Keeping Kids From Toy Guns: How One Mother Changed Her Mind - "We didn't always used to frown upon weapon play; children of the 1950s grew up steeped in television shows showing gun-toting heroes like the Lone Ranger, and toy soldiers and cowboy costumes were common playthings. But societal panic intensified in the wake of a spate of tragic school shootings in the 1990s, and a shift towards zero tolerance policies and regulating how children should play has been steadily increasing ever since. We've become so panicked about toy weapons that we are rewriting them out of our past. Jay Mechling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, recounts in The Journal of Play how surprised he was that an icon of postwar 1950s American childhood - the Daisy BB gun - was utterly absent, along with toy guns, when he visited the Strong National Museum of Play. The Daisy and toy replica guns had been nominated for inclusion in the museum's National Toy Hall of Fame multiple times, but protests against them by parents and teachers prevailed.* Toy guns were systematically being erased from the American cultural history of childhood. Although many of us in America worry that gun play desensitizes kids to violence, the research doesn't bear this out. In fact, it can actually help teach children to read each other's facial cues and body language, figure out their place in a group, and learn how to adjust their behavior in social settings. Play helps children learn how to signal each other: this is fantasy
This also applies to TV violence
If in doubt, add an egg. The 10 cooking tips everyone should know - "Meat and fish cooked on the bone will always have a deeper, more interesting taste than the equivalent fillets, and stocks made from bones will not only add flavour to your soups and sauces, but richness: a good stock should have a slightly wobbly consistency at room temperature thanks to the gelatine content (don’t worry, it will melt when you heat it up)."
Osaka Escort Erotic Massage Club - "This site is engaged in the education of our youth very seriously." (NSFW)"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Maths in the Early Islamic World - "A lot of people assume that it started because of the birth of this new religion Islam in Arabia. Whereas in fact for a whole century there was an Islamic dynasty the Umayyad where scholarship didn't really flourish. The Golden Age is really thought to have begun with the Abbasid dynasty... The Abbasids were very much influenced by Persian culture. And in Persia there was this long long tradition of scholarship and learning. And so they became obsessed with texts and books. So the Golden Age really began with a wonderful flourishing translation movement...
Algebra itself, all the way through the Islamic period, didn't have symbols. They had to wait for people like Descartes. So they were writing everything rhetorically, everything in prose. But that didn't slow them down in terms of doing algebra...
[On Indian numerals] We know that it had reached as far as Syria by the 600s because there's a lovely quote from a Syrian Christian bishop complaining about the Greeks thinking they know everything and the Indians are marvelous"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Seneca the Younger - "He got very into extreme philosophical practices. He adopted vegetarianism and his father thought that was rather a dangerous thing to do in case he was associated with an exotic religious sect and then might be subject to the Emperor Tiberius at the time was cracking down on exotic religions...
You can only show the virtue of mercy if you have the capacity to chop someone's head off. So mercy is always an autocratic virtue"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - "People don't seem to realise... We're in a very cold period of time in earth history. We have ice at both poles. We have about 70m of sea level potential locked up in that ice and as we've looked back through the whole of geological history, it's very difficult to find any other period of time where we have ice at both poles"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Wives Wanted in the Faroe Islands - "[On coming from Southeast Asia] When I step from the plane the first feeling I feel is the fresh air. I feel like I'm drowning because of the freshness of the air"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Cathedral of the Fallen - "In nineteen fifty nine because Franco did not have enough people from the Nationalist Front to bury in the Valley of the Fallen, what he did was dispatch an order throughout Spain to remove the remains of those killed and bring them there without anyone's permission"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, #GrannyWisdom - "So I asked my great grandma... how she learned about sex and she said that she learned everything from her husband. And so I asked well how did he find out and she said oh when he was sixteen his family had a maid and she took him down the cellar and taught him"
Study: Walking Can Be as Good as Running - "The key to improved cardiovascular health, according to this study, is calorie expenditure, regardless of how it's expended. Runners aren't healthier by virtue of being runners -- they're just more efficient in their exercising. If you prefer walking, you can be just as well off, health-wise. "Assuming a slow jogging speed of a 12 minute mile, compared to a walking speed of 17 minute miles, you would need to walk about 50 percent further to expend the same energy as running," lead author Paul Williams explained to me. In terms of time, "you would need to walk for about twice as long.""
Laser technology uncovers 1,600-year-old Christian frescoes in Rome's biggest catacomb - "It is a myth that Christians buried their dead underground in secrecy, the academics said. The reason they dug catacombs was to accommodate thousands of dead bodies, while only paying tax on the surface area of the land. In the St Domitilla Catacombs, the Christians dug down to a depth of 100ft."
Statue of Dog Peeing Pops Up Near NYC's 'Fearless Girl' - "Gardega said the "Fearless Girl" wasn't made by some individual artist making a statement, but made by a billion-dollar financial firm trying to promote an index fund."
Why Hong Kong chefs age fish used in sashimi and sushi – just as good steaks are aged | South China Morning Post - "certain types of fish are refrigerated and aged to enhance the texture and taste, in the same way good steaks are aged for flavour and tenderness. While sushi cognoscenti were aware of this, chefs outside Japan rarely talked about it – until now."
Deep Learning Algorithm Rewrites Traditional Recipes for New Regions, Ingredients - "Imagine your favorite go-to recipe mutated to conform to the traditional methods and ingredients of any number of diverse regional food cultures. Consider, say, lasagne, but a sort of lasagne that's instead a naturally occurring part of Japanese or Ethiopian cuisine. Not "fusion," but something deeper—a whole rewriting of what a lasagne even is according to the culinary traditions of some other place"
Why China chose the German instead of English legal system | South China Morning Post - "civil law works very badly in dictatorships, where it politicises justice and leads to socially inefficient outcomes. There is strong evidence to show that when civil law is transplanted through colonisation into an environment with a bad government, it will lead to more abuse. Transplantation of common law does not suffer as much from this problem as the sovereign is less able to use the legal system for political purposes... The German system had a distinctive communitarian character. It was the product of the Prussian desire to build up a rational state bureaucracy and a strong military command in fear of Napoleonic France, and unite the many small states, principalities and cities in Bismarck’s Germany"
It’s not just Donald Trump: The Pope makes it a point to look miserable around visiting dignitaries - "It’s a treatment that Francis has given to a who’s who of foreign dignitaries. Irish president Michael Higgins, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Japan’s Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko and former U.S. president Barack Obama, among others, all came back from the Vatican bearing official portraits showing them standing next to a surprisingly disinterested pontiff. The Pope is essentially in the same boat as Queen Elizabeth II. As a non-partisan constitutional monarch, the Queen similarly has to avoid any sign that she’s giving special favour to any particular politician or visiting world leader."
Why Maajid Nawaz Refuses To Praise Didsbury Mosque For Speaking Out Against Isis - ""Surprise, surprise you happen to have the same sorts of speakers, with the same sorts of views that would sympathise with the same sorts of things that al Qaeda want to implement in their theocratic Caliphate. "So what you oppose ISIS, so what? That's like saying "I oppose Stalin but I support the Nazis" or else "I oppose Hitler but I support Stalin gulags""... "Until we can separate, until we can separate these extremists from our community, and isolate them, don't blame the rest of society for wondering whether every Muslim is an extremist, when our mosques are hosting the extremists themselves.""
Take the test: Feminist shenanigans or satire? - "Below are five stories about feminist antics. One is pure invention, the others are true. Can you tell which one is false?"
No, You’re Not More Likely to Be Killed by a Right-Wing Extremist than an Islamic Terrorist - "when these apologists for Islam get bored of claiming that jihadists are incessantly and inexplicably lying about their religious motivations, they invariably engage in the crass exercise of throwing around skewed data in a desperate attempt to deemphasize the danger posed by Islamic terror. As far as I can tell, this is not due to some well-meaning concern for people worrying unnecessarily, or to ensure that counter terrorism strategy is accurately focused upon the most serious threat, it seems rather to be a tactical attempt to prioritize the protection of odious 7th century folklore over the welfare of real human beings... Muslim adults comprise less than 1% of the U.S population, and yet according to this study, are responsible for a whopping 27% of the terrorism in the country. This is a significant overrepresentation among such a tiny minority and, as expected, is completely overlooked in this report...
they will be citing a report or article that contains most, if not all, of the below errors:
A tally which starts after the biggest terror attack committed on U.S. soil.
A tally which ends before the deadliest mass shooting on U.S. soil. (Both of these attacks were committed by jihadists.)
A tally which fails to include certain other jihadist and right-wing attacks.
A tally which misreports certain attacks as “right-wing” or “far-right”.
A report which fails to include figures for Americans killed abroad.
A report which ignores foiled plots.
A report which ignores the number of non-fatal casualties.
A report which is not calibrated to consider the disproportionate focus of counter-terror analysis on Islamic terrorism.
A report which is not calibrated to consider the disproportionate number of attacks by Muslim extremists in relation to their lack of prevalence as a minority group.
A report which conflates several disparate ideological motivations for non-Islamic terrorism by lumping them all into the “far-right” bracket.
A report which ignores all terror attacks outside of the United States...
Ironically, those of us concerned about the global impacts of Islam, are routinely accused of xenophobia and bigotry, often by the very same people who demand that we measure threat by ignoring Islamic terrorism in foreign states. They seem to be arguing that as long as jihadism is negligible in the good ole U.S. of A, then it’s as though the threat to “foreigners” in the rest of the world is of little to no concern. I must say, that sounds a lot like bigotry and xenophobia to me."
Watching movies with children: How my daughter’s screen habits changed my criticism. - "Watching P. grow into a very different kind of watcher than I am—less passive and analytic, more collaborative and engaged—has been a welcome stripping away of my own viewing habits and assumptions. I’d long presumed films should be watched from beginning to end; she’s happy to keep returning to one beloved scene, or watch a musical song by song, skipping all the dialogue in between, or watch the first half-hour of 101 Dalmatians 10 nights in a row."
Disney Kills Star Wars Game Without Telling Creator - "All in all, it's rough. I understand needing to reallocate resources (yes, even when you're a company of Disney's "that's no moon!"-level size), but treating developers poorly is a) classless and b) a crappy way to run a business."
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Subversion, Russia and the West - "What's so interesting here in Moscow is that almost everyone you speak to portrays Russia as the one on the defensive. It's the one under attack with the West trying to undermine its position, to stir up dissent. It's a refrain you hear from almost everyone you speak to now"
Fool Me Once | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "Hands are really hard for everybody, and they always have been and that's why back in the day in the Renaissance, the Old Masters used to separate fee for each visible hand that would be depicted in the painting. And this would be spelled out in contracts before the painting was done. So if you were a wealthy patron that was commissioning a work of art and when you got the estimate back it seemed too high, the hands might be a place that you could skimp...
When Customs and Border Patrol seizes counterfeit goods they go back to the company whose products are being knocked off and they'll give them a choice of having the goods destroyed or they can be saved and used in the time of an emergency. So after Katrina the state of Mississippi tapped into this stockpile using prison labor to help sort and distribute the goods. Since seventy percent of the counterfeit goods originate in China it expedited things to teach the prisoners to read basic mandarin to speed up sorting all the boxes...
[On the Ghost Army in WWII] In their spare time they drew each other and they painted like the scenery: the bombed out villages and the whorehouses... they would create fake headquarters and pretend to be generals which was really fun because that was breaking all army regulations which they enjoyed a lot...
[On Brian the Wiz] He was offered a hundred thousand dollars to get breast implants and he did and he had to keep them in for a year. And he didn't like, he chest hair and everything it was anyway he did it and then as long as I knew him he never took him out because he always said it was really good for getting girls... I don't know if you guys know many magicians but they learn magic cause they're not naturally good with the ladies so. So anyway it was like hey can you believe it I have breast implants and the girls are like really and it was like an ice breaker I guess"
Under the Hood | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "[On the popularity of kosher food products] Romaine lettuce for instance is infested with aphids... if you are a kosher certified restaurant you will have a rabbi or a trained individual in the back checking every broccoli floret, every cauliflower and every piece of lettuce... a large percentage of those who purchase kosher products do so because they have the impression of cleanliness... it pays for itself because you don't have to spend very much in total in order to be able to reach two percent of the market or five percent of the market and that's a win. The New York Times in 1975 did a study and the price for a consumer to purchase a kosher product, when you buy Coca Cola - how much are you as a consumer paying for the Orthodox Union that ubiquitous OU on the label? It is 6.5 millionth of a penny. So based on incremental sales, from a factory perspective it makes perfect sense... about sixteen percent of all kosher consumers are Muslims. It's actually beautiful. Now one of the few areas that imams and rabbis talk almost on a daily basis has to do in the food industry"
Money Money Money | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "The ten dollar bill from the Cook Islands in the middle of the Pacific its famous for having the most R rated design in the history of currency. It's an image of a topless woman riding a shark...
[On the Radhanites] 'So can I ask Alana: where there is money there is fraud so how did you protect against that?'
'Beheadings. Yeah it was very seriously enforced and you couldn't marry off your daughter so if our house of Dubner didn't pay his debt his daughters and the daughters of everyone related to him wouldn't be able to marry. It was reputationally based money'"
L'origine de Bert
Friday, August 04, 2017
Thursday, August 03, 2017
Links - 3rd August 2017 (2)
BBC World Service - The Documentary, A Soldier's Eye View of Afghanistan - "The Russians were better fighters than the Americans or the British on the ground. Western soldiers rely on technical equipment and modern technology and computer systems... They severely failed in the ground fight wherever we faced them. They cannot go anywhere without air power. Russians would go places without air power. They would land somewhere without any aerial support or tanks and they would spend the night."
Make Love and Lose Your Religion and Virtue: Recalling Sexual Experiences Undermines Spiritual Intentions and Moral Behavior - "sexual induction diminished spiritual behavioral intentions (Experiments 1 and 2), in particular among those with high individual disinhibition (Experiment 1), as well as behaviors of prosociality and integrity/honesty (Experiment 3). The effects were independent of individual religiousness/spirituality. These findings suggest that combining sexual pleasure with self-transcendence and moral perfection, even if a legitimate ideal, is not an easy enterprise."
Maybe sex cults are about the sex, not the religion
How Wealth Reduces Compassion - "luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian... participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children... less affluent individuals are more likely to report feeling compassion towards others on a regular basis... upper class individuals are worse at recognizing the emotions of others and less likely to pay attention to people they are interacting with (e.g. by checking their cell phones or doodling)... Piff and his colleagues suspect that the answer may have something to do with how wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others"
Free pizza is a better way to motivate workers than paying them more money - "A slice of gooey cheese and tomato is a great incentive at the start of the working week but, ultimately, a 'Well done' from mission control comes out top... Early in the week, free pizza came top, with a 6.7 per cent increase in productivity over the control group, while a compliment from the boss saw an increase of 6.6 per cent, New York Magazine reported. Perhaps surprisingly, a cash incentive came third with 4.9 per cent. However, by day two, the money-motivated group performed 13.2 per cent worse than those in the control group. Over the course of the week, the cash bonus cost the company more and resulted in a 6.5 per cent drop in productivity."
An Anniversary of Shame - "What makes the observance of this 9/11 anniversary so enervating and even shameful is an acute sense of what might have been. According to some experts, the main conflict against Al Qaeda could have effectively ended in as little six months, by mid-to-late 2002, had the right decisions been made by our elected and appointed officials."
There Is a Male Engagement Ring - "Rolexes, I realized, are engagement rings for dudes—the main difference being that most women would absolutely buy a diamond solitaire for themselves but can't; men are free to buy a Rolex for themselves but just won't"
The Case for Having (or Pretending to Have) a Hot Ex - "Both male and female volunteers rated faces as more attractive, desirable, and dateable when paired with hot exes than when featured solo. While having a hot ex is a boost to your attractivess, having a homely one can hurt you. When volunteers spent more time looking at a potential mate’s unattractive partner, they were less interested in dating that person... There's an exception to this rule, and (as usual) it's hot women. While female volunteers downgraded otherwise hot men if they were paired with a dumpy partner, men gave high ratings to an attractive woman regardless of her partner's appearance. Women, generally the choosier and more cautious sex, are more likely than men to rely on social cues such as whether other women find the target guy attractive."
How the way we walk can increase risk of being mugged - "The way people move can influence the likelihood of an attack by a stranger. The good news, though, is that altering it can reduce the chances of being targeted."
