For some reason, many people get very excited over the subject of spanking (children), and go on long diatribes about how bad it is, how traumatic it is to children and how parents who do it are bad.
I suspect there is some deeper motivation behind the excitement. Maybe many people of a more liberal bent just don't like to see kids being spanked.
Yet, as we know, visceral dislike of something doesn't make it bad.
Anyway, here is a consolidation of past featured material on spanking, about omitted variable bias and some contrary research that actually finds that spanking is good:
What Science Says--and Doesn't--about Spanking - "Ferguson did try to control for the effects of preexisting child behavior in a 2013 meta-analysis he published of the longitudinal studies on this issue; when he did, “spanking’s effects became trivial,” he says. As a further demonstration of the importance of careful statistical controls, Robert Larzelere, a psychologist at Oklahoma State University, and his colleagues reported in a 2010 study that grounding and psychotherapy are linked just as strongly to bad behavior as spanking is but that all the associations disappear with the use of careful statistical controls. It makes sense that disciplinary tactics used as responses to bad behavior will be associated with such behavior, Larzelere says, unless care is taken to control for children’s preexisting characteristics and temperaments."
Some Kids Are Never Spanked - Do They Turn Out Better? - "In NurtureShock, we described some extensive cross-ethnic and international research on spanking by Drs. Jennifer Lansford and Ken Dodge. Their data suggested that if a culture views spanking as the normal consequence for bad behavior, kids aren’t damaged by its occasional use... are kids who’ve never been spanked any better off, long term?Gunnoe’s summary is blunt: “I didn’t find that in my data.”... those who’d been spanked just when they were young—ages 2 to 6—were doing a little better as teenagers than those who’d never been spanked. On almost every measure... children of progressive dads were acting out more in school... perhaps the consistency of discipline is more important than the form of discipline. In other words, spanking regularly isn’t the problem; the problem is having no regular form of discipline at all."
Why parenting may not matter and why most social science research is probably wrong - "Children who are spanked (not abused, but spanked) often experience a host of other problems in life, including psychological maladjustment and behavioral problems. In a study led by my colleague J.C. Barnes, we probed this issue in more detail and found some evidence suggesting that spanking increased the occurrence of overt bad behavior in children. We could have stopped there. Yet, we went one step further and attempted to inspect the genetic influences... much of the association between the two variables (spanking and behavior) was attributable to genetic effects that they had in common. The correlation between spanking and behavior appeared to reflect the presence of shared genetic influences cutting across both traits"
And some new material:
Research on Disciplinary Spanking is Misleading | American College of Pediatricians
"most research against spanking uses methods so flawed that such studies would be rejected if they were being used to halt a medical procedure, such as chemotherapy for combating cancer. The anti-spanking research suffers from three major fallacies or defects that invalidate its conclusions. These flaws are evident in a recent summary of research on spanking by Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff and her colleague, Dr. Andrew Grogan-Kaylor...
The first step in assessing the effectiveness of an intervention, whether a medical intervention against a disease or a disciplinary action to correct behavior, is to ensure the intervention is both well-defined and appropriately implemented... only four of the 75 studies in the latest Gershoff overview ensured that spanking was used appropriately, and those four studies actually found disciplinary spanking to be at least as effective as the three alternatives with which it was compared. In contrast, all the evidence against spanking came from the other 71 studies which suffer from three major fallacies, any one of which would be a fatal flaw in medical research. Let’s examine each of them in turn.
The correlational fallacy: Correlations, or associations between two variables, do not prove causation. Correlations are especially misleading when evaluating actions chosen to correct disciplinary or medical problems, called corrective actions.
The extrapolation fallacy: Even if infrequent spanking is correlated with better outcomes than overly frequent spanking, that does not prove that zero spanking is best.
The lumping fallacy: Only 4 of their 75 studies were limited to two open-handed swats to the buttocks for child defiance. The other 71 studies lumped together all “spanking” regardless of how it was implemented and why it was used...
most of their evidence is based on “cross-sectional” correlations, i.e. correlations between disciplinary spanking and child behaviors during the same time period, regardless which occurred first... This is the kind of flawed correlational evidence contained in 55% of the studies that Drs. Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor considered relevant for their meta-analysis... However, one must ask which came first, the spanking or the aggressive behavior? Did the aggression occur first and elicit more spanking from the parents, or did the spanking occur before the aggression? One cannot tell from cross-sectional correlations.
Now consider their strongest evidence against spanking: the 21% of their studies that were longitudinal and documented that spanking preceded the child’s aggressive behavior. Correlations indicate that children who were spanked tended to be more aggressive at school the following year when compared to children who had not been spanked. Is this sufficient evidence to oppose this corrective disciplinary action by parents? Again, the answer is no. The medical field would not be impressed by the fact that patients who received chemotherapy last year are now more likely to still be battling cancer than people who had never had cancer. Medical doctors would ignore such longitudinal correlations unless the research (1) compared patients who had the same severity of cancer to start with, and (2) showed that another treatment was more effective than the selected chemotherapy. Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor’s meta-analysis did neither. Even their strongest correlations could be explained by the possibility that children who were more defiant caused their parents to try all their disciplinary tactics more often, including but not limited to spanking... By limiting their meta-analysis to correlations, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor ignored evidence from studies that took pre-existing child differences into account, such as the crucial fact that some children are more defiant than others. A better meta-analysis in 2013 included 45 longitudinal studies, with 25 taking pre-existing child differences into account with statistical adjustments. This analysis concluded that “the impact of spanking . . . on the negative outcomes . . . are minimal”...
Incredibly, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor have failed to find any disciplinary response that is linked to reductions in children’s behavior problems, despite investigating eight other disciplinary responses in a large international study. That is because their reliance on correlations makes all corrective actions look harmful or ineffective, just as it would all cancer treatments...
If low-dose chemotherapy against cancer is associated with better outcomes than high-dose chemotherapy against the same cancer, is it correct to extrapolate that no chemotherapy will yield even better results for the patient than low-dose chemotherapy? Of course not! Yet, this is precisely the kind of flawed reasoning Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor use in their anti-spanking research. The meta-analysis recommended that parents never use spanking despite including only one study that actually compared a never-spanked group to a spanked group. Moreover, that one study suggested a beneficial outcome in that American soldiers who recalled being spanked as children had lower rates of drug abuse than those who did not recall being spanked. Thus, not only is their no-spanking recommendation an extrapolation based upon a comparison of infrequently spanked children versus those spanked too frequently, but it is also contradicted by the only directly relevant study included in the analysis.
Other studies of never-spanked children do exist, but they were not included in this latest meta-analysis. For example, one retrospective study found slightly better adolescent outcomes for those whose spanking was phased out before age 12 compared to adolescents who were never spanked, replicating similar prospective results by a leading spanking-ban advocate...
Two other meta-analyses published since Gershoff’s2 initial meta-analysis have gone beyond correlational evidence to obtain stronger causal evidence of the effects of spanking. One concluded that any adverse effects of spanking were “trivial,” whereas the other found that child outcomes of physical punishment were worse than outcomes of other disciplinary responses only when it was used too severely or as the main disciplinary response. The latter meta-analysis also identified an optimal type of back-up spanking, which led to less defiance or aggression than 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary tactics and was just as effective as the remaining three tactics studied. Back-up spanking is used non-abusively when a child refuses to comply with milder disciplinary techniques, such as time out (based mostly on research with 2- to 6-year-olds). Back-up spanking teaches a defiant child to cooperate with the milder disciplinary technique, thereby making spanking less necessary in the future...
This matter of misrepresenting the science on the effects of spanking in children is significant in that it is being used to influence legislators worldwide to ban spanking by parents... Remarkably, there is no objective evidence that any of these bans have curbed child abuse or teen violence as intended. In fact, there is more evidence that the incidence of each has increased following these bans, especially in countries that enforce them more vigorously"
Cited paper on spanking bans increasing violence:
Swedish Trends in Criminal Assaults against Minors since Banning Spanking, 1981-2010
"Compared to 1981, criminal statistics in 2010 included about 22 times as many cases of physical child abuse, 24 times as many assaults by minors against minors, and 73 times as many rapes of minors under the age of 15. Although the first cohort born after the spanking ban showed a smaller percentage increase in perpetrating assaults against minors than other age cohorts, those born since the spanking ban had almost a 12-fold increase in perpetrations altogether, compared to a 7-fold increase for older age cohorts. Although some increases might reflect changes in reporting practices, their magnitude and consistency suggest that part of these increases are real. Recent increases may be due to expanding proscriptions against nonphysical disciplinary consequences. Future research needs to identify effective alternative disciplinary consequences to replace spanking. Otherwise, proscriptions against an expanding range of disciplinary consequences may undermine the kind of appropriate parental authority that can facilitate the development of impulse control in oppositional children and appropriate respect for others, especially the physically vulnerable."
Is it harmful to smack your child?
"I have replicated this strongest type of evidence against customary use of spanking and found very similar evidence against everything else that parents use to try to reduce oppositional defiance in young children, including privilege removal, grounding, sending children to their room, docking their allowance, and getting professional help (child psychotherapy or Ritalin)...
Getting professional help in the form of psychotherapy or Ritalin also appears to be just as harmful as customary spanking. In other words, when using the same statistical methods that provide the strongest causal evidence against customary spanking, Ritalin appears to be just as harmful as spanking. This shows additional evidence that the superficially harmful outcomes of spanking are due to the remaining poor prognosis of children whose behavior causes parents to use every kind of discipline more, rather than being due to any harmful effect of spanking...
Interestingly, one of the leading anti-spanking advocates also published a recent study showing that spanking did not have any adverse effects if parents were no longer spanking at age 9, and such phased-out spanking was associated with better outcomes in conservative Protestant families, apparently because it was more likely to be perceived as appropriate parental discipline rather than evidence of parental rejection.
There is, however, an alarming amount of child physical abuse in some quarters of society. Isn’t it worth banning physical discipline altogether for the sake of children vulnerable to real abuse? Aren’t alternatives like time out and withdrawal of privileges enough for good parents?
This is the main rationale for spanking bans, using the same logic that was used for the Prohibition Amendment in the United States a century ago. Unfortunately most evidence indicates that enforced spanking bans lead to increases in physical child abuse as well as other forms of violence as children grow up without effective discipline...
A five-nation comparison in Europe found that some kinds of verbal and physical violence are higher in countries that have banned spanking compared to those who had not banned spanking. For example, 79% of intimate partners say that they insult their partners in Sweden, compared to 36% in countries without spanking bans. A surprising 34% of partners get tackled or hit in Sweden compared to 18% in countries without spanking bans...
There was a similar finding for how they were disciplined as children. Those receiving mild spanking but not severe physical punishment were less likely to use severe physical punishment with their children. This supports a speculation we made in 1999 that mild spanking can serve to bring a frustrating discipline episode to a conclusion before parents get so frustrated that they erupt by hitting the child harder than they otherwise would...
One of my mentors, Dr. Gerald Patterson started by trying to reinforce (reward) children for good behavior, assuming that their behavior would improve with that method alone. He still supports reinforcing good behavior, but said in his major book, Coercive Family Process, in 1982: “If I were allowed to select only one concept to use in training parents of antisocial children, I would teach them how to punish more effectively. It is the key to understanding familial aggression” ( p. 111). By that, he meant timeout, because he personally opposed spanking.
All the other gurus of behavioral parent training -- the primary psychosocial treatment supported for ADHD In the guidelines of clinical child psychologists, pediatricians, and child psychiatrists -- also used timeout, but they recommended a two-swat spanking to enforce cooperation with staying on the timeout chair -- until spanking fell into disfavour in the 1990’s.
So parents should prefer the mildest disciplinary response that can get acceptable cooperation from children. But children need to learn that persistent defiance in response to milder responses will not let them get their way. In such cases non-abusive spanking can be a very effective enforcement of milder disciplinary responses, which is why most behavioral parent training protocols recommended that from the late 1960’s, when they were developed, to the mid-1990’s. By then the gurus could no longer get research funding if they continued using the spank backup (but they never found anything more effective).
And what about children's dignity and rights?
As children grow up, they develop rights and responsibilities together. We require many things of children that are not required of adults (vaccinations, school attendance). A balance of love and limits, which is called authoritative parenting, has been shown to be optimal for children to achieve their potential. The polarized extremes of authoritarian parenting (limits without love) and overly permissive parenting (love without limits) fall way behind in developing their potential competencies across a range of outcomes.
The argument that children should not be subject to negative disciplinary consequences that would be unacceptable for adults is an argument against most negative disciplinary consequence, including timeout, grounding, etc. To maximize their potential, children need both love and limits when they are young, so they don’t need to learn lessons about cooperating with people around them when they are older and the negative consequences are worse and longer lasting."
Addendum: For those who don't like the American College of Pediatricians, here're more of the cited papers:
Spanking, corporal punishment and negative long-term outcomes: a meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.
"the impact of spanking and CP on the negative outcomes evaluated here (externalizing, internalizing behaviors and low cognitive performance) are minimal. It is advised that psychologists take a more nuanced approach in discussing the effects of spanking/CP with the general public, consistent with the size as well as the significance of their longitudinal associations with adverse outcomes."
Published in Clin Psychol Rev - IF 8.897 (Note that "0nly 213 journal titles, or 2% of the journals tracked by JCR, have a 2016 impact factor of 10 or higher")
Comparing child outcomes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics: a meta-analysis.
"effect sizes significantly favored conditional spanking over 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary tactics for reducing child noncompliance or antisocial behavior"
Published in Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev, IF 4.171
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Monday, November 05, 2018
Links - 5th November 2018 (2)
Evidence of education as a signal - "Under signaling, an increase in the minimum school-leaving age implies also an increase in the number of years of education chosen by individuals not affected by the new requirement. In contrast, under the human capital model, this should not be the case. Using data from the years where this natural experiment took place in de USA between 1910 and 1970, Lang and Kropp show that there is in effect evidence for the signaling hypothesis... Within the standard human capital model, local universities provide lower-cost postsecondary alternatives and consequently increase university enrollment, but, within the signaling model, they might also increase the high school dropout rate. This is because if it becomes easier for students to go to college, and high ability students go in a higher proportion, then the average skill of individuals with only a high school degree is reduced, and thus the incentive to obtain this degree is diminished for those not pursuing college education, and dropouts increase. Following this, Bedard studies the effects of the presence of local universities in high school dropouts and finds that the prediction is supported by the data. In particular, the percentage increase in high school dropouts is at least 33 percent of the percentage increase in university enrollment, something we should not see under the alternative hypotheses... The self-employed, especially those who do not need to signal to customers, is the sector where signaling should not be an issue, as opposed to the sector of the employed, where employers may demand a signal, and of self-employed, like lawyers or medical doctors, where it is the customers who may demand the signal. The authors test directly for the differences in returns correcting for possible underlying causes of self-employment. In summary, they find substantially smaller returns to self-employed for secondary education, vocational education and university and suggest this is indicative of the role of education as a signal."
