help a stranger? Around 48% of people across OECD countries say they have helped a stranger in the last month. OECD countries with a large share of respondents reporting to have helped a stranger also tend to have high levels of volunteering. More than 65% of people in Australia, New-Zealand and the United States reported helping a stranger in the last month"
Can a Parachute Save Your Life? Not According to Science. - "A double blind, randomized, placebo controlled crossover trial of the parachute means that the "advocates of evidence based medicine" would be put on a plane, given packs, and made to hurl themselves toward the ground. Neither the givers or the receivers of the packs would know which ones held parachutes, and which held "placebos." This is satirizing the view of people who feel observational studies - studies in which everyone is treated with the experimental medicine and the response of the entire group is evaluated - aren't clear enough or rigorous enough to prove that a drug works. True, these studies sometimes lack the clarity of a perfect randomized double-blind study, but as we see with the parachute, sometimes the results are pretty clear anyway. And in a life-or-death situation, no one wants to take the chance on a placebo. In other words, the "advocates of evidence based medicine" are being "challenged" with a little sarcasm."
America’s future racial makeup: Will today’s Hispanics be tomorrow’s whites? - "Trayvon Martin was black, but is Zimmerman white? For Martin’s sympathizers, the answer was yes. For Zimmerman’s, the answers ranged from “it doesn’t matter” to he “is actually a Hispanic nonracist person who acted in self-defense”... while we see the 19th century as a world of blacks and whites, that wasn’t true for Americans at the time. They saw their United States as diverse as we see ours—a hodgepodge of races and ethnicities, with blacks as the insoluble element. The difference was their construction of race, which placed various Europeans on a convoluted hierarchy of racial difference."
Some dude on Craigslist wants you to sit in a bathtub of ramen noodles - "Every talented chef holds fast to two pieces of conventional wisdom: A watched pot never boils, and noodle soup tastes better when a woman’s been soaking in it."
This website will write your filthy Craigslist hookup ad for you
Cheating Survey Finds That People Cheat With People Less Attractive Than Their Spouses - "Interestingly, male respondents said they consider their significant others superior to their affair partners in other ways as well. Only 30 percent of men cheated with women younger than their current partners, and only a quarter of the men found their mistresses more interesting or more in shape than their partners. So why cheat at all? Men admitted that they found their mistresses to be more passionate, better listeners and more caring than their significant others. Over half of the female respondents also found their significant others to be more attractive than their affair partners, but 50 percent said their lovers were in better shape. Similar to the male respondents, women reported that their affair partners listen better and are more passionate than their man at home. And a whopping 89.6 percent of the women indicated that the man they're cheating with makes them feel more appreciated than their significant other."
Kill The White People from NiNo - "Eddie Murphy at his best, old school"
Manufacturing Female Victimhood and Marginalizing Vulnerable Men - "Toxic victim-consciousness is the process by which women are made into class “acted upon” by emphasizing a disproportionate victimhood where none actually exists or isn’t proven. In “Women Do Not Benefit: The Science“, I outlined how toxic victimhood limits women and socializes them to undermine their own achievements. Toxic victimhood promotes the perception that women are “acted upon” rather than actors. When a society is promoting toxic victimhood, there is no need to limit women overtly through legal, financial or social restrictions. Instead women will limit themselves through their own mental foot-binding. Here I will look at a recent and very successful effort to manufacture toxic female victimhood whole-cloth, the CDC’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The much publicized figure on rape from this survey is that 1 in 5 women versus 1 in 71 men are victims of rape in their lifetime. (If the rate men are raped is reported on at all)... The first thing to note is that the NIPSVS decided that men being forced to have sex with women isn’t rape... If the act of forced envelopment is correctly classified as rape—namely a woman forcing a man to have sex using her vagina, the vagina being one of the two most commonly used instruments of sex—then you get an equal risk of rape between men and women in the last twelve months... Comparing the lifetime rate of sexual abuse for men and women is misleading in determining their relative risk of sexual violence, simply because men disclose childhood sexual abuse four times less often than women... In a study on the effects of retention interval and gender on the perception of violence, Ahola et al. (2009) found that eyewitnesses rated female perpetrators less violent than male when reporting after an interval of one to three weeks as opposed to ten minutes. Ahola et al. (2009) proposed that over time eyewitnesses reinterpreted the behavior of perpetrators in order to conform to gender stereotypes regarding violence... That works out to about 40% of rapists being female and 60% being male. A far cry from 95+% of rapists being male"
