Swedish footballer sent off for farting during match - "A Swedish footballer has hit out after being sent off for breaking wind during a match – with the referee accusing him of “deliberate provocation” and “unsportsmanlike behaviour”."
British woman held after being seen reading book about Syria on plane
"If you suspect it, report it"
Jews are world's best-educated religious group, study reveals - "In sub-Saharan Africa, Muslims are more than twice as likely as Christians to have no formal schooling – and the gap is widening."
Revealed: how US billionaire helped to back Brexit - "It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission."
The Guardian doesn't seem to have problems with Soros funding tons of groups and causes
Philippines drugs war: The woman who kills dealers for a living - "When you meet an assassin who has killed six people, you don't expect to encounter a diminutive, nervous young woman carrying a baby... She is part of a hit team that includes three women, who are valued because they can get close to their victims without arousing the same suspicion a man would... I asked her who gave the orders for these assassinations: "Our boss, the police officer," she said... "I thought he would go after the big syndicates who manufacture the drugs, not the small time dealers like me. I wish I could turn the clock back. But it is too late for me. I cannot surrender, because if I do the police will probably kill me"... She has one more hit, one more contract to fulfill, and would like that to be her last. But her boss has threatened to kill anyone who leaves the team. She feels trapped. She asks her priest for forgiveness at confession in church, but does not dare to tell him what she does."
Hello, my name is Abcde: How millennial parents are creating tongue-twisting names for their children - "More people around the world are giving unconventional names to their babies. In a report about millennial mums released by Goldman Sachs last May, research showed that fewer babies are being given "popular" and "traditional" names."
Searching for Toyah Sofaer: born in Baghdad, buried in Chennai - Andrew Whitehead - "Somewhere around 1939 or 1940, Toyah fell in love with an Armenian man from that family. The two met in secret. They were from different communities and different religions, and when Toyah's family found out about the relationship they were determined to put a stop to it. They sought to marry her to a suitable Jewish boy - but when Toyah rejected these suitors, they shipped her out to India... [This photo] shows three of the Sofaer boys - Elias, the oldest and tallest, Abraham, standing next to him and Jack, the toddler. It was taken in around 1927. Toyah would then have been 7. Why doesn't she feature in this professionally taken family photo? Well, she did - she was standing on Elias's left. After her death, the photo was retouched to excise her likeness - you can still make out where her right arm overlapped with Elias's left arm - so that, in Lydia's words, 'there would be no reminder of the scandal and tragedy of her life'. It was apparently a custom in Baghdad - a superstition - that when people died all the photos of them were disposed of. That may be why - much to Abraham's regret- there is no confirmed likeness of his sister"
On From Our Own Correspondent he said she was removed from the photo to hide the shame
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Pride and Prejudice - "[On Brentwood and the MS-13 gang Trump wants to crush] There are random checks with the metal detector and if too many people are wearing the same color they're told to change or go home...
[On Uganda's patriotic clubs] Surely I suggest again nobody can be taught to love their country or anything else. We either feel that way or we don't. Not at all bothered by my skepticism he beckons me closer. Many people say that you can't teach a person to love. So why is it that you can teach someone to hate? I hear how in many parts of the world children are taught to hate America and they seem to succeed. So if they can teach children to hate, why can't we teach them to love?...
Goa is a place where many westerners seem to have left behind old fashioned empirical questioning. Here almost any request for facts or evidence is seen as an encumbrance to conversation. Meeting someone for the first time you don't ask where they're from so much as what they're into. A simple conversation opener might be: what star sign are you? Though that might be considered too obvious. One yoga teacher attempted to get to know me better by suggesting I attend a male tantric initiation where i was promised we would hold each other's private parts in our hands and present them with our blessing... this teacher was unusual in Goa that he actually came from India. Of course Prabaka had not discovered yoga there in the land where it originated. Growing up in a prosperous Delhi family his horizons were limited to a private school education and the hope that one day he might become a lawyer or accountant. But Prabaka was sent off to study in Europe and there for the first time he came across people performing sun salutations and downward dog positions. It's you westerners who keep Indian traditions going, he told me, amused by this apparent contradiction. The friends I grew up with in Delhi, they're only interested in making money"
After the female quota here come the “trans” quota - "the Senate of the Province of Buenos Aires has just approved a law by which 1% of hiring in public offices must be allocated to adult transvestites, transsexual and transgender who have all the necessary requisites for the longed for job. The new law will apply in the whole region surrounding Buenos Aires"
Fake WhatsApp Chat Generator
I bet most of the funny screenshotted conversations online use this
You'd Never Forget Your Child In The Car, Right? - "The basal ganglia play a big part in driving. "Once you've driven from Point A to Point B enough times, you can do it without thinking," Dr. Diamond says. "You might not even remember the trip." If new information enters the picture (say, your partner calls to ask you to stop at the store and buy milk), your prefrontal cortex and hippocampus have to kick into gear to incorporate it. "But it's common to drive right past the store and come home. When your partner says, 'Where's the milk?' you feel flustered because you remember the conversation, but for some reason you came home instead." Why? Because you were on autopilot. "The basal ganglia actually suppress the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus from bringing that memory to your consciousness," explains Dr. Diamond. Stress worsens this phenomenon, he adds. "It affects how our prefrontal cortex functions and makes it more likely we'll do something out of habit." And those factors, ultimately, are what allow otherwise responsible parents to leave their child in a car. In every hot-car death Dr. Diamond has studied, something was different about the routine that day. Jodie Edwards had to make two stops instead of her usual one. In other cases, Dad drove the baby instead of Mom or there was some other extra stress. And the basal ganglia won control... Beneath this harsh judgment is a desire for self-protection, explains Janet Brown Lobel, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in New York City and Pleasantville, New York. "The idea of forgetting a child in a car is such a horrifying prospect for parents that the only way they can deal with it is to make themselves feel as different as possible from the parent who did this," she says. "That parent becomes a neglectful parent with whom you have nothing in common. Therefore, you don't have to think about this tragedy because it could never happen to you." Janette Fennell, founder and president of KidsAndCars.org, a national nonprofit focused on keeping children safe in and around vehicles, agrees: "People try to demonize these parents. The logic goes: 'These people are monsters. I'm not a monster, so it won't happen to me,' and that is the biggest mistake anyone can make.""
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Katie Prescott - "Some of the things that account for Uber's outsized success: their business aggressiveness for instance, the speed at which they went to hundreds of cities in dozens of countries, had to do with not accepting usual limits. Not taking no for an answer. That same dynamic leads to a very unhealthy internal culture when it's applied towards employees"
What if a company's criticised culture is what has led to its success?
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "[On activist investors] For me the single best study is by a Harvard professor who looked at two thousand different examples of activism and I think the surprise for me was not only did they actually create value in the first twelve months but actually three, four and five years on the operating performance of the company was better. So it's almost as if they had a cathartic moment and actually the management felt the feet were to the fire and I was with one company last week where an activist has taken a seat on the board. They just look through a different lens and I think it's on the whole a good challenge for companies"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Hong Kong and China: One country, two systems - "'You heard I know that the Chinese ambassador to London talking on this program half an hour ago saying that he has, they have delivered on the promise that it would be one government two systems. In other words if Hong Kong wanted greater democracy that is what it would have. And you're saying it hasn't had it'
[Anson Chan responding to Liu Xiaoming] 'Well the ambassador and I must come from two very different Hong Kongs. He says that one country two systems has worked very well, that even the British government agree. That they've given to Hong Kong people election. I am afraid the mood today on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of Hong Kong's handover, most people feel there's very little to celebrate. We've just seen an election of our chief executive that was clearly rigged from the very beginning. As you pointed out only 0.03 of a qualified electorate in Hong Kong is entitled to vote for the Chief Executive. So now they orchestrated the election of Mrs Carrie Lam who will take office on first of July. One country two systems is being seriously eroded and this has been happening for several years now... what they fail to acknowledge and appreciate is that the DNA of the Hong Kong people is very very different from the DNA of the average mainlanders... I recollect at the handover when the governor, outgoing governor and the British government made it quite clear - we will not forget Hong Kong. So what do we see today, twentieth anniversary? You've long since forgotten Hong Kong. You've abandoned us to a one party system rule. Hong Kong does not wish to be swallowed up by China'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Cyber-security: Who can protect us? - "We do see that some of the attacks that are trying to get through are failing because of better protections. Now they're not being widely enough applied yet and it is absolutely vital that people, businesses and government apply those basic protections because when you raise the cost of the attacker they will go somewhere else"
Don't tell me to change my password. Tell hackers to stop trying to hack into my account.
Hacking is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused.
When you're telling me to apply better protections, you're hoping somebody else will get hacked
People who change their passwords also get hacked. Therefore there's no point changing your passwords
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Rosa Luxemburg - "Freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise. It's one of my favorite quotes from Rosa Luxembourg"
audioBoom / Anjem Choudary: There is a war against our brothers and sisters - "[On condemning the Lee Rigby murder] 'I think that to talk about condemnation or to talk about how we feel, I think, is not the most important question now... what is important now is to learn lessons from what has taken place, whether we agree or disagree with what took place. You cannot predict the actions of one individual among a population of 60 million when the government is clearly at war in Muslim countries...
'Do you condemn British foreign policy?'...
'I tell you what. Let's do a deal here this morning. You condemn the murder of an innocent man on the streets of London and then we can talk about British foreign policy'
'You condemn the British foreign policy first and then we'll have a look-'
'We've established quite clearly that you do not condemn murder on the streets of London'
'I think it's irresponsible to talk about that now'...
'If I went to Saudi Arabia and found an off-duty soldier on the streets of Saudi Arabia and I happened to disapprove of the Saudi Arabian foreign policy, I would be entitled to go and murder him, would I?
'No, John, because I don't agree with your parameters of judging scenarios. I am a Muslim. And a brother mujahid does things that you will never understand because... you're not looking at it from an Islamic perspective. I'm trying to give you an Islamic perspective. I'm saying to you-'
'So therefore you understand their killing'
'There are people who see the Muslims as one body worldwide. We don't look at nationality, we don't look at our own passports. There is a way against our brothers and sisters around the world'...
'I call for the Sharia but I do it very peacefully you know we recently had a demonstration talking about alcohol'...
'If you want Sharia why don't you live in a country where there is Sharia?'
'They don't implement the sharia for your information in any country. They implement parts of it in certain countries but we haven't had... we haven't had an Islamic State implementing the whole of the Sharia for the last 89 years. Now if there was a state I wouldn't make hizja [sp?] I would go there. But the point is that I was born in Britain, I grew up here... I don't believe in democracy'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'Democrats cannot run purely on an impeachment campaign' - "What he was promising was hollow but the problem is the Democrats weren't offering something else that energized their base... And still aren't. I mean one of the things that's really worrying about this relentless focus on Russia, both in the news media but also coming straight from the Democrats is that it seems that the plan in twenty eighteen for the next round of elections is to run on it just to a purely impeachment campaign. Elect us because we will impeach Donald Trump. And it's just doubling down on this purely negative strategy. And I think one of the messages we learned watching what happened here in the UK is that things turned around for Jeremy Corbyn when he put out this manifesto that raised people's hopes about actually addressing their most urgent and pressing need"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Lord Browne: I had to lead a double life - "It taught me a lot about, I think the following. First is I had a tremendous number of fears in my head, that if I were seen to be gay I would be regarded as nothing, no one would treat with me, business would collapse, I'd never be allowed to go and see a foreign country and so forth and that was conditioned by all the statements in my youth about being gay and poofed a shirt, left all these things that went on and on. Of course when I was outed none of that was true. Quite the reverse. People supported me, they said you are who you are and we respect that and we like it. And rather than losing friends I actually gained friends... you'll be surprised how many people accept you
Sometimes, fears of discrimination are just in your head, and you're just imagining it
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "Mike Ashley the boss of Sports Direct... The way he does business: drinking competitions and very admirably if he finds a meeting boring he goes to sleep under the table...
I have written a piece calling Trump the Uber of the political world in the sense that he is disrupting, disintermediating the traditional power structures"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Grenfell Tower: 'We are not the criminals here' - "They offer her a two bedroom house... It's far. It's about let's say about, if you, fifteen minutes, fifteen, twenty minutes. Twenty minutes which is far from the school, from the whole area and, and the biggest, biggest massive problem is Westminister... It's not our borough...
'You didn't even go to see it'
'Even the, even the place is not, is not suitable for us. It's not for us... the area itself is not for us. We don't know the area'"
15-20 minutes away from your home is far, and you can turn down alternative housing and blame the government
New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being - "The new status of the river means if someone abused or harmed it the law now sees no differentiation between harming the tribe or harming the river because they are one and the same."
Comment: "So it can be sued it if floods and causes damage?"
"A living entity? There's an opportunity for the government to tax the fucker forever. Get in!"
"It also gets to vote, choice translated by a esteemed gathering of river whisperers."
"Are they now going to give brother sun and sister moon legal status as human beings? What other theological fantasies are they now going to enshrine in legislation. So much for being a modern secular nation."
"New Zealand is an excellent case study on why Australia is lucky it never signed a treaty with Aboriginals and why it never should."
"how would you react if laws were made to make cathedrals legal persons"
"So the traditional Guardian sneering at religion goes out of the window when dealing with indigenous peoples' superstitions, does it? Interesting."
L'origine de Bert
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Monday, September 11, 2017
Links - 11th September 2017 (3)
How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration - "If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today... Prominent liberals didn’t oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to America’s economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained America’s welfare state. And they were far more likely than liberals today are to acknowledge that, as Krugman put it, “immigration is an intensely painful topic … because it places basic principles in conflict.” Today, little of that ambivalence remains... As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism... Alongside pressure from pro-immigrant activists came pressure from corporate America, especially the Democrat-aligned tech industry, which uses the H-1B visa program to import workers... progressive commentators now routinely claim that there’s a near-consensus among economists on immigration’s benefits. There isn’t... In his book Exodus, Paul Collier, an economist at the University of Oxford, claims that in their “desperate [desire] not to give succor” to nativist bigots, “social scientists have strained every muscle to show that migration is good for everyone.” George Borjas of Harvard argues that since he began studying immigration in the 1980s, his fellow economists have grown far less tolerant of research that emphasizes its costs. There is, he told me, “a lot of self-censorship among young social scientists”... By some estimates, immigrants, who are poorer on average than native-born Americans and have larger families, receive more in government services than they pay in taxes... What’s more, studies by the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and others suggest that greater diversity makes Americans less charitable and less willing to redistribute wealth. People tend to be less generous when large segments of society don’t look or talk like them. Surprisingly, Putnam’s research suggests that greater diversity doesn’t reduce trust and cooperation just among people of different races or ethnicities—it also reduces trust and cooperation among people of the same race and ethnicity... strengthening the bonds of identity between natives and immigrants is harder when natives and immigrants are not equal under the law... newer immigrants are learning English more slowly than their predecessors did.. 'Exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference—the hallmarks of liberal democracy—are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness.'... In 2014, the University of California listed melting pot as a term it considered a “microaggression.”"
