Megan McArdle's '12 Rules for Life' - "1. Be kind. Mean is easy; kind is hard... Making yourself feel bigger by making someone else feel small takes so little skill that 12-year-olds can do it. Those with greater ambitions should leave casual cruelty behind them...
2. Politics is not the most important thing in the world. It’s just the one people talk about the most. That’s because everyone shares the government; only you are married to your spouse... your spouse and others around you matter more to your happiness than the government does. You will notice, as you go about your day, that many, many important things are riding on your spouse, things that will have immediate costs and benefits to you. Very few of the things that irritate you or bring you joy have anything to do with the government. So keep some perspective about politics. It doesn’t matter as much as the real people around you, and the real things you can do in the world. If you have to choose between politics and a friendship, choose the friendship every time.
3. Always order one extra dish at a restaurant, an unfamiliar one. You might like it, which would be splendid. If you don’t like it, all you lost was a couple of bucks. If you can’t afford to order that one extra dish, then the restaurant is too expensive for your budget and you should find a cheaper one.
4. Give yourself permission to be bad. You know what you’re really good at? Things you’ve done many times before. Mastery is boredom...
5. Go to the party even when you don’t want to. Nine times in 10, you’ll be bored and go home early. But the 10th time, you will have a worthy experience or meet an interesting person. That more than redeems those other wasted hours.
6. Save 25 percent of your income. No, don’t tell me how expensive your city is; I have spent basically my whole life in New York and Washington, DC. You can save if you want to; what you really mean is “There are all these things I want more than financial security.”...
7. Don’t just pay people compliments; give them living eulogies...
8. That thing you kinda want to do someday? Do it now...
9. The great modernist mistake was to decide that if books without sewers were unrealistic, “reality” must be the sewers...
10. Don’t try to resolve fundamental conflicts with your spouse or roommates. The only people who win marital arguments about bedrock values are divorce lawyers...
11. Be grateful."
Europe: Making Islam Great Again - "Professor Ednan Aslan, Professor of Islamic Religious Education at the University of Vienna, recently interviewed a sample of 288 of the approximately 4,000 predominantly Afghan asylum seekers in the Austrian city of Graz, on behalf of the city's integration department. Members of the department understandably wanted to know the views of the Muslim newcomers there. The results were published in a study, "Religiöse und Ethische Orientierungen von Muslimischen Flüchtlingen in Graz" ("Religious and ethical orientations of Muslim refugees in Graz").
ccording to the study, two-thirds of the asylum seekers are men, mostly under 30 years old. They are all in favor of preserving their traditional, conservative, Islamic values.. Half of the migrants (49.8%), report that religion now plays a larger role in their daily lives in Europe, than it did in their native country. 47.2% are convinced that Jews and Christians have strayed from the "right path", and 47.8% think that the future of Islam would be in danger if Islam were to be interpreted in a modern and contemporary fashion. For 51.6% of the interviewees, the supremacy of Islam over other religions is undisputed. 55% believe in hell for unbelievers... In 2016, a study of nearly 800 migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea in the German state of Bavaria was conducted by a German think tank, the Hanns Seidel Foundation. This study showed that patriarchal beliefs were widespread among the migrants... A 2016 UK poll showed that 43% of British Muslims "believed that parts of the Islamic legal system should replace British law while only 22 per cent opposed the idea"... In Germany, intelligence agencies warned in the early fall of 2015 that, "We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law.""
Mandatory diversity course not effective, prof discovers - "A professor at East Carolina University recently discovered that the diversity course she teaches isn’t actually “effective” in changing students’ racial or gender biases. Dr. Michele Stacey, who teaches criminal justice at ECU, assessed the efficacy of the school’s diversity course by surveying 288 criminal justice students’ attitudes towards women and minorities both before and after taking the course... Race, Gender, and Special Populations in the Criminal Justice System is a three-credit course that is required for the ECU major and minor in criminal justice... The ineffective course remains a requirement for Criminal Justice majors at ECU"
Emma, why did you sign a petition to help Polanski? - "how credible is Hollywood’s decision to strip Weinstein of his membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which awards the Oscars), when it continues to treat the film director Polanski as a deity? Unlike Weinstein, who has yet to be charged with a crime, let alone convicted, Polanski pleaded guilty to ‘unlawful sex’ in an American court in 1977 — a plea bargain after he had drugged, raped and sodomised 13-year-old Samantha Galley, a would-be model. He then fled the country before sentence could be passed... the Academy awarded him an Oscar in 2003 — and the first person captured by the cameras leaping to her feet to applaud was Meryl Streep. The very woman who last week said the revelations of Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of her fellow actresses came as an appalling surprise — which makes Streep about the only person in the business who didn’t know about his predatory practices... Weinstein himself was a big donor to the Clintons, and also very friendly with President Obama — he gave Obama’s daughter, Malia, an internship in his company. You can bet this is one young woman he didn’t grope. In recent years, it would do an actor’s Hollywood career more harm if he came out as a Republican than would the sleaziest sexual behaviour... Weinstein has been thanked by actors in Oscar ceremonies more often than any other entity (including God).And that’s the other Hollywood deal: the artist is above the law... Bill Browder, whose book on his experiences fighting corruption in Putin’s Russia is now being made into a movie, recently told me: ‘Hollywood is a far worse place than Moscow.’ When I asked how that could be, given that friends of his had been murdered by the regime, he replied: ‘There are some good guys in Moscow. There are none in Hollywood.’