Yes, There Are Pro-Life Atheists Out There. Here’s Why I’m One of Them - "if self-awareness is to be the dividing line, anyone unconscious or in a coma might not be considered a person, while those in a heightened state of awareness due to drugs would trump the rest of us. If we determine that the ability to suffer and feel pain is what counts, then any born person with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain can be stripped of equal rights and killed. If higher brain function or a greater degree of health are what matter, then anyone with a higher IQ or a greater longevity and health than your own should be free to decide that your unfortunate quality of life makes your existence not worth continuing. Only the pro-life position — that all human beings should be granted the common right to continue their lives as human persons, regardless of their age, stage, gender, sexual orientation, race, or physical form and abilities — is truly egalitarian and fair for all human beings"
How to Trick People Into Saving Money - "she got an email saying that a “prize savings” feature had been added to her card. If she kept some of her balance in a virtual “vault,” meaning that it would not show up in her available funds, she would be eligible to win a cash prize in a monthly drawing—up to $1,000. Every dollar in the MoneyCard Vault would equal an entry in that month’s drawing. This caught her interest. A prize would go a long way toward her being able to buy a car. It also made her focus on what all those “stash” requests were about. “Oh, cool, this can work as a savings account, too,” she remembers realizing. So when she got paid, she started setting aside “10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever I could.”"
Hacking Traditional College Debate's White-Privilege Problem - "On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities. In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled"
If you can't win, play by your own rules and call people who disagree racist
Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - "For some visual evidence of this phenomenon, here is a century or so of culture writers declaring the youth to be self-obsessed little monsters"
How Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All - "Our ability to know the price of anything, anytime, anywhere, has given us, the consumers, so much power that retailers—in a desperate effort to regain the upper hand, or at least avoid extinction—are now staring back through the screen. They are comparison shopping us... The price of a can of soda in a vending machine can now vary with the temperature outside. The price of the headphones Google recommends may depend on how budget-conscious your web history shows you to be... the practice of setting a fixed price for a good or a service—which took hold in the 1860s—meant, in effect, a cessation of the perpetual state of hostility known as haggling... [consumers] loved deals so much that, to make sense of their behavior, economists were forced to distinguish between two types of value: acquisition value (the perceived worth of a new car to the buyer) and transaction value (the feeling that one lost or won the negotiation at the dealership)."
'Grit' Isn't That Great, Research Shows - "Gritty people stick with the task before them, but sometimes it’s at the expense of their own financial gain—and even overall performance"
Mary Otto, Author of 'Teeth,' on the Dentistry-Medicine Divide - "the dental profession really became a profession in 1840 in Baltimore. That was when the first dental college in the world was opened, I found out, and that was thanks to the efforts of a couple of dentists who were kind of self-trained. Their names were Chapin Harris and Horace Hayden. They approached the physicians at the college of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore with the idea of adding dental instruction to the medical course there, because they really believed that dentistry was more than a mechanical challenge, that it deserved status as a profession, and a course of study, and licensing, and peer-reviewed scientific consideration. But the physicians, the story goes, rejected their proposal and said the subject of dentistry was of little consequence. That event is remembered as the “historic rebuff.” It's still talked about sometimes, not a lot, but it’s seen as a symbolic event and it’s continued to define the relationships between medical and dental education and medical and dental healthcare systems in funny ways"
Black Screen - see the dust! - "Click the above button to display black-screen in fullscreen mode so you can SEE THE DUST better and make your computer screen clean."
Tweeting From Left to Right - "We observed that information was exchanged primarily among individuals with similar ideological preferences in the case of political issues (e.g., 2012 presidential election, 2013 government shutdown) but not many other current events (e.g., 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2014 Super Bowl). Discussion of the Newtown shootings in 2012 reflected a dynamic process, beginning as a national conversation before transforming into a polarized exchange. With respect to both political and nonpolitical issues, liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in cross-ideological dissemination"
High school graduation rates among children of same-sex households - "Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65 % as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons"
AWARE Singapore - Posts - "Right now, households cannot earn more than $1,500 if they want to apply for or keep rental housing. This is especially unrealistic for a single parent with one or more children. No one should have to choose between a roof over their heads and a better-paying job to give their children a better life. Our petition calls for an increase in the income cap for public rental housing, and setting it on a per-capita basis. #asinglelove"
Comment: "Why is the single mother always "dark"?The real stats say otherwise."
Response: "The comics are each primarily based on one of our research interviews (we spoke to 55 single mothers for our report). Those in turn are based on referrals to us from social workers and agencies, which were disproportionately ethnic minority. We sought to reflect the stories we collected; no other intention."
AWARE gets burned by SJW!
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar - Posts - "Why don't the articles that say "30,000 Muslims marched against ISIS" mention that they are AHMADYIA MUSLIMS who are not considered Muslims by many if not most Muslims around the world because they believe that there was a prophet that came after Mohamad? in fact, in one of the largest Islamic countries in the world (Pakistan), you can't even have a passport WITHOUT declaring (Qadyianis) which is derogatory term to describe Ahmadyis."
Police swoop on garden party where song mocking the death of Osama Bin Laden was played - "The force helicopter and 10 officers were sent to a home in Highdene Road, Cherry Hinton after a complaint from members of the public the music was too loud and people were allegedly shouting anti-Islamic abuse... “This is music which is well known which was put on YouTube when Bin Laden was killed by the British and American army. In the music there is no reference to colour, race, or religion. "The police then threatened to arrest everyone if we didn’t hand over our karaoke machine and mobile phone."
The scientific evidence for microaggressions is weak and we should drop the term, argues review author - "Personality having a hand in microaggression experience would also explain why some people from minority groups report no microaggressions when canvassed. The (limited) evidence that more ambiguous slights lead to more negative outcomes could also reflect the established psychological fact that in “weak” situations with no clear guidelines for action, people’s personality – in this case, their negative emotionality – tends to assert itself to fill in the interpretive gaps... Lilienfeld also suggests we all consider putting aside the word microaggression in favour of “perceived racial slight” – because we don’t yet understand the role of interpretation due to personality, and because it simply isn’t clear that those using microaggressions are showing aggression as we usually understand the word"
Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence - "The microaggression concept has recently galvanized public discussion and spread to numerous college campuses and businesses. I argue that the microaggression research program (MRP) rests on five core premises, namely, that microaggressions (1) are operationalized with sufficient clarity and consensus to afford rigorous scientific investigation; (2) are interpreted negatively by most or all minority group members; (3) reflect implicitly prejudicial and implicitly aggressive motives; (4) can be validly assessed using only respondents’ subjective reports; and (5) exert an adverse impact on recipients’ mental health. A review of the literature reveals negligible support for all five suppositions. More broadly, the MRP has been marked by an absence of connectivity to key domains of psychological science, including psychometrics, social cognition, cognitive-behavioral therapy, behavior genetics, and personality, health, and industrial-organizational psychology"
‘Voltron’ Fans Blackmail Studio with Leaked Photos, Demand Gay Romance
Fareed Zakaria: Liberals think they're tolerant, but they're not
The camp of bigots grows ever larger!
Jawi steps up Ramadan enforcement operations - "The Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) is stepping up enforcement operations during this Holy month of Ramadan. Its enforcement chief Wan Jaafar Wan Ahmad said this was being done in all the three federal territories — Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan. “On the first day yesterday, we caught three Muslims in the Sungai Besi area (here) for eating in public during day time. If Muslims are unable to observe the Ramadan fast because of illness fo age, it does not mean they can eat in public (during fasting hours),” he told Bernama. He added that action could be taken under shariah laws against offenders. First time offenders can be fined up to RM1,000 or jailed not more than six months or both, if convicted"
British Airways chaos and was cost cutting to blame? - "The airline and Mr Cruz have blamed the computer meltdown on a power failure. The vague explanation has been dismissed by aviation industry insiders as ‘moronic’. They said airlines made sure they survived power failures by using a system known as UPS – uninterruptible power supply. It means that if one mains power supply fails, the business switches automatically to a second supply... Mr Cruz made a controversial decision last year to shut down the airline’s British computer department with the loss of 700 jobs around the country."
BA's £150m outage was caused by someone turning computers on and off too quickly - "The engineer involved is reportedly from contractor CBRE Global Workplace Solutions, who are assisting the airline with its investigation... alternative power sources such as batteries and a generator also failed"
How plane meals differ in business class vs. economy
Gordon Ramsay reveals three golden rules for eating out - "The 50-year-old chef said customers should avoid specials, be suspicious of outlandish boasts and be prepared to haggle for their wine"
Academics take smart drugs prescribed to help ADHD to keep up with university work - "One in five academics are taking smart drugs to help them write difficult grant applications, a leading academic has claimed. Cambridge neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow said that professors were increasingly using medication which was meant for Alzheimer's patients, narcoleptics or children with ADHD."
Make Love and Lose Your Religion and Virtue: Recalling Sexual Experiences Undermines Spiritual Intentions and Moral Behavior - "sexual induction diminished spiritual behavioral intentions (Experiments 1 and 2), in particular among those with high individual disinhibition (Experiment 1), as well as behaviors of prosociality and integrity/honesty (Experiment 3). The effects were independent of individual religiousness/spirituality. These findings suggest that combining sexual pleasure with self-transcendence and moral perfection, even if a legitimate ideal, is not an easy enterprise."
Maybe sex cults are about the sex, not the religion
How Wealth Reduces Compassion - "luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian... participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children... less affluent individuals are more likely to report feeling compassion towards others on a regular basis... upper class individuals are worse at recognizing the emotions of others and less likely to pay attention to people they are interacting with (e.g. by checking their cell phones or doodling)... Piff and his colleagues suspect that the answer may have something to do with how wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others"
Free pizza is a better way to motivate workers than paying them more money - "A slice of gooey cheese and tomato is a great incentive at the start of the working week but, ultimately, a 'Well done' from mission control comes out top... Early in the week, free pizza came top, with a 6.7 per cent increase in productivity over the control group, while a compliment from the boss saw an increase of 6.6 per cent, New York Magazine reported. Perhaps surprisingly, a cash incentive came third with 4.9 per cent. However, by day two, the money-motivated group performed 13.2 per cent worse than those in the control group. Over the course of the week, the cash bonus cost the company more and resulted in a 6.5 per cent drop in productivity."
An Anniversary of Shame - "What makes the observance of this 9/11 anniversary so enervating and even shameful is an acute sense of what might have been. According to some experts, the main conflict against Al Qaeda could have effectively ended in as little six months, by mid-to-late 2002, had the right decisions been made by our elected and appointed officials."
There Is a Male Engagement Ring - "Rolexes, I realized, are engagement rings for dudes—the main difference being that most women would absolutely buy a diamond solitaire for themselves but can't; men are free to buy a Rolex for themselves but just won't"
The Case for Having (or Pretending to Have) a Hot Ex - "Both male and female volunteers rated faces as more attractive, desirable, and dateable when paired with hot exes than when featured solo. While having a hot ex is a boost to your attractivess, having a homely one can hurt you. When volunteers spent more time looking at a potential mate’s unattractive partner, they were less interested in dating that person... There's an exception to this rule, and (as usual) it's hot women. While female volunteers downgraded otherwise hot men if they were paired with a dumpy partner, men gave high ratings to an attractive woman regardless of her partner's appearance. Women, generally the choosier and more cautious sex, are more likely than men to rely on social cues such as whether other women find the target guy attractive."
How the way we walk can increase risk of being mugged - "The way people move can influence the likelihood of an attack by a stranger. The good news, though, is that altering it can reduce the chances of being targeted."
Yes, There Are Pro-Life Atheists Out There. Here’s Why I’m One of Them - "if self-awareness is to be the dividing line, anyone unconscious or in a coma might not be considered a person, while those in a heightened state of awareness due to drugs would trump the rest of us. If we determine that the ability to suffer and feel pain is what counts, then any born person with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain can be stripped of equal rights and killed. If higher brain function or a greater degree of health are what matter, then anyone with a higher IQ or a greater longevity and health than your own should be free to decide that your unfortunate quality of life makes your existence not worth continuing. Only the pro-life position — that all human beings should be granted the common right to continue their lives as human persons, regardless of their age, stage, gender, sexual orientation, race, or physical form and abilities — is truly egalitarian and fair for all human beings"
How to Trick People Into Saving Money - "she got an email saying that a “prize savings” feature had been added to her card. If she kept some of her balance in a virtual “vault,” meaning that it would not show up in her available funds, she would be eligible to win a cash prize in a monthly drawing—up to $1,000. Every dollar in the MoneyCard Vault would equal an entry in that month’s drawing. This caught her interest. A prize would go a long way toward her being able to buy a car. It also made her focus on what all those “stash” requests were about. “Oh, cool, this can work as a savings account, too,” she remembers realizing. So when she got paid, she started setting aside “10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever I could.”"
Hacking Traditional College Debate's White-Privilege Problem - "On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities. In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled"
If you can't win, play by your own rules and call people who disagree racist
Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - "For some visual evidence of this phenomenon, here is a century or so of culture writers declaring the youth to be self-obsessed little monsters"
How Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All - "Our ability to know the price of anything, anytime, anywhere, has given us, the consumers, so much power that retailers—in a desperate effort to regain the upper hand, or at least avoid extinction—are now staring back through the screen. They are comparison shopping us... The price of a can of soda in a vending machine can now vary with the temperature outside. The price of the headphones Google recommends may depend on how budget-conscious your web history shows you to be... the practice of setting a fixed price for a good or a service—which took hold in the 1860s—meant, in effect, a cessation of the perpetual state of hostility known as haggling... [consumers] loved deals so much that, to make sense of their behavior, economists were forced to distinguish between two types of value: acquisition value (the perceived worth of a new car to the buyer) and transaction value (the feeling that one lost or won the negotiation at the dealership)."
'Grit' Isn't That Great, Research Shows - "Gritty people stick with the task before them, but sometimes it’s at the expense of their own financial gain—and even overall performance"
Mary Otto, Author of 'Teeth,' on the Dentistry-Medicine Divide - "the dental profession really became a profession in 1840 in Baltimore. That was when the first dental college in the world was opened, I found out, and that was thanks to the efforts of a couple of dentists who were kind of self-trained. Their names were Chapin Harris and Horace Hayden. They approached the physicians at the college of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore with the idea of adding dental instruction to the medical course there, because they really believed that dentistry was more than a mechanical challenge, that it deserved status as a profession, and a course of study, and licensing, and peer-reviewed scientific consideration. But the physicians, the story goes, rejected their proposal and said the subject of dentistry was of little consequence. That event is remembered as the “historic rebuff.” It's still talked about sometimes, not a lot, but it’s seen as a symbolic event and it’s continued to define the relationships between medical and dental education and medical and dental healthcare systems in funny ways"
Black Screen - see the dust! - "Click the above button to display black-screen in fullscreen mode so you can SEE THE DUST better and make your computer screen clean."
Tweeting From Left to Right - "We observed that information was exchanged primarily among individuals with similar ideological preferences in the case of political issues (e.g., 2012 presidential election, 2013 government shutdown) but not many other current events (e.g., 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2014 Super Bowl). Discussion of the Newtown shootings in 2012 reflected a dynamic process, beginning as a national conversation before transforming into a polarized exchange. With respect to both political and nonpolitical issues, liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in cross-ideological dissemination"
High school graduation rates among children of same-sex households - "Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65 % as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons"
AWARE Singapore - Posts - "Right now, households cannot earn more than $1,500 if they want to apply for or keep rental housing. This is especially unrealistic for a single parent with one or more children. No one should have to choose between a roof over their heads and a better-paying job to give their children a better life. Our petition calls for an increase in the income cap for public rental housing, and setting it on a per-capita basis. #asinglelove"
Comment: "Why is the single mother always "dark"?The real stats say otherwise."
Response: "The comics are each primarily based on one of our research interviews (we spoke to 55 single mothers for our report). Those in turn are based on referrals to us from social workers and agencies, which were disproportionately ethnic minority. We sought to reflect the stories we collected; no other intention."
AWARE gets burned by SJW!
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar - Posts - "Why don't the articles that say "30,000 Muslims marched against ISIS" mention that they are AHMADYIA MUSLIMS who are not considered Muslims by many if not most Muslims around the world because they believe that there was a prophet that came after Mohamad? in fact, in one of the largest Islamic countries in the world (Pakistan), you can't even have a passport WITHOUT declaring (Qadyianis) which is derogatory term to describe Ahmadyis."
