Has Feminism Made Women Happier? A Comprehensive Review | Psych and Society
"We will review five studies that have been published which directly measure the extent to which various aspects of women’s rights correlate with women’s life satisfaction at the level of countries or geographical regions. It should be noted that all three of the four studies that look at global correlations used the same dataset on male and female life satisfaction, the World Values Survey. So in that specific regard these studies should not be seen as truly replicating each other.
A study published by Meisenberg and Woodley (2014) looked at 96 different countries between 1981 and 2010 investigating the extent to which relative female life satisfaction (that is average female life satisfaction minus average male life satisfaction) correlated with the gender gap in education, the proportion of legislators, managers, and officials who are female, the female to male labour force ratio, and the percentage of females in the non-agricultural labour force. In all case the correlation was negative and statistically significant – between -0.42 to -0.28. That is, women tend to be the happiest relative to men in countries that have large gaps in male and female educational attainment, a low proportion of female leaders, and a smaller amount of women in the labour force.
A study published by Vieira Lima (2011) performed a similar analysis on relative female life-satisfaction, but used different measures of women’s rights. Looking at 80 different countries the study found that women’s social and economic rights as assessed by the CIRI Human Rights Database, women’s labour force participation, and egalitarian attitudes towards women were negatively correlated with relative female happiness.
A study published by Lalive and Stutzer (2009) explores the same association, but rather than on a national level this study used regional variation in Switzerland. The researchers used voting patterns from a 1981 Swiss national referendum on an equal rights amendment to the constitution of which a central proposition was that “women and men shall have the right to equal pay for work of equal value” as a measurement of gender egalitarian attitudes among communities. Not surprisingly, communities with more egalitarian attitudes tended to have smaller income gaps between men and women. Despite this, employed females in communities more accepting of egalitarian attitudes towards gender had significantly lower levels of life satisfaction (r=-0.1) and higher levels of perceived gender discrimination (r=-0.2).
A study published by Tesch-Römer, Motel-Klingebiel, Tomasik (2007) continues in the same line of research and finds similar results: female economic activity is associated with lower relative female life satisfaction. Although a novel finding was that among countries that have less egalitarian gender norms this association is reserved while in countries that have stronger egalitarian gender norms this relationship is strengthened.
And finally, a study published by Zweig (2014) looked at the association between relative female happiness and economic development as well as female representation in parliament. It found no statistically significant associations above the 95% confidence threshold although the correlations found were negative and statistically significant at a 90% confidence threshold. Regardless, it should not be considered a failed replication given that no other study found associations for these particular measures either indicating that female representation in politics is probably not a good proxy for whatever mechanism is behind the consistent negative association between relative female happiness and women’s rights...
There are many large surveys, such the National Longitudinal Surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, available for studying the effects of increased relative earnings of wives on marital stability and satisfaction. Unfortunately though, despite the large amount of attention researchers have put into this topic the findings are often highly contradictory. The chart below [found in the original article] organizes the results of eleven studies on the effects that relative spousal income has on marital happiness and the risk of marital disruption (such as divorce or separation). The majority of these studies (eight out of twelve) have found that the more a wife earns relative to her husband the less happy she is with the marriage or the higher the risk of marital disruption is. These studies differ in their results as much as in their methods – they have different sample sizes, different demographic controls, different measures, and some are cross-sectional while others are longitudinal. So clearly, drawing conclusions with certainty from these findings is difficult until a proper meta-analysis is conducted, but they do provide tentative support for the theory that increased earnings on the part of wives has had a deleterious effect on marital satisfaction and marital stability. Based on the results of these studies it appears that the mechanism by which increased relative earnings of wives relates to decreased marital instability is that of less household specialization and greater economic independence of both partners which reduces the economic and domestic benefits of marriage relative to separation...
Several studies have found that traditional gender role attitudes within marriage are associated with increased marital satisfaction:
- A 2006 study published in the journal Social Forces found that traditional views of marriage were associated with higher marital satisfaction for wives even after controlling for social, economic, and demographic variables (Wilcox & Nock, 2006). It also found that women who share a normative commitment to marriage with their partners were more satisfied with the emotion work done by their husbands.
- A study published in the journal American Sociological Review used longitudinal survey data from 1980 to 1988 and found that as wives’ attitudes became more egalitarian their perceived marital quality declined (Amato & Booth, 1995). Interestingly, for husbands, as their attitudes became more egalitarian their perceived marital quality increased. The study also found that marriage quality eight years prior did not predict changes in gender role attitudes indicating that gender attitudes are likely influencing marital quality and not the other way around.
- A study published in the Journal of Family Issues that used GSS data from 1974 to 1986 found that women who held more traditional views on gender such as agreement with statements like “women should take care of running the house and leave running the country up to men” reported higher marital and individual happiness (Lueptow, Guss, & Hyden, 1989).
- In a 1992 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family researchers conducted interviews of married couples and found that while expectations of traditional gender roles did not relate to marital quality women’s perceptions of their husband’s gender role expectations did negatively correlated with marital quality among women (Vannoy & Philliber, 1992). These findings seem to contradict the others, although this may be due to the nature of the questions asked. Rather than ask questions about husbands’ and wives’ normative view of gender roles they were asked whether or not they or their spouse should be the one personally to do various tasks such as childcare or money management...
Given that on the national level and in regards to marriage feminism seems to an unambiguous negative influence it comes as somewhat of a surprise that at the individual level the empirical evidence on the effects of feminist ideology on women’s overall satisfaction is not only scarce, but also seems to suggest that the relationship is not negative – that is, women who hold feminists beliefs are not less satisfied with their lives. I’d like to emphasize the extent to which this topic has remained understudied: after multiple attempts to locate evidence via database searchers and attempts to contact researchers who published on this topic I’ve only been able to find three rather low-quality studies...
Given these findings the question inevitably becomes, “Has feminism failed?”. And the answer to this question largely depends on what you believe feminism was meant to accomplish. After all, in terms of objective measures of women’s economic, political, and social standing feminism has clearly achieved much. And so if the success of feminism hinges on the empowerment and liberation of women I don’t think it could be convincingly argued that feminism has failed...
maybe the big questions isn’t whether or not feminism has failed, but rather it’s whether or not the goals of feminism are even desirable. Does feminism actually improve the lives of women? To that question the data gives us a clear answer: not only is there no good evidence that feminist societies, feminist relationships, or feminist beliefs make women more satisfied with their lives, but if anything, the evidence suggests that some of these things are actually detrimental to women’s psychological well-being. And so if feminism should be judged on the extent to which it improves the quality of women’s lives then I think we can confidently say that, yes, it has failed."
At first I thought it was just that one study showing that women were becoming less happy as they gained more rights (The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness by Stevenson and Wolfers (2009), which all the feminists got upset about) but there're 4 others with similar results
L'origine de Bert
Friday, September 16, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Links - 15th September 2016
Robi, a bilingual and Singlish-uttering robot, is now available in Singapore - "maker DeAgostini isn’t shipping Robi as a complete robot. Robi’s assembly instructions and model parts are delivered with an educational magazine about robotics over the course of 70 weekly issues. Each issue retails at S$28.90, other than the first issue (at a promo price of S$9.90); and issue 43 and 67 (S$55 each) and issue 62 and 63 (S$42 each), because these four issues contain more expensive parts like the CPU, sensors, and speech recognition board. Put another way, at the end of the day, Robi will set you back S$2,082.40."
It's a trap!
Canadians Regret Welcoming Muslim Refugees - "While 60 percent of Ontarians say they initially supported the decision to import Syrian refugees, 75 percent now say Muslim immigrants hold fundamentally different values and a majority now say Islam’s mainstream doctrines promote violence. Only one-third of those in the region have a positive impression of the religion."
The Dallas Killings Were Inevitable - "In Oakland, they spray painted “Fuck the pigs” and “Fuck the OPD (Oakland Police Department)” on concrete barriers. They splattered red paint on the door of the police building, and spray painted “Fuck the police murderers” on its walls. They also shot fireworks at the police building. In New York City, white people held up signs saying “The slaughter of black people must be stopped”... It is dogma in BLM circles that “the slaughter of black people” is the work of whites. In the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, three of the six officers charged were black, and they were the ones accused of the most serious crimes, but it didn’t matter. Blacks are still the victims of white racism."
Know Which Ingredients in Lip Balm Actually Cause Dry Lips - "America News Now spoke to dermatologist Gary Slaughter, who found camphor, phenol and menthol were the ingredients in bad lip balm. When you spread it on it seems to soothe at first, but quickly dries up and requires reapplication. Additionally, OL (which indicates alcohol) and salicylic acid are two more ingredients that may cause some people irritation"
Can Your DNA Determine If You’re a Morning Person or Night Owl? - "A new genome-wide association study (GWAS) published by the personal genetics company 23andMe identifies an array of genetic variants associated with being a morning person."
Rhino horn now more valuable than gold, diamonds and cocaine, at $60K a pound
Kalyn Chapman James, first black Miss Alabama, calls Dallas cop killer a 'martyr'
3D-Printed Synthetic Rhino Horns Could Save Rhinos - "Engineers there have figured out a way to turn keratin powder and rhino DNA into a substance that is genetically similar to natural rhino horn. The plan is to flood Chinese and Vietnamese markets, where demand is high, and bring down the price... The biotech company also wants to produce beer using the synthetic rhino horn, which is seen by some in Asia a way to treat hangovers."
Where have all the soldiers gone? - "Colonel Martin Herem, of KVÜÕA, having analysed the problems with conscripts, is among those who think DRA medical committee statistics do not reflect the real state of Estonian men. «Today we say: 39 percent of men are fit to serve, the rest are sick. In my opinion, this is a demoralising picture. Most of the men walking the streets thus ought to be lame, crooked, or mentally ill – but that’s obviously not the case,» reasons the Colonel."
Chapter Four: The Militarisation of the South China Sea | IISS - "In 2014 China began to implement a master plan to expand and consolidate its presence in the South China Sea, transforming seven small rocks and low-tide elevations that it occupied into artificial islands. In the space of 18 months, Chinese vessels dredged and pumped sand from the seabed and coral ripped out of nearby reefs until these features encompassed an area of 3,000 acres (12 square kilometres). For comparison, other claimants in the South China Sea – Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – expanded the land area of the features they already occupied by only 100 acres (0.4 sq km) over 45 years. In 2015, the pace and scope of China’s reclamation activities accelerated markedly and it began to construct infrastructure, including airstrips and multi-level building"
The fall of Salon.com - "A Facebook page dedicated to celebrating the 20th anniversary of digital media pioneer Salon is functioning as a crowdsourced eulogy... “Sadly, Salon doesn’t really exist anymore,” wrote Laura Miller, one of Salon’s founding editors who left the site for Slate last fall. “The name is still being used, but the real Salon is gone”... in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way... Two guys even created a vicious parody account, @salondotcom, to mock Salon’s increasingly strident brand of leftism, with fake tweets like “Ten signs your cat might be racist” and “Should GMOs come with trigger warnings?”... "[In 1995] the web rewarded quickness, the web rewarded saying something that other people were not saying,” Walsh said. “The web also rewarded speed.” After a beat, she added: “At that time, the web rewarded reporting as well. I used to make the case that it's still like that, but I'm not sure I feel that way anymore”... the new strategy rewarded aggregation and provocation – in other words, hot takes. Both are easy to produce at scale, since they do not require writers to spend time reporting out a story... Twelve current and former employees said they were discouraged from doing original journalism out of a concern that time spent reporting could be better spent writing commentary and aggregate stories... “The low point arrived when my editor G-chatted me with the observation that our traffic figures were lagging that day and ordered me to ‘publish something within the hour,’” Andrew Leonard, who left Salon in 2014, recalled in a post. “Which, translated into my new reality, meant ‘Go troll Twitter for something to get mad about — Uber, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Tea Party Republicans — and then produce a rant about it.’"
Faroe Islands fit cameras to sheep to create Google Street View - "Tired of waiting for Google to map the archipelago, Faroe Islanders have launched Sheep View 360, enlisting their ovine population to do the leg work"
Men Produce Better Sperm When They’re Cheating On Their Partners - "A study carried out by the College of Wooster found that guys ejaculate faster and produce more, high quality sperm when they masturbate to a “novel female stimulus”. To you and I, a “novel female stimulus” is porn and what this means is that men are at their sexually reproductive best when they’re with a new woman. Study co-author Dr. Laura K. Sirot, assistant professor of biology, told the Huffington Post that ‘our study does not suggest anything about whether monogamy was favoured or disfavoured by natural selection. However, the results of this study and other studies of human differential ejaculation behaviour suggest that extra-pair (or extramarital) copulations may have occurred in our evolutionary past.’... When men see doctors about possible infertility problems, they are asked to masturbate to novel female stimuli. What the University of Ohio have discovered means that this sperm might be of a high quality than the sperm they are producing with their partners. This can, therefore, conceal the problem from doctors."
COMMENT: Lee Wei Ling... a dissident in the making? - "That has been really the result of Lee Kuan Yew’s stature and his ability to instill fear among his confidantes and others that if they showed their dissent in public, the consequences will be disastrous... She also lost ground when she complained that the paper, in not publishing her article, had curtailed her freedom of speech. It was laughable that she should complain about a principle that many have complained about for ages and has been dismissed by her father’s and her brother’s governments... One of the first battlefields is likely to be the family’s Oxley Road house, which she and her family want demolished eventually. Lee Kuan Yew had also stated in his will for this wish to be carried out.But conservation experts believe that the more than 100-year-old property should be preserved because of its historical value. It is very difficult to see how the Preservation of Monuments Board can go against this important body of opinion and rule in favour of the Lee family. And if that happens, Dr Lee is unlikely to take this sitting down."
Chinese wedding traditions – The Wedding Script - "Crying and picking up the bride – The bride, covered by a red head-kerchief, must cry with her mother to show her reluctance to leave home. She would be led or carried by her elder brother to the sedan. In the meeting party, the groom would meet a series of difficulties intentionally set in his path. Only after coping with these could he pass to see his wife-to-be."
More young people in Singapore staying single - "Prof Straughan suggested targeting efforts to encourage earlier marriage at those who are not dating. But finding a significant other can be awkward in Singapore, she added. "There's no culture here where you can walk into a bar and say, 'Hi singles, I'm here'." To overcome the obstacle, she said bosses need to encourage their employees not to work late, by say, turning off the air-conditioning at 7pm"
Why boys with sisters are more likely to be Republicans - "“Having sisters makes males more politically conservative in terms of their gender role attitudes and their partisanship,” they wrote. “Particularly for gender role attitudes, we find that these political socialization effects persist until respondents are well into adulthood.”"
The Real Reason Behind Public Smoking Bans - "“I discovered the evidence was really weak,” explained lead author Ronald Bayer, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “The evidence of harm to non-smokers on the beach or in a park from someone smoking is virtually non-existent.” Bayer is points out that there is, however, an important public health benefit from such bans. “They make it more difficult for smokers to smoke,” Bayer told us, “and contribute in an important way to the ‘denormalization’ of smoking”... when my students of public health talked about illicit drugs like heroin or cocaine or marijuana, they adopted a libertarian point of view — emphasizing how the government has no business intruding on people’s choices and all those negative consequences. But when I raised the issue of tobacco, they all became in a way, authoritarian... The evidence that fish and birds are dying because of cigarette butts is virtually non-existent. And even the evidence that seeing someone in a park or beach will encourage kids to smoke is extremely weak"
How Can Liberals Be Pro-Choice on Abortion and Anti-Choice on Everything Else? - "Marco Rubio recently drew a distinction between discriminating against people (e.g., by refusing to serve an LGBT customer at a restaurant) and declining to participate in an event (e.g., by refusing to officiate at a same-sex wedding). And there is another distinction, spelled out in an amicus brief by Eugene Volokh in the Elane Photography case, between forcing people to provide services that have no expressive component (such as driving a limousine) and services that do (such as writing press releases for various groups). Given that, as Volokh wrote, “speech compulsions are generally as unconstitutional as speech restrictions,” you could argue that photographers, writers, and perhaps even cake-makers have a First Amendment right not to provide expressive content with which they disagree. Consider, for instance, whether a Jewish printer should have to print placards promoting the American Nazi Party. Or consider the views of Kathy Trautvetter, a lesbian who owns a T-shirt company. Despite her sexual orientation, she defended a Christian printer’s right not to make signs for a gay-pride event: “When I read the story I immediately felt, ‘If I were in his shoes, what would they be forcing me to do?’ ”... If a pregnant woman is not responsible for the welfare of the child within her womb—the child she willingly helped create—then why should that pregnant woman be responsible for the welfare of a child she has never met? Or a middle-aged man halfway across the country who just lost a job? Or an old woman five states away who needs a hip replacement? Indeed, why should anyone be responsible for anybody’s welfare but their own?"