12 things you might not know you could be punished for in Singapore - "1. Annoying someone by behaving badly in public while drunk
2. Annoying someone in a public place through an act, or by reciting or uttering a song with lyrics that are obscene
3. Sale, distribution, rental of all things "obscene", including paintings, books, figures
4. Purposely obstructing a person, so as to prevent him from proceeding in any direction that he is allowed to walk in
5. Using false weight or measure
6. Your dog injuring a person
7. Bathing or washing yourself in on a public road, in a public tank, reservoir, or any water body
8. Flying a kite that obstructs traffic on a public road
9. Annoying someone by making noise in any way, including by an instrument
10. Taking alcohol into a public hospital
11. Making business deals at MRT stations
12. Leaving your vehicle engines idling"
BBC Falls Victim to 4Chan Trolling - MSM Caught Sounding Like Idiots - "The BBC is claiming a “far-right smear campaign against Antifa” was “exposed” by “investigative researchers,” but the campaign was publicly viewable to anyone browsing the popular imageboard 4Chan."
The Minority Victim Value Index - "The Victim Value Index is calculated based on one overriding factor: Disruptiveness. Those who are most disruptive go to the head of the line. This can be mistaken for a "Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease" phenomenon, and occasionally in the micro it is, but in the macro it goes to the question of why progressives value minorities and for what purpose. To be a progressive is to be committed to perpetual reform in the name of perpetual grievance for perpetual power. Grievance is to their government feudalism what the Divine Right of Kings was to feudal rulers. It justifies their right to agitate and undermine, to seize power by any means necessary and to implement their programs legally or extra-legally... Anyone who is shocked that the left would make common cause with Islamists has forgotten the Black Panthers. From the left's point of view they are doing the same thing by bringing on board a group with some revolutionary energy and a willingness to overthrow the system. Associating with them gives the left some revolutionary cred and the supposed ability to turn the violence on and off... Speech codes are an easy way to determine VVI status. As a black man, Juan Williams was a high-status VVI, allowing him to make otherwise politically incorrect observations. He was only purged for offending Muslims, a group with a higher status VVI. But black sportscasters who make jokes about Asian men are rarely reprimanded because Asians have a lower VVI status"
The Hidden Truths about Calories - "Differences exist even within a given kind of food. Take, for example, cooked vegetables. Cell walls in some plants are tougher to break down than those in others; nature, of course, varies in everything. If the plant material we eat has more of its cell walls broken down we can more of the calories from the goodies inside. In some plants, cooking ruptures most cell walls; in others, such as cassava, cell walls hold strong and hoard their precious calories in such a way that many of them pass through our bodies intact... Peanuts, pistachios and almonds all seem to be less completely digested than their levels of protein, fat, carbohydrates and fiber would suggest. How much? Just this month, a new study by Janet Novotny and colleagues at the USDA found that when the “average” person eats almonds she receives just 128 calories per serving rather than the 170 calories “on the label.”... Proteins can require ten to twenty times as much heat-energy to digest as fats, but the loss of calories as heat energy is not accounted for at all on packaging... the more processed foods are the more they actually give us the number of calories we see on the box, bag or other sort of label. This applies not just to cooking and pounding but also to industrial processing... Even if two people were to somehow eat the same sweet potato cooked the same way they would not get the same number of calories... Russian intestines are about five feet longer than those of, say, Italians. This means that those Russians eating the same amount of food as the Italians likely get more out of it"
9 Ugly Lessons About Sex from Big Data - "1. Straight men think women have an expiration date... While men often set their age filters for women into the 30s and beyond, rarely do they contact a woman over 29.
2. Straight women are far less likely to express sexual desire than are other demographics.
4. Searches for “Is my husband gay?” occur in states where gay marriage is least accepted.
5. According to Rudder’s research, Asian men are the least desirable racial group to women…
6. …And black women are the least desirable racial group to men.