When young men play the victim – and then take the lives of others - "Jihadist groups such as the Islamic State, for instance, promote a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam by convincing young Muslims (who are often recent religious converts) they are unhappy because Europe and North America are prejudiced, hateful places for Muslims. Far-right extremists and neo-Nazis similarly tell young white men that life is difficult because immigrants and diversity advocates are turning the West into a prejudiced, hateful place for whites. Other ideologies that encourage violence, such as the inner-city gangster subculture responsible for many of Toronto’s 17 other homicide victims this year, similarly teach victimhood. Young men learn that being a gangster is acceptable if you’re poor or you need money you can’t easily get elsewhere. These gangsters are taught to think they’re victims of others’ immorality and as victims, they can justify being immoral in return, which is why so much gun violence is retaliatory. Self-victimization has grown far beyond extremist groups or gangs... We can’t stop every young man from being angry, but we can compete to influence him to do something positive and constructive with that anger."
Nova Scotia judge who said ‘a drunk can consent’ cleared of misconduct over sexual-assault ruling - "Saying that it is important to protect the judiciary from “mob justice,” a committee has cleared a judge of misconduct over a sexual-assault ruling that drew street protests, a 37,000-signature petition and 121 formal complaints to the Nova Scotia Judicial Council. Provincial Court Justice Gregory Lenehan acquitted a Halifax taxi driver last year of sexual assault involving an intoxicated female passenger. Police had found the woman partly naked and passed out, with the taxi driver holding her urine-stained underwear. Justice Lenehan, in an oral ruling, said, “clearly, a drunk can consent,” and explained that he had no direct evidence on whether the passenger had consented to sexual activity... Justice Lenehan had shown no gender bias, the committee said, and was accurate in his statement that inebriated people may still be able to consent to sex under Canadian law."
FACTSHEET: Statistics on farm attacks and murders in South Africa
Multiple sources show that the attacks have been steadily increasing for years
Stella Creasy’s war on thoughtcrime - "Creasy wants to make things worse by making misogyny a punishable motivation to a crime. There are so many problems with this. How would we know the suspect was motivated by misogyny? What if he is just a pervert? If he really hates women and wants to take pictures of their knickers, does that make him worse than a knicker-obsessive who really loves women? Does it hurt more if you are punched by a man who hates women than if you are punched by one who is just drunk?... data from Nottinghamshire (where the treatment of misogyny as a hate crime was trialled two years ago) showed that levels of street harassment are negligible"
Arabisation and the threat to Singapore culture - "A segment of the community is relegating its own culture and heritage while opting for Arabic culture and lifestyle. Malays are evidently more comfortable wearing Arabic-style garments compared to their traditional baju Melayu... Arabic phrases are preferred by some over their Malay equivalents: For example, hijab to replace tudung (headscarf), Eidul Fitri rather than hari raya (a day of celebration after the fasting month of Ramadan), and syukran instead of terima kasih (thank you)... there are some who view Malay music, dress, dance, and arts as not conforming to Islam, by which they are referring to its Arabised form."
Misogynist conversations women have all the time - "“I could never stay at home with kids. It’s too boring.”
“You’re so smart, you can do anything!”
“I’ve never fit in with other women.”
Women having an opinion = misogyny
The misogyny of #MeToo - "Forget those tragic internet threads inhabited by men whose fury with women is one part concern about feminism and nine parts because they’ve never had sex; look, instead, at the thoroughly mainstream, celebrity-endorsed #MeToo movement whose fear of men is easily matched – outdone now, in fact – by its seething contempt for women who think for themselves... [Katie] Roiphe has been so publicly shamed, and ideally silenced, by women who claim they want women’s voices to be heard. But not Roiphe’s voice, it seems; not that bitch; shut her down. The outpouring of hatred for Roiphe has been astonishing, even by the low standards of Twitter debate and 21st-century virtual intolerance. Guardian feminist Jessica Valenti swiftly did to Roiphe what she accuses men of doing to female journalists: tried to silence her... Sady Doyle, a writer for Elle, branded Roiphe ‘pro-rape’, which really just means evil, witch-like. A writer for feminist mag Bustle wondered if ‘Katie Roiphe’ is a ‘pseudonym shared by a group of 65-year-old men’, because any woman who disagrees with us correct feminists must be a man really, right? Just as any black person who votes Republican or Conservative is a ‘coconut’... Roiphe, you see – like any other woman who criticises the new victim feminism – suffers from ‘internalised misogyny’. This deeply patronising idea holds that women do not really know their own minds and are easy prey to the allegedly misogynistic culture that surrounds them... the B-movie actress Blanca Blanco got in trouble for daring to wear a red dress to the all-black fashion and virtue-signalling shitshow that was the Golden Globes. How dare women wear what they want? Or express their opinions?... We are now starting to see that #MeToo is not a pro-woman movement at all. It is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion"
Aman Ali - "as if it was some kind of Pavlovian reflex, I grabbed him by his shirt and came inches away from punching him in the face so hard that I probably would have altered the structure of his face. The only thing that stopped me milliseconds before doing it was the look he gave me. He had a smug smile on his face as if he was telling me "Yep, I knew it." I froze when I saw that smile. I knew I had lost this argument because I essentially reinforced everything he believed that I was trying so hard to passionately counter... What if I was the only exposure to Muslims he ever had? What if that's the opinion he carries about Muslims for the rest of his life? What if he goes around at dinner parties and tells others "Those Moslems, man. I had a class with a Moslem once and the dude tried to punch me for no reason at all." And in unison, everyone at the party would go "Yep, I knew it.""
Trump upgrades Martin Luther King birthplace to national historic park
What a failure of a white supremacist
Trump Nominates First Female African-American Marine General
The case of the purloined poultry: How ISIS prosecuted petty crime - "In a terrorist version of the "broken window" school of policing, the Islamic State aggressively prosecuted minor crimes in the communities it took over, winning points with residents who were used to having to pay bribes to secure police help... Even residents who suffered abuses at the hands of the militants gave them points for their policing, saying that for nonreligious disputes, they were not only fair but also willing to wade into problems that might have been brushed off by most authorities."
The European Union: To leave or not to leave? - "One of the strengths of the Continent has been its diversity. The separate experiences of Europe’s countries have acted as inspirations and warnings to others... The history of multinational ventures in Europe is not a good one. Over 400 years, the Habsburg Empire was unable to cement a workable enterprise. It only held together in the 19th century by striking bargains between the various national groups and by keeping them all, in the words of one Austrian prime minister, ‘in a condition of even and well-modulated discontent’. It is the same in the EU today... A political union will prosper only if its peoples feel a common sense of belonging that makes them willing to make sacrifices for one another. This is lacking in the EU"
Online Bettors Know If Psychology Studies Will Replicate - "scientists seem to be remarkably good at predicting which studies in psychology and other social sciences will replicate, and which will not?... “If researchers can anticipate which findings will replicate, or fail to, it makes it harder to sustain dismissive claims about the replications or the replicators”... several of the studies that didn’t replicate have another quality in common: newsworthiness. They reported cute, attention-grabbing, whoa-if-true results that conform to the biases of at least some parts of society. One purportedly showed that reading literary fiction improves our ability to understand other people’s beliefs and desires. Another said that thinking analytically weakens belief in religion. Yet another said that people who think about computers are worse at recalling old information—a phenomenon that the authors billed as “the Google effect.” All of these were widely covered in the media."
Harvard and M.I.T. Are Sued Over Lack of Closed Captions - The New York Times - "Advocates for the deaf on Thursday filed federal lawsuits against Harvard and M.I.T., saying both universities violated antidiscrimination laws by failing to provide closed captioning in their online lectures, courses, podcasts and other educational materials. “Much of Harvard’s online content is either not captioned or is inaccurately or unintelligibly captioned, making it inaccessible for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing,” the complaint said, echoing language used in the M.I.T. complaint. “Just as buildings without ramps bar people who use wheelchairs, online content without captions excludes individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.”... Harvard and M.I.T. had been leaders in putting university content online"
This is why we can't have nice things; the perfect is the enemy of the good
UC Berkeley Removing Public Course Content Over Accessibility Costs - "video and audio recordings of entire courses that used to be open to global, public consumption for free are now gated by login info only supplied to the official students, faculty, and staff of UC Berkeley."
Woman, 43, who kidnapped a teenage girl and drove her to a flat where she was raped is spared jail - "A woman who kidnapped a teenage girl before she was raped in a flat has avoided jail after a judge said it would be 'unfair' to send her to prison."
Male privilege!
WEF: Machines are going to perform more tasks than humans by 2025 - "Developments in automation technologies and artificial intelligence could see 75 million jobs displaced, according to the WEF report "The Future of Jobs 2018." However, another 133 million new roles may emerge as companies shake up their division of labor between humans and machines, translating to 58 million net new jobs being created by 2022, it said... An analysis from global audit firm PwC also made similar predictions"
Pamela Anderson declares herself an ‘anti-feminist’ - "the 49-year-old discussed her concerns over gender roles as people become more 'androgynous'... 'I obviously believe in treating people equally, but men and women are different for a reason, with very important roles to play,' she explained. Pamela also claimed she worries the 'world will forget how to make love'."
When young men play the victim – and then take the lives of others - "Jihadist groups such as the Islamic State, for instance, promote a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam by convincing young Muslims (who are often recent religious converts) they are unhappy because Europe and North America are prejudiced, hateful places for Muslims. Far-right extremists and neo-Nazis similarly tell young white men that life is difficult because immigrants and diversity advocates are turning the West into a prejudiced, hateful place for whites. Other ideologies that encourage violence, such as the inner-city gangster subculture responsible for many of Toronto’s 17 other homicide victims this year, similarly teach victimhood. Young men learn that being a gangster is acceptable if you’re poor or you need money you can’t easily get elsewhere. These gangsters are taught to think they’re victims of others’ immorality and as victims, they can justify being immoral in return, which is why so much gun violence is retaliatory. Self-victimization has grown far beyond extremist groups or gangs... We can’t stop every young man from being angry, but we can compete to influence him to do something positive and constructive with that anger."
Nova Scotia judge who said ‘a drunk can consent’ cleared of misconduct over sexual-assault ruling - "Saying that it is important to protect the judiciary from “mob justice,” a committee has cleared a judge of misconduct over a sexual-assault ruling that drew street protests, a 37,000-signature petition and 121 formal complaints to the Nova Scotia Judicial Council. Provincial Court Justice Gregory Lenehan acquitted a Halifax taxi driver last year of sexual assault involving an intoxicated female passenger. Police had found the woman partly naked and passed out, with the taxi driver holding her urine-stained underwear. Justice Lenehan, in an oral ruling, said, “clearly, a drunk can consent,” and explained that he had no direct evidence on whether the passenger had consented to sexual activity... Justice Lenehan had shown no gender bias, the committee said, and was accurate in his statement that inebriated people may still be able to consent to sex under Canadian law."
FACTSHEET: Statistics on farm attacks and murders in South Africa
Multiple sources show that the attacks have been steadily increasing for years
Stella Creasy’s war on thoughtcrime - "Creasy wants to make things worse by making misogyny a punishable motivation to a crime. There are so many problems with this. How would we know the suspect was motivated by misogyny? What if he is just a pervert? If he really hates women and wants to take pictures of their knickers, does that make him worse than a knicker-obsessive who really loves women? Does it hurt more if you are punched by a man who hates women than if you are punched by one who is just drunk?... data from Nottinghamshire (where the treatment of misogyny as a hate crime was trialled two years ago) showed that levels of street harassment are negligible"
Arabisation and the threat to Singapore culture - "A segment of the community is relegating its own culture and heritage while opting for Arabic culture and lifestyle. Malays are evidently more comfortable wearing Arabic-style garments compared to their traditional baju Melayu... Arabic phrases are preferred by some over their Malay equivalents: For example, hijab to replace tudung (headscarf), Eidul Fitri rather than hari raya (a day of celebration after the fasting month of Ramadan), and syukran instead of terima kasih (thank you)... there are some who view Malay music, dress, dance, and arts as not conforming to Islam, by which they are referring to its Arabised form."
Misogynist conversations women have all the time - "“I could never stay at home with kids. It’s too boring.”
“You’re so smart, you can do anything!”
“I’ve never fit in with other women.”
Women having an opinion = misogyny
The misogyny of #MeToo - "Forget those tragic internet threads inhabited by men whose fury with women is one part concern about feminism and nine parts because they’ve never had sex; look, instead, at the thoroughly mainstream, celebrity-endorsed #MeToo movement whose fear of men is easily matched – outdone now, in fact – by its seething contempt for women who think for themselves... [Katie] Roiphe has been so publicly shamed, and ideally silenced, by women who claim they want women’s voices to be heard. But not Roiphe’s voice, it seems; not that bitch; shut her down. The outpouring of hatred for Roiphe has been astonishing, even by the low standards of Twitter debate and 21st-century virtual intolerance. Guardian feminist Jessica Valenti swiftly did to Roiphe what she accuses men of doing to female journalists: tried to silence her... Sady Doyle, a writer for Elle, branded Roiphe ‘pro-rape’, which really just means evil, witch-like. A writer for feminist mag Bustle wondered if ‘Katie Roiphe’ is a ‘pseudonym shared by a group of 65-year-old men’, because any woman who disagrees with us correct feminists must be a man really, right? Just as any black person who votes Republican or Conservative is a ‘coconut’... Roiphe, you see – like any other woman who criticises the new victim feminism – suffers from ‘internalised misogyny’. This deeply patronising idea holds that women do not really know their own minds and are easy prey to the allegedly misogynistic culture that surrounds them... the B-movie actress Blanca Blanco got in trouble for daring to wear a red dress to the all-black fashion and virtue-signalling shitshow that was the Golden Globes. How dare women wear what they want? Or express their opinions?... We are now starting to see that #MeToo is not a pro-woman movement at all. It is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion"
Aman Ali - "as if it was some kind of Pavlovian reflex, I grabbed him by his shirt and came inches away from punching him in the face so hard that I probably would have altered the structure of his face. The only thing that stopped me milliseconds before doing it was the look he gave me. He had a smug smile on his face as if he was telling me "Yep, I knew it." I froze when I saw that smile. I knew I had lost this argument because I essentially reinforced everything he believed that I was trying so hard to passionately counter... What if I was the only exposure to Muslims he ever had? What if that's the opinion he carries about Muslims for the rest of his life? What if he goes around at dinner parties and tells others "Those Moslems, man. I had a class with a Moslem once and the dude tried to punch me for no reason at all." And in unison, everyone at the party would go "Yep, I knew it.""
Trump upgrades Martin Luther King birthplace to national historic park
What a failure of a white supremacist
Trump Nominates First Female African-American Marine General
The case of the purloined poultry: How ISIS prosecuted petty crime - "In a terrorist version of the "broken window" school of policing, the Islamic State aggressively prosecuted minor crimes in the communities it took over, winning points with residents who were used to having to pay bribes to secure police help... Even residents who suffered abuses at the hands of the militants gave them points for their policing, saying that for nonreligious disputes, they were not only fair but also willing to wade into problems that might have been brushed off by most authorities."
The European Union: To leave or not to leave? - "One of the strengths of the Continent has been its diversity. The separate experiences of Europe’s countries have acted as inspirations and warnings to others... The history of multinational ventures in Europe is not a good one. Over 400 years, the Habsburg Empire was unable to cement a workable enterprise. It only held together in the 19th century by striking bargains between the various national groups and by keeping them all, in the words of one Austrian prime minister, ‘in a condition of even and well-modulated discontent’. It is the same in the EU today... A political union will prosper only if its peoples feel a common sense of belonging that makes them willing to make sacrifices for one another. This is lacking in the EU"
Online Bettors Know If Psychology Studies Will Replicate - "scientists seem to be remarkably good at predicting which studies in psychology and other social sciences will replicate, and which will not?... “If researchers can anticipate which findings will replicate, or fail to, it makes it harder to sustain dismissive claims about the replications or the replicators”... several of the studies that didn’t replicate have another quality in common: newsworthiness. They reported cute, attention-grabbing, whoa-if-true results that conform to the biases of at least some parts of society. One purportedly showed that reading literary fiction improves our ability to understand other people’s beliefs and desires. Another said that thinking analytically weakens belief in religion. Yet another said that people who think about computers are worse at recalling old information—a phenomenon that the authors billed as “the Google effect.” All of these were widely covered in the media."
