13 Words That The Author of "25 Common Words That You’ve Got Wrong" Got Wrong

Most “you’re using English wrongly” articles have a lot of errors, and yet people love to share them.

The latest example, shared by 3 people on my Facebook:

25 Common Words That You’ve Got Wrong

This one was particularly egregious, since I spotted several glaring mistakes.

So I've consulted the OED, "The definitive record of the English language" to correct the writer (whether you believe dictionaries are prescriptive or descriptive with regard to usage, either way he's still wrong):

3. Ultimate

What you think it means: The one, the only. The best.
What it really means: The last item of a list...

That is actually the proper use of ultimate. There is no other context or added context. It simply means the last one.

OED:

"Putting an end to further continuance, development, or action; final, decisive."
"Forming a final stage, point, or limit; beyond which there is no advance or progress."
"Beyond which no advance can be made by investigation or analysis; forming a limit or final stage in respect of nature or quality; fundamental or elemental."

Granted none of these senses explicitly means "The one, the only. The best", but they come a lot closer to it than "The last item of a list".

This is to say nothing of how ignorant saying that there is "no other context" is of any common English word (or indeed, probably any common word in any language) - the OED lists 6 general adjectival senses of the word. None of which, incidentally, is "the last item of a list".

5. Peruse

What you think it means: To skim or browse.
What it really means: To observe in depth.

OED:

"To examine in detail; to scrutinize, inspect, survey, oversee; to consider, to take heed of. Now also (influenced by sense 4c): to look over briefly or superficially; to browse."
"To read through or over; (generally) to read. In later use also: to browse, skim."

Notably, there is also a note here (which I have never seen before in the OED):

"Modern dictionaries and usage guides, perh. influenced by the word's earlier history in English, have sometimes claimed that the only ‘correct’ usage is in reference to reading closely or thoroughly (cf. senses 4a, 4b). However, peruse has been a broad synonym for read since the 16th cent., encompassing both careful and cursory reading; Johnson defined and used it as such. The implication of leisureliness, cursoriness, or haste is therefore not a recent development, although it is usually found in less formal contexts and is less frequent in earlier use (see quot. 1589 for an early example). The specific sense of browsing or skimming emerged relatively recently, generally in ironic or humorous inversion of the formal sense of thoroughness. Cf. scan v. for a similar development and range of senses."

8. Nauseous

What you think it means: To feel ill.
What it really means: To cause feelings of illness.

This is another understandable mishap that a lot of people make. If you actually feel sick then you are nauseated. The object that made you feel ill is nauseous.

OED:

"orig. U.S. Of a person: affected with nausea; having an unsettled stomach; (fig.) disgusted, affected with distaste or loathing."
"lit. Of a thing: causing nausea. In later use: esp. offensive or unpleasant to taste or smell."

So here the writer is taking the literary meaning as the only correct meaning.

11. Terrific

What you think it means: Fantastic, good.
What it really means: Horrific, to inspire fear.

This is another one that we expect will be changed in the dictionary eventually because barely anyone uses the real meaning anymore.

OED:

"Causing terror, terrifying; terrible, frightful; stirring, awe-inspiring; sublime. Now rare."
"As an enthusiastic term of commendation: amazing, impressive; excellent, exceedingly good, splendid."

Here, we can see that the author subscribes to the etymological fallacy and takes a view of language as eternal and unchanging (maybe he thinks 'nervous' should mean 'strong and vigorous'), even as senses fall out of use.

Especially notable is that the sense he calls "wrong" has its first example sentence from 1871. And his "right" sense has its last example sentence from 1914.

12. Effect

What you may think it means: To cause something to change.
What it really means: An event that causes a change.

OED (n):
"That which results from the action or properties of something or someone; results in general; the quality of producing a result, efficacy."
"As a count noun. Something accomplished, caused, or produced; a result, consequence. As a count noun. Something accomplished, caused, or produced; a result, consequence. "

OED (v):
"To bring about (an event, a result); to accomplish (an intention, a desire)." (there are examples of this usage from 1581 to 2000)

This is especially bizarre, because the common usage of the noun effect is not "an event that causes a change" but rather "the outcome of a change".

13. Disinterested

What you think it means: Bored.
What it really means: Neutral.

OED:

"Without interest or concern; not interested, unconcerned. (Often regarded as a loose use.)"
"Not influenced by interest; impartial, unbiased, unprejudiced; now always, Unbiased by personal interest; free from self-seeking. (Of persons, or their dispositions, actions, etc.)"

The "wrong" sense is attested from as far back as 1631, up till 1970.

14. Irregardless

What you think it means: Without regard.
What it really means: Nothing.

... Irregardless has been used so often that it actually is in the dictionary now and that’s kind of sad. Even though it is technically there, there are a large number of people who don’t consider it a word.

One wonders just how this person thinks words come about and what he considers the Gold Standard for the English language (maybe "my own prejudices").

To paraphrase Dan Brown,

"The English language did not arrive by fax from heaven. The English language is the product of usage, my dear. Not of self-righteous authors. The English language did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the language"

15. Chronic

What you think it means: Severe.
What it really means: Over the course of a long time.

OED:

"transf. Continuous, constant. Used colloquially as a vague expression of disapproval: bad, intense, severe, objectionable; also something chronic adv. phr., severely, badly." (examples start from 1861)

Sure, when you talk about an illness you shouldn't use "chronic" to mean severe. But for everything else, it's fair game.

17. Decimate

What you think it means: To destroy or annihilate
What it really means: To destroy ten percent.

This one is really goofy and one day this won’t be true. For the time being, decimate actually means removing only ten percent of something. If you know a little bit about words it’s not difficult to figure out. The prefix “dec” means ten. However, the traditional definition of this word is antiquated and it’ll probably be changed eventually. Until then, it’s technically correct to use a word like exterminate or annihilate instead.

OED (1894, not fully updated):

"To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of."
"rhetorically or loosely. To destroy or remove a large proportion of; to subject to severe loss, slaughter, or mortality."

Oxford Dictionary:

"Kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of"
"Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something)"
"historical Kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group"

This item annoyed me the most and was what prompted me to write this blog post.

Approximately no one uses "decimate" to mean "to destroy 10% of" anymore.

Since the writer subscribes to the etymological fallacy, I shall propose a 26th Common Word That You've Gotten Wrong:

26. Hysterical

What you think it means: Characterized by convulsive emotion or excitement
What it really means: Describing a woman whose womb is dysfunctional and so goes crazy

19. Fortuitous

What you think it means: Lucky.
What it really means: By chance.

Oxford Dictionary:

"Happening by chance rather than intention"
"Happening by a lucky chance; fortunate"

It is one thing to say a word can mean something different. It is another to say that it MUST mean something different.

20. Plethora

What you think it means: A lot of something.
What it really means: More than is needed.

OED:

"Usu. with of. Originally in pejorative sense: an excessive supply, an overabundance; an undesirably large quantity. Subsequently, and more usually, in neutral or favourable sense: a very large amount, quantity, or variety."

Examples come from 1835 to 2003.

Here we see that "more than is needed" is not even the primary meaning now.

23. Can

What you think it means: What is permissible.
What it really means: What is possible.

OED:

"To be allowed to, to be given permission to"

Interestingly, one of the examples here is from Lord Tennyson's play The Falcon: "Can I speak with the Count?"

25. Obsolete

What you think it means: Old, out of date.
What it really means: Not produced, used, or needed.

OED:

"No longer used or practised; outmoded, out of date."

The examples make this more clear:

"Two female servants, whose prim and obsolete appearance were perfectly consistent with the venerable aspect of the place of their habitation."
"On the Pacific station..we have one obsolete ironclad, the Swiftsure."
"Nothing is more hazardous in military policy than rigid adherence to obsolete ideas."

So we can see that "Old, out of date" still works as a definition for "obsolete".


Ironically, the author ends the article with the lines:

"The English language is a finicky one but it’s also ever changing. Words are updated and definitions change. New words are added every year and some are retired."

It looks like he should take his own advice and keep up with changing definitions (as well as some old ones that never went away).

Links - 4th July 2014

Part of Paris bridge collapses under weight of 'love locks' left by tourists - "The practice is believed to have started in Russia but has spread all over the world. It is especially common in Paris, the city of lovers."

5 Shockingly Insane 'Game of Thrones' Fanfiction Sex Scenes | Cracked.com - "The reader makes a sudden realization as well, namely that they were just tricked into reading a story of underage incest by dire wolf mind control proxy. And then Maisie Williams, like the character she plays, adds the author of this story to the list of names she has to kill."

The 'Nordic model' of prostitution law is a myth - "We recently gave a talk titled “The Nordic model of prostitution policy does not exist”. The aim was to provoke reflection and a discussion, but also to tell the truth about prostitution policies in the Nordic countries... Contrary to many common feminist appraisals, these laws do not in fact send a clear message as to what and who is the problem with prostitution; on the contrary, they are often implemented in ways that produce negative outcomes for people in prostitution... the Nordic countries' approaches must be judged with caution – and none more so than the most popular example, the case of Sweden... The claim that the number of people involved in prostitution has declined, for one, is largely based on the work of organisations that report on specific groups they work with, not the state of prostitution more generally: social workers, for example, count and get an impression based on their contact with women in street prostitution in the largest cities. There is no reason to believe that other forms of prostitution, hidden from view, are not still going on. The oft-cited 2010 Skarhed report acknowledges this – but still concludes that the law is a success based on the number of women in contact with social workers and police. Men involved in prostitution, women in indoor venues, and those selling sex outside the larger cities are therefore excluded from the scope of the report. This excessive focus on street prostitution handicaps many accounts of the law’s implementation, which tend to simply repeat Swedish authorities’ claims that the Sex Purchase Act has influenced the size of the prostitution markets... the Swedish Sex Purchase Act is often said to be an effective tool against human trafficking. The evidence for this claim is weak; Swedish authorities have backed it up with something said in a call intercepted by the police. The official data that does exist is vague; some authors have also pointed out that the act may have raised prices for sex, making trafficking for sexual purposes potentially more lucrative than ever... Even though surveys among the general public indicate great support for the law, the same material also shows a rather strong support for a criminalisation of sex sellers. This contradicts the idea that the law promotes an ideal of gender equality: instead, the criminalisation of sex buyers seems to influence people to consider the possibility of criminalising sex sellers as well. This rather confounds the idea that the “Nordic model” successfully shifts the stigma of prostitution from sex sellers to clients...
In Sweden this is embodied by the Aliens Act, which forbids foreign women from selling sex in Sweden and is used by the police to apprehend non-Swedish or migrant persons suspected of selling sex. This reveals the limits of the rhetoric of female victimisation, with clients framed as perpetrators: if the seller is foreign, she is to blame, and can be punished with deportation."