7. Users who send copy-and-paste messages get responses more efficiently.
8. Your Facebook Likes reveal can reveal your gender, race, sexuality and political views...
In states where it’s hotter, people shower more; where it’s colder, people shower less. Still, the Northeast is relatively well-washed. Except, that is, for Vermont"
Williams College Students Can Report Each Other for 'Making Comments on Social Media' About Religion or Politics - "Williams College is one of at least 100 campuses with a system in place for students to report each other for saying or doing something slightly offensive. These trivially disturbing occurrences are known as "bias incidents"—and at Williams, virtually anything could qualify... Mocking someone's disability on Twitter would be awful. "Making comments on social media" about another person's religious or political beliefs isn't remotely similar. Some people's religious and political beliefs should be discussed, challenged, and even mocked. As the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker once observed, "that's the difference between a university and a madrassa."
Oberlin College Is Hiring Students to Be Social Justice Activists, Host Microaggression Training - "The position is called "Social Justice Education Facilitator," pays $8.15 an hour, and requires "knowledge on the various forms of oppression, including but not limited to: race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, citizenship, etc."... It's one thing for a professor within a classroom setting to teach students about the nature of oppression, or to discuss how certain people have been marginalized because of their gender or skin color. It's quite another for the college to train—and pay!—students to serve as activists outside of the classroom."
From Promise to Promiscuity - "For women, infidelity is thought to be driven more by emotional needs and is most likely when they are not satisfied in their marital relationship, especially when it is not a partnership of equals. For men, infidelity has long been more independent of the state of the marital relationship... the therapeutic world has remained fairly fixed in the belief that affairs occur because something is radically wrong with the marriage... 70 percent of couples choose to rebuild the relationship after infidelity, although they may not know how. Even couples for whom the violation is so painful or incomprehensible that divorce seems the only alternative often later regret a decision made in the highly disorienting days after discovery. Studies indeed show that relationship dissatisfaction is associated with engaging in extramarital sex. But there's evidence that in almost two-thirds of cases, marital problems are the effect, not the cause, of extramarital involvements. Further, affairs themselves skew perceptions of the marriage. Once infidelity has occurred, partners tend to look back on their primary relationship and see it as having been flawed all along—an attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance... Affairs, says Washington, D.C., psychologist Barry McCarthy, are "the absolutely best example of behavior being multicausal, multidimensional. There are many contributing factors. Sometimes they have nothing to do with the marriage. The most common reason for an affair is high opportunity. People fall into affairs rather than plan them." Another very common cause of affairs, he observes, is that "people do not feel desired and desirable in their marriage, and they want to see if they can be desired and desirable outside it." For others, he notes, the affair is a symptom of a mental health problem like alcohol abuse or bipolar disorder... By far the biggest predictor of affairs, experts agree, is sheer opportunity—how people vary in access and desirability to others. And the workplace is the great benefactor, providing large numbers of people with constant contact, common interests, an income to camouflage the costs of socializing outside the office, and an ironclad excuse... Living in the midst of a city abets infidelity. Not only is there exposure to large numbers of potential partners, there's more opportunity to escape detection. The larger the city one lives in, researchers have found, the greater the likelihood of an affair... Situations that deplete self-control—exposure to alcohol, an exhausting day of travel, doing highly challenging work—raise the risk of infidelity. They disable sexual restraint... "Everyone starts out in marriage believing they will not have an affair. Why do data from around the world consistently show that infidelity occurs even among people who are happy in their marriage? You can feel deep attachment to a partner but also feel intense romantic love for someone else while also feeling a desire for sex with other partners... For the vast majority of American couples today, sexual satisfaction plummets at the birth of the first child and reemerges, if at all, after the last child leaves home... In healthy marriages, sex plays what he deems "a relatively small part, a 15 to 20 percent part"—but it energizes the whole bond and allows each partner to feel desired and desirable. When couples abandon sex, they wind up draining the entire relationship of its vitality. "You not only lose the marriage connection but your sense of self," McCarthy finds. "An affair can be an attempt to regain a sense of self."... Fewer than 25 percent of cheaters leave a marriage for an affair partner, and those relationships are statistically extremely unlikely to endure."
Oxford Scientist Confirms Starting Work, School before 10 AM is Torture - "During his stint as a head teacher at Monkseaton Middle School in North Tyneside in 2009, Dr Kelley moved the school start day from 8.30 am to 10 am and found that starting an hour later improved grades in core subjects by 19%. Since his earlier experiment was a success, he stresses that children aged 8 to 10 should start school at 8.30 am or later, 16-year-olds at 10 am and 18-year-olds at 11am... “before the age of 55, the circadian rhythms of adults are completely out of synch with normal 9-to-5 working hours, posing a serious threat to performance, mood and mental health.”"