Kids of pushy parents 'face higher risk of depression'
Nude Hercules statue gets removable penis for special events - "The three-metre statue, which stands in a park in Arcachon, south-western France, was deprived of its member so often that the local council decided it would be best to leave it off — except during public events or ceremonies. The mayor, Yves Foulon told the Sud-Ouest newspaper: “I wouldn’t wish anyone — not even my worst enemies — to go through what has been inflicted on this statue”... It is not the first time that the statue’s penis has caused problems. When the statue was erected in the Parc Mauresque in 1948 to symbolise the valiant struggle of the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation, a number of influential ladies of Arcachon complained that it was over-endowed. The sculptor, Claude Bouscau, was twice forced to shorten the phallus to render the statue inoffensive in their eyes."
It's a trap!
Canadians Regret Welcoming Muslim Refugees - "While 60 percent of Ontarians say they initially supported the decision to import Syrian refugees, 75 percent now say Muslim immigrants hold fundamentally different values and a majority now say Islam’s mainstream doctrines promote violence. Only one-third of those in the region have a positive impression of the religion."
The Dallas Killings Were Inevitable - "In Oakland, they spray painted “Fuck the pigs” and “Fuck the OPD (Oakland Police Department)” on concrete barriers. They splattered red paint on the door of the police building, and spray painted “Fuck the police murderers” on its walls. They also shot fireworks at the police building. In New York City, white people held up signs saying “The slaughter of black people must be stopped”... It is dogma in BLM circles that “the slaughter of black people” is the work of whites. In the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, three of the six officers charged were black, and they were the ones accused of the most serious crimes, but it didn’t matter. Blacks are still the victims of white racism."
Know Which Ingredients in Lip Balm Actually Cause Dry Lips - "America News Now spoke to dermatologist Gary Slaughter, who found camphor, phenol and menthol were the ingredients in bad lip balm. When you spread it on it seems to soothe at first, but quickly dries up and requires reapplication. Additionally, OL (which indicates alcohol) and salicylic acid are two more ingredients that may cause some people irritation"
Can Your DNA Determine If You’re a Morning Person or Night Owl? - "A new genome-wide association study (GWAS) published by the personal genetics company 23andMe identifies an array of genetic variants associated with being a morning person."
Rhino horn now more valuable than gold, diamonds and cocaine, at $60K a pound
Kalyn Chapman James, first black Miss Alabama, calls Dallas cop killer a 'martyr'
3D-Printed Synthetic Rhino Horns Could Save Rhinos - "Engineers there have figured out a way to turn keratin powder and rhino DNA into a substance that is genetically similar to natural rhino horn. The plan is to flood Chinese and Vietnamese markets, where demand is high, and bring down the price... The biotech company also wants to produce beer using the synthetic rhino horn, which is seen by some in Asia a way to treat hangovers."
Where have all the soldiers gone? - "Colonel Martin Herem, of KVÜÕA, having analysed the problems with conscripts, is among those who think DRA medical committee statistics do not reflect the real state of Estonian men. «Today we say: 39 percent of men are fit to serve, the rest are sick. In my opinion, this is a demoralising picture. Most of the men walking the streets thus ought to be lame, crooked, or mentally ill – but that’s obviously not the case,» reasons the Colonel."
Chapter Four: The Militarisation of the South China Sea | IISS - "In 2014 China began to implement a master plan to expand and consolidate its presence in the South China Sea, transforming seven small rocks and low-tide elevations that it occupied into artificial islands. In the space of 18 months, Chinese vessels dredged and pumped sand from the seabed and coral ripped out of nearby reefs until these features encompassed an area of 3,000 acres (12 square kilometres). For comparison, other claimants in the South China Sea – Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – expanded the land area of the features they already occupied by only 100 acres (0.4 sq km) over 45 years. In 2015, the pace and scope of China’s reclamation activities accelerated markedly and it began to construct infrastructure, including airstrips and multi-level building"
The fall of Salon.com - "A Facebook page dedicated to celebrating the 20th anniversary of digital media pioneer Salon is functioning as a crowdsourced eulogy... “Sadly, Salon doesn’t really exist anymore,” wrote Laura Miller, one of Salon’s founding editors who left the site for Slate last fall. “The name is still being used, but the real Salon is gone”... in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way... Two guys even created a vicious parody account, @salondotcom, to mock Salon’s increasingly strident brand of leftism, with fake tweets like “Ten signs your cat might be racist” and “Should GMOs come with trigger warnings?”... "[In 1995] the web rewarded quickness, the web rewarded saying something that other people were not saying,” Walsh said. “The web also rewarded speed.” After a beat, she added: “At that time, the web rewarded reporting as well. I used to make the case that it's still like that, but I'm not sure I feel that way anymore”... the new strategy rewarded aggregation and provocation – in other words, hot takes. Both are easy to produce at scale, since they do not require writers to spend time reporting out a story... Twelve current and former employees said they were discouraged from doing original journalism out of a concern that time spent reporting could be better spent writing commentary and aggregate stories... “The low point arrived when my editor G-chatted me with the observation that our traffic figures were lagging that day and ordered me to ‘publish something within the hour,’” Andrew Leonard, who left Salon in 2014, recalled in a post. “Which, translated into my new reality, meant ‘Go troll Twitter for something to get mad about — Uber, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Tea Party Republicans — and then produce a rant about it.’"
Faroe Islands fit cameras to sheep to create Google Street View - "Tired of waiting for Google to map the archipelago, Faroe Islanders have launched Sheep View 360, enlisting their ovine population to do the leg work"
Men Produce Better Sperm When They’re Cheating On Their Partners - "A study carried out by the College of Wooster found that guys ejaculate faster and produce more, high quality sperm when they masturbate to a “novel female stimulus”. To you and I, a “novel female stimulus” is porn and what this means is that men are at their sexually reproductive best when they’re with a new woman. Study co-author Dr. Laura K. Sirot, assistant professor of biology, told the Huffington Post that ‘our study does not suggest anything about whether monogamy was favoured or disfavoured by natural selection. However, the results of this study and other studies of human differential ejaculation behaviour suggest that extra-pair (or extramarital) copulations may have occurred in our evolutionary past.’... When men see doctors about possible infertility problems, they are asked to masturbate to novel female stimuli. What the University of Ohio have discovered means that this sperm might be of a high quality than the sperm they are producing with their partners. This can, therefore, conceal the problem from doctors."
COMMENT: Lee Wei Ling... a dissident in the making? - "That has been really the result of Lee Kuan Yew’s stature and his ability to instill fear among his confidantes and others that if they showed their dissent in public, the consequences will be disastrous... She also lost ground when she complained that the paper, in not publishing her article, had curtailed her freedom of speech. It was laughable that she should complain about a principle that many have complained about for ages and has been dismissed by her father’s and her brother’s governments... One of the first battlefields is likely to be the family’s Oxley Road house, which she and her family want demolished eventually. Lee Kuan Yew had also stated in his will for this wish to be carried out.But conservation experts believe that the more than 100-year-old property should be preserved because of its historical value. It is very difficult to see how the Preservation of Monuments Board can go against this important body of opinion and rule in favour of the Lee family. And if that happens, Dr Lee is unlikely to take this sitting down."
Chinese wedding traditions – The Wedding Script - "Crying and picking up the bride – The bride, covered by a red head-kerchief, must cry with her mother to show her reluctance to leave home. She would be led or carried by her elder brother to the sedan. In the meeting party, the groom would meet a series of difficulties intentionally set in his path. Only after coping with these could he pass to see his wife-to-be."
More young people in Singapore staying single - "Prof Straughan suggested targeting efforts to encourage earlier marriage at those who are not dating. But finding a significant other can be awkward in Singapore, she added. "There's no culture here where you can walk into a bar and say, 'Hi singles, I'm here'." To overcome the obstacle, she said bosses need to encourage their employees not to work late, by say, turning off the air-conditioning at 7pm"
Why boys with sisters are more likely to be Republicans - "“Having sisters makes males more politically conservative in terms of their gender role attitudes and their partisanship,” they wrote. “Particularly for gender role attitudes, we find that these political socialization effects persist until respondents are well into adulthood.”"
The Real Reason Behind Public Smoking Bans - "“I discovered the evidence was really weak,” explained lead author Ronald Bayer, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “The evidence of harm to non-smokers on the beach or in a park from someone smoking is virtually non-existent.” Bayer is points out that there is, however, an important public health benefit from such bans. “They make it more difficult for smokers to smoke,” Bayer told us, “and contribute in an important way to the ‘denormalization’ of smoking”... when my students of public health talked about illicit drugs like heroin or cocaine or marijuana, they adopted a libertarian point of view — emphasizing how the government has no business intruding on people’s choices and all those negative consequences. But when I raised the issue of tobacco, they all became in a way, authoritarian... The evidence that fish and birds are dying because of cigarette butts is virtually non-existent. And even the evidence that seeing someone in a park or beach will encourage kids to smoke is extremely weak"
How Can Liberals Be Pro-Choice on Abortion and Anti-Choice on Everything Else? - "Marco Rubio recently drew a distinction between discriminating against people (e.g., by refusing to serve an LGBT customer at a restaurant) and declining to participate in an event (e.g., by refusing to officiate at a same-sex wedding). And there is another distinction, spelled out in an amicus brief by Eugene Volokh in the Elane Photography case, between forcing people to provide services that have no expressive component (such as driving a limousine) and services that do (such as writing press releases for various groups). Given that, as Volokh wrote, “speech compulsions are generally as unconstitutional as speech restrictions,” you could argue that photographers, writers, and perhaps even cake-makers have a First Amendment right not to provide expressive content with which they disagree. Consider, for instance, whether a Jewish printer should have to print placards promoting the American Nazi Party. Or consider the views of Kathy Trautvetter, a lesbian who owns a T-shirt company. Despite her sexual orientation, she defended a Christian printer’s right not to make signs for a gay-pride event: “When I read the story I immediately felt, ‘If I were in his shoes, what would they be forcing me to do?’ ”... If a pregnant woman is not responsible for the welfare of the child within her womb—the child she willingly helped create—then why should that pregnant woman be responsible for the welfare of a child she has never met? Or a middle-aged man halfway across the country who just lost a job? Or an old woman five states away who needs a hip replacement? Indeed, why should anyone be responsible for anybody’s welfare but their own?"
Kids of pushy parents 'face higher risk of depression'
Nude Hercules statue gets removable penis for special events - "The three-metre statue, which stands in a park in Arcachon, south-western France, was deprived of its member so often that the local council decided it would be best to leave it off — except during public events or ceremonies. The mayor, Yves Foulon told the Sud-Ouest newspaper: “I wouldn’t wish anyone — not even my worst enemies — to go through what has been inflicted on this statue”... It is not the first time that the statue’s penis has caused problems. When the statue was erected in the Parc Mauresque in 1948 to symbolise the valiant struggle of the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation, a number of influential ladies of Arcachon complained that it was over-endowed. The sculptor, Claude Bouscau, was twice forced to shorten the phallus to render the statue inoffensive in their eyes."
Post ID: 7756564406291346763
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Links - 14th September 2016
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "Low interest rates really steal growth from the future. What they do is they take spending that would take place in the future and they bring it forward to today. And so whilst in the short term that's a good thing - it was the right thing to cut interest rates in 2008, 2009 in order to stimulate the economy in the wake of the financial crisis, now that the economy is back to sort of close to full employment, interest rates should really start going up in the US in particular because otherwise you just end up pulling forward more and more spending and eventually you have to get the payback"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, What is it like to live under siege? - "[On Aleppo] 'I would give them a hug. They need to feel that we are compassionate and to remain their human dignity is the most important thing of all'
'You haven't used the word hope. You have not said I would give them hope'
Because it would be very hypocritical. You know. How can we give them hope? To give them hope would be to lie to them and I don't want to lie to them'"
What Are You Waiting For? - Freakonomics Freakonomics - " FISHBACH: When other people were joining the line, then people reported that the smoothie tastes better.
Which, to Fishbach, showed that a line can signal value.
FISHBACH: In other words, once we wait for something, we value it more than if it was effortless, than if we never had to wait."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What does Brexit mean for Felixstowe? - "You're reminded that the golden rule of politics, of every election campaign, of every referendum, turned out to be fool's gold. It was not 'the economy, stupid'. It was instead concerns about democracy, sovereignty, control that triumphed...
'I'm not nervous at all, however it goes, because real people, in real lives will adapt. The people that are really worrying aren't normal people on the ground - it's the Establishment'"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, China v UK: The unexpected battle for second - "How's it going down on the Chinese media?
'Who has poisoned our dream team?'
'The worst performance in 5 Olympics'
'Are the judges biased against our athletes?...
When it comes to willpower, grit and pluck, Chinese expect to come top. How to cope then with the shock display of their national character from: Britain? Strategy Number One: Denial.
'We fell behind a small island country troubled by separatism? I don't believe it. And I refuse to give in'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, How human behaviour changes online - "The DSM doesn't... recognise internet addiction and I agree with that, because we cannot be addicted to air, and we cannot be addicted to water. We need technology to live in this day and age. So I actually like to consider it as maladaptive behavior...
'Around 3 or 4, there are some - there's some research to show positive aspects of interface with technology in terms of looking at language acquisition or fine motor skills, but certainly not under the age of 2. But more important than what age a child should look at a screen is, I turn the question back to parents and say: What age should you expose your infant to your screen use? Do you know that the average person checks their mobile phone 200 times a day?'
'And if you're doing that in front of your children and distracting from dealing with your children, you're doing them harm'
'Absolutely. And you're not making eye contact. Studies show: ethnographic studies looking at people in fast food restaurants, show that caregivers 60% of the time spend their time looking at their devices and when they speak to their children, they don't make eye contact'"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Cruising, Cruising: Bad for the World? - "You go to a hotel. You check in to a hotel. The person behind the counter, they only know your name because they see it on a computer. That's the last time they know your name. When you cruise, oh you never meet anybody staying in a hotel. When you cruise, you unpack. Within days you know all the staff. Within days you know many of the passengers. You develop friendships and relationships that you're going to have for the rest of your life. And it adds to the travel experience...
When you're at home, how many days a week do you see your best friends? Once, maybe twice? Here, you see them every day... A cruise becomes your second family'
Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe says Hillary will flip-flop on TPP — again
The Animation Pioneer Who Helped Disney Create Mickey Mouse - "Famous animator Chuck Jones once said of Iwekrs “Iwerks spelled backwards is screwy,” but maybe you need a screw loose to invent like Iwerks did."
India’s Cow Vigilantes - "In the state of Gujarat, four Dalit youths caught skinning a cow were stripped, tied, and beaten with iron rods by cow vigilantes who accused them of killing the animal (they had not). In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, two Dalit women were assaulted for supposedly carrying illegal cow meat (it was legal buffalo meat). In Punjab, two young Dalits were beaten and urinated upon for the same “crime.” A 16-year-old Kashmiri Muslim boy was murdered for having hitched a ride on a truck that was transporting cattle"
Topless tourists face fines as France cracks down on public nudity
Let it be known to Hitler’s “Hindu” fans that he thought of them as “Asiatic jugglers” and was planning to brutally rule over them
10 surprising facts about Mark Zuckerberg - "Facebook is blue because Zuckerberg is color-blind"
Thailands’s ladyboys and go-go girls face the axe — is seedy sex tourism over in Thailand? - "a clampdown could devastate the economy, which is still reeling from a massive recession in 2014. Some prostitutes make 5000 Baht (A$189) in a single night, which is sixteen times the minimum wage, and many send their income to relatives in rural parts of the country. If the industry is dissolved, thousands could find themselves out of work. However, some researchers suggest sex tourism is an entrenched part of Thai society, and that it links all the way back to the Korean and Vietnam wars. Manpavan Kaur, a research analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, calls it the “military sexual complex”."