Cristiano Ronaldo’s injuries ahead of World Cup claimed as work of witch doctor in Ghana - "Believe it or not, the Australian team has had its own experience with voodoo, with the Socceroos thought to have broken its own curse in 2006 after 37 years. Former captain Johnny Warren blamed the Socceroo’s long losing streak on a hex placed on the team in 1969. He said the Australian team was cursed for not paying $1000 to a witch doctor in Mozambique who helped them win a elimination round for the World Cup in 1969. The Australians had asked the witch doctor to place a curse on opponents Rhodesia ahead of a crucial game which they ended up winning. However, when the witch doctor wasn’t paid for his services he vowed to reverse the curse and put it on the Aussies. “From that moment when he put the curse on every thing went wrong for the team”... The Socceroos finally re-entered the competition after Safran travelled to Mozambique and hired a witch doctor to lift the curse, which involved being splattered in chicken’s blood. After a long drought the Socceroos were finally able to qualify for the World Cup in 2006."

Philippine, Vietnamese troops drink beer, play volleyball on disputed isle - "Vietnamese and Philippine troops got together on a disputed island in the South China Sea on Sunday to play soccer and volleyball - as well as drink beer - in a display of unity that will not go unnoticed in Beijing... Coincidentally, the Philippines occupied Southwest Cay until early 1975, when troops from then South Vietnam seized it after Philippine forces sailed a couple of miles to Northeast Cay, which was under Manila's control, for a party."

‘Possessed’ maid allegedly eats kitten alive, runs amok the next day

Does Fertility Behavior Spread among Friends? - "a friend’s childbearing increases an individual’s risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual’s risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend’s childbearing, reaches its peak approximately two years later, and then decreases."

Cash to the poor: Pennies from heaven | The Economist - "[Unconditional Cash Transfers] work better than almost anyone would have expected. They dent the stereotype of poor people as inherently feckless and ignorant. But CCTs are usually better still, especially when dealing with the root causes of poverty and, rather than just alleviating it, helping families escape it altogether."

On the march - "White nationalists have called a rally in south Brisbane today. They huddle on one side of a street that runs along a park. Behind the park poke the cranes and skyscrapers of the city skyline. Getting wind of the rally weeks ago, a counter-protest has gathered on the other side of the street, to show support for multiculturalism. Two olive-skinned Greek men stand proud as a mob of angry white faces turn red, screaming and hectoring them. Before we go any further, there's something you need to know. The olive-skinned Greeks are part of the white nationalist crew. The mob of angry whites are the anti-racists. White nationalism is confusing in 2014. "Fascist Scum! Off our streets!" bellow the 200-odd anti-fascists at the 20 or so nationalists, a police line dividing the two... "NAZI SCUM OFF OUR STREETS!" roar the rest. A shuddering Cole pulls at his leather jacket lapel. "I've got my grandfather's British Legion badge on from when he fought in World War II," he says, trembling. "He was with the Black Watch and I'm a Nazi? I go to dawn service, I wear my grandfather's medals and I'm a Nazi?" Mr Sarcastic and Red Beard have moved onto another nationalist, in black hoody and sunglasses. "C...-sucking faggot!" shouts Red Beard. In the far-right rally in my head it would have been a fascist, not an anti-fascist, shouting this... Half an hour later, like everywhere else in the world, the white nationalists and anti-fascists have all started fidgeting with their smartphones. Everyone in the street looks out of energy... Everyone left is in a jolly mood. My smartphone vibrates in my pocket. It's a Facebook message from a stranger, one of the anti-racist protesters. "Saw you before. I wanted to ask what did you think of the protest? I found it a little weird. Kinda like we were the Nazis." "Why did you feel like you were the Nazis?" "Because we were a bigger mob harassing a smaller mob. What message are we sending them? That intimidation is okay, that's fine, you just have to have the bigger numbers? The other odd thing was marching people under the hammer and sickle flag. Is this 1945? Where people under the Soviet Union flag are chasing Nazis through the streets? It was like cosplay"... "A couple of activists experienced minor cuts. However, their spirit was undeterred. The responsibility for the violence today does not rest with any worker tricked into action by the CFMEU leader-group. It rests with this small core of union officials and organisers." CFMEU head office tell me they have not heard from police about the punch-up in the pub. They say they condemn fascism, but do not condone violence... That's the cherry on the pavlova. Australia: where even the immigrants hate immigrants. And where even the anti-racists bash wogs"

$1m gone in one year: Widow of killed Changi Airport worker is now broke - ""I was told not to touch my children's money as it was meant for their future," she said, adding that the financial adviser also suggested she could use the remaining money to set up a small business in Malaysia. But the money proved too much for Madam Pusparani to manage on her own... she decided to invest the remaining $100,000 in her brother's transport business in Kuala Lumpur, thinking it would give her a stable income. "But I was told the money was only enough to buy one lorry and we needed three lorries. So, I withdrew half of my children's money, which was about $400,000, to buy two more lorries"... the widow was told that the company was losing money. She said she fell out with her brother eventually and did not recover any of her investment... "My expenses came up to RM5,000 to RM6,000. Where do I find the money?" That last $400,000 she withdrew lasted her five months."
Keywords: Pusparani Mohan, Chandra Mogan
Addendum: Lorries are really expensive in Malaysia

These 40 Alien-Like Creatures Actually Live On Earth. I Can't Believe #3 Is Real!

Tiananmen, Forgotten - NYTimes.com - "Perhaps nowhere is this indifference toward politics and civil rights more pronounced than in the insouciance of young people about the Communist Party’s attempts to expunge historical truths from public memory. The majority of my generation still believes, for instance, that the war against Japanese invasion in the 1930s and ’40s was fought primarily by Communist soldiers, while the Nationalist army “passively resisted the Japanese and actively combated the Communists,” as told in my high school history textbook... Well-educated and worldly, they nonetheless see censorship more as a nuisance of daily life, something to be begrudgingly endured, rather than an infringement on their freedom of speech...
If the previous generations learned the cost of political transgression through persecutions and crackdowns, today’s youth, especially those from elite backgrounds, instinctively understand the futility of challenging the system. After all, most of the time, power interferes with our personal lives only in the form of nettlesome restrictions. These inconveniences — from censorship to the vehicle license lottery, a system that distributes a limited number of license plates to a huge number of new drivers who apply each month — feel not unlike the dogmatic words of Marxist philosophy in our school textbooks, which we mock in private but dutifully memorize and copy onto exams. Rebelling against these hurdles seems both naïve and unproductive — an understanding that the system has inculcated into us early on — as it would likely achieve little. Circumvention and compromise help us move forward, in a society where the price of falling behind is surely greater than the minor harms in our daily lives caused by state power. Over time, such an approach is rationalized, and even defended by the very group of young elites who in previous generations have been the most passionate advocates for change. Last October, Xia Yeliang, an economics professor at Peking University, was dismissed from his job after making bold demands for political change. The school insisted that Mr. Xia was fired for poor teaching skills. When the news broke, scores of university students rushed to defend the school’s claim on social media from what one called “Western media’s typical tactic to smear the image of China.”"

What women say they want, what women think they want and what women really want: revealing clothing

Provocative Clothing: If a woman doesn't like being stared at when she wears revealing clothing, is it wrong to tell her she should wear less revealing clothes? - Quora

Top Answer:

"I'm kind of struggling with this one.

Why does a woman dress in revealing clothes?

I asked my daughters.

I have two daughters - one is 21 years old and comfortable with who she is. She is a buxom, very attractive young lady. (think young Marilyn Monroe but with red hair.[ Actually don't - that's my daughter you're thinking about! ] )

The other is 13 and just discovering who she is. She's a pretty willowy blond at that long legged "coltish" kind of stage. She's just discovering that boys might actually be quite interesting.

My eldest said she wears clothes that enhance her "assets" because, "it makes me feel good". I pushed her on that though, "it makes me feel confident" she said. Confident about what? "Oh I don't know, I look good, guys notice me."
So you wear low cut tops and stuff because it makes you feel good when guys notice you? "No...well yeah...but that's not all it's about." So what then? "It means that I know I'm looking good and that people -not just guys, will notice me, I'll get served before other people at the bar and.... well it's just one less thing to worry about." So looking "hot" means less to worry about? "Dad people are shallow, they value how others look more than I do, but I know I look good so I don't even need to think about it." Ok - so you like getting positive attention from guys and you don't get bitchy attention from girls when you dress like that? "Pretty much." So what about the guys you don't want attention from? "Hey - Daaad... come on, I can't control who looks at me, but it's not them I'm dressing up for." Well I think you look very pretty. "Perv - I'm your daughter!"

My youngest wears skinny tops and 2nd skin leggings. She's the prettiest little thing. (and has her dad wrapped around her finger.)