The Economics of Dodgy Massage Parlours - "One customer that I ran into outside one such establishment shared that he preferred these massages because they feel more intimate. He tells me, “When you pay for sex, sometimes they just lie there until you finish. And you can see when they’re not into it because you can see their face. These places, the girl lies next to you and you can touch her, close your eyes, pretend it’s your lover. It’s nicer.” To get some sense of the scale of this industry, we dropped by the districts most well-known for it, like Parklane Shopping Centre and Orchard Towers. Spend enough time in one of these malls and you begin to recognise the smell of vice: a heady combination of cold air, fresh laundry, and cheap perfume–not unlike the smell of most hotel rooms. But apart from these, we also visited some lesser-known ones in Katong Shopping Centre and along Macpherson Road. In total, we covered 127 of such establishments over four days, mostly clustered around the Central and Central/East parts of Singapore... Some of the women we spoke to share that the bulk of their expenditure goes towards food, make-up, mobile plans, and other personal expenses. Many of them live in-house (which explains why many massage parlours operate 24 hours a day), and so they don’t fork anything out for housing. One lady shared that she was saving up so she could return to China to start her own business. On average, she manages to save about 60 percent of her salary. Others shared that they were happy with their work, and had no plans at the moment... Contrary to what one might expect, this clientele includes everyone from sloppy uncles to sharply dressed professionals, both local and expat. Many of them also look like they wouldn’t have problems picking up women. After speaking to 6 of them, all of whom declined to share their names, I learn their reasons for patronising these establishments"
L'origine de Bert
Tuesday, June 05, 2018
Monday, June 04, 2018
Links - 4th June 2018 (3)
Students Hate Quotes from Trump's State of the Union, Until Realizing They Are Obama's - "Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips spoke to students outside John Jay College in New York City, who unanimously criticized the supposed Trump quotes, describing them as “warmongering,” “aggressive,” and “immature.” The quotes, taken from some of Obama’s State of the Union addresses, included threats to destroy the Islamic State, statements of America’s military strength, and attacking China’s economic policy."
what therapy gifts - "I wasn’t aware of the healing/enriching qualities of having a relationship with someone who’s able to listen to us fully without judging, trivialising, or fixing. How often do we have that in reality? How often do people try to tell us we should feel a different way or we shouldn’t be having certain feelings? Maybe you would think, that’s what close friends or family can do, to support us unconditionally. But close friends and family come with their own worldviews and biases, sometimes even more so because they think they know you intimately, so without even properly listening and understanding they are already assuming they know what you’re actually trying to express. We need someone who doesn’t have an investment in the outcome of the dialogue. Imagine trying to tell your loved ones you wake up everyday feeling like you want to end your life or that you want to quit your job when their quality of life depends on you not quitting? On top of that, people carry their own baggage so they will try to understand us from that vantage point without giving enough consideration that we are different people with different needs and aspirations... Sometimes we don’t actually want someone to make us better. Sometimes we just need someone to truly listen and try to understand. Sometimes we just need a space to hurt, for as long as we need, without advice telling us to exercise more or think more positively or go for vipassanas"
Plus when you pay someone, you don't need to ever see him again
Yarra City Council tells staff to stop referring to Australia Day - "Yarra City Council has taken another step towards no longer recognising Australia Day by asking staff to stop using the term while at work... Employees were directed to refer to the day as the "January 26 public holiday" when at work and speaking to the public. The missive follows the council's unanimous vote in August last year to no longer mark Australia Day on January 26 and support the movement to change the date... Other inner-north councils Moreland and Darebin have also decided to stop celebrating Australia Day on January 26."
And this coming from part of the government
the rogue feminist — toenail-fister: drejofvalenwood: ... - "batched: I do not care about your gender, sexuality or skin colour.
I only care about whether you’re a nice fucking human being or not.
theroguefeminist: so basically you’re racist, sexist and homophobic"
Modern liberals in a nutshell
Swedish Politician Who Fought for Equality and Open Borders Is Beheaded in Congo - "Zaida Catalan was a Swedish Green Party politician who believed in open borders. Zaida was pro-immigration and supported migrant rights. She was the former leader of the Young Greens of Sweden."
'They ask if it’s my business’: Meet the Caucasian who works in a heartland provision shop - "American artists would struggle with the culture shock of living and working in a place like Singapore. It didn’t take long for Peter to experience the shock for himself. “Here in Singapore, clients would spend six months debating how much to pay, and as soon as they agree to the cost, they want the thing tomorrow,” he said. “My boss was constantly on my back, asking me to work faster and more efficiently.”... He described mee rebus as ingredients “floating around in this dark gravy”, while the smell of shrimp sauce in rojak “made me want to vomit”."