How Paul Krugman Made Donald Trump Possible - " If you use the most vile language available on a good man like Romney, or on real candidates like Rubio and Cruz, you find you have none left for the Donald Trumps of the world—and no one is listening to you anyway. If every Republican is always unfit for the presidency then Trump is no different and it shouldn’t be surprising that rank-and-file Republican voters are lining up behind him. They know there aren’t actually any Republicans of which the media approves. There’s a joke among Republicans that the only GOP candidate the media likes is one who has no chance of winning. John McCain was a media darling when he lost in the 2000 primary to George W. Bush but not when he was actually running against a Democrat in 2008. The media bear a lot of responsibility for the creation of Trump, and treating all Republican presidential candidates as if they’re a danger to American society is just one way they’ve done it"
New National Poll Finds: More Americans Know Snow White's Dwarfs Than Supreme Court Judges, Homer Simpson Than Homer's Odyssey, and Harry Potter Than Tony Blair - "Americans are more familiar with the Seven Dwarfs, The Three Stooges, Harry Potter, Homer Simpson and Superman than the news of the day, world leaders or classic literature... Americans' knowledge of fictional super heroes and boy wizards eclipsed our collective knowledge of astronomy and world leaders. Krypton was identified correctly by 60% of the respondents as Superman's planet of origin, while only 37% were able to name Mercury as the closest planet to the sun. Our British counterparts might be surprised to learn that more Americans (57%) were able to correctly identify Harry Potter as the name of J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard who lives in England than were able to successfully name Tony Blair as the current Prime Minister of England - only 50%. "
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 159 - Colin Allen on "Do fish feel pain?" - "If we talk about fish generically, as a category, first, fish constitute 60% of all vertebrate species. It's a hugely diverse taxonomic group. Asking what it's like to be a fish, or are fish conscious, or do they suffer or feel pain, is even a broader question than asking, what is it like to be a primate, for instance. Primates are a relatively small taxonomic group compared to fish... If we talk about fish generically, as a category, first, fish constitute 60% of all vertebrate species. It's a hugely diverse taxonomic group. Asking what it's like to be a fish, or are fish conscious, or do they suffer or feel pain, is even a broader question than asking, what is it like to be a primate, for instance. Primates are a relatively small taxonomic group compared to fish."
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 164 - James Evans on "Using meta-knowledge to learn how science works" - "it's certainly taking people longer to produce professional science in some ways. What we don't know is whether that's because we've exhausted all of the low-hanging fruit, or if we've exhausted all the low-hanging fruit on the trees that we've chosen to pick from"
Episode 38: Pride Cometh Before The Fall - "It was, in fact, the PAP leaders themselves who caused the split and affected their own standing with the public through their own actions. And their downfall starts with how they treated the most popular politician in Singapore, the former Mayor of Singapore, Ong Eng Guan... The PAP leadership abused their powers by ordering Special Branch to dig up dirt on Ong. Allegations of perjury, dishonesty, and bigamy were leaked to the press."
Episode 37: The Nature of Colonialism - "The key difference between Lee, and Marshall and Lim Chin Siong, of course, was a moral one. That will come as no surprise to regular listeners of this podcast. Marshall stood up for justice. He never locked up anyone, and when the British locked up people against his wishes, he sought to have them put on trial as soon as possible. Lim, likewise, meant what he said, and stuck to that position throughout his abbreviated political career. If he locked people up without trial, he would then take responsibility for it and go to the people and explain why he did it for the common good. But Lee Kuan Yew of course interpreted “take responsibility” in a different way. He interpreted it as “avoid responsibility”. He did not want to take responsibility for locking people up without trial because he knew it was unpopular. Like the British and Lim Yew Hock, Lee also wanted to use detention without trial, to lock up his enemies and keep them locked up, but he knew that it was extremely unpopular, that it was associated with colonialism. The ability to arbitrarily destroy people’s lives, by slavery, by torture, by locking them up without trial by a government unaccountable to the people – those are the hallmarks of colonialism. But from Lee’s perspective, if he could lock people up while avoiding responsibility, well, that was okay too. He had no moral issue with destroying people’s lives. To him, it was a political issue. Can I destroy lives while ensuring that I get no blame, or better yet someone else takes the blame? If so, that’s okay. And that’s what Lee set out to do."
Episode 40: The Mercy of the Tunku - "Nine days before the Hong Lim election, the PAP Assemblyman for Anson, Baharuddin bin Mohamed Ariff, died of a sudden heart attack. His death triggered another by-election, to be held on 15 July. The PAP leadership, who had treated Hong Lim as a referendum on their government, doubled down, now declaring Anson a second referendum on their government. Can you imagine. It’s like people who lose a referendum demanding a second referendum… that’s crazy. That’s undemocratic. Anyway, the PAP leaders did the same thing as Hong Lim. They vilified their opponents and described apocalyptic scenarios if the PAP lost"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, What is it like to live under siege? - "[On Aleppo] 'I would give them a hug. They need to feel that we are compassionate and to remain their human dignity is the most important thing of all'
'You haven't used the word hope. You have not said I would give them hope'
Because it would be very hypocritical. You know. How can we give them hope? To give them hope would be to lie to them and I don't want to lie to them'"
What Are You Waiting For? - Freakonomics Freakonomics - " FISHBACH: When other people were joining the line, then people reported that the smoothie tastes better.
Which, to Fishbach, showed that a line can signal value.
FISHBACH: In other words, once we wait for something, we value it more than if it was effortless, than if we never had to wait."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What does Brexit mean for Felixstowe? - "You're reminded that the golden rule of politics, of every election campaign, of every referendum, turned out to be fool's gold. It was not 'the economy, stupid'. It was instead concerns about democracy, sovereignty, control that triumphed...
'I'm not nervous at all, however it goes, because real people, in real lives will adapt. The people that are really worrying aren't normal people on the ground - it's the Establishment'"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, China v UK: The unexpected battle for second - "How's it going down on the Chinese media?
'Who has poisoned our dream team?'
'The worst performance in 5 Olympics'
'Are the judges biased against our athletes?...
When it comes to willpower, grit and pluck, Chinese expect to come top. How to cope then with the shock display of their national character from: Britain? Strategy Number One: Denial.
'We fell behind a small island country troubled by separatism? I don't believe it. And I refuse to give in'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, How human behaviour changes online - "The DSM doesn't... recognise internet addiction and I agree with that, because we cannot be addicted to air, and we cannot be addicted to water. We need technology to live in this day and age. So I actually like to consider it as maladaptive behavior...
'Around 3 or 4, there are some - there's some research to show positive aspects of interface with technology in terms of looking at language acquisition or fine motor skills, but certainly not under the age of 2. But more important than what age a child should look at a screen is, I turn the question back to parents and say: What age should you expose your infant to your screen use? Do you know that the average person checks their mobile phone 200 times a day?'
'And if you're doing that in front of your children and distracting from dealing with your children, you're doing them harm'
'Absolutely. And you're not making eye contact. Studies show: ethnographic studies looking at people in fast food restaurants, show that caregivers 60% of the time spend their time looking at their devices and when they speak to their children, they don't make eye contact'"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Cruising, Cruising: Bad for the World? - "You go to a hotel. You check in to a hotel. The person behind the counter, they only know your name because they see it on a computer. That's the last time they know your name. When you cruise, oh you never meet anybody staying in a hotel. When you cruise, you unpack. Within days you know all the staff. Within days you know many of the passengers. You develop friendships and relationships that you're going to have for the rest of your life. And it adds to the travel experience...
When you're at home, how many days a week do you see your best friends? Once, maybe twice? Here, you see them every day... A cruise becomes your second family'
Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe says Hillary will flip-flop on TPP — again
The Animation Pioneer Who Helped Disney Create Mickey Mouse - "Famous animator Chuck Jones once said of Iwekrs “Iwerks spelled backwards is screwy,” but maybe you need a screw loose to invent like Iwerks did."
India’s Cow Vigilantes - "In the state of Gujarat, four Dalit youths caught skinning a cow were stripped, tied, and beaten with iron rods by cow vigilantes who accused them of killing the animal (they had not). In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, two Dalit women were assaulted for supposedly carrying illegal cow meat (it was legal buffalo meat). In Punjab, two young Dalits were beaten and urinated upon for the same “crime.” A 16-year-old Kashmiri Muslim boy was murdered for having hitched a ride on a truck that was transporting cattle"
Topless tourists face fines as France cracks down on public nudity
Let it be known to Hitler’s “Hindu” fans that he thought of them as “Asiatic jugglers” and was planning to brutally rule over them
10 surprising facts about Mark Zuckerberg - "Facebook is blue because Zuckerberg is color-blind"
Thailands’s ladyboys and go-go girls face the axe — is seedy sex tourism over in Thailand? - "a clampdown could devastate the economy, which is still reeling from a massive recession in 2014. Some prostitutes make 5000 Baht (A$189) in a single night, which is sixteen times the minimum wage, and many send their income to relatives in rural parts of the country. If the industry is dissolved, thousands could find themselves out of work. However, some researchers suggest sex tourism is an entrenched part of Thai society, and that it links all the way back to the Korean and Vietnam wars. Manpavan Kaur, a research analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, calls it the “military sexual complex”."
How Paul Krugman Made Donald Trump Possible - " If you use the most vile language available on a good man like Romney, or on real candidates like Rubio and Cruz, you find you have none left for the Donald Trumps of the world—and no one is listening to you anyway. If every Republican is always unfit for the presidency then Trump is no different and it shouldn’t be surprising that rank-and-file Republican voters are lining up behind him. They know there aren’t actually any Republicans of which the media approves. There’s a joke among Republicans that the only GOP candidate the media likes is one who has no chance of winning. John McCain was a media darling when he lost in the 2000 primary to George W. Bush but not when he was actually running against a Democrat in 2008. The media bear a lot of responsibility for the creation of Trump, and treating all Republican presidential candidates as if they’re a danger to American society is just one way they’ve done it"
New National Poll Finds: More Americans Know Snow White's Dwarfs Than Supreme Court Judges, Homer Simpson Than Homer's Odyssey, and Harry Potter Than Tony Blair - "Americans are more familiar with the Seven Dwarfs, The Three Stooges, Harry Potter, Homer Simpson and Superman than the news of the day, world leaders or classic literature... Americans' knowledge of fictional super heroes and boy wizards eclipsed our collective knowledge of astronomy and world leaders. Krypton was identified correctly by 60% of the respondents as Superman's planet of origin, while only 37% were able to name Mercury as the closest planet to the sun. Our British counterparts might be surprised to learn that more Americans (57%) were able to correctly identify Harry Potter as the name of J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard who lives in England than were able to successfully name Tony Blair as the current Prime Minister of England - only 50%. "
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 159 - Colin Allen on "Do fish feel pain?" - "If we talk about fish generically, as a category, first, fish constitute 60% of all vertebrate species. It's a hugely diverse taxonomic group. Asking what it's like to be a fish, or are fish conscious, or do they suffer or feel pain, is even a broader question than asking, what is it like to be a primate, for instance. Primates are a relatively small taxonomic group compared to fish... If we talk about fish generically, as a category, first, fish constitute 60% of all vertebrate species. It's a hugely diverse taxonomic group. Asking what it's like to be a fish, or are fish conscious, or do they suffer or feel pain, is even a broader question than asking, what is it like to be a primate, for instance. Primates are a relatively small taxonomic group compared to fish."
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 164 - James Evans on "Using meta-knowledge to learn how science works" - "it's certainly taking people longer to produce professional science in some ways. What we don't know is whether that's because we've exhausted all of the low-hanging fruit, or if we've exhausted all the low-hanging fruit on the trees that we've chosen to pick from"
Episode 38: Pride Cometh Before The Fall - "It was, in fact, the PAP leaders themselves who caused the split and affected their own standing with the public through their own actions. And their downfall starts with how they treated the most popular politician in Singapore, the former Mayor of Singapore, Ong Eng Guan... The PAP leadership abused their powers by ordering Special Branch to dig up dirt on Ong. Allegations of perjury, dishonesty, and bigamy were leaked to the press."
Episode 37: The Nature of Colonialism - "The key difference between Lee, and Marshall and Lim Chin Siong, of course, was a moral one. That will come as no surprise to regular listeners of this podcast. Marshall stood up for justice. He never locked up anyone, and when the British locked up people against his wishes, he sought to have them put on trial as soon as possible. Lim, likewise, meant what he said, and stuck to that position throughout his abbreviated political career. If he locked people up without trial, he would then take responsibility for it and go to the people and explain why he did it for the common good. But Lee Kuan Yew of course interpreted “take responsibility” in a different way. He interpreted it as “avoid responsibility”. He did not want to take responsibility for locking people up without trial because he knew it was unpopular. Like the British and Lim Yew Hock, Lee also wanted to use detention without trial, to lock up his enemies and keep them locked up, but he knew that it was extremely unpopular, that it was associated with colonialism. The ability to arbitrarily destroy people’s lives, by slavery, by torture, by locking them up without trial by a government unaccountable to the people – those are the hallmarks of colonialism. But from Lee’s perspective, if he could lock people up while avoiding responsibility, well, that was okay too. He had no moral issue with destroying people’s lives. To him, it was a political issue. Can I destroy lives while ensuring that I get no blame, or better yet someone else takes the blame? If so, that’s okay. And that’s what Lee set out to do."
Episode 40: The Mercy of the Tunku - "Nine days before the Hong Lim election, the PAP Assemblyman for Anson, Baharuddin bin Mohamed Ariff, died of a sudden heart attack. His death triggered another by-election, to be held on 15 July. The PAP leadership, who had treated Hong Lim as a referendum on their government, doubled down, now declaring Anson a second referendum on their government. Can you imagine. It’s like people who lose a referendum demanding a second referendum… that’s crazy. That’s undemocratic. Anyway, the PAP leaders did the same thing as Hong Lim. They vilified their opponents and described apocalyptic scenarios if the PAP lost"
Post ID: 505397722175358037
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Links - 13th September 2016
Man calls S’pore a ‘fu**ing sh**’ country, Internet rages, man gets fired within a day
Will there ever be a backlash against the internet lynch mob?
‘Rapist’ Pulled Out Of Jail, Beaten To Death By Mob. There’s NOTHING To Be Proud About Here - "How are we ANY different from the rapist if we commit a crime as heinous as murder, no matter who is at the receiving end of it?"
What Is the Difference Between Sunscreen & Sunblock? - "Sunscreens contain chemicals that absorb UV radiation and reduce the amount that reaches the skin, according to the American Melanoma Foundation (AMF). Sunblocks physically prevent UV radiation from reaching the skin. Sunscreens tend to be transparent and are invisible when applied, whereas sunblocks are thicker, remain visible when applied and are more difficult to wash off than sunscreens."
Pornography has a big race problem - "Deen asked up front via text message whether a female performer had “issues with black dudes.” She wrote back, “Personally no. Sexually, I’d rather not at this time lol.” He responded: “Racist,” then added, “I will find someone else for this scene.” She tried to save face, writing, “I’m only 5 months in. Havnt done IR yet.”"
Consent is racist.
It's homophobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a lesbian. It's transphobic and homophobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a pre-op transwoman. It's transphobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a pre-op transman
President Obama: 'Very hard to untangle' the motive of Micah X. Johnson - "President Obama said on Saturday that it is "very hard to untangle the motives" of Micah X. Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers on Thursday. "First of all, I think it's very hard to untangle the motivers of this shooter. I'll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents. "I think the danger is that we somehow suggest the act of a troubled individuals speaks to some larger political statement across the country, Obama said."