Hey bunny, you look good, what's going on? "Dad... remember it's Kate's sleepover, you said you'd drive me." Did I? OK go get dressed then. "Dad I am dressed."
What - I thought you were dressed up to go clubbing or something - could a skirt get any shorter? "Dad you know I'm too young to go clubbing - we're going to watch a DVD and make some popcorn and stuff."
Is Kate's big brother going to be there? And his friends? "Yeah but they'll just be going out or something."
Yeah well just make sure the "or something" isn't trying it on with his sisters friends. "Daaad - that's gross. Boys are just stupid." "Besides he's in 4th year and I'm only in 1st." OK well I've got some overalls you can borrow to make sure he doesn't think you're interesting or anything if you wan't. "Daaaaaad- just - no." So you're not interested, he's not interested but you're going over there in a skirt that ends just below your butt and you'll all probably call him "pervy" if you catch him sneaking a look at your legs? "Dad it's complicated -you don't understand."

Well do you know what fellow Quorans and OP - I don't fucking understand. But I'll tell you what. Looking is not sexual harassment.

Just keep your eyes off my daughters...."


Also:

"Lets say you're a billionaire driving around the town in your Rolls Royce and flaunting your Armani suit, Gucci Shoes, Rolex watch etc.. Well someone might find this show of affluence unnecessary. but quite possibly you are proud of what you've earned for yourself and feel good confident about showing off...

Now, how people react to you is their business until they cross the line... if someone stops by to check out your car and says "Amazing......" I guess this is completely fine."


"I'd like to quote an anecdote from my sister's orientation program as told by her when she was starting college.
The principal of the institution (i'm assuming she is;a little hazy on the details) performed a simple demonstration to answer this dilemma shrewdly and perhaps convincingly.
She did the following to explain why the college did not have a dress code.
Demo #1

She dropped something on stage and asked a girl from the joining batch to pick it up. The girl held the neckline of her shirt to prevent cleavage from showing and then bent down to pick it up.

Demo #2

She asked a senior to do the same. This time,the senior didn't give a hoot. She bent,revealing a little,picked it up and gave it back to the speaker.

After this,the principal (assuming she was) said the following words "If you wear,you shouldn't care and if you care,you shouldn't wear"
In conclusion,men are always going to stare. It's a woman's choice (and burden)

P.S:I know this is a rather unpopular opinion but it's also true."


"I'm pretty shocked at how many people think it's wrong to stare at a woman wearing revealing clothes. If try didn't want to be stared at then they shouldn't be wearing clothes that show off their breast and ass. If Brad Pitt walked around in his underwear and no shirt, can most women honestly say they wouldn't star or at least look at him often? Women do have the right to wear whatever they want but they shouldn't complain from the attention they get if they dress provocatively...

Stop always blaming men for everything and expect us to be saints when what your wearing shows more skin than it covers!"

Links - 30th June 2014

Video Games Improve Vision, Study Says - "Playing "action" video games improves a visual ability crucial for tasks like reading and driving at night, a new study says... Previous research shows that gaming improves other visual skills, such as the ability to track several objects at the same time and paying attention to a series of fast-moving events, Bavelier said"

The Quiet Death of Moderate Islam - "Let’s assume that the pro-lynching Afrikaners are mostly law-abiding and that their support for lynching is based upon sincerely held religious beliefs – after all, some in the Dutch Reformed Church once believed that black Africans belonged to a lower race than whites and that black skin was the ‘mark of Cain’. Let’s also assume that their religious leaders assert that their religion commands them to obey the laws of the countries in which they live and that that any support for lynching applies only in an ‘ideal Apartheid state’?... When I was a child, my relatives would tell me that the hadud punishments of stoning, beheading and limb amputation weren’t part of modern Islam – such practices belonged to another time, in the same way that burning witches in Europe belonged to another time. I was told that the only Muslims that supported such practices were ‘backward’ and the only places that practiced them were ‘barbaric’ – in time ‘education’ would enlighten these simple folk and drag them into modernity. Yet I’ve grown up and seen the opposite happen. These days, one can happily believe and even state publicly that the death penalty should apply to anyone who has sex outside of marriage, takes part in a homosexual act, insults the Prophet or leaves Islam without being ‘extreme’. As long as one says “in an ideal Islamic society”... even though it’s convenient to pretend one thing in public, the media and the political class know deep down that people like me no longer represent the views of British Muslims... We face overwhelming hostility from the ‘vast majority of moderate Muslims’. We’re accused of causing fitnah and of being murtad – apostates, and as such we too warrant the death penalty alongside homosexuals in Baksh’s ideal Islamic state. It’s ironic that in modern Britain, it is far, far more dangerous for me to state my beliefs in public in than it is for Baksh to state his... Throughout Europe today, someone can advocate a Utopia in which gays and apostates are killed and nevertheless expect to be considered a ‘moderate’, fully entitled to and deserving of tolerance and respect. They can even call themselves an ‘anti-fascist’. As long as that Utopia is “an ideal Islamic society”."

Pain Now Is Easier Than Pain Later

'Selfie' body image warning issued - "Spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image"

Don Corleone: Not a Nice Guy but No Psychopath - "None of the Mafia members scored higher than a 30, the generally accepted threshold for psychopathy, and only 10 percent had scores that would classify them as moderately psychopathic. Meanwhile, more than half of the non-Mafia men rated as either moderately or severely psychopathic. Mafia membership was also associated with low substance abuse and high family commitment"

Brendan O’Neill: Equal marriage is an elitist campaign with no roots in the public - "“I think same-sex marriage is an entirely invented, purely symbolic issue and it doesn’t have any roots in social activism,” he said. When asked to explain why he felt there was no public call for same-sex marriage he said: “Look at the way this [campaign] is, compared to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, the differences are astounding. “There were mass protests, there were year-long boycotts, there was fighting, there were water cannons, people were arrested and put in jail... “I know there are lots of opinion polls which show that small majorities think it’s a good idea, 55%, 56% and so on, but if you look at those opinion polls in detail you’ll notice that larger majorities think it’s not an important issue. “People are tolerant of homosexuals, which is a wonderful, great thing, but they are confused by the priority that is given to this issue and I don’t think that’s surprising because this issue came out of thin air and it’s largely being pursued for the benefit of individual politicians and campaigners rather than for the benefit of society”... “The Stonewall rioters of 1969 said that all social institutions including marriage needed to be abolished. Now you have representatives of something called Stonewall coming in here and saying ‘we really want to get married’”... “If you read the government’s consutation on same-sex marriage it does not mention family, or children, or community, except when it twice talks about the transgender community. It doesn’t mention the fundamental things that marriage was originally bound up with, which was about managing and organising the renewal of generations. “You are elevating a bourgeois view of marriage which is marriage as companionship,” said Mr O’Neill. “Beyond your old couple there are millions of people for whom marriage is about more than two people.”"

Hong Chung Chow's answer to Indian People: Where did the Malaysian stereotype of Indians as alcoholics come from? - Quora - "If you wander off to rural areas in Malaysia, it's relatively easy to find Indian men congregating outside of Chinese medicine shop, after work, to buy cheaply packed hard liquor. Additionally, it's also easy to find many Indians wasting their time in local community coconut wine breweries. One can only wonder where are the Chinese"

How some young people have become their own online bullies - "While her parents, council manager Jonathan and his wife Sue, an office assistant, assumed Ellie was studying for her forthcoming exams, the teenager posted dozens of vicious remarks about herself over the course of a year... She is one of what seems to be a growing number of British teens indulging in the sinister and habit-forming practice of self-trolling... Fourteen-year-old Hannah Smith, from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, hanged herself in her bedroom last summer after messages were posted on Ask FM telling her to 'go die', 'get cancer' and 'drink bleach'. At first, as in Ellie's case, cyber-bullies were blamed for the abuse. Then her father revealed that detectives believed she had been sending the messages to herself... This appeared to confirm claims by the Latvian bosses of the site - initially greeted with shock and bewilderment - that 98 per cent of the messages could be traced back to Hannah's home... It takes less than a minute on Ask FM to find examples of young people trolling themselves without even pretending to be someone else... U.S. researchers found in a recent study of more than 600 first-year students that 9 per cent posted toxic remarks about themselves... Posting horrible remarks from 'strangers' saying they are fat or ugly is also a way for youngsters to attract compliments from friends who rush to contradict them - a quick fix for their self-esteem. Furthermore, being seen as a victim - or being seen to stand firm against 'bullying' - may win them status among their peers. Loneliness may be another factor, says Rachel. 'There are plenty of young people who have 1,000 friends on their Facebook page but only two or three real ones.' Just as children sometimes invent imaginary friends, it seems there is a strange comfort in inventing imaginary critics and appearing to have their attention... One clue that a young person may be actively seeking out bullying is if they turn off their privacy settings to boost the chances of attracting vitriolic comments from strangers"

'Bad-Eating Groups' Love to Hate Hong Kong's Ming General Restaurant - WSJ - "From gold-flecked dim sum to its traditional greeting, "Have you eaten yet?" Hong Kong is famous for its obsession with fine dining. Then there is Ming General Japanese Sushi Restaurant, which has built a fan base united by their belief that the restaurant's food is supremely terrible. "

Phone apps used for gay sex linked to higher STD risk - "Previous research found that app users were less likely to use condoms during sex and more likely to have multiple partners"

As Taylor Swift transforms to sexy rocker, her changing faces as good girl turns bad - "After the release of her first album, Fearless, she discovered bodycon and hair straightners. Then she made friends with Miley, and her dresses got shorter.