Los Maracuchos - "How is it that the world’s fifth largest oil exporter has come to this? How is it that 70 percent of its population lives in ranchos—the slums and shantytowns? How is it that the streets here are not paved with gold? Who is to blame for all this? At the root of Venezuela’s woes is its class conflict, the gap between rich and poor. .. we won’t invite Jimmy Carter and, even though it is completely unprecedented, we will assume there is no corruption. Repeat the following: “I [insert your name] will turn Venezuela’s oil wealth into riches for all Venezuelans, including you [point finger]. I will SOW THE OIL so that you can fly to Miami to shop. The government of [insert existing president’s name] is corrupt. He [it’s always a “he”] is stealing the oil money for himself and his cronies.” That’s it! Just say it over and over again and spend a little bit more money than your competitor and you’ll win. Decade after decade—for almost a century now—Venezuelans have fallen for this... what you have is perhaps the best educated, best connected, best electrified, moderately well medicated poor in the world with attorneys, engineers and nurses living among them... When offered subsidized housing, most Venezuelans will say thanks but no thanks. Living with no rent and no utilities is much better than being on the grid and paying more, even if it means more security. Hence, Venezuelans use their college-level reasoning skills to conclude that free is better than cheap... Venezuelans are still, to this day, so desperate to believe this Arthurian Legend, to believe that they will someday enjoy fabulous oil wealth, that they have finally surrendered their democracy in pursuit of the delusion, allowing Chávez to change and rechange the constitution, pack the Supreme Court and Election Council with his cronies, make laws by decree, place gag rules on the media, and otherwise systematically undermine Venezuela’s democratic institutions. All in the name of a fantasy that can never come true... As a student of Latin American history I have, for many years, excused this country’s fate as something beyond the control of most, if not all, Venezuelans; that the continuing social decay was the work of macroeconomic forces, oil prices, Structural Adjustment Programs, even meddling from the CIA and the State Department. Yet, the more I learn, the more I see that the history of Venezuela is not the history of its neighbors, not the history of coups and puppet governments, of flagrant economic imperialism and exploitation. There was no Pinochet here, no Batista, no Trujillo. The history of Venezuela is the history of Venezuelans cheating, defrauding, and robbing other Venezuelans and then trying to blame someone else for their crimes."
City utility drops 'Duck Dynasty' contest over LGBT fears - "Tolerance and diversity does not include men who wear camouflage or beards, according to Michigan’s largest municipally-owned utility. The Lansing Board of Water & Light has decided to cancel an upcoming "Duck Dynasty" look-alike contest off because the contest might offend people, a spokesman for the utility told me. “The decision was made in light of controversial remarks by a Duck Dynasty cast member against the LGBT community,” the public utility said in a statement. “The BWL is committed to diversity and respect community differences, and we regret if the contest offended anyone”... Serkaian told me there were concerns about "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson’s comments about homosexuality... You would think that BWL had been overwhelmed with a deluge of customers furious about the "Duck Dynasty" contest – but that’s not the case at all. In fact – only one complaint was lodged"
Video: Miley Cyrus 'Wrecking Ball' Chatroulette parody goes viral
OECD Better Life Index - "On average, people across selected OECD countries, spend 4 minutes per day in volunteer activities. People in New-Zealand, Ireland and the United States spend more than twice that time volunteering. In several countries, however, people spend hardly any time volunteering. This is the case in Hungary, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, France, Estonia, Spain and Mexico. Would you help a stranger? Around 48% of people across OECD countries say they have helped a stranger in the last month. OECD countries with a large share of respondents reporting to have helped a stranger also tend to have high levels of volunteering. More than 65% of people in Australia, New-Zealand and the United States reported helping a stranger in the last month"
Can a Parachute Save Your Life? Not According to Science. - "A double blind, randomized, placebo controlled crossover trial of the parachute means that the "advocates of evidence based medicine" would be put on a plane, given packs, and made to hurl themselves toward the ground. Neither the givers or the receivers of the packs would know which ones held parachutes, and which held "placebos." This is satirizing the view of people who feel observational studies - studies in which everyone is treated with the experimental medicine and the response of the entire group is evaluated - aren't clear enough or rigorous enough to prove that a drug works. True, these studies sometimes lack the clarity of a perfect randomized double-blind study, but as we see with the parachute, sometimes the results are pretty clear anyway. And in a life-or-death situation, no one wants to take the chance on a placebo. In other words, the "advocates of evidence based medicine" are being "challenged" with a little sarcasm."