Yet, "Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Friday that Johnson had told authorities “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” and “White nationalism infuses our political ideology”: Dylann Roof is just the beginning
Singaporean Tells of Khmer Rouge Aid - NYTimes.com - "China, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand spent more than $1.3 billion in a largely secret program in the 1980s to support Khmer Rouge and non-Communist guerrillas in Cambodia fighting Vietnamese troops and allied Cambodian forces, the Singaporean senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, has disclosed in his memoirs"
Isn't this interfering in other countries' internal affairs? By supporting genocidaires too
Intern Fired for Dress Code Petition Is the Case Against Social Justice Education - "the intern's justification of his actions is illustrative. This is what he learned in school: if you don't like your company's policies, create a petition or organize against management. As if that's how professional people in the private sector handle disagreements. Perhaps an education in social justice activism is not as valuable as university planners want their students to believe it is. It's also quite funny that these socially conscious interns didn't immediately recognize the one actually marginalized person in the situation: the disabled veteran."
Discrimination and instructional comprehension: Guided discretion, racial bias, and the death penalty - " instructional comprehension was poor overall and that, although Black defendants were treated only slightly more punitively than White defendants in general, discriminatory effects were concentrated among participants whose comprehension was poorest. In addition, the use of penalty phase evidence differed as a function of race of defendant and whether the participant sentenced the defendant to life or death. The study suggest that racially biased and capricious death sentencing may be in part caused or exacerbated by the inability to comprehend penalty phase instructions"
Scores of police officers injured in Berlin protests - "German police said more than 120 officers were injured and 86 demonstrators were detained during leftist riots in the German capital which police called "the most aggressive and violent protests in the last five years"... Activists had called for the demonstration to protest against police operations at buildings taken over by squatters in the eastern part of the city last month."
Some Eurasians frustrated at being mistaken for foreigners in Singapore - ""I'll deliberately answer in Mandarin to see the shocked looks on their faces. It's interesting to hear which countries others think I'm from." There are perks of boasting an exotic parentage too. Mr Shelley jokes: "I've never been short of pretty and sexy girlfriends. They all want to show off to their friends that they are dating an 'ang moh kia'."
This is the greatest university graduate photo shoot in S’pore that is keeping it real - "Perhaps tired of seeing those clichéd jumpshot photos with flowers, teddy bears and that glimmer of hope in the newly-grad’s eyes that envisions a promising future where the world is their oyster because a starting $4k salary can finance their dreams, the concept of her graduate photos kept it as real as the economic reality of being a fresh grad in Singapore today"
Five stars – says who? My trouble with TripAdvisor - "It was in a small seaside town in Croatia that my dislike of TripAdvisor petrified into loathing... Despite the fact that virtually every week brings a new story about how useless TripAdvisor is, how it enables users who are corrupt/greedy/mendacious, the site trundles on like a marauder, spewing an ever-increasing volume of freely given, unpaid “content”, as it has since its conception in 2000... Regardless of the fact that it is riddled with fakes and idiots, a huge number of otherwise sensible people continue to give credence to the aggregated opinion of, at best, unqualified strangers... I hate TripAdvisor because the top listing in one Italian town was utterly fictitious. Because it gives awards to hotels like the Tunisian one closed months earlier after 38 holidaymakers were shot dead. Because there is a whole industry dedicated to churning out fake, by-the-yard “reviews”.
Too much education is bad. Don't over-educate the young: Nassim Taleb - ""education is the enemy of entrepreneurship. If you start having a high level of education, you start hiring people based on school success"... Empirical investigation, he writes, shows no evidence that raising the general level of education raises a country's income level."
I don't know what empiricial investigation Taleb is looking at. All the studies I can find conclude education benefits economic growth
Amos Yee and child pornography - "Unfortunately, since his first jail-term (he may have another one coming up), Yee has transformed himself from a creative and articulate activist for political freedom to—ugh! — a narcissistic anarchist with a huge chip on his shoulder and an even bigger stick up his arse. While his views on Singapore’s socio-political tyranny remain worthy of discussion, his yappin’ on other issues — especially his mockery of religion—contains more than a whiff of the psychotic... And Yee calls himself a genius on Twitter every three seconds"
The claim about needing skin in the game to speak is even more annoying than the "you cannot criticise if you can't do better" fallacy
"Good Girls": Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus - "Women's participation in slut shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression: they apply disadvantageous sexual double standards established by men. This perspective grants women little agency and neglects their simultaneous location in other social structures. In this article we synthesize insights from social psychology, gender, and culture to argue that undergraduate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class-while also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than trashy, while low-status women express class resentment-deriding rich, bitchy sluts for their exclusivity. Slut discourse enables, rather than constrains, sexual experimentation for the high-status women whose definitions prevail in the dominant social scene. This is a form of sexual privilege. In contrast, low-status women risk public shaming when they attempt to enter dominant social worlds"
Blaming men for slut-shaming is like blaming women for men dying when playing the chicken game (with cars) - unless you have ultimate causes in mind (and almost no one does)
Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings - The New York Times - "“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California. The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold after the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota... officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force."
Some dismiss the study showing that police officers are slower to shoot blacks, but this is empirical confirmation
Looks like Black Lives Matter needs a new name
Why it's OK to celebrate the rise of female leaders, even if they're not good feminists - "Merkel has been mostly reluctant to prioritise women's rights; but at least she's honest about her lack of feminist ethos. "Perhaps [I'm] an interesting case of a woman in power, but no feminist," she told a panel audience in 2013. "Real feminists would be offended if I described myself as one"... Women who enter politics with strong feminist ideals are likely to find their ethos compromised, or they will not last long. Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership is a case in point. Few could argue that Gillard is not a feminist, or that her political agenda wasn't deeply informed by feminism and social justice. But despite her admirable efforts on climate change, education and disability reform, Gillard's record on asylum seekers, single mothers and marriage equality were a huge disappointment to many feminists... We don't have to welcome our new female world leaders with feminist fervour. But if and when the western world wakes up to find itself dominated by women"
Feminists don't want women in power - they want feminist women in power - while pretending they're speaking on behalf of women
If Sadiq Khan is not a "good" Muslim, should his being mayor of London be celebrated?
Instead of fulminating about patriarchy, perhaps a better response is to reflect that feminism is not conducive to successful politics
If feminism is about equality, why does this feminist want the world to be dominated by women?
A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began. - The New York Times - "For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind. So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith. There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S.U.V.s.He even said that while women should conceal their bodies, they needed to cover their faces only if they chose to do so. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup.It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life... Officials I spoke with were upset by the kingdom’s increasingly troubled reputation abroad and said over and over that they supported “moderate Islam.”But what exactly did they mean by “moderate Islam”? Unpacking that term made it clear how wide the values gap is between Saudi Arabia and its American ally. The kingdom’s “moderate Islam” publicly beheads criminals, punishes apostates and prevents women from traveling abroad without the permission of a male “guardian.” Don’t even ask about gay rights... “When is your birthday?” Confused, she switched to Arabic. “We don’t have that in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “That’s an infidel holiday.” Shocked, her father asked where she had learned that, and she fetched one of her government-issued textbooks, flipping to a lesson that listed “forbidden holidays”: Christmas and Thanksgiving. Birthdays had been part of the same lesson... The first thing many Saudis will tell you about Wahhabism is that it does not exist.“There is no such thing as Wahhabism,” Hisham al-Sheikh told me the first time we met. “There is only true Islam”... She disputed the Western idea that Saudi women lack rights. “They believe we are oppressed because we don’t drive, but that is incorrect,” Ms. Sheikh said, adding that driving would be a hassle in Riyadh’s snarled traffic. “Here women are respected and honored in many ways you don’t find in the West,” she continued... Regardless of how much the royal family lauds its Islamic values, when it wants to earn money or innovate, it does not turn to the clerics for advice. It puts up a wall and locks them out"
Will there ever be a backlash against the internet lynch mob?
‘Rapist’ Pulled Out Of Jail, Beaten To Death By Mob. There’s NOTHING To Be Proud About Here - "How are we ANY different from the rapist if we commit a crime as heinous as murder, no matter who is at the receiving end of it?"
What Is the Difference Between Sunscreen & Sunblock? - "Sunscreens contain chemicals that absorb UV radiation and reduce the amount that reaches the skin, according to the American Melanoma Foundation (AMF). Sunblocks physically prevent UV radiation from reaching the skin. Sunscreens tend to be transparent and are invisible when applied, whereas sunblocks are thicker, remain visible when applied and are more difficult to wash off than sunscreens."
Pornography has a big race problem - "Deen asked up front via text message whether a female performer had “issues with black dudes.” She wrote back, “Personally no. Sexually, I’d rather not at this time lol.” He responded: “Racist,” then added, “I will find someone else for this scene.” She tried to save face, writing, “I’m only 5 months in. Havnt done IR yet.”"
Consent is racist.
It's homophobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a lesbian. It's transphobic and homophobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a pre-op transwoman. It's transphobic if a straight woman refuses to sleep with a pre-op transman
President Obama: 'Very hard to untangle' the motive of Micah X. Johnson - "President Obama said on Saturday that it is "very hard to untangle the motives" of Micah X. Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers on Thursday. "First of all, I think it's very hard to untangle the motivers of this shooter. I'll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents. "I think the danger is that we somehow suggest the act of a troubled individuals speaks to some larger political statement across the country, Obama said."
Yet, "Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Friday that Johnson had told authorities “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” and “White nationalism infuses our political ideology”: Dylann Roof is just the beginning
Singaporean Tells of Khmer Rouge Aid - NYTimes.com - "China, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand spent more than $1.3 billion in a largely secret program in the 1980s to support Khmer Rouge and non-Communist guerrillas in Cambodia fighting Vietnamese troops and allied Cambodian forces, the Singaporean senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, has disclosed in his memoirs"
Isn't this interfering in other countries' internal affairs? By supporting genocidaires too
Intern Fired for Dress Code Petition Is the Case Against Social Justice Education - "the intern's justification of his actions is illustrative. This is what he learned in school: if you don't like your company's policies, create a petition or organize against management. As if that's how professional people in the private sector handle disagreements. Perhaps an education in social justice activism is not as valuable as university planners want their students to believe it is. It's also quite funny that these socially conscious interns didn't immediately recognize the one actually marginalized person in the situation: the disabled veteran."
Discrimination and instructional comprehension: Guided discretion, racial bias, and the death penalty - " instructional comprehension was poor overall and that, although Black defendants were treated only slightly more punitively than White defendants in general, discriminatory effects were concentrated among participants whose comprehension was poorest. In addition, the use of penalty phase evidence differed as a function of race of defendant and whether the participant sentenced the defendant to life or death. The study suggest that racially biased and capricious death sentencing may be in part caused or exacerbated by the inability to comprehend penalty phase instructions"
Scores of police officers injured in Berlin protests - "German police said more than 120 officers were injured and 86 demonstrators were detained during leftist riots in the German capital which police called "the most aggressive and violent protests in the last five years"... Activists had called for the demonstration to protest against police operations at buildings taken over by squatters in the eastern part of the city last month."
Some Eurasians frustrated at being mistaken for foreigners in Singapore - ""I'll deliberately answer in Mandarin to see the shocked looks on their faces. It's interesting to hear which countries others think I'm from." There are perks of boasting an exotic parentage too. Mr Shelley jokes: "I've never been short of pretty and sexy girlfriends. They all want to show off to their friends that they are dating an 'ang moh kia'."
This is the greatest university graduate photo shoot in S’pore that is keeping it real - "Perhaps tired of seeing those clichéd jumpshot photos with flowers, teddy bears and that glimmer of hope in the newly-grad’s eyes that envisions a promising future where the world is their oyster because a starting $4k salary can finance their dreams, the concept of her graduate photos kept it as real as the economic reality of being a fresh grad in Singapore today"
Five stars – says who? My trouble with TripAdvisor - "It was in a small seaside town in Croatia that my dislike of TripAdvisor petrified into loathing... Despite the fact that virtually every week brings a new story about how useless TripAdvisor is, how it enables users who are corrupt/greedy/mendacious, the site trundles on like a marauder, spewing an ever-increasing volume of freely given, unpaid “content”, as it has since its conception in 2000... Regardless of the fact that it is riddled with fakes and idiots, a huge number of otherwise sensible people continue to give credence to the aggregated opinion of, at best, unqualified strangers... I hate TripAdvisor because the top listing in one Italian town was utterly fictitious. Because it gives awards to hotels like the Tunisian one closed months earlier after 38 holidaymakers were shot dead. Because there is a whole industry dedicated to churning out fake, by-the-yard “reviews”.
Too much education is bad. Don't over-educate the young: Nassim Taleb - ""education is the enemy of entrepreneurship. If you start having a high level of education, you start hiring people based on school success"... Empirical investigation, he writes, shows no evidence that raising the general level of education raises a country's income level."
I don't know what empiricial investigation Taleb is looking at. All the studies I can find conclude education benefits economic growth
Amos Yee and child pornography - "Unfortunately, since his first jail-term (he may have another one coming up), Yee has transformed himself from a creative and articulate activist for political freedom to—ugh! — a narcissistic anarchist with a huge chip on his shoulder and an even bigger stick up his arse. While his views on Singapore’s socio-political tyranny remain worthy of discussion, his yappin’ on other issues — especially his mockery of religion—contains more than a whiff of the psychotic... And Yee calls himself a genius on Twitter every three seconds"
The claim about needing skin in the game to speak is even more annoying than the "you cannot criticise if you can't do better" fallacy
"Good Girls": Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus - "Women's participation in slut shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression: they apply disadvantageous sexual double standards established by men. This perspective grants women little agency and neglects their simultaneous location in other social structures. In this article we synthesize insights from social psychology, gender, and culture to argue that undergraduate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class-while also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than trashy, while low-status women express class resentment-deriding rich, bitchy sluts for their exclusivity. Slut discourse enables, rather than constrains, sexual experimentation for the high-status women whose definitions prevail in the dominant social scene. This is a form of sexual privilege. In contrast, low-status women risk public shaming when they attempt to enter dominant social worlds"
Blaming men for slut-shaming is like blaming women for men dying when playing the chicken game (with cars) - unless you have ultimate causes in mind (and almost no one does)
Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings - The New York Times - "“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California. The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold after the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota... officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force."
Some dismiss the study showing that police officers are slower to shoot blacks, but this is empirical confirmation
Looks like Black Lives Matter needs a new name
Why it's OK to celebrate the rise of female leaders, even if they're not good feminists - "Merkel has been mostly reluctant to prioritise women's rights; but at least she's honest about her lack of feminist ethos. "Perhaps [I'm] an interesting case of a woman in power, but no feminist," she told a panel audience in 2013. "Real feminists would be offended if I described myself as one"... Women who enter politics with strong feminist ideals are likely to find their ethos compromised, or they will not last long. Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership is a case in point. Few could argue that Gillard is not a feminist, or that her political agenda wasn't deeply informed by feminism and social justice. But despite her admirable efforts on climate change, education and disability reform, Gillard's record on asylum seekers, single mothers and marriage equality were a huge disappointment to many feminists... We don't have to welcome our new female world leaders with feminist fervour. But if and when the western world wakes up to find itself dominated by women"
Feminists don't want women in power - they want feminist women in power - while pretending they're speaking on behalf of women
If Sadiq Khan is not a "good" Muslim, should his being mayor of London be celebrated?
Instead of fulminating about patriarchy, perhaps a better response is to reflect that feminism is not conducive to successful politics
If feminism is about equality, why does this feminist want the world to be dominated by women?