Association of Exposure to High Rates of Obesity With Overweight and Obesity - "Using data from military service members assigned to installations around the country, this study found that exposure to counties with higher rates of obesity (relative to counties with lower obesity rates) was associated with higher mean BMI and greater odds of obesity in parents and higher BMI z scores and greater odds of overweight/obesity in children. Associations were stronger among families who had resided longer in a given location and with off-installation residence; no evidence supported self-selection or shared built environment as explanations for these results... which suggests the presence of social contagion in obesity."
World Hijab Day versus Wear A Kimono Day « Why Evolution Is True - "Yesterday was World Hijab Day, a recent holiday confected to celebrate (and justify) the Muslim symbol of oppression... women throughout the West gleefully put on the hijab, hoping to have some kind of Muslim experience... That brought to mind the incident in 2016 when women in Boston were invited to try on a kimono in front of a Manet painting at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, just to see what wearing one felt like, as well as to match the painting. That brought down the wrath of Leftist youth, who decried this as blatant cultural appropriation. And it eventually led to the Museum’s cancelling of Kimono Wednesdays.. Why is hijab-wearing not only okay, but positively wonderful, while kimono-wearing is a no-no?... Remember, too, that the most demonized religion in America, at least judging by the rate of hate crimes experienced by its adherents, is Judaism. There are twice as many hate crimes for each Jewish person as there are for every Muslim. Should we then have World Yarmulke Day to decry anti-Semitism, asking all men to put on a beanie?"
Alishba Zarmeen on the Hijab - “What I feel about the ‘hijab-is-identity-and-liberation’ apologists is the same thing I feel about Confederate flag supporters: Yes, free speech protects your right to sport one–but do not forget the fucking history and traditional use of that symbol.”
Recycling on the brink of collapse in Victoria as China ban bites - "The recycling industry has been warning for some time that a decision by China – our largest export destination for recycling – to ban waste imports would have a catastrophic impact on the sector, possibly making it unviable... Mr Moles said if waste had nowhere to go, there was a chance councils would be forced to explore putting recycling into landfill, but Moyne Shire was doing everything it could to avoid that possibility because it was “environmentally and socially” wrong."
How sustainable are "sustainability" initiatives without subsidies of some sort?
Inside Edina's attempt to turn their school into a social justice factory - "Academic rigor is unraveling, high school reading and math test scores are sliding, and students increasingly fear bullying and persecution. The shift began in 2013, when Edina school leaders adopted the “All for All” strategic plan—a sweeping initiative that reordered the district’s mission from academic excellence for all students to “racial equity.” “Equity” in this context does not mean “equality” or “fairness.” It means racial identity politics—an ideology that blames minority students’ academic challenges on institutional racial bias, repudiates Martin Luther King, Jr.’s color-blind ideal, and focuses on uprooting “white privilege.” The Edina school district’s All for All plan mandated that henceforth “all teaching and learning experiences” would be viewed through the “lens of racial equity,” and that only “racially conscious” teachers and administrators should be hired. District leaders assured parents this would reduce Edina’s racial achievement gap, which they attributed to “barriers rooted in racial constructs and cultural misunderstandings.” As a result, the school system’s obsession with “white privilege” now begins in kindergarten... A course description of an 11th-grade U.S. Literature and Composition course puts it this way: “By the end of the year, you will have . . . learned how to apply marxist [sic], feminist, post-colonial [and] psychoanalytical . . .lenses to literature.” The primary vehicle in the indoctrination effort is a year-long English course—required of all 10th-graders—that centers, not on reading literature and enhancing writing skills, but on the politicized themes of “Colonization,” “Immigration” and “Social Constructions of Race, Class and Gender.”... Flores, who fled a Marxist regime in Nicaragua as a child, had this to say: “Years ago, we fled Communism to escape indoctrination, absolutist thinking and restrictions on our freedom of speech. If we see these traits in our schools in America, we must speak out and oppose it.”... The result of all of this? Four years into the Edina schools’ equity crusade, black students’ test scores continue to disappoint. There’s been a single positive point of data: Black students’ reading scores—all ages, all grades—have slightly increased, from 45.5 percent proficiency in 2014 to 46.4 percent proficiency in 2017. But other than that, the news is all bad"
SJW logic: that things aren't improving shows how bad racism, sexism etc, so more progressive indoctrination is needed
There is now a K in LGBTQQICAPF2K+ - "Users were quick to dismiss Kink as part of the LGBT+ community... “I’m gay, and I do not and will not use this silly LGBTQLAPK sh*t. They keep adding a silly letter for inclusion. You are just labelling yourselves, and that is a silly thing to do.”"
Teachers federation conducts 'LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP' training - "The acronym stands for Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual and Polyamorous."