Racial/ethnic homogeneity explains many of the things people like about Japanese and Nordic culture
The people ‘possessed’ by computers - "people are really bad at judging if someone is acting of their own free will, or if they are a “zombie” acting another’s commands. “No matter how big the incongruity between body and mind, people won’t notice,” says Corti. Or, put another way – we go by appearances more than judging the substance of someone’s thoughts."
Heimlich, 96, uses his move to save fellow rest home resident
Spanish civil servant off work unnoticed for six years - "A Spanish civil servant who failed to turn up for work for "at least" six years has been caught after becoming eligible for a long service award... the boss of the water company had not seen Mr Garcia for years despite occupying an office opposite his. The water company thought he was supervised by the local authorities and vice versa."
China's high-speed sexual revolution - ""In the survey I made in 1989, 15.5% of people had sex before marriage," says Li Yinhe. "But in the survey I did two years ago, the figure went up to 71%... Until 1997, sex before marriage was actually illegal and could be prosecuted as "hooliganism"... In 1996 the owner of a bathhouse was sentenced to death for organising prostitution, Li said in a lecture to the Brookings Institution last year, but now it is widely practised. The most severe punishment these days, according to Li, would be the closure of the business.Publishers of pornography could also be sentenced to death as recently as the 1980s, as could those who organised sex parties... One of the main impulses driving the change in attitudes to sex, according to Li, was the Communist Party's one-child policy, which was enforced from 1979 to 2015. "The one-child policy allows people to have one or two kids only. So unless you give up sex afterwards you are changing your purpose of having sex. Having sex for pleasure gets justified too," she says... "Foucault [the French philosopher] once said, there was no society in the world where sex was absolutely free. There are always restrictions. But I believe the more freedom is offered for sex in a society, the happier people get.""
Which animals can swim up your toilet? - "In New York, stories of alligators in the sewers have proliferated since the 1930s, but they are probably just urban legends. In Paris, however, a crocodile was found in the city's sewers in the 1980s under Pont Neuf"
AA Milne and the curse of Pooh bear - "The success of the Pooh stories also undermined the reception of the non-juvenile work Milne wrote later. “It seems to me now that if I write anything less realistic, less straightforward than ‘The cat sat on the mat’, I am ‘indulging in a whimsy’,” Milne wrote in the introduction to his play The Ivory Door in 1928. “Indeed if I did say that the cat sat on the mat (as well it might), I should be accused of being whimsical about cats; not a real cat, but just a little make-believe pussy, such as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh invents so charmingly for our delectation.” His collaborator, the Punch political cartoonist turned Pooh illustrator EH Shepard, felt the same. Before his death, he called Pooh “that silly old bear” and expressed regret that he’d ever taken part.
Craving root beer floats and Coney dogs? A&W confirms Singapore return
Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern version decays - "The Roman recipe – a mix of volcanic ash, lime (calcium oxide), seawater and lumps of volcanic rock – held together piers, breakwaters and harbours. Moreover, in contrast to modern materials, the ancient water-based structures became stronger over time. Scientists say this is the result of seawater reacting with the volcanic material in the cement and creating new minerals that reinforced the concrete."
Dark Web Users Reveal Most F*cked Up Thing They've Seen
Alexey Tereshchenko's answer to What are some mind-blowing facts about North Korea? - Quora - "In North Korea, it is very chic to have a fridge at home. Do you know why? Because it cannot be used to store food."
Here's How Long it Would Take for Vampires to Annihilate Humanity - "Working with the conservative estimate that vampires only need to feed once a month, Efthimiou and Gandhi looked at population stats and concluded that vampires would eliminate humans within three years"
Revealed: NSA Leaker Is Pro-Iran Liberal Activist Who Says ‘Being White Is Terrorism’ - "The federal contractor, who was charged by the Department of Justice for stealing classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) and leaking it to a media outlet, is a pro-Iran liberal activist who believes being white is terrorism. According to the resurfaced social media accounts of Reality Leigh Winner, who was arrested on Saturday over leaking classified information to The Intercept and reportedly confessed the wrongdoing, the 25-year-old didn’t hide her contempt for President Trump or her country, and repeated far-left talking points."
Huffington Post's Contributor Platform Is a Magnet for Fake News and Crazy People - "These guys are the exact reason most publications do a base level of vetting to prove their writers aren’t sociopathic kooks."
PISA: Singapore's competitive private tuition system helps students ace the world's biggest education test - "60% of high school and 80% of primary school age students receive private tuition
40% of preschoolers receive private tuition
Preschoolers, on average, attend two hours of private tuition per week, while primary school aged children are attending, on average, at least three hours per week...
Thirty-four percent of those with children currently in tuition spend between $500 and $1,000 per month per child, while 16% spend up to $2,000. Considering the bottom-fifth quintile of households earn about $2,000 per month—the next quintile is around $5,000—this is a very large chunk of the family budget"
Peter Thiel is trying to save the world: The apocalyptic theory behind his actions - "His attack on multiculturalism – such as in his 1995 book, “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus” – was a warning against a new form of scapegoating. “Rather than breaking the cycle of human history, multiculturalism merely represents another link in the long chain of victimization and revenge,” Thiel wrote... Perhaps, as suggested by Shullenberger and others, Trump is destined to become a scapegoat for the ages, a kinglike figure who is in one way or another sacrificed to create a new world order."
The not-so-secret life of Singapore’s crossplayers - "Three years ago, when she was doing housework, he walked up to her and made the unusual request of borrowing her bra. He had only just begun to crossplay then. His mother, completely unfazed, complied by getting him the bra, and even gave him a tip: Don’t stuff until too big, or it will look very weird... Date, Hongzhu and See Jay all say that one of the most common misconceptions people have of male crossplayers is that they must be gay or that they are confused about their gender identity. But more likely than not, underneath the thick makeup and elaborate costumes are heterosexual men - just like the three of them"
Why Being an In-N-Out Manager Is Better Than Being a Lawyer - "They might not get to expense dinner on a corporate card, but In-N-Out managers are privy to a wealth of benefits too. Perks to working at one of America’s most popular burger chains include strong job satisfaction and even this rare unicorn known as "work-life balance"... even while people are climbing their way up the Animal Style-covered corporate ladder at In-N-Out, they're still enjoying themselves. That explains why it recently won an Employee's Choice Award for one of the best places to work by Glassdoor this year"
Lawyers With Lowest Pay Report More Happiness - The New York Times - "Researchers who surveyed 6,200 lawyers about their jobs and health found that the factors most frequently associated with success in the legal field, such as high income or a partner-track job at a prestigious firm, had almost zero correlation with happiness and well-being. However, lawyers in public-service jobs who made the least money, like public defenders or Legal Aid attorneys, were most likely to report being happy. Lawyers in public-service jobs also drank less alcohol than their higher-income peers. And, despite the large gap in affluence, the two groups reported about equal overall satisfaction with their lives. Making partner, the ultimate gold ring at many firms, does not appear to pay off in greater happiness, either. Junior partners reported well-being that was identical to that of senior associates, who were paid 62 percent less... The problem with the more prestigious jobs, said Mr. Krieger, is that they do not provide feelings of competence, autonomy or connection to others — three pillars of self-determination theory, the psychological model of human happiness on which the study was based. Public-service jobs do... lawyers were 3.6 times as likely as non-lawyers to suffer from depression, putting them at greater risk than people in any other occupation... Other research has linked the legal profession to higher rates of substance abuse... lawyers were 54 percent more likely to commit suicide than people in other professions... Others say the job requires an unhealthy degree of cynicism. “Research shows that an optimistic outlook is good for your mental health,” said Patricia Spataro, director of the New York State Lawyer Assistance Program, a resource for attorneys with mental health concerns. “But lawyers are trained to always look for the worst-case scenario. They benefit more from being pessimistic, and that takes a toll.” And then there is the public hostility. “People just seem to hate lawyers”... Many of the more than 3,000 comments on the CNN article about lawyer suicides applauded the trend... “A lot of people go to law school because they don’t know what to do with their lives”"
"What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Prof" by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon - "The first law school study demonstrated the following changes occurring in students after they began law school: marked increases in depression, negative mood, and physical symptoms, with corresponding decreases in positive affect and life satisfaction; shifts from helping and community-oriented values to extrinsic, rewards-based values in the first year; similar shifts in motivation for becoming lawyers, from salutary internal purposes (for interest, enjoyment, and meaning) to more superficial and external reasons (such as for financial rewards, recognition, or to impress or please others); and decreases in values of all kinds after the first year, suggesting generalized demoralization or loss of personal purpose. As discussed above, each of these shifts would predict decreased well-being, and that result was apparent in the data... Mertz observed, for example, that basic law school training changes student values; “unmoor[s] . . . the self”; marginalizes fairness, justice, morality, emotional life, and caring for others; and exclusively emphasizes competitive processes to the extent that they become the only goal. The net result is erosion of the very ability
to make an ethical decision."
Singapore's new train displays have serious design issues - "If anything, the new trains are a symptomatic of a tendency to embrace technology-focused rather than user-centered design"
CNN tracks down person who made Trump-WWE meme, strongarms him into apologizing under threat of doxing - "3 days ago, Donald Trump became the first United States shitposting president after he posted a WWE meme of himself slam-dunking a CNN logo; which the media chose to treat like the second holocaust. After spending two whole days complaining about how Trump was promoting violence against the press (Because edited WWE gifs are threats of violence, obviously), CNN decided to track down the person who had originally made the meme (I shit you not), and threaten to release his full identity. The creator of the meme, who goes by the name “HanAssholeSolo” on Reddit and is believed to be 15 years of age, went into full panic mode – I think you would to, if a giant multi-billion company was coming after you for making a fucking gif. He deleted his entire post history on Reddit, issued an apology on the R/The_Donald subreddit which the mods quickly deleted, and then shut down his account. CNN decided to consider this as a victory. They decided not to publish his full identity because he apologized (under duress); however, they cannot promise that they will not release his personal information in the future. I wish I was making this up"
CNN slammed for threat to reveal identity of Trump 'wrestling' CNN creator - "The blowback on social media against CNN has resulted in #CNNBlackmail trending on Twitter and includes condemnation from several public figures including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Donald Trump Jr. and Vox's German Lopez."
CNN accused of 'blackmailing' Trump gif maker - "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange accused CNN of "blackmailing a private citizen" and tweeted: "When Trump goes low CNN goes lower: threatens to dox artist behind 'CNN head' video if he makes fun of them again""
Racial/ethnic homogeneity explains many of the things people like about Japanese and Nordic culture
The people ‘possessed’ by computers - "people are really bad at judging if someone is acting of their own free will, or if they are a “zombie” acting another’s commands. “No matter how big the incongruity between body and mind, people won’t notice,” says Corti. Or, put another way – we go by appearances more than judging the substance of someone’s thoughts."
Heimlich, 96, uses his move to save fellow rest home resident
Spanish civil servant off work unnoticed for six years - "A Spanish civil servant who failed to turn up for work for "at least" six years has been caught after becoming eligible for a long service award... the boss of the water company had not seen Mr Garcia for years despite occupying an office opposite his. The water company thought he was supervised by the local authorities and vice versa."
China's high-speed sexual revolution - ""In the survey I made in 1989, 15.5% of people had sex before marriage," says Li Yinhe. "But in the survey I did two years ago, the figure went up to 71%... Until 1997, sex before marriage was actually illegal and could be prosecuted as "hooliganism"... In 1996 the owner of a bathhouse was sentenced to death for organising prostitution, Li said in a lecture to the Brookings Institution last year, but now it is widely practised. The most severe punishment these days, according to Li, would be the closure of the business.Publishers of pornography could also be sentenced to death as recently as the 1980s, as could those who organised sex parties... One of the main impulses driving the change in attitudes to sex, according to Li, was the Communist Party's one-child policy, which was enforced from 1979 to 2015. "The one-child policy allows people to have one or two kids only. So unless you give up sex afterwards you are changing your purpose of having sex. Having sex for pleasure gets justified too," she says... "Foucault [the French philosopher] once said, there was no society in the world where sex was absolutely free. There are always restrictions. But I believe the more freedom is offered for sex in a society, the happier people get.""
Which animals can swim up your toilet? - "In New York, stories of alligators in the sewers have proliferated since the 1930s, but they are probably just urban legends. In Paris, however, a crocodile was found in the city's sewers in the 1980s under Pont Neuf"
AA Milne and the curse of Pooh bear - "The success of the Pooh stories also undermined the reception of the non-juvenile work Milne wrote later. “It seems to me now that if I write anything less realistic, less straightforward than ‘The cat sat on the mat’, I am ‘indulging in a whimsy’,” Milne wrote in the introduction to his play The Ivory Door in 1928. “Indeed if I did say that the cat sat on the mat (as well it might), I should be accused of being whimsical about cats; not a real cat, but just a little make-believe pussy, such as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh invents so charmingly for our delectation.” His collaborator, the Punch political cartoonist turned Pooh illustrator EH Shepard, felt the same. Before his death, he called Pooh “that silly old bear” and expressed regret that he’d ever taken part.
Craving root beer floats and Coney dogs? A&W confirms Singapore return
Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern version decays - "The Roman recipe – a mix of volcanic ash, lime (calcium oxide), seawater and lumps of volcanic rock – held together piers, breakwaters and harbours. Moreover, in contrast to modern materials, the ancient water-based structures became stronger over time. Scientists say this is the result of seawater reacting with the volcanic material in the cement and creating new minerals that reinforced the concrete."
Dark Web Users Reveal Most F*cked Up Thing They've Seen
Alexey Tereshchenko's answer to What are some mind-blowing facts about North Korea? - Quora - "In North Korea, it is very chic to have a fridge at home. Do you know why? Because it cannot be used to store food."
Here's How Long it Would Take for Vampires to Annihilate Humanity - "Working with the conservative estimate that vampires only need to feed once a month, Efthimiou and Gandhi looked at population stats and concluded that vampires would eliminate humans within three years"
Revealed: NSA Leaker Is Pro-Iran Liberal Activist Who Says ‘Being White Is Terrorism’ - "The federal contractor, who was charged by the Department of Justice for stealing classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) and leaking it to a media outlet, is a pro-Iran liberal activist who believes being white is terrorism. According to the resurfaced social media accounts of Reality Leigh Winner, who was arrested on Saturday over leaking classified information to The Intercept and reportedly confessed the wrongdoing, the 25-year-old didn’t hide her contempt for President Trump or her country, and repeated far-left talking points."
Huffington Post's Contributor Platform Is a Magnet for Fake News and Crazy People - "These guys are the exact reason most publications do a base level of vetting to prove their writers aren’t sociopathic kooks."
PISA: Singapore's competitive private tuition system helps students ace the world's biggest education test - "60% of high school and 80% of primary school age students receive private tuition
40% of preschoolers receive private tuition
Preschoolers, on average, attend two hours of private tuition per week, while primary school aged children are attending, on average, at least three hours per week...