A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began. - The New York Times - "For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind. So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith. There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S.U.V.s.He even said that while women should conceal their bodies, they needed to cover their faces only if they chose to do so. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup.It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life... Officials I spoke with were upset by the kingdom’s increasingly troubled reputation abroad and said over and over that they supported “moderate Islam.”But what exactly did they mean by “moderate Islam”? Unpacking that term made it clear how wide the values gap is between Saudi Arabia and its American ally. The kingdom’s “moderate Islam” publicly beheads criminals, punishes apostates and prevents women from traveling abroad without the permission of a male “guardian.” Don’t even ask about gay rights... “When is your birthday?” Confused, she switched to Arabic. “We don’t have that in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “That’s an infidel holiday.” Shocked, her father asked where she had learned that, and she fetched one of her government-issued textbooks, flipping to a lesson that listed “forbidden holidays”: Christmas and Thanksgiving. Birthdays had been part of the same lesson... The first thing many Saudis will tell you about Wahhabism is that it does not exist.“There is no such thing as Wahhabism,” Hisham al-Sheikh told me the first time we met. “There is only true Islam”... She disputed the Western idea that Saudi women lack rights. “They believe we are oppressed because we don’t drive, but that is incorrect,” Ms. Sheikh said, adding that driving would be a hassle in Riyadh’s snarled traffic. “Here women are respected and honored in many ways you don’t find in the West,” she continued... Regardless of how much the royal family lauds its Islamic values, when it wants to earn money or innovate, it does not turn to the clerics for advice. It puts up a wall and locks them out"
Post ID: 8727677797060823025
Monday, September 12, 2016
Links - 12th September 2016
Rio officials lose keys to Olympic stadium, need bolt cutters to get in
Left Planned to Stage Violence to Bring Down Trump - "'If you go back to the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails, this is on the PowerPoint playbook on the messaging — slide number 6 — with the messaging theme number 1: Violence. They were looking for an opportunity to pick up somewhere to continue this narrative that somehow Donald Trump is violent.'... There is no doubt that Trump has played into that strategy with some rather stupid remarks, the worst of which was his offer to pay the legal fees of a supporter who punched a protester. Note, however, that the protesters seem to have done their very best to get hit. One group brought a KKK-style hood to a Trump rally and was attacked by a black Trump supporter. The worst case of violence was outside a San Jose rally in early June, where Trump supporters were viciously beaten and chased through the streets by a left-wing mob. Despite the fact that the rioters carried out their brutality shamelessly, in full view of the mainstream media, some media outlets blamed Trump for the violence... And for the left, that was precisely the point: creating violence is a no-lose strategy. If protesters can provoke Trump supporters to be violent, they embarrass Trump and cast him as a fascist. And if the protesters themselves are violent, voters will understand that a Trump victory will be met with violent mob resistance."
Millennials outraged over TV show portraying millennials as outraged
Germany Has Evidence ISIS Hides 'Hit Squads' Among Refugees - "Manfred Hauser — the vice president of BayLfV, the Bavarian region’s intelligence gathering apparatus — told the BBC Thursday that officials must “accept we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany.” “We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads,” he added. “There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves.”"
Chinese tourists lead San Diego police on freeway chase, didn't know they were supposed to pull over
Florida police shoot dead woman during safety exercise for local community - "Ms Knowlton was playing a victim and the officer was playing an aggressor. But the gun used in the exercise was real and loaded with ammunition, and at least one round was shot into Ms Knowlton, causing fatal injuries"
Woman tells police she was RAPED by a Pokemon Go character after she felt an ‘assault’
American adults have low (and declining) reading proficiency - "The reading skills of American adults are significantly lower than those of adults in most other developed countries, according to a new international survey. What’s more, over the last two decades Americans’ reading proficiency has declined across most age groups, and has only improved significantly for 65-year-olds... Americans also scored lower than average in math and technological problem solving... People in their thirties and forties in 2012 scored significantly lower than people in their same age group in 1994. The drop among 30-year-olds was less dramatic."
Not all laments about declining standards are unwarranted
Hospital crises show the gap between how doctors and patients perceive events - "Most hospitalised patients have no idea whose care they are under; frustratingly, their doctors may not know either. Increasingly, in modern medicine, there is no such thing as the patient’s doctor – it’s the patient’s pulmonologist, oncologist, thoracic surgeon, psychiatrist and cardiologist. This fragmentation of care has deep consequences for decision-making and healthcare spending but there is another growing problem – the diffusion of accountability."
US election: The man hurting Clinton in her fight with Trump - "My sense, having watched the Clintons fairly closely for over 20 years, is that they have a loving marriage and deep friendship. An animated conversation that started at Yale Law School in the early Seventies continues for both of them to fascinate and enthral. But many critics of the Clintons believe it's a transactional partnership, a marriage of political convenience. To some, her loyalty during the most troubled phase of the Clinton presidency reinforces the sense that she's a cynical political operator, willing to do anything to accrue power"
Chinese tourist loses wallet and becomes refugee in Germany for two weeks by mistake - "The 31-year-old backpacker, who spoke neither German nor English, reported that he "needed help" after arriving at Stuttgart airport on July 4. The man, who was described as "smartly dressed" and had apparently travelled to Europe for a walking holiday in Italy, was taken to a reception centre in the nearby town of Heidelberg. Instead of signing a stolen item form for his wallet at the local police station, the man, known as Mr L, unwittingly filled out an asylum request form. The mistake triggered a chain of events as the hapless tourist became mired in bureaucratic red tape. Authorities took his passport and gave him refugee documents. He was transported nearly 200 miles to Düsseldorf, in the west of the country, and then a further 50 miles north to Dülmen. He was given a medical check, had his finger prints taken, and accepted the pocket money given to him by camp officials."
Italian police in Rome cook pasta for lonely elderly couple as they were crying - "The couple said they had not been victims of crime, but were overcome by emotion after watching sad stories on the news. The pair, who have been married for 70 years, said they had not had visitors for a long time and were very lonely. While they waiting for an ambulance to arrive to check the couple over, the officers prepared a hot meal. They then sat down to have a chat while the elderly couple ate the spaghetti with butter and parmesan they had prepared."
Fury at Luton's segregated Olympic swimming pool done for 'cultural reasons' - "Abdul-Wadud Ahmed, 31, said more than 40 swimmers attended the first new permanent session last Friday, which he hopes will grow in the near future. He added: 'There is a large demand for it, one of the reasons being that swimming is a prophetic activity where Muhammad, peace be upon Him, encourages Muslim men and women to swim... The gender-segregated sessions are being advertised as 'Alhamdulliah swimming' on Facebook, a Muslim phrase which thanks God for his blessings. Posters promoting the event, which were implemented last Friday, strictly ask that 'navel to knee must be covered'."
Long way to catch up with Hong Kong's rail reliability - "If we consider that Hong Kong's network is longer and older than Singapore's, and that it carries significantly more people, we will be able to appreciate the comparison more fully... the MTR is so impressive that several cities pay it to run their trains. There are other learning points from the MTR, such as compensating commuters who have been inconvenienced by a breakdown... in Hong Kong, the rail network is denser, and there are a myriad of other transport options (besides Uber) to help in a breakdown. Nevertheless, the public gives the MTR hell whenever a breakdown happens. The press also goes to town, pressuring the government each time. So much so that in March 2014, Secretary for Transport and Housing Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said the government would consider tying the salary of top management at MTR to the number of breakdowns. Should SMRT do likewise? That's something for its board of directors and major shareholder Temasek to decide... the MTR would probably find it a tad more challenging to maintain its reliability record if it had to cope with Singapore's ridership growth surge. Here the lesson is, of course, to keep a closer watch on population growth, and to ensure that infrastructural and systemic expansion keeps pace. By the same token, Singapore may well have to tone down its "car-lite" rhetoric until after its rail woes are fixed. Because the last thing it wants is to push more people onto a system that is already feeling the strain of the current load."
Men who picked up Yellowstone bison: 'We didn't have the heart to leave it' - "A Canadian man and his son loaded a Yellowstone national park bison calf into their vehicle last month because they thought it was an abandoned newborn that would die without their help, the men said in their first interview since park officials had to euthanize the animal. The calf was killed because it couldn’t be reunited with its herd after being handled by Shamash Kassam of Quebec, Canada, and his son, Shakeel Kassam, on 9 May, park officials said... Park rangers took the animal back to where it was picked up, but they could not reunite it with its herd. The calf was euthanized because it was continually approaching people and cars on the roadway, Yellowstone officials said. They warned that humans approaching wildlife can affect the animals’ wellbeing and possibly cause mothers to reject their offspring"
Myth busting: Are synthetic pesticides, used with some GMOs, more dangerous than natural ones? - "we eat an estimated 1.5 grams of natural pesticides a day, “which is about 10,000 times more” than the amount of synthetic pesticide residues we consume. This amount would be significantly higher in vegetarians and vegans... While there’s an uproar about parts per billion amounts of synthetic pesticide residues on our food, there are more concentrated compounds in fruits and veggies actually known to cause cancer. In addition, some of the more commonly used pesticides in agriculture have mechanisms of action that are specific to the pests their targeting, making them far safer than many natural pesticides, which is on reason why they’ve gained popularity in the past half century... there are plenty of “natural chemicals” that are registered pesticides, but no one seems to be freaking out about basil and mustard seeds."
Japan-Themed Cambridge Ball Scrapped over ‘Cultural Appropriation’ - "The first theme was set around the contrasts between the two major Japanese cities, which promised “vibrant fashions” and “neon lights” paired with “Imperial palaces and tranquil gardens”... The Tab polled readers to see whether they thought the event should have been changed. At time of writing, 92% had answered “no”... the Japanese Society had volunteered its members to help organize the event. Despite members of the society clearly enjoying the event sufficiently to join in, blog author Hanna Stephens accused to organizers of “commodifying” Japan and “causing offence”. She claimed the event was part of an “Orientalist” culture which was also responsible for Japanese Americans being sent to camps during the Second World War, and today manifests itself in a “lack of social interaction” between Asian and Western students. Cambridge parties are not usually accompanied by hand-wringing firestorms. Previous years have seen Greek, Italian, Middle Eastern and indeed Far Eastern themes executed with little fuss... in recent months even much lower-profile social events have flared into cultural disputes. Last week Heat Street reported that students at Queens’ College were branded racist for holding an Africa-themed dinner. Earlier in the year a party tied to the classic novel Around the World in 80 Days was scrapped for fear they would wear offensive costumes. Other British campuses have implemented sombrero bans and shut down themed in case young people are insufficiently reverent. The conflict also echoes a ruckus at the University of Missouri, which saw student protesters force the owner of a sushi restaurant to remove the Rising Sun Flag from his store logo."
Automation accelerates in the fast food industry - "Wendy’s announced on May 12 that they would begin to offer self-service kiosks to franchise owners of its fast food restaurants in late 2016. Rising labor costs were cited for the move."
$15/hour!
Turtle gets final revenge on man after being chopped in half - "A turtle has managed to attack a man's face in its final act of revenge after being chopped in half. The shocking video shows the sawn-off creature clamp onto the man's forehead in its dying moments."
Left Planned to Stage Violence to Bring Down Trump - "'If you go back to the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails, this is on the PowerPoint playbook on the messaging — slide number 6 — with the messaging theme number 1: Violence. They were looking for an opportunity to pick up somewhere to continue this narrative that somehow Donald Trump is violent.'... There is no doubt that Trump has played into that strategy with some rather stupid remarks, the worst of which was his offer to pay the legal fees of a supporter who punched a protester. Note, however, that the protesters seem to have done their very best to get hit. One group brought a KKK-style hood to a Trump rally and was attacked by a black Trump supporter. The worst case of violence was outside a San Jose rally in early June, where Trump supporters were viciously beaten and chased through the streets by a left-wing mob. Despite the fact that the rioters carried out their brutality shamelessly, in full view of the mainstream media, some media outlets blamed Trump for the violence... And for the left, that was precisely the point: creating violence is a no-lose strategy. If protesters can provoke Trump supporters to be violent, they embarrass Trump and cast him as a fascist. And if the protesters themselves are violent, voters will understand that a Trump victory will be met with violent mob resistance."
Millennials outraged over TV show portraying millennials as outraged
Germany Has Evidence ISIS Hides 'Hit Squads' Among Refugees - "Manfred Hauser — the vice president of BayLfV, the Bavarian region’s intelligence gathering apparatus — told the BBC Thursday that officials must “accept we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany.” “We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads,” he added. “There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves.”"
Chinese tourists lead San Diego police on freeway chase, didn't know they were supposed to pull over
Florida police shoot dead woman during safety exercise for local community - "Ms Knowlton was playing a victim and the officer was playing an aggressor. But the gun used in the exercise was real and loaded with ammunition, and at least one round was shot into Ms Knowlton, causing fatal injuries"
Woman tells police she was RAPED by a Pokemon Go character after she felt an ‘assault’
American adults have low (and declining) reading proficiency - "The reading skills of American adults are significantly lower than those of adults in most other developed countries, according to a new international survey. What’s more, over the last two decades Americans’ reading proficiency has declined across most age groups, and has only improved significantly for 65-year-olds... Americans also scored lower than average in math and technological problem solving... People in their thirties and forties in 2012 scored significantly lower than people in their same age group in 1994. The drop among 30-year-olds was less dramatic."
Not all laments about declining standards are unwarranted
Hospital crises show the gap between how doctors and patients perceive events - "Most hospitalised patients have no idea whose care they are under; frustratingly, their doctors may not know either. Increasingly, in modern medicine, there is no such thing as the patient’s doctor – it’s the patient’s pulmonologist, oncologist, thoracic surgeon, psychiatrist and cardiologist. This fragmentation of care has deep consequences for decision-making and healthcare spending but there is another growing problem – the diffusion of accountability."
US election: The man hurting Clinton in her fight with Trump - "My sense, having watched the Clintons fairly closely for over 20 years, is that they have a loving marriage and deep friendship. An animated conversation that started at Yale Law School in the early Seventies continues for both of them to fascinate and enthral. But many critics of the Clintons believe it's a transactional partnership, a marriage of political convenience. To some, her loyalty during the most troubled phase of the Clinton presidency reinforces the sense that she's a cynical political operator, willing to do anything to accrue power"
Chinese tourist loses wallet and becomes refugee in Germany for two weeks by mistake - "The 31-year-old backpacker, who spoke neither German nor English, reported that he "needed help" after arriving at Stuttgart airport on July 4. The man, who was described as "smartly dressed" and had apparently travelled to Europe for a walking holiday in Italy, was taken to a reception centre in the nearby town of Heidelberg. Instead of signing a stolen item form for his wallet at the local police station, the man, known as Mr L, unwittingly filled out an asylum request form. The mistake triggered a chain of events as the hapless tourist became mired in bureaucratic red tape. Authorities took his passport and gave him refugee documents. He was transported nearly 200 miles to Düsseldorf, in the west of the country, and then a further 50 miles north to Dülmen. He was given a medical check, had his finger prints taken, and accepted the pocket money given to him by camp officials."
Italian police in Rome cook pasta for lonely elderly couple as they were crying - "The couple said they had not been victims of crime, but were overcome by emotion after watching sad stories on the news. The pair, who have been married for 70 years, said they had not had visitors for a long time and were very lonely. While they waiting for an ambulance to arrive to check the couple over, the officers prepared a hot meal. They then sat down to have a chat while the elderly couple ate the spaghetti with butter and parmesan they had prepared."
Fury at Luton's segregated Olympic swimming pool done for 'cultural reasons' - "Abdul-Wadud Ahmed, 31, said more than 40 swimmers attended the first new permanent session last Friday, which he hopes will grow in the near future. He added: 'There is a large demand for it, one of the reasons being that swimming is a prophetic activity where Muhammad, peace be upon Him, encourages Muslim men and women to swim... The gender-segregated sessions are being advertised as 'Alhamdulliah swimming' on Facebook, a Muslim phrase which thanks God for his blessings. Posters promoting the event, which were implemented last Friday, strictly ask that 'navel to knee must be covered'."
Long way to catch up with Hong Kong's rail reliability - "If we consider that Hong Kong's network is longer and older than Singapore's, and that it carries significantly more people, we will be able to appreciate the comparison more fully... the MTR is so impressive that several cities pay it to run their trains. There are other learning points from the MTR, such as compensating commuters who have been inconvenienced by a breakdown... in Hong Kong, the rail network is denser, and there are a myriad of other transport options (besides Uber) to help in a breakdown. Nevertheless, the public gives the MTR hell whenever a breakdown happens. The press also goes to town, pressuring the government each time. So much so that in March 2014, Secretary for Transport and Housing Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said the government would consider tying the salary of top management at MTR to the number of breakdowns. Should SMRT do likewise? That's something for its board of directors and major shareholder Temasek to decide... the MTR would probably find it a tad more challenging to maintain its reliability record if it had to cope with Singapore's ridership growth surge. Here the lesson is, of course, to keep a closer watch on population growth, and to ensure that infrastructural and systemic expansion keeps pace. By the same token, Singapore may well have to tone down its "car-lite" rhetoric until after its rail woes are fixed. Because the last thing it wants is to push more people onto a system that is already feeling the strain of the current load."