10 Racist, Sexist, Xenophobic, And Homophobic Countries Ignored By The Left - "1. Jamaica (Homophobia)
2. Liberia (Racism)
3. Japan (Xenophobia)
4. China (Racism & Xenophobia)
5. Bhutan (Xenophobia)
Foreign visitation to the Kingdom of Bhutan (population 775,000) is extremely regulated under the seemingly Orwellian decree of “High Value, Low Impact” tourism, which is intended to minimize it’s impact on the country’s unique society and environment. One of those regulations is an exorbitant fee just to be in the country, at anywhere between $200-250 U.S. dollars per day depending on the season...
6. Laos (Sexism & Xenophobia)
The relatively quiet and uneventful country of Laos stipulates that foreigners may not have any sexual relations with Laotian women unless they are married...
7. Malaysia (Racism)
8. India (Racism)
Over 40% of Indians would be reluctant to have neighbors who are of a different race, while it was less than 4% in the United States by comparison....
9. Mauritania (Slavery!)
An estimated 10% to 20% of the population lives in slavery...
10. Saudi Arabia (Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Terrorism)"
Racial diversity lacking in some sports here - "Of the 23 Lions called up for Singapore’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup Group E qualifier against Taiwan in June, 18 were Malay. The rest: one Chinese, two Indians, and two Caucasians, who are naturalised citizens. The SEA Games-bound national table tennis teams are made up entirely of Chinese players. It is almost likewise in the national basketball and badminton squads. The national men’s cricket team, on the other hand, consists mostly of Indian players, although the women’s team has a fair mix of players of various races... Mr Khairul said football’s lack of racial diversity can also be caused by coaches who tend to favour Malays because of their own pre-conceived notions and assumptions."
Bangladesh frets about population boom in Rohingya camps - "It is our religious duty to have children. Using medicines to prevent childbirth is a sin. I don't think my family will use this stuff"
60 Subway branches in Singapore have stopped selling pork - "Reactions to the news have been mixed, with some customers bemoaning the loss and threatening to "boycott Subway", while others hoped that they'll still be able to get the regular menu in Singapore."
Curiously the reaction seems stronger than I expected, despite most fast food being Halal. Or maybe because of it
Scientific American - Posts - ""We cannot stand by while Bill Nye uses his public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science." — 500 Women Scientists"
Comments: "This is why Progressives lose. We will never change things by wagging our fingers from without. Nye is clearly using his position and fame as a means to affect the system from within. How one could honestly believe he is supporting the Trump administration is absolutely unfathomable."
"The left demands absolute purity in their candidates or they withhold their vote in tantrum."
"Oh give me a freaking break. You're going to disavow him because he's attending a state of the union address? That really makes us (liberals) sound insane."
"I'm thinking of not following Scientific American after this crap opinion piece. I'm a woman and a scientist and I see the value in bringing a knowledge base to those who remain ignorant."
"I am a woman scientist & these 500 women scientists do not speak for me, this is the dumbest article I’ve read this week."
"If everyone who hates this guy refuses to do their jobs in protest, we won't have a functioning country."
"By the writers logic, the dreamers accompanying Democratic leaders are anti-immigration."
"The blog is a textbook case of cynicism and ultimately suggests a point of view as repressive as that of the administration."
Paris Muslim accused of killing Jewish woman no longer charged with hate crime - "In the Halimi case, Traore was heard shouting about Allah and calling her “a devil” in Arabic. Halimi’s daughter said he had called the daughter a “dirty Jewess” in the building two years before the murder. But the examining magistrate in Traore’s trial, which opened this week, dismissed the aggravated hate crime charge before the trial actually began, Le Parisien reported Wednesday. Traore is pleading temporary insanity, though he has no history of mental illness."
German shock at car exhaust tests on humans and monkeys
If you ban animal testing, only humans are left
Exclusive: FBI Confirms Jihadi Training Camps in America
St Patrick's Day crackdown: Irish flag banned at parade in Strabane - "THE IRISH tricolour has been banned from a St Patrick’s Day parade in case it offends people attending the event in a crackdown on flags at the annual celebration"
Engineer spent three months in jail on false rape claim - "A teenager suspected of rape spent three months in custody because police did not disclose text messages that proved his innocence, he has claimed. BT engineer Connor Fitzgerald, 19, was arrested last year after a complaint was made against him. But charges were dropped only last week when it emerged that the complainant, who is entitled to lifelong anonymity, had sent texts threatening to destroy him... The case is the latest in a string of investigations or trials that have collapsed after police failed to disclose vital evidence to defence lawyers"
What happens when you have a feminist legal system (and it's not just the CPS)
I’m Sikh and I can’t eat halal - "the religion’s code of conduct says Sikhs are strictly prohibited from eating meat killed in a ritualistic manner... Sikhs are supposed to eat meat that has been killed quickly, without causing suffering to the animal. A Sikh woman from Bournemouth who wanted to remain anonymous had a strong view: “It’s strange that some Subway stores have actually banned ham and bacon. That’s something I don’t understand because people have a choice not to buy it so it won’t affect them if stores are selling it. Sikh people aren’t supposed to eat beef, but it would never be banned from a shop and I wouldn’t want it to be.”