Post ID: 2234199202825163436
#CancelColbert and the Return of the Anti-Liberal Left
#CancelColbert and the Return of the Anti-Liberal Left
"Perhaps every political generation is fated to be appalled by the one that succeeds it. In the 1960s, longtime socialist intellectuals were horrified by the anarchic energies of the new left. Then some of those new leftists reached middle age and watched, aghast, as new speech codes proliferated on college campuses during the first iteration of political correctness. I was in college then and am now in my thirties, which means it’s my turn to be dismayed by a growing left-wing tendency towards censoriousness and hair-trigger offense.
It’s increasingly clear that we are entering a new era of political correctness. Recently, we’ve seen the calls to #CancelColbert because of something outrageous said by Stephen Colbert’s blowhard alter ego, who has been saying outrageous things regularly for nine years. Then there’s the sudden demand for “trigger warnings” on college syllabi, meant to protect students from encountering ideas or images that may traumatize them; an Oberlin faculty document even suggests jettisoning “triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.” At Wellesley, students have petitioned to have an outdoor statue of a lifelike sleepwalking man removed because it was causing them “undue stress.” As I wrote in The Nation, there’s pressure in some circles not to use the word “vagina” in connection with reproductive rights, lest it offend trans people...
Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression...
Note here both the belief that correct opinions can be dispassionately identified, and the blithe confidence in the wisdom of those empowered to do the suppressing. This kind of thinking is only possible at certain moments: when liberalism seems to have failed but the right is not yet in charge. At such times, old-fashioned liberal values like free speech and robust, open debate seem like tainted adjuncts of an oppressive system, and it’s still possible for radicals to believe that the ideas suppressed as hateful won’t be their own.
“One of the most striking characteristics of ‘60s radicalism was its aversion to liberalism,” wrote Alice Echols in Daring to Be Bad, her history of radical feminism. “Radicals’ repudiation of liberalism was not immediate; rather, it developed in response to liberalism’s defaults—specifically, its timidity regarding black civil rights and its escalation of the Vietnam War.” Something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale, happened after Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know it, and it’s happening now, as economic misery persists under Barack Obama. There’s disenchantment not just with electoral politics, but with liberal values as a whole. “White liberal” has, once again, emerged as a favorite left-wing epithet.
At times like this, politics contract. On the surface, the rhetoric appears more ambitious and utopian than ever—witness, for example, the apparently sincere claim by Suey Park, creator of the #CancelColbert hashtag, that Twitter activists intend to “dismantle the state.” But at the same time, activism becomes less about winning converts and changing the world and more about creating protected enclaves and policing speech. As the radical cultural critic Ellen Willis wrote in 1997, at another moment of widespread left-wing illiberalism, “It’s the general repressiveness of the social climate that encourages moves to ban offensive speech or define any form of sexual oppression in the workplace as sexual harassment. The main effect of these maneuvers is to foment confusion, cynicism and sexual witch-hunts, trivialize sexual violence, and legitimize conservative demands for censorship—while at the same time ceding the moral high ground of free expression to the right.”
There’s a cure for this sort of thing, though it’s worse than the disease. When the right takes power, the left usually discovers the importance of unfettered speech. In the 1980s, with conservatives leading a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts for funding projects deemed anti-Christian and pornographic, tolerance no longer seemed quite so repressively bourgeois. The same was true during the Bush administration, when opposition to the Iraq War got Phil Donahue fired from MSNBC and the Dixie Chicks pulled off radio playlists nationwide. That’s why the Colbert Report was so cathartic when it first appeared—his relentless mockery cut through the bombastic jingoism, the right wing political correctness, that was stifling us...
Some day president Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul is going to be sworn in, and an ascendant, empowered conservatism will once again try to curtail dissent in pop culture and academia, just as it always does. Public art won’t be taken down because it’s considered triggering—it will be taken down (or covered up) because it’s considered indecent. There might be another #CancelColbert campaign, but it won’t come from the left. Maybe people will be ashamed, then, that this one did."
Comments:
"One of their prominent members (@red3blog) is currently ranting about camera technology is racist. Yes, really. This is the debates they are having, with no clue fucking clue about how long it has taken to getting it this far and the limitations it currently faces.
Its nonsense and drivel by an uneducated class that memorize a few buzzwords (mostly privilege, gaslighting, etc) and repeat them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over."