Police swoop on garden party where song mocking the death of Osama Bin Laden was played - "The force helicopter and 10 officers were sent to a home in Highdene Road, Cherry Hinton after a complaint from members of the public the music was too loud and people were allegedly shouting anti-Islamic abuse... “This is music which is well known which was put on YouTube when Bin Laden was killed by the British and American army. In the music there is no reference to colour, race, or religion. "The police then threatened to arrest everyone if we didn’t hand over our karaoke machine and mobile phone."
The scientific evidence for microaggressions is weak and we should drop the term, argues review author - "Personality having a hand in microaggression experience would also explain why some people from minority groups report no microaggressions when canvassed. The (limited) evidence that more ambiguous slights lead to more negative outcomes could also reflect the established psychological fact that in “weak” situations with no clear guidelines for action, people’s personality – in this case, their negative emotionality – tends to assert itself to fill in the interpretive gaps... Lilienfeld also suggests we all consider putting aside the word microaggression in favour of “perceived racial slight” – because we don’t yet understand the role of interpretation due to personality, and because it simply isn’t clear that those using microaggressions are showing aggression as we usually understand the word"
Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence - "The microaggression concept has recently galvanized public discussion and spread to numerous college campuses and businesses. I argue that the microaggression research program (MRP) rests on five core premises, namely, that microaggressions (1) are operationalized with sufficient clarity and consensus to afford rigorous scientific investigation; (2) are interpreted negatively by most or all minority group members; (3) reflect implicitly prejudicial and implicitly aggressive motives; (4) can be validly assessed using only respondents’ subjective reports; and (5) exert an adverse impact on recipients’ mental health. A review of the literature reveals negligible support for all five suppositions. More broadly, the MRP has been marked by an absence of connectivity to key domains of psychological science, including psychometrics, social cognition, cognitive-behavioral therapy, behavior genetics, and personality, health, and industrial-organizational psychology"
‘Voltron’ Fans Blackmail Studio with Leaked Photos, Demand Gay Romance
Fareed Zakaria: Liberals think they're tolerant, but they're not
The camp of bigots grows ever larger!
Jawi steps up Ramadan enforcement operations - "The Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) is stepping up enforcement operations during this Holy month of Ramadan. Its enforcement chief Wan Jaafar Wan Ahmad said this was being done in all the three federal territories — Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan. “On the first day yesterday, we caught three Muslims in the Sungai Besi area (here) for eating in public during day time. If Muslims are unable to observe the Ramadan fast because of illness fo age, it does not mean they can eat in public (during fasting hours),” he told Bernama. He added that action could be taken under shariah laws against offenders. First time offenders can be fined up to RM1,000 or jailed not more than six months or both, if convicted"
British Airways chaos and was cost cutting to blame? - "The airline and Mr Cruz have blamed the computer meltdown on a power failure. The vague explanation has been dismissed by aviation industry insiders as ‘moronic’. They said airlines made sure they survived power failures by using a system known as UPS – uninterruptible power supply. It means that if one mains power supply fails, the business switches automatically to a second supply... Mr Cruz made a controversial decision last year to shut down the airline’s British computer department with the loss of 700 jobs around the country."
BA's £150m outage was caused by someone turning computers on and off too quickly - "The engineer involved is reportedly from contractor CBRE Global Workplace Solutions, who are assisting the airline with its investigation... alternative power sources such as batteries and a generator also failed"
How plane meals differ in business class vs. economy
Gordon Ramsay reveals three golden rules for eating out - "The 50-year-old chef said customers should avoid specials, be suspicious of outlandish boasts and be prepared to haggle for their wine"
Academics take smart drugs prescribed to help ADHD to keep up with university work - "One in five academics are taking smart drugs to help them write difficult grant applications, a leading academic has claimed. Cambridge neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow said that professors were increasingly using medication which was meant for Alzheimer's patients, narcoleptics or children with ADHD."
Post ID: 2592921090647023266
On the Warped Timeline in Game of Thrones
Some defenders of the show claim that the timeline isn’t actually warped because we cannot assume that events portrayed onscreen happen at the same time (e.g. Varys’s teleportation at the end of Season 6 from Meereen to Sunspear and back to join Dany is said to take longer than it appears onscreen).
Yet we can look at the timing of Jon Snow’s being summoned to Dragonstone and Ellaria and the Sand Snakes being ambushed and realise there is a big problem there.
Here is a possible timeline:
1) Dany occupies Dragonstone (T)
2) Dany sends a raven to Jon to summon him down, Dany sends Ellaria and the Sand Snakes to Dorne (T+1 days)
3) The raven flies to Jon (this should be fast) (T+1 - T+3 days at least)
4) Ellaria and the Sand Snakes leave for Dorne (T+5 days at most - the fleet was already offshore)
5) Jon leaves for Dragonstone (T+5 days at least given the need to summon a council, debate what to do etc)
6) Jon reaches White Harbour and gets on a boat (T+15 days at least given that it's 340 miles away and a horse can travel 32 miles a day - which might be generous given that Winter has come and they're in the North, see: Game of Thrones map shows how far distances are, What Is the Average Distance a Horse Can Travel in a Day?)
7) Ellaria and the Sand Snakes are ambushed by Euron (T+5+X days). X is the number of days they were ambushed after leaving Dragonstone.
7) One ship, surviving the battle with Euron, rushes back to Dragonstone to report the defeat to Dany (T+5+X+Y days). Y is the number of days between the ambush and their returning to Dragonstone.
Y must be less than X because they are rushing and because 1 ship can travel faster than a fleet. Some might say damaged ships are slower, but if it were damaged and thus slowed the odds are Euron's fleet would've destroyed it before it could've reported back.
8) Jon Snow arrives in Dragonstone (T+15+Z days), where Z is the number of days it takes to sail down from White Harbour. Dany hears of her fleet's defeat. We know that these occur at the same time because this is explicitly portrayed onscreen.
So we know T+15+Z has to equal T+5+X+Y, where Y is less than X.
With some algebra, we know that Z = X+Y-10. That is, Jon took as long to sail from White Harbor to Dragonstone as it took for Ellaria and friends to sail out and one ship to make it back - minus ten days.
Now consider that White Harbor is roughly as far from Dragonstone as Dragonstone is from Sunspear (Map), and that from in-show dialogue Ellaria and friends are a significant distance from Sunspear ("How can you drink this piss? When we reach Sunspear, I'll treat you to a Dornish red")
So even if we discount how the Shivering Sea (the one in the North Jon would've had to travel down for the first part of his voyage) is choppier than the Narrow Sea (Winter conditions, and Essos provides some shelter from the truly open ocean - it is called the Narrow Sea after all and there is regular trade across it), if you generously assume that Ellaria and friends were 2/3 of the way to Dorne, Z is unlikely to equal X+Y-10.
And without all our generous assumptions Jon’s speed seems even more amazing.
So show apologists seem to be grasping at straws when they say there is no time inconsistency in the TV series.
Yet we can look at the timing of Jon Snow’s being summoned to Dragonstone and Ellaria and the Sand Snakes being ambushed and realise there is a big problem there.
Here is a possible timeline:
1) Dany occupies Dragonstone (T)
2) Dany sends a raven to Jon to summon him down, Dany sends Ellaria and the Sand Snakes to Dorne (T+1 days)
3) The raven flies to Jon (this should be fast) (T+1 - T+3 days at least)
4) Ellaria and the Sand Snakes leave for Dorne (T+5 days at most - the fleet was already offshore)
5) Jon leaves for Dragonstone (T+5 days at least given the need to summon a council, debate what to do etc)
6) Jon reaches White Harbour and gets on a boat (T+15 days at least given that it's 340 miles away and a horse can travel 32 miles a day - which might be generous given that Winter has come and they're in the North, see: Game of Thrones map shows how far distances are, What Is the Average Distance a Horse Can Travel in a Day?)
7) Ellaria and the Sand Snakes are ambushed by Euron (T+5+X days). X is the number of days they were ambushed after leaving Dragonstone.
7) One ship, surviving the battle with Euron, rushes back to Dragonstone to report the defeat to Dany (T+5+X+Y days). Y is the number of days between the ambush and their returning to Dragonstone.
Y must be less than X because they are rushing and because 1 ship can travel faster than a fleet. Some might say damaged ships are slower, but if it were damaged and thus slowed the odds are Euron's fleet would've destroyed it before it could've reported back.
8) Jon Snow arrives in Dragonstone (T+15+Z days), where Z is the number of days it takes to sail down from White Harbour. Dany hears of her fleet's defeat. We know that these occur at the same time because this is explicitly portrayed onscreen.
So we know T+15+Z has to equal T+5+X+Y, where Y is less than X.
With some algebra, we know that Z = X+Y-10. That is, Jon took as long to sail from White Harbor to Dragonstone as it took for Ellaria and friends to sail out and one ship to make it back - minus ten days.
Now consider that White Harbor is roughly as far from Dragonstone as Dragonstone is from Sunspear (Map), and that from in-show dialogue Ellaria and friends are a significant distance from Sunspear ("How can you drink this piss? When we reach Sunspear, I'll treat you to a Dornish red")
So even if we discount how the Shivering Sea (the one in the North Jon would've had to travel down for the first part of his voyage) is choppier than the Narrow Sea (Winter conditions, and Essos provides some shelter from the truly open ocean - it is called the Narrow Sea after all and there is regular trade across it), if you generously assume that Ellaria and friends were 2/3 of the way to Dorne, Z is unlikely to equal X+Y-10.
And without all our generous assumptions Jon’s speed seems even more amazing.
So show apologists seem to be grasping at straws when they say there is no time inconsistency in the TV series.
Post ID: 7923621029301415865
Links - 3rd August 2017 (1)
Lisa Wade, PhD - Posts - "I was once called out in class by a student, a veteran, who objected to my using the phrase "militarization of police."... He argued that soldiers would never be allowed to behave the way some police behave, that the phrase was a misunderstanding of both military training and comportment, and that it was unfair and insulting to the people who served"
10 ways to offend the French and how to avoid it - "If you are invited to eat in the home of a French person, it is considered insulting if you do not invite them back in the following months. Of course, there is no need for the invitation to be returned immediately, but if you are invited more than once and have not yet hosted a meal in your own home, you may find yourself left out of the next round of invitations."
The Unspoken Rules of Gift Giving - "The truth is, buying presents for friends effectively forces us to rank and prioritise them according to how much they mean to us. It’s not so much that the truth hurts, but that it’s inconvenient."
“The Essence of the Hard On”Men and Masculinities - ANNIE POTTS, 2000 - "The condition known as “impotence” demonstrates the inscription on individual male bodies of a coital imperative: the surface of the male body interfuses with culture to produce the “fiction” of a dysfunctional nonpenetrative male (hetero)sexuality. The impotent man embodies this cultural narrative; his perceived failure to erect his penis and perform (with it) according to dominant phallocratic notions of healthy male heterosexuality infiltrates his flesh, actions, and thoughts. This article employs feminist poststructuralist discursive analysis to investigate the effect of the metonymic relationship between the penis and the phallus on the cultural construction of male “sexual dysfunctions.” It explores the medicalization of male sexuality, focusing on the impact of so-called “erectile dysfunction” on male bodies and lives; in particular, the use of intrapenile injections as a medical intervention for this “disorder.” It is argued that by relinquishing the penis's executive position in sex, male bodies might become differently inscribed, and coded for diverse pleasures beyond the phallus/penis."
What Does The Acronym PWPGSJSISIACWPB Stand For? - "In the face of rationing and controls during WWII there were a series of commissions that oversaw the regulating of many parts of society. Many of these efforts had acronyms, the longest of these being PWPGSJSISIACWPB. It stood for Pipe, Wire Product and Galvanized Steel Jobbers Subcommittee of the Iron and Steel Industry Advisory Committee of the War Production Board. It needs mentioning too—just for the fact you have read this far that also in existence was the Biscuit, Cracker and Pretzel Subcommittee of the Baking Industry of the Division of Industry Operation, War Production Board."
The One Thing That (Sadly) Most Women Agree Makes A Man Undateable - "While 63 percent of those surveyed said they’d opt out of traditional labels like “homosexual,” “heterosexual” and “bisexual,” the same percentage also said they wouldn’t date a man who has slept with another man... only 3 percent ranked sex as the most important aspect of a relationship... The Glamour survey results are in line with the general perception of women as somehow “more fluid“ in their sexualities than men"
The politics of heterosexuality—a missing discourse in cancer nursing literature on sexuality: A discussion paper - "there has largely been an uncritical endorsement of biomedical constructions of sexuality, rooted in orthodox sexology, with a dominant focus on sexual functioning and on sexual rehabilitation for women with cancer. Moreover, in this knowledge base, phallocentric heterosexuality over and above other forms of sexual expression is privileged, and the socio-political context of unequal gender power relations is largely excluded. References to the social sphere as a dimension of nursing care are focused almost exclusively on maintaining normality, and reflect the emphasis on functional restoration. The largely individualistic, uncritical and biocentric emphasis in this literature may serve inadvertently to reinforce and maintain existing gender inequalities in heterosexual relationships"
New Real Peer Review summary: "Gender scholar wonders why cancer nursing focuses on biology rather than gender theory "
Let's Be Careful With the "White Supremacy" Label - "Bernie Sanders has taken some heat recently for his remarks to a woman who said she hoped to someday become the second Latina senator and asked him for some tips about getting into politics. His reply, essentially, was that being Latina wasn't enough... someone asked how and when it became fashionable to use the term "white supremacy" as a substitute for ordinary racism... For what it's worth, this is a terrible fad. With the exception of actual neo-Nazis and a few others, there isn't anyone in America who's trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks or Latinos... This isn't just pedantic. It matters. It's bad enough that liberals toss around charges of racism with more abandon than we should, but it's far worse if we start calling every sign of racial animus—big or small, accidental or deliberate—white supremacy. I can hardly imagine a better way of proving to the non-liberal community that we're all a bunch of out-of-touch nutbars who are going to label everyone and everything we don't like as racist."
"The Scourge of the Left": Too Much Stigma, Not Enough Persuasion - "The coalition that opposes Donald Trump needs to get better at persuading fellow citizens and winning converts, rather than leaning so heavily on stigmatizing those who disagree with them. Chief among the problems with stigma as a political weapon? It doesn’t work... any intellectual community that wants to retain any stigma––anyone who believes that a stigma against a given concept has value is invested in guarding against concept creep that would inevitably erode the attendant stigma...
[On slamming Kevin Drum for having the common understanding of 'white supremacy' rather than an academic one] It is awful to stigmatize people as cringeworthy for failing to speak in the vernacular of a tiny, insular subculture. Neither journalists nor academics speaking to a general audience can insist a term’s only meaning is a contested usage so little known that it confounds a longtime employee of Mother Jones and many residents of the Upper West Side. And it is deeply counterproductive to stigmatize those who use the common meaning of a well-known term with words like “embarrassing,” and “mortifying.” The insularity and biases at work here are a significant reason that the academy, and growing parts of the press who mistake its subculture for conventional wisdom, are increasingly unable to reach anyone that doesn’t share an educational background many intellectuals now think of as normal but that is, in fact, unusual even among college students in the U.S., never mind the rest of the world... Insofar as the definition of “white supremacist” includes Bernie Sanders, the term is not going to retain significant stigma, or even be understood by most of America"
Academic doublespeak, like with the redefinition of "racism", at play
Seven Surprises for New CEOs - "Bearing full responsibility for a company’s success or failure, but being unable to control most of what will determine it. Having more authority than anyone else in the organization, but being unable to wield it without unhappy consequences. Sound like a tough job? It is—ask a CEO. Surprised by the description? So are CEOs who are new to the role. Just when an executive feels he has reached the pinnacle of his career, capturing the coveted goal for which he has so long been striving, he begins to realize that the CEO’s job is different and more complicated than he imagined... Actions and strategies favored by shareholders (and analysts) may not benefit the ultimate competitive position of the company. Shareholders come and go—the average share of stock in the United States is held for less than a year—and they care only about what happens to the stock during the period they expect to own it. Analysts are naturally concerned with moving in and out of a stock, not holding it. They tend to reinforce trends—and love deals—rather than reward a long-term focus. In fact, both shareholders and analysts are prone to take a short-term view. CEOs, however, need to concern themselves with creating sustainable economic value."