Aka Jhatka
How Dirt Could Save Us From Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs - "Since 1939, when René Dubos, a researcher at Rockefeller University, smeared dirt across a Petri plate and isolated the antibiotic gramicidin, the search for antibiotics has largely been culture dependent: It’s limited to the finite percentage of bacteria and fungi that grow in the laboratory. If the chance of finding a new antibiotic in a random soil screen was once one in 20,000, by some estimates the odds have dwindled to less than one in a billion. All the easy ones have already been found."
what therapy gifts - "I wasn’t aware of the healing/enriching qualities of having a relationship with someone who’s able to listen to us fully without judging, trivialising, or fixing. How often do we have that in reality? How often do people try to tell us we should feel a different way or we shouldn’t be having certain feelings? Maybe you would think, that’s what close friends or family can do, to support us unconditionally. But close friends and family come with their own worldviews and biases, sometimes even more so because they think they know you intimately, so without even properly listening and understanding they are already assuming they know what you’re actually trying to express. We need someone who doesn’t have an investment in the outcome of the dialogue. Imagine trying to tell your loved ones you wake up everyday feeling like you want to end your life or that you want to quit your job when their quality of life depends on you not quitting? On top of that, people carry their own baggage so they will try to understand us from that vantage point without giving enough consideration that we are different people with different needs and aspirations... Sometimes we don’t actually want someone to make us better. Sometimes we just need someone to truly listen and try to understand. Sometimes we just need a space to hurt, for as long as we need, without advice telling us to exercise more or think more positively or go for vipassanas"
Plus when you pay someone, you don't need to ever see him again
Yarra City Council tells staff to stop referring to Australia Day - "Yarra City Council has taken another step towards no longer recognising Australia Day by asking staff to stop using the term while at work... Employees were directed to refer to the day as the "January 26 public holiday" when at work and speaking to the public. The missive follows the council's unanimous vote in August last year to no longer mark Australia Day on January 26 and support the movement to change the date... Other inner-north councils Moreland and Darebin have also decided to stop celebrating Australia Day on January 26."
And this coming from part of the government
the rogue feminist — toenail-fister: drejofvalenwood: ... - "batched: I do not care about your gender, sexuality or skin colour.
I only care about whether you’re a nice fucking human being or not.
theroguefeminist: so basically you’re racist, sexist and homophobic"
Modern liberals in a nutshell
Swedish Politician Who Fought for Equality and Open Borders Is Beheaded in Congo - "Zaida Catalan was a Swedish Green Party politician who believed in open borders. Zaida was pro-immigration and supported migrant rights. She was the former leader of the Young Greens of Sweden."
'They ask if it’s my business’: Meet the Caucasian who works in a heartland provision shop - "American artists would struggle with the culture shock of living and working in a place like Singapore. It didn’t take long for Peter to experience the shock for himself. “Here in Singapore, clients would spend six months debating how much to pay, and as soon as they agree to the cost, they want the thing tomorrow,” he said. “My boss was constantly on my back, asking me to work faster and more efficiently.”... He described mee rebus as ingredients “floating around in this dark gravy”, while the smell of shrimp sauce in rojak “made me want to vomit”."
Association of Exposure to High Rates of Obesity With Overweight and Obesity - "Using data from military service members assigned to installations around the country, this study found that exposure to counties with higher rates of obesity (relative to counties with lower obesity rates) was associated with higher mean BMI and greater odds of obesity in parents and higher BMI z scores and greater odds of overweight/obesity in children. Associations were stronger among families who had resided longer in a given location and with off-installation residence; no evidence supported self-selection or shared built environment as explanations for these results... which suggests the presence of social contagion in obesity."
World Hijab Day versus Wear A Kimono Day « Why Evolution Is True - "Yesterday was World Hijab Day, a recent holiday confected to celebrate (and justify) the Muslim symbol of oppression... women throughout the West gleefully put on the hijab, hoping to have some kind of Muslim experience... That brought to mind the incident in 2016 when women in Boston were invited to try on a kimono in front of a Manet painting at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, just to see what wearing one felt like, as well as to match the painting. That brought down the wrath of Leftist youth, who decried this as blatant cultural appropriation. And it eventually led to the Museum’s cancelling of Kimono Wednesdays.. Why is hijab-wearing not only okay, but positively wonderful, while kimono-wearing is a no-no?... Remember, too, that the most demonized religion in America, at least judging by the rate of hate crimes experienced by its adherents, is Judaism. There are twice as many hate crimes for each Jewish person as there are for every Muslim. Should we then have World Yarmulke Day to decry anti-Semitism, asking all men to put on a beanie?"