Men who picked up Yellowstone bison: 'We didn't have the heart to leave it' - "A Canadian man and his son loaded a Yellowstone national park bison calf into their vehicle last month because they thought it was an abandoned newborn that would die without their help, the men said in their first interview since park officials had to euthanize the animal. The calf was killed because it couldn’t be reunited with its herd after being handled by Shamash Kassam of Quebec, Canada, and his son, Shakeel Kassam, on 9 May, park officials said... Park rangers took the animal back to where it was picked up, but they could not reunite it with its herd. The calf was euthanized because it was continually approaching people and cars on the roadway, Yellowstone officials said. They warned that humans approaching wildlife can affect the animals’ wellbeing and possibly cause mothers to reject their offspring"
Myth busting: Are synthetic pesticides, used with some GMOs, more dangerous than natural ones? - "we eat an estimated 1.5 grams of natural pesticides a day, “which is about 10,000 times more” than the amount of synthetic pesticide residues we consume. This amount would be significantly higher in vegetarians and vegans... While there’s an uproar about parts per billion amounts of synthetic pesticide residues on our food, there are more concentrated compounds in fruits and veggies actually known to cause cancer. In addition, some of the more commonly used pesticides in agriculture have mechanisms of action that are specific to the pests their targeting, making them far safer than many natural pesticides, which is on reason why they’ve gained popularity in the past half century... there are plenty of “natural chemicals” that are registered pesticides, but no one seems to be freaking out about basil and mustard seeds."
Japan-Themed Cambridge Ball Scrapped over ‘Cultural Appropriation’ - "The first theme was set around the contrasts between the two major Japanese cities, which promised “vibrant fashions” and “neon lights” paired with “Imperial palaces and tranquil gardens”... The Tab polled readers to see whether they thought the event should have been changed. At time of writing, 92% had answered “no”... the Japanese Society had volunteered its members to help organize the event. Despite members of the society clearly enjoying the event sufficiently to join in, blog author Hanna Stephens accused to organizers of “commodifying” Japan and “causing offence”. She claimed the event was part of an “Orientalist” culture which was also responsible for Japanese Americans being sent to camps during the Second World War, and today manifests itself in a “lack of social interaction” between Asian and Western students. Cambridge parties are not usually accompanied by hand-wringing firestorms. Previous years have seen Greek, Italian, Middle Eastern and indeed Far Eastern themes executed with little fuss... in recent months even much lower-profile social events have flared into cultural disputes. Last week Heat Street reported that students at Queens’ College were branded racist for holding an Africa-themed dinner. Earlier in the year a party tied to the classic novel Around the World in 80 Days was scrapped for fear they would wear offensive costumes. Other British campuses have implemented sombrero bans and shut down themed in case young people are insufficiently reverent. The conflict also echoes a ruckus at the University of Missouri, which saw student protesters force the owner of a sushi restaurant to remove the Rising Sun Flag from his store logo."
Automation accelerates in the fast food industry - "Wendy’s announced on May 12 that they would begin to offer self-service kiosks to franchise owners of its fast food restaurants in late 2016. Rising labor costs were cited for the move."
$15/hour!
Turtle gets final revenge on man after being chopped in half - "A turtle has managed to attack a man's face in its final act of revenge after being chopped in half. The shocking video shows the sawn-off creature clamp onto the man's forehead in its dying moments."
Post ID: 4775236370107230972
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Links - 11th September 2016
Alton Sterling: police appear to take gun from body after fatal shooting - "Officer 1: “He’s got a gun! Gun!”
Officer 2: “If you fucking move, I swear to god.”
Officer 1: “He’s going for the gun!”
[At least two shots are heard]
Officer: “Shit!”
Officer: “Get on the ground!”
[Three shots]
Officer to radio: “[Inaudible] shots fired, shots fired.”
Officer: “Fuck!”
[Officer removes gun from pocket]"
Why do Americans think it's a good idea to resist arrest while reaching for a gun?
Acevedo: Austin officer wounded after struggle with suspect - "the security guard tackled the man to the ground, Acevedo said. The suspect got up and the security guard tackled the man again, Acevedo said. The police officer pulled up in his patrol car and jumped out to help. He and the security guard tried to restrain the man, but he was extremely combative, Acevedo said. The officer repeatedly yelled for the man to show his hands, but the suspect would not, Acevedo said. The officer radioed for more help. The suspect then pulled out his pistol, he said. The security officer yelled “Gun!” and the suspect shot the police officer in the lower right abdomen below his vest"
Just because someone is tackled to the ground doesn't mean he can't shoot you
Man shot dead by Minn. police during traffic stop GRAPHIC CONTENT - "She said that he was reaching for his wallet before the policeman shot around four times"
Sadly, the obsession over faux racist police cases distracts from real cases of police brutality
SECOND Swedish music festival sex victim reveals she was groped by a mob of men - "Ms Florman added: 'The ironic thing was that they were wearing the police bracelet with the text 'don´t grope', everything was really surreal now that I remember it.'"
Why We Swedes Are So Lonely - "there has been an ideology here in Sweden that is pretty unique to this country, and that is the idea that the citizens should be independent and free from one another. When the idea was implemented there was this notion that no adult should be financially dependent on their relatives and so we created a society where no old person should have to live with their children and no young person should have to live with their parents after the age of eighteen. A sociologist named Zygmunt Bauman who is featured in the film, claims that "independence have stripped you from the ability of socializing". Something that fits well with the Swedish social model."
Driving While Black - "The data from our survey allowed us to distinguish stops to enforce traffic safety laws—like speeding at fifteen miles per hour over the limit—from stops to investigate the driver. Our key finding is that these two types of stops differ from start to finish. In traffic safety stops, based on clear violations of the law, officers quickly issue a ticket or warning and let the driver go. In investigatory stops officers drag the stop out as they try to look at the vehicle’s interior, ask probing questions, and ultimately seek consent for a search (drivers almost always agree, telling us that they feel they have no real choice in the matter). The key influence on who is stopped in traffic safety stops is how you drive; in investigatory stops it is who you are, and being black is the leading influence. In traffic safety stops, being black has no influence: African Americans are not significantly more likely than whites to be stopped for clear traffic safety law violations. But in investigatory stops, a black man age twenty-five or younger has a 28 percent chance of being stopped for an investigatory reason over the course of a year; a similar young white man has a 12.5 percent chance, and a similar young white woman has only a 7 percent chance. And this is after taking into account other possible influences on being stopped, like how you drive"
Age and sex discrimination
George Takei Reacts to Gay Sulu News: "I Think It's Really Unfortunate" - "Takei wasn't overjoyed. He had never asked for Sulu to be gay. In fact, he'd much prefer that he stay straight. "I’m delighted that there’s a gay character," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate." Takei explains that Roddenberry was exhaustive in conceiving his Star Trek characters. (The name Sulu, for example, was based on the Sulu Sea off the coast of the Philippines, so as to render his Asian nationality indeterminate.) And Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual... Takei tried to convince him to make a new character gay instead. "I told him, 'Be imaginative and create a character who has a history of being gay, rather than Sulu, who had been straight all this time, suddenly being revealed as being closeted.'""
George Takei must be a homophobe!
Cops Shoot White Guy in Fresno; Nobody Pays Attention - "Unlike the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, which have created yet another firestorm complete with accusations of police racism, the media is ignoring the death of Dylan Noble, a 19-year-old white man, on June 25."
NRA’s offensive hypocrisy: When will the organization demand justice for black gun owners shot by police?
I can't find instances of the NRA protesting white gun owners being shot, so this is a great straw man
Comment: "Salon will be the first publication to accuse the NRA of appropriating the racial justice movement should they choose to make a statement."
Anti-gun prof calls for shooting up NRA, ensuring 'no survivors'
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 158 - Dr. George Ainslie on "Negotiating with your future selves" - "no animals aside from us have any real capacity to plan for the future, even our closest relatives, the great apes, the chimpanzees, plan ahead no more than an hour or two. It's just not something that most anybody else is wired to do. Other animals, if they have to do something far-sighted, will have an instinct for it. They will have something that makes building a dam fun or hoarding nuts fun, and so they're in a different situation"
There's No Hiring Bias Against Women In Tech, They Just Suck At Interviews - "men are “advancing to the next round” around 1.4 times more often than women, and that men were being rated an average of 3 stars out of 4, compared to the 2.5 stars that women received. Interviewing.io’s Aline Lerner, who authored the report, originally hypothesized that differences in real-world interview results was down to employer discrimination against women, but the results quickly forced her to rethink her view... Their test, designed to provide empirical ballast to a feminist agenda, ended up completely torpedoing it. Worse, it suggested that employers actually discriminate in favor of women, choosing them in favor of men when they believe them to be competent enough... women are around seven times more likely to quit the platform after underperforming in an interview. According to a published graph featured in the report, men are more likely to continue, giving it more of a shot on the second interview as opposed to completely giving up like their female counterparts."
Possibilities:
- Will accept lower pay (though liberals mock the fact that in a competitive market, if employers can get away with paying a type of workers less than others and get similar results they will prefer to hire them, this provides empirical evidence that this phenomenon might exist)
- employers are liberal
At first I thought maybe women have lower turnover, but there's no proof for that
The Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty - "According to FBI statistics, crime rates went down across the board in 2009. Way down. Murder, rape, robbery, assault, auto theft—plummeted, one and all. Then, this week, the FBI released preliminary data for the first six months of 2010, and again the same pattern emerged. Violent crimes and property crimes alike have been falling in every region of the country. What gives? Have experts just completely misunderstood what causes people to commit crimes?"
To have and have not | The Economist - "when he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, the younger children—those born into relative affluence—were just as likely to misbehave when they were teenagers as their elder siblings had been. Family income was not, per se, the determining factor.
That suggests two, not mutually exclusive, possibilities. One is that a family’s culture, once established, is “sticky”—that you can, to put it crudely, take the kid out of the neighbourhood, but not the neighbourhood out of the kid. Given, for example, children’s propensity to emulate elder siblings whom they admire, that sounds perfectly plausible. The other possibility is that genes which predispose to criminal behaviour (several studies suggest such genes exist) are more common at the bottom of society than at the top, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control they engender also tends to reduce someone’s earning capacity. Neither of these conclusions is likely to be welcome to social reformers"
Students complain about professor's Black Lives Matter shirt. The professor's response is priceless. - "A law professor received a written complaint from “Concerned Students” about his Black Lives Matter shirt, and she responded by brilliantly turning the letter into a teachable moment, taking apart their arguments and the assumptions behind them, literally and figuratively schooling the authors of the complaint with wit, clarity, and moral authority."
The differing response to this and Halloween costumes (and all the other SJW hissyfits) is telling
Dylann Roof vs Black Lives Matter
Here's Why Cops Often Shoot Suspects Multiple Times - "“Hollywood has us believing that if you shoot someone once or twice, they fall,” former police chief Chuck Drago told BI over the phone. But, he added, “I’ve seen people shot many times, and they don’t even slow down.” Police often keep firing because they don’t even realize they hit the person, Drago says. Cops are also taught to fire three times before reassessing the threat — a procedure known as “triple tap,” according to Dr. Daniel Kennedy, a forensic criminologist"
As cobras and vipers spread their deadly venom, it’s getting harder to save lives - "It is estimated that a resurgence of the scourge of snakebites in Africa and Asia could soon account for a quarter of million deaths every year. In the past, deaths from snakebites have been poorly reported and the extent of the crisis underestimated. However, doctors in India recently carried out a detailed survey and discovered that around 46,000 people in the country died from snakebites every year. Official statistics had suggested that the figure was only around 1,000. Similarly in Bangladesh, a detailed survey revealed that the annual snakebite death toll there was around 6,000."
Best of Today, 24 Jun EU referendum: The UK votes Leave · BBC - "the first time I appeared on this program with you was 17 years ago and we were considered to be a complete joke party with a manifesto that was sort of for the mad and the bad and now 70 million people have voted for it and I couldn't be more delighted"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Agrippina the Younger - "[On Messalina] 'She is said to have competed with prostitutes through the night and-'
'And won. And won, she won against Rome's chief prostitute... The satirist Juvenal has this picture of her with gilded nipples and exposing the belly that bore... Britannicus. So this sort of sense that, he calls her in fact Meretrix Augusta... She was the Emperor's wife and she was also a prostitute, Meratrix. She's a public figure in the worst possible way. So there are stories about her love affairs with actors like Menaster (sp?)'...
'We heard about Messalina being sexually loose. So is Agrippina. She sleeps with a lot of people, according to the sources, but there's a difference. Messalina does it for her own pleasure. Agrippina does it always spae dominataeus (sp?) Tacitus says: in the hope of power, in the hope of control.'"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Tess of the d'Urbervilles - "The editor of Macmillan rejected it because of its succulence. It was too succulent... it's that dwelling of the physical
I think that they found so-"
Officer 2: “If you fucking move, I swear to god.”
Officer 1: “He’s going for the gun!”
[At least two shots are heard]
Officer: “Shit!”
Officer: “Get on the ground!”
[Three shots]
Officer to radio: “[Inaudible] shots fired, shots fired.”
Officer: “Fuck!”
[Officer removes gun from pocket]"
Why do Americans think it's a good idea to resist arrest while reaching for a gun?
Acevedo: Austin officer wounded after struggle with suspect - "the security guard tackled the man to the ground, Acevedo said. The suspect got up and the security guard tackled the man again, Acevedo said. The police officer pulled up in his patrol car and jumped out to help. He and the security guard tried to restrain the man, but he was extremely combative, Acevedo said. The officer repeatedly yelled for the man to show his hands, but the suspect would not, Acevedo said. The officer radioed for more help. The suspect then pulled out his pistol, he said. The security officer yelled “Gun!” and the suspect shot the police officer in the lower right abdomen below his vest"
Just because someone is tackled to the ground doesn't mean he can't shoot you
Man shot dead by Minn. police during traffic stop GRAPHIC CONTENT - "She said that he was reaching for his wallet before the policeman shot around four times"
Sadly, the obsession over faux racist police cases distracts from real cases of police brutality
SECOND Swedish music festival sex victim reveals she was groped by a mob of men - "Ms Florman added: 'The ironic thing was that they were wearing the police bracelet with the text 'don´t grope', everything was really surreal now that I remember it.'"
Why We Swedes Are So Lonely - "there has been an ideology here in Sweden that is pretty unique to this country, and that is the idea that the citizens should be independent and free from one another. When the idea was implemented there was this notion that no adult should be financially dependent on their relatives and so we created a society where no old person should have to live with their children and no young person should have to live with their parents after the age of eighteen. A sociologist named Zygmunt Bauman who is featured in the film, claims that "independence have stripped you from the ability of socializing". Something that fits well with the Swedish social model."
Driving While Black - "The data from our survey allowed us to distinguish stops to enforce traffic safety laws—like speeding at fifteen miles per hour over the limit—from stops to investigate the driver. Our key finding is that these two types of stops differ from start to finish. In traffic safety stops, based on clear violations of the law, officers quickly issue a ticket or warning and let the driver go. In investigatory stops officers drag the stop out as they try to look at the vehicle’s interior, ask probing questions, and ultimately seek consent for a search (drivers almost always agree, telling us that they feel they have no real choice in the matter). The key influence on who is stopped in traffic safety stops is how you drive; in investigatory stops it is who you are, and being black is the leading influence. In traffic safety stops, being black has no influence: African Americans are not significantly more likely than whites to be stopped for clear traffic safety law violations. But in investigatory stops, a black man age twenty-five or younger has a 28 percent chance of being stopped for an investigatory reason over the course of a year; a similar young white man has a 12.5 percent chance, and a similar young white woman has only a 7 percent chance. And this is after taking into account other possible influences on being stopped, like how you drive"
Age and sex discrimination
George Takei Reacts to Gay Sulu News: "I Think It's Really Unfortunate" - "Takei wasn't overjoyed. He had never asked for Sulu to be gay. In fact, he'd much prefer that he stay straight. "I’m delighted that there’s a gay character," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate." Takei explains that Roddenberry was exhaustive in conceiving his Star Trek characters. (The name Sulu, for example, was based on the Sulu Sea off the coast of the Philippines, so as to render his Asian nationality indeterminate.) And Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual... Takei tried to convince him to make a new character gay instead. "I told him, 'Be imaginative and create a character who has a history of being gay, rather than Sulu, who had been straight all this time, suddenly being revealed as being closeted.'""