Thirty-four percent of those with children currently in tuition spend between $500 and $1,000 per month per child, while 16% spend up to $2,000. Considering the bottom-fifth quintile of households earn about $2,000 per month—the next quintile is around $5,000—this is a very large chunk of the family budget"
Peter Thiel is trying to save the world: The apocalyptic theory behind his actions - "His attack on multiculturalism – such as in his 1995 book, “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus” – was a warning against a new form of scapegoating. “Rather than breaking the cycle of human history, multiculturalism merely represents another link in the long chain of victimization and revenge,” Thiel wrote... Perhaps, as suggested by Shullenberger and others, Trump is destined to become a scapegoat for the ages, a kinglike figure who is in one way or another sacrificed to create a new world order."
The not-so-secret life of Singapore’s crossplayers - "Three years ago, when she was doing housework, he walked up to her and made the unusual request of borrowing her bra. He had only just begun to crossplay then. His mother, completely unfazed, complied by getting him the bra, and even gave him a tip: Don’t stuff until too big, or it will look very weird... Date, Hongzhu and See Jay all say that one of the most common misconceptions people have of male crossplayers is that they must be gay or that they are confused about their gender identity. But more likely than not, underneath the thick makeup and elaborate costumes are heterosexual men - just like the three of them"
Why Being an In-N-Out Manager Is Better Than Being a Lawyer - "They might not get to expense dinner on a corporate card, but In-N-Out managers are privy to a wealth of benefits too. Perks to working at one of America’s most popular burger chains include strong job satisfaction and even this rare unicorn known as "work-life balance"... even while people are climbing their way up the Animal Style-covered corporate ladder at In-N-Out, they're still enjoying themselves. That explains why it recently won an Employee's Choice Award for one of the best places to work by Glassdoor this year"
Lawyers With Lowest Pay Report More Happiness - The New York Times - "Researchers who surveyed 6,200 lawyers about their jobs and health found that the factors most frequently associated with success in the legal field, such as high income or a partner-track job at a prestigious firm, had almost zero correlation with happiness and well-being. However, lawyers in public-service jobs who made the least money, like public defenders or Legal Aid attorneys, were most likely to report being happy. Lawyers in public-service jobs also drank less alcohol than their higher-income peers. And, despite the large gap in affluence, the two groups reported about equal overall satisfaction with their lives. Making partner, the ultimate gold ring at many firms, does not appear to pay off in greater happiness, either. Junior partners reported well-being that was identical to that of senior associates, who were paid 62 percent less... The problem with the more prestigious jobs, said Mr. Krieger, is that they do not provide feelings of competence, autonomy or connection to others — three pillars of self-determination theory, the psychological model of human happiness on which the study was based. Public-service jobs do... lawyers were 3.6 times as likely as non-lawyers to suffer from depression, putting them at greater risk than people in any other occupation... Other research has linked the legal profession to higher rates of substance abuse... lawyers were 54 percent more likely to commit suicide than people in other professions... Others say the job requires an unhealthy degree of cynicism. “Research shows that an optimistic outlook is good for your mental health,” said Patricia Spataro, director of the New York State Lawyer Assistance Program, a resource for attorneys with mental health concerns. “But lawyers are trained to always look for the worst-case scenario. They benefit more from being pessimistic, and that takes a toll.” And then there is the public hostility. “People just seem to hate lawyers”... Many of the more than 3,000 comments on the CNN article about lawyer suicides applauded the trend... “A lot of people go to law school because they don’t know what to do with their lives”"
"What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Prof" by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon - "The first law school study demonstrated the following changes occurring in students after they began law school: marked increases in depression, negative mood, and physical symptoms, with corresponding decreases in positive affect and life satisfaction; shifts from helping and community-oriented values to extrinsic, rewards-based values in the first year; similar shifts in motivation for becoming lawyers, from salutary internal purposes (for interest, enjoyment, and meaning) to more superficial and external reasons (such as for financial rewards, recognition, or to impress or please others); and decreases in values of all kinds after the first year, suggesting generalized demoralization or loss of personal purpose. As discussed above, each of these shifts would predict decreased well-being, and that result was apparent in the data... Mertz observed, for example, that basic law school training changes student values; “unmoor[s] . . . the self”; marginalizes fairness, justice, morality, emotional life, and caring for others; and exclusively emphasizes competitive processes to the extent that they become the only goal. The net result is erosion of the very ability
to make an ethical decision."
Singapore's new train displays have serious design issues - "If anything, the new trains are a symptomatic of a tendency to embrace technology-focused rather than user-centered design"
CNN tracks down person who made Trump-WWE meme, strongarms him into apologizing under threat of doxing - "3 days ago, Donald Trump became the first United States shitposting president after he posted a WWE meme of himself slam-dunking a CNN logo; which the media chose to treat like the second holocaust. After spending two whole days complaining about how Trump was promoting violence against the press (Because edited WWE gifs are threats of violence, obviously), CNN decided to track down the person who had originally made the meme (I shit you not), and threaten to release his full identity. The creator of the meme, who goes by the name “HanAssholeSolo” on Reddit and is believed to be 15 years of age, went into full panic mode – I think you would to, if a giant multi-billion company was coming after you for making a fucking gif. He deleted his entire post history on Reddit, issued an apology on the R/The_Donald subreddit which the mods quickly deleted, and then shut down his account. CNN decided to consider this as a victory. They decided not to publish his full identity because he apologized (under duress); however, they cannot promise that they will not release his personal information in the future. I wish I was making this up"
CNN slammed for threat to reveal identity of Trump 'wrestling' CNN creator - "The blowback on social media against CNN has resulted in #CNNBlackmail trending on Twitter and includes condemnation from several public figures including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Donald Trump Jr. and Vox's German Lopez."
CNN accused of 'blackmailing' Trump gif maker - "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange accused CNN of "blackmailing a private citizen" and tweeted: "When Trump goes low CNN goes lower: threatens to dox artist behind 'CNN head' video if he makes fun of them again""
Post ID: 6632398445041804580
Wannabes
Wannabes | Tell Me Something I Don't Know
"There was this one time Steven when I was in Atlanta I visited a very famous dry through known as The Varsity and the lady serving me nudged her co worker and said: what language is she speaking and then somebody at the back of the kitchen went: woah, it's a black Mary Poppins...
Bots are - these are accounts that are posted by computer programs. They tweet, they follow each other, they look pretty normal but they're not people and they look like any other twitter account. But there's one simple observation you can make that will unmask them'...
'Is it something to do with the timing of their responses?'
'That's a good possibility. I actually looked into that and it seems fairly randomized so it looks kinda like any other person'...
'If you look at your friends on Facebook or Twitter and how many friends they have, about thirty percent of them will have friend counts that start with a one and only about five percent of them will have friend counts that start with a nine. This is a thing called Benford's law and it says that ones are way more common as the first digit in natural systems and it goes down for each digit from there'...
If they want you to be a spy I know how to get yourself fired because my wife managed to do this. So she speaks Chinese and Japanese and she studied at a University. When she graduated she got this mysterious letter and writing her to come along. And it seemed to be from the Secret Service. She didn't read to the end of the letter which said do not discuss the contents of this letter with anybody. So anyway she just, she calls her mom and she's telling her friends and mysteriously the job offer was withdrawn very very quickly...
Juan Garcia... was a Spaniard and he hated the fascist because he had spent a lot of time in Spain during the Spanish civil war. He wanted do everything he could to mess with the Nazis... So he reached out to the British, they rejected him. He reached out again, they rejected him a third time. They said no. He wasn't going to give up.
He really wanted to spy for the British. So now he reached out to the Germans - not to provide them with any information but essentially he faked that he was a spy inside Britain. Never went to Britain but using travel guides and train schedules in journals and things he pulled out from the library on Britain, he was able to give fake reports to the Germans about what was happening inside Britain. He created twenty five fake assets on the ground - spies that he was running. Created fake identities, actually wrote in different handwriting, the reports for each of these identities. To the point where the Germans brought him on as one of their top spies.
Then he went back to the British and said now you want me right? Because I've got the Germans eating out of my hands and the British finally realized this was somebody they wanted to work with. So the Germans were kind of fed disinformation for the rest of the war because they thought Juan Pujol Garcia was their spy. To the point that he was such a good actor that the British codenamed him agent Garbo. Because Greta Garbo at the time was the greatest actress in the world. Now here's the kicker. He was so good at his job that he spread disinformation about the D Day landings in Normandy. And he said to the Germans the D Day invasion wasn't going to take place at Normandy. It's going to take place at a place called Pas de Calais. Which is actually the shortest distance across the English channel...
The Germans never knew he was a double agent. So he's the only person in history to receive the top award for spying for the Germans and the British too...
When people think about going to do activities alone, really what they're thinking about is that other people are going to look at them and judge them for not having friends. It's as though that's the one thing that other people will be thinking about us if they see us.
And yet what we find is that what observers do is they create these stories like this person is working on a Ph.D. or you know they have this sort of rich inner life. because when you see them there alone you know they must be interested in the exhibit, whereas if you see the person there with a friend at the museum maybe the person is there just to socialize with a friend.
People do think that a person who goes alone has fewer friends but, but people also view that solo person as more interested in the world and more curious and so overall there are these really positive evaluations of someone who does things alone. We find also that people are more interested in initiating conversation with someone who is solo than with a friend."
One reason to note have a wingman.
"There was this one time Steven when I was in Atlanta I visited a very famous dry through known as The Varsity and the lady serving me nudged her co worker and said: what language is she speaking and then somebody at the back of the kitchen went: woah, it's a black Mary Poppins...
Bots are - these are accounts that are posted by computer programs. They tweet, they follow each other, they look pretty normal but they're not people and they look like any other twitter account. But there's one simple observation you can make that will unmask them'...
'Is it something to do with the timing of their responses?'
'That's a good possibility. I actually looked into that and it seems fairly randomized so it looks kinda like any other person'...
'If you look at your friends on Facebook or Twitter and how many friends they have, about thirty percent of them will have friend counts that start with a one and only about five percent of them will have friend counts that start with a nine. This is a thing called Benford's law and it says that ones are way more common as the first digit in natural systems and it goes down for each digit from there'...
If they want you to be a spy I know how to get yourself fired because my wife managed to do this. So she speaks Chinese and Japanese and she studied at a University. When she graduated she got this mysterious letter and writing her to come along. And it seemed to be from the Secret Service. She didn't read to the end of the letter which said do not discuss the contents of this letter with anybody. So anyway she just, she calls her mom and she's telling her friends and mysteriously the job offer was withdrawn very very quickly...
Juan Garcia... was a Spaniard and he hated the fascist because he had spent a lot of time in Spain during the Spanish civil war. He wanted do everything he could to mess with the Nazis... So he reached out to the British, they rejected him. He reached out again, they rejected him a third time. They said no. He wasn't going to give up.
He really wanted to spy for the British. So now he reached out to the Germans - not to provide them with any information but essentially he faked that he was a spy inside Britain. Never went to Britain but using travel guides and train schedules in journals and things he pulled out from the library on Britain, he was able to give fake reports to the Germans about what was happening inside Britain. He created twenty five fake assets on the ground - spies that he was running. Created fake identities, actually wrote in different handwriting, the reports for each of these identities. To the point where the Germans brought him on as one of their top spies.
Then he went back to the British and said now you want me right? Because I've got the Germans eating out of my hands and the British finally realized this was somebody they wanted to work with. So the Germans were kind of fed disinformation for the rest of the war because they thought Juan Pujol Garcia was their spy. To the point that he was such a good actor that the British codenamed him agent Garbo. Because Greta Garbo at the time was the greatest actress in the world. Now here's the kicker. He was so good at his job that he spread disinformation about the D Day landings in Normandy. And he said to the Germans the D Day invasion wasn't going to take place at Normandy. It's going to take place at a place called Pas de Calais. Which is actually the shortest distance across the English channel...
The Germans never knew he was a double agent. So he's the only person in history to receive the top award for spying for the Germans and the British too...
When people think about going to do activities alone, really what they're thinking about is that other people are going to look at them and judge them for not having friends. It's as though that's the one thing that other people will be thinking about us if they see us.
And yet what we find is that what observers do is they create these stories like this person is working on a Ph.D. or you know they have this sort of rich inner life. because when you see them there alone you know they must be interested in the exhibit, whereas if you see the person there with a friend at the museum maybe the person is there just to socialize with a friend.
People do think that a person who goes alone has fewer friends but, but people also view that solo person as more interested in the world and more curious and so overall there are these really positive evaluations of someone who does things alone. We find also that people are more interested in initiating conversation with someone who is solo than with a friend."
One reason to note have a wingman.
Post ID: 6177932018249361454
Links - 11th September 2017 (2)
亲戚计算器
A tool to find out what to call relatives in Mandarin
Star-crossed lovers? Meet the couples sleeping with the (political) enemy - "The books that most shaped our understanding of America (for better or worse) were, for him, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and for me, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. As part of our marital deal we each agreed to read the other’s respective book. He was OK with American Tragedy in terms of writing, but found the political leaning meek. I, meanwhile, still find Atlas Shrugged complete and utter garbage, both in style and substance. So yes, books were flying across the room...
Adam and I met in a pub, through a mutual friend – one of the first conversations we had, somehow, was about the government’s austerity programme (which he was fully in favour of). I disliked him immediately. It took about five pints and several hours before I changed my mind and we swapped numbers"
Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - "While speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware "that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism." "Therefore," he said, "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy... To that we'll add that Sweden, another of Sanders' inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare."
Why do the French protest so much? You asked Google – here’s the answer - "The ghosts of monarchists who died under the guillotine haunted generations of politicians to come; the wrath of the French populace was to be feared and respected. To this day, many argue it was the way it should be: a government should listen to its subjects, and fear reprisals if it ever scorns them."
Singapore Island Country Club offers ‘poverty simulation’ class for members - "Participants will be called upon to role-play and manage challenging scenarios, like supporting a family and making ends meet on a meagre income while juggling health issues. An MWS spokesperson, responding to queries, said the programme aims to stir compassion and nudge participants towards doing more for the community... MWS has been conducting the programme since 2011 for Methodist church members, other VWOs, and schools"
Steinem apologizes for implying women back Sanders to meet men
As the Singapore Sling turns 100, Leslie Danker takes a look at the colourful history of the iconic cocktail - "As British etiquette of that time frowned upon women for drinking alcoholic beverages in public, the ladies had to sip on tea and fruit juices instead. Mr. Ngiam observed this and saw an opportunity to create something special for his female guests. He mixed gin with cherry brandy, Dom Benedictine, Cointreau, pineapple and lime juices along with a dash of Angostura bitters and grenadine to give the cocktail a rosy hue. This resulted in a concoction that could easily pass off for fruit punch, thus masking it as a socially acceptable drink for the ladies"
Dave Filoni Explains Why the Star Wars Prequels Are So Important to Today's Stories - "When ComicBook.com discussed the growing idea of "balance" in the Force in today's Star Wars stories, from Kanan's training with the Bendu to Ezra experimenting with dark side techniques to Ahsoka's clear-bladed lightsabers and even Kylo Ren/Ben Solo's affinity with and straddling of both sides of the Force, Filoni went back to the prequels."