Why every Hong Kong MTR station is a different colour – the reason may surprise you | South China Morning Post - "The main reason bright colours were adopted when the first line opened in the 1970s was to lighten up the subway system... an important factor in picking different colours was function. Underground, where there are no landmarks to look out for like when you’re travelling by bus or car, colour helped differentiate the MTR stations, and gave each their own identity. That was important, Mead says, because “back in the 1970s, there was still a high level of illiteracy” in the city. It was not until 1971 that Hong Kong launched a programme of free compulsory education... For key stations, Mead says, different shades of red were used. The bold red in the Tsuen Wan, Mong Kok and Central stations was intended to alert passengers that they had arrived at an interchange or terminus."
HSBC's rainbow lions: Can we have our homophobia back please? - "In 1967, homosexual acts were decriminalized in the UK. This led the subject to be discussed all over the British empire, including in Hong Kong. At the time, in the mid-1960s, members of the Anglican Church and the theatre community in the then British Crown Colony of Hong Kong urged the local government to make the same change here. The Hong Kong government declined, on the basis that all research had shown that local populace, who were more than 90 per cent ethnically Chinese and non-Christian, had “strong feelings of disgust” for homosexuality, which was seen as “the white man’s disease.” Calls for change were politely rebuffed because the representatives of the locals were unshakably opposed to it. Get that? – Yes, the main bastion of the Christian church was pushing for decriminalization of homosexual acts, while the local populace, who were technically atheists (most had non-theistic beliefs), stood powerfully against repealing the laws. The Christians lost, the atheists won, and the push to decriminalize homosexuality failed... formal legislation against homosexuality was introduced by Westerners. But so were laws against bank robbery, and it’s idiotic to conclude that it was fine to rob banks before that. And yes, China had no laws against homosexuality – but that was because the official line was that gay people did not exist. And the Cut Sleeve story? Most communities around the world have ancient stories which include non-heterosexual characters: their existence doesn’t make the world free of prejudice against LGBT people."
Canadian claims Halal sign is proof of division in S’pore, S’poreans politely disagree - "Basically claiming that a Halal only microwave was proof of Muslims “taking over”."
The Chinese privilege squad must be upset by the anger at Tarek Fatah
At the same time there were so many ignorant Singaporeans bashing him on Facebook, e.g. saying he didn't know what Halal was (when he's Muslim), calling him a troll, saying he should learn from Justin Trudeau (maybe we should also learn from his endorsing gender segregation), saying liberal Muslims aren't real Muslims, calling him Islamophobic etc
Luckily there were many Muslims saying they had no issues if people ate even pork in front of them during Ramadan, Muslims pointing out that there's no such thing as Halal microwaves and people asking if there should be no-beef or vegetarian/vegan microwaves too. No one mentioned Halal fridges or sinks (though they did on EDMW)
Experts on Why Police Aren't Trained to Shoot to Wound - "Anytime a firearm is discharged, it's considered deadly force, said David Klinger, professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Shooting to injure or maim someone wouldn't stop an aggressive subject, Klinger said, and officers are trying to stop the threat to their life, or the life of their partner or a citizen. "Why would we want to injure or maim people?" he said. "It doesn't stop them." Because of the potential risks, it would be "very difficult" to train officers to shoot to wound instead, Kelly said. If someone's life is in jeopardy, shooting to maim or injure will have little effect on the actions of the individual who is trying to kill, Klinger added. Additionally, if an officer aims at anything other than the torso area, the odds that he or she will miss increase greatly, Klinger said. But aiming for the chest means that the type of wounds suspects usually sustain are likely to be fatal, he added. Officers are trained to shoot with the understanding that one shot may not stop an aggressive subject, Klinger said... Even after Klinger shot the suspect and the bullet pierced his left lung, aorta and right lung, the suspect still continued to fight for at least another 30 seconds, Klinger said. It took a total of six officers to subdue him and get him to drop the knife. If the man were armed with a gun instead of a knife, Klinger would have had to keep shooting because "he would have continued to be a threat"... Tasers are not foolproof. The probes that generate the electric shock can miss, get caught in clothing or may simply not affect the suspect. Klinger called it "unreasonable" for police to gamble with their lives or the life of a third party by using a taser when deadly force is necessary"
On why allegations of police brutality based on police shooting aggressive people multiple times are hollow
Pigs To The Rescue: How Salt Pork Stops Nose Bleeds - "It turns out this isn’t the first time salt pork has been used to control a nosebleed. “It’s a traditional therapy for hard to treat bleeding disorders,” Jackler told me. “When I was a resident in the 1980s, we would buy a lump of salt pork to use.” The salt-packed pork is thought to work by inducing swelling, thereby blocking the bleeding blood vessel."
The crazy life and crazier death of Tycho Brahe, history's strangest astronomer - "In 1566 at the age of 20, he lost part of his nose in a duel with another Danish nobleman named Manderup Parsbjerg. The duel is said to have started over a disagreement about a mathematical formula. Because 16th century Denmark didn't have resources like the internet to figure out who was right, the only solution was to try to kill each other. For the rest of his life, Brahe wore a prosthetic nose. His fake nose was likely made of copper, although he probably also had gold and silver noses around for special occasions... He employed a little person called Jepp, who Brahe believed possessed psychic powers. Jepp was his court jester, and spent most dinners under the table. It's probably best not to speculate on just why Brahe preferred that arrangement. Then there was Brahe's elk, a tame beast that Brahe kept as a prized pet. The elk met a rather bizarre end, reportedly drinking a lot of beer while visiting a nobleman on Brahe's behalf, after which it fell down the stairs and died. Yes, that entire sentence was about an elk."
Schoolboy ‘believes he’s a girl’ - "According to the NHS, an estimated one in 4 000 people is receiving medical help for gender dysphoria. On average, men are five times more likely to be diagnosed with the condition than women"
More data on the relative prevalence of MTF vs FTM transsexuals
Industrial Cybersecurity: Return of the Air Gap? - "What’s the safest state for a plant? When it’s shut down and not producing... Companies that persist in air gapping may well find the economics of that choice bearing down on them at some point, says Albert Rooyakkers, founder, CTO and vice president of engineering for Bedrock Automation. “They will miss the predictive analytics, causing them to blow a bearing on a turbine that costs $150 million,” for example... Most cyber incidents originate from inside the system, Lund says; in that case, air gaps do not help... Air gaps can also introduce errors, warns Gregory Wilcox, global technology and business development manager for Rockwell Automation. “Employees may write down data on clipboards and then manually key it in, but then you have increased the risk of errors.”"
Air Gap or Not, Why ICS/SCADA Networks Are at Risk - "Even in air gapped OT environments, files must be exchanged with the outside world. Some examples include software patches, and files from third parties like system integrators, contractors, etc. An adversary can take advantage of this by tricking employees into installing fake software updates and patches, or transferring files that will introduce malware into industrial networks"
Goodbye Air Gaps, Hello Improved ICS Security - "In today’s competitive world, the demand for real-time data and continuous improvement has meant that links between control networks and business networks are inevitable... 90% of industrial cyber security is not about blocking hackers – it’s about ensuring high availability and reliability through hardened, resilient systems."
BBC World Service - The Documentary, It's a Dog's Life - "Women and children would take wolf cubs and start to hand raise them and that may have been the moment of separation, that hand raised wolves would not be so good at rejoining their counterparts in the wild and so became a separate genetic line of dogs...
[On military deployment in Iraq] 'On stressful days I would let the guys play with Cena. You know, throw a tennis ball, forget where you are for ten seconds. Try to scratch a dog's ear and it's just, it's truly amazing what that little bit of normalcy can do in a chaotic world and he's like: hey I've got this.'
'Dogs they have a really unique and special ability to be social outside of their species'"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Reflections on Terror: 50 Years Behind the Headlines - "In Northern Ireland even some of the most brutal and apparently senseless murders have a savage logic behind them. Loyalist killers who wanted to keep Northern Ireland under British rule had a grim rationale for slaying innocent Catholics. IRA members were drawn from the Catholic community and the killings were to get that community to put pressure on the IRA to stop...
Although the IRA killed many civilians it was, with notable exceptions, seldom part of a deliberate policy to target civilians, unlike that of the loyalist paramilitaries Al-Qaeda and IS...
The detention center at Camp Booker became the birthplace of the so-called Islamic state. The fusion of Al-Qaeda insurgents with Sunni veterans of Saddam's armed forces...
'These extremists were basically running a terrorist training University or at least a radicalization school in our own detention facilities. In fact I'd stopped release of detainees because I felt that we were actually releasing individuals that were more radical than they were when they entered'...
[On the IRA] 'Prisoners in the compound see themselves as people who have been fighting a war and therefore are not criminals but prisoners of war. Inside the compound they have their own command structure, inside the compound they organise their own leisure activities and inside the compound they do drill'"
10 ways to offend the French and how to avoid it - "If you are invited to eat in the home of a French person, it is considered insulting if you do not invite them back in the following months. Of course, there is no need for the invitation to be returned immediately, but if you are invited more than once and have not yet hosted a meal in your own home, you may find yourself left out of the next round of invitations."
The Unspoken Rules of Gift Giving - "The truth is, buying presents for friends effectively forces us to rank and prioritise them according to how much they mean to us. It’s not so much that the truth hurts, but that it’s inconvenient."
“The Essence of the Hard On”Men and Masculinities - ANNIE POTTS, 2000 - "The condition known as “impotence” demonstrates the inscription on individual male bodies of a coital imperative: the surface of the male body interfuses with culture to produce the “fiction” of a dysfunctional nonpenetrative male (hetero)sexuality. The impotent man embodies this cultural narrative; his perceived failure to erect his penis and perform (with it) according to dominant phallocratic notions of healthy male heterosexuality infiltrates his flesh, actions, and thoughts. This article employs feminist poststructuralist discursive analysis to investigate the effect of the metonymic relationship between the penis and the phallus on the cultural construction of male “sexual dysfunctions.” It explores the medicalization of male sexuality, focusing on the impact of so-called “erectile dysfunction” on male bodies and lives; in particular, the use of intrapenile injections as a medical intervention for this “disorder.” It is argued that by relinquishing the penis's executive position in sex, male bodies might become differently inscribed, and coded for diverse pleasures beyond the phallus/penis."
What Does The Acronym PWPGSJSISIACWPB Stand For? - "In the face of rationing and controls during WWII there were a series of commissions that oversaw the regulating of many parts of society. Many of these efforts had acronyms, the longest of these being PWPGSJSISIACWPB. It stood for Pipe, Wire Product and Galvanized Steel Jobbers Subcommittee of the Iron and Steel Industry Advisory Committee of the War Production Board. It needs mentioning too—just for the fact you have read this far that also in existence was the Biscuit, Cracker and Pretzel Subcommittee of the Baking Industry of the Division of Industry Operation, War Production Board."
The One Thing That (Sadly) Most Women Agree Makes A Man Undateable - "While 63 percent of those surveyed said they’d opt out of traditional labels like “homosexual,” “heterosexual” and “bisexual,” the same percentage also said they wouldn’t date a man who has slept with another man... only 3 percent ranked sex as the most important aspect of a relationship... The Glamour survey results are in line with the general perception of women as somehow “more fluid“ in their sexualities than men"
The politics of heterosexuality—a missing discourse in cancer nursing literature on sexuality: A discussion paper - "there has largely been an uncritical endorsement of biomedical constructions of sexuality, rooted in orthodox sexology, with a dominant focus on sexual functioning and on sexual rehabilitation for women with cancer. Moreover, in this knowledge base, phallocentric heterosexuality over and above other forms of sexual expression is privileged, and the socio-political context of unequal gender power relations is largely excluded. References to the social sphere as a dimension of nursing care are focused almost exclusively on maintaining normality, and reflect the emphasis on functional restoration. The largely individualistic, uncritical and biocentric emphasis in this literature may serve inadvertently to reinforce and maintain existing gender inequalities in heterosexual relationships"
New Real Peer Review summary: "Gender scholar wonders why cancer nursing focuses on biology rather than gender theory "
Let's Be Careful With the "White Supremacy" Label - "Bernie Sanders has taken some heat recently for his remarks to a woman who said she hoped to someday become the second Latina senator and asked him for some tips about getting into politics. His reply, essentially, was that being Latina wasn't enough... someone asked how and when it became fashionable to use the term "white supremacy" as a substitute for ordinary racism... For what it's worth, this is a terrible fad. With the exception of actual neo-Nazis and a few others, there isn't anyone in America who's trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks or Latinos... This isn't just pedantic. It matters. It's bad enough that liberals toss around charges of racism with more abandon than we should, but it's far worse if we start calling every sign of racial animus—big or small, accidental or deliberate—white supremacy. I can hardly imagine a better way of proving to the non-liberal community that we're all a bunch of out-of-touch nutbars who are going to label everyone and everything we don't like as racist."
"The Scourge of the Left": Too Much Stigma, Not Enough Persuasion - "The coalition that opposes Donald Trump needs to get better at persuading fellow citizens and winning converts, rather than leaning so heavily on stigmatizing those who disagree with them. Chief among the problems with stigma as a political weapon? It doesn’t work... any intellectual community that wants to retain any stigma––anyone who believes that a stigma against a given concept has value is invested in guarding against concept creep that would inevitably erode the attendant stigma...
[On slamming Kevin Drum for having the common understanding of 'white supremacy' rather than an academic one] It is awful to stigmatize people as cringeworthy for failing to speak in the vernacular of a tiny, insular subculture. Neither journalists nor academics speaking to a general audience can insist a term’s only meaning is a contested usage so little known that it confounds a longtime employee of Mother Jones and many residents of the Upper West Side. And it is deeply counterproductive to stigmatize those who use the common meaning of a well-known term with words like “embarrassing,” and “mortifying.” The insularity and biases at work here are a significant reason that the academy, and growing parts of the press who mistake its subculture for conventional wisdom, are increasingly unable to reach anyone that doesn’t share an educational background many intellectuals now think of as normal but that is, in fact, unusual even among college students in the U.S., never mind the rest of the world... Insofar as the definition of “white supremacist” includes Bernie Sanders, the term is not going to retain significant stigma, or even be understood by most of America"
Academic doublespeak, like with the redefinition of "racism", at play
Seven Surprises for New CEOs - "Bearing full responsibility for a company’s success or failure, but being unable to control most of what will determine it. Having more authority than anyone else in the organization, but being unable to wield it without unhappy consequences. Sound like a tough job? It is—ask a CEO. Surprised by the description? So are CEOs who are new to the role. Just when an executive feels he has reached the pinnacle of his career, capturing the coveted goal for which he has so long been striving, he begins to realize that the CEO’s job is different and more complicated than he imagined... Actions and strategies favored by shareholders (and analysts) may not benefit the ultimate competitive position of the company. Shareholders come and go—the average share of stock in the United States is held for less than a year—and they care only about what happens to the stock during the period they expect to own it. Analysts are naturally concerned with moving in and out of a stock, not holding it. They tend to reinforce trends—and love deals—rather than reward a long-term focus. In fact, both shareholders and analysts are prone to take a short-term view. CEOs, however, need to concern themselves with creating sustainable economic value."
Why every Hong Kong MTR station is a different colour – the reason may surprise you | South China Morning Post - "The main reason bright colours were adopted when the first line opened in the 1970s was to lighten up the subway system... an important factor in picking different colours was function. Underground, where there are no landmarks to look out for like when you’re travelling by bus or car, colour helped differentiate the MTR stations, and gave each their own identity. That was important, Mead says, because “back in the 1970s, there was still a high level of illiteracy” in the city. It was not until 1971 that Hong Kong launched a programme of free compulsory education... For key stations, Mead says, different shades of red were used. The bold red in the Tsuen Wan, Mong Kok and Central stations was intended to alert passengers that they had arrived at an interchange or terminus."
HSBC's rainbow lions: Can we have our homophobia back please? - "In 1967, homosexual acts were decriminalized in the UK. This led the subject to be discussed all over the British empire, including in Hong Kong. At the time, in the mid-1960s, members of the Anglican Church and the theatre community in the then British Crown Colony of Hong Kong urged the local government to make the same change here. The Hong Kong government declined, on the basis that all research had shown that local populace, who were more than 90 per cent ethnically Chinese and non-Christian, had “strong feelings of disgust” for homosexuality, which was seen as “the white man’s disease.” Calls for change were politely rebuffed because the representatives of the locals were unshakably opposed to it. Get that? – Yes, the main bastion of the Christian church was pushing for decriminalization of homosexual acts, while the local populace, who were technically atheists (most had non-theistic beliefs), stood powerfully against repealing the laws. The Christians lost, the atheists won, and the push to decriminalize homosexuality failed... formal legislation against homosexuality was introduced by Westerners. But so were laws against bank robbery, and it’s idiotic to conclude that it was fine to rob banks before that. And yes, China had no laws against homosexuality – but that was because the official line was that gay people did not exist. And the Cut Sleeve story? Most communities around the world have ancient stories which include non-heterosexual characters: their existence doesn’t make the world free of prejudice against LGBT people."