Two Teens 'Were Having Sex' When They Fell To Their Deaths From Balcony - ""They were trying to have sex on the balcony, the guy was lifting the girl and putting her on the bannister, he kept on doing it. "He was putting her on there - they were going back and forth. You could see they were doing some really dangerous stuff."

Burial ban blamed for spike in China suicide rates - "Burial has been a tradition in China for thousands of years. But some people apparently have felt so strongly about the recent change banning the practice that there have been a spate of alleged suicides to avoid the new rule... Zheng Shifang, from the village of Luting, was one of the six who committed suicide. She was 83 when she died, choosing to take her own life after village committee staff sawed her coffin – which she kept at home – in half in front of her."

ATHEIST MOBS RIOT OVER FB PHOTO DEEMED OFFENSIVE TO RICHARD DAWKINS - "Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Oxford, England chanting “Empirical evidence supported by controlled experimentation is Great” and burning effigies to Ronald MacDonald... Agnostics failed to riot, but stood on the sidelines cheering on the riot and taking credit for it anyways."

LOOK Scoot turns SGAG squabble into promotion

Do Big Money Bonuses Really Increase Job Performance? - "An incentive can be both a blessing and a curse because while it should motivate us, it can just as easily psych us out. Actual task performance may suffer because we’re obsessing about the money. Also, a bigger prize can make us more tightly focussed, but a tight focus is not useful for some tasks – for example those that involve creativity. Consequently behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely and colleagues hypothesised that big bonuses might actually decrease people’s performance, and they set out to prove it (Ariely et al., 2004)."
And highly paid politicians...

'Organic' Isn't Clean and It Isn't Toxin-Free - "organic farms produce as much, or more, pollution than conventional farms and that organic products might actually contain more toxins than other foods."

California parents outraged by Pine Valley Middle School's explicit sex ed class - "the one which shocked them most was a picture of a man with a bloody face accompanied by a caption saying, 'A real man loves his woman every day of the month.' One parent said: 'This is horrific. This is unacceptable material.'"

Like some happiness with that? Fast food cues hurt ability to savor experience - "people living in communities with higher prevalence of fast-food restaurants were significantly less able to enjoy pleasurable activities that require savoring, even when controlling for economic factors of the individual and the neighborhood. The study’s authors propose that’s because fast food can incite people to feel more impatient, diminishing their ability to slow down and savour life’s simpler joys."

My fling with Dolly the Dolphin: Writer says lovesick mammal killed herself after six-month affair ended - "Malcolm, from Punta Garda, Florida, believes her death a short time later was a case of suicide and that she voluntarily stopped breathing. The relationship didn't break any laws as bestiality was only banned in Florida 2011. Malcolm has since been married twice but also describes himself as a 'zoophile' and says he has had previous sexual experiences with a dog. He said Margaret Howe Lovatt shouldn't feel any shame over her experience with the dolphin and that humans have a misunderstanding about sexual relationships with animals. "It's extremely upsetting. When my book came out I lost a job at a magazine because of the publicity and complaints from advertisers. "I don't understand why there is seen to be a slippery slope. "There is no comparison between sexual abuse and a sexual relationship with a consenting animal.""

The innate effect of Bias; Naive Realism

The innate effect of Bias

"Research by behavioural economists has clearly demonstrated we are not rational; in fact we are naturally irrational. Deeply embedded biases affect every decision we make, there are conscious factors, learned from experience, subconscious cognitive biases and affective factors including our feelings and emotions at the time the decision is made. The challenge is to accept people as they are and then work rationally within our innate biases; this needs a rational approach to an irrational problem!...

Two biases that cut in when you have an issue that has already cost money and needs more funds committed to prevent potential future losses are loss aversion and Hyperbolic discounting...

Another pair of biases that affect problem solving are first our strong preference for our own creations over other people’s creations; reinforced by what behavioural economists call the ‘IKEA Effect’, the more labour we expend on a project, the more we love the result regardless of its quality. If someone has worked hard on the solution to a problem (or the creation of an estimate) they are innately programmed to love their solution! These are just a few of the biases built into all of us; most people are innately optimistic, over-value their personal skills and capabilities and over-value the advice of distant experts compared to the advice from someone they know well...

Naive realism is the belief that we see reality as it really is4 – objectively and without bias; and that those who don't see things ‘our way’ are either uninformed, or biased . The three "tenets" of naive realism are:

1. That I see entities and events as they are in objective reality, and that my social attitudes, beliefs, preferences, priorities, and the like follow from a relatively dispassionate, unbiased and essentially "unmediated" comprehension of the information or evidence at hand.

2. That other rational social perceivers generally will share my reactions, behaviours, and opinions— provided they have had access to the same information that gave rise to my views, and provided that they too have processed that information in a reasonably thoughtful and open-minded fashion.

3. That the failure of a given individual or group to share my views arises from one of three possible sources: a. the individual or group in question may have been exposed to a different sample of information than I was (in which case, provided that the other party is reasonable and open minded, the sharing or pooling of information should lead us to reach an agreement); b. the individual or group in question may be lazy, irrational, or otherwise unable or unwilling to proceed in a normative fashion from objective evidence to reasonable conclusions; or c. the individual or group in question may be biased (either in interpreting the evidence, or in proceeding from evidence to conclusions) by ideology, self-interest, or some other distorting personal influence.

The reality is my version of the ‘truth’ and your version of the ‘truth’ is as unreliable and biased as everybody else’s.

[Ed: Post-modernism! 1+1=3 is as unreliable and biased as 1+1=2!]

... A person’s current state of emotion can easily overpower rational thinking. If a person is tired, or emotionally stressed for any reason, these negative emotions will affect all of the decisions made regardless of the current decisions relationship to the cause of the emotion. Similarly if a person has just won an important sporting event (important to them, not to you or the world at large), the feeling of being successful and capable of winning will impact decisions and encourage more risky decisions.

In addition to their current emotions, we all store emotion charged memories. These emotions are automatically triggered in situations perceived to be similar to the stored memory."

Links - 26th June 2014

Levitation Secret Revealed (70 years ago) - "“[The photograph] is nothing short of hilarious. It is a flash-illuminated picture of a séance held at Wortley Hall in Finsburg Park, London, showing the attendees holding hands and medium Colin Evans ‘levitating’. A cord leading from a device in Evan’s hand indicates it was he who triggered the flash-photograph – a critical act since the evidence of the photo itself reveals the mechanism of ‘levitation’ and thus indicates its momentary nature: Evan’s feet are a blur above the seat of his chair, his body is in a partially crouched position, and his hair is in disarray. If springing into the air from a crouched position is levitating[…]”, writes skeptic Joe Nickell in Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation."

CDs for Sale - Classical Music Discoveries
Love how Classical Music Discoveries has their model strike a pose for each week's episode image

Apple partners with patent troll Digitude Innovations -- and wow, what a deal - "This isn’t the first time Apple has been called a patent troll."
Truly a Revolution

An Inside Look at China’s Censorship Tools - China Real Time Report - WSJ - "If you can’t beat China’s censors, why not join them? That’s what a Harvard University professor decided to do, in a creative effort to learn firsthand just how censorship in China works. To get inside the system, professor Gary King and two Ph.D. students started their own fake social network... the company recommended that his team hire two to three full-time censors for every 50,000 users. If that same formula was used at Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform, the company would employ somewhere between 2,160 and 3,240 censors to cover its 54 million daily active users. In an interview, Mr. King said his exposure to the broad range of censorship software on the market suggests that China’s government is “allowing competition and innovation in censorship technology.” “They have top-down control of outcomes, but not of the particular process. It’s not a bad strategy,” he said... Mr. King said this week that the study’s findings also reinforce his previous work on Chinese censorship, which found that posts with the potential to stir collective action—for example, those related to protests or Tibetan self-immolations—tend to be most heavily targeted, not the posts that are simply critical of the Chinese government."

Can FreeWeibo's Android App Defeat China's Internet Censors? - "The Android app, also called FreeWeibo, allows users to read posts that are deleted from Sina Weibo, giving Chinese netizens a chance to see what their government censors, and what their fellow countrymen are really talking about... The group is confident FreeWeibo cannot be blocked because of the way they have built it: All of the app's content is hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 could-hosting platform. What makes Amazon's cloud perfect for this project is that it's all encrypted, making the task of censoring content on it almost impossible. When a Chinese netizen visits content hosted on AWS, Chinese censors can see only that the user is visiting s3.amazonaws.com, but not the exact final address. China can't selectively block just some content on AWS without blocking the entire service. And therein lies the key to the project: Thousands of businesses rely on Amazon's cloud in China. The government probably can't afford to block the service entirely just to kill FreeWeibo. It's a strategy researchers call "collateral freedom." It makes it impossible for governments to block access to a service because the collateral economic costs of doing so would be too crippling... The first real-world test of this theory came in January 2013, when China blocked the popular coding site GitHub and had to unblock it just two days later after Chinese developers protested against the move."