John Rosemond: Your kids should not be the most important - "many if not most of the problems they’re having with their kids — typical stuff, these days — are the result of treating their children as if they, their marriage, and their family exist because of the kids when it is, in fact, the other way around. Their kids exist because of them and their marriage and thrive because they have created a stable family... “Our child is the most important person in our family” is the first step toward raising a child who feels entitled."
Political Correctness is All about Slave Morality - "over the past decade, I have found myself increasingly concerned with political correctness evolving into an oppressive righteousness that are in many ways deeply misguided and incomplete and there is definitely a need to push back against it when it spills over into absurdity... Nietzsche articulated the view that there are two broad moral views or moral frames of mind, that of master morality and of slave morality. Slave morality is concerned with issues of justice, fairness and protection of the weak. It is called slave morality because its emphasis and focus is on those who are powerless, controlled or in positions of minority... what Nietzsche realized is that this is not enough to encapsulate all of morality. There must also be a vertical dimension to morality, one that emphasizes strength, courage, accomplishment, virtue and merit. This relates deeply to what honor cultures emphasize and certainly is a strong element in Aristotle's virtue ethics. This Nietzsche called master morality, because it referred to individuals who were in a position to rise above the herd of society and be judged on their own terms... political correctness in the academy. It is overly concerned with horizontal dimensions emphasizing protection and equality and simultaneously attacking the vertical dimensions (and thus at least somewhat deemphasizing virtue and merit), sometimes to the point of rewarding and justifying a victimized stance."
Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD - "French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain... And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child-rearing in the U.S. and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are generally better-behaved than their American counterparts"
Why Men Find It So Hard to Understand What Women Want - "it’s natural that men who respect and appreciate women are confused about when it’s acceptable to express those desires in a more primal, animalistic way. It's difficult for a guy to know when it’s OK to express desire and passion, and if he waits until a woman explicitly allows it, that defeats the purpose of spontaneous expressions of desire; as Dr. Shpancer puts it, quoting Dr. Marta Meana, a woman wants to feel “overwhelmingly desired, not rationally considered.” The problem for the considerate man, however, is how to express “overwhelming” desire within the constraints he holds himself to and he feels a woman is entitled to; in other words, he doesn't know how to be both the beast and the gentleman she wants and deserves."
Another way feminism makes women lose their erection
Carl Hamilton's answer to How likely was it for a soldier to survive two battles in a row in the Napoleonic era? - Quora - "Casualty rates were actually very low back then, battles were not won or lost by killing the enemy to the last man, but by routing them. During the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon lost 1305 men, out of 65,000 to 75,000 which is between 1.74% and 2%. That is a pretty good chance of surviving the battle on Napoleon’s side."
Lucas Lynch - The rehabilitation of George W. Bush on the left is... - "The rehabilitation of George W. Bush on the left is one of the most fascinating and curious results of the Trump presidency. I don't think necessarily people like Jay Leno or Ellen should never talk to him at all. It's just curious that a man who failed to capture Bin Laden while invading the wrong country - the consequences of which were deathcounts in the hundreds of thousands, debt in trillions, and the creation of the forming and training ground for the Islamic State - is now less taboo than someone making (undeniably) mean tweets to reporters"
Media Horrified By Trump Body-Slam Video - "Journalists reacted in horror Sunday morning after President Trump tweeted a fake video that showed him body-slamming “fraud news” CNN in a fake wrestling match. While many of the president’s supporters online reacted to the video with humor, the consensus among journalists seemed to be that Trump was inciting violence against the media."
If what's obviously taking the piss is inciting violence, Kathy Griffin should have been executed and Julius Caesar plays showing Trump as Caesar are death threats
How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security - "The letter wasn’t about liberty but about taxes and the ability to “raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.” Indeed, if you look at the text surrounding the famous quote, it’s pretty clearly about money: “Our assemblies have of late had so many supply bill, and of such different kinds, rejected, on various pretences,” wrote Franklin. There’s not much on liberty, as we understand the concept, in the entire letter."
Danish city makes pork mandatory but allows other food - "A Danish city has ordered pork to be mandatory on municipal menus, including for schools and daycare centers, with politicians insisting the move is necessary for preserving the country's food traditions and is not an attack on Muslims.
Frank Noergaard, a member of the council in Randers that narrowly approved the decision earlier this week, says it was made to ensure that pork remains “a central part of Denmark's food culture.''"
Booted up in 1993, this server still runs -- but not for much longer - "Even though the system has a character-driven interface, similar to an old green screen system, the users "like the reliability of it, and the screens are actually pretty simple," said Hogan."
If You Don’t Want Your Kids to Be ‘Assaulted’ by the Cops, Teach Them to Respect Authority - "physical removal was the last resort, and it was a last resort made necessary by the student. How, then, do you physically remove a non-compliant human being without it looking “aggressive” and “violent”?... That cop didn’t just barge into the room and randomly pull the nearest black student out of her chair. He was asked to respond after the student couldn’t be bothered to obey a rule or listen to her teacher or listen to an administrator."
Apparently Game Of Thrones Is So Popular It Has An Effect On Porn Consumption - "its premiere date actually reduced online porn consumption by four percent"
Game of Thrones: Sophie Turner describes fantasy HBO series as her 'sex education' - "The first time I found out about oral sex was reading the Game of Thrones script"
Sophie Turner Has Opinions About Sansa's Rape On Game of Thrones, Too - "'one of the things it stirred in me was surprise that so much of people’s time and energy was being spent discussing a fictional scene on television when you hear about people in third world countries —and not just third world countries, all over the world! — getting raped every day, and sexually assaulted every day. This was the trending topic on Twitter, and it makes you wonder, when it happens in real life, why isn’t it a trending topic every time? This was a fictional character, and I got to walk away from it unscathed. Also, why should it be taboo to portray onscreen?'... 'Benioff and Weiss claim to have seen no other possible outcome for a character stranded in a marriage to a psychopath, in a skewed version of feudal society. “It might not be our world,” says Benioff, “but it’s still the same basic power dynamic between men and women in this medieval world. This is what we believed was going to happen.” Adds Weiss: “We talked about, is there any other way she could possibly avoid this fate that doesn’t seem fake, where she uses her pluck to save herself at the last? There was no version of that that didn’t seem completely horrible.”'"
Elton John bomb plotter Haroon Syed jailed for life - "Last year, his brother was jailed for life for plotting to behead someone on Remembrance Sunday"
Cuba love hotels to make comeback, state announces - "State-run "posadas", or love motels, disappeared during Cuba's economic crisis in the 1990s when they became hurricane shelters. Private householders filled the gap in the market, but at exorbitant prices. Officials say the posadas will be cheaper and will help end the practice of love-making in Havana's open spaces... The officials said they hoped the new chain would provide cheaper options for love-making in the city. Couples making love are a common sight in Havana's parks, on the beach and on the famed Malaccan seafront"
Man horrifically mauled after jumping into giant panda den - "A foolish tourist in Nanchang Zoo, China, climbs into a panda den and approaches one of the enormous bears"
No Gender? Canadian Parent Wants First Birth Certificate Without Male Or Female Designation - "A parent in Canada is fighting a law that says a child’s gender must be stated on their birth certificate, in order to keep their baby "genderless." Kori Doty, who does not identify as male or female, wants their eight-month-old baby Searyl Atli to be able to choose their gender, but Canadian law states the baby will not be given a birth certificate without specifying its sex. "I'm raising Searyl in such a way that until they have the sense of self and command of vocabulary to tell me who they are, I'm recognizing them as a baby and trying to give them all the love and support to be the most whole person that they can be outside of the restrictions that come with the boy box and the girl box," Doty, who prefers to use the pronoun ‘they,’ told CBC News"
I thought even those who propagate this sort of stuff claim that sex and gender are different?
Magnum and Cornetto ice creams to shrink - "Unilever said the move was to help consumers "make healthier choices."
Vienna’s recipe for living well - "“The business of Vienna is not business and never has been,” she told me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The business of Vienna is life. You can know people in Vienna for years and you don’t really know what they do for a living”... Vienna slays the myth that you have to choose, efficiency or repose. You can have both... Vienna consistently ranks as the world’s most liveable city, surpassing such stalwarts as Copenhagen, Zurich and New York... Another strange thing about a Viennese coffee house is that the coffee is almost irrelevant... those exposed to moderate noise levels (70 decibels) performed better on a creative-thinking exam than those exposed to either high levels of noise or complete silence. Moderate noise allows us to enter a state of mind conducive to creative breakthroughs"
Why do humans kiss each other when most animals don't? - "People in western societies may assume that romantic kissing is a universal human behaviour, but a new analysis suggests that less than half of all cultures actually do it. Kissing is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom... Kissing as we do it today seems to be a fairly recent invention, says Rafael Wlodarski of the University of Oxford in the UK... Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, do kiss... men also make a version of the pheromone that female boars find attractive. It is present in male sweat, and when women are exposed to it their arousal levels increase slightly."
A tool to find out what to call relatives in Mandarin
Star-crossed lovers? Meet the couples sleeping with the (political) enemy - "The books that most shaped our understanding of America (for better or worse) were, for him, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and for me, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. As part of our marital deal we each agreed to read the other’s respective book. He was OK with American Tragedy in terms of writing, but found the political leaning meek. I, meanwhile, still find Atlas Shrugged complete and utter garbage, both in style and substance. So yes, books were flying across the room...
Adam and I met in a pub, through a mutual friend – one of the first conversations we had, somehow, was about the government’s austerity programme (which he was fully in favour of). I disliked him immediately. It took about five pints and several hours before I changed my mind and we swapped numbers"
Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - "While speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware "that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism." "Therefore," he said, "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy... To that we'll add that Sweden, another of Sanders' inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare."
Why do the French protest so much? You asked Google – here’s the answer - "The ghosts of monarchists who died under the guillotine haunted generations of politicians to come; the wrath of the French populace was to be feared and respected. To this day, many argue it was the way it should be: a government should listen to its subjects, and fear reprisals if it ever scorns them."
Singapore Island Country Club offers ‘poverty simulation’ class for members - "Participants will be called upon to role-play and manage challenging scenarios, like supporting a family and making ends meet on a meagre income while juggling health issues. An MWS spokesperson, responding to queries, said the programme aims to stir compassion and nudge participants towards doing more for the community... MWS has been conducting the programme since 2011 for Methodist church members, other VWOs, and schools"
Steinem apologizes for implying women back Sanders to meet men
As the Singapore Sling turns 100, Leslie Danker takes a look at the colourful history of the iconic cocktail - "As British etiquette of that time frowned upon women for drinking alcoholic beverages in public, the ladies had to sip on tea and fruit juices instead. Mr. Ngiam observed this and saw an opportunity to create something special for his female guests. He mixed gin with cherry brandy, Dom Benedictine, Cointreau, pineapple and lime juices along with a dash of Angostura bitters and grenadine to give the cocktail a rosy hue. This resulted in a concoction that could easily pass off for fruit punch, thus masking it as a socially acceptable drink for the ladies"
Dave Filoni Explains Why the Star Wars Prequels Are So Important to Today's Stories - "When ComicBook.com discussed the growing idea of "balance" in the Force in today's Star Wars stories, from Kanan's training with the Bendu to Ezra experimenting with dark side techniques to Ahsoka's clear-bladed lightsabers and even Kylo Ren/Ben Solo's affinity with and straddling of both sides of the Force, Filoni went back to the prequels."
John Rosemond: Your kids should not be the most important - "many if not most of the problems they’re having with their kids — typical stuff, these days — are the result of treating their children as if they, their marriage, and their family exist because of the kids when it is, in fact, the other way around. Their kids exist because of them and their marriage and thrive because they have created a stable family... “Our child is the most important person in our family” is the first step toward raising a child who feels entitled."
Political Correctness is All about Slave Morality - "over the past decade, I have found myself increasingly concerned with political correctness evolving into an oppressive righteousness that are in many ways deeply misguided and incomplete and there is definitely a need to push back against it when it spills over into absurdity... Nietzsche articulated the view that there are two broad moral views or moral frames of mind, that of master morality and of slave morality. Slave morality is concerned with issues of justice, fairness and protection of the weak. It is called slave morality because its emphasis and focus is on those who are powerless, controlled or in positions of minority... what Nietzsche realized is that this is not enough to encapsulate all of morality. There must also be a vertical dimension to morality, one that emphasizes strength, courage, accomplishment, virtue and merit. This relates deeply to what honor cultures emphasize and certainly is a strong element in Aristotle's virtue ethics. This Nietzsche called master morality, because it referred to individuals who were in a position to rise above the herd of society and be judged on their own terms... political correctness in the academy. It is overly concerned with horizontal dimensions emphasizing protection and equality and simultaneously attacking the vertical dimensions (and thus at least somewhat deemphasizing virtue and merit), sometimes to the point of rewarding and justifying a victimized stance."
Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD - "French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain... And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child-rearing in the U.S. and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are generally better-behaved than their American counterparts"
Why Men Find It So Hard to Understand What Women Want - "it’s natural that men who respect and appreciate women are confused about when it’s acceptable to express those desires in a more primal, animalistic way. It's difficult for a guy to know when it’s OK to express desire and passion, and if he waits until a woman explicitly allows it, that defeats the purpose of spontaneous expressions of desire; as Dr. Shpancer puts it, quoting Dr. Marta Meana, a woman wants to feel “overwhelmingly desired, not rationally considered.” The problem for the considerate man, however, is how to express “overwhelming” desire within the constraints he holds himself to and he feels a woman is entitled to; in other words, he doesn't know how to be both the beast and the gentleman she wants and deserves."
Another way feminism makes women lose their erection
Carl Hamilton's answer to How likely was it for a soldier to survive two battles in a row in the Napoleonic era? - Quora - "Casualty rates were actually very low back then, battles were not won or lost by killing the enemy to the last man, but by routing them. During the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon lost 1305 men, out of 65,000 to 75,000 which is between 1.74% and 2%. That is a pretty good chance of surviving the battle on Napoleon’s side."
Lucas Lynch - The rehabilitation of George W. Bush on the left is... - "The rehabilitation of George W. Bush on the left is one of the most fascinating and curious results of the Trump presidency. I don't think necessarily people like Jay Leno or Ellen should never talk to him at all. It's just curious that a man who failed to capture Bin Laden while invading the wrong country - the consequences of which were deathcounts in the hundreds of thousands, debt in trillions, and the creation of the forming and training ground for the Islamic State - is now less taboo than someone making (undeniably) mean tweets to reporters"
Media Horrified By Trump Body-Slam Video - "Journalists reacted in horror Sunday morning after President Trump tweeted a fake video that showed him body-slamming “fraud news” CNN in a fake wrestling match. While many of the president’s supporters online reacted to the video with humor, the consensus among journalists seemed to be that Trump was inciting violence against the media."