Canadian claims Halal sign is proof of division in S’pore, S’poreans politely disagree - "Basically claiming that a Halal only microwave was proof of Muslims “taking over”."
The Chinese privilege squad must be upset by the anger at Tarek Fatah
At the same time there were so many ignorant Singaporeans bashing him on Facebook, e.g. saying he didn't know what Halal was (when he's Muslim), calling him a troll, saying he should learn from Justin Trudeau (maybe we should also learn from his endorsing gender segregation), saying liberal Muslims aren't real Muslims, calling him Islamophobic etc
Luckily there were many Muslims saying they had no issues if people ate even pork in front of them during Ramadan, Muslims pointing out that there's no such thing as Halal microwaves and people asking if there should be no-beef or vegetarian/vegan microwaves too. No one mentioned Halal fridges or sinks (though they did on EDMW)
Experts on Why Police Aren't Trained to Shoot to Wound - "Anytime a firearm is discharged, it's considered deadly force, said David Klinger, professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Shooting to injure or maim someone wouldn't stop an aggressive subject, Klinger said, and officers are trying to stop the threat to their life, or the life of their partner or a citizen. "Why would we want to injure or maim people?" he said. "It doesn't stop them." Because of the potential risks, it would be "very difficult" to train officers to shoot to wound instead, Kelly said. If someone's life is in jeopardy, shooting to maim or injure will have little effect on the actions of the individual who is trying to kill, Klinger added. Additionally, if an officer aims at anything other than the torso area, the odds that he or she will miss increase greatly, Klinger said. But aiming for the chest means that the type of wounds suspects usually sustain are likely to be fatal, he added. Officers are trained to shoot with the understanding that one shot may not stop an aggressive subject, Klinger said... Even after Klinger shot the suspect and the bullet pierced his left lung, aorta and right lung, the suspect still continued to fight for at least another 30 seconds, Klinger said. It took a total of six officers to subdue him and get him to drop the knife. If the man were armed with a gun instead of a knife, Klinger would have had to keep shooting because "he would have continued to be a threat"... Tasers are not foolproof. The probes that generate the electric shock can miss, get caught in clothing or may simply not affect the suspect. Klinger called it "unreasonable" for police to gamble with their lives or the life of a third party by using a taser when deadly force is necessary"
On why allegations of police brutality based on police shooting aggressive people multiple times are hollow
Pigs To The Rescue: How Salt Pork Stops Nose Bleeds - "It turns out this isn’t the first time salt pork has been used to control a nosebleed. “It’s a traditional therapy for hard to treat bleeding disorders,” Jackler told me. “When I was a resident in the 1980s, we would buy a lump of salt pork to use.” The salt-packed pork is thought to work by inducing swelling, thereby blocking the bleeding blood vessel."
The crazy life and crazier death of Tycho Brahe, history's strangest astronomer - "In 1566 at the age of 20, he lost part of his nose in a duel with another Danish nobleman named Manderup Parsbjerg. The duel is said to have started over a disagreement about a mathematical formula. Because 16th century Denmark didn't have resources like the internet to figure out who was right, the only solution was to try to kill each other. For the rest of his life, Brahe wore a prosthetic nose. His fake nose was likely made of copper, although he probably also had gold and silver noses around for special occasions... He employed a little person called Jepp, who Brahe believed possessed psychic powers. Jepp was his court jester, and spent most dinners under the table. It's probably best not to speculate on just why Brahe preferred that arrangement. Then there was Brahe's elk, a tame beast that Brahe kept as a prized pet. The elk met a rather bizarre end, reportedly drinking a lot of beer while visiting a nobleman on Brahe's behalf, after which it fell down the stairs and died. Yes, that entire sentence was about an elk."
Schoolboy ‘believes he’s a girl’ - "According to the NHS, an estimated one in 4 000 people is receiving medical help for gender dysphoria. On average, men are five times more likely to be diagnosed with the condition than women"
More data on the relative prevalence of MTF vs FTM transsexuals
Industrial Cybersecurity: Return of the Air Gap? - "What’s the safest state for a plant? When it’s shut down and not producing... Companies that persist in air gapping may well find the economics of that choice bearing down on them at some point, says Albert Rooyakkers, founder, CTO and vice president of engineering for Bedrock Automation. “They will miss the predictive analytics, causing them to blow a bearing on a turbine that costs $150 million,” for example... Most cyber incidents originate from inside the system, Lund says; in that case, air gaps do not help... Air gaps can also introduce errors, warns Gregory Wilcox, global technology and business development manager for Rockwell Automation. “Employees may write down data on clipboards and then manually key it in, but then you have increased the risk of errors.”"
Air Gap or Not, Why ICS/SCADA Networks Are at Risk - "Even in air gapped OT environments, files must be exchanged with the outside world. Some examples include software patches, and files from third parties like system integrators, contractors, etc. An adversary can take advantage of this by tricking employees into installing fake software updates and patches, or transferring files that will introduce malware into industrial networks"
Goodbye Air Gaps, Hello Improved ICS Security - "In today’s competitive world, the demand for real-time data and continuous improvement has meant that links between control networks and business networks are inevitable... 90% of industrial cyber security is not about blocking hackers – it’s about ensuring high availability and reliability through hardened, resilient systems."
BBC World Service - The Documentary, It's a Dog's Life - "Women and children would take wolf cubs and start to hand raise them and that may have been the moment of separation, that hand raised wolves would not be so good at rejoining their counterparts in the wild and so became a separate genetic line of dogs...
[On military deployment in Iraq] 'On stressful days I would let the guys play with Cena. You know, throw a tennis ball, forget where you are for ten seconds. Try to scratch a dog's ear and it's just, it's truly amazing what that little bit of normalcy can do in a chaotic world and he's like: hey I've got this.'
'Dogs they have a really unique and special ability to be social outside of their species'"
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Reflections on Terror: 50 Years Behind the Headlines - "In Northern Ireland even some of the most brutal and apparently senseless murders have a savage logic behind them. Loyalist killers who wanted to keep Northern Ireland under British rule had a grim rationale for slaying innocent Catholics. IRA members were drawn from the Catholic community and the killings were to get that community to put pressure on the IRA to stop...
Although the IRA killed many civilians it was, with notable exceptions, seldom part of a deliberate policy to target civilians, unlike that of the loyalist paramilitaries Al-Qaeda and IS...
The detention center at Camp Booker became the birthplace of the so-called Islamic state. The fusion of Al-Qaeda insurgents with Sunni veterans of Saddam's armed forces...
'These extremists were basically running a terrorist training University or at least a radicalization school in our own detention facilities. In fact I'd stopped release of detainees because I felt that we were actually releasing individuals that were more radical than they were when they entered'...
[On the IRA] 'Prisoners in the compound see themselves as people who have been fighting a war and therefore are not criminals but prisoners of war. Inside the compound they have their own command structure, inside the compound they organise their own leisure activities and inside the compound they do drill'"
Post ID: 1668860257936262946
Tuesday, August 01, 2017
Links - 1st August 2017 (2)
6 Things You Never Knew About Cooking Onboard A Cruise Ship - "It is also important to stock up certain items based on the demographics of guests on-board. For instance, guests from UK usually prefer lamb, while Americans prefer beef and Chinese guests like pork dishes. As fire is a major safety hazard on-board every ship, kitchen equipment is limited to electric stoves and ovens. But that doesn't mean the chefs at Harmony restaurant are unable to recreate wok hei, a key hallmark of Cantonese cooking. Getting the wok hot enough on an induction stove (watch for it to start smoking), for instance, can come very close to recreating that charred flavour. It also means chefs put more emphasis on creating deeply-flavoured soups and tasty sauces used in the dishes... When the ship does not dock at a port to stock up on new supplies, vegetables are slow-cooked or pureed and enhanced with butter and herbs."
These are the original pneumatic zoom tubes hidden beneath New York and London - "there are stories of workers from downtown ordering sandwiches from a deli up in the Bronx and receiving them via pneumatic tube within 20 minutes."
Mexican Tarahumara woman wins 50km race wearing sandals - "María Lorena Ramírez defeated 500 other runners from 12 countries in the female category of the Ultra Trail Cerro Rojo in Puebla, in central Mexico. She ran without any professional gear, and her pair of sandals was reportedly made from recycled tyre rubber. The Tarahumara are famous for being excellent runners."
New ‘Social Justice’ Math Class Teaches Kids That Math Is Evil, Dehumanizing - "Teach for America thinks that language is "social justice," and has designed a course that makes some startling claims about math. "In western mathematics, our ways of knowing include formalized reasoning or proof, decontextualization, and algorithmic thinking, leaving little room for those having non-western mathematical skills and thinking processes," the training course claims."
Maybe this is why (some) minorities are underrepresented in STEM - because they're taught math is evil
A new academic hoax: a bogus paper on “the conceptual penis” gets published in a “high quality peer-reviewed” social science journal - "over the past 21 years since Sokal’s hoax, the social sciences remain rife with obscurantist nonsense—an academic miasma. Of course, not all people or areas in social science or the humanities are full of such nonsense, but cultural studies, including women’s studies, are particularly prone to the toxic combination of jargon and ideology that makes for such horrible “scholarship.”"
A lot of people claim it's a pay to publish journal, but Cogent Social Sciences is peer reviewed
Unconventional sexual relationships: Data about German women ages 50 to 91 years - "For older women there is a shortage of single male partners in the same age group... 4% (18%) of the interviewees had a relationship with a man younger than themselves, and 1% (4%) had a lesbian relationship. Of those living as singles, 8% were having an affair with a married man (21% had one while living as a single). Although relationships with married men occurred most often, attitudes towards relationships with married men were mostly negative. Feelings about relationships with younger men and other women were ambivalent."
Sexuality and Affection among Elderly German Men and Women in Long-Term Relationships: Results of a Prospective Population-Based Study - "When measured at age 74, affection was given a higher priority than sexual activity. Although men and women reported similar priorities, sexual activity and affection were more important for men than for women. Satisfaction within the relationship can be predicted by the importance of affection, but not by that of sexual activity. Our results confirm the thesis of the ‘second language of sexuality’: for humans in their later years affection seems to be more important than for younger individuals."
History of Sex and Sexuality from 1920 to 1951 - "1930s An underground amusement called le cirque erotique--the erotic circus--flourished in Paris. Nude women bicycled speedily around an indoor track while spectators bet on which cyclist would reach orgasm first from the rubbing of clitoris against bicycle seat.
1946 Charging Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber with being obscene, the state of Massachusetts made an attempt to ban its sale. Attorney General George Rowell supported his request for the ban by charging that the novel contained the following: 70 references to sexual intercourse; 39 illegitimate pregnancies; 7 abortions; 10 descriptions of women dressing, undressing, or bathing in the presence of gentlemen; 5 references to incest; 13 references ridiculing marriage; 49 "miscellaneous objectionable passages." Afterwards, one radio comedian was censored for suggesting that Miss Winsor should have called her book Forever Under.
1951 A nationwide census in India indicated there were nearly 3 million husbands and more than 6 million wives between 5 and 14 years old"
Black Privilege - "Andrea's rendition of the events reminded me of those angerfests that were popular in the '70s. Back then, people would pay to be in encounter groups, where they'd holler and smack each other with foam bats. The idea was that by releasing anger, everyone would feel better. But guess what the research eventually found? By raging at another person (whether he deserves it or not), our anger doesn't dissipate; it grows. And the deleterious effects are not just emotional. Blood pressure rises and muscle tension increases, promoting hypertension and musculoskeletal pain."
Grievance/victim culture actually harms those it purports to defend
French Cheesemakers Crippled by EU Health Measures - "Unpasteurised milk, which gives a unique earth-and-fruit flavour, has been gradually marginalised on false public health pretexts after intense lobbying by the food processing industry, to the detriment of the consumer but the incalculable advantage of those producing cheese made with pasteurised milk. The latter will last up to a month on the supermarket shelf, while many made with raw milk – such as fresh goat’s cheese – are unlikely to be edible after more than 10 days... The slithery slide of French gastronomy is in no way confined to the fate of its once mighty national cheese trolley. In the past 10 years, at least half of the country’s artisans-boulangers have stopped baking the croissants and viennoiseries that they sell. These products, far from being home-baked, are mass manufactured, frozen, delivered and sold at an enormous mark-up, making it almost impossible for the genuine corner shop baker to compete... perhaps the crowning inglory is the French restaurant, where an estimated 70% of outlets now serve up microwaved meals bought from industrial caterers."
What I Gained When I Lost My Religion - "I give credit where credit is due, both to others and to myself. Like the preceding two, I think this makes me a healthier person than before. If someone does something good, I do not thank God for it. I thank the person who actually did it. They deserve credit for the things that they do. Doctors, for example, must get really tired of hearing people give God credit when their surgical/medical skills and learning are what saved a person’s life"
"Religion Thing Cannot Touch" - "When religion enters the equation, in Singapore, we often find ourselves unable to disentangle the real issues and engage in constructive discussion. Sincerity is absent if honesty and openness must be checked in at the door when religious matters are to be discussed. It does not help when the Government and authorities choose softly-softly approaches to problem-solving when religion is involved as it only entrenches existing attitudes and behaviours and sends the wrong signals to the impressionable in society. It also emboldens those who know that playing the religion card often puts a stop to conversations"
Shenzhen workers create 'Clothes-off Challenge' in response to 'Ice Bucket Challenge'
What French Kids Eat For School Lunch (It Puts Americans To Shame!) - "Almost all foods are prepared right in the kitchen; they’re not ready-made frozen. This means mashed potatoes, most desserts, salads, soups, and certainly the main dishes are prepared daily. Treats are included — the occasional slice of tarte, a dollop of ice cream, a delicacy from the local pastry shop"
No, There Is Not A Brazilian Town Full Of Women Seeking Single Men - "Upon further investigation, BBC Brazil determined that the town was not a real life Amazon tribe hungry for men. Noiva Do Cordeiro resident Rosalee Belies Fernandes, who allegedly was the person who said they needed bachelors, claimed that their was no such campaign and the situation is "absurd.""
This app wants to invest your 'spare change' so you'll actually be able to retire - "The app links to any credit or debit card and automatically rounds up purchases to the nearest full dollar, investing the rounded-up cents into a portfolio of index funds"
Japan Has Its Own Batman, And He Is So Awesome
The truth about the Ice Bucket Challenge: Viral memes shouldn't dictate our charitable giving - "With ALS, he said that $56,000 would provide one quality-adjusted life year to a sufferer. On the other hand, he said, "the same amount of money could provide 500 quality-adjusted life years if you give money to bed nets for malaria.""
Only women need apply: ARTC gets permission to target women for rail jobs - "The Australian Rail Track Corporation has been given permission to hire only women for track maintenance roles across Newcastle and the Hunter Valley... It has obtained permission from the Anti-Discrimination Board to specifically target women for some current vacancies, based in Muswellbrook, Scone, Maitland and Newcastle."
Would they do the same if men were underrepresented?
Swedish social experiment highlights the benefits of a six-hour work day - "At Gothenburg’s Svartedalens care home, the standard of care increased when nurses switched to a six-hour day... Gothenburg is not the first to discover that shorter hours can lead to improved work performance. Last year, Stanford economist John Pencavel proved (pdf) that output does not proportionally increase with each additional hour worked. In fact, above a certain number of hours, he found, work output begins to rise more slowly. British employees work more than French or German employees, but produce, on average, 27% to 31% less than their continental colleagues"
Tokyo’s labyrinthine Shibuya Station becomes a literal RPG dungeon in free smartphone game - "UeharaLabo claims that the game’s map is an accurate recreation of the entire Shibuya Station layout, although the real thing doesn’t have quite as many walls of spikes and wandering ghosts as the video game version"
SNP back prostitution law changes condemned by sex workers - "“The criminalisation of clients has been shown time and time again to make sex workers more vulnerable to violence, as interactions with clients have to become more rushed and clandestine – a gift to people with violent intentions. "Indeed, we already have evidence of this happening in Scotland – in 2008, the prostitution in public places act criminalised the clients of street-based sex workers, and SCOT-PEP saw a 50 per cent increase in violence against street-based sex workers within just the first six months of the law."