5 Avoiding or Exiting the Sex Industry — Ministry of Justice, New Zealand - "Pull factors can include excitement, encouragement from others involved in sex work, and a way of seeking affection. Freedom to work one's own hours to accommodate childcare or study responsibilities is another pull, particularly for brothel or small owner-operator brothel (SOOB) workers... The percentages of sex workers in each sector who indicated that each of the factors listed below was one of the main reasons for entry are presented in Table 12.
Exploring sexuality: 22.5%
Friend was doing it: 31.7%
Minding a friend and was asked to join: 10.0%
Thought it looked exciting/glamorous: 26.0%
Sex workers looked fun to be with: 22.8%
Curiosity: 49.7%
... The fact that few of the sex workers who were interviewed by CSOM indicated that decriminalisation of the sex industry in and of itself was the reason for entering the industry supports the conclusion drawn in chapter two: that the enactment of the PRA has not led to an increase in the number of sex workers operating in New Zealand... The Committee hopes that this will assist in clarifying the misconception that there are significant numbers of sex workers in New Zealand who are in the industry against their will... a 2003 study of 216 sex workers in Queensland aged 18 or older showed an average weekly income of A$1,500 a week when the average weekly earnings in Queensland was approximately A$900 (pre tax). This may largely explain why job satisfaction is higher than is popularly believed... Table 15: Reasons for Staying in the Sex Industry in Each Sector
Enjoy the sex 39.0%
All my friends do it 14.5%
It's exciting and glamorous 22.7%
Sex workers are friendly/fun to be with 42.2%
... it was potentially offensive to be discussing with sex workers how they should be assisted to exit... Many participants from all sectors enjoyed the contact that they had with most clients, as well as the people skills they developed through working in the industry... participants all discussed benefits they experienced from working in the sex industry. These benefits included having flexibility and freedom in their workplace, learning new workplace skills, meeting a variety of people and experiencing a sense of belonging."
Keywords: prostitute, prostitutes, prostitution, meet interesting people, survey, good pay

Tensions Set To Rise In The South China Sea - "Over the last month and a half, seven significant developments indicate that tensions in the South China Sea are set to rise in both the short and long term. The five short-term trends include: Philippine defiance of China’s fishing ban; continued inaction by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the Chinese navy’s repeated assertions of sovereignty over James Shoal; the possibility of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea; and stronger United States opposition to China’s ADIZ and maritime territorial claims."
The common factor in South China Sea tensions is China. A Peaceful Rise indeed!

Why Chinese Food Isn't Hip - WSJ - "Anyone worried about the rise of China on the world stage, as made clear by last month's lavish Olympics display, can take a kind of cold comfort from the almost total failure of the world's biggest culture to break into the foodie world. Yes, there are tens of thousands of places to buy second-rate pork buns and wontons in any town you might happen to be in, from Lima, Peru, to Lima, Ohio. There are also deeply rooted Chinese expat cuisines in Malaysia and the Philippines. And even these peripheral adaptations of Mother China's food can be found in modern restaurants in Manhattan outside Chinatown. But tell me where I can find a quality, high-end Chinese restaurant anywhere in a U.S. urban center aimed at nonethnic diners and I will beat a path there"

Why is Chinese food so cheap? Guest blog by Chinese food expert Sam Lipoff - "They ranged from Big Think’s Lindsay Beyerstein‘s hypothesis that it was cheap overhead and ingredients, to Boston food writer’s MC Slim JB‘s observation on different cultural perceptions of what makes a good restaurant. Friend Sam Jackson and Jimmy Li thinks it’s a marketing/image issue. Serious Eats intern Leah Douglas cites her history class and the economic class of immigrant foodways. Another SE intern, Aaron Mattis postulates it might be lack of restaurant culture... In the modern world, how does food become haute? Typically by applying French technique to the traditional ingredients. Conceptually, Chinese food doesn’t follow this rule, one possible reason why the American-Chinese version is inexpensive... Modern haute cuisine tends to feature artisanal, high-quality proteins, cooked in a simple method to bring out the natural flavors of the protein, often with a simple sauce that pairs well with those flavors, and some accompanying vegetables to balance those flavors. However, Chinese cuisine is based on different principles. Chinese food often uses protein less for flavor and more for texture, and utilizes extremely complex cooking methods and involved sauces to provide the flavor. You might have better luck on a Chinese menu ordering by cooking method than by protein. This doesn’t mean at all that Chinese food is inexpensive, but it means that expensive Chinese food isn’t just a matter of purchasing the kind of expensive proteins reared in the West for Western-style meals... There also may be a slight mismatch between what “restaurants” mean in different cultures. In many Chinese restaurants in the United States, you can order a $6.25 lunch plate during the week. But you can also host your wedding banquet there, and the same restaurant will be transformed with white linen, and $200+ a person food, from abalone to geoduck clam. Try getting Per Se to serve you lunch for $6, or try getting a McDonalds to provide black-tie clad table service and Filet Mignon for a banquet... It is extraordinarily difficult to get Chinese restaurants to produce authentic food for non-Chinese patrons. By contrast, it is extraordinarily difficult to get (real) Japanese restaurants to produce inauthentic food to cater to foreign tastes. I think this has something to do with deep ways in which these cultures define themselves. To Japanese it is obvious that foreigners should like authentic Japanese food, because Japanese food is obviously the best, so why wouldn’t everyone like it? To Chinese, however, the boundaries of the authentic are circumscribed by what foreigners can’t appreciate"

Why the nice guy gets the girl...but the nice girl gets left on the shelf - "For women, being well groomed appeared to have the biggest impact on getting married.. having a good personality barely made a difference to a woman’s chance of becoming a bride"

Taxes and the rich: Looking at all the taxes | The Economist - "MY COLLEAGUE suggests that America’s wealthy already pay at least their fair share of the cost for the public goods they depend on to prosper. He notes that in recent years, the top 5% of earners have received 32% of the country’s adjusted gross income, but paid 59% of federal individual income taxes. “If that’s not giving something back, what is?”, he asks. This is a case of cherry-picking the data. Yes, the federal income-tax system is progressive through most of the income distribution—although it becomes extremely regressive at the high end, because of the low rates applied to qualified dividends and long-term capital gains (as Mitt Romney can attest). However, federal income taxes account for just 27% of total government revenue collected in America. And the remaining three-quarters of the tax pie is quite regressive... The fact of the matter is that the American tax code as a whole is almost perfectly flat. The bottom 20% of earners make 3% of the income and pay 2% of the taxes; the middle 20% make 11% and pay 10%; and the top 1% make 21% and pay 22%. Steve Forbes couldn’t have drawn it up any better."

Singaporeans not as wealthy as GDP figures suggest - "In Singapore, personal consumption expenditure has steadily fallen over the years as a percentage of GDP and, at 35 per cent, is now barely half of what it is in Hong Kong. This is an oddity characteristic of a startup economy, not of a wealthy town like Singapore. But it means that, on the basis of our money-in-your-hands measure, Hong Kong at US$24,000 per capita still outranks Singapore at US$21,000. The second chart gives you a clue as to why the two economies are so different on this measure. Industrial investment in Singapore, always predominantly foreign, has become even more so in recent years, accounting for an average of about 80 per cent of total investment over the past 10 years... This foreign investment in Singapore has in turn produced a huge trade surplus in both goods and services. Over recent years, it has run at about 30 per cent of GDP. And most of this money goes right back out again to pay foreigners for all the confidence they have shown in Singapore by investing in it so heavily. In short, Singapore's high GDP numbers are mostly an anomaly created by very generous industrial concessions to foreigners. They do not really reflect domestic wealth... All that their relative state of wealth really tells you is one has fewer scruples than the other about how low it is willing to go. On this measure, I definitely rate Singapore as the more successful."

How to make epic pancakes with your Japanese rice cooker

On being a chicken

A man found a chicken's egg and put it in a nest of an eagle. The chick hatched with the brood of eaglets and grew up with them.

As he was growing up the chicken did what the eaglets did, thinking he was an eagle. He witnessed the others killing their siblings. He ate morsels of meat from his 'parents'. He stretched his wings and tried to fly.

Yet, try as he might, he could not fly as well as the eaglets.

He would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air, watching in frustration as the other eaglets glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat on their strong golden wings.

Frustrated, he thought to himself: "I can do anything I want. The only thing holding me back is my negative beliefs!"

So he launched himself off the eyrie and opened his wings... only to plummet down, dashing himself on the rocks far below.

As he lay dying, he saw a gawkish bird walking past him. It scratched the earth beside him for worms and insects, and then started to peck at the dying body of the chicken.

The mortally wounded chicken looked up in pain. "Who are you?" he asked. "I'm the chicken. I belong to the earth. And now I'm going to eat you, dying 'eagle'."

So the chicken lived and died an eagle, for that's what he thought he was.

For all of his short life, anyway.


Adapted from: On being an eagle by Anthony de Mello

Links - 25th June 2014

PM Lee: You can work beyond 65, downgrade your flat and pay higher CPF Life premiums | The Real Singapore
Comment: "So basically work till you die, sell your apartment for a cheaper one to get more money and then use that money to pay the higher CPF installments and live on while we raise the CPF mininum amount one more time in 2015. Nice!!"

The Science Of Why Bacon Smells So Damn Good - "the amazing aroma stems from 150 organic compounds. As heat is applied, sugars, amino acids, and fat in the meat undergo Maillard reactions, and creates the molecules used in their aroma. While many of these compounds smell amazing on their own, they are a force to be reckoned with when they are smelled in concert."

Upworthy Generator - Instantly create Upworthy-style articles
Choice ones: "You Will Dig Your Fingernails Into Your Desk When You See What An Actress Wrote."
"Try Not To Weep When You Listen To This One Verb."
"What Happens When One Angry Woman Doesn't Worry About What Anyone Thinks."
"I'll Never Look At This Bullied NBA Coach The Same Way Again."
"Before You Say America's Disparity In Income Is All Bad, Listen To This Battlecry From A Veteran."

Why Are Upworthy Headlines Suddenly Everywhere? - "They make an emotional promise. They usually have two phrases. They paint their political proposition as obvious, as beyond debate. They’re headlines in the Upworthy style, and they seem to have colonized every news source... Founded in March of last year, its headline style was so obvious that the New York Times could parody it by July... Clickbait has been around for years. Through ridiculousness, sexiness, or just by withholding critical information from a reader, it tantalizes people in such a way that they can’t help but see what’s on the other side—tallying, crucially, a page view (and then maybe a Facebook like) for the clickbaiteer."