If what's obviously taking the piss is inciting violence, Kathy Griffin should have been executed and Julius Caesar plays showing Trump as Caesar are death threats
How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security - "The letter wasn’t about liberty but about taxes and the ability to “raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.” Indeed, if you look at the text surrounding the famous quote, it’s pretty clearly about money: “Our assemblies have of late had so many supply bill, and of such different kinds, rejected, on various pretences,” wrote Franklin. There’s not much on liberty, as we understand the concept, in the entire letter."
Danish city makes pork mandatory but allows other food - "A Danish city has ordered pork to be mandatory on municipal menus, including for schools and daycare centers, with politicians insisting the move is necessary for preserving the country's food traditions and is not an attack on Muslims.
Frank Noergaard, a member of the council in Randers that narrowly approved the decision earlier this week, says it was made to ensure that pork remains “a central part of Denmark's food culture.''"
Booted up in 1993, this server still runs -- but not for much longer - "Even though the system has a character-driven interface, similar to an old green screen system, the users "like the reliability of it, and the screens are actually pretty simple," said Hogan."
If You Don’t Want Your Kids to Be ‘Assaulted’ by the Cops, Teach Them to Respect Authority - "physical removal was the last resort, and it was a last resort made necessary by the student. How, then, do you physically remove a non-compliant human being without it looking “aggressive” and “violent”?... That cop didn’t just barge into the room and randomly pull the nearest black student out of her chair. He was asked to respond after the student couldn’t be bothered to obey a rule or listen to her teacher or listen to an administrator."
Apparently Game Of Thrones Is So Popular It Has An Effect On Porn Consumption - "its premiere date actually reduced online porn consumption by four percent"
Game of Thrones: Sophie Turner describes fantasy HBO series as her 'sex education' - "The first time I found out about oral sex was reading the Game of Thrones script"
Sophie Turner Has Opinions About Sansa's Rape On Game of Thrones, Too - "'one of the things it stirred in me was surprise that so much of people’s time and energy was being spent discussing a fictional scene on television when you hear about people in third world countries —and not just third world countries, all over the world! — getting raped every day, and sexually assaulted every day. This was the trending topic on Twitter, and it makes you wonder, when it happens in real life, why isn’t it a trending topic every time? This was a fictional character, and I got to walk away from it unscathed. Also, why should it be taboo to portray onscreen?'... 'Benioff and Weiss claim to have seen no other possible outcome for a character stranded in a marriage to a psychopath, in a skewed version of feudal society. “It might not be our world,” says Benioff, “but it’s still the same basic power dynamic between men and women in this medieval world. This is what we believed was going to happen.” Adds Weiss: “We talked about, is there any other way she could possibly avoid this fate that doesn’t seem fake, where she uses her pluck to save herself at the last? There was no version of that that didn’t seem completely horrible.”'"
Elton John bomb plotter Haroon Syed jailed for life - "Last year, his brother was jailed for life for plotting to behead someone on Remembrance Sunday"
Cuba love hotels to make comeback, state announces - "State-run "posadas", or love motels, disappeared during Cuba's economic crisis in the 1990s when they became hurricane shelters. Private householders filled the gap in the market, but at exorbitant prices. Officials say the posadas will be cheaper and will help end the practice of love-making in Havana's open spaces... The officials said they hoped the new chain would provide cheaper options for love-making in the city. Couples making love are a common sight in Havana's parks, on the beach and on the famed Malaccan seafront"
Man horrifically mauled after jumping into giant panda den - "A foolish tourist in Nanchang Zoo, China, climbs into a panda den and approaches one of the enormous bears"
No Gender? Canadian Parent Wants First Birth Certificate Without Male Or Female Designation - "A parent in Canada is fighting a law that says a child’s gender must be stated on their birth certificate, in order to keep their baby "genderless." Kori Doty, who does not identify as male or female, wants their eight-month-old baby Searyl Atli to be able to choose their gender, but Canadian law states the baby will not be given a birth certificate without specifying its sex. "I'm raising Searyl in such a way that until they have the sense of self and command of vocabulary to tell me who they are, I'm recognizing them as a baby and trying to give them all the love and support to be the most whole person that they can be outside of the restrictions that come with the boy box and the girl box," Doty, who prefers to use the pronoun ‘they,’ told CBC News"
I thought even those who propagate this sort of stuff claim that sex and gender are different?
Magnum and Cornetto ice creams to shrink - "Unilever said the move was to help consumers "make healthier choices."
Vienna’s recipe for living well - "“The business of Vienna is not business and never has been,” she told me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The business of Vienna is life. You can know people in Vienna for years and you don’t really know what they do for a living”... Vienna slays the myth that you have to choose, efficiency or repose. You can have both... Vienna consistently ranks as the world’s most liveable city, surpassing such stalwarts as Copenhagen, Zurich and New York... Another strange thing about a Viennese coffee house is that the coffee is almost irrelevant... those exposed to moderate noise levels (70 decibels) performed better on a creative-thinking exam than those exposed to either high levels of noise or complete silence. Moderate noise allows us to enter a state of mind conducive to creative breakthroughs"
Why do humans kiss each other when most animals don't? - "People in western societies may assume that romantic kissing is a universal human behaviour, but a new analysis suggests that less than half of all cultures actually do it. Kissing is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom... Kissing as we do it today seems to be a fairly recent invention, says Rafael Wlodarski of the University of Oxford in the UK... Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, do kiss... men also make a version of the pheromone that female boars find attractive. It is present in male sweat, and when women are exposed to it their arousal levels increase slightly."
Post ID: 3443254763938151228
Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet
Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet | HistoryNet
"Despite Muhammad’s remarkable accomplishments, there is no modern account of his life that examines his role as Islam’s first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency. Had Muhammad not succeeded as a commander, however, Islam might have been relegated to a geographic backwater—and the conquest of the Byzantine and Persian empires by Arab armies might never have occurred.
The idea of Muhammad as a military man will be new to many. Yet he was a truly great general. In the space of a single decade he fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned another thirty-eight military operations where others were in command but operating under his orders and strategic direction. Wounded twice, he also twice experienced having his positions overrun by superior forces before he managed to turn the tables on his enemies and rally his men to victory. More than a great field general and tactician, he was also a military theorist, organizational reformer, strategic thinker, operational-level combat commander, political-military leader, heroic soldier, and revolutionary. The inventor of insurgency warfare and history’s first successful practitioner, Muhammad had no military training before he commanded an army in the field.
Muhammad’s intelligence service eventually rivaled that of Byzantium and Persia, especially when it came to political information. He reportedly spent hours devising tactical and political stratagems, and once remarked that “all war is cunning,” reminding modern analysts of Sun Tzu’s dictum, “all war is deception.” In his thinking and application of force Muhammad was a combination of Karl von Clausewitz and Niccolo Machiavelli, for he always employed force in the service of political goals. An astute grand strategist, he used nonmilitary methods (alliance building, political assassination, bribery, religious appeals, mercy, and calculated butchery) to strengthen his long-term position, sometimes even at the expense of short-term military considerations.
Muhammad’s belief in Islam and his own role as the “Messenger of God” revolutionized Arabian warfare and resulted in the creation of the ancient world’s first army motivated by a coherent system of ideological belief. The ideology of holy war (jihad) and martyrdom (shahada) for the faith was transmitted to the West during the wars between Muslims and Christians in Spain and France, where it changed traditional Christian pacifistic thinking on war, brought into being a coterie of Christian warrior saints, and provided the Catholic Church with its ideological justification for the Crusades. Ideology—whether religious or secular—has remained a primary component of military ventures ever since...
Muhammad was first and foremost a revolutionary, a fiery religious guerrilla leader who created and led the first genuine national insurgency in antiquity that is comprehensible in modern terms, a fact not lost on the jihadis of the present day, who often cite the Koran and Muhammad’s use of violence as justification for their own insurgencies. Unlike conventional generals, Muhammad did not seek the defeat of a foreign enemy or invader; rather, he sought to replace the existing Arabian social order with a new one based upon a radically different ideological worldview. To achieve his revolutionary goals Muhammad utilized all the means recognized by modern analysts as characteristic of a successful insurgency in today’s world...
Muhammad’s rise to power was a textbook example of a successful insurgency, in all likelihood the first such example in antiquity. The West has been accustomed to thinking of the Arab conquests that followed Muhammad in purely conventional military terms. But the armies that achieved those conquests did not exist in Arabia before Muhammad. It was Muhammad’s successful unconventional guerrilla operations, his successful insurgency, that brought those armies into existence. The later Arab conquests, as regards both strategic concept and the new armies as instruments of military method, were the consequences of Muhammad’s prior military success as the leader of an insurgency...
Once Muhammad had created his cadre of revolutionaries, he established a base from which to conduct military operations against his adversaries. These operations initially took the form of ambushes and raids aimed at isolating Mecca, the enemy’s main city, and other trading towns that opposed him. Only one in six Arabs lived in a city or town at this time; the others resided in the desert, living as pastoral nomads. Muhammad chose Medina as his base of operations because of its strategic location. Medina was close to the main caravan route from Mecca to Syria that constituted the economic lifeline of Mecca and other oases and towns dependent upon the caravan trade for their economic survival. Medina was also sufficiently distant from Mecca to permit Muhammad a relatively free hand in his efforts to convert the bedouin clans living along the caravan route. Muhammad understood that conversions and political alliances with the bedouins, not military engagements with the Meccans, were the keys to success.
Insurgencies require an armed force and the manpower to sustain them. It was from the original small cadre of guerrillas that the larger conventional army could be grown that would ultimately permit the insurgency to engage its enemies in set-piece battles when the time and political conditions were right. Muhammad may have been the first commander in history to understand and implement the doctrine later espoused by General Vo Nguyen Giap of North Vietnam as “people’s war, people’s army.” Muhammad established the belief among his followers that God had commandeered all Muslims’ purposes and property for His efforts and that all Muslims had a responsibility to fight for the faith. Everyone—men, women, and even children—had an obligation for military service in defense of the faith and the ummah that was the community of God’s chosen people on earth. It is essential to understand that the attraction of the Islamic ideology more than anything else produced the manpower that permitted Muhammad’s small revolutionary cadre to evolve into a conventional armed force capable of large-scale engagements...
The leader of an insurgency must take great care to guard his authority from challenges, including those that come from within the movement itself. Muhammad had many enemies, and he was always on guard against an attempt upon his life. Like other leaders, Muhammad surrounded himself with a loyal group of followers who acted as his bodyguard and carried out his orders without question. For this purpose he created the suffah, a small cadre of loyal followers who lived in the mosque next to Muhammad’s house. Recruited from among the most pious, enthusiastic, and fanatical followers, they came from impoverished backgrounds. The suffah members spent much of their time studying Islam. They were devoted to Muhammad and served not only as his life guard but also as a secret police that could be called upon at a moment’s notice to carry out whatever task Muhammad set for them, including assassination and terror...
Insurgencies succeed or fail to the degree that they are able to win the allegiance of great numbers of uncommitted citizens to support the insurgency’s goals. Muhammad understood the role of propaganda and went to great lengths to make his message public and widely known. In a largely illiterate Arab society, the poet served as the major conveyor of political propaganda. Muhammad hired the best poets money could buy to sing his praises and denigrate his opponents. He issued proclamations regarding the revelations he received as the Messenger of God, and remained in public view to keep the vision of the new order and the promise of a heavenly paradise constantly before the public. He also sent missionaries to other clans and tribes to instruct the “pagans” in the new faith, sometimes teaching those groups to read and write in the process. Muhammad understood that the conflict was between the existing social order with its manifest injustices and his vision of the future, and he surpassed his adversaries in spreading his vision to win the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab population.
Terrorism seems to be an indispensable element of a successful insurgency, and it was no less so in Muhammad’s case. He used terrorism in two basic ways: First, he ensured discipline among his followers by making public examples of traitors and backsliders. In Muhammad’s day the penalty for apostasy in Islam was death. He also ordered some of his political enemies assassinated, including poets and singers who had publicly ridiculed him. When his armies marched into Mecca, for example, Muhammad’s suffah set about hunting down a list of old enemies marked for execution. Second, Muhammad used terrorism to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies on a large scale. In the case of the Jewish tribes of Medina, Muhammad seems to have ordered the death of the entire Beni Qaynuqa tribe and the selling of their women and children into slavery, though he was later talked out of it by the chief of one of his allies. On another occasion, again against a Jewish tribe of Medina, he ordered all the tribe’s adult males, some nine hundred, beheaded in the city square, the women and children sold into slavery, and their property distributed among his Muslim followers. Shortly after the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad declared “war to the knife” against all those who remained idolaters, instructing his followers to kill any pagans they encountered on the spot. His ruthlessness and brutality served to strengthen his hand with opponents and allies alike...
Over time the violent origins of religions are forgotten and only the faith itself remains, so the founders of the creeds come to be remembered as untouched by the violence of the historical record. In Muhammad’s case the result has been to deemphasize the military aspects of his life and his considerable military accomplishments as Islam’s first great general and the inventor of the theory and practice of insurgency...
Muhammad transformed the social composition of Arab armies from a collection of clans, tribes, and blood kin loyal only to themselves into a national army loyal to a national social entity, the ummah. The ummah was not a nation or a state in the modern sense, but a body of religious believers under the unified command and governance of Muhammad. The ummah transcended the clans and tribes and permitted Muhammad to forge a common identity, national in scope, among the Arabs for the first time. It was leadership of this national entity that Muhammad claimed, not of any clan or tribe. Loyalty to the ummah permitted the national army to unify the two traditional combat arms of infantry and cavalry into a genuine combined arms force. Bedouins and town dwellers had historically viewed one another with suspicion. Arab infantry had traditionally been drawn from the people living in the towns, settlements, and oases of Arabia. Arab cavalry was traditionally drawn from bedouin clans, whose nomadic warriors excelled at speedy raids, surprise attacks, and elusive retreats, skills honed to a fine edge over generations of raiding.
These two different types of combatants possessed only limited experience in fighting alongside one another. Bound by clan loyalties and living in settlements, Arab infantry was steadfast and cohesive and could usually be relied upon to hold its ground, especially in the defense. Arab cavalry, on the other hand, was unreliable in a battle against infantry, often breaking off the fight to keep their precious mounts from being hurt or make off with whatever booty they had seized. Bedouin cavalry was, however, proficient at reconnaissance, surprise attack, protecting the flanks, and pursuing ill-disciplined infantry. Muhammad was the first Arab commander to successfully join both combat arms into a national army and use them in concert in battle. Thanks to the larger religious community of believers, the ummah, he could combine the two primary elements of traditional Arab society, town dwellers and bedouin tribes, into a single Arab national identity. That change was actually preceded by a shift in the social composition of Arab society...
Traditional Arab warfare emphasized the courageous performance of individual warriors in battle, not the clan’s ability to fight as a unit. The Arab warrior fought for his own honor and social prestige within the kin group, not for the clan per se. One consequence was that Arab armies and the clan units within them did not usually reflect a high degree of combat unit cohesion, the ability of the group to remain intact and fight together under the stress of battle.