Triple talaq not integral part of the religion: Centre in Supreme Court - "The government maintained that triple talaq and polygamy impacted a woman’s status and her right to live with confidence and dignity, and added that they were not protected under Article 25 of the Constitution, which guaranteed immunity to practices essential or integral to the religion... The Muslim Personal Law Board, in its reply to the petitions, had defended the validity of triple talaq saying that if the practice is discontinued, a man could murder or burn his wife alive to get rid of her."
Dear Shashi Tharoor, the fault was not in the Raj, but in ourselves - "The British didn’t come to conquer India; it was a creeping takeover facilitated and encouraged by Indians. Gujarat was relieved when the British finally protected them from the excesses of the Marathas (who still squat on Baroda) and the incompetence of the Mughal rump. It was the Oswal Jains who financed and executed Robert Clive’s win at Plassey. They did so because the Mughal governors there were in power but incapable of leading them, even if they were not foreign... The fact is that the Indian army has historically been an army of mercenaries that became a national army overnight on August 15, 1947. It has zero history of fighting for national causes, only ever for money... If the British failed to govern India well it is because India is ungovernable. They did as good a job as might be expected of colonialists and have little to apologize for. Under the British, India’s population quadrupled for the first time in the 19th century (having only doubled each century before that according to the economist Angus Maddison). That is in my opinion purely down to Pax Britannica, the peace ensured by the Raj’s monopoly over violence"
A Dust Over India - "Indians will rarely, if ever, resort to violence. As a foreigner, you never have to worry about being robbed, or having a knife pulled on you, or getting beaten up by a gang of thugs and having your kidney carved out of you. And this is true. I’ve been to many shady parts of the world. But never did I once feel unsafe in India. Even late at night. But, Sanjay said, an Indian will lie to your face. He’ll say anything to get what he wants from you. And most of them don’t see it as immoral or wrong. So on the one hand, they won’t stick a gun in your face to take your wallet. But they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord... I learned long ago the perfect remedy to street touts: iPod + sunglasses. Crank that shit up to 10 and just keep walking. What you can’t hear or see can’t bother you. Would-be harassers and hagglers bounce off you like flies... There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess. And it’s the only country that I’ve ever been to where I left more confused than when I arrived"
India: 'Walls of shame' against outdoor defecation - "Villages in the Nadia district in West Bengal are setting up "walls of shame" featuring the names and photos of people caught relieving themselves in public... while toilets have been built, persuading some people to use them is another matter"
Meepok Da's answer to What do Singaporeans think about Indians? - Quora - "We in Singapore have mixed views about Indians, from India...
1) Argumentative
They argue and argue. And argue more. Why do they always need to "win" an argument? It is not our culture to be confrontational, we can agree to be different and we will stop at that.
2) Caste System
I wish they stop bringing their superiority complex here. We do not have a caste system here like they do back in India, so stop looking down on others. And this is from my local Indian friend's mouth "I wish they stop talking down to us. Sick of all this BS!"
3) Quick to Promise, Fail to Deliver
"Yes, it can be done." "No problem, delivery time is not an issue" Sounds familiar when dealing with them? You are not alone!
4) Corrupt
Let one into a position of power, and soon his/her department are all filled with Indians...
5) Irresponsible tenants
Wonder why the landlords do not want to rent to Indians? Here's why. They mess up the house, abuse the furniture / equipment. Do not clean up their cooking mess. They promise you they would fix it before their lease ends, then they don't. And they have the cheek to come asking for their deposit after all that.
Point 5 is my personal experience. Not once but twice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'm sorry, but no more Indian tenants for me.
They also abuse the dependent pass system, brings their entire "clan" here, applies PR for daughters and not for sons, and talks openly about "reaping the benefits before skipping to the US of A." They are so notorious, it's a well known fact in the expat forums. And so bad, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority has to crack down on their BS and tighten the leash on Indian applications."
Worried about cellphone radiation? Apply cow dung on its back, says RSS ideologue - "Lal said that cow dung has the potential to cure any disease. He claimed that controlled intake of cow dung has kept him healthy though his age was 76. Lal added that they made pregnant women eat cow dung and urine paste to ensure a normal delivery."
Why Archeologists Hate Indiana Jones - ""True, the Nazis were trying to find the Ark of the Covenant so they could destroy the world," Canuto says. "But methodologically and legally they were in the right." Whatever you may think of evil archeologists bent on world domination, they presumably had permits to be there. And while the early days of Egyptian archeology were corrupt and exploitative, it was far better than just allowing foreign looters to run wild. Looters like Indiana Jones."
Little India COI report: Punches pulled - "So, give ‘em a break. You know, none of them had ever had to handle a riot; the frontline cops weren’t equipped nor prepared for crowds who throw stones and beer bottles. How would anyone have figured that red tape would have delayed the deployment of the riot cops? How would anyone have known that communication lines would be jammed such that the cops couldn’t talk to one another and find out what was happening in the streets of Little India or even how many cops were already there? Holding a position by lining up across key roads is really a good idea but did you know that there were so many alleyways and back streets that rioters could go through? And you would have thought the riot cops would have blared their way through traffic with sirens on, so who would have figured that they would be so late on the scene? In any case, in the half hour waiting for the calvary to arrive, all the rioters did was damage 23 emergency vehicles, including setting fire to four. Just over S$530,000 of damage caused – hey, small sum! And remember no tear gas nor water cannons used. No shots were fired.
Okay, I am being cynical but I sure hope I won’t have to hear such comments if the guys in GREEN had to go into action."
These are the original pneumatic zoom tubes hidden beneath New York and London - "there are stories of workers from downtown ordering sandwiches from a deli up in the Bronx and receiving them via pneumatic tube within 20 minutes."
Mexican Tarahumara woman wins 50km race wearing sandals - "María Lorena Ramírez defeated 500 other runners from 12 countries in the female category of the Ultra Trail Cerro Rojo in Puebla, in central Mexico. She ran without any professional gear, and her pair of sandals was reportedly made from recycled tyre rubber. The Tarahumara are famous for being excellent runners."
New ‘Social Justice’ Math Class Teaches Kids That Math Is Evil, Dehumanizing - "Teach for America thinks that language is "social justice," and has designed a course that makes some startling claims about math. "In western mathematics, our ways of knowing include formalized reasoning or proof, decontextualization, and algorithmic thinking, leaving little room for those having non-western mathematical skills and thinking processes," the training course claims."
Maybe this is why (some) minorities are underrepresented in STEM - because they're taught math is evil
A new academic hoax: a bogus paper on “the conceptual penis” gets published in a “high quality peer-reviewed” social science journal - "over the past 21 years since Sokal’s hoax, the social sciences remain rife with obscurantist nonsense—an academic miasma. Of course, not all people or areas in social science or the humanities are full of such nonsense, but cultural studies, including women’s studies, are particularly prone to the toxic combination of jargon and ideology that makes for such horrible “scholarship.”"
A lot of people claim it's a pay to publish journal, but Cogent Social Sciences is peer reviewed
Unconventional sexual relationships: Data about German women ages 50 to 91 years - "For older women there is a shortage of single male partners in the same age group... 4% (18%) of the interviewees had a relationship with a man younger than themselves, and 1% (4%) had a lesbian relationship. Of those living as singles, 8% were having an affair with a married man (21% had one while living as a single). Although relationships with married men occurred most often, attitudes towards relationships with married men were mostly negative. Feelings about relationships with younger men and other women were ambivalent."
Sexuality and Affection among Elderly German Men and Women in Long-Term Relationships: Results of a Prospective Population-Based Study - "When measured at age 74, affection was given a higher priority than sexual activity. Although men and women reported similar priorities, sexual activity and affection were more important for men than for women. Satisfaction within the relationship can be predicted by the importance of affection, but not by that of sexual activity. Our results confirm the thesis of the ‘second language of sexuality’: for humans in their later years affection seems to be more important than for younger individuals."
History of Sex and Sexuality from 1920 to 1951 - "1930s An underground amusement called le cirque erotique--the erotic circus--flourished in Paris. Nude women bicycled speedily around an indoor track while spectators bet on which cyclist would reach orgasm first from the rubbing of clitoris against bicycle seat.
1946 Charging Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber with being obscene, the state of Massachusetts made an attempt to ban its sale. Attorney General George Rowell supported his request for the ban by charging that the novel contained the following: 70 references to sexual intercourse; 39 illegitimate pregnancies; 7 abortions; 10 descriptions of women dressing, undressing, or bathing in the presence of gentlemen; 5 references to incest; 13 references ridiculing marriage; 49 "miscellaneous objectionable passages." Afterwards, one radio comedian was censored for suggesting that Miss Winsor should have called her book Forever Under.
1951 A nationwide census in India indicated there were nearly 3 million husbands and more than 6 million wives between 5 and 14 years old"
Black Privilege - "Andrea's rendition of the events reminded me of those angerfests that were popular in the '70s. Back then, people would pay to be in encounter groups, where they'd holler and smack each other with foam bats. The idea was that by releasing anger, everyone would feel better. But guess what the research eventually found? By raging at another person (whether he deserves it or not), our anger doesn't dissipate; it grows. And the deleterious effects are not just emotional. Blood pressure rises and muscle tension increases, promoting hypertension and musculoskeletal pain."
Grievance/victim culture actually harms those it purports to defend
French Cheesemakers Crippled by EU Health Measures - "Unpasteurised milk, which gives a unique earth-and-fruit flavour, has been gradually marginalised on false public health pretexts after intense lobbying by the food processing industry, to the detriment of the consumer but the incalculable advantage of those producing cheese made with pasteurised milk. The latter will last up to a month on the supermarket shelf, while many made with raw milk – such as fresh goat’s cheese – are unlikely to be edible after more than 10 days... The slithery slide of French gastronomy is in no way confined to the fate of its once mighty national cheese trolley. In the past 10 years, at least half of the country’s artisans-boulangers have stopped baking the croissants and viennoiseries that they sell. These products, far from being home-baked, are mass manufactured, frozen, delivered and sold at an enormous mark-up, making it almost impossible for the genuine corner shop baker to compete... perhaps the crowning inglory is the French restaurant, where an estimated 70% of outlets now serve up microwaved meals bought from industrial caterers."
What I Gained When I Lost My Religion - "I give credit where credit is due, both to others and to myself. Like the preceding two, I think this makes me a healthier person than before. If someone does something good, I do not thank God for it. I thank the person who actually did it. They deserve credit for the things that they do. Doctors, for example, must get really tired of hearing people give God credit when their surgical/medical skills and learning are what saved a person’s life"
"Religion Thing Cannot Touch" - "When religion enters the equation, in Singapore, we often find ourselves unable to disentangle the real issues and engage in constructive discussion. Sincerity is absent if honesty and openness must be checked in at the door when religious matters are to be discussed. It does not help when the Government and authorities choose softly-softly approaches to problem-solving when religion is involved as it only entrenches existing attitudes and behaviours and sends the wrong signals to the impressionable in society. It also emboldens those who know that playing the religion card often puts a stop to conversations"
Shenzhen workers create 'Clothes-off Challenge' in response to 'Ice Bucket Challenge'
What French Kids Eat For School Lunch (It Puts Americans To Shame!) - "Almost all foods are prepared right in the kitchen; they’re not ready-made frozen. This means mashed potatoes, most desserts, salads, soups, and certainly the main dishes are prepared daily. Treats are included — the occasional slice of tarte, a dollop of ice cream, a delicacy from the local pastry shop"
No, There Is Not A Brazilian Town Full Of Women Seeking Single Men - "Upon further investigation, BBC Brazil determined that the town was not a real life Amazon tribe hungry for men. Noiva Do Cordeiro resident Rosalee Belies Fernandes, who allegedly was the person who said they needed bachelors, claimed that their was no such campaign and the situation is "absurd.""
This app wants to invest your 'spare change' so you'll actually be able to retire - "The app links to any credit or debit card and automatically rounds up purchases to the nearest full dollar, investing the rounded-up cents into a portfolio of index funds"
Japan Has Its Own Batman, And He Is So Awesome
The truth about the Ice Bucket Challenge: Viral memes shouldn't dictate our charitable giving - "With ALS, he said that $56,000 would provide one quality-adjusted life year to a sufferer. On the other hand, he said, "the same amount of money could provide 500 quality-adjusted life years if you give money to bed nets for malaria.""
Only women need apply: ARTC gets permission to target women for rail jobs - "The Australian Rail Track Corporation has been given permission to hire only women for track maintenance roles across Newcastle and the Hunter Valley... It has obtained permission from the Anti-Discrimination Board to specifically target women for some current vacancies, based in Muswellbrook, Scone, Maitland and Newcastle."
Would they do the same if men were underrepresented?
Swedish social experiment highlights the benefits of a six-hour work day - "At Gothenburg’s Svartedalens care home, the standard of care increased when nurses switched to a six-hour day... Gothenburg is not the first to discover that shorter hours can lead to improved work performance. Last year, Stanford economist John Pencavel proved (pdf) that output does not proportionally increase with each additional hour worked. In fact, above a certain number of hours, he found, work output begins to rise more slowly. British employees work more than French or German employees, but produce, on average, 27% to 31% less than their continental colleagues"
Tokyo’s labyrinthine Shibuya Station becomes a literal RPG dungeon in free smartphone game - "UeharaLabo claims that the game’s map is an accurate recreation of the entire Shibuya Station layout, although the real thing doesn’t have quite as many walls of spikes and wandering ghosts as the video game version"
SNP back prostitution law changes condemned by sex workers - "“The criminalisation of clients has been shown time and time again to make sex workers more vulnerable to violence, as interactions with clients have to become more rushed and clandestine – a gift to people with violent intentions. "Indeed, we already have evidence of this happening in Scotland – in 2008, the prostitution in public places act criminalised the clients of street-based sex workers, and SCOT-PEP saw a 50 per cent increase in violence against street-based sex workers within just the first six months of the law."
Triple talaq not integral part of the religion: Centre in Supreme Court - "The government maintained that triple talaq and polygamy impacted a woman’s status and her right to live with confidence and dignity, and added that they were not protected under Article 25 of the Constitution, which guaranteed immunity to practices essential or integral to the religion... The Muslim Personal Law Board, in its reply to the petitions, had defended the validity of triple talaq saying that if the practice is discontinued, a man could murder or burn his wife alive to get rid of her."
Dear Shashi Tharoor, the fault was not in the Raj, but in ourselves - "The British didn’t come to conquer India; it was a creeping takeover facilitated and encouraged by Indians. Gujarat was relieved when the British finally protected them from the excesses of the Marathas (who still squat on Baroda) and the incompetence of the Mughal rump. It was the Oswal Jains who financed and executed Robert Clive’s win at Plassey. They did so because the Mughal governors there were in power but incapable of leading them, even if they were not foreign... The fact is that the Indian army has historically been an army of mercenaries that became a national army overnight on August 15, 1947. It has zero history of fighting for national causes, only ever for money... If the British failed to govern India well it is because India is ungovernable. They did as good a job as might be expected of colonialists and have little to apologize for. Under the British, India’s population quadrupled for the first time in the 19th century (having only doubled each century before that according to the economist Angus Maddison). That is in my opinion purely down to Pax Britannica, the peace ensured by the Raj’s monopoly over violence"
A Dust Over India - "Indians will rarely, if ever, resort to violence. As a foreigner, you never have to worry about being robbed, or having a knife pulled on you, or getting beaten up by a gang of thugs and having your kidney carved out of you. And this is true. I’ve been to many shady parts of the world. But never did I once feel unsafe in India. Even late at night. But, Sanjay said, an Indian will lie to your face. He’ll say anything to get what he wants from you. And most of them don’t see it as immoral or wrong. So on the one hand, they won’t stick a gun in your face to take your wallet. But they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord... I learned long ago the perfect remedy to street touts: iPod + sunglasses. Crank that shit up to 10 and just keep walking. What you can’t hear or see can’t bother you. Would-be harassers and hagglers bounce off you like flies... There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess. And it’s the only country that I’ve ever been to where I left more confused than when I arrived"
India: 'Walls of shame' against outdoor defecation - "Villages in the Nadia district in West Bengal are setting up "walls of shame" featuring the names and photos of people caught relieving themselves in public... while toilets have been built, persuading some people to use them is another matter"
Meepok Da's answer to What do Singaporeans think about Indians? - Quora - "We in Singapore have mixed views about Indians, from India...