TV News & Upworthy Are Transforming Us All Into Dumb, Ill-Informed, Simple-Minded Sheep - "That's the evolving state of modern journalism, folks: race, sex, religion, superficial political analysis, and disaster stories, all slathered in a veneer of outrage. Notice what's missing: Regular coverage of federal legislation, scientific developments, substantive corruption pieces, real debates that go beyond name-calling, stories on foreign wars (we are still in Afghanistan, right?), structural racial and gender disparities... the list goes on and on."

11 titillating minutes with Ashley Madison renders me impressed - "e27: In your interview with Today Online, you mentioned that infidelity has societal benefits. What are these benefits that you spoke of?
Biderman: It’s pretty rare to meet a married couple who says “Sex is the priority,” that “Sex is number one”. That’s not to say they want life to celibacy. That is important to them, but it’s not the most important. So why would you ask someone who’s maybe struggling with monogamy to give up all the other things I just mentioned? The child rearing, the economics, the homes, the extended family, in exchange for a new sexual … That doesn’t make any sense. What most people in affairs are seeking is to have their cake and eat it too. They want to stay married. They want to keep that foundation going, but they want to break the monogamy. Ultimately, we have to stand back as a society and ask, “What’s the value of marriage?” There’s primarily the raising of kids together in that marriage. That is incredibly valuable because the data around the room is uniform. Kids raised by single parents don’t have as much access to higher education. Get into more trouble with the law. Have more issues around drug and alcohol use. If we want to prevent those real societal issues, we have to find a way to keep marriages together. By forcing monogamy down their throats, we’re doing the exact opposite...
When you create prohibitions like this, it only backfires. That’s why … prohibitions around alcohol and different things. Even more so when it comes to human sexuality, you can’t have these prohibitions. Think about it. Right now, there are places on Earth where if a woman has an affair, they will put her to death. You know what, sadly, people still have affairs in those places. Because it’s asking you to not have food to eat, or water to drink. It’s that much of a biological drive. So women risk their lives to have affairs, so do you really think that this ban will accomplish… will stop a single affair from happening in Singapore? I doubt it...
The most successful affair is being never discovered, and the kids will much rather have their both parents together even if one is unfaithful than have them break up."

Behind the Scenes Pictures of a NSFW Playboy Photoshoot are so Awkward (NSFW)

As a Christian this just blew my mind... - 9GAG

Tikhon Jelvis's answer to Offensiveness: Why do some people seem to be looking for things to be offended by? - Quora - " some people—a definite minority—actually are looking to be offended. They want to make a specific point, a loudpublic statement. They're looking for something symbolic to push their views or agenda. They do it because, unfortunately, it's a reasonably effective strategy... Among other things, this is also a good signalling mechanism for showing which group you belong to as well as your level of loyalty. Decrying Harry Potter definitely served as a handy way to both signify your religion to outsiders and demonstrate the strength of your faith to insiders... Since I can't generally draw a reasonable, objective line between most things I do and do not find offensive, I've generally decided to err on the side of letting things go. This is very similar to how I generally don't reprimand people for annoying habits (making noise, cracking knuckles) even if they're distracting me from work. It would just put others off without gaining me much, especially because I can ignore or work around it. It's part of my general preference for fewer rules (including social ones), simpler manners, less formality, less social hierarchy... etc. So I, at least, have definitely tried to move towards accepting uncomfortable humor, beliefs, statements and such without assuming malice or trying to stop it. I wouldn't want people to be afraid of making me uncomfortable, especially because many of the things that domake me uncomfortable are just products of my own internal quirks and upbringing (like, again, my general antipathy towards anything even mildly religious). Ultimately, it all comes down to consistency. When I find myself acting inconsistently on something, like what constitutes "offensive" or how I should react to it, I try to fix that. It just seems that my way of making things consistent turns out to be the opposite of many people I know."

Wrong to call Malaysia a moderate Muslim country, NGOs tell Obama - "It would be inaccurate to describe Malaysia as a “moderate Muslim country” despite repeated attempts by the country’s leaders to project such an image, civil society groups told US president Barack Obama during his visit. In an “intimate and candid” meeting with Obama on Sunday, 10 local non-governmental organisation (NGO) leaders said they had highlighted that there were still a slew of issues affecting the country, which included extremism and the worrying process of Islamisation that was “tearing at the fabric of Malaysian society”. “If you look at the issues that are affecting us, both from an ethnic religious perspective, as well as a human rights and respect for rule of law. We cannot be described as moderate,” Bar Council president Christopher Leong told Astro AWANI today... Leong said that Malaysia constantly faced “widespread and institutionalised ethnic and religious unfair discrimination”, citing the cases of minority Muslim sects, Syiah and Ahmadis, being persecuted, and the seizure of Bibles and holy books by the Home Ministry... “I found it very interesting and ironic that president Obama began his visit with us on Sunday with the national mosque, and had toured National Mosque with imam Tan Sri Syaikh Ismail Muhammad, who is reported to have said that he found it endearing and kind of President Obama’s efforts to use Bahasa Malaysia. And President Obama in the course of conversation also said InsyaAllah (God willing) and terima kasih (thank you). It is ironic that the imam finds that endearing and kind, when Malaysian non-Muslims who say that in almost all states would face prosecution.""

Rise of strict Islam exposes tensions in Malaysia - "Muslim women without headscarves are a common sight on the streets of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. But engaging them in a discussion about the hijab is difficult. Norhayati Kaprawi is a Malaysian activist whose recent documentary Aku Siapa (Who Am I) deals with the issue of how women in Malaysia should dress. She found some women unwilling to show their faces in her film - not on religious grounds, but because they feared reprisals. This is a damning reflection on Malaysia's Muslim society, says Ms Norhayati. "It's full of fear. If you don't follow the mainstream you will be lynched"... Islamic officials in Selangor state entered a Methodist church without a warrant in early August, breaking up a fundraising dinner. They recorded the details of several Muslims who attended the function... "This action sets a dangerous precedent and makes a mockery of the sanctity and inviolability of all religious places in our beloved country," said the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hindusim, Sikhism and Taoism in a statement."

‘Moderate Muslim’ invented by ‘enemies of Islam’, claims Isma leader - "The concept of “moderate Muslim” was invented by “enemies of Islam” aiming to undermine and exert control over the Muslim world, a leader of Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) claimed today. Suriani Sudi, the deputy chief of the group’s women’s wing, urged Muslims to be uncompromising when defending their religion. Suriani, also a lecturer at Kolej Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Selangor, said it is unfair to label Muslims who are simply defending their religion as “extremists.” “The word ‘moderate’ has been made a weapon where anybody who opposes the moderates will be labelled conservative, extremist and extreme,” Suriani said in an article carried by Isma’s website. “It is as if among the Muslims, it is the Moderate Muslims who are right, true, moderate, non-extreme, modern, up-to-date, and parallel with human rights”... Suriani alleged that despite his modest demeanour, the Prophet Muhammad had acted uncompromisingly in order to defend the rights of Muslims... Earlier this month, Isma claimed that the influx of Chinese migrants into the country had been “a mistake” which must be rectified, but stopped short of saying how this could be achieved. According to Isma president Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman, ethnic Chinese are considered trespassers on Malay land, and had been brought by British colonialists to oppress Malays... Suriani also suggested that there is nothing wrong with defending one’s race as it had served well Muslim civilisations of the past... The article followed a defence by Isma deputy president Aminuddin Yahaya, who said that the recent racial and religious tensions were sparked by “chauvinist” non-Malays and non-Muslims who claim that Malaysia is a secular country where they are marginalised. According to Aminuddin, Malays are the most tolerant race in the world and have been accommodating even as non-Malays entered the country and transformed its racial makeup. That tolerance has not been reciprocated by other races, he added."

Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex

What Judith Levine is Really Saying

"Few issues cause as much consternation as the sexual lives of young people, a fact made abundantly clear to author Judith Levine and the University of Minnesota Press upon publication of "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex."

In the furor over the book, most commentators have missed Levine's main point: "Sex is not ipso facto harmful to minors." In fact, "America's drive to protect kids from sex is protecting them from nothing. Instead, often it is harming them."

Despite what critics contend, "Harmful to Minors" is not about pedophilia. It tackles a wide range of issues including censorship, statutory rape laws, abstinence-only sex education, abortion, gender, AIDS, and child welfare...

Why does the proposition that youth deserves sexual autonomy, pleasure, and privacy seem so radical? In the 1970s, the sexual revolution was in full swing and the idea that children and teens were sexual beings was accepted, at least among progressives. Books such as Heidi Handman and Peter Brennan's "Sex Handbook: Information and Help for Minors" and Sol Gordon's "You!" showed respect for young people and their ability to make their own sexual decisions.

For the past two decades, though, the religious right has been winning the war against comprehensive sex education, access to abortion and contraception, and the sexual autonomy of young people. By the late 1980s, Gordon had shifted his advice toward parents with "Raising a Child Conservatively in a Sexually Permissive World," and child pornography laws made it illegal to even possess a copy of "Show Me!," an award-winning sex education book for children.

What happened? Levine does not place all the blame on the right, acknowledging the role cultural feminists played in imposing a regime of overwhelming sexual protectionism...

The sexual liberationists of yesterday are parents today, facing all the typical parental fears. As the joke goes, a conservative is a liberal with a teenage daughter...

As Levine documents throughout the book with copious studies and reviews of news sources, fears of rampant pedophilia, child abduction, ritual abuse, and Internet sexual predators are at best exaggerated, at worst completely unsupported by evidence.

For example, studies commissioned by Congress show that between 50 and 150 children are kidnapped and murdered by strangers each year, yet in a Mayo Clinic survey three-quarters of parents said they are afraid their children will be abducted. And a 1994 U.S. government report analyzing over 12,000 accusations of Satanic ritual abuse found "not a single case where there was clear corroborating evidence."