Muhammad’s armies, by contrast, were highly cohesive, holding together even when they fought outnumbered or were overrun. The ummah served as a higher locus of the soldier’s loyalty that transcended the clan. Many of Muhammad’s early converts had left their families and clans to follow the Prophet. There were many instances where members of the same clan or even families fought on opposite sides during his early battles. Religion turned out to be a greater source of unit cohesion than blood and clan ties, the obligations of faith replacing and overriding those of tradition and even family. His soldiers cared for each other as brothers, which under the precepts of Islam they were, and quickly gained a reputation for their discipline and ferocity in battle.
Muhammad’s armies demonstrated a higher degree of military motivation than traditional Arab armies. Being a good warrior had always been at the center of Arab values, but Muhammad enhanced the warrior’s status. His soldiers were always guaranteed a share in the booty. It became a common saying among Muslims that “the soldier is not only the noblest and most pleasing profession in the sight of Allah, but also the most profitable.” Muhammad’s soldiers were usually paid better than Persian or Byzantine soldiers.
But better pay was only a small part of the new Islamic warriors’ motivation. One of Muhammad’s most important innovations was convincing his troops that they were doing God’s work on earth. There were of course soldiers of other faiths who fought on religious grounds. But no army before Muhammad’s ever placed religion at the center of military motivation and defined the soldier primarily as an instrument of God’s will on earth. The soldiers of Islam came to see themselves as fighting under God’s instructions. The result, still evident in Islamic societies today, was a soldier who enjoyed much higher social status and respect than soldiers in Western armies.
A central element to an Islamic soldier’s motivation in Muhammad’s day was the idea that death was not something to be feared but rather embraced. Muhammad’s pronouncement that those killed in battle would be welcomed immediately into a paradise of pleasure and eternal life was a powerful inducement to perform well in combat. To die fighting in defense of the faith was to fulfill God’s will and become a martyr...
Once war was harnessed to strategic objectives, it became possible to expand its application to introduce tactical dimensions that were completely new to Arab warfare. Muhammad attacked tribes, towns, and garrisons before they could form hostile coalitions; he isolated his enemies by severing their economic lifelines and disrupting their lines of communication; he was a master at political negotiation, forming alliances with pagan tribes when it served his interests; and he laid siege to cities and towns. He also introduced the new dimension of psychological warfare, employing terror and massacre as means to weaken the will of his enemies. Various texts also mention Muhammad’s use of catapults (manjaniq) and movable covered cars (dabbabah) in siege warfare. Most likely these siege devices were acquired in Yemen, where Persian garrisons had been located on and off over the centuries. Muhammad seems to have been the first Arab commander to use them in the north. Where once Arab warfare had been a completely tactical affair, Muhammad’s introduction of strategic war permitted the use of tactics in the proper manner, as a means to greater strategic ends. War, after all, is never an end in itself. It is, as Clausewitz reminds us, always a method, never a goal...
Muhammad’s transformation of Arab warfare was preceded by a revolution in the way Arabs thought about war, what might be called the moral basis of war. The old chivalric code that limited bloodletting was abandoned and replaced with an ethos less conducive to restraint, the blood feud. Extending that ethos beyond the ties of kin and blood to include members of the new community of Muslim believers inevitably made Arab warfare more encompassing and bloody than it had ever been...
Muhammad’s military legacy is most clearly evident in the modern methodology of insurgency and in the powerful idea of jihad. In the years following his death, Islamic scholars developed an account of the Islamic law of war. This body of law, essentially complete by 850, ultimately rests on two foundations: the example and teaching of Muhammad and the word of God as expressed in the Koran...
According to classical Sunni doctrine, jihad can refer generically to any worthy endeavor, but in Islamic law it means primarily armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates...
Shiites, some ten to fifteen percent of Muslims, subscribe to a somewhat different doctrine of jihad, believing that it can only be waged under the command of the rightful leader of the Muslim community, whom they call imam. Shiites believe that the last imam went into hiding in 874 and that the collective duty to wage expansionist jihad is suspended until his return in the apocalyptic future. But Shiite scholars do affirm a duty to wage defensive jihad against infidel invaders.
Classical Islamic law is less tolerant of non-Muslims. Apostates from Islam, pagans, atheists, agnostics, and pseudo-scriptuaries, that is, members of cults that have appeared since Muhammad’s day: for example, Sikhs, Bahais, Mormons, and Qadianis are only offered the option of conversion to Islam or death.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sunni Islamic modernists began to modify the classical law of war. The Indian Muslim thinker Sayyid Ahmad Khan argued that jihad was obligatory for Muslims only when they were prevented from exercising their faith, thus restricting jihad to defensive purposes. Mahmud Shaltut, an Egyptian scholar, likewise argued only for defensive jihad.
Conservative Sunnis, such as the Wahhabis of Arabia, and modern militant jihadis in Iraq and Pakistan still adhere to the traditional doctrine. It is among these militant conservative Muslims that the military legacy of Muhammad is most alive today.
Richard A. Gabriel, a military historian and adjunct professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, has authored forty-one books. His latest is Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General (Oklahoma University Press, 2007)."
The Sunni-Shiite distinction is interesting, as explicated:
Sunni and Shi’a Terror: A Difference That Matters
"While Sunni terrorists “tend to operate in a continuous, mid to high intensity manner, seeing war against infidels and apostates as a perennial condition,” Shi’a terror, carried out by groups or agents close to the Iranian government featured “discrete terror campaigns tethered to state and organizational objectives.” Lynch provides a detailed summary of Shi’a terrorist operations from the early eighties to the present. Shi’a terror, he concludes, is linked to Iranian-state aims, including most of all—which he mentions several times—“regime survival.” This is not the work of alienated loners trying to commit mass murder for essentially incomprehensible religious/mystical/reasons. It can be understood—and dealt with—as easily as one understands and deals with the Provisional IRA—a comparison Lynch does not make but one which flows logically from his analysis."
Addendum: predominant meaning of jihad, dominant meaning of jihad
See also: Islam, the West and Modernity
"Despite Muhammad’s remarkable accomplishments, there is no modern account of his life that examines his role as Islam’s first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency. Had Muhammad not succeeded as a commander, however, Islam might have been relegated to a geographic backwater—and the conquest of the Byzantine and Persian empires by Arab armies might never have occurred.
The idea of Muhammad as a military man will be new to many. Yet he was a truly great general. In the space of a single decade he fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned another thirty-eight military operations where others were in command but operating under his orders and strategic direction. Wounded twice, he also twice experienced having his positions overrun by superior forces before he managed to turn the tables on his enemies and rally his men to victory. More than a great field general and tactician, he was also a military theorist, organizational reformer, strategic thinker, operational-level combat commander, political-military leader, heroic soldier, and revolutionary. The inventor of insurgency warfare and history’s first successful practitioner, Muhammad had no military training before he commanded an army in the field.
Muhammad’s intelligence service eventually rivaled that of Byzantium and Persia, especially when it came to political information. He reportedly spent hours devising tactical and political stratagems, and once remarked that “all war is cunning,” reminding modern analysts of Sun Tzu’s dictum, “all war is deception.” In his thinking and application of force Muhammad was a combination of Karl von Clausewitz and Niccolo Machiavelli, for he always employed force in the service of political goals. An astute grand strategist, he used nonmilitary methods (alliance building, political assassination, bribery, religious appeals, mercy, and calculated butchery) to strengthen his long-term position, sometimes even at the expense of short-term military considerations.
Muhammad’s belief in Islam and his own role as the “Messenger of God” revolutionized Arabian warfare and resulted in the creation of the ancient world’s first army motivated by a coherent system of ideological belief. The ideology of holy war (jihad) and martyrdom (shahada) for the faith was transmitted to the West during the wars between Muslims and Christians in Spain and France, where it changed traditional Christian pacifistic thinking on war, brought into being a coterie of Christian warrior saints, and provided the Catholic Church with its ideological justification for the Crusades. Ideology—whether religious or secular—has remained a primary component of military ventures ever since...
Muhammad was first and foremost a revolutionary, a fiery religious guerrilla leader who created and led the first genuine national insurgency in antiquity that is comprehensible in modern terms, a fact not lost on the jihadis of the present day, who often cite the Koran and Muhammad’s use of violence as justification for their own insurgencies. Unlike conventional generals, Muhammad did not seek the defeat of a foreign enemy or invader; rather, he sought to replace the existing Arabian social order with a new one based upon a radically different ideological worldview. To achieve his revolutionary goals Muhammad utilized all the means recognized by modern analysts as characteristic of a successful insurgency in today’s world...
Muhammad’s rise to power was a textbook example of a successful insurgency, in all likelihood the first such example in antiquity. The West has been accustomed to thinking of the Arab conquests that followed Muhammad in purely conventional military terms. But the armies that achieved those conquests did not exist in Arabia before Muhammad. It was Muhammad’s successful unconventional guerrilla operations, his successful insurgency, that brought those armies into existence. The later Arab conquests, as regards both strategic concept and the new armies as instruments of military method, were the consequences of Muhammad’s prior military success as the leader of an insurgency...
Once Muhammad had created his cadre of revolutionaries, he established a base from which to conduct military operations against his adversaries. These operations initially took the form of ambushes and raids aimed at isolating Mecca, the enemy’s main city, and other trading towns that opposed him. Only one in six Arabs lived in a city or town at this time; the others resided in the desert, living as pastoral nomads. Muhammad chose Medina as his base of operations because of its strategic location. Medina was close to the main caravan route from Mecca to Syria that constituted the economic lifeline of Mecca and other oases and towns dependent upon the caravan trade for their economic survival. Medina was also sufficiently distant from Mecca to permit Muhammad a relatively free hand in his efforts to convert the bedouin clans living along the caravan route. Muhammad understood that conversions and political alliances with the bedouins, not military engagements with the Meccans, were the keys to success.
Insurgencies require an armed force and the manpower to sustain them. It was from the original small cadre of guerrillas that the larger conventional army could be grown that would ultimately permit the insurgency to engage its enemies in set-piece battles when the time and political conditions were right. Muhammad may have been the first commander in history to understand and implement the doctrine later espoused by General Vo Nguyen Giap of North Vietnam as “people’s war, people’s army.” Muhammad established the belief among his followers that God had commandeered all Muslims’ purposes and property for His efforts and that all Muslims had a responsibility to fight for the faith. Everyone—men, women, and even children—had an obligation for military service in defense of the faith and the ummah that was the community of God’s chosen people on earth. It is essential to understand that the attraction of the Islamic ideology more than anything else produced the manpower that permitted Muhammad’s small revolutionary cadre to evolve into a conventional armed force capable of large-scale engagements...
The leader of an insurgency must take great care to guard his authority from challenges, including those that come from within the movement itself. Muhammad had many enemies, and he was always on guard against an attempt upon his life. Like other leaders, Muhammad surrounded himself with a loyal group of followers who acted as his bodyguard and carried out his orders without question. For this purpose he created the suffah, a small cadre of loyal followers who lived in the mosque next to Muhammad’s house. Recruited from among the most pious, enthusiastic, and fanatical followers, they came from impoverished backgrounds. The suffah members spent much of their time studying Islam. They were devoted to Muhammad and served not only as his life guard but also as a secret police that could be called upon at a moment’s notice to carry out whatever task Muhammad set for them, including assassination and terror...
Insurgencies succeed or fail to the degree that they are able to win the allegiance of great numbers of uncommitted citizens to support the insurgency’s goals. Muhammad understood the role of propaganda and went to great lengths to make his message public and widely known. In a largely illiterate Arab society, the poet served as the major conveyor of political propaganda. Muhammad hired the best poets money could buy to sing his praises and denigrate his opponents. He issued proclamations regarding the revelations he received as the Messenger of God, and remained in public view to keep the vision of the new order and the promise of a heavenly paradise constantly before the public. He also sent missionaries to other clans and tribes to instruct the “pagans” in the new faith, sometimes teaching those groups to read and write in the process. Muhammad understood that the conflict was between the existing social order with its manifest injustices and his vision of the future, and he surpassed his adversaries in spreading his vision to win the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab population.
Terrorism seems to be an indispensable element of a successful insurgency, and it was no less so in Muhammad’s case. He used terrorism in two basic ways: First, he ensured discipline among his followers by making public examples of traitors and backsliders. In Muhammad’s day the penalty for apostasy in Islam was death. He also ordered some of his political enemies assassinated, including poets and singers who had publicly ridiculed him. When his armies marched into Mecca, for example, Muhammad’s suffah set about hunting down a list of old enemies marked for execution. Second, Muhammad used terrorism to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies on a large scale. In the case of the Jewish tribes of Medina, Muhammad seems to have ordered the death of the entire Beni Qaynuqa tribe and the selling of their women and children into slavery, though he was later talked out of it by the chief of one of his allies. On another occasion, again against a Jewish tribe of Medina, he ordered all the tribe’s adult males, some nine hundred, beheaded in the city square, the women and children sold into slavery, and their property distributed among his Muslim followers. Shortly after the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad declared “war to the knife” against all those who remained idolaters, instructing his followers to kill any pagans they encountered on the spot. His ruthlessness and brutality served to strengthen his hand with opponents and allies alike...
Over time the violent origins of religions are forgotten and only the faith itself remains, so the founders of the creeds come to be remembered as untouched by the violence of the historical record. In Muhammad’s case the result has been to deemphasize the military aspects of his life and his considerable military accomplishments as Islam’s first great general and the inventor of the theory and practice of insurgency...
Muhammad transformed the social composition of Arab armies from a collection of clans, tribes, and blood kin loyal only to themselves into a national army loyal to a national social entity, the ummah. The ummah was not a nation or a state in the modern sense, but a body of religious believers under the unified command and governance of Muhammad. The ummah transcended the clans and tribes and permitted Muhammad to forge a common identity, national in scope, among the Arabs for the first time. It was leadership of this national entity that Muhammad claimed, not of any clan or tribe. Loyalty to the ummah permitted the national army to unify the two traditional combat arms of infantry and cavalry into a genuine combined arms force. Bedouins and town dwellers had historically viewed one another with suspicion. Arab infantry had traditionally been drawn from the people living in the towns, settlements, and oases of Arabia. Arab cavalry was traditionally drawn from bedouin clans, whose nomadic warriors excelled at speedy raids, surprise attacks, and elusive retreats, skills honed to a fine edge over generations of raiding.
These two different types of combatants possessed only limited experience in fighting alongside one another. Bound by clan loyalties and living in settlements, Arab infantry was steadfast and cohesive and could usually be relied upon to hold its ground, especially in the defense. Arab cavalry, on the other hand, was unreliable in a battle against infantry, often breaking off the fight to keep their precious mounts from being hurt or make off with whatever booty they had seized. Bedouin cavalry was, however, proficient at reconnaissance, surprise attack, protecting the flanks, and pursuing ill-disciplined infantry. Muhammad was the first Arab commander to successfully join both combat arms into a national army and use them in concert in battle. Thanks to the larger religious community of believers, the ummah, he could combine the two primary elements of traditional Arab society, town dwellers and bedouin tribes, into a single Arab national identity. That change was actually preceded by a shift in the social composition of Arab society...