"These social justice ideologies effectively become closed belief systems. Even whatever dissent is permitted within them is produced and approved by movement leadership ("one thing I do think feminism can be criticized for is its over-emphasis on white, middle class heterosexual women" being the best example). Questioning them on anything is simply not tolerated, anything short of cult like adherence to "3rd wave sex positive feminism" or "Critical race theory" or whatever else is construed and dismissed as "privilege" and an act of oppression against "marginalized" peoples."
"The word white gets used as if every white person shares the same class, culture, experience.
The experience of the Irish in America, fleeing starvation and ethnic cleansing is different from the swarthy sicilians which is different from the Russians freed at the same time from serfdom as African-American's from slavery which is different from the Jews who seem to be white or non-white depending on which gets them the most blame which is different from the (usually fake) Cavaliers of Virginia who became slave owners which is different from the non-slaveholding whites which were termed Cracker and Redneck which is different from the Acadians driven down to pockets of New England and Louisiana which is different from Lutefisk eating swedes of the mid-West which is different from the Puritans which is once again different.
You simply can't speak about these various terms without extreme nuance and historical understandings. Not and have them mean anything."
"it was horrible in most of the trans rights groups I ran into. People were redefining words to say that trans people of color are incapable of supporting the gender binary as it's entirely the fault of colonization by white people, and that white non-binary people were just using it as an excuse to oppress trans women of color. Oh, and then there was one thing about how only trans women of color should be getting representation, because that apparently is the only way to be intersectional."
""privilege" is a valid concept that has been thoroughly exploited in an extraordinarily ethically corrupt way. We now have the victim's privilege -- the ad hominem that whoever can claim victimhood first or most deeply is *correct* in any dispute with someone "privileged". It's particularly tragic to me that the "skeptical" and "freethinker" communities have become rife with this sort of thing and tar anyone who doesn't toe the line as "an MRA" ("male rights activist")."
"Instead of using "anti-liberal" leftists, let's call these people what they really are - totalitarian leftists.
Point by point they make it clear that they hold the fundamental democratic rights in contempt, everything from free speech to innocent until found guilty and the right to a fair trial is to them annoyances that they, if they could, would do away with. In their black-and-white world, evil people should not be allowed those kind of rights, and since everyone who doesn't agree with them is an evil person..."
"When the left gets dogmatic it gets dangerous. McCarthy was a liberal and Leftists in the US were apologists for Stalin for too way long (as I understand it) Pragmatism seems to be about justifying evil or destructive means in hopes of good ends. It doesn't turn out that way, because the end never comes. The means are how we live."
"Perhaps every political generation is fated to be appalled by the one that succeeds it. In the 1960s, longtime socialist intellectuals were horrified by the anarchic energies of the new left. Then some of those new leftists reached middle age and watched, aghast, as new speech codes proliferated on college campuses during the first iteration of political correctness. I was in college then and am now in my thirties, which means it’s my turn to be dismayed by a growing left-wing tendency towards censoriousness and hair-trigger offense.
It’s increasingly clear that we are entering a new era of political correctness. Recently, we’ve seen the calls to #CancelColbert because of something outrageous said by Stephen Colbert’s blowhard alter ego, who has been saying outrageous things regularly for nine years. Then there’s the sudden demand for “trigger warnings” on college syllabi, meant to protect students from encountering ideas or images that may traumatize them; an Oberlin faculty document even suggests jettisoning “triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.” At Wellesley, students have petitioned to have an outdoor statue of a lifelike sleepwalking man removed because it was causing them “undue stress.” As I wrote in The Nation, there’s pressure in some circles not to use the word “vagina” in connection with reproductive rights, lest it offend trans people...
Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression...
Note here both the belief that correct opinions can be dispassionately identified, and the blithe confidence in the wisdom of those empowered to do the suppressing. This kind of thinking is only possible at certain moments: when liberalism seems to have failed but the right is not yet in charge. At such times, old-fashioned liberal values like free speech and robust, open debate seem like tainted adjuncts of an oppressive system, and it’s still possible for radicals to believe that the ideas suppressed as hateful won’t be their own.
“One of the most striking characteristics of ‘60s radicalism was its aversion to liberalism,” wrote Alice Echols in Daring to Be Bad, her history of radical feminism. “Radicals’ repudiation of liberalism was not immediate; rather, it developed in response to liberalism’s defaults—specifically, its timidity regarding black civil rights and its escalation of the Vietnam War.” Something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale, happened after Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know it, and it’s happening now, as economic misery persists under Barack Obama. There’s disenchantment not just with electoral politics, but with liberal values as a whole. “White liberal” has, once again, emerged as a favorite left-wing epithet.