Nevertheless, parents are nervous -- even squeamish -- about their children's and teens' sexuality, often seeking to deny their offspring the sexual freedoms they themselves demanded at the same age. (Physician Victor Strasburger has even penned a paean to hypocrisy entitled "Getting Your Kids to Say 'No' in the '90s When You Said 'Yes' in the '60s."

In the past two decades youthful sexual desire has become widely pathologized. As Levine notes, "It's as if (parents) cannot imagine that their kids seek sex for the same reasons they do: They like or love the person they are having it with. It gives them a sense of beauty, worthiness, happiness, or power. And it feels good."

The panic surrounding youthful sexuality can perhaps best be compared to the war on drugs: Both are based on ideology rather than science, and no amount of evidence can change the minds of true believers. Both mask underlying social agendas in which concern for children is used to control the behavior of adults. And both engender problems of credibility as young people reject exhortations to "do as I say, not as I did."

Many adults recognize that they made mistakes in their youth and understandably wish to spare children similar missteps, especially in the age of AIDS. Yet too often, Levine contends, censorship and abstinence-only sex education are really an effort to hold back children's coming of age, offering parents an illusory "freedom from watching their kids grow up."

But denying young people knowledge about sex will not help them become responsible sexual citizens. As Levine notes, children today know about IPOs and the hole in the ozone layer, just as they know about abortion and sadomasochism. Parents cannot block out all uncomfortable knowledge.

In order "to give children a fighting chance in navigating the sexual world," Levine says, "adults need to saturate it with accurate, realistic information and abundant, varied images and narratives of love and sex."

If a person truly has the good of young people in mind, one would hope he or she would be interested in what research has to reveal. "Harmful to Minors" offers a plethora of findings, from studies showing that exposure to sexually explicit images does not harm children, to evidence that teens' sexual relationships with adults are not uniformly devastating, to research on the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education in delaying sexual activity.

But more crucial than research is listening to what children and teens have to say about their own experiences, honestly acknowledging our own experiences at those ages, and applying a healthy dose of common sense. While we are constantly reminded of the importance of believing young people's allegations of coercion and abuse, too often we give considerably less credence to their avowals of consent and pleasure.

Most of us came across sexual images in our youth, and most of us did not turn out to be sexual monsters. Further, there is no evidence that cultures in which explicit sexual imagery is prevalent (such as Denmark or the Netherlands) produce more sexual pathology than those in which such material is forbidden; in fact, there are indications that quite the opposite is the case.

In the explosive realm of adult-youth sex, many teens say that such relationships can be consensual and positive. And more than a few of us remember having such positive sexual relationships with adults when we ourselves were teens.

"Teens often seek out sex with older people, and they do so for understandable reasons: an older person makes them feel sexy and grown up, protected and special," writes Levine. "Often the sex is better than it would be with a peer who has as little skill as they do. For some teens, a romance with an older person can feel more like salvation than victimization."

Romantic heartbreak -- and plain old bad sex -– are just as likely with same-age peers as with older partners.

Within the gay community, especially, one often hears fond reminiscences of youthful sexual relationships with adults. For many gay men, a teenage relationship with an older man was their release from a homophobic family and peers and their introduction to a supportive community.

As lesbian syndicated columnist Paula Martinac recently wrote, the differences of opinion between gay men and lesbians regarding adult-youth sexuality represent an ongoing rift within the gay community...

Levine has taken considerable heat for holding up as a "good model" the Netherlands' age of consent law, under which young people ages 12-16 can legally consent to sex with older people who are not parents or authority figures, but under which charges can be brought if teens or their parents (with the Approval of the Council for the Protection of Children) believe the young person is being exploited. But her support for the Dutch law cannot be taken out of the context of that country's social welfare system and relaxed cultural attitudes about sex.

"In the Netherlands, children are respected as citizens with rights like everyone else, to housing, health care, good day care, school, and college," Levine told AlterNet. "They get sexuality education from the get-go, condoms are available in vending machines everywhere, abortion is free from the national health service, their parents receive generous parental leave and, if they choose to stay home longer with the kids, social welfare benefits to subsidize that important work. While protecting children, the Dutch (and other Europeans) do not infantilize them"...

Virtually every sex-related problem, from AIDS to incest, is correlated with poverty. It is these conditions, argues Levine -- not pedophiles or pornography -- that are truly harming young people...

Americans persist in defining sex-related problems as moral rather than material, and thus focusing on solutions that are "character building, not situation bettering"...

Such misplaced priorities are nothing new: In the late 19th century, as industrialization drove children into the factories, moralistic adults worried about saving them from sex.

From Levine's point of view, children are not the property of their parents and must be treated as citizens in their own right.

"Legally designating a class of people categorically unable to consent to sexual relations is not the best way to protect children, particularly when 'children' include everyone from birth to eighteen," she writes.

Indeed, Levine finds such an idea reminiscent of the now discredited dogma -- held by both social conservatives and some feminists -- that women, too, were paragons of innocence who did not experience desire, required protection, and were not truly capable of consent. And how, she wonders, has it come to pass that "it is only in the area of violent criminal activity that children (some as young as 11) are considered fully mature"?

How can we expect children and teens to learn about healthy sex and relationships if they cannot experiment and explore, with access to increasing information, freedom, and responsibility as they get older?

How can we hope that young people who have received abstinence-only sex education, been shielded from sexually explicit material in the media and on the Internet, been deprived of non-sexual touch from adults, and had no opportunity for sexual play with their peers will magically transform into worldly, responsible, sexually healthy adults upon attaining the age of majority (whatever that happens to be wherever they live)?...

The idea that young people must never have -- or even hear much about -- sex makes it difficult to teach them about the differences between consensual and nonconsensual sex, between healthy and exploitative sex, between safe and unsafe sex."

Links - 24th June 2014

University graduates have more risque sex - but those without a degree have more sex overall - "22 per cent of people without a degree have had a threesome, compared to 19 per cent of graduates... The news comes just after it was revealed that high earners have much less sex than low earners. Another study by Lovehoney found that just four per cent of top earners have sex every day - a figure that tripples for low earners. The survey also revealed that a third of people who earn more than £50,000 a year only have sex once a week. In contrast, just 17 per cent of those who earn less than £15,000 have sex just once a week."

Woman tells court: My husband's 'mistress' set me up - "The alleged theft took place on Sept 2 last year when the two women met for the first time while visiting Mr Ong at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, where he was warded after an operation. Dim sum was spilled and the two women got into a scuffle. Madam Koh jabbed her finger at Lee, while Mr Ong threw his drip stand in the direction of his wife, apparently in a bid to separate them, the court heard."

Tyrant of the under 10s: Football coach fired after he tells boys they're not playing for fun - "When the village boys’ team appointed a new manager, they were not expecting a boss with the fervour of a Jose Mourinho or a Sir Alex Ferguson. So parents of the under-10s side were aghast when coach Justin Byrne outlined his win-at-all-costs philosophy. Mr Byrne insisted he was not there so the boys could have fun playing football – he was ‘only interested in winning’. He said parents who complained when their boy did not make the first team were ‘not doing their sons any favours’. Those who opposed him were ‘weak-minded’ and ‘think sport is about knitting’."

These photos of '80s Singapore will make your jaw drop - "In 1980, Parisian photographer Alain Soldeville visited Singapore and discovered a legion of androgynous beauties at Bugis Street, of whom he has amassed an amazing gallery of photos"

Minecraft’s terms and conditions to clarify meaning of “trolling” - "Mojang will change Minecraft’s terms and conditions to clarify the meaning of “trolling” after confusion about the term made one player think he had to remove his Minecraft videos from YouTube, Markus “Notch” Persson said on his website. Minecraft player ZexyZek has a YouTube channel with over 700,000 subscribers. He makes a series of videos called Minecraft Trolling, where he’ll join a server or invite players to his server and annoy them, scare them, destroy their creations, and basically raise hell in a variety of creative but not very mean ways. “Because we apparently have to have them, we have terms and conditions on how you can use Minecraft,” Notch said. “Someone at some point added the term “no trolling” to these terms. I assume this was done in good faith to prevent Minecraft being used to harass or bully people, but ‘trolling’ is a very problematic term.”"

Cheaters Have Higher Risk for STDs than People in 'Open' Relationships - "people in monogamous relationships who cheated on their partners were less likely to use condoms, and less likely to discuss their history of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) during their sexual digression compared with people in open relationships who had sex with someone other than their primary partner"

When Student-Adviser Tensions Erupt, the Results Can Be Fatal - New York Times - "Take the case of Theodore Streleski, a Stanford mathematician. In 1978 he bludgeoned his adviser, Karel deLeeuw, to death with a ball-peen hammer after being told that, after 19 years of graduate school, he wasn’t going to get his doctorate. Mr. Streleski received a sentence of seven years based on a defense of diminished capacity, according to newspaper accounts. He did not admit any remorse when he was freed, but said he didn’t have any plans to kill again... Frederick M. Davidson, an engineering student at San Diego State, began the defense of his master’s thesis by gunning down the three professors on his committee"

Dyke: BBC is 'hideously white' - "The BBC is 'hideously white' according to Greg Dyke, the corporation's director-general. Mr Dyke did not say the corporation was racist but acknowledged that, in common with the Metropolitan Police, it had a problem with race relations. He admitted the management structure at the BBC was more than 98 per cent white"
Good luck if you call an organisation "hideously (minority)"

Nagging could cost the lives of hundreds of men - "For most men a nagging wife can be little more than an irritation, but the arguments and worries that stem from a demanding partner may actually be a health hazard. New research has found that the burden of a demanding partner is linked to hundreds of extra deaths each year. Men who were subjected to 'nagging', constant demands and worries from their partners, were 2.5 as likely to die within ten years than those with less stressful relationships. The effect is so strong it could account for hundreds of deaths a year, the researchers suggested. However women may be more immune to nagging as there was little effect on their death rates, it was found."