Harvard and M.I.T. Are Sued Over Lack of Closed Captions - The New York Times - "Advocates for the deaf on Thursday filed federal lawsuits against Harvard and M.I.T., saying both universities violated antidiscrimination laws by failing to provide closed captioning in their online lectures, courses, podcasts and other educational materials. “Much of Harvard’s online content is either not captioned or is inaccurately or unintelligibly captioned, making it inaccessible for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing,” the complaint said, echoing language used in the M.I.T. complaint. “Just as buildings without ramps bar people who use wheelchairs, online content without captions excludes individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.”... Harvard and M.I.T. had been leaders in putting university content online"
This is why we can't have nice things; the perfect is the enemy of the good
UC Berkeley Removing Public Course Content Over Accessibility Costs - "video and audio recordings of entire courses that used to be open to global, public consumption for free are now gated by login info only supplied to the official students, faculty, and staff of UC Berkeley."
Woman, 43, who kidnapped a teenage girl and drove her to a flat where she was raped is spared jail - "A woman who kidnapped a teenage girl before she was raped in a flat has avoided jail after a judge said it would be 'unfair' to send her to prison."
Male privilege!
WEF: Machines are going to perform more tasks than humans by 2025 - "Developments in automation technologies and artificial intelligence could see 75 million jobs displaced, according to the WEF report "The Future of Jobs 2018." However, another 133 million new roles may emerge as companies shake up their division of labor between humans and machines, translating to 58 million net new jobs being created by 2022, it said... An analysis from global audit firm PwC also made similar predictions"
Pamela Anderson declares herself an ‘anti-feminist’ - "the 49-year-old discussed her concerns over gender roles as people become more 'androgynous'... 'I obviously believe in treating people equally, but men and women are different for a reason, with very important roles to play,' she explained. Pamela also claimed she worries the 'world will forget how to make love'."
Post ID: 1071542267075210905
To All the Creepy Singaporean Men I’ve Ever Met: Enough is Enough
A RICE article hasn't annoyed me for a while, but that's probably because I haven't read it for a while
Today, I read:
To All the Creepy Singaporean Men I’ve Ever Met: Enough is Enough
As you can predict from the headline, this is the usual silly nonsense.
The author complains about the pain of being a woman with gendered expectations - but these exist for both genders. And actually are stronger for men than women.
The author keeps complaining about getting hit on, but it's not clear why being hit on is such a traumatic experience. Why is she even on Tinder if she doesn't like to be hit on? And shouldn't engaging in internet arguments - which are even worse than being hit on, since they are combative - give one PTSD?
If even she herself admits that "I had been chatting with a guy from Tinder, and we were finally gonna hook up", why is she so upset when he asks "your place or mine"? Ironically, the author probably proclaims that consent is sexy - but of course in real life the process of getting consent is deeply unsexy, since she clearly expected at least a pretence at seduction (which, as we know, is indirect as opposed to consent culture which is very straightforward).
And then when she gets propositioned again, she is upset once more. Presumably she is mad that men aren't psychic and unable to tell that women want to be hit on.
The key point that we can see emerging from this account is that "creepy" is basically shorthand for a guy who hits on her who isn't attractive (as she admits, "To all the men out there, just because I want to hook up someone doesn’t mean I want to hook up with YOU").
Then she says she wants to doxx every man who propositions her, taking pride in ruining their lives.
I bet in 5 years' time she will write another article about how no man ever approaches her, showing that men are intimidated by strong, independent women.
Today, I read:
To All the Creepy Singaporean Men I’ve Ever Met: Enough is Enough
As you can predict from the headline, this is the usual silly nonsense.
The author complains about the pain of being a woman with gendered expectations - but these exist for both genders. And actually are stronger for men than women.
The author keeps complaining about getting hit on, but it's not clear why being hit on is such a traumatic experience. Why is she even on Tinder if she doesn't like to be hit on? And shouldn't engaging in internet arguments - which are even worse than being hit on, since they are combative - give one PTSD?
If even she herself admits that "I had been chatting with a guy from Tinder, and we were finally gonna hook up", why is she so upset when he asks "your place or mine"? Ironically, the author probably proclaims that consent is sexy - but of course in real life the process of getting consent is deeply unsexy, since she clearly expected at least a pretence at seduction (which, as we know, is indirect as opposed to consent culture which is very straightforward).
And then when she gets propositioned again, she is upset once more. Presumably she is mad that men aren't psychic and unable to tell that women want to be hit on.
The key point that we can see emerging from this account is that "creepy" is basically shorthand for a guy who hits on her who isn't attractive (as she admits, "To all the men out there, just because I want to hook up someone doesn’t mean I want to hook up with YOU").
Then she says she wants to doxx every man who propositions her, taking pride in ruining their lives.
I bet in 5 years' time she will write another article about how no man ever approaches her, showing that men are intimidated by strong, independent women.
Post ID: 6337490849552858328
Links - 5th November 2018 (1)
Atonement as Activism - "This brand of self-flagellation has become the new form of enlightenment on race issues. It qualifies as a kind of worship; the parallels with Christianity are almost uncannily rich. White privilege is the secular white person’s Original Sin, present at birth and ultimately ineradicable. One does one’s penance by endlessly attesting to this privilege in hope of some kind of forgiveness. After the black man I mentioned above spoke, the next speaker was a middle-aged white man who spoke of having a coach come to his office each week to talk to him about his white privilege. The audience, of course, applauded warmly at this man’s description of having what an anthropologist observer would recognize not as a “coach” but as a pastor. I have seen whites owning up to their white privilege using the hand-in-the-air-palm-out gesture typically associated with testifying in church. After the event I have been describing, all concerned deemed it “wonderful” even though nothing new had been learned. The purpose of the event was to remind the parishioners of the prevalence of the racist sin and its reflection in themselves, and to offer a kind of forgiveness, this latter being essentially the function of the black people on the panel and in the audience. Amen... The self-affirming part is the rub. This new cult of atonement is less about black people than white people. Fifty years ago, a white person learning about the race problem came away asking “How can I help?” Today the same person too often comes away asking, “How can I show that I’m a moral person?” That isn’t what the Civil Rights revolution was about; it is the product of decades of mission creep aided by the emergence of social media."
10 things you have always wanted to ask a lesbian – Pat Law - "1. How does scissoring work?... We scissor as often as you fornicate your wife standing up holding her entire weight with one hand...
3. How do you do it?
I hate to be such a hypocrite here, but watch some porn...
5. How do you know if the other girl is also a lesbian?
You ask. And if you’re too shy to do so, check for the following signs:
Trimmed fingernails (think)
Toned arms (think again)
Lesbian hair (although I would argue that in today’s gender-blending world, follicles hardly pass the litmus test)...
9. Have you ever been discriminated against for being a lesbian?...
I haven’t been discriminated against for being a lesbian but it has a lot to do with the way I chose to see things, to keep my sanity. I choose not to get angry over ignorance.
10. What is your fear as a lesbian?
That I will be known for only my sexuality. I am a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend, Singaporean, Chinese, a creative director, a human to two chihuahuas, and oh by the way, I am also gay...
The last thing I want is to be that gay person who makes every damn thing about her sexuality. Like that one prominent gay dick who held drug parties at home only to be arrested and locked up, and I witnessed first-hand how some folks in the gay community blamed it on his sexuality. Dude, you didn’t get locked up because you were gay and singled out by the cops. You got locked up because you were hosting drug parties. People like you give us such a bad name... If you want heterosexuals to accept you for who you are, stop making your sexuality all that you are."
Japanese north–south gradient in IQ predicts differences in stature, skin color, income, and homicide rate - "Regional differences in IQ are estimated for 47 prefectures of Japan. IQ scores obtained from official achievement tests show a gradient from north to south. Latitudes correlate with height, IQ, and skin color at r = 0.70, 0.44, 0.47, respectively. IQ also correlates with height (0.52), skin color (0.42), income (0.51) after correction, less homicide rate (− 0.60), and less divorce (− 0.69) but not with fertility infant mortali'ty. The lower IQ in southern Japanese islands could be attributable to warmer climates with less cognitive demand for more than fifteen hundred years."
Is it still racist if they're all Japanese?
Regional Differences in Intelligence in 22 Countries and their Economic, Social and Demographic Correlates: A Review - "Regional differences in intelligence are reported for 22 countries. These are positively associated with many economic, social and demographic phenomena. These include income, health, educational and occupational achievement. These are negatively associated with poverty, fertility and crime."
Chinese sex differences in intelligence: Some new evidence - "Sex differences on the WISC-R in Chinese children were examined in a sample of 788 aged 12 years. Boys obtained a higher mean full scale IQ than girls of 3.75 IQ points, a higher performance IQ of 4.20 IQ points, and a higher verbal IQ of 2.40 IQ points. Boys obtained significantly higher means on the information, picture arrangement, picture completion, block design, and object assembly subtests, while girls obtained a significantly higher mean on coding. The results were in general similar to the sex differences in the United States standardisation sample of the WISC-R. Boys showed greater variability than girls."
Spousal Abuse: Narrative Over Facts - "There is an interesting article on spousal abuse by a chap who works with PAVE, in which he talks about the issue of domestic violence and race in Singapore. The main gist of his article is that people predominantly see it as an Indian problem when the majority of the cases reported are from the Chinese demographic. He goes on to assert that Spousal Abuse is an issue in which race has no relevance. But is this what the facts really show?... going by PAVE statistics, the Chinese demographic was 26% less likely than expected to be committing domestic violence for their makeup of the population. The Indian demographic is 2.1 times as likely as the to commit it versus the Chinese, followed by the Malay demographic in which it is seen at an incidence 2.5 times more... This is hardly something that could be called “slightly over-represented compared to their proportion in the population.” We are talking about a serious problem that happens at incidences that are significantly over the expected background rate."
Sinda concerned over family violence in Indian community - "About one in five reported abuse cases and personal protection order applications are made against Indians, said organisations approached. This outweighs their 9.1 per cent representation in the Singapore population... Anecdotal evidence suggests that Indians may be more predisposed to domestic violence due to their drinking habit, she said. Sinda has found that alcohol abuse increases the odds of a man lashing out at his family."
JFK's Very Revealing Harvard Application Essay - "At 17 years old, the future president seemed to understand that the value of an elite education is in the status it offers."
Marital rape, voyeurism to become offences in ‘sweeping’ changes proposed for Singapore’s penal code - "the committee has proposed creating new offences involving child abuse material - from using or involving a child in the production of, to the making, distributing, selling, advertising, seeking, accessing and possession of such material. This includes fictional material. The committee said fictional material could be used for grooming children, and could fuel child abuse by reinforcing potential abusers’ inappropriate feelings towards children."
No more lolis
In marital rape, proving lack of consent a 'complicated' issue, lawyers say - "It will be challenging to prove a lack of consent in cases of marital rape, criminal lawyers said, pointing to the intimacy associated with marriage and the fluid nature of consent... Another concern, the lawyers said, is the retracting of consent following a "trigger factor" like a heated argument."
Some Students Want to Abolish In-Class Presentations - "According to a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, oral communication is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace, with over 90 percent of hiring managers saying it’s important. Some educators also credit in-class presentations with building essential leadership skills and increasing students’ confidence and understanding of material. But in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options... Some responses to the most recent viral tweet, though, noted that giving a presentation in spite of anxiety might reduce a student’s fear of public speaking... “My thoughts are that we are in the business of preparing students for college, career, and civic life. Public speaking is a piece of that preparation,” says Ryan Jones, a high-school history teacher in Connecticut. “Now, some kids (many) are deathly afraid to do it, but pushing outside of comfort zones is also a big part of what we do.”"
Twitter Mob Gets U.S. Coast Guard Member Removed for Making 'Offensive' 'OK' Sign - "The Anti-Defamation League has dismissed the conspiracy theory, pointing out its origins as a hoax started on the 4chan website... According to the ADL, the OK/white power hoax is just one of many hoaxes started by 4channers and other websites “to take innocuous items, symbols or gestures and falsely attribute white supremacist meanings to them in order to fool liberals and get them to spread such false messages.” Despite the fact the whole white power symbol is a hoax, several media outlets have run with the story, claiming with certainty that the Coast Guard member flashed a white power symbol."
The ADL must be part of the alt-right
Four in 10 think British culture is undermined by multiculturalism
Midnight at Maxwell Food Centre: A Shadow of a Once Lucrative Hawker Business - "To emphasise how hard it is to be in the business today, even if you’re located at one of the most famous hawker centres in a central location, the veteran hawker adds that the stall next to his has already gone through 10 different tenants. The longest tenure was four years while the shortest only lasted a week."
Why work is exhausting even when it involves no physical labor - "as we work on a task, we struggle to focus on it or eventually lose interest in it. We become less motivated to do the task. We become drawn to the things we want to do (scrolling Instagram or reading music blogs, for instance), rather than the things we have to do. And this tension possibly causes fatigue."
Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey
After Getting 3,000% Wage Hike, Workers Are Fired in Venezuela
Relinquishing Taboos - "“Being taught to avoid talking about politics and religion has led to a lack of understanding of politics and religion. What we should have been taught is how to have a civil conversation about a difficult topic.”... Thomas Jefferson said, “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
Your new school curriculum: social justice for all - "Canada's biggest school system has some problems. Math scores are flat or in decline. Too many kids aren't doing well in school, and too many of them are visible minorities. Something must be done. What is it? The answer is to make social justice and "equity" the main focus of education in Ontario... "Equality" is no longer the goal. The new goal is "equity," a very different concept. According to a sweeping draft plan prepared for the Toronto District School Board, equity is not achieved by treating students fairly. It is achieved by challenging "entrenched systems of power and privilege" and "constantly working to centre the conversation around the effects of inequity, oppression, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of hate and discrimination specifically for racialized students." In other words, kids' success or failure is shaped by historic forces that determine their victim status. (The vexed question of why some "racialized" students do extremely well and others not so well is not addressed.) One mother wrote me that social justice and equity are now the focus of her son's school. At parent council meetings they talk about microaggressions. "There is no room, it seems, for white children or mixed children," she lamented. (Her children are mixed.) In the name of social justice, Grade 9 math is being de-streamed... "Here's what will happen with de-streaming," wrote Don Cooper, a retired teacher, in a letter to the Toronto Star. "Grade 9 teachers will be faced with a classroom with more academic and social disparity, which will be much more difficult to educate." Translation: Struggling kids will be the losers... What's so awful about social-justice doctrine is that it will hurt the very kids it's supposed to help. It deploys significant resources in the wrong direction and aggressively ignores everything important that we know about kids and school achievement. Decades of social-science research confirm that the biggest predictors of school achievement are family structure effects – family composition, stability, maternal education and socioeconomic status. These have nothing to do with entrenched systems of power and privilege, and everything to do with factors such as having two parents and close parental supervision. Sad to say, not all the anti-bias training in the world is going to change that."