George Takei must be a homophobe!
Cops Shoot White Guy in Fresno; Nobody Pays Attention - "Unlike the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, which have created yet another firestorm complete with accusations of police racism, the media is ignoring the death of Dylan Noble, a 19-year-old white man, on June 25."
NRA’s offensive hypocrisy: When will the organization demand justice for black gun owners shot by police?
I can't find instances of the NRA protesting white gun owners being shot, so this is a great straw man
Comment: "Salon will be the first publication to accuse the NRA of appropriating the racial justice movement should they choose to make a statement."
Anti-gun prof calls for shooting up NRA, ensuring 'no survivors'
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 158 - Dr. George Ainslie on "Negotiating with your future selves" - "no animals aside from us have any real capacity to plan for the future, even our closest relatives, the great apes, the chimpanzees, plan ahead no more than an hour or two. It's just not something that most anybody else is wired to do. Other animals, if they have to do something far-sighted, will have an instinct for it. They will have something that makes building a dam fun or hoarding nuts fun, and so they're in a different situation"
There's No Hiring Bias Against Women In Tech, They Just Suck At Interviews - "men are “advancing to the next round” around 1.4 times more often than women, and that men were being rated an average of 3 stars out of 4, compared to the 2.5 stars that women received. Interviewing.io’s Aline Lerner, who authored the report, originally hypothesized that differences in real-world interview results was down to employer discrimination against women, but the results quickly forced her to rethink her view... Their test, designed to provide empirical ballast to a feminist agenda, ended up completely torpedoing it. Worse, it suggested that employers actually discriminate in favor of women, choosing them in favor of men when they believe them to be competent enough... women are around seven times more likely to quit the platform after underperforming in an interview. According to a published graph featured in the report, men are more likely to continue, giving it more of a shot on the second interview as opposed to completely giving up like their female counterparts."
Possibilities:
- Will accept lower pay (though liberals mock the fact that in a competitive market, if employers can get away with paying a type of workers less than others and get similar results they will prefer to hire them, this provides empirical evidence that this phenomenon might exist)
- employers are liberal
At first I thought maybe women have lower turnover, but there's no proof for that
The Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty - "According to FBI statistics, crime rates went down across the board in 2009. Way down. Murder, rape, robbery, assault, auto theft—plummeted, one and all. Then, this week, the FBI released preliminary data for the first six months of 2010, and again the same pattern emerged. Violent crimes and property crimes alike have been falling in every region of the country. What gives? Have experts just completely misunderstood what causes people to commit crimes?"
To have and have not | The Economist - "when he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, the younger children—those born into relative affluence—were just as likely to misbehave when they were teenagers as their elder siblings had been. Family income was not, per se, the determining factor.
That suggests two, not mutually exclusive, possibilities. One is that a family’s culture, once established, is “sticky”—that you can, to put it crudely, take the kid out of the neighbourhood, but not the neighbourhood out of the kid. Given, for example, children’s propensity to emulate elder siblings whom they admire, that sounds perfectly plausible. The other possibility is that genes which predispose to criminal behaviour (several studies suggest such genes exist) are more common at the bottom of society than at the top, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control they engender also tends to reduce someone’s earning capacity. Neither of these conclusions is likely to be welcome to social reformers"
Students complain about professor's Black Lives Matter shirt. The professor's response is priceless. - "A law professor received a written complaint from “Concerned Students” about his Black Lives Matter shirt, and she responded by brilliantly turning the letter into a teachable moment, taking apart their arguments and the assumptions behind them, literally and figuratively schooling the authors of the complaint with wit, clarity, and moral authority."
The differing response to this and Halloween costumes (and all the other SJW hissyfits) is telling
Dylann Roof vs Black Lives Matter
Here's Why Cops Often Shoot Suspects Multiple Times - "“Hollywood has us believing that if you shoot someone once or twice, they fall,” former police chief Chuck Drago told BI over the phone. But, he added, “I’ve seen people shot many times, and they don’t even slow down.” Police often keep firing because they don’t even realize they hit the person, Drago says. Cops are also taught to fire three times before reassessing the threat — a procedure known as “triple tap,” according to Dr. Daniel Kennedy, a forensic criminologist"
As cobras and vipers spread their deadly venom, it’s getting harder to save lives - "It is estimated that a resurgence of the scourge of snakebites in Africa and Asia could soon account for a quarter of million deaths every year. In the past, deaths from snakebites have been poorly reported and the extent of the crisis underestimated. However, doctors in India recently carried out a detailed survey and discovered that around 46,000 people in the country died from snakebites every year. Official statistics had suggested that the figure was only around 1,000. Similarly in Bangladesh, a detailed survey revealed that the annual snakebite death toll there was around 6,000."
Best of Today, 24 Jun EU referendum: The UK votes Leave · BBC - "the first time I appeared on this program with you was 17 years ago and we were considered to be a complete joke party with a manifesto that was sort of for the mad and the bad and now 70 million people have voted for it and I couldn't be more delighted"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Agrippina the Younger - "[On Messalina] 'She is said to have competed with prostitutes through the night and-'
'And won. And won, she won against Rome's chief prostitute... The satirist Juvenal has this picture of her with gilded nipples and exposing the belly that bore... Britannicus. So this sort of sense that, he calls her in fact Meretrix Augusta... She was the Emperor's wife and she was also a prostitute, Meratrix. She's a public figure in the worst possible way. So there are stories about her love affairs with actors like Menaster (sp?)'...
'We heard about Messalina being sexually loose. So is Agrippina. She sleeps with a lot of people, according to the sources, but there's a difference. Messalina does it for her own pleasure. Agrippina does it always spae dominataeus (sp?) Tacitus says: in the hope of power, in the hope of control.'"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Tess of the d'Urbervilles - "The editor of Macmillan rejected it because of its succulence. It was too succulent... it's that dwelling of the physical
I think that they found so-"
Post ID: 792384137868340137
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Links - 10th September 2016
Women Banned from Wearing Burqa When Entering ISIS’ Security Centres - "within the past two years, the ISIS used to force women in Iraq and Syria to wear burqa and niqab; however, now the group has no choice but to prevent women with burqa from entering its security centres... The decision, according to the source, came after some fully veiled women killed a number of ISIS commanders and members in the past months"
Islamophobia!
Ancient Roman-inspired restaurant Roma to open in east London - "Food – including cuts of meat and homemade dishes such as tapenade ‒ will be cooked using what are said to be traditional Roman techniques, including cooking meat with hay. The wine list will encompass choices from across the old Roman Empire, include vintages from Italy, France, Macedonia and Spain – with some said to be from vineyards that have been traced back to Roman times."
StandWithUs - We ♥ LOVE ♥ our supporters of Israel from around the... - "We <3 LOVE <3 our supporters of Israel from around the world! This week we received this message from a family in Singapore"
Comments: Zaki Omar (225 likes): "My Muslim bros and sisters. We all know what will happen to the Jews ultimately. When the time comes, even a rock will reveal if a Jew is hiding behind it. So don't worry. Make ur prayers. Allah is on our side. Allah sees and hears. Allah will respond. Allah never breaks promises."
Mohd Azhar Mohd Sani (166 likes): "Theres no land or country called israel... Shame on u zionist rapist killers n terrorist...puiiik"
Eliaz Trazaguet (37 likes): "Zionist scums & 7 idiots in the picture. I didnt know this idiots exist in Singapore..Supporting Terrorism is a crime!"
Mariam Solehah (262 likes): "isreal terrorists have killed Palestinians .. .. And confiscated land not theirs .. Isreal is one of the most evil .. Their nature is the same , namely, to rob the rights of others and can not see any other advanced nation and religion .. Remember God 's promise is sure .. israel is a nation of liars .."
Hidrir Hamid (13 likes): "THOSE are not SINGAPOREANS! Thier Families CAME FROM CHINA Real Born original Singaporeans doesnt stand with Terrorist country like ISRAEL! MURDERER!"
Andrew To: "Suddenly the people from the religion which always emphasize love and peace are calling others with different views dogs, idiots, dumb, moron, if they teach you to be so intolerant, maybe their teaching is not that peaceful after all."
Rex Timothy Ang: "I just like all the Muslims and anti-Israelis here cursing the Singapore Family just because their belief is Christianity and they support Israel. If you look into the history, you should know how much favor we owe Israel. They built our military against aggressive countries and they helped Singapore become an economic power. Thanks for destroying Singapore's reputation as a multiracial and multireligious country."
Malay man did a Amy Chong racist comments - "Wow Hoa Sai Liao..... He 1st bring in Chinese, now he bring in Christian... Good show coming up."
Someone made a police report in July 2014, but nothing happened. In fact the person made his own police report. I guess it's okay for "minorities" to be racist and religiously discriminatory
I dare you to read this and still feel good about tipping - "the restaurant industry has the highest rate of sexual harassment of any industry in the United States. It’s actually five times the rate of all other industries. Seven percent of American women work in restaurants, but thirty percent of sexual harassment complaints from women come from the restaurant industry. It's the single largest source of sexual harassment complaints of any industry in the United States. Our research shows that all of that sexual harassment—from customers, coworkers, and management—can be traced back to this whole culture of forcing women to make their income based on pleasing the customer."
The genetic fallacy about black people and slavery is annoying though
Tipless restaurants: The Linkery’s owner explains why abolishing tipping made service better. - "When we switched from tipping to a service charge, our food improved, probably because our cooks were being paid more and didn't feel taken for granted. In turn, business improved, and within a couple of months, our server team was making more money than it had under the tipped system. The quality of our service also improved. In my observation, however, that wasn't mainly because the servers were making more money (although that helped, too). Instead, our service improved principally because eliminating tips makes it easier to provide good service... in almost every industry, it's expected you'll be able to do your best work if you're not constantly distracted by compensation issues. Why don't we want that for restaurant servers?... Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work... in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference... the most notable opponent we encountered who wanted to cling to the tipping model was our local city attorney. In spite of our posted signs and check stamps and menu text and blog posts that outlined the service charge, his office accused us of trying to deceive consumers with it, and threatened me with fines and jail time. I thought this made me a special kind of outlaw, until this year when the same city attorney tried to stick one of my neighbors with 13 years in jail for writing protest slogans on the sidewalk using water-soluble children's chalk"
Foreign doctors with unapproved medical degree found working in polyclinics
'Murica - Imgur
The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers - "American lawyers lean to the left of the ideological spectrum... This places the average American lawyer’s ideology close to the ideology of Bill Clinton... This confirms prior scholarship and journalism that has argued that the legal profession is liberal on balance. To our knowledge, however, this figure represents the most comprehensive picture of the ideology of American lawyers ever assembled... although the fact that few American lawyers hold extreme ideological positions may suggest that lawyers are generally moderate, it is worth noting that there are relatively few lawyers in the middle of the distribution... the ideological distribution of lawyers falls exactly in the middle of these seven professions. The distributions for technology workers, journalists, and academics are skewed further to the left. This perhaps confirms existing beliefs about the types of individuals who are attracted to these professions (see, e.g., Mariani and Hewitt 2008). Lawyers as a whole are much more liberal, however, than three of the professions presented. Indeed, the median lawyer is well to the left of the respective medians for accountants; bankers and financial workers; and medical doctors. The difference between those in the legal profession and those in the banking or finance industry is particularly revealing, as corporate law firms and finance firms tend to be centered in comparable metropolitan areas and perhaps draw from the same underlying pools of potential candidates... technology workers, journalists, and academics are all professions with a sizable percentage of members with a CFscore of less than –1.0. The legal profession on the other hand, albeit liberal overall, has a much lower percentage of outlier members who are extremely liberal or extremely conservative... all fourteen top law schools have distributions that lean to the left"
Man claims he paid $3.7m to have sex with celebs - ""It was agreed that if (Mr Xu) paid the sum of A$3.7 million, (the agency) would provide Megan Fox, Candice Swanepoel and Angelababy as escorts for sexual services," Mr Xu's statement of claim said. It is not suggested that the women are escorts."
Meet Balmuda, the $230 Toaster From Japan - "Using steam and carefully calibrated heat cycles, it transforms store-bought bread into something that smells, tastes and feels like it popped out of a baker's oven"
How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare - "But I soon learned that Africa is rife with hidden danger. I witnessed random acts of violence, contracted malaria and had close encounters with lions, elephants, crocodiles and snakes. As monsoon season came and went, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighbouring Congo began to escalate and then spill over into Zambia with repercussions all along the lake. Thousands of people were displaced and we heard brutal tales of rape and murder. Then one day, without warning, armed rebels descended on our bay"
Maybe someone will scold her for perpetuating racist stereotypes
How a parrot who may have witnessed a murder could change the way we think about animals - "prosecutors are trying to figure out how they might be able to use the bird’s reported eyewitness account as evidence. This is obviously pretty unprecedented in the American legal system. But the case is significant for another big reason: if Bud “testifies” and the prosecution is successful, experts say it could prove to be a game changer when it comes to the representation of nonhuman species in the courtroom—and that it could help change the way we think about how animals contribute to society in general."
Kids Are Master Manipulators. So Use Game Theory Against Them - "Screaming “Don’t make me turn this car around!” never works. That’s what Zollman calls a noncredible threat—kids see through it, because they know it means you’ll suffer too. So pick punishments that benefit you. Like: “Stop punching your sister or we’re going to Grandma’s instead of the movies.”"
Horrifying mob of 5,000 attacks Christians for BUILDING CHURCH shouting ‘Egypt is Islamic’ - "Coptic Christians have long struggled to legally build churches in Egypt, despite a growing Christian population. A new church can only be built by presidential decreers, which is only issued once a year. Villagers reported police officers attended evening Muslim prayers in front of the Christians’ homes and used loudspeakers to broadcast the service... There have also been reports of Christian women being abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry older Muslim men."
Elite K-8 school teaches white students they’re born racist - "An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers. Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it... a number of leading private schools across the country also have segregated students by “race-based affinity groups”... The program, these parents say, deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race. Some kids come home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.” They say white kids are being brainwashed into thinking any success they achieve is unearned. Indeed, a young white girl is seen confessing on a Bank Street video: “I feel guilty for having a privilege I don’t deserve.”"
Raped German politician Selin Gören admits lie over her attackers' nationality - "A young left-wing German politician has admitted she lied to police about the racial background of three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country... Selin, who has visited refugee camps in Iraq where she was shocked at the squalor people are living in, did not want to stoke 'more hatred against migrants ín Germany.' To help her cope she wrote an open letter to a fictional refugee and posted it on Facebook. It read in part: 'I am really sorry that your sexist and line-crossing treatment of me could help fuel aggressive racism... She now says people must never 'twist the truth' even if it is politically expedient to do so."
Islamophobia!
Ancient Roman-inspired restaurant Roma to open in east London - "Food – including cuts of meat and homemade dishes such as tapenade ‒ will be cooked using what are said to be traditional Roman techniques, including cooking meat with hay. The wine list will encompass choices from across the old Roman Empire, include vintages from Italy, France, Macedonia and Spain – with some said to be from vineyards that have been traced back to Roman times."
StandWithUs - We ♥ LOVE ♥ our supporters of Israel from around the... - "We <3 LOVE <3 our supporters of Israel from around the world! This week we received this message from a family in Singapore"
Comments: Zaki Omar (225 likes): "My Muslim bros and sisters. We all know what will happen to the Jews ultimately. When the time comes, even a rock will reveal if a Jew is hiding behind it. So don't worry. Make ur prayers. Allah is on our side. Allah sees and hears. Allah will respond. Allah never breaks promises."
Mohd Azhar Mohd Sani (166 likes): "Theres no land or country called israel... Shame on u zionist rapist killers n terrorist...puiiik"
Eliaz Trazaguet (37 likes): "Zionist scums & 7 idiots in the picture. I didnt know this idiots exist in Singapore..Supporting Terrorism is a crime!"