Traditional Arab warfare emphasized the courageous performance of individual warriors in battle, not the clan’s ability to fight as a unit. The Arab warrior fought for his own honor and social prestige within the kin group, not for the clan per se. One consequence was that Arab armies and the clan units within them did not usually reflect a high degree of combat unit cohesion, the ability of the group to remain intact and fight together under the stress of battle.
Muhammad’s armies, by contrast, were highly cohesive, holding together even when they fought outnumbered or were overrun. The ummah served as a higher locus of the soldier’s loyalty that transcended the clan. Many of Muhammad’s early converts had left their families and clans to follow the Prophet. There were many instances where members of the same clan or even families fought on opposite sides during his early battles. Religion turned out to be a greater source of unit cohesion than blood and clan ties, the obligations of faith replacing and overriding those of tradition and even family. His soldiers cared for each other as brothers, which under the precepts of Islam they were, and quickly gained a reputation for their discipline and ferocity in battle.
Muhammad’s armies demonstrated a higher degree of military motivation than traditional Arab armies. Being a good warrior had always been at the center of Arab values, but Muhammad enhanced the warrior’s status. His soldiers were always guaranteed a share in the booty. It became a common saying among Muslims that “the soldier is not only the noblest and most pleasing profession in the sight of Allah, but also the most profitable.” Muhammad’s soldiers were usually paid better than Persian or Byzantine soldiers.
But better pay was only a small part of the new Islamic warriors’ motivation. One of Muhammad’s most important innovations was convincing his troops that they were doing God’s work on earth. There were of course soldiers of other faiths who fought on religious grounds. But no army before Muhammad’s ever placed religion at the center of military motivation and defined the soldier primarily as an instrument of God’s will on earth. The soldiers of Islam came to see themselves as fighting under God’s instructions. The result, still evident in Islamic societies today, was a soldier who enjoyed much higher social status and respect than soldiers in Western armies.
A central element to an Islamic soldier’s motivation in Muhammad’s day was the idea that death was not something to be feared but rather embraced. Muhammad’s pronouncement that those killed in battle would be welcomed immediately into a paradise of pleasure and eternal life was a powerful inducement to perform well in combat. To die fighting in defense of the faith was to fulfill God’s will and become a martyr...
Once war was harnessed to strategic objectives, it became possible to expand its application to introduce tactical dimensions that were completely new to Arab warfare. Muhammad attacked tribes, towns, and garrisons before they could form hostile coalitions; he isolated his enemies by severing their economic lifelines and disrupting their lines of communication; he was a master at political negotiation, forming alliances with pagan tribes when it served his interests; and he laid siege to cities and towns. He also introduced the new dimension of psychological warfare, employing terror and massacre as means to weaken the will of his enemies. Various texts also mention Muhammad’s use of catapults (manjaniq) and movable covered cars (dabbabah) in siege warfare. Most likely these siege devices were acquired in Yemen, where Persian garrisons had been located on and off over the centuries. Muhammad seems to have been the first Arab commander to use them in the north. Where once Arab warfare had been a completely tactical affair, Muhammad’s introduction of strategic war permitted the use of tactics in the proper manner, as a means to greater strategic ends. War, after all, is never an end in itself. It is, as Clausewitz reminds us, always a method, never a goal...
Muhammad’s transformation of Arab warfare was preceded by a revolution in the way Arabs thought about war, what might be called the moral basis of war. The old chivalric code that limited bloodletting was abandoned and replaced with an ethos less conducive to restraint, the blood feud. Extending that ethos beyond the ties of kin and blood to include members of the new community of Muslim believers inevitably made Arab warfare more encompassing and bloody than it had ever been...
Muhammad’s military legacy is most clearly evident in the modern methodology of insurgency and in the powerful idea of jihad. In the years following his death, Islamic scholars developed an account of the Islamic law of war. This body of law, essentially complete by 850, ultimately rests on two foundations: the example and teaching of Muhammad and the word of God as expressed in the Koran...
According to classical Sunni doctrine, jihad can refer generically to any worthy endeavor, but in Islamic law it means primarily armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates...
Shiites, some ten to fifteen percent of Muslims, subscribe to a somewhat different doctrine of jihad, believing that it can only be waged under the command of the rightful leader of the Muslim community, whom they call imam. Shiites believe that the last imam went into hiding in 874 and that the collective duty to wage expansionist jihad is suspended until his return in the apocalyptic future. But Shiite scholars do affirm a duty to wage defensive jihad against infidel invaders.
Classical Islamic law is less tolerant of non-Muslims. Apostates from Islam, pagans, atheists, agnostics, and pseudo-scriptuaries, that is, members of cults that have appeared since Muhammad’s day: for example, Sikhs, Bahais, Mormons, and Qadianis are only offered the option of conversion to Islam or death.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sunni Islamic modernists began to modify the classical law of war. The Indian Muslim thinker Sayyid Ahmad Khan argued that jihad was obligatory for Muslims only when they were prevented from exercising their faith, thus restricting jihad to defensive purposes. Mahmud Shaltut, an Egyptian scholar, likewise argued only for defensive jihad.
Conservative Sunnis, such as the Wahhabis of Arabia, and modern militant jihadis in Iraq and Pakistan still adhere to the traditional doctrine. It is among these militant conservative Muslims that the military legacy of Muhammad is most alive today.
Richard A. Gabriel, a military historian and adjunct professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, has authored forty-one books. His latest is Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General (Oklahoma University Press, 2007)."
The Sunni-Shiite distinction is interesting, as explicated:
Sunni and Shi’a Terror: A Difference That Matters
"While Sunni terrorists “tend to operate in a continuous, mid to high intensity manner, seeing war against infidels and apostates as a perennial condition,” Shi’a terror, carried out by groups or agents close to the Iranian government featured “discrete terror campaigns tethered to state and organizational objectives.” Lynch provides a detailed summary of Shi’a terrorist operations from the early eighties to the present. Shi’a terror, he concludes, is linked to Iranian-state aims, including most of all—which he mentions several times—“regime survival.” This is not the work of alienated loners trying to commit mass murder for essentially incomprehensible religious/mystical/reasons. It can be understood—and dealt with—as easily as one understands and deals with the Provisional IRA—a comparison Lynch does not make but one which flows logically from his analysis."
Addendum: predominant meaning of jihad, dominant meaning of jihad
See also: Islam, the West and Modernity
Post ID: 1651909627524371427
Links - 11th September 2017 (1)
Why You Hate the Word Moist - "Dr. Thibodeau had three hypotheses on why people aren't into "moist": because of the way the word sounds, its association with gross bodily functions, and by virtue of the fact that everyone else (apparently) hates the word. The results of Dr. Thibodeau's study affirm the latter two hypotheses."
Fukushima cows find new purpose in radiation study - Technology & Science - "So far, the animals' internal organs and reproductive functions have shown no significant abnormality particularly linked to radiation exposure, Okada said, but it's too early to draw conclusions about thyroid cancer and leukemia. Radiation could cause leukemia, but so could mosquitoes, which have infected cattle around the world with bovine leukemia virus"
Asexual lizards do not need sex to keep genetic variation - "these lizards maintain genetic richness by starting the reproductive process with twice the number of chromosomes than sexual lizard species. The researchers found that these species could maintain diversity and form a gamete by pairing their sister chromosomes (the two chromatids from one chromosome), while in sexual species homologous chromosomes from each parent are paired... An interesting aspect to reproduction in these asexual lizards is that mating behavior still occurs even though the populations are all female. One female plays the role of a male and mounts the female that is about to lay eggs. This behaviour is due to hormonal cycles"
Scientists Feed Cows Onions to Make Them Stop Farting So Much Methane - "From the tests, the scientists determined that 25 grams per day was a fine amount of onion extract to feed cows, and that 2 milligrams per kilogram of PTSO was the maximum concentration to avoid making the milk taste like onions"
Why Dragonfly Wings Kill Bacteria
Millions of Muslims March Against the Islamic State? - "On 22 November 2016, the American Herald Tribune web site published an article (which was uncritically aggregated by other sites such as MintPress News under the misleading headline “Media Blackout as Millions of Muslims March Against ISIS in Iraq”). In reality, millions of Muslims did not march against the Islamic State, nor did a “media blackout” result in news agencies’ ignoring such an event."
People who swear more are more honest, new psychology study finds - "Someone who does not filter their language, so swears, is more likely to be saying what they think to be true so are being more honest and genuine from their perspective... Last year, a study suggested it was intelligent people who swear more"
Scientists solve mystery of Scotland's shrinking sheep - "Scientists have now stepped in to solve the conundrum, and fingered the culprit as the new Moriarty of mankind: global warming. The experts say shorter and milder winters mean that lambs do not need to put as much weight on during their first few months of life. Smaller animals that would have perished in harsh winters a few decades ago can now survive to their first birthday. As a result, the average weight of the sheep has dropped by 81g each year."
Also, Bergmann's rule
Shae Williams: History-mad Norwich schoolboy turns bedroom into Admiral Nelson museum - "He is charging £2 for adults, 50p per child and £4 for a family ticket to visit his bedroom and see his collection. His younger brother Kye, six, has been press-ganged as a security guard."
Hide Izumi's answer to What aspect of Japanese culture is hardest for westerners to properly understand? - Quora - "Japan does not like to assign accountability to a single individual. Given the choice, Japanese groups will shy away from designating a single point of accountability. When something goes wrong, everyone takes responsibility - which in reality means no one takes responsibility. The whole troupe that is said to be responsible can all commit Harakiri, but that still does not help in identifying the one guy who was to claim responsibility for what happened."
Antidote for partisanship? In science, curiosity seems to work - "knowledge of science, and curiosity about science, are not the same thing"
Oxford University blasted for 'insulting' decision to allow students to sit exams at home as it implies women are the 'weaker sex' - "From the start of the next academic year, the University’s History Faculty is to change its exam system to replace one of the five final-year exams with a “take-home” paper. The move is designed to boost results for female students at Oxford, who are less likely to get a first-class degree in history than their male peers... "You are saying that the girls can’t take the stress of sitting in the exam room, which does raise one’s anxiety levels. I don’t think girls are inherently weaker than boys and can’t take it. Women are not the weaker sex.” Ms Foreman said the reason why men outperform women in their degrees is because young men are encouraged to be risk takers, while young women particularly at school are encouraged to be conformist. “A first class degree is awarded on basis of whether ideas are fresh and new – risk taking behaviour takes you to that point," she said."
Yet few care that women are more likely to go to university
Gay trio Victor Hugo Prada, Manuel Jose Bermudez and John Alejandro Rodriguez’s modern family recognised in Colombia - "THREE gay men say they have gained legal recognition as the first “polyamorous family” in Colombia, where same-sex marriages were legalised last year."
And the slippery slope was supposed to be a conservative homophobic lie
Durham University handed out books encouraging terrorism - "A university Islamic Society has apologised for handing out booklets written by a preacher saying 'every Muslim should be a terrorist'... The booklet also claims that women should wear hijabs to 'prevent them from being molested'. It also states Western culture has turned women into 'concubines, mistresses, and social butterflies who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers'. It describes a girl wearing a mini-skirt as 'an indirect invitation to the opposite sex for teasing and molestation.'... Naik has previously stated that a man has the 'right' to beat his wife 'gently'. He also says Muslim men have the 'right to sex with their female slaves', and recommends 'death penalty' for homosexuals, who he believes are 'patients suffering from sinful mental problems'. Naik supported Osama Bin Laden, stating 'if he is terrorising America, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. 'Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorising a terrorist, he is following Islam.'"
SUPER WOKE: New 'Call of Duty' Lets You Play as Black Lady Nazis - "The developer wanted to add diversity, by allowing players to customize the character they play in multiplayer. This means, you can change the race and gender of your soldier avatar. When playing, the game randomly places you on a different team, usually Americans or Nazis, so sometimes, you’re gonna get some pretty ahistorical looking Nazis. This might be why the multiplayer was scrubbed of all Swastikas, on army uniforms and in maps of Berlin."
Trendy Moms Are Asking Their Babies Permission to Pick Them Up (So They Don't Turn Into Rapists) - "Enterprising new parents claim to be expanding the boundaries of consent, even though their infants can’t talk and barely understand the world around them. They claim that picking up babies without checking in with them first is an aspect of “rape culture” – and that raising them without involuntary lifting will make sure their sons don’t become rapists in later life."
Mommy Blogger: It's a Microaggression to Ask My Kid to Sit Still In Class - "One teacher assigned her six-year-old daughter homework from a “gigantic math workbook.” That’s a microaggression, Wyles explains, because the teacher is “assuming the kids go home after school and not to after-care.”... Wyles is also unhappy that elementary school teachers line up students in two separate lines, one for boys and one for girls. “But what about kids who don’t identify with their biological sex?” she worries. “Why can’t we make a place for them in the hallway?”... All of this occurs even though Wyles’ children attend an “incredibly diverse public elementary school” that offers five different languages and accommodates first-generation immigrant children. Even in this “inclusive and fair educational oasis,” Wyles worries, “tiny, yet powerful dings in my kids’ confidence affect their feelings about school.”"
Dolce & Gabbana Is Selling #Boycott T-Shirts Amidst Melania Trump Mini-Controversy - "Now the brand is set to release t-shirts making light of the hashtag. There is even a full-fledged social media campaign around the tee that makes use of protest imagery. Except this time no one is there to ease tensions with a soft drink."
Woman 'made up sex attack claims against 15 men and sent innocent man to jail for 7 years' - "She claimed she was attacked at a pub and outside her home, and gang raped in the street. Beale said she was raped by nine men and sexually assaulted by six. All but one were strangers. Beale’s first allegation was against Mahad Cassim, who had given her a lift home after a night out. He was charged with rape and jailed for seven years. But prosecutor John Price QC said: “That was a wrongful conviction. Mahad Cassim was innocent"... Mr Williams yesterday told how Beale had invited him to have sex with her at a party while her girlfriend was downstairs. He said: “I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to feel rejected but I really didn’t find her attractive.”"
Somehow with sexual crimes motive is not a pertinent element
Antifa Member Attacks and Stabs Police Horse in Neck at Pennsylvania Demonstration - "Lisa Simon, an Antifa “counter-protester” of the March, reportedly attacked the horse with a flag pole that had a nail driven into one end in an effort to get the horse to run, causing chaos in the crowd, according to law enforcement. Simon stabbed the horse in the neck with the weapon, but the horse was able to keep composure and continued to work despite his injury. Simon, realizing she had not made headway in her effort, then attempted to obstruct police from moving the crowd along the block where they were working."