10 things you have always wanted to ask a lesbian – Pat Law - "1. How does scissoring work?... We scissor as often as you fornicate your wife standing up holding her entire weight with one hand...
3. How do you do it?
I hate to be such a hypocrite here, but watch some porn...
5. How do you know if the other girl is also a lesbian?
You ask. And if you’re too shy to do so, check for the following signs:
Trimmed fingernails (think)
Toned arms (think again)
Lesbian hair (although I would argue that in today’s gender-blending world, follicles hardly pass the litmus test)...
9. Have you ever been discriminated against for being a lesbian?...
I haven’t been discriminated against for being a lesbian but it has a lot to do with the way I chose to see things, to keep my sanity. I choose not to get angry over ignorance.
10. What is your fear as a lesbian?
That I will be known for only my sexuality. I am a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend, Singaporean, Chinese, a creative director, a human to two chihuahuas, and oh by the way, I am also gay...
The last thing I want is to be that gay person who makes every damn thing about her sexuality. Like that one prominent gay dick who held drug parties at home only to be arrested and locked up, and I witnessed first-hand how some folks in the gay community blamed it on his sexuality. Dude, you didn’t get locked up because you were gay and singled out by the cops. You got locked up because you were hosting drug parties. People like you give us such a bad name... If you want heterosexuals to accept you for who you are, stop making your sexuality all that you are."
Japanese north–south gradient in IQ predicts differences in stature, skin color, income, and homicide rate - "Regional differences in IQ are estimated for 47 prefectures of Japan. IQ scores obtained from official achievement tests show a gradient from north to south. Latitudes correlate with height, IQ, and skin color at r = 0.70, 0.44, 0.47, respectively. IQ also correlates with height (0.52), skin color (0.42), income (0.51) after correction, less homicide rate (− 0.60), and less divorce (− 0.69) but not with fertility infant mortali'ty. The lower IQ in southern Japanese islands could be attributable to warmer climates with less cognitive demand for more than fifteen hundred years."
Is it still racist if they're all Japanese?
Regional Differences in Intelligence in 22 Countries and their Economic, Social and Demographic Correlates: A Review - "Regional differences in intelligence are reported for 22 countries. These are positively associated with many economic, social and demographic phenomena. These include income, health, educational and occupational achievement. These are negatively associated with poverty, fertility and crime."
Chinese sex differences in intelligence: Some new evidence - "Sex differences on the WISC-R in Chinese children were examined in a sample of 788 aged 12 years. Boys obtained a higher mean full scale IQ than girls of 3.75 IQ points, a higher performance IQ of 4.20 IQ points, and a higher verbal IQ of 2.40 IQ points. Boys obtained significantly higher means on the information, picture arrangement, picture completion, block design, and object assembly subtests, while girls obtained a significantly higher mean on coding. The results were in general similar to the sex differences in the United States standardisation sample of the WISC-R. Boys showed greater variability than girls."
Spousal Abuse: Narrative Over Facts - "There is an interesting article on spousal abuse by a chap who works with PAVE, in which he talks about the issue of domestic violence and race in Singapore. The main gist of his article is that people predominantly see it as an Indian problem when the majority of the cases reported are from the Chinese demographic. He goes on to assert that Spousal Abuse is an issue in which race has no relevance. But is this what the facts really show?... going by PAVE statistics, the Chinese demographic was 26% less likely than expected to be committing domestic violence for their makeup of the population. The Indian demographic is 2.1 times as likely as the to commit it versus the Chinese, followed by the Malay demographic in which it is seen at an incidence 2.5 times more... This is hardly something that could be called “slightly over-represented compared to their proportion in the population.” We are talking about a serious problem that happens at incidences that are significantly over the expected background rate."
Sinda concerned over family violence in Indian community - "About one in five reported abuse cases and personal protection order applications are made against Indians, said organisations approached. This outweighs their 9.1 per cent representation in the Singapore population... Anecdotal evidence suggests that Indians may be more predisposed to domestic violence due to their drinking habit, she said. Sinda has found that alcohol abuse increases the odds of a man lashing out at his family."
JFK's Very Revealing Harvard Application Essay - "At 17 years old, the future president seemed to understand that the value of an elite education is in the status it offers."
Marital rape, voyeurism to become offences in ‘sweeping’ changes proposed for Singapore’s penal code - "the committee has proposed creating new offences involving child abuse material - from using or involving a child in the production of, to the making, distributing, selling, advertising, seeking, accessing and possession of such material. This includes fictional material. The committee said fictional material could be used for grooming children, and could fuel child abuse by reinforcing potential abusers’ inappropriate feelings towards children."
No more lolis
In marital rape, proving lack of consent a 'complicated' issue, lawyers say - "It will be challenging to prove a lack of consent in cases of marital rape, criminal lawyers said, pointing to the intimacy associated with marriage and the fluid nature of consent... Another concern, the lawyers said, is the retracting of consent following a "trigger factor" like a heated argument."
Some Students Want to Abolish In-Class Presentations - "According to a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, oral communication is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace, with over 90 percent of hiring managers saying it’s important. Some educators also credit in-class presentations with building essential leadership skills and increasing students’ confidence and understanding of material. But in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options... Some responses to the most recent viral tweet, though, noted that giving a presentation in spite of anxiety might reduce a student’s fear of public speaking... “My thoughts are that we are in the business of preparing students for college, career, and civic life. Public speaking is a piece of that preparation,” says Ryan Jones, a high-school history teacher in Connecticut. “Now, some kids (many) are deathly afraid to do it, but pushing outside of comfort zones is also a big part of what we do.”"
Twitter Mob Gets U.S. Coast Guard Member Removed for Making 'Offensive' 'OK' Sign - "The Anti-Defamation League has dismissed the conspiracy theory, pointing out its origins as a hoax started on the 4chan website... According to the ADL, the OK/white power hoax is just one of many hoaxes started by 4channers and other websites “to take innocuous items, symbols or gestures and falsely attribute white supremacist meanings to them in order to fool liberals and get them to spread such false messages.” Despite the fact the whole white power symbol is a hoax, several media outlets have run with the story, claiming with certainty that the Coast Guard member flashed a white power symbol."
The ADL must be part of the alt-right
Four in 10 think British culture is undermined by multiculturalism
Midnight at Maxwell Food Centre: A Shadow of a Once Lucrative Hawker Business - "To emphasise how hard it is to be in the business today, even if you’re located at one of the most famous hawker centres in a central location, the veteran hawker adds that the stall next to his has already gone through 10 different tenants. The longest tenure was four years while the shortest only lasted a week."
Why work is exhausting even when it involves no physical labor - "as we work on a task, we struggle to focus on it or eventually lose interest in it. We become less motivated to do the task. We become drawn to the things we want to do (scrolling Instagram or reading music blogs, for instance), rather than the things we have to do. And this tension possibly causes fatigue."
Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey
After Getting 3,000% Wage Hike, Workers Are Fired in Venezuela
Relinquishing Taboos - "“Being taught to avoid talking about politics and religion has led to a lack of understanding of politics and religion. What we should have been taught is how to have a civil conversation about a difficult topic.”... Thomas Jefferson said, “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
Your new school curriculum: social justice for all - "Canada's biggest school system has some problems. Math scores are flat or in decline. Too many kids aren't doing well in school, and too many of them are visible minorities. Something must be done. What is it? The answer is to make social justice and "equity" the main focus of education in Ontario... "Equality" is no longer the goal. The new goal is "equity," a very different concept. According to a sweeping draft plan prepared for the Toronto District School Board, equity is not achieved by treating students fairly. It is achieved by challenging "entrenched systems of power and privilege" and "constantly working to centre the conversation around the effects of inequity, oppression, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of hate and discrimination specifically for racialized students." In other words, kids' success or failure is shaped by historic forces that determine their victim status. (The vexed question of why some "racialized" students do extremely well and others not so well is not addressed.) One mother wrote me that social justice and equity are now the focus of her son's school. At parent council meetings they talk about microaggressions. "There is no room, it seems, for white children or mixed children," she lamented. (Her children are mixed.) In the name of social justice, Grade 9 math is being de-streamed... "Here's what will happen with de-streaming," wrote Don Cooper, a retired teacher, in a letter to the Toronto Star. "Grade 9 teachers will be faced with a classroom with more academic and social disparity, which will be much more difficult to educate." Translation: Struggling kids will be the losers... What's so awful about social-justice doctrine is that it will hurt the very kids it's supposed to help. It deploys significant resources in the wrong direction and aggressively ignores everything important that we know about kids and school achievement. Decades of social-science research confirm that the biggest predictors of school achievement are family structure effects – family composition, stability, maternal education and socioeconomic status. These have nothing to do with entrenched systems of power and privilege, and everything to do with factors such as having two parents and close parental supervision. Sad to say, not all the anti-bias training in the world is going to change that."
Post ID: 3481408845372951731
Friday, November 02, 2018
Links - 2nd November 2018 (2)
Here's what happens to your body when you walk those recommended 10,000 steps - "Roizen points to a recent study, that found postal workers in Glasgow, Scotland, who walked 15,000 steps a day, had fewer risk factors for heart disease than colleagues who sat throughout the day."
KBG84, Japan’s oldest idol group, have released their first major label single and it’s amazing - "the song features a sanshin (Okinawan string instrument) performance by Kikuo Tsuchida, an Okinawan musician, in the vein of traditional min’you music with a pop idol vibe to it. In other words, it’s a mixture of traditional and contemporary — perfect for an idol group with an average age of 84!"
Open letter to Seah Kian Peng over post that “incited fear and distrust between citizens” trends online - "While I appreciate your display of patriotism and sense of duty to defend Singapore’s sovereignty, I also am aware of your false assumption about Teo Soh Lung being a member of the SDP. As a member of the Select Committee on Online Falsehoods you would know very well how dangerous fake news can be in the age we are in. Many Singaporeans are now taken aback by your false assumption, how can we trust that your moral position in the select committee is not compromised?"
Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet - "Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader's bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest."
To the New York Times op-ed writer: If you can’t serve honorably, don’t serve at all - The Washington Post - "The “deep state” exists after all. But it turns out that deep state is not made up of the permanent bureaucracy, shadowy intelligence officials, or even Obama administration holdovers; rather it is made up of President Trump’s own senior appointees... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy."
Apparently you must kill democracy to save it
How College Ruined My Life - "education and the big banks preyed on unsuspecting Americans, who went to college, and now have an outstanding burden of debt that may threaten their way of life. These people had plans for the future, but are now stagnant and unable to move forward. One person shown in the magazine says she owes about $152,000 dollars’ worth of student loan debt. She has a good job now, but is unable to penetrate the debt"
How Over-Hyping a College Education Destroyed the Millennials - "college-bound Millennials are most likely to choose college degrees in social science and the applied science fields. These are the liberal arts and psych majors that were encouraged to pursue their passion by their “advisors”, only to later be ridiculed because after graduation, they realized they couldn’t get much more than a job in social services."
Benevolent Sexism at Work: Gender Differences in the Distribution of Challenging Developmental Experiences - "stereotype-based beliefs that women should be protected may limit women’s exposure to challenging assignments, which in turn may partially explain the underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of organizations."
Gender Differences in Responses to Moral Dilemmas: A Process Dissociation Analysis - Rebecca Friesdorf, Paul Conway, Bertram Gawronski, 2015 - "men showed a stronger preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments than women when the two principles implied conflicting decisions (d = 0.52). PD further revealed that women exhibited stronger deontological inclinations than men (d = 0.57), while men exhibited only slightly stronger utilitarian inclinations than women (d = 0.10). The findings suggest that gender differences in moral dilemma judgments are due to differences in affective responses to harm rather than cognitive evaluations of outcomes."
In other words, women are more likely to make moral judgments based on how they feel rather than making considered moral judgment
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape - "of those who obtain doctorates in math-intensive fields, men and women entering the professoriate have equivalent access to tenure-track academic jobs in science, and they persist and are remunerated at comparable rates—with some caveats that we discuss. The transition from graduate programs to assistant professorships shows more pipeline leakage in the fields in which women are already very prevalent (psychology, life science, social science) than in the math-intensive fields in which they are underrepresented but in which the number of females holding assistant professorships is at least commensurate with (if not greater than) that of males. That is, invitations to interview for tenure-track positions in math-intensive fields—as well as actual employment offers—reveal that female PhD applicants fare at least as well as their male counterparts in math-intensive fields. Along these same lines, our analyses reveal that manuscript reviewing and grant funding are gender neutral: Male and female authors and principal investigators are equally likely to have their manuscripts accepted by journal editors and their grants funded, with only very occasional exceptions. There are no compelling sex differences in hours worked or average citations per publication, but there is an overall male advantage in productivity... although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields"
So much for sexism in academia
Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. - " good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing."
Gender and Helping Behavior. A Meta-Analytic Review of the Social Psychological Literature - "Results from our meta-analytic review of sex differences in helping behavior indicate that in general men helped more than women and women received more help than men"
More on women receiving more sympathy/help than men. This helps explain why only men pay taxes
Sex Differences in the Ultimatum Game: An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective - "Using evolutionary psychology as the theoretical framework, we predicted and found that males made more generous offers when pitted against a female as opposed to a male. While females made equal offers independently of the sex of the recipient. That male allocators are altruistic towards female recipients and competitive with male recipients is construed as a manifestation of social rules, which evolve from the male pre-disposition to use resources for attracting mates. In contrast, females have not evolved such a pre-disposition, and thus, female allocators are more concerned about fairness when making offers to recipients"
Sarsour: American Muslims Shouldn’t ‘Humanize’ Israelis - "“You wouldn’t automatically associate such language on the part of someone who is touted as an elite spokesperson for women’s rights, equal rights in the United States,” Cooper said. Cooper added that Sarsour’s comments likely stem from “desperation” due to recent global developments of Gulf Arabs having “unprecedented normal contact” with Israelis."
For Low-SES Students, Not Focusing on Grades is an Impossible Dream - "Life Beyond Grades won’t be the last ground-up initiative that’s run by those who come from middle to upper-middle class, English-educated backgrounds, that aims to tackle the increasing pressures children face in school. After all, it’s these people who have the resources to start such projects to help the less fortunate in the first place... their children are free to explore other options beyond traditional academic pursuits. They don’t need good grades, because they are largely protected from the far-reaching consequences of coming from an underprivileged background and not doing well in school"
John David Ward's answer to What are the facial differences between the Japanese and Chinese? - Quora - "This image is a composite of, from left to right, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese women. To me, the most noticeable thing about that composite image is the difference in skin tone, but the general shape of the face and the hair is also different. This is a cluster analysis from Dieneke's Anthropology blog which shows how the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people fall out genetically... As you can see, there's a lot of genetic variability in China, reflecting the fact that it's a big, multiethnic country, a fair amount in Japan, which stretches from the Ryukyu Islands to Hokkaido, and the people of Korea are in somewhere in between, but tightly clustered so that they don't overlap with either."