1) Argumentative
They argue and argue. And argue more. Why do they always need to "win" an argument? It is not our culture to be confrontational, we can agree to be different and we will stop at that.
2) Caste System
I wish they stop bringing their superiority complex here. We do not have a caste system here like they do back in India, so stop looking down on others. And this is from my local Indian friend's mouth "I wish they stop talking down to us. Sick of all this BS!"
3) Quick to Promise, Fail to Deliver
"Yes, it can be done." "No problem, delivery time is not an issue" Sounds familiar when dealing with them? You are not alone!
4) Corrupt
Let one into a position of power, and soon his/her department are all filled with Indians...
5) Irresponsible tenants
Wonder why the landlords do not want to rent to Indians? Here's why. They mess up the house, abuse the furniture / equipment. Do not clean up their cooking mess. They promise you they would fix it before their lease ends, then they don't. And they have the cheek to come asking for their deposit after all that.
Point 5 is my personal experience. Not once but twice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'm sorry, but no more Indian tenants for me.
They also abuse the dependent pass system, brings their entire "clan" here, applies PR for daughters and not for sons, and talks openly about "reaping the benefits before skipping to the US of A." They are so notorious, it's a well known fact in the expat forums. And so bad, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority has to crack down on their BS and tighten the leash on Indian applications."
Worried about cellphone radiation? Apply cow dung on its back, says RSS ideologue - "Lal said that cow dung has the potential to cure any disease. He claimed that controlled intake of cow dung has kept him healthy though his age was 76. Lal added that they made pregnant women eat cow dung and urine paste to ensure a normal delivery."
Why Archeologists Hate Indiana Jones - ""True, the Nazis were trying to find the Ark of the Covenant so they could destroy the world," Canuto says. "But methodologically and legally they were in the right." Whatever you may think of evil archeologists bent on world domination, they presumably had permits to be there. And while the early days of Egyptian archeology were corrupt and exploitative, it was far better than just allowing foreign looters to run wild. Looters like Indiana Jones."
Little India COI report: Punches pulled - "So, give ‘em a break. You know, none of them had ever had to handle a riot; the frontline cops weren’t equipped nor prepared for crowds who throw stones and beer bottles. How would anyone have figured that red tape would have delayed the deployment of the riot cops? How would anyone have known that communication lines would be jammed such that the cops couldn’t talk to one another and find out what was happening in the streets of Little India or even how many cops were already there? Holding a position by lining up across key roads is really a good idea but did you know that there were so many alleyways and back streets that rioters could go through? And you would have thought the riot cops would have blared their way through traffic with sirens on, so who would have figured that they would be so late on the scene? In any case, in the half hour waiting for the calvary to arrive, all the rioters did was damage 23 emergency vehicles, including setting fire to four. Just over S$530,000 of damage caused – hey, small sum! And remember no tear gas nor water cannons used. No shots were fired.
Okay, I am being cynical but I sure hope I won’t have to hear such comments if the guys in GREEN had to go into action."
Post ID: 5669857071613109771
From another point of view
"I encounter civilians like you all the time. You believe the Empire is continually plotting to do harm. Let me tell you, your view of the Empire is far too dramatic. The Empire is a government. It keeps billions of beings fed and clothed. Day after day, year after year, on thousands of worlds, people live their lives under Imperial rule without seeing a stormtrooper or hearing a TIE fighter scream overhead."
--- Mitth'raw'nuruodo
--- Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Post ID: 2800284089462507622
Links - 1st August 2017 (1)
Birmingham millionaire has his Ferrari crushed - "When rogue landlord Zahid Khan turned up at court for a hearing about the way he treated some tenants, he ostentatiously parked his Ferrari 458 Spider on the pavement outside. So his victims must be celebrating after the £200,000 supercar was later confiscated and crushed by police. The 30-year-old was stopped at the wheel last month and the car was seized as officers suspected it was stolen... West Midlands Police said checks revealed it was a Category B vehicle, meaning it was unroadworthy and the shell had to be destroyed. It was also uninsured."
‘I could punch her in the face’: Libertarian student draws ire for exposing biased UWisc classes - "Murphy, who obtained a copy of the syllabus through one of her public records act requests, noted in her piece that the course has students “reflect on their privilege and marginalization. Students also review how meritocracy – and the American Dream – is a myth. Why work hard to achieve your dreams if you can blame sex/race/class/sexuality for your lack of success?”
Murphy added:
A portion of the participation grade is based on whether or not students were inclusive and supported other students expressing their thoughts. This is college, not charm school – and these students (and taxpayers!) are essentially paying hundreds of dollars for a course on how to be nice to people"
European Roma descended from Indian 'untouchables', genetic study shows - "Gypsies have long believed they have origins in India, citing common Sanskrit words in their languages and photographs of darker-skinned ancestors in South Asian clothes... The researchers believe the descendants of today's Roma gypsies in Europe began their westward exodus first to fight in wars in what is today Punjab between 1001 and 1026 on the promise of a promotion in caste status. Later, they left to flee the fall of Hindu kingdoms in what is today Pakistan, with many setting off from near Gilgit. The exodus to North Africa and Europe suggested they may have been early refugees from the spread of Islam into the Indian sub-continent"
Pamela Anderson to campaign for men falsely accused of rape - inspired by Julian Assange friendship - "“Sweden has these very progressive laws against sexual crimes, whatever you want to call it," Ms Anderson told Russian broadcaster, RT . “It’s almost too progressive, it’s almost paralysing," she said, announcing that she would start to push for the rights of men who have been wrongly accused of rape."
It’s a delusion to think that the terror attacks are just about foreign policy - "The trouble is, the link is not nearly so simple or direct. Talk to those who devote their lives to the study of violent jihadism, reading Isis’s propaganda and interviewing its devotees, and a different picture emerges. For one thing, it’s not all about us. Most of jihadism’s victims are other Muslims, in the Arab world or in Africa. When they murder and maim Shia Muslims by the hundreds, they’re not doing that to punish western foreign policy. When Isis set about the massacre of Yazidi men and the enslavement and mass rape of Yazidi women and girls, it wasn’t revenge for western meddling in the Middle East. It takes an oddly Eurocentric view of the world to decide that this is a phenomenon entirely of the west’s creation. Moreover, what might count as western provocation, fuelling jihadism, is not as clear as some might like to think. Many on the left assume it is military intervention that turns young men into jihadis ready to murder pre-teen girls. But I recall my own first encounter with that ideology, back in the 1990s. I was speaking at a student meeting that was disrupted by loud activists from the extremist al-Muhajiroun group. What were they furious about? The west’s failure to take military action over Bosnia. These young men were livid that Britain and the US had not dropped bombs to prevent the massacre at Srebrenica. It proved, they said, that the west held Muslim lives to be cheap... this is an ideology that can rage against western inaction as much as action. When I spoke to Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at King’s College London who studies radicalisation up close, he put the problem concisely: “You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Maher suggests that western foreign policy often plays the role of a hook on which jihadis can hang a much larger set of ideological, and theological, motives. In his latest essay for the New Statesman, he quotes one British Isis recruit he interviewed, who told him: “We primarily fight wars due to people being disbelievers. Their drones against us are a secondary issue.” So it’s not clear what a foreign policy designed to soothe rather than inflame jihadi opinion would look like – or that it would get you very far. Staying out of Muslim countries might seem like the obvious answer, but it offers no guarantees. Not against those who can regard an eight-year-old girl and her friends as “crusaders”, worthy of death for the sin of dancing in a “shameless concert arena”."
Global Times asks foreigners living in China if they like being called 'laowai' - "a former dormitory supervisor for international students at the Beijing Language and Culture University said that foreigners often use the term "laowai" familiarly among themselves (along with words like laoban and laoshi), so why shouldn't Chinese?"
Jeremy Corbyn thinks the real evil is Western intervention, not Isil - and Labour wants him in office - "It is the very defining philosophy that has driven the anti-West movement since before the Berlin Wall came down: all terrorism is the cause of the West’s military interventions and foreign policy. It’s always our fault. And we can only be safe by disarming and retreating and allowing the rest of the world – particularly the Middle East – to sort out their own problems. We only ever make things worse. Let’s call it The Corbyn Doctrine. And so, the UN-sanctioned incursion into Afghanistan was a disaster, according to the Corbyn Doctrine. The fact that women there have a historically lower mortality childbirth rates and a record number of girls now attending full time education there is irrelevant, of no importance or interest. If they were given those opportunities only because of US and British military intervention, then such advances are hardly worth it. And, naturally, the same doctrine applies elsewhere. Domestic terrorism, whether the 7/7 attacks in London or this week’s slaughter of young women in Manchester, cannot possibly be the responsibility of the Islamists alone – the West must always take more responsibility than those who built the bombs and pressed the detonating switch."
Girl faces fine for possessing pepper spray in Denmark, after using spray to protect against sexual assault - The Washington Post - "the Copenhagen Post reported that “An increasing number of Danes are travelling to Germany to buy pepper spray.”"
The Parenting Style That Turns Kids Into Narcissists - "Parents who “overvalue” their kids by teaching them that they're unique and extraordinary—which they all are, of course—encourage those kids to have an inflated view of themselves and a less charitable view of others. The kids grow up to expect the world will treat them the way their parents do. Which it inevitably doesn't. That's particularly troubling because the study suggests that narcissism is growing more common. "Narcissism scores have been increasing over the past few decades among university students in the United States," said Eddie Brummelman, lead author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and is the first to measure the emergence of narcissism among kids aged 7-12... The researchers also point to what may be the best parenting strategy for well-adjusted, non-narcissistic kids: a combination of "parental warmth" and realism about children's abilities... Unchecked, the authors posit, narcissistic people can "contribute to societal problems such as aggression and violence.""
Sounds like SJWs
This Perfect Fried Chicken Recipe Took 100 Attempts to Develop - "López-Alt explained he’d soaked the meat in salty, paprika-darkened buttermilk, which tenderized the chicken and helped it retain moisture during cooking. He pulled some marinated pieces from the brine and, to build up the crust, dredged the meat in flour he'd mixed up with a little of the same brine. "Oooooh," an audience member cooed, "that's how you do it!" This created tiny lumps that would later, if all went well in the fryer, offer bonus texture and crunch over the surface of each piece... López-Alt recommends doing an initial fry and finishing up the chicken on a rack in the oven. The secret to extra crunchy chicken, however, is taking it a step farther: Refrigerate the meat overnight and fry it a second time the next day just before serving."
This recipe is so valuable, it "is only available for Bloomberg Professional Service subscribers". But anyway it's on: The Food Lab: The Best Southern Fried Chicken | Serious Eats
It’s a Small World - 5 Tiny Things You Can Find in Japan - "according to a survey, some 40 percent of beer lovers in Japan said that the first sip of beer is the best, because it's cold and fresh. But if you drink a 350ml can and take more than 15 minutes to finish, it gets kind of warm and stale. So after the beer companies heard the feedback, they thought, “Why don't we sell smaller cans of beer? Then they can drink it up quick and enjoy the ice cold goodness until the last sip.”"
Tough Pill to Swallow: Why Singapore’s Healthcare Model Should Not Be Followed - "Singaporeans currently have to contribute a whopping 8 to 10.5 percent of their monthly wages into Medisave. You would imagine that paying a contribution of 8 to 10.5 percent of wages into Medisave would effectively net Singaporeans free healthcare, but this is not the case."
Angela Merkel: German multiculturalism has 'utterly failed' - "The row over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a highly-controversial book in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society. Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved popular and polls showed Germans were sympathetic with the thrust of his arguments. One recent poll showed one-third of Germans believed the country was "overrun by foreigners". It also found 55% of Germans believed that Arabs are "unpleasant people", compared with the 44% who held the opinion seven years ago."
And this was in 2010
KASSAM: A Very Real War on Women Arrived in Manchester Last Night - "For news sources like the Independent, the ostensible fight in defence of multiculturalism is even more important than the news story itself, let alone pro-security positions. Over the past 16 hours, the Independent has published and promoted at least seven separate articles targeting the critics of mass migration or lax security. I cannot for one second imagine being that editor and having the callousness to shout across the newsroom: “Let’s hammer Nigel Farage for what he said on Fox!” while young girls are still bleeding in hospitals in England. I encourage you to read their article, by the way, and find anything wrong in what Mr. Farage told Tucker Carlson last night. This is their new normal. Terror attacks are now political footballs for the left, while they, without a scintilla of self-awareness or irony, accuse the right of using these events for partisan gain... while the political left hurls accusations of a “war on women” at the right, for refusing to accept taxpayer subsidy of contraception or abortion, the real war on women is taking place in British towns and cities, conducted by fellow travellers of the high chiefs of multiculturalism."
Leftists Bemoan 'Islamophobia' Backlash on Social Media Following Manchester Terrorist Attack - "Some immediately jumped to blaming President Donald Trump"
Breathtaking image of futsal court in remote Sabah goes viral - "A teacher from SK Logongon in Nabawan, Sabah, sent the remarkable drone image of the creeper-covered court, and Malaysians responded with awe and amazement. Although the surroundings appear to be teeming with foliage, the court itself, which lies in the centre of a "green lake" of leaves, was kept neat and clean."
In the cut - ""Many maternity clinic midwives have begun to market female cutting (FC) as part of a birth delivery package with the service being offered to the parents right after the delivery of a baby girl"... While circumcision is widespread in Indonesia, it is very different to the female genital mutilation (FGC) common in parts of Africa, which often severely damages almost all genital parts... symbolic circumcision involved local healers cutting a tumeric root and rubbing it on the baby's clitoris while those attending chanted and prayed. "This was very much women's business, and even if the fathers of the girls were there they would not understand what was done," he says. In the cities, where Islamic influence was stronger, Hull found that circumcision involved drawing blood, usually by putting a pin in the clitoris... the USAid-funded study by the Population Council surveyed 1694 households in eight regions and found all the boys and 97.5 per cent of girls had been circumcised. Although many questions remain unanswered, the study concluded circumcision in Indonesia at present "did not reveal any clear, immediate or long-term physical or psychological complications ... for girls or women". It listed the most common forms of circumcision as "rubbing and scraping; stretching, pricking and piercing; incision; and excision", and the cutting instruments used as "penknife; scissors; bamboo knife/razor blade and needles"... SEVERAL hours out of Jakarta, in Bandung, the Assalaam Foundation has held free mass circumcisions for males and females for almost 50 years. As many as 400 people turn up. Syarief Hamid, treasurer of the foundation, which also runs several schools, says the circumcisions were timed to honour the Prophet's birthday and were growing in popularity each year. While religion was the main reason for circumcisions, he says there are also health reasons. "I understand that a girl who is not circumcised would not have clean genitals after she urinates and sometimes that can cause cervical cancer," he says. "The religious view is, if you are not circumcised you won't have clean genitals after you urinate. If then you pray, your prayer won't be legal"... The Department of Health had come to observe, with representatives of the World Health Organisation, and had left satisfied. "What they saw here was different to what they imagined; it was different to what they saw in Africa"... more than 90 per cent of mothers questioned supported the practice continuing. And one in five mothers even suggested social sanctions should be imposed on girls who were uncircumcised."
Not that this will convince those who claim female circumcision in Indonesia is about cutting out the clitoris (even though that is impossible) and Infibulation
How The Economist Thinks - "In his deliciously biting 1991 examination of the role of The Economist in shaping American elite opinion, James Fallows tried to figure out exactly what was so repellent about the magazine’s approach to the seeking of truth. Fallows puzzled over the fact that American intellectuals hold a disproportionate amount of respect for The Economist’s judgment and reporting, even though the magazine is produced by imperious 20-something Oxbridge graduates who generally know little about the subjects on which they so confidently opine. Fallows suggested that The Economist’s outsized reputation in the U.S. was partially attributable to Americans’ lingering colonial insecurity, their ongoing belief that despite all evidence to the contrary, British people are inherently intelligent and trustworthy. Fallows even dug up an embarrassingly snooty quote from Robert Reich, boasting about his sensible preference for British news: “I, for one, don’t get my economics news from Newsweek. I rely on The Economist — published in London”... readers are consistently given the impression, regardless of whether it is true, that unrestricted free market capitalism is a Thoroughly Good Thing, and that sensible and pragmatic British intellectuals have vouched for this position. The nuances are erased, reality is fudged, and The Economist helps its American readers pretend to have read books by telling them things that the books don’t actually say"
Fly Burgers! Patties Made of Millions of Mayflies - "The largest swarm of flies in the world hails from Lake Victoria, where trillions of midge flies swarm each month for mating. Local residents didn’t want the easy to catch protein go to waste, so started the tradition of making midge fly BURGERS."