A year ago, Loretta Lynch tried editing ISIS out of the Orlando Pulse attack - "Rather than tell the truth, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Orlando's gay community that the FBI didn't know Mateen's real motivation. And when she told grieving families that "we stand with you," Lynch didn't tell them that the Obama administration didn't trust them with the facts about the terrorist that just killed their loved ones. At Lynch's direction, the FBI edited a partial 28-minute transcript of a 911 call, redacting all references to the Islamic State. As a result, grieving families played a tasteless and tragic fill-in-the-blank to learn about the killer."
Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say - "Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency."
The damage is not just limited to college campuses
Anarchist conference descends into chaos
Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim - "the mummified people were “distinct from modern Egyptians, and closer towards Near Eastern and European samples”."
We wuz kangz!
Of course there's a dissenter objecting because of the fear of the implications of the research
Breastfeeding Benefits: The Real, the Imagined, and the Exaggerated - "Observational studies on breastfeeding merit skepticism, because they all suffer from the same major problem: breastfed infants on average differ from formula-fed infants not just in how they are fed in infancy, but in practically every other possible way–maternal education, maternal IQ, poverty, neighborhood safety, exposure to environmental toxins, race, and type and quality of childcare. In scientific terms, breastfeeding is confounded, out the wazoo... Nearly all the alleged long-term benefits are likely the result of confounding, not breastfeeding. Better-designed studies find only a handful of real benefits: a reduced chance of severe gastrointestinal infections and a lower risk of eczema during infancy, and perhaps a small boost in childhood IQ... the apparent benefits of being breastfed vanished when the researchers compared siblings within families... If we as a society truly want to raise children’s IQs, improve behavior, and reduce obesity, our efforts would be better spent addressing systemic problems–providing living wages, paid maternity and paternity leave, and affordable, high- quality childcare–than urging all women to breastfeed.
Most US women won't dine alone with opposite sex, survey suggests - "Many eyebrows were raised when it emerged US Vice-President Mike Pence would not dine alone with a woman who was not his wife. How old fashioned, the internet cried. Only, now it seems he is not alone. A surprise poll for the New York Times has discovered more than half of women agree with him - as well as 45% of men. And as for a drink? Forget about it. Just 29% of women think that would be appropriate in a one-on-one situation."
I suppose condemning everyone else will let the Democrats win the Presidency again
Apple's new MacBook Pro is the first MacBook Consumer Reports won't recommend - "Consumer Reports is the gold standard for reviewing products and methodologies — if they’re picking up such drastic problems with three different systems, it’s a good sign that Apple has a serious problem it either can’t find or doesn’t want to admit."
Goodbye car, hello Grab and Uber - "A personal finance website just came up with a study that showed that taking Uber or Grab rides every day can actually be cheaper than owning a car in Singapore. ValuePenguin found that the cost of owning a car here and using ride-hailing apps daily works out to about the same - $15,000 to $16,000 per year for the average commuter.
Home Office Research Study 293 A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases - "False allegations have been one of the most contested areas within law enforcement responses to rape, with research suggesting rates are no higher than for other crimes sitting alongside perceptions of police officers and the media who take the opposite view. Some of the most frequently cited US studies put the rate as low as two per cent (Katz and Mazur, 1979). There were 216 cases classified as false allegations: as a proportion of all 2,643 cases reported to the police this amounts to 8 per cent"
This is 4 times the rate that feminists like to cite and excludes false reports not proven to be false (e.g. dropouts or acquittals that are due to false reporting), which underreports the problem
FBI — Crime in the United States 1996 - Section II - Crime Index Offenses Reported: "The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime. Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent."
So much for the feminist myth that the rate of false reporting for rape is the same as for other crimes
Fukushima cows find new purpose in radiation study - Technology & Science - "So far, the animals' internal organs and reproductive functions have shown no significant abnormality particularly linked to radiation exposure, Okada said, but it's too early to draw conclusions about thyroid cancer and leukemia. Radiation could cause leukemia, but so could mosquitoes, which have infected cattle around the world with bovine leukemia virus"
Asexual lizards do not need sex to keep genetic variation - "these lizards maintain genetic richness by starting the reproductive process with twice the number of chromosomes than sexual lizard species. The researchers found that these species could maintain diversity and form a gamete by pairing their sister chromosomes (the two chromatids from one chromosome), while in sexual species homologous chromosomes from each parent are paired... An interesting aspect to reproduction in these asexual lizards is that mating behavior still occurs even though the populations are all female. One female plays the role of a male and mounts the female that is about to lay eggs. This behaviour is due to hormonal cycles"
Scientists Feed Cows Onions to Make Them Stop Farting So Much Methane - "From the tests, the scientists determined that 25 grams per day was a fine amount of onion extract to feed cows, and that 2 milligrams per kilogram of PTSO was the maximum concentration to avoid making the milk taste like onions"
Why Dragonfly Wings Kill Bacteria
Millions of Muslims March Against the Islamic State? - "On 22 November 2016, the American Herald Tribune web site published an article (which was uncritically aggregated by other sites such as MintPress News under the misleading headline “Media Blackout as Millions of Muslims March Against ISIS in Iraq”). In reality, millions of Muslims did not march against the Islamic State, nor did a “media blackout” result in news agencies’ ignoring such an event."
People who swear more are more honest, new psychology study finds - "Someone who does not filter their language, so swears, is more likely to be saying what they think to be true so are being more honest and genuine from their perspective... Last year, a study suggested it was intelligent people who swear more"
Scientists solve mystery of Scotland's shrinking sheep - "Scientists have now stepped in to solve the conundrum, and fingered the culprit as the new Moriarty of mankind: global warming. The experts say shorter and milder winters mean that lambs do not need to put as much weight on during their first few months of life. Smaller animals that would have perished in harsh winters a few decades ago can now survive to their first birthday. As a result, the average weight of the sheep has dropped by 81g each year."
Also, Bergmann's rule
Shae Williams: History-mad Norwich schoolboy turns bedroom into Admiral Nelson museum - "He is charging £2 for adults, 50p per child and £4 for a family ticket to visit his bedroom and see his collection. His younger brother Kye, six, has been press-ganged as a security guard."
Hide Izumi's answer to What aspect of Japanese culture is hardest for westerners to properly understand? - Quora - "Japan does not like to assign accountability to a single individual. Given the choice, Japanese groups will shy away from designating a single point of accountability. When something goes wrong, everyone takes responsibility - which in reality means no one takes responsibility. The whole troupe that is said to be responsible can all commit Harakiri, but that still does not help in identifying the one guy who was to claim responsibility for what happened."
Antidote for partisanship? In science, curiosity seems to work - "knowledge of science, and curiosity about science, are not the same thing"
Oxford University blasted for 'insulting' decision to allow students to sit exams at home as it implies women are the 'weaker sex' - "From the start of the next academic year, the University’s History Faculty is to change its exam system to replace one of the five final-year exams with a “take-home” paper. The move is designed to boost results for female students at Oxford, who are less likely to get a first-class degree in history than their male peers... "You are saying that the girls can’t take the stress of sitting in the exam room, which does raise one’s anxiety levels. I don’t think girls are inherently weaker than boys and can’t take it. Women are not the weaker sex.” Ms Foreman said the reason why men outperform women in their degrees is because young men are encouraged to be risk takers, while young women particularly at school are encouraged to be conformist. “A first class degree is awarded on basis of whether ideas are fresh and new – risk taking behaviour takes you to that point," she said."
Yet few care that women are more likely to go to university
Gay trio Victor Hugo Prada, Manuel Jose Bermudez and John Alejandro Rodriguez’s modern family recognised in Colombia - "THREE gay men say they have gained legal recognition as the first “polyamorous family” in Colombia, where same-sex marriages were legalised last year."
And the slippery slope was supposed to be a conservative homophobic lie
Durham University handed out books encouraging terrorism - "A university Islamic Society has apologised for handing out booklets written by a preacher saying 'every Muslim should be a terrorist'... The booklet also claims that women should wear hijabs to 'prevent them from being molested'. It also states Western culture has turned women into 'concubines, mistresses, and social butterflies who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers'. It describes a girl wearing a mini-skirt as 'an indirect invitation to the opposite sex for teasing and molestation.'... Naik has previously stated that a man has the 'right' to beat his wife 'gently'. He also says Muslim men have the 'right to sex with their female slaves', and recommends 'death penalty' for homosexuals, who he believes are 'patients suffering from sinful mental problems'. Naik supported Osama Bin Laden, stating 'if he is terrorising America, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. 'Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorising a terrorist, he is following Islam.'"
SUPER WOKE: New 'Call of Duty' Lets You Play as Black Lady Nazis - "The developer wanted to add diversity, by allowing players to customize the character they play in multiplayer. This means, you can change the race and gender of your soldier avatar. When playing, the game randomly places you on a different team, usually Americans or Nazis, so sometimes, you’re gonna get some pretty ahistorical looking Nazis. This might be why the multiplayer was scrubbed of all Swastikas, on army uniforms and in maps of Berlin."
Trendy Moms Are Asking Their Babies Permission to Pick Them Up (So They Don't Turn Into Rapists) - "Enterprising new parents claim to be expanding the boundaries of consent, even though their infants can’t talk and barely understand the world around them. They claim that picking up babies without checking in with them first is an aspect of “rape culture” – and that raising them without involuntary lifting will make sure their sons don’t become rapists in later life."
Mommy Blogger: It's a Microaggression to Ask My Kid to Sit Still In Class - "One teacher assigned her six-year-old daughter homework from a “gigantic math workbook.” That’s a microaggression, Wyles explains, because the teacher is “assuming the kids go home after school and not to after-care.”... Wyles is also unhappy that elementary school teachers line up students in two separate lines, one for boys and one for girls. “But what about kids who don’t identify with their biological sex?” she worries. “Why can’t we make a place for them in the hallway?”... All of this occurs even though Wyles’ children attend an “incredibly diverse public elementary school” that offers five different languages and accommodates first-generation immigrant children. Even in this “inclusive and fair educational oasis,” Wyles worries, “tiny, yet powerful dings in my kids’ confidence affect their feelings about school.”"
Dolce & Gabbana Is Selling #Boycott T-Shirts Amidst Melania Trump Mini-Controversy - "Now the brand is set to release t-shirts making light of the hashtag. There is even a full-fledged social media campaign around the tee that makes use of protest imagery. Except this time no one is there to ease tensions with a soft drink."
Woman 'made up sex attack claims against 15 men and sent innocent man to jail for 7 years' - "She claimed she was attacked at a pub and outside her home, and gang raped in the street. Beale said she was raped by nine men and sexually assaulted by six. All but one were strangers. Beale’s first allegation was against Mahad Cassim, who had given her a lift home after a night out. He was charged with rape and jailed for seven years. But prosecutor John Price QC said: “That was a wrongful conviction. Mahad Cassim was innocent"... Mr Williams yesterday told how Beale had invited him to have sex with her at a party while her girlfriend was downstairs. He said: “I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to feel rejected but I really didn’t find her attractive.”"
Somehow with sexual crimes motive is not a pertinent element
Antifa Member Attacks and Stabs Police Horse in Neck at Pennsylvania Demonstration - "Lisa Simon, an Antifa “counter-protester” of the March, reportedly attacked the horse with a flag pole that had a nail driven into one end in an effort to get the horse to run, causing chaos in the crowd, according to law enforcement. Simon stabbed the horse in the neck with the weapon, but the horse was able to keep composure and continued to work despite his injury. Simon, realizing she had not made headway in her effort, then attempted to obstruct police from moving the crowd along the block where they were working."
A year ago, Loretta Lynch tried editing ISIS out of the Orlando Pulse attack - "Rather than tell the truth, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Orlando's gay community that the FBI didn't know Mateen's real motivation. And when she told grieving families that "we stand with you," Lynch didn't tell them that the Obama administration didn't trust them with the facts about the terrorist that just killed their loved ones. At Lynch's direction, the FBI edited a partial 28-minute transcript of a 911 call, redacting all references to the Islamic State. As a result, grieving families played a tasteless and tragic fill-in-the-blank to learn about the killer."
Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say - "Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency."
The damage is not just limited to college campuses
Anarchist conference descends into chaos
Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim - "the mummified people were “distinct from modern Egyptians, and closer towards Near Eastern and European samples”."
We wuz kangz!
Of course there's a dissenter objecting because of the fear of the implications of the research
Breastfeeding Benefits: The Real, the Imagined, and the Exaggerated - "Observational studies on breastfeeding merit skepticism, because they all suffer from the same major problem: breastfed infants on average differ from formula-fed infants not just in how they are fed in infancy, but in practically every other possible way–maternal education, maternal IQ, poverty, neighborhood safety, exposure to environmental toxins, race, and type and quality of childcare. In scientific terms, breastfeeding is confounded, out the wazoo... Nearly all the alleged long-term benefits are likely the result of confounding, not breastfeeding. Better-designed studies find only a handful of real benefits: a reduced chance of severe gastrointestinal infections and a lower risk of eczema during infancy, and perhaps a small boost in childhood IQ... the apparent benefits of being breastfed vanished when the researchers compared siblings within families... If we as a society truly want to raise children’s IQs, improve behavior, and reduce obesity, our efforts would be better spent addressing systemic problems–providing living wages, paid maternity and paternity leave, and affordable, high- quality childcare–than urging all women to breastfeed.
Most US women won't dine alone with opposite sex, survey suggests - "Many eyebrows were raised when it emerged US Vice-President Mike Pence would not dine alone with a woman who was not his wife. How old fashioned, the internet cried. Only, now it seems he is not alone. A surprise poll for the New York Times has discovered more than half of women agree with him - as well as 45% of men. And as for a drink? Forget about it. Just 29% of women think that would be appropriate in a one-on-one situation."
I suppose condemning everyone else will let the Democrats win the Presidency again
Apple's new MacBook Pro is the first MacBook Consumer Reports won't recommend - "Consumer Reports is the gold standard for reviewing products and methodologies — if they’re picking up such drastic problems with three different systems, it’s a good sign that Apple has a serious problem it either can’t find or doesn’t want to admit."
Goodbye car, hello Grab and Uber - "A personal finance website just came up with a study that showed that taking Uber or Grab rides every day can actually be cheaper than owning a car in Singapore. ValuePenguin found that the cost of owning a car here and using ride-hailing apps daily works out to about the same - $15,000 to $16,000 per year for the average commuter.
Home Office Research Study 293 A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases - "False allegations have been one of the most contested areas within law enforcement responses to rape, with research suggesting rates are no higher than for other crimes sitting alongside perceptions of police officers and the media who take the opposite view. Some of the most frequently cited US studies put the rate as low as two per cent (Katz and Mazur, 1979). There were 216 cases classified as false allegations: as a proportion of all 2,643 cases reported to the police this amounts to 8 per cent"
This is 4 times the rate that feminists like to cite and excludes false reports not proven to be false (e.g. dropouts or acquittals that are due to false reporting), which underreports the problem
FBI — Crime in the United States 1996 - Section II - Crime Index Offenses Reported: "The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime. Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent."
So much for the feminist myth that the rate of false reporting for rape is the same as for other crimes
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