Nigel Yeo - [377A] This is not a call to action for the retention... - "Yes, the Westboro Baptist Church exists. Yes, there are thousands of Christians who express their aversion to homosexuality online, who make hurtful and cutting comments which belie a lack of understanding of the LGBT community. But there are also sections of the LGBT community who intentionally wear BDSM attire at pride parades to provoke, who organize casual swinger orgies, or who pour inflammatory vitriol against those they disagree with. Just as how it is not right to brand the entire LGBT community with the actions of these few, it is not right to do the same to Christians. It is unfortunate that in the course of the responses to LGBT activism (and I use these terms descriptively), Christians are now represented by their opposition to sexual lifestyles outside of man-woman marriage, in particular homosexuality (but also pansexualism, bisexualism, etc). This community of so-called “bigots” who apparently only want to further oppress their LGBT neighbours, is the source of countless individuals who have laid down their lives and given all that they have to take care of and feed those who cannot do so for themselves... Increasingly, we’re being told by others how to run our own religion. Just take Truelove.is for instance. An initiative set up by a local church that (1) does not itself prescribe whether homosexuality is wrong or not; (2) shares the stories of Christians who were / are LGBT and VOLUNTARILY went to their church leaders for help; (3) with the intention of reaching out to other Christians who might be facing the same situation, has received disdain and even actual hate from those who disagree with them. Here we have an example of a church attempting to do what the church has been criticized (rightly or wrongly) for not doing enough of: reaching out to those in the body of Christ who are LGBT and journeying together with them. But no. Immediately, they’re accused of conversion therapy (despite there being absolutely no evidence that they have intended to convert anyone) and that the only way of being a loving church is to affirm LGBT lifestyles – even if this may go against what they believe in... Ultimately my point to those who are anti-377a is this: if your belief in a tolerant society is a genuine one, then display that same tolerance to people whose views you disagree with"
US lawmakers say AI deepfakes ‘have the potential to disrupt every facet of our society’ - "“hyper-realistic digital forgeries” showing “convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never did” could be used for blackmail and misinformation. “As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security”"
Stuck In A Web: How Game Journalism Lost Its Originality - "I remember visiting the White House and assassinating the Vice President in Hitman: Blood Money back in 2006 without articles addressing its politics. So what happened? Why in 2018 must all games be political? From Far Cry 5 not being enough of a Trump supporter killing simulator to The Division 2 not being political enough, and even up to the current release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider for not addressing it’s history of “colonialism”... Controversy sells... Only one thing hurts a website, and that’s the dwindling of funds, so hurt them in their wallets"
Justin Trudeau maintains that Japan is 'inward looking' and 'not intolerant' for its anti-immigration policy - "For a leader so set on refusing to see any option other than a virtually open-border approach to immigration, the comments come as contradictory, if not hypocritical."
KBG84, Japan’s oldest idol group, have released their first major label single and it’s amazing - "the song features a sanshin (Okinawan string instrument) performance by Kikuo Tsuchida, an Okinawan musician, in the vein of traditional min’you music with a pop idol vibe to it. In other words, it’s a mixture of traditional and contemporary — perfect for an idol group with an average age of 84!"
Open letter to Seah Kian Peng over post that “incited fear and distrust between citizens” trends online - "While I appreciate your display of patriotism and sense of duty to defend Singapore’s sovereignty, I also am aware of your false assumption about Teo Soh Lung being a member of the SDP. As a member of the Select Committee on Online Falsehoods you would know very well how dangerous fake news can be in the age we are in. Many Singaporeans are now taken aback by your false assumption, how can we trust that your moral position in the select committee is not compromised?"
Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet - "Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader's bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest."
To the New York Times op-ed writer: If you can’t serve honorably, don’t serve at all - The Washington Post - "The “deep state” exists after all. But it turns out that deep state is not made up of the permanent bureaucracy, shadowy intelligence officials, or even Obama administration holdovers; rather it is made up of President Trump’s own senior appointees... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy."
Apparently you must kill democracy to save it
How College Ruined My Life - "education and the big banks preyed on unsuspecting Americans, who went to college, and now have an outstanding burden of debt that may threaten their way of life. These people had plans for the future, but are now stagnant and unable to move forward. One person shown in the magazine says she owes about $152,000 dollars’ worth of student loan debt. She has a good job now, but is unable to penetrate the debt"
How Over-Hyping a College Education Destroyed the Millennials - "college-bound Millennials are most likely to choose college degrees in social science and the applied science fields. These are the liberal arts and psych majors that were encouraged to pursue their passion by their “advisors”, only to later be ridiculed because after graduation, they realized they couldn’t get much more than a job in social services."
Benevolent Sexism at Work: Gender Differences in the Distribution of Challenging Developmental Experiences - "stereotype-based beliefs that women should be protected may limit women’s exposure to challenging assignments, which in turn may partially explain the underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of organizations."
Gender Differences in Responses to Moral Dilemmas: A Process Dissociation Analysis - Rebecca Friesdorf, Paul Conway, Bertram Gawronski, 2015 - "men showed a stronger preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments than women when the two principles implied conflicting decisions (d = 0.52). PD further revealed that women exhibited stronger deontological inclinations than men (d = 0.57), while men exhibited only slightly stronger utilitarian inclinations than women (d = 0.10). The findings suggest that gender differences in moral dilemma judgments are due to differences in affective responses to harm rather than cognitive evaluations of outcomes."
In other words, women are more likely to make moral judgments based on how they feel rather than making considered moral judgment
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape - "of those who obtain doctorates in math-intensive fields, men and women entering the professoriate have equivalent access to tenure-track academic jobs in science, and they persist and are remunerated at comparable rates—with some caveats that we discuss. The transition from graduate programs to assistant professorships shows more pipeline leakage in the fields in which women are already very prevalent (psychology, life science, social science) than in the math-intensive fields in which they are underrepresented but in which the number of females holding assistant professorships is at least commensurate with (if not greater than) that of males. That is, invitations to interview for tenure-track positions in math-intensive fields—as well as actual employment offers—reveal that female PhD applicants fare at least as well as their male counterparts in math-intensive fields. Along these same lines, our analyses reveal that manuscript reviewing and grant funding are gender neutral: Male and female authors and principal investigators are equally likely to have their manuscripts accepted by journal editors and their grants funded, with only very occasional exceptions. There are no compelling sex differences in hours worked or average citations per publication, but there is an overall male advantage in productivity... although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields"
So much for sexism in academia
Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. - " good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing."
Gender and Helping Behavior. A Meta-Analytic Review of the Social Psychological Literature - "Results from our meta-analytic review of sex differences in helping behavior indicate that in general men helped more than women and women received more help than men"
More on women receiving more sympathy/help than men. This helps explain why only men pay taxes
Sex Differences in the Ultimatum Game: An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective - "Using evolutionary psychology as the theoretical framework, we predicted and found that males made more generous offers when pitted against a female as opposed to a male. While females made equal offers independently of the sex of the recipient. That male allocators are altruistic towards female recipients and competitive with male recipients is construed as a manifestation of social rules, which evolve from the male pre-disposition to use resources for attracting mates. In contrast, females have not evolved such a pre-disposition, and thus, female allocators are more concerned about fairness when making offers to recipients"
Sarsour: American Muslims Shouldn’t ‘Humanize’ Israelis - "“You wouldn’t automatically associate such language on the part of someone who is touted as an elite spokesperson for women’s rights, equal rights in the United States,” Cooper said. Cooper added that Sarsour’s comments likely stem from “desperation” due to recent global developments of Gulf Arabs having “unprecedented normal contact” with Israelis."
For Low-SES Students, Not Focusing on Grades is an Impossible Dream - "Life Beyond Grades won’t be the last ground-up initiative that’s run by those who come from middle to upper-middle class, English-educated backgrounds, that aims to tackle the increasing pressures children face in school. After all, it’s these people who have the resources to start such projects to help the less fortunate in the first place... their children are free to explore other options beyond traditional academic pursuits. They don’t need good grades, because they are largely protected from the far-reaching consequences of coming from an underprivileged background and not doing well in school"
John David Ward's answer to What are the facial differences between the Japanese and Chinese? - Quora - "This image is a composite of, from left to right, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese women. To me, the most noticeable thing about that composite image is the difference in skin tone, but the general shape of the face and the hair is also different. This is a cluster analysis from Dieneke's Anthropology blog which shows how the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people fall out genetically... As you can see, there's a lot of genetic variability in China, reflecting the fact that it's a big, multiethnic country, a fair amount in Japan, which stretches from the Ryukyu Islands to Hokkaido, and the people of Korea are in somewhere in between, but tightly clustered so that they don't overlap with either."
Nigel Yeo - [377A] This is not a call to action for the retention... - "Yes, the Westboro Baptist Church exists. Yes, there are thousands of Christians who express their aversion to homosexuality online, who make hurtful and cutting comments which belie a lack of understanding of the LGBT community. But there are also sections of the LGBT community who intentionally wear BDSM attire at pride parades to provoke, who organize casual swinger orgies, or who pour inflammatory vitriol against those they disagree with. Just as how it is not right to brand the entire LGBT community with the actions of these few, it is not right to do the same to Christians. It is unfortunate that in the course of the responses to LGBT activism (and I use these terms descriptively), Christians are now represented by their opposition to sexual lifestyles outside of man-woman marriage, in particular homosexuality (but also pansexualism, bisexualism, etc). This community of so-called “bigots” who apparently only want to further oppress their LGBT neighbours, is the source of countless individuals who have laid down their lives and given all that they have to take care of and feed those who cannot do so for themselves... Increasingly, we’re being told by others how to run our own religion. Just take Truelove.is for instance. An initiative set up by a local church that (1) does not itself prescribe whether homosexuality is wrong or not; (2) shares the stories of Christians who were / are LGBT and VOLUNTARILY went to their church leaders for help; (3) with the intention of reaching out to other Christians who might be facing the same situation, has received disdain and even actual hate from those who disagree with them. Here we have an example of a church attempting to do what the church has been criticized (rightly or wrongly) for not doing enough of: reaching out to those in the body of Christ who are LGBT and journeying together with them. But no. Immediately, they’re accused of conversion therapy (despite there being absolutely no evidence that they have intended to convert anyone) and that the only way of being a loving church is to affirm LGBT lifestyles – even if this may go against what they believe in... Ultimately my point to those who are anti-377a is this: if your belief in a tolerant society is a genuine one, then display that same tolerance to people whose views you disagree with"
US lawmakers say AI deepfakes ‘have the potential to disrupt every facet of our society’ - "“hyper-realistic digital forgeries” showing “convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never did” could be used for blackmail and misinformation. “As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security”"
Stuck In A Web: How Game Journalism Lost Its Originality - "I remember visiting the White House and assassinating the Vice President in Hitman: Blood Money back in 2006 without articles addressing its politics. So what happened? Why in 2018 must all games be political? From Far Cry 5 not being enough of a Trump supporter killing simulator to The Division 2 not being political enough, and even up to the current release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider for not addressing it’s history of “colonialism”... Controversy sells... Only one thing hurts a website, and that’s the dwindling of funds, so hurt them in their wallets"
Justin Trudeau maintains that Japan is 'inward looking' and 'not intolerant' for its anti-immigration policy - "For a leader so set on refusing to see any option other than a virtually open-border approach to immigration, the comments come as contradictory, if not hypocritical."
Post ID: 3415774184725397462
Non-Economic Factors in the Economic Retardation of the Rural Malays (3/4)
"In the nineteenth century, the rural Malays were always loath to accumulate too much wealth because it invited confiscation by either the Sultan or the local chiefs. In any event, it appears that the Malays were powerless to prevent the Sultan or the local chiefs from taking their cattle and rice without payment, or even their wives and daughters! If we add to this the not infrequent internecine wars and local feuds in which the villagers became involved, and also their low levels of income, then the Malays' desire for some sort of material security becomes quite understandable and merely reinforces any more general psychological yearning for security.
Inherent in the Malays, therefore, is a desire for security, something which is based on the desire for feeling in harmony with their environment, for being able to understand it and for being able to respond intuitively to a given situation. These needs are not likely to lead the Malays into being experimental in their attitude towards material techniques because any deviation from that which obtains, or that which is expected, necessarily makes them feel more insecure and more anxious, and hence they remain unimpressed by the opportunities offered by change. Indeed, the desire for security may go a long way towards explaining the attraction that government employment has for the Malays, for such employment is regarded as being very secure even if less remunerative than other paid employment. And it may also help to explain the Malays' dislike for full-time specialization in any one occupation. The insecurity they apparently feel by specialization is something that can only be overcome by having more than one occupation.
Within the framework of E. E. Hagen's more general thesis, the anxiety caused by being faced with new situations is 'avoided or relieved by two types of behaviour characteristic. .... One is the reliance on tradition. . . . Only within [traditional areas of behaviour] does one face problems without anxiety. .... The other method of avoiding anxiety is decision by authority...
Every Muslim is essentially a propagandist of his faith, and, being a Muslim, the Malay will mix freely with non-Muslims and be kind and hospitable to them. Despite this, however, there is a gulf between the Muslim and the non-Muslim which tends to make the Malay seem rather withdrawn, almost chauvinistic, less likely to submit his beliefs to, or accept, those of others, and to be satisfied with looking to his friends, his religion, his techniques and his institutions as the bases for any advancement or inspiration.
The Islamic belief that all things are emanations from God is another important force affecting the Malays' economic behaviour, for it tends to make them fatalistic in their approach to life. 'The Malay is very prone, after receiving a setback, to give up striving, and say that he has no luck, that it is the will of God. In economic affairs, this is most clearly seen in the concept rezeki, a person's divinely inspired economic lot.' Such an attitude constitutes a significant drag on economic development...
Indeed, this view is but part of their belief in the advent of a Messiah, the Islamic mahdi...
Islamic Messianism may well have had a profound effect on the Malays' economic ambition and aspiration. To the persons who believe in the likelihood of the coming of a 'golden age', into they would be led and in which all problems would be solved, the tendency to sit and wait passively for change to occur rather than to become active vehicles of change. In short, there is a tendency to adopt an attitude of resignation rather than of innovation. And it must be remembered that the golden age for which the Malays yearn and which they expect is essentially an extension (albeit a perfect one) of their existing way of life. It does not seem to envisage a change in their pursuits, their customs, their religion or their ambitions, but merely the removal of all imperfections and evils. In other words, it does not seem to envisage a commercial or industrial community with all the trappings of material wealth, and any economic changes that merely promise to lead towards this end are therefore not accepted with quite the same exuberance as they might be in the West."
--- Non-Economic Factors in the Economic Retardation of the Rural Malays / Brien K. Parkinson (in Modern Asian Studies, 1967)
Inherent in the Malays, therefore, is a desire for security, something which is based on the desire for feeling in harmony with their environment, for being able to understand it and for being able to respond intuitively to a given situation. These needs are not likely to lead the Malays into being experimental in their attitude towards material techniques because any deviation from that which obtains, or that which is expected, necessarily makes them feel more insecure and more anxious, and hence they remain unimpressed by the opportunities offered by change. Indeed, the desire for security may go a long way towards explaining the attraction that government employment has for the Malays, for such employment is regarded as being very secure even if less remunerative than other paid employment. And it may also help to explain the Malays' dislike for full-time specialization in any one occupation. The insecurity they apparently feel by specialization is something that can only be overcome by having more than one occupation.
Within the framework of E. E. Hagen's more general thesis, the anxiety caused by being faced with new situations is 'avoided or relieved by two types of behaviour characteristic. .... One is the reliance on tradition. . . . Only within [traditional areas of behaviour] does one face problems without anxiety. .... The other method of avoiding anxiety is decision by authority...