Man shoots at 3 women who refuse sex with him and friends, police say

Is Malaysia an Islamic or secular state? - "by the characteristics that define a secular state then Malaysia by definition is not a secular state; it violates the principle attributes of a secular state on multiple fronts. Breaches to the tenants of a secular state are not the exception; it is almost the rule. In Malaysia, religion is not separated from the state but entrenched, empowered, enforced, expressed and elevated."

Drugs, prostitution and smuggling—Italy’s GDP is about to get much bigger - "The drug trade, prostitution and smuggling are to be added to Italy’s GDP calculations from Sep 2014, Italy’s institute of statistics, ISTAT, announced on May 22 (link in Italian). The change is meant to comply with an EU regulation from 2013 that requires all transactions, regardless of their legal status, to be accounted for. Italy is home to several huge organized-crime organizations, and according to a 2012 estimate by Italy’s central bank, the country’s criminal economy is worth about €170 billion ($230 billion), around 11% of 2012 GDP"

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens | The Onion - America's Finest News Source - "residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”"

Erotica Authors Lead Hotter Sex Lives Than Most Americans, Says Survey - "The 103 authors surveyed last month are overwhelmingly women, heterosexual, married and publish under a pen name. They’re no more likely to have had sex for the first time any earlier than the average American, and the survey found they’re 10% less likely to cheat on a spouse. But they do report a greater variety and incidence of intimate encounters. Chalk it up to professional development. Nearly half claim to have had sex as research for their work, and three out of four have based a fictional sex scene on an actual experience. According to the survey, erotic romance authors are more likely to have sex on a first date as well as to join a threesome. And among the heterosexual authors who dished on their sex lives, one in five has had sex with someone of the same gender. That range of sexual experience could have contributed to lowering their overall esteem for Fifty Shades of Grey. On average, the authors surveyed gave the novel only two out of five stars."

Registry hack enables continued updates for Windows XP - "A single registry setting makes Windows Update think your XP system is Windows XP POSReady, which will receive updates for another five years."

The brave new world of DIY faecal transplant - "You would have to be desperate to take a sample of your husband's excrement, liquidise it in a kitchen blender and then insert it into your body with an off-the-shelf enema kit... "I kept thinking, 'I'm giving my kid a bag of [faeces] for Christmas. It wasn't ideal, but he was just so sick and I knew if I waited until after the Christmas holidays he would be dead"...
"We had one woman who said: 'Can I use my dog's stool?'" says Brandt. "I'm sure that there are some people out there who are saying, 'Well, I have a horse. He's pretty healthy and he has an adequate supply of stool - I'll use his stool." But using animal stool is absolutely not recommended"

To help youths better appreciate Singapore, send them overseas: MP Ang Wei Neng - "To shape the values of Singaporean students, the Education Ministry could consider sending them on mandatory overseas community service trips to rural villages in neighbouring countries. Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC Mr Ang Wei Neng said in Parliament today (May 29) that such field trips will help youths here better appreciate Singapore's success, combat the sense of entitlement and inculcate the value of service to others."
Friend: "Err so only the young ones have a sense of entitlement and should be sent on hardship trips? Those whose oversights caused huge mistakes and won't apologise nor even pretend to offer to step down are ok? Who are the ones exhibiting a divine sense of entitlement? Why not lead them to Thailand or south korea or maybe the USA and see how politicians are scrutinised by society and how they react with basic dignity and humility.

X-Men: How Famke Janssen Kept Her Days of Future Past Cameo a Secret - ""I really think that it's so much harder for women to star and direct at the same time because we waste so much time in the makeup trailer. It's a sad reality,"; she said. "Whereas for men, they just show up and it's like, 'We love you just the way you are.' We have to go through a process of an hour and a half or however long it takes and then touch ups before and after lunch. It's too much time away from the camera.""

Coca-Cola Friendly Twist - YouTube

Cynicism linked to greater dementia risk - "Tindle was the lead author on a study that examined the health outcomes of over 97,000 women and found that cynical women had a higher hazard of cancer-related mortality... Research shows cynical people also tend to smoke more, exercise less and weigh more. They also have a harder time following even the best medical advice, because their cynical natures won't let them believe what people tell them, Tindle said. Past studies have also found that people who are cynical have a higher rate of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular problems and cancer-related deaths. Cardiovascular disease can contribute to dementia because it essentially damages small blood vessels everywhere in your body, including in your brain. Cynical people also tend to have greater stress responses"

Tabby named Puddy Cat and owner defrauded of $450K, prosecutors say - "A 7-year-old tabby called Puddy Cat is at the center of an extensive embezzlement case out of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Puddy Cat once stood to inherit part of a trust fund worth at least $450,000, until its owner fell victim to a couple of swindling neighbors, prosecutors said. Puddy Cat belongs to a 74-year-old Brighton woman who is suffering from progressive dementia and living in a nursing home. The woman created the "Puddy Cat Trust" in her will and specified that upon her death, the tabby was to be cared for through the trust and that all remaining assets would benefit animal welfare groups."

Being Surprised that the Pope is still Catholic

Pope Francis’ new clothes: Why his progressive image is white smoke and mirrors

"On January 17, 2014, Politico pointed out that in an interview given by the pope in August 2013, and published in September of that year, “Pope Francis said the church did not have to talk about gay marriage and abortion all the time.” And yet, “the very next day [after the interview was published] Francis condemned abortion as ‘unjust.’” Furthermore, after the interview was given, a week before its publication, the pope excommunicated a priest from Melbourne, Australia, Greg Reynolds, for advocating for female clergy and gay marriage.  Pope Francis’s seemingly understanding words about gay marriage and abortion were sandwiched in between two events that completely undermined that message."


According to Salon, because Francis talks about abortion once, he is talking about abortion all the time and he was lying when he claimed that the church didn't have to talk about it all the time.


From a more level-headed source:

With few words on abortion, Pope Francis shows a new way to be pro-life

"The pope's comparative reticence on abortion became evident to many observers a few months into his pontificate. At a June Vatican Mass dedicated to pro-life causes, an event that had been planned under Pope Benedict, Pope Francis surprised many when delivered a homily without any reference to abortion, euthanasia or any other specific threat to life.

During his weeklong visit to Brazil the following month, the pope said nothing about the country's moves to liberalize abortion (or its legalization of same-sex marriage), explaining afterward to reporters that the "church has already expressed itself perfectly on that."

Among people used to regarding the pope as the world's foremost advocate for the unborn, his silence was disquieting.

"Some people think that the Holy Father should talk more about abortion," Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston said in a speech to the Knights of Columbus in August"


Comments:

"Liberals actively discourage the practice of religion and then complain when a major religious institution doesn't reflect their views."

"I think the author needs to to study the history of christianity a little to understand how even a word is a small revolution in this institution. In 1964, in Vatican II, the Church has "forgiven" the Jews for the crucifixtion of Jesus Christ, and around the same time admitted that Galileo shouldn't have been excommunicated. This is the timing of the Chruch, if you are disappointed by this pope study some history"

"The whole article was replete with a kind enraged disappointment because Catholicism is not going to be completely reconfigured in order to cosy up to secular liberalism; that isn't going to happen today, tomorrow or indeed, ever."

"The Pope is no Stalin, nor Gregory the Great, nor Constantine. He cannot just fly in the face of culture or he will be pissing into the wind. Doesn't the writer get that?"


"to insist that NOTHING HAS CHANNGED based largely on birth control (which is decidedly NOT going to change, not any time soon) is disingenuous. He's making pope statements that are unusual and shifts are happening.

I'm also unimpressed by the big "reveal" that they have a publicist. Of course they have a publicist. They're a mammoth international organization, they're going to have a publicist.

Now I'll scroll down and read about how religion is the source of most or even all bad in the world. Which is absurd. Humans organize themselves into all manner of groups, and as soon as they've achieved an "us" and a "them" someone gets shitty to the "them." It would be nice if religion actually WAS above this particularly ugly human trait, but it clearly is not."


"Oh my god. It's still the Catholic Church. It's an almost 2000 year old institution with converts ALL OVER THE WORLD. They still get the vast majority of their US donations from the elderly, most of whom are very unlikely to share your urbane and progressive worldview. I know my grandmother doesn't.

Anyways, I'm glad to have to Catholic Church around despite their relatively backwards views/policies. Lord knows one priest has done more to change lives (for the better) and the organization has done more to help the poor than the rest of you ever will b****ing from the sidelines. (Oh wait, I heard you gave a quarter to a homeless guy today - nevermind!)

In this current political climate, liberals kind of have to take what we can get. I, for one, would like to keep the Catholic Church on our side. There's no use arguing over small potatoes like birth control coverage for church employees."


"If you expect this Pope to single-handedly reverse all of the Church's teachings on the above topics, you'll probably be disappointed.

But if you expect him to bring the Church into fuller involvement with movements for economic equality, and to work to silence the exclusionary and bigoted rhetoric coming out of certain bishops, you're probably on the right track.

I would urge you not to trip your allies as they walk in the door to join you."


"Translation: "He isn't doing exactly what I WANT about the issue I CARE ABOUT, therefore he SUCKS AT EVERYTHING!!!"

As always, the perfect is the enemy of the good."


"A kinder and gentler Joe Ratzinger."
"Yeah, because Ratzinger initiated an overhaul of corrupt Church practices, had meetings with survivors of abuse, went up against the Mafia, told all the ultra-rich that their way is godless and evil, etc., etc.

Yep, they're exactly the same. *eyeroll*"