Mariam Solehah (262 likes): "isreal terrorists have killed Palestinians .. .. And confiscated land not theirs .. Isreal is one of the most evil .. Their nature is the same , namely, to rob the rights of others and can not see any other advanced nation and religion .. Remember God 's promise is sure .. israel is a nation of liars .."
Hidrir Hamid (13 likes): "THOSE are not SINGAPOREANS! Thier Families CAME FROM CHINA Real Born original Singaporeans doesnt stand with Terrorist country like ISRAEL! MURDERER!"
Andrew To: "Suddenly the people from the religion which always emphasize love and peace are calling others with different views dogs, idiots, dumb, moron, if they teach you to be so intolerant, maybe their teaching is not that peaceful after all."
Rex Timothy Ang: "I just like all the Muslims and anti-Israelis here cursing the Singapore Family just because their belief is Christianity and they support Israel. If you look into the history, you should know how much favor we owe Israel. They built our military against aggressive countries and they helped Singapore become an economic power. Thanks for destroying Singapore's reputation as a multiracial and multireligious country."
Malay man did a Amy Chong racist comments - "Wow Hoa Sai Liao..... He 1st bring in Chinese, now he bring in Christian... Good show coming up."
Someone made a police report in July 2014, but nothing happened. In fact the person made his own police report. I guess it's okay for "minorities" to be racist and religiously discriminatory
I dare you to read this and still feel good about tipping - "the restaurant industry has the highest rate of sexual harassment of any industry in the United States. It’s actually five times the rate of all other industries. Seven percent of American women work in restaurants, but thirty percent of sexual harassment complaints from women come from the restaurant industry. It's the single largest source of sexual harassment complaints of any industry in the United States. Our research shows that all of that sexual harassment—from customers, coworkers, and management—can be traced back to this whole culture of forcing women to make their income based on pleasing the customer."
The genetic fallacy about black people and slavery is annoying though
Tipless restaurants: The Linkery’s owner explains why abolishing tipping made service better. - "When we switched from tipping to a service charge, our food improved, probably because our cooks were being paid more and didn't feel taken for granted. In turn, business improved, and within a couple of months, our server team was making more money than it had under the tipped system. The quality of our service also improved. In my observation, however, that wasn't mainly because the servers were making more money (although that helped, too). Instead, our service improved principally because eliminating tips makes it easier to provide good service... in almost every industry, it's expected you'll be able to do your best work if you're not constantly distracted by compensation issues. Why don't we want that for restaurant servers?... Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work... in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference... the most notable opponent we encountered who wanted to cling to the tipping model was our local city attorney. In spite of our posted signs and check stamps and menu text and blog posts that outlined the service charge, his office accused us of trying to deceive consumers with it, and threatened me with fines and jail time. I thought this made me a special kind of outlaw, until this year when the same city attorney tried to stick one of my neighbors with 13 years in jail for writing protest slogans on the sidewalk using water-soluble children's chalk"
Foreign doctors with unapproved medical degree found working in polyclinics
'Murica - Imgur
The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers - "American lawyers lean to the left of the ideological spectrum... This places the average American lawyer’s ideology close to the ideology of Bill Clinton... This confirms prior scholarship and journalism that has argued that the legal profession is liberal on balance. To our knowledge, however, this figure represents the most comprehensive picture of the ideology of American lawyers ever assembled... although the fact that few American lawyers hold extreme ideological positions may suggest that lawyers are generally moderate, it is worth noting that there are relatively few lawyers in the middle of the distribution... the ideological distribution of lawyers falls exactly in the middle of these seven professions. The distributions for technology workers, journalists, and academics are skewed further to the left. This perhaps confirms existing beliefs about the types of individuals who are attracted to these professions (see, e.g., Mariani and Hewitt 2008). Lawyers as a whole are much more liberal, however, than three of the professions presented. Indeed, the median lawyer is well to the left of the respective medians for accountants; bankers and financial workers; and medical doctors. The difference between those in the legal profession and those in the banking or finance industry is particularly revealing, as corporate law firms and finance firms tend to be centered in comparable metropolitan areas and perhaps draw from the same underlying pools of potential candidates... technology workers, journalists, and academics are all professions with a sizable percentage of members with a CFscore of less than –1.0. The legal profession on the other hand, albeit liberal overall, has a much lower percentage of outlier members who are extremely liberal or extremely conservative... all fourteen top law schools have distributions that lean to the left"
Man claims he paid $3.7m to have sex with celebs - ""It was agreed that if (Mr Xu) paid the sum of A$3.7 million, (the agency) would provide Megan Fox, Candice Swanepoel and Angelababy as escorts for sexual services," Mr Xu's statement of claim said. It is not suggested that the women are escorts."
Meet Balmuda, the $230 Toaster From Japan - "Using steam and carefully calibrated heat cycles, it transforms store-bought bread into something that smells, tastes and feels like it popped out of a baker's oven"
How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare - "But I soon learned that Africa is rife with hidden danger. I witnessed random acts of violence, contracted malaria and had close encounters with lions, elephants, crocodiles and snakes. As monsoon season came and went, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighbouring Congo began to escalate and then spill over into Zambia with repercussions all along the lake. Thousands of people were displaced and we heard brutal tales of rape and murder. Then one day, without warning, armed rebels descended on our bay"
Maybe someone will scold her for perpetuating racist stereotypes
How a parrot who may have witnessed a murder could change the way we think about animals - "prosecutors are trying to figure out how they might be able to use the bird’s reported eyewitness account as evidence. This is obviously pretty unprecedented in the American legal system. But the case is significant for another big reason: if Bud “testifies” and the prosecution is successful, experts say it could prove to be a game changer when it comes to the representation of nonhuman species in the courtroom—and that it could help change the way we think about how animals contribute to society in general."
Kids Are Master Manipulators. So Use Game Theory Against Them - "Screaming “Don’t make me turn this car around!” never works. That’s what Zollman calls a noncredible threat—kids see through it, because they know it means you’ll suffer too. So pick punishments that benefit you. Like: “Stop punching your sister or we’re going to Grandma’s instead of the movies.”"
Horrifying mob of 5,000 attacks Christians for BUILDING CHURCH shouting ‘Egypt is Islamic’ - "Coptic Christians have long struggled to legally build churches in Egypt, despite a growing Christian population. A new church can only be built by presidential decreers, which is only issued once a year. Villagers reported police officers attended evening Muslim prayers in front of the Christians’ homes and used loudspeakers to broadcast the service... There have also been reports of Christian women being abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry older Muslim men."
Elite K-8 school teaches white students they’re born racist - "An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers. Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it... a number of leading private schools across the country also have segregated students by “race-based affinity groups”... The program, these parents say, deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race. Some kids come home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.” They say white kids are being brainwashed into thinking any success they achieve is unearned. Indeed, a young white girl is seen confessing on a Bank Street video: “I feel guilty for having a privilege I don’t deserve.”"
Raped German politician Selin Gören admits lie over her attackers' nationality - "A young left-wing German politician has admitted she lied to police about the racial background of three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country... Selin, who has visited refugee camps in Iraq where she was shocked at the squalor people are living in, did not want to stoke 'more hatred against migrants ín Germany.' To help her cope she wrote an open letter to a fictional refugee and posted it on Facebook. It read in part: 'I am really sorry that your sexist and line-crossing treatment of me could help fuel aggressive racism... She now says people must never 'twist the truth' even if it is politically expedient to do so."
Post ID: 3746066599364517296
Friday, September 09, 2016
Shall I wed an aged man
Fol. 228. The evils incident to marriage between January and May form one of the commonest themes of the ballad-writers : cf. no. XXVI, stanza 4 ; no. LXIV, stanza 23.
The complaint of a widdow against an old man.
To the tune OF Trentam's Toy.
SHALL I wed an aged man,
that groaneth of the Gout,
And lead my lyfe in miserye,
within doores and without?
No ! I will haue a Batcheler,
of lyvely bloud and bone,
To cheare me in my latter dayes,
or els I will haue non.
For yf I take a Batcheler
that can both skyp and springe,
Then he will be my comforter,
to giue me every thinge.
If I be sad, or sorowfull,
at boord or els at bed,
A youngman will be pittyfull,
and help to hould my head.
An aged man is testye,
and set to hoorde and hyde;
With lame legges and restye,
bewayling back and syde.
A young man he is beautyfull,
couragious, trick, and trim ;
And looketh with a merry cheere,
when aged men looke grim.
Better is a Batcheler,
of bone and body sound,
Then is an olde leacherer
with twentye thousand pound.
Who is so bad a market-man,
that buyeth flesh or fishe,
But lightly choseth for to haue
the yongest in his dishe?
Young bloud renueth olde,
as Phisicke doth expresse ;
And age is ill to be contrould,
but cursse where they should blesse :
But yf I haue a young man,
and chaunce to catch the quacke,
He will provide me delicats,
and cheare me vp with sacke.
An aged man is quaffinge
in every cup or can,
with ioynts and synnewes shakinge,
much like a deadly man.
But looke vpon a young man,
in him yow shall espye
A good face, and a iollye cheere,
a pleasant rowlinge eye.
His countenaunce is chearfull,
at bed and eke at boorde;
His talke is never sorrowfull,
but Heigh ! at every word.
An old man's coate it is beraide,
all overthwart the brest.
A young man is well-favored,
well-browed, and finelye drest.
An aged man comes drooping home,
as on that wanteth lyfe. A young man sayes, when he comes in,
' Come, kysse me, gentle wife !'
And yf I take a young man,
although his wealth be small,
If that he vse me honestlye
he shall be lord of all.
Behould the little Spanniell,
and every beast in briefe,
Will likke, and leape vpon, their feete
by whom they find releife.
Much more then will a witty man,
whom natur's worke hath wrought,
Must loue the woman faythfullye,
that maried him of nought.
[L'Envoy]
Therefore I am determined
I cannot liue alone,
But I will haue a Batcheler,
or els I will haue none.
--- Shirburn Ballads, No. LXVI / Anon
In modern English spelling:
SHALL I wed an aged man,
that groaneth of the Gout,
And lead my life in misery,
within doors and without?
No ! I will have a bachelor,
of lively blood and bone,
To cheer me in my latter days,
or else I will have non.
For if I take a bachelor
that can both skip and spring,
Then he will be my comforter,
to give me every thing.
If I be sad, or sorrowful,
at board or else at bed,
A young man will be pitiful,
and help to hold my head.
An aged man is testy,
and set to horde and hide;
With lamey legs and resty,
bewailing back and side.
A young man he is beautiful,
courageous, trick, and trim ;
And looketh with a merry cheer,
when aged men look grim.
Better is a bachelor,
of bone and body sound,
Then is an old lecherer
with twenty thousand pound.
Who is so bad a market-man,
that buyeth flesh or fish,
But lightly choseth for to have
the youngest in his dish?
Young blood reneweth old,
as Physicke doth express ;
And age is ill to be controlled,
but cursed where they should bless :
But if I have a young man,
and chance to catch the quack,
He will provide me delicats,
and cheer me up with sack.
An aged man is quaffing
in every cup or can,
with joints and sinews shaking,
much like a deadly man.
But look upon a young man,
in him you shall espy
A good face, and a jolly cheer,
a pleasant rolling eye.
His countenance is cheerful,
at bed and eke at board;
His talk is never sorrowful,
but hey! at every word.
An old man's coat it is beride,
all overthwart the breast.
A young man is well-favored,
well-browed, and finely dressed.
An aged man comes drooping home,
as on that wanteth life.
A young man says, when he comes in,
' Come, kiss me, gentle wife !'
And if I take a young man,
although his wealth be small,
If that he use me honestly
he shall be lord of all.
Behold the little Spaniel,
and every beast in brief,
Will lick, and leap upon, their feet
by whom they find relief.
Much more then will a witty man,
whom nature's work hath wrought,
Must love the woman faithfully,
that married him of nought.
[L'Envoy]
Therefore I am determined
I cannot live alone,
But I will have a bachelor,
or else I will have none.
The complaint of a widdow against an old man.
To the tune OF Trentam's Toy.
SHALL I wed an aged man,
that groaneth of the Gout,
And lead my lyfe in miserye,
within doores and without?
No ! I will haue a Batcheler,
of lyvely bloud and bone,
To cheare me in my latter dayes,
or els I will haue non.
For yf I take a Batcheler
that can both skyp and springe,
Then he will be my comforter,
to giue me every thinge.
If I be sad, or sorowfull,
at boord or els at bed,
A youngman will be pittyfull,
and help to hould my head.
An aged man is testye,
and set to hoorde and hyde;
With lame legges and restye,
bewayling back and syde.
A young man he is beautyfull,
couragious, trick, and trim ;
And looketh with a merry cheere,
when aged men looke grim.
Better is a Batcheler,
of bone and body sound,
Then is an olde leacherer
with twentye thousand pound.
Who is so bad a market-man,
that buyeth flesh or fishe,
But lightly choseth for to haue
the yongest in his dishe?
Young bloud renueth olde,
as Phisicke doth expresse ;
And age is ill to be contrould,
but cursse where they should blesse :
But yf I haue a young man,
and chaunce to catch the quacke,
He will provide me delicats,
and cheare me vp with sacke.
An aged man is quaffinge
in every cup or can,
with ioynts and synnewes shakinge,
much like a deadly man.
But looke vpon a young man,
in him yow shall espye
A good face, and a iollye cheere,
a pleasant rowlinge eye.
His countenaunce is chearfull,
at bed and eke at boorde;
His talke is never sorrowfull,
but Heigh ! at every word.
An old man's coate it is beraide,
all overthwart the brest.
A young man is well-favored,
well-browed, and finelye drest.
An aged man comes drooping home,
as on that wanteth lyfe. A young man sayes, when he comes in,
' Come, kysse me, gentle wife !'
And yf I take a young man,
although his wealth be small,
If that he vse me honestlye
he shall be lord of all.
Behould the little Spanniell,
and every beast in briefe,
Will likke, and leape vpon, their feete
by whom they find releife.
Much more then will a witty man,
whom natur's worke hath wrought,
Must loue the woman faythfullye,
that maried him of nought.
[L'Envoy]
Therefore I am determined
I cannot liue alone,
But I will haue a Batcheler,
or els I will haue none.
--- Shirburn Ballads, No. LXVI / Anon
In modern English spelling:
SHALL I wed an aged man,
that groaneth of the Gout,
And lead my life in misery,
within doors and without?
No ! I will have a bachelor,
of lively blood and bone,
To cheer me in my latter days,
or else I will have non.
For if I take a bachelor
that can both skip and spring,
Then he will be my comforter,
to give me every thing.
If I be sad, or sorrowful,
at board or else at bed,
A young man will be pitiful,
and help to hold my head.
An aged man is testy,
and set to horde and hide;
With lamey legs and resty,
bewailing back and side.
A young man he is beautiful,
courageous, trick, and trim ;
And looketh with a merry cheer,
when aged men look grim.
Better is a bachelor,
of bone and body sound,
Then is an old lecherer
with twenty thousand pound.
Who is so bad a market-man,
that buyeth flesh or fish,
But lightly choseth for to have
the youngest in his dish?
Young blood reneweth old,
as Physicke doth express ;
And age is ill to be controlled,
but cursed where they should bless :
But if I have a young man,
and chance to catch the quack,
He will provide me delicats,
and cheer me up with sack.
An aged man is quaffing
in every cup or can,
with joints and sinews shaking,
much like a deadly man.
But look upon a young man,
in him you shall espy
A good face, and a jolly cheer,
a pleasant rolling eye.
His countenance is cheerful,
at bed and eke at board;
His talk is never sorrowful,
but hey! at every word.
An old man's coat it is beride,
all overthwart the breast.
A young man is well-favored,
well-browed, and finely dressed.
An aged man comes drooping home,
as on that wanteth life.
A young man says, when he comes in,
' Come, kiss me, gentle wife !'
And if I take a young man,
although his wealth be small,
If that he use me honestly
he shall be lord of all.
Behold the little Spaniel,
and every beast in brief,
Will lick, and leap upon, their feet
by whom they find relief.
Much more then will a witty man,
whom nature's work hath wrought,
Must love the woman faithfully,
that married him of nought.
[L'Envoy]
Therefore I am determined
I cannot live alone,
But I will have a bachelor,
or else I will have none.
Post ID: 5769195955947320511
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