Every Muslim is essentially a propagandist of his faith, and, being a Muslim, the Malay will mix freely with non-Muslims and be kind and hospitable to them. Despite this, however, there is a gulf between the Muslim and the non-Muslim which tends to make the Malay seem rather withdrawn, almost chauvinistic, less likely to submit his beliefs to, or accept, those of others, and to be satisfied with looking to his friends, his religion, his techniques and his institutions as the bases for any advancement or inspiration.
The Islamic belief that all things are emanations from God is another important force affecting the Malays' economic behaviour, for it tends to make them fatalistic in their approach to life. 'The Malay is very prone, after receiving a setback, to give up striving, and say that he has no luck, that it is the will of God. In economic affairs, this is most clearly seen in the concept rezeki, a person's divinely inspired economic lot.' Such an attitude constitutes a significant drag on economic development...
Indeed, this view is but part of their belief in the advent of a Messiah, the Islamic mahdi...
Islamic Messianism may well have had a profound effect on the Malays' economic ambition and aspiration. To the persons who believe in the likelihood of the coming of a 'golden age', into they would be led and in which all problems would be solved, the tendency to sit and wait passively for change to occur rather than to become active vehicles of change. In short, there is a tendency to adopt an attitude of resignation rather than of innovation. And it must be remembered that the golden age for which the Malays yearn and which they expect is essentially an extension (albeit a perfect one) of their existing way of life. It does not seem to envisage a change in their pursuits, their customs, their religion or their ambitions, but merely the removal of all imperfections and evils. In other words, it does not seem to envisage a commercial or industrial community with all the trappings of material wealth, and any economic changes that merely promise to lead towards this end are therefore not accepted with quite the same exuberance as they might be in the West."
--- Non-Economic Factors in the Economic Retardation of the Rural Malays / Brien K. Parkinson (in Modern Asian Studies, 1967)
Post ID: 1516112486011059445
Links - 2nd November 2018 (1)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends $40 trillion price tag for progressive proposals - "Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday defended what could accrue to a $40 trillion price tag for progressive policy programs, including Medicare for all, over the next 10 years... CNN "State of the Union" anchor Jake Tapper asked where that estimated $40 trillion -- which would include the costs for Medicare for all, jobs guarantees, student loan forgiveness, free college programs, paid family leave, and Social Security expansion -- would come from. Medicare for all would be the costliest initiative, coming in at about $32 trillion... asked again where that $40 trillion would come from, aside from her proposed increase in taxes on the wealthy and corporate taxes, which she has said would raise $2 trillion over the next 10 years, Ocasio-Cortez said the taxpayer-funded programs would free people up to increase economic activity in other areas, adding that the Medicare for all program is part of "a broader agenda.""
Salvini: 'We Need to Have More Children, Not Africans to Replace Them' - "Maybe in Luxembourg they need to do this, but in Italy we need to help people have more children, rather than bring in modern-day slaves [from Africa] to replace the children we’re not having"
Senate Democrats Are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet: Reason Roundup - "A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in "our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets," it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including "comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation" of the sort enacted in the E.U."
6 Reasons Why the French Are Such Good Lovers, According to French People - "“We are used to French kisses since we are 12. We don’t play basketball or baseball on the playground. We just practice the French kiss.” -- Hugo...
“They [French men] know they are charming, so they will go over the top and people [foreigners] are seduced and wrapped into it. They know women are easy prey. A friend came a month ago and the first man we met at a party picked her up and carried her down the stairs because he said she was ‘too good to take the stairs.’ She fell for it.” -- Jill
“We buy the lingerie because we know it is important.” -- Marine
“We love the Mediterranean way of life. It is all about the wine and seduction.” -- Hugo...
“They [French men] listen to women and try to understand what they feel. They try to meet a woman’s expectations and they pay a lot of attention. They also have some skills with their tongues.” -- Marine...
“The way we are with women is in our nature since we first learned to talk and walk. We hold the door for a woman, we stand when she joins us at the table, and we kiss her hand when we meet. It’s just the way we are. We take care of women and make them laugh and feel good. As I always say, ‘On ne peut pas être performant à l'horizontale si on ne se sent pas bien a la verticale,’ which means, ‘you can’t be good at sex with your lover if you don’t feel right when you are standing with them.’” -- Marco"
Congratulations Graduate! Eleven Reasons Why I Will Never Hire You.
Oakland Tech to hold first Black Graduation, joins growing movement to celebrate among one's own - "Oakland Tech joins public institutions such as the University California at Berkeley, Berkeley High and for the first time this year, the West Contra Costa Unified School District, all of which hold separate black graduations. Harvard University held its first official commencement for black graduate students last year, in addition to the commencement ceremony for the entire school where they received their diplomas... Critics see these events as having a separatist attitude, something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., worked hard to fight against. And they are being held at a time when the country is rife with accusations of racism and hateful attitudes toward ‘the other.’"
Probiotics are mostly useless and can actually hurt you - "the microbes found in faeces were not representative of those that had colonised the gut. “Relying on faecal samples as an indicator of what goes on inside the gut is inaccurate and wrong” says Elinav. The research also showed that while probiotics colonised the gastrointestinal tract of some people, the gut microbiome of others just expelled them. There was no way of telling from their stool sample which category people fell into. “Some people accept probiotics in their gut, while others just pass them from one end to the other,” says Elinav. They found that the probiotic colonisation patterns were highly dependent on the individual. That tells us that the concept that everyone can benefit from a universal probiotic bought from the supermarket is empirically wrong, he says... Probiotic bacteria readily colonised the gut of everyone in the second group after antibiotics had cleared the way. However, the researchers were surprised to find that this prevented the return of the person’s normal microbiome for up to six months"
The man who won the lottery 14 times - "This is the story of the man who “gamed” the lottery by buying every possible combination."
One in seven major operations in UK cancelled on day of surgery, data shows - "Of these patients, 10 per cent have been cancelled once before, while patients waiting for riskier operations where they are likely to require a critical care bed to recover were also more likely to be cancelled on, the data shows."
We won’t save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup | George Monbiot - "It was charming to see how Norwegian herring boats seek to avoid killing orcas, but we were given no idea of how unusual it is. Even marine plastic is in large part a fishing issue. It turns out that 46% of the Great Pacific garbage patch – which has come to symbolise our throwaway society – is composed of discarded nets, and much of the rest consists of other kinds of fishing gear. Abandoned fishing materials tend to be far more dangerous to marine life than other forms of waste. As for the bags and bottles contributing to the disaster, the great majority arise in poorer nations without good disposal systems. But because this point was not made, we look to the wrong places for solutions. From this misdirection arise a thousand perversities. One prominent environmentalist posted a picture of the king prawns she had bought, celebrating the fact that she had persuaded the supermarket to put them in her own container rather than a plastic bag, and linking this to the protection of the seas. But buying prawns causes many times more damage to marine life than any plastic in which they are wrapped. Prawn fishing has the highest rates of bycatch of any fishery – scooping up vast numbers of turtles and other threatened species. Prawn farming is just as bad, eliminating tracts of mangrove forests, crucial nurseries for thousands of species. We are kept remarkably ignorant of such issues. As consumers, we are confused, bamboozled and almost powerless – and corporate power has gone to great lengths to persuade us to see ourselves this way. The BBC’s approach to environmental issues is highly partisan, siding with a system that has sought to transfer responsibility for structural forces to individual shoppers. Yet it is only as citizens taking political action that we can promote meaningful change... Disposable coffee cups made from new materials are not just a non-solution: they are a perpetuation of the problem"
British worker files discrimination lawsuit after being fired from Hong Kong company and called a ‘gweilo’ by staff - "A British blasting specialist was called a “gweilo” at work and was excluded when he was hired on a Hong Kong tunnel project, according to a discrimination lawsuit he filed against his former employer. Francis William Haden also said that Leighton Contractors (Asia) did not let him hire blasting specialists from Australia, even though Hong Kong was short on people with the skill, because a partnering firm on the Tseung Kwan O-Lam Tin tunnel project did not want non-Chinese involved."
The future is here today: you can't play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions
6 maps and charts that explain sex around the world - "Only 10 percent of Japanese people report exciting sex. That's less than a third of the next-lowest, Hong Kong's, at 32... Japan is the only country in the world where a higher percentage of people report being dissatisfied with their sex lives than satisfied... working hours have made "physical contact" between spouses "so infrequent that some of Japan's leading homebuilders now report that more than one in three custom homes is built with separate bedrooms for husband and wife... Singapore, China, and Mexico had the smallest differences between between male and female orgasm rates, while Russia and Thailand had the largest. The thing that's most surprising about this is there's virtually no correlation between a country's overall level of gender equality and its orgasm gap... Turks reported more sex partners than any other country in the world, and were doing it unprotected about 45 percent of the time [and having more STIs]... Asian countries have a much higher mean age of virginity loss than nations basically everywhere else... there may be something about East Asian religious traditions or cultural norms that promotes sexual conservatism. One study by a group of researchers found very high levels of reported "embarrassment" about discussing sexual practices in public. These results, according to the researchers is that "in comparison with men and women from ‘Western' regions," respondents living in East Asian countries were "more sexually conservative, more male-orientated and less sexually active.""
SMRT Ltd (Feedback) And The Great Teh Tarik Expose - "Long gone is Azly’s brand of dry wit and humour from SMRT Ltd (Feedback), and browsing through the Facebook page, you’ll notice that the new administrator’s voice is distinctively different from the old guard’s. But Azly maintains that SMRT Ltd (Feedback) will and has continued from his time, and will maintain its anonymity for many versions to come."
Colin Kaepernick & Nike's Sweatshops - "Nike never does anything simply because it is the right thing to do. They do not care about social justice or human rights. This is about money. Period. They are still reeling because of the sexual misconduct allegations at Nike headquarters and want to pivot attention away from that. They also see this as a way to endear themselves to one of their largest bases of customers - young black men - to sell more sneakers. And they are banking on capturing the anti-Trump movement with this move. Again, to sell more sneakers. This is “cause marketing” 101."
New York Knicks center Enes Kanter says his criticisms of Turkish government have stifled endorsement deals - "New York Knicks center Enes Kanter said that Nike and other companies have shied away from signing him to endorsement deals because of his outspoken criticisms of the Turkish government."
So much for standing up for something
NBA Player Enes Kanter: How I Became Erdogan's Enemy - "If you speak out against Erdogan, it can affect your whole life and everyone around you. It has been too dangerous for me to set foot in Turkey for three years. The last time I visited, the government destroyed my brothers’ school and threw my dentist and his wife in prison. The regime arrested and charged a man for links to Gulen after I took a picture with his child, and went after a comedian after he exchanged a few tweets with me. Last year, Erdogan canceled my passport and put out an international warrant for my arrest. That means I am now stateless and pretty much can’t leave the United States. It’s interfering with my career, too"
Evergreen State College apologizes for protesting Sumas farm - "Evergreen State College’s President apologized for using taxpayer-funded resources to transport students to a Sumas berry farm for a protest in 2017... Medical examiners and the state Department of Labor and Industries found his death was due to natural causes unrelated to his work and cleared the farm of any wrongdoing."
Steve Bannon, Chelsea Clinton & “No Platforming” Rules - "Ms. Penny chose not to engage in the same festival as Steve Bannon because she believes that he doesn’t want to engage. Which must count as a sort of pre-emptive hit of non-engagement: “I’m going to not engage with you before you can not engage with me.”... the most shocking aspect of that event (even more than the presiding minister fondling Ariana Grande live onstage at a funeral) was the moment when we all said, “Isn’t that Louis Farrakhan up there onstage?” And indeed it was. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton seemed to have no problem sharing a platform with one of the world’s most notorious racists and anti-Semites. Indeed, when Farrakhan waddled over to President Clinton to shake his hand, he was positively oozing with the satisfaction he obviously gets — and has always gotten — from such encounters. For handshakes with — and proximity to — the likes of the Clintons is the only thing that stops Farrakhan from being recognized for what he is: no better or worse than a David Duke... I just cannot understand the rules here. So far as I know, Steve Bannon has never given a speech titled “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” If he had, then I doubt he would be so proud of it that it would be still sitting at the top of his Twitter page. And if he had, then I imagine that the Clintons would run the other way from him even if it meant no-platforming someone at a funeral."
Doug Casey On China's Exploitation Of Africa - "The Chinese basically see Africans as no more than a cheap labor source. That’s at best. Other than that, they’re viewed as a complete nuisance. Basically an obstacle, a cost, standing in the way of efficient use of the continent itself... Chinese are moving to Africa in record numbers and Africans are leaving as fast as they can... Rich Chinese are smart to diversify to developed Western countries. Poor Chinese go to backward countries, to try to become wealthy. Africa is the prime recipient... I honestly think Africa could implode. I mean where is the economic growth going to come from that will be needed to support all these people? It’s turning into the world of Soylent Green in the cities. And in the boondocks, people just sit around on their haunches and beat on earth. Or at least the women do. Men just sit around and palaver all day... Africans haven’t learned anything from the past... Just look at what Zimbabwe recently went through... You’d think South Africans would say, “Geez, that country’s economy was totally destroyed by politics and envy. That wasn’t a good idea; we ought to act more intelligently.”... hey actually view what happened in Zimbabwe as a success... The blacks went from owning, say, 10% of the country’s wealth to now owning, say, 99%. That looked pretty good. The fact the absolute amount of wealth fell by perhaps 75% is irrelevant to them... Africa is probably the most racist place on the planet... The methodology in Africa has been the same for years. Get into the government. Steal as much as you can. Then go to Europe to live like a billionaire."
Salvini: 'We Need to Have More Children, Not Africans to Replace Them' - "Maybe in Luxembourg they need to do this, but in Italy we need to help people have more children, rather than bring in modern-day slaves [from Africa] to replace the children we’re not having"
Senate Democrats Are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet: Reason Roundup - "A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in "our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets," it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including "comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation" of the sort enacted in the E.U."
6 Reasons Why the French Are Such Good Lovers, According to French People - "“We are used to French kisses since we are 12. We don’t play basketball or baseball on the playground. We just practice the French kiss.” -- Hugo...
“They [French men] know they are charming, so they will go over the top and people [foreigners] are seduced and wrapped into it. They know women are easy prey. A friend came a month ago and the first man we met at a party picked her up and carried her down the stairs because he said she was ‘too good to take the stairs.’ She fell for it.” -- Jill
“We buy the lingerie because we know it is important.” -- Marine
“We love the Mediterranean way of life. It is all about the wine and seduction.” -- Hugo...
“They [French men] listen to women and try to understand what they feel. They try to meet a woman’s expectations and they pay a lot of attention. They also have some skills with their tongues.” -- Marine...
“The way we are with women is in our nature since we first learned to talk and walk. We hold the door for a woman, we stand when she joins us at the table, and we kiss her hand when we meet. It’s just the way we are. We take care of women and make them laugh and feel good. As I always say, ‘On ne peut pas être performant à l'horizontale si on ne se sent pas bien a la verticale,’ which means, ‘you can’t be good at sex with your lover if you don’t feel right when you are standing with them.’” -- Marco"
Congratulations Graduate! Eleven Reasons Why I Will Never Hire You.