At times like this, politics contract. On the surface, the rhetoric appears more ambitious and utopian than ever—witness, for example, the apparently sincere claim by Suey Park, creator of the #CancelColbert hashtag, that Twitter activists intend to “dismantle the state.” But at the same time, activism becomes less about winning converts and changing the world and more about creating protected enclaves and policing speech. As the radical cultural critic Ellen Willis wrote in 1997, at another moment of widespread left-wing illiberalism, “It’s the general repressiveness of the social climate that encourages moves to ban offensive speech or define any form of sexual oppression in the workplace as sexual harassment. The main effect of these maneuvers is to foment confusion, cynicism and sexual witch-hunts, trivialize sexual violence, and legitimize conservative demands for censorship—while at the same time ceding the moral high ground of free expression to the right.”
There’s a cure for this sort of thing, though it’s worse than the disease. When the right takes power, the left usually discovers the importance of unfettered speech. In the 1980s, with conservatives leading a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts for funding projects deemed anti-Christian and pornographic, tolerance no longer seemed quite so repressively bourgeois. The same was true during the Bush administration, when opposition to the Iraq War got Phil Donahue fired from MSNBC and the Dixie Chicks pulled off radio playlists nationwide. That’s why the Colbert Report was so cathartic when it first appeared—his relentless mockery cut through the bombastic jingoism, the right wing political correctness, that was stifling us...
Some day president Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul is going to be sworn in, and an ascendant, empowered conservatism will once again try to curtail dissent in pop culture and academia, just as it always does. Public art won’t be taken down because it’s considered triggering—it will be taken down (or covered up) because it’s considered indecent. There might be another #CancelColbert campaign, but it won’t come from the left. Maybe people will be ashamed, then, that this one did."
Comments:
"One of their prominent members (@red3blog) is currently ranting about camera technology is racist. Yes, really. This is the debates they are having, with no clue fucking clue about how long it has taken to getting it this far and the limitations it currently faces.
Its nonsense and drivel by an uneducated class that memorize a few buzzwords (mostly privilege, gaslighting, etc) and repeat them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over."
"These social justice ideologies effectively become closed belief systems. Even whatever dissent is permitted within them is produced and approved by movement leadership ("one thing I do think feminism can be criticized for is its over-emphasis on white, middle class heterosexual women" being the best example). Questioning them on anything is simply not tolerated, anything short of cult like adherence to "3rd wave sex positive feminism" or "Critical race theory" or whatever else is construed and dismissed as "privilege" and an act of oppression against "marginalized" peoples."
"The word white gets used as if every white person shares the same class, culture, experience.
The experience of the Irish in America, fleeing starvation and ethnic cleansing is different from the swarthy sicilians which is different from the Russians freed at the same time from serfdom as African-American's from slavery which is different from the Jews who seem to be white or non-white depending on which gets them the most blame which is different from the (usually fake) Cavaliers of Virginia who became slave owners which is different from the non-slaveholding whites which were termed Cracker and Redneck which is different from the Acadians driven down to pockets of New England and Louisiana which is different from Lutefisk eating swedes of the mid-West which is different from the Puritans which is once again different.
You simply can't speak about these various terms without extreme nuance and historical understandings. Not and have them mean anything."
"it was horrible in most of the trans rights groups I ran into. People were redefining words to say that trans people of color are incapable of supporting the gender binary as it's entirely the fault of colonization by white people, and that white non-binary people were just using it as an excuse to oppress trans women of color. Oh, and then there was one thing about how only trans women of color should be getting representation, because that apparently is the only way to be intersectional."
""privilege" is a valid concept that has been thoroughly exploited in an extraordinarily ethically corrupt way. We now have the victim's privilege -- the ad hominem that whoever can claim victimhood first or most deeply is *correct* in any dispute with someone "privileged". It's particularly tragic to me that the "skeptical" and "freethinker" communities have become rife with this sort of thing and tar anyone who doesn't toe the line as "an MRA" ("male rights activist")."
"Instead of using "anti-liberal" leftists, let's call these people what they really are - totalitarian leftists.
Point by point they make it clear that they hold the fundamental democratic rights in contempt, everything from free speech to innocent until found guilty and the right to a fair trial is to them annoyances that they, if they could, would do away with. In their black-and-white world, evil people should not be allowed those kind of rights, and since everyone who doesn't agree with them is an evil person..."