Apparently these aren't flies but midges
WHO spends more on travel costs than fighting AIDS - "other aid agencies manage to fly staff around on much tighter budgets — the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF spends $140 million a year and has twice the staff, while Doctors Without Borders forbids business-class travel and spends on $43 million a year despite having more than five times as many staffers"
UK to censor online videos of 'non-conventional' sex acts - "In order to comply with the censorship rules, many mainstream adult websites would have to render whole sections inaccessible to UK audiences. That is despite the acts shown being legal for consenting over-16s to perform and for adults in almost all other liberal countries to film, distribute and watch... Pictures and videos that show spanking, whipping or caning that leaves marks, and sex acts involving urination, female ejaculation or menstruation as well as sex in public are likely to be caught by the ban – in effect turning back the clock on Britain’s censorship regime to the pre-internet era... “Although it is nominally designed to enforce the [Obscene Publications Act] guidelines of the Crown Prosecution Service, in practice it draws far tighter lines, many of them inexplicable. The ban on female ejaculation is a particularly strange example,” he said. The censorship regime has led to bizarre understandings between the producers and regulators, Barnett said. One is the “four-finger rule”, which limits the number of digits that can be inserted into an orifice for sexual stimulation. Even some who back age verification questioned such strict censorship. “It’s mad that we regulate such material that aren’t even criminal acts,” said Prof Clare McGlynn, an expert on pornography laws at Durham University and co-founder of the Centre for Gender Equal Media."
Secrets of sumo wrestler's diet - "A sumo wrestler's day begins around 5am with morning training. They peel themselves out of bed and go directly to the training room. Working out on an empty stomach has its advantages in the effort to gain weight, Matsuda says, as this helps slow down the body's metabolism and makes burning calories more difficult... By fasting overnight and before morning training, sumo wrestlers switch their bodies to a fat storing mode when all the dishes are served on the table"
‘I could punch her in the face’: Libertarian student draws ire for exposing biased UWisc classes - "Murphy, who obtained a copy of the syllabus through one of her public records act requests, noted in her piece that the course has students “reflect on their privilege and marginalization. Students also review how meritocracy – and the American Dream – is a myth. Why work hard to achieve your dreams if you can blame sex/race/class/sexuality for your lack of success?”
Murphy added:
A portion of the participation grade is based on whether or not students were inclusive and supported other students expressing their thoughts. This is college, not charm school – and these students (and taxpayers!) are essentially paying hundreds of dollars for a course on how to be nice to people"
European Roma descended from Indian 'untouchables', genetic study shows - "Gypsies have long believed they have origins in India, citing common Sanskrit words in their languages and photographs of darker-skinned ancestors in South Asian clothes... The researchers believe the descendants of today's Roma gypsies in Europe began their westward exodus first to fight in wars in what is today Punjab between 1001 and 1026 on the promise of a promotion in caste status. Later, they left to flee the fall of Hindu kingdoms in what is today Pakistan, with many setting off from near Gilgit. The exodus to North Africa and Europe suggested they may have been early refugees from the spread of Islam into the Indian sub-continent"
Pamela Anderson to campaign for men falsely accused of rape - inspired by Julian Assange friendship - "“Sweden has these very progressive laws against sexual crimes, whatever you want to call it," Ms Anderson told Russian broadcaster, RT . “It’s almost too progressive, it’s almost paralysing," she said, announcing that she would start to push for the rights of men who have been wrongly accused of rape."
It’s a delusion to think that the terror attacks are just about foreign policy - "The trouble is, the link is not nearly so simple or direct. Talk to those who devote their lives to the study of violent jihadism, reading Isis’s propaganda and interviewing its devotees, and a different picture emerges. For one thing, it’s not all about us. Most of jihadism’s victims are other Muslims, in the Arab world or in Africa. When they murder and maim Shia Muslims by the hundreds, they’re not doing that to punish western foreign policy. When Isis set about the massacre of Yazidi men and the enslavement and mass rape of Yazidi women and girls, it wasn’t revenge for western meddling in the Middle East. It takes an oddly Eurocentric view of the world to decide that this is a phenomenon entirely of the west’s creation. Moreover, what might count as western provocation, fuelling jihadism, is not as clear as some might like to think. Many on the left assume it is military intervention that turns young men into jihadis ready to murder pre-teen girls. But I recall my own first encounter with that ideology, back in the 1990s. I was speaking at a student meeting that was disrupted by loud activists from the extremist al-Muhajiroun group. What were they furious about? The west’s failure to take military action over Bosnia. These young men were livid that Britain and the US had not dropped bombs to prevent the massacre at Srebrenica. It proved, they said, that the west held Muslim lives to be cheap... this is an ideology that can rage against western inaction as much as action. When I spoke to Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at King’s College London who studies radicalisation up close, he put the problem concisely: “You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Maher suggests that western foreign policy often plays the role of a hook on which jihadis can hang a much larger set of ideological, and theological, motives. In his latest essay for the New Statesman, he quotes one British Isis recruit he interviewed, who told him: “We primarily fight wars due to people being disbelievers. Their drones against us are a secondary issue.” So it’s not clear what a foreign policy designed to soothe rather than inflame jihadi opinion would look like – or that it would get you very far. Staying out of Muslim countries might seem like the obvious answer, but it offers no guarantees. Not against those who can regard an eight-year-old girl and her friends as “crusaders”, worthy of death for the sin of dancing in a “shameless concert arena”."
Global Times asks foreigners living in China if they like being called 'laowai' - "a former dormitory supervisor for international students at the Beijing Language and Culture University said that foreigners often use the term "laowai" familiarly among themselves (along with words like laoban and laoshi), so why shouldn't Chinese?"
Jeremy Corbyn thinks the real evil is Western intervention, not Isil - and Labour wants him in office - "It is the very defining philosophy that has driven the anti-West movement since before the Berlin Wall came down: all terrorism is the cause of the West’s military interventions and foreign policy. It’s always our fault. And we can only be safe by disarming and retreating and allowing the rest of the world – particularly the Middle East – to sort out their own problems. We only ever make things worse. Let’s call it The Corbyn Doctrine. And so, the UN-sanctioned incursion into Afghanistan was a disaster, according to the Corbyn Doctrine. The fact that women there have a historically lower mortality childbirth rates and a record number of girls now attending full time education there is irrelevant, of no importance or interest. If they were given those opportunities only because of US and British military intervention, then such advances are hardly worth it. And, naturally, the same doctrine applies elsewhere. Domestic terrorism, whether the 7/7 attacks in London or this week’s slaughter of young women in Manchester, cannot possibly be the responsibility of the Islamists alone – the West must always take more responsibility than those who built the bombs and pressed the detonating switch."
Girl faces fine for possessing pepper spray in Denmark, after using spray to protect against sexual assault - The Washington Post - "the Copenhagen Post reported that “An increasing number of Danes are travelling to Germany to buy pepper spray.”"
The Parenting Style That Turns Kids Into Narcissists - "Parents who “overvalue” their kids by teaching them that they're unique and extraordinary—which they all are, of course—encourage those kids to have an inflated view of themselves and a less charitable view of others. The kids grow up to expect the world will treat them the way their parents do. Which it inevitably doesn't. That's particularly troubling because the study suggests that narcissism is growing more common. "Narcissism scores have been increasing over the past few decades among university students in the United States," said Eddie Brummelman, lead author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and is the first to measure the emergence of narcissism among kids aged 7-12... The researchers also point to what may be the best parenting strategy for well-adjusted, non-narcissistic kids: a combination of "parental warmth" and realism about children's abilities... Unchecked, the authors posit, narcissistic people can "contribute to societal problems such as aggression and violence.""
Sounds like SJWs
This Perfect Fried Chicken Recipe Took 100 Attempts to Develop - "López-Alt explained he’d soaked the meat in salty, paprika-darkened buttermilk, which tenderized the chicken and helped it retain moisture during cooking. He pulled some marinated pieces from the brine and, to build up the crust, dredged the meat in flour he'd mixed up with a little of the same brine. "Oooooh," an audience member cooed, "that's how you do it!" This created tiny lumps that would later, if all went well in the fryer, offer bonus texture and crunch over the surface of each piece... López-Alt recommends doing an initial fry and finishing up the chicken on a rack in the oven. The secret to extra crunchy chicken, however, is taking it a step farther: Refrigerate the meat overnight and fry it a second time the next day just before serving."
This recipe is so valuable, it "is only available for Bloomberg Professional Service subscribers". But anyway it's on: The Food Lab: The Best Southern Fried Chicken | Serious Eats
It’s a Small World - 5 Tiny Things You Can Find in Japan - "according to a survey, some 40 percent of beer lovers in Japan said that the first sip of beer is the best, because it's cold and fresh. But if you drink a 350ml can and take more than 15 minutes to finish, it gets kind of warm and stale. So after the beer companies heard the feedback, they thought, “Why don't we sell smaller cans of beer? Then they can drink it up quick and enjoy the ice cold goodness until the last sip.”"
Tough Pill to Swallow: Why Singapore’s Healthcare Model Should Not Be Followed - "Singaporeans currently have to contribute a whopping 8 to 10.5 percent of their monthly wages into Medisave. You would imagine that paying a contribution of 8 to 10.5 percent of wages into Medisave would effectively net Singaporeans free healthcare, but this is not the case."
Angela Merkel: German multiculturalism has 'utterly failed' - "The row over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a highly-controversial book in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society. Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved popular and polls showed Germans were sympathetic with the thrust of his arguments. One recent poll showed one-third of Germans believed the country was "overrun by foreigners". It also found 55% of Germans believed that Arabs are "unpleasant people", compared with the 44% who held the opinion seven years ago."
And this was in 2010
KASSAM: A Very Real War on Women Arrived in Manchester Last Night - "For news sources like the Independent, the ostensible fight in defence of multiculturalism is even more important than the news story itself, let alone pro-security positions. Over the past 16 hours, the Independent has published and promoted at least seven separate articles targeting the critics of mass migration or lax security. I cannot for one second imagine being that editor and having the callousness to shout across the newsroom: “Let’s hammer Nigel Farage for what he said on Fox!” while young girls are still bleeding in hospitals in England. I encourage you to read their article, by the way, and find anything wrong in what Mr. Farage told Tucker Carlson last night. This is their new normal. Terror attacks are now political footballs for the left, while they, without a scintilla of self-awareness or irony, accuse the right of using these events for partisan gain... while the political left hurls accusations of a “war on women” at the right, for refusing to accept taxpayer subsidy of contraception or abortion, the real war on women is taking place in British towns and cities, conducted by fellow travellers of the high chiefs of multiculturalism."
Leftists Bemoan 'Islamophobia' Backlash on Social Media Following Manchester Terrorist Attack - "Some immediately jumped to blaming President Donald Trump"
Breathtaking image of futsal court in remote Sabah goes viral - "A teacher from SK Logongon in Nabawan, Sabah, sent the remarkable drone image of the creeper-covered court, and Malaysians responded with awe and amazement. Although the surroundings appear to be teeming with foliage, the court itself, which lies in the centre of a "green lake" of leaves, was kept neat and clean."
In the cut - ""Many maternity clinic midwives have begun to market female cutting (FC) as part of a birth delivery package with the service being offered to the parents right after the delivery of a baby girl"... While circumcision is widespread in Indonesia, it is very different to the female genital mutilation (FGC) common in parts of Africa, which often severely damages almost all genital parts... symbolic circumcision involved local healers cutting a tumeric root and rubbing it on the baby's clitoris while those attending chanted and prayed. "This was very much women's business, and even if the fathers of the girls were there they would not understand what was done," he says. In the cities, where Islamic influence was stronger, Hull found that circumcision involved drawing blood, usually by putting a pin in the clitoris... the USAid-funded study by the Population Council surveyed 1694 households in eight regions and found all the boys and 97.5 per cent of girls had been circumcised. Although many questions remain unanswered, the study concluded circumcision in Indonesia at present "did not reveal any clear, immediate or long-term physical or psychological complications ... for girls or women". It listed the most common forms of circumcision as "rubbing and scraping; stretching, pricking and piercing; incision; and excision", and the cutting instruments used as "penknife; scissors; bamboo knife/razor blade and needles"... SEVERAL hours out of Jakarta, in Bandung, the Assalaam Foundation has held free mass circumcisions for males and females for almost 50 years. As many as 400 people turn up. Syarief Hamid, treasurer of the foundation, which also runs several schools, says the circumcisions were timed to honour the Prophet's birthday and were growing in popularity each year. While religion was the main reason for circumcisions, he says there are also health reasons. "I understand that a girl who is not circumcised would not have clean genitals after she urinates and sometimes that can cause cervical cancer," he says. "The religious view is, if you are not circumcised you won't have clean genitals after you urinate. If then you pray, your prayer won't be legal"... The Department of Health had come to observe, with representatives of the World Health Organisation, and had left satisfied. "What they saw here was different to what they imagined; it was different to what they saw in Africa"... more than 90 per cent of mothers questioned supported the practice continuing. And one in five mothers even suggested social sanctions should be imposed on girls who were uncircumcised."
Not that this will convince those who claim female circumcision in Indonesia is about cutting out the clitoris (even though that is impossible) and Infibulation
How The Economist Thinks - "In his deliciously biting 1991 examination of the role of The Economist in shaping American elite opinion, James Fallows tried to figure out exactly what was so repellent about the magazine’s approach to the seeking of truth. Fallows puzzled over the fact that American intellectuals hold a disproportionate amount of respect for The Economist’s judgment and reporting, even though the magazine is produced by imperious 20-something Oxbridge graduates who generally know little about the subjects on which they so confidently opine. Fallows suggested that The Economist’s outsized reputation in the U.S. was partially attributable to Americans’ lingering colonial insecurity, their ongoing belief that despite all evidence to the contrary, British people are inherently intelligent and trustworthy. Fallows even dug up an embarrassingly snooty quote from Robert Reich, boasting about his sensible preference for British news: “I, for one, don’t get my economics news from Newsweek. I rely on The Economist — published in London”... readers are consistently given the impression, regardless of whether it is true, that unrestricted free market capitalism is a Thoroughly Good Thing, and that sensible and pragmatic British intellectuals have vouched for this position. The nuances are erased, reality is fudged, and The Economist helps its American readers pretend to have read books by telling them things that the books don’t actually say"
Fly Burgers! Patties Made of Millions of Mayflies - "The largest swarm of flies in the world hails from Lake Victoria, where trillions of midge flies swarm each month for mating. Local residents didn’t want the easy to catch protein go to waste, so started the tradition of making midge fly BURGERS."
Apparently these aren't flies but midges
WHO spends more on travel costs than fighting AIDS - "other aid agencies manage to fly staff around on much tighter budgets — the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF spends $140 million a year and has twice the staff, while Doctors Without Borders forbids business-class travel and spends on $43 million a year despite having more than five times as many staffers"
UK to censor online videos of 'non-conventional' sex acts - "In order to comply with the censorship rules, many mainstream adult websites would have to render whole sections inaccessible to UK audiences. That is despite the acts shown being legal for consenting over-16s to perform and for adults in almost all other liberal countries to film, distribute and watch... Pictures and videos that show spanking, whipping or caning that leaves marks, and sex acts involving urination, female ejaculation or menstruation as well as sex in public are likely to be caught by the ban – in effect turning back the clock on Britain’s censorship regime to the pre-internet era... “Although it is nominally designed to enforce the [Obscene Publications Act] guidelines of the Crown Prosecution Service, in practice it draws far tighter lines, many of them inexplicable. The ban on female ejaculation is a particularly strange example,” he said. The censorship regime has led to bizarre understandings between the producers and regulators, Barnett said. One is the “four-finger rule”, which limits the number of digits that can be inserted into an orifice for sexual stimulation. Even some who back age verification questioned such strict censorship. “It’s mad that we regulate such material that aren’t even criminal acts,” said Prof Clare McGlynn, an expert on pornography laws at Durham University and co-founder of the Centre for Gender Equal Media."
Secrets of sumo wrestler's diet - "A sumo wrestler's day begins around 5am with morning training. They peel themselves out of bed and go directly to the training room. Working out on an empty stomach has its advantages in the effort to gain weight, Matsuda says, as this helps slow down the body's metabolism and makes burning calories more difficult... By fasting overnight and before morning training, sumo wrestlers switch their bodies to a fat storing mode when all the dishes are served on the table"
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