Oakland Tech to hold first Black Graduation, joins growing movement to celebrate among one's own - "Oakland Tech joins public institutions such as the University California at Berkeley, Berkeley High and for the first time this year, the West Contra Costa Unified School District, all of which hold separate black graduations. Harvard University held its first official commencement for black graduate students last year, in addition to the commencement ceremony for the entire school where they received their diplomas... Critics see these events as having a separatist attitude, something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., worked hard to fight against. And they are being held at a time when the country is rife with accusations of racism and hateful attitudes toward ‘the other.’"
Probiotics are mostly useless and can actually hurt you - "the microbes found in faeces were not representative of those that had colonised the gut. “Relying on faecal samples as an indicator of what goes on inside the gut is inaccurate and wrong” says Elinav. The research also showed that while probiotics colonised the gastrointestinal tract of some people, the gut microbiome of others just expelled them. There was no way of telling from their stool sample which category people fell into. “Some people accept probiotics in their gut, while others just pass them from one end to the other,” says Elinav. They found that the probiotic colonisation patterns were highly dependent on the individual. That tells us that the concept that everyone can benefit from a universal probiotic bought from the supermarket is empirically wrong, he says... Probiotic bacteria readily colonised the gut of everyone in the second group after antibiotics had cleared the way. However, the researchers were surprised to find that this prevented the return of the person’s normal microbiome for up to six months"
The man who won the lottery 14 times - "This is the story of the man who “gamed” the lottery by buying every possible combination."
One in seven major operations in UK cancelled on day of surgery, data shows - "Of these patients, 10 per cent have been cancelled once before, while patients waiting for riskier operations where they are likely to require a critical care bed to recover were also more likely to be cancelled on, the data shows."
We won’t save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup | George Monbiot - "It was charming to see how Norwegian herring boats seek to avoid killing orcas, but we were given no idea of how unusual it is. Even marine plastic is in large part a fishing issue. It turns out that 46% of the Great Pacific garbage patch – which has come to symbolise our throwaway society – is composed of discarded nets, and much of the rest consists of other kinds of fishing gear. Abandoned fishing materials tend to be far more dangerous to marine life than other forms of waste. As for the bags and bottles contributing to the disaster, the great majority arise in poorer nations without good disposal systems. But because this point was not made, we look to the wrong places for solutions. From this misdirection arise a thousand perversities. One prominent environmentalist posted a picture of the king prawns she had bought, celebrating the fact that she had persuaded the supermarket to put them in her own container rather than a plastic bag, and linking this to the protection of the seas. But buying prawns causes many times more damage to marine life than any plastic in which they are wrapped. Prawn fishing has the highest rates of bycatch of any fishery – scooping up vast numbers of turtles and other threatened species. Prawn farming is just as bad, eliminating tracts of mangrove forests, crucial nurseries for thousands of species. We are kept remarkably ignorant of such issues. As consumers, we are confused, bamboozled and almost powerless – and corporate power has gone to great lengths to persuade us to see ourselves this way. The BBC’s approach to environmental issues is highly partisan, siding with a system that has sought to transfer responsibility for structural forces to individual shoppers. Yet it is only as citizens taking political action that we can promote meaningful change... Disposable coffee cups made from new materials are not just a non-solution: they are a perpetuation of the problem"
British worker files discrimination lawsuit after being fired from Hong Kong company and called a ‘gweilo’ by staff - "A British blasting specialist was called a “gweilo” at work and was excluded when he was hired on a Hong Kong tunnel project, according to a discrimination lawsuit he filed against his former employer. Francis William Haden also said that Leighton Contractors (Asia) did not let him hire blasting specialists from Australia, even though Hong Kong was short on people with the skill, because a partnering firm on the Tseung Kwan O-Lam Tin tunnel project did not want non-Chinese involved."
The future is here today: you can't play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions
6 maps and charts that explain sex around the world - "Only 10 percent of Japanese people report exciting sex. That's less than a third of the next-lowest, Hong Kong's, at 32... Japan is the only country in the world where a higher percentage of people report being dissatisfied with their sex lives than satisfied... working hours have made "physical contact" between spouses "so infrequent that some of Japan's leading homebuilders now report that more than one in three custom homes is built with separate bedrooms for husband and wife... Singapore, China, and Mexico had the smallest differences between between male and female orgasm rates, while Russia and Thailand had the largest. The thing that's most surprising about this is there's virtually no correlation between a country's overall level of gender equality and its orgasm gap... Turks reported more sex partners than any other country in the world, and were doing it unprotected about 45 percent of the time [and having more STIs]... Asian countries have a much higher mean age of virginity loss than nations basically everywhere else... there may be something about East Asian religious traditions or cultural norms that promotes sexual conservatism. One study by a group of researchers found very high levels of reported "embarrassment" about discussing sexual practices in public. These results, according to the researchers is that "in comparison with men and women from ‘Western' regions," respondents living in East Asian countries were "more sexually conservative, more male-orientated and less sexually active.""
SMRT Ltd (Feedback) And The Great Teh Tarik Expose - "Long gone is Azly’s brand of dry wit and humour from SMRT Ltd (Feedback), and browsing through the Facebook page, you’ll notice that the new administrator’s voice is distinctively different from the old guard’s. But Azly maintains that SMRT Ltd (Feedback) will and has continued from his time, and will maintain its anonymity for many versions to come."
Colin Kaepernick & Nike's Sweatshops - "Nike never does anything simply because it is the right thing to do. They do not care about social justice or human rights. This is about money. Period. They are still reeling because of the sexual misconduct allegations at Nike headquarters and want to pivot attention away from that. They also see this as a way to endear themselves to one of their largest bases of customers - young black men - to sell more sneakers. And they are banking on capturing the anti-Trump movement with this move. Again, to sell more sneakers. This is “cause marketing” 101."
New York Knicks center Enes Kanter says his criticisms of Turkish government have stifled endorsement deals - "New York Knicks center Enes Kanter said that Nike and other companies have shied away from signing him to endorsement deals because of his outspoken criticisms of the Turkish government."
So much for standing up for something
NBA Player Enes Kanter: How I Became Erdogan's Enemy - "If you speak out against Erdogan, it can affect your whole life and everyone around you. It has been too dangerous for me to set foot in Turkey for three years. The last time I visited, the government destroyed my brothers’ school and threw my dentist and his wife in prison. The regime arrested and charged a man for links to Gulen after I took a picture with his child, and went after a comedian after he exchanged a few tweets with me. Last year, Erdogan canceled my passport and put out an international warrant for my arrest. That means I am now stateless and pretty much can’t leave the United States. It’s interfering with my career, too"
Evergreen State College apologizes for protesting Sumas farm - "Evergreen State College’s President apologized for using taxpayer-funded resources to transport students to a Sumas berry farm for a protest in 2017... Medical examiners and the state Department of Labor and Industries found his death was due to natural causes unrelated to his work and cleared the farm of any wrongdoing."
Steve Bannon, Chelsea Clinton & “No Platforming” Rules - "Ms. Penny chose not to engage in the same festival as Steve Bannon because she believes that he doesn’t want to engage. Which must count as a sort of pre-emptive hit of non-engagement: “I’m going to not engage with you before you can not engage with me.”... the most shocking aspect of that event (even more than the presiding minister fondling Ariana Grande live onstage at a funeral) was the moment when we all said, “Isn’t that Louis Farrakhan up there onstage?” And indeed it was. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton seemed to have no problem sharing a platform with one of the world’s most notorious racists and anti-Semites. Indeed, when Farrakhan waddled over to President Clinton to shake his hand, he was positively oozing with the satisfaction he obviously gets — and has always gotten — from such encounters. For handshakes with — and proximity to — the likes of the Clintons is the only thing that stops Farrakhan from being recognized for what he is: no better or worse than a David Duke... I just cannot understand the rules here. So far as I know, Steve Bannon has never given a speech titled “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” If he had, then I doubt he would be so proud of it that it would be still sitting at the top of his Twitter page. And if he had, then I imagine that the Clintons would run the other way from him even if it meant no-platforming someone at a funeral."
Doug Casey On China's Exploitation Of Africa - "The Chinese basically see Africans as no more than a cheap labor source. That’s at best. Other than that, they’re viewed as a complete nuisance. Basically an obstacle, a cost, standing in the way of efficient use of the continent itself... Chinese are moving to Africa in record numbers and Africans are leaving as fast as they can... Rich Chinese are smart to diversify to developed Western countries. Poor Chinese go to backward countries, to try to become wealthy. Africa is the prime recipient... I honestly think Africa could implode. I mean where is the economic growth going to come from that will be needed to support all these people? It’s turning into the world of Soylent Green in the cities. And in the boondocks, people just sit around on their haunches and beat on earth. Or at least the women do. Men just sit around and palaver all day... Africans haven’t learned anything from the past... Just look at what Zimbabwe recently went through... You’d think South Africans would say, “Geez, that country’s economy was totally destroyed by politics and envy. That wasn’t a good idea; we ought to act more intelligently.”... hey actually view what happened in Zimbabwe as a success... The blacks went from owning, say, 10% of the country’s wealth to now owning, say, 99%. That looked pretty good. The fact the absolute amount of wealth fell by perhaps 75% is irrelevant to them... Africa is probably the most racist place on the planet... The methodology in Africa has been the same for years. Get into the government. Steal as much as you can. Then go to Europe to live like a billionaire."
Post ID: 7902915662511401472
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Links - 1st November 2018
The homophobic legacy of the British Empire - "Despite the prevalence of anti-LGBT laws throughout the former British Empire, there was no blanket decree outlawing homosexual relations. Instead, it was the sensibilities of individual colonial administrators which led to the first laws and then their quick spread across the Empire from 1860 onwards. Enze Han, author of "British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality," said the laws were partly the product of a strict Victorian moral code, which defined any sexual activity not for procreation as taboo. "(The British also) had this conception that the 'Orient,' the non-Western subjects, were overly erotic and over-sexed, and that's the reason why they were worried young colonial officers going abroad would be corrupted by those sexual acts," he said. Many of the laws which were put in place under the colonizers have long since been amended or even strengthened by local governments, which Mendos said could also show that colonial legislation at least partially reflected conservative opinions common within those countries at the time."
The Met has a problem with hate-crime. It can't explain what it means. - "The Metropolitan Police has a rather strange notice about “hate crimes” on its website. It has attracted quite a bit of attention on social media...
“Though what the perpetrator has done may not be against the law, their reasons for doing it are. This means it may be possible to charge them with an offence.”
We are back to the suggestion that a person may be charged with“the reasons for doing” an act which is itself lawful. The Met is in a terrible muddle here and it is very hard to understand what they mean... although there are some cases where doing an act is illegal irrespective of your state of mind, there are no cases where your state of mind can make you guilty of an offence if you don’t actually do anything capable of amounting to a crime... The Met’s website seems to presuppose the existence of an entirely novel type of criminal offence: a crime which requires only a guilty mind, mens rea but not actus reus. If such an offence existed then “thought-crime” would be a very good description of it"
Metropolitan Police drops tens of thousands of cases within hours of them being reported by victims - "The Metropolitan Police has been accused of dropping tens of thousands of investigations into serious crimes, such as sexual assault and arson, within hours of them being reported by members of the public."
It's sexier to be obsessed with hate crimes
South Yorkshire Police relentlessly mocked after urging people to report one another for 'offensive or insulting words' - “In addition to reporting hate crime, please report non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing. Hate will not be tolerated in South Yorkshire. Report it and put a stop to it.”
Britain Turns Offensive Speech Into a Police Matter - "In essence, South Yorkshire Police want people to report on everyday conversations. This is Stasi territory. Coppers asking citizens to file reports on things they have read or overheard really should have disappeared from Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet here it still is, this GDR-style instruction to eavesdrop and squeal, though now it's happening on the other side of the old Iron Curtain. It is testament to how entrenched censorship has become in 21st-century Britain that a police force can so casually call for reports about speech. This is a country whose communications laws and public-order legislation can be, and regularly are, used to punish hateful expression. Last year The Times reported that British police are arresting nine people a day for posting "offensive messages online." In 2016, 3,300 people were detained and questioned for things they said online. In some parts of Britain the arrest rate for offensive speech has risen by nearly 900% in recent years. We Brits are sleepwalking into a police state."
Why Brits are turning against the police - "They have been under political pressure from lobby groups obsessed with attaining rape conviction quotas – as if justice was about achieving statistical targets, rather than punishing guilty individuals and letting innocent individuals go free... The police have been alienating their erstwhile natural friends for some time. This first became evident at the end of the last century, with the jailing of the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin for shooting dead a burglar who had broken into his home. The consequent outrage in the conservative press stemmed from a belief that the police were now more concerned with the human rights of criminals than with crimes against private property, in this case. In ensuing years, the police have continued to antagonise a large swathe of the British public, who are increasingly convinced the Old Bill no longer take seriously burglary and theft. According to Home Office figures from last year, nine out of 10 burglary cases are closed without even a suspect being identified. Today, the police don’t even attend reports of shoplifting if the value stolen is less than £200. No wonder this nation of shopkeepers no longer respects its police... nationwide, shoplifting and violent crime continues to rise as criminals feel less afraid to break the law. Cries by the police that they are financially stretched arouse little sympathy when we read about police forces dressing themselves and their vehicles in LGBT-friendly colours, scouring Twitter for offensive words, or filling libraries with leaflets about ‘hate crimes’. Post-Macpherson, the police seem more desperate to prove their PC, anti-racist credentials than to address crimes that affect us all. The failure of the forces of law and order to prevent, investigate or suitably punish the rape gangs in the north of England has entrenched a suspicion that the police have become either enfeebled or politicised."
A Dietary Supplement Containing Standardized Phaseolus vulgaris Extract Influences Body Composition of Overweight Men and Women - "So-called "starch blockers" are listed among natural weight loss supplements. Theoretically, they may promote weight loss by interfering with the breakdown of complex carbohydrates thereby reducing, or at least slowing, the digestive availability of carbohydrate-derived calories and/or by providing resistant starches to the lower gastrointestinal tract... The present research study examines a dietary supplement containing 445 mg of Phaseolus vulgaris extract derived from the white kidney bean, previously shown to inhibit the activity of the digestive enzyme alpha amylase, on body composition of overweight human subjects... Phaseolus vulgaris extract produces significant decrements in body weight and suggest decrements in fat mass in the face of maintained lean body mass."
China to take over Zambia's international Airport for debt repayment - "Signing a contract with China is like, ascribing to the boiling frog effect; a fable describing a frog being boiled alive slowly... The Zambian government contracted the Chinese, lazy-thought and glossed over details thinking they were granting consent to gernuine terms but the whole thing just morphed into modern day colonialism. China is now proposing to take over the Kenneth Kaunda International Airport should Zambia Government fail to pay back its huge foreign debt on time. The issue of whether Zambia posses the required economic muscle to repay that debt is in contention considering the amount involved. It’s typical of the Chinese strategy. That moreover is not the only thing Zambian suffered from China; the Chinese own 60% shares of the Zambian National Broadcasting corporation which means, Chinese have an influence over what should or should not be premiered on their sets."
Ancient farmers spared us from glaciers but profoundly changed Earth’s climate - "ancient farming practices led to a rise in the atmospheric emission of the heat-trapping gases carbon dioxide and methane – a rise that has continued since, unlike the trend at any other time in Earth’s geologic history. It also shows that without this human influence, by the start of the Industrial Revolution, the planet would have likely been headed for another ice age."
Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective - "protesters have shown up with signs comparing Obama to Hitler (i.e. depicting him with a Hitler mustache), or displaying swastikas in the context of implying that Obama and/or his administration are Nazi-like. One would think that this would not be particularly newsworthy, but Democrats, the White House and their supporters are expressing outrage at this “horrifying” and “menacing” turn of events. (Or faux-outrage, at least.) Pundits, bloggers, media outlets and even top politicians like Nancy Pelosi are claiming that such signs are unprecedented, racist, and even that anyone who brings a swastika to a protest must be self-identifying as a Nazi (instead of accusing their opponents of being Nazis). When anyone tries to point out that the Left continuously compared Bush to Hitler and brought swastikas to rallies for six straight years during the Bush era, Obama supporters mock such claims, demand proof, and then try to ignore any individual examples proffered. Since I had a front-row seat between 2003 and 2008 at anti-Bush protests in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I saw literally THOUSANDS of Bush/Hitler comparisons and swastikas, I thought perhaps it would be useful to compile here in one place a small sampling of them — to prove beyond any doubt that Hitler and swastikas were referenced incessantly at basically every single protest during the Bush administration"
Nazi mania predates Trump, of course. The boy has been crying wolf for a long time
Poorest will gain most under Brexit, says Labour report - ""The reduction in prices and immigration control are particularly important for lower income households. "These households spend more on food and housing, the prices of both of which are raised substantially by EU protectionism. "Unskilled immigrants settle in poor communities which, therefore, carry a disproportionate cost in public services as well as suffering from a fall in wages. Our estimates show that the lowest decile household would gain £36 a week from Brexit; the second lowest decile (60 per cent of the median) would gain £44 a week.""
Money Really Does Lead to a More Satisfying Life - The New York Times - "Lottery winners said they were substantially more satisfied with their lives than lottery losers. And those who won prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars reported being more satisfied than winners of mere tens of thousands. These effects are remarkably durable. They were still evident up to two decades after a big win... What’s new here is the evidence that higher income is causing higher life satisfaction... A further set of questions probed the mental health of respondents, finding that greater income had no effect, although in related work, the same authors find that lottery winners are prescribed fewer mental health drugs. I interpret this as suggestive but not conclusive evidence that wealth improves one’s mental health... Contrary to popular stereotypes, those who win hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t blow most of their winnings at once. Instead, they slowly spend their newfound wealth over many years. Many don’t quit their jobs, but they do tend to work a bit less and retire a bit earlier. Surprisingly, the increase in wealth caused by winning the lottery has few effects on the physical health of the winners or their children. It seems possible that family wealth might have quite different effects in a less egalitarian society, like the United States."
The New York Times | Facebook - "Before Fashion Week, the model and activist Ashley Graham spoke with us about the power of depicting female bodies as they really are — without doctoring their form."
Comments: "The thing that’s doctored her form is those additional 3,000 calories she’s consuming every day."
"The term 'real women' is absurd - all women are real unless of course they are robots - and every woman is a different shape either by genes or by a medical problem or by choice ..... voila !"
"Well, except from the obvious doctoring of Ashley walking on the water, she very conveniently forgot to mention the full doctoring (it's called retouching) they always make to her face
" I don't want an unfiltered body. Only fashion models don't need much retouching to look their best. Photoshop my pics, please!!"
"As a photographer, I can see no sign of human presence in this image, it is THAT heavily Photoshopped; the skin, the creases in the clothes, the hair, the legs, and of course, the fine art of walking on water. Maybe it should belong in the humor section of the New York Times"
"There are simply body shapes that are more appealing than others to the general public. Period. Magazines and advertisements will use these body shapes to call attention to sell their products. The goal is not to show a regular body. Greek statues don't show regular body, showing even anatomically impossible structures to the human being. But this is art, depiction of the beauty for the time being. The concept of beauty changes culturally over time. Middle age paintings show "overweight" girls since they were the considered the most beautiful, and the thin girls were the ugly ones. I'm not traumatized for not having a David statue body or the muscular shape of guys in Speedo advertisements."
"then why all the makeup and fake eyelashes?"
The national question - "Americans are defined by our relationship to a literary discussion of the relationship of men in society. The canon is not well defined but certainly includes the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Federalist (a kind of operating manual for the Constitution) plus influential works such as John Locke’s treatises on government and the nature of property. The result was a radical departure from all previous ideas of national identity. The notion that you can become an American, as much an American as anyone born here... The first problem is these people come with no conception of what it is that made us this wealthy: free enterprise, sensible laws governing labor and business, and a general acknowledgement that what you make is yours to keep minus a tolerable levy for the upkeep of the country as a whole. We’re now accepting people who appear to believe what we have is the result of luck – or worse, theft. People who do not care to assimilate, and in fact reject the idea out of hand. The second problem is we appear to have lost the will to insist on it. That native-born Americans have lost sight of what created this outpouring of wealth unprecedented in human history. We can’t bring ourselves to say anymore, “Come and bring the richness of your culture. We welcome it. But you must leave behind your old loyalties and your old hatreds. You must learn a new way of thinking about yourself and become a new kind of person. We ask much, but in return much is given.”"
The Met has a problem with hate-crime. It can't explain what it means. - "The Metropolitan Police has a rather strange notice about “hate crimes” on its website. It has attracted quite a bit of attention on social media...
“Though what the perpetrator has done may not be against the law, their reasons for doing it are. This means it may be possible to charge them with an offence.”
We are back to the suggestion that a person may be charged with“the reasons for doing” an act which is itself lawful. The Met is in a terrible muddle here and it is very hard to understand what they mean... although there are some cases where doing an act is illegal irrespective of your state of mind, there are no cases where your state of mind can make you guilty of an offence if you don’t actually do anything capable of amounting to a crime... The Met’s website seems to presuppose the existence of an entirely novel type of criminal offence: a crime which requires only a guilty mind, mens rea but not actus reus. If such an offence existed then “thought-crime” would be a very good description of it"
Metropolitan Police drops tens of thousands of cases within hours of them being reported by victims - "The Metropolitan Police has been accused of dropping tens of thousands of investigations into serious crimes, such as sexual assault and arson, within hours of them being reported by members of the public."
It's sexier to be obsessed with hate crimes
South Yorkshire Police relentlessly mocked after urging people to report one another for 'offensive or insulting words' - “In addition to reporting hate crime, please report non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing. Hate will not be tolerated in South Yorkshire. Report it and put a stop to it.”
Britain Turns Offensive Speech Into a Police Matter - "In essence, South Yorkshire Police want people to report on everyday conversations. This is Stasi territory. Coppers asking citizens to file reports on things they have read or overheard really should have disappeared from Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet here it still is, this GDR-style instruction to eavesdrop and squeal, though now it's happening on the other side of the old Iron Curtain. It is testament to how entrenched censorship has become in 21st-century Britain that a police force can so casually call for reports about speech. This is a country whose communications laws and public-order legislation can be, and regularly are, used to punish hateful expression. Last year The Times reported that British police are arresting nine people a day for posting "offensive messages online." In 2016, 3,300 people were detained and questioned for things they said online. In some parts of Britain the arrest rate for offensive speech has risen by nearly 900% in recent years. We Brits are sleepwalking into a police state."
Why Brits are turning against the police - "They have been under political pressure from lobby groups obsessed with attaining rape conviction quotas – as if justice was about achieving statistical targets, rather than punishing guilty individuals and letting innocent individuals go free... The police have been alienating their erstwhile natural friends for some time. This first became evident at the end of the last century, with the jailing of the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin for shooting dead a burglar who had broken into his home. The consequent outrage in the conservative press stemmed from a belief that the police were now more concerned with the human rights of criminals than with crimes against private property, in this case. In ensuing years, the police have continued to antagonise a large swathe of the British public, who are increasingly convinced the Old Bill no longer take seriously burglary and theft. According to Home Office figures from last year, nine out of 10 burglary cases are closed without even a suspect being identified. Today, the police don’t even attend reports of shoplifting if the value stolen is less than £200. No wonder this nation of shopkeepers no longer respects its police... nationwide, shoplifting and violent crime continues to rise as criminals feel less afraid to break the law. Cries by the police that they are financially stretched arouse little sympathy when we read about police forces dressing themselves and their vehicles in LGBT-friendly colours, scouring Twitter for offensive words, or filling libraries with leaflets about ‘hate crimes’. Post-Macpherson, the police seem more desperate to prove their PC, anti-racist credentials than to address crimes that affect us all. The failure of the forces of law and order to prevent, investigate or suitably punish the rape gangs in the north of England has entrenched a suspicion that the police have become either enfeebled or politicised."
A Dietary Supplement Containing Standardized Phaseolus vulgaris Extract Influences Body Composition of Overweight Men and Women - "So-called "starch blockers" are listed among natural weight loss supplements. Theoretically, they may promote weight loss by interfering with the breakdown of complex carbohydrates thereby reducing, or at least slowing, the digestive availability of carbohydrate-derived calories and/or by providing resistant starches to the lower gastrointestinal tract... The present research study examines a dietary supplement containing 445 mg of Phaseolus vulgaris extract derived from the white kidney bean, previously shown to inhibit the activity of the digestive enzyme alpha amylase, on body composition of overweight human subjects... Phaseolus vulgaris extract produces significant decrements in body weight and suggest decrements in fat mass in the face of maintained lean body mass."
China to take over Zambia's international Airport for debt repayment - "Signing a contract with China is like, ascribing to the boiling frog effect; a fable describing a frog being boiled alive slowly... The Zambian government contracted the Chinese, lazy-thought and glossed over details thinking they were granting consent to gernuine terms but the whole thing just morphed into modern day colonialism. China is now proposing to take over the Kenneth Kaunda International Airport should Zambia Government fail to pay back its huge foreign debt on time. The issue of whether Zambia posses the required economic muscle to repay that debt is in contention considering the amount involved. It’s typical of the Chinese strategy. That moreover is not the only thing Zambian suffered from China; the Chinese own 60% shares of the Zambian National Broadcasting corporation which means, Chinese have an influence over what should or should not be premiered on their sets."
Ancient farmers spared us from glaciers but profoundly changed Earth’s climate - "ancient farming practices led to a rise in the atmospheric emission of the heat-trapping gases carbon dioxide and methane – a rise that has continued since, unlike the trend at any other time in Earth’s geologic history. It also shows that without this human influence, by the start of the Industrial Revolution, the planet would have likely been headed for another ice age."
Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective - "protesters have shown up with signs comparing Obama to Hitler (i.e. depicting him with a Hitler mustache), or displaying swastikas in the context of implying that Obama and/or his administration are Nazi-like. One would think that this would not be particularly newsworthy, but Democrats, the White House and their supporters are expressing outrage at this “horrifying” and “menacing” turn of events. (Or faux-outrage, at least.) Pundits, bloggers, media outlets and even top politicians like Nancy Pelosi are claiming that such signs are unprecedented, racist, and even that anyone who brings a swastika to a protest must be self-identifying as a Nazi (instead of accusing their opponents of being Nazis). When anyone tries to point out that the Left continuously compared Bush to Hitler and brought swastikas to rallies for six straight years during the Bush era, Obama supporters mock such claims, demand proof, and then try to ignore any individual examples proffered. Since I had a front-row seat between 2003 and 2008 at anti-Bush protests in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I saw literally THOUSANDS of Bush/Hitler comparisons and swastikas, I thought perhaps it would be useful to compile here in one place a small sampling of them — to prove beyond any doubt that Hitler and swastikas were referenced incessantly at basically every single protest during the Bush administration"
Nazi mania predates Trump, of course. The boy has been crying wolf for a long time
Poorest will gain most under Brexit, says Labour report - ""The reduction in prices and immigration control are particularly important for lower income households. "These households spend more on food and housing, the prices of both of which are raised substantially by EU protectionism. "Unskilled immigrants settle in poor communities which, therefore, carry a disproportionate cost in public services as well as suffering from a fall in wages. Our estimates show that the lowest decile household would gain £36 a week from Brexit; the second lowest decile (60 per cent of the median) would gain £44 a week.""
Money Really Does Lead to a More Satisfying Life - The New York Times - "Lottery winners said they were substantially more satisfied with their lives than lottery losers. And those who won prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars reported being more satisfied than winners of mere tens of thousands. These effects are remarkably durable. They were still evident up to two decades after a big win... What’s new here is the evidence that higher income is causing higher life satisfaction... A further set of questions probed the mental health of respondents, finding that greater income had no effect, although in related work, the same authors find that lottery winners are prescribed fewer mental health drugs. I interpret this as suggestive but not conclusive evidence that wealth improves one’s mental health... Contrary to popular stereotypes, those who win hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t blow most of their winnings at once. Instead, they slowly spend their newfound wealth over many years. Many don’t quit their jobs, but they do tend to work a bit less and retire a bit earlier. Surprisingly, the increase in wealth caused by winning the lottery has few effects on the physical health of the winners or their children. It seems possible that family wealth might have quite different effects in a less egalitarian society, like the United States."
The New York Times | Facebook - "Before Fashion Week, the model and activist Ashley Graham spoke with us about the power of depicting female bodies as they really are — without doctoring their form."
Comments: "The thing that’s doctored her form is those additional 3,000 calories she’s consuming every day."
"The term 'real women' is absurd - all women are real unless of course they are robots - and every woman is a different shape either by genes or by a medical problem or by choice ..... voila !"
"Well, except from the obvious doctoring of Ashley walking on the water, she very conveniently forgot to mention the full doctoring (it's called retouching) they always make to her face
" I don't want an unfiltered body. Only fashion models don't need much retouching to look their best. Photoshop my pics, please!!"
"As a photographer, I can see no sign of human presence in this image, it is THAT heavily Photoshopped; the skin, the creases in the clothes, the hair, the legs, and of course, the fine art of walking on water. Maybe it should belong in the humor section of the New York Times"
"There are simply body shapes that are more appealing than others to the general public. Period. Magazines and advertisements will use these body shapes to call attention to sell their products. The goal is not to show a regular body. Greek statues don't show regular body, showing even anatomically impossible structures to the human being. But this is art, depiction of the beauty for the time being. The concept of beauty changes culturally over time. Middle age paintings show "overweight" girls since they were the considered the most beautiful, and the thin girls were the ugly ones. I'm not traumatized for not having a David statue body or the muscular shape of guys in Speedo advertisements."
"then why all the makeup and fake eyelashes?"
The national question - "Americans are defined by our relationship to a literary discussion of the relationship of men in society. The canon is not well defined but certainly includes the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Federalist (a kind of operating manual for the Constitution) plus influential works such as John Locke’s treatises on government and the nature of property. The result was a radical departure from all previous ideas of national identity. The notion that you can become an American, as much an American as anyone born here... The first problem is these people come with no conception of what it is that made us this wealthy: free enterprise, sensible laws governing labor and business, and a general acknowledgement that what you make is yours to keep minus a tolerable levy for the upkeep of the country as a whole. We’re now accepting people who appear to believe what we have is the result of luck – or worse, theft. People who do not care to assimilate, and in fact reject the idea out of hand. The second problem is we appear to have lost the will to insist on it. That native-born Americans have lost sight of what created this outpouring of wealth unprecedented in human history. We can’t bring ourselves to say anymore, “Come and bring the richness of your culture. We welcome it. But you must leave behind your old loyalties and your old hatreds. You must learn a new way of thinking about yourself and become a new kind of person. We ask much, but in return much is given.”"
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