"When the left gets dogmatic it gets dangerous. McCarthy was a liberal and Leftists in the US were apologists for Stalin for too way long (as I understand it) Pragmatism seems to be about justifying evil or destructive means in hopes of good ends. It doesn't turn out that way, because the end never comes. The means are how we live."
Post ID: 1959693023384855139
Friday, April 25, 2014
More AWARE Misfiring
7 things AWARE is unaware of, as shown by this gaffe – Signs of Struggle
"AWARE barked up the wrong tree and got to show off some of their best examples of ignorance with this post in response to the Defence Minister’s suggestion that the ministry wanted to recognise NSmen by “giving them a greater stake in Singapore, whether it is housing, health or education.”
"AWARE barked up the wrong tree and got to show off some of their best examples of ignorance with this post in response to the Defence Minister’s suggestion that the ministry wanted to recognise NSmen by “giving them a greater stake in Singapore, whether it is housing, health or education.”
AWARE charged into battle with this post, full of bad assumptions and logic.
1) Unaware of the details. To start, nobody has said anything about what these benefits are going to be. From various officials’ comments, it may be in the form of CPF top-ups or medisave top-ups. So, 10 points to AWARE for jumping the gun (or should I say misfiring) on this criticism. Sure kenna charge.2) Unaware of how to work towards equality. AWARE seems to think that equality is achieved by the lowest common denominator – that minimising or removing rewards to different parts of society is the key to gender or some other sort of equality. Everybody will feel that the world is fair towards all when we all receive exactly the same bottom-rung level of help and benefits. Nobody should get more for whatever reason.
3) Unaware of what affects our sense of belonging. AWARE thinks that giving some groups more help with basic needs will deprive others of a sense of belonging. Like giving transport subsidies to the disabled makes the rest of Singaporeans feel like second-class citizens. Like giving student rates and elderly rates for various services and products makes everyone else somehow less important. Like how the fact that only women can be full members of AWARE makes men feel like the lesser sex. Ha!
4) Unaware of the role of MINDEF. AWARE doesn’t realise that this scheme is in excess of providing for fundamental needs. It’s not MINDEF’s prerogative to provide for all Singaporeans’ fundamental needs. This is a reward or recognition in excess of fundamental needs. If you’re worried about fundamental needs not being met, go chat with the rest of the G.
5) Unaware of the uniqueness of each group and the unique needs of each individual. AWARE’s logic means that anything that one unique group cannot receive, the other group should not receive it either, ie, if women who cannot get conscripted and become NSmen and access additional benefits, then NSmen should not have these benefits either. If we apply this across the rest of society, we should dismantle the Pioneer Generation package. We should also stop subsidising healthcare costs for ObGyn, maternity and even prostate treatments. No need for a Women’s Charter, since there is no Men’s Charter.
6) Unaware of how to show appreciation. If AWARE really wanted to give the finger to every Singaporean Son and his family, they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Sure, we know you oppose NS, but while the rest of us are toiling and serving, tanks for spitting on us in the name of “equality”.
7) Unaware of the sacrifices made by NSmen and their families. 2 (2.5 for some) years of conscription? Meh. 10 years of NS liability? Nothing. AWARE’s callous attitude to the sacrifices of NSmen and their families is foolish and dangerous. I bet they’d ask for NSF allowance to be cut to zero, but maybe they don’t even know how that works in the first place.
AWARE loves to keep yapping about equality over NS matters, but I don’t ever see them suggesting that women also serve an equivalent conscription. It’s a little insincere."
Author in comments: I’m concerned that AWARE isn’t able to put out a coherent response on this issue. It seems that they are simply reacting without thinking.
Why not “we appreciate NSmen’s sacrifice”, but “we still advocate the abolition of NS”? They seem to be picking fights at every opportunity and losing each one.
Quixote: Incredulously, there isn’t one reply of theirs which conveys that sentiment. Whoever’s replying seems entirely caught up in defending the original post and less interested in engaging in a discussion about the real thrust of Defence Minister’s suggestion: recognition for contributions made in the name of national duty.
Addendum: Friend:
"Here's the worst and scary part. When you try to engage them on their Facebook page, their response is just to repeat the stance in an internet equivalent of stuffing fingers into ears and saying "lalalalala." Completely deaf to reason."
Post ID: 1222849977952838066
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