Alishba Zarmeen on the Hijab - “What I feel about the ‘hijab-is-identity-and-liberation’ apologists is the same thing I feel about Confederate flag supporters: Yes, free speech protects your right to sport one–but do not forget the fucking history and traditional use of that symbol.”
Recycling on the brink of collapse in Victoria as China ban bites - "The recycling industry has been warning for some time that a decision by China – our largest export destination for recycling – to ban waste imports would have a catastrophic impact on the sector, possibly making it unviable... Mr Moles said if waste had nowhere to go, there was a chance councils would be forced to explore putting recycling into landfill, but Moyne Shire was doing everything it could to avoid that possibility because it was “environmentally and socially” wrong."
How sustainable are "sustainability" initiatives without subsidies of some sort?
Inside Edina's attempt to turn their school into a social justice factory - "Academic rigor is unraveling, high school reading and math test scores are sliding, and students increasingly fear bullying and persecution. The shift began in 2013, when Edina school leaders adopted the “All for All” strategic plan—a sweeping initiative that reordered the district’s mission from academic excellence for all students to “racial equity.” “Equity” in this context does not mean “equality” or “fairness.” It means racial identity politics—an ideology that blames minority students’ academic challenges on institutional racial bias, repudiates Martin Luther King, Jr.’s color-blind ideal, and focuses on uprooting “white privilege.” The Edina school district’s All for All plan mandated that henceforth “all teaching and learning experiences” would be viewed through the “lens of racial equity,” and that only “racially conscious” teachers and administrators should be hired. District leaders assured parents this would reduce Edina’s racial achievement gap, which they attributed to “barriers rooted in racial constructs and cultural misunderstandings.” As a result, the school system’s obsession with “white privilege” now begins in kindergarten... A course description of an 11th-grade U.S. Literature and Composition course puts it this way: “By the end of the year, you will have . . . learned how to apply marxist [sic], feminist, post-colonial [and] psychoanalytical . . .lenses to literature.” The primary vehicle in the indoctrination effort is a year-long English course—required of all 10th-graders—that centers, not on reading literature and enhancing writing skills, but on the politicized themes of “Colonization,” “Immigration” and “Social Constructions of Race, Class and Gender.”... Flores, who fled a Marxist regime in Nicaragua as a child, had this to say: “Years ago, we fled Communism to escape indoctrination, absolutist thinking and restrictions on our freedom of speech. If we see these traits in our schools in America, we must speak out and oppose it.”... The result of all of this? Four years into the Edina schools’ equity crusade, black students’ test scores continue to disappoint. There’s been a single positive point of data: Black students’ reading scores—all ages, all grades—have slightly increased, from 45.5 percent proficiency in 2014 to 46.4 percent proficiency in 2017. But other than that, the news is all bad"
SJW logic: that things aren't improving shows how bad racism, sexism etc, so more progressive indoctrination is needed
There is now a K in LGBTQQICAPF2K+ - "Users were quick to dismiss Kink as part of the LGBT+ community... “I’m gay, and I do not and will not use this silly LGBTQLAPK sh*t. They keep adding a silly letter for inclusion. You are just labelling yourselves, and that is a silly thing to do.”"
Teachers federation conducts 'LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP' training - "The acronym stands for Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual and Polyamorous."
10 Racist, Sexist, Xenophobic, And Homophobic Countries Ignored By The Left - "1. Jamaica (Homophobia)
2. Liberia (Racism)
3. Japan (Xenophobia)
4. China (Racism & Xenophobia)
5. Bhutan (Xenophobia)
Foreign visitation to the Kingdom of Bhutan (population 775,000) is extremely regulated under the seemingly Orwellian decree of “High Value, Low Impact” tourism, which is intended to minimize it’s impact on the country’s unique society and environment. One of those regulations is an exorbitant fee just to be in the country, at anywhere between $200-250 U.S. dollars per day depending on the season...
6. Laos (Sexism & Xenophobia)
The relatively quiet and uneventful country of Laos stipulates that foreigners may not have any sexual relations with Laotian women unless they are married...
7. Malaysia (Racism)
8. India (Racism)
Over 40% of Indians would be reluctant to have neighbors who are of a different race, while it was less than 4% in the United States by comparison....
9. Mauritania (Slavery!)
An estimated 10% to 20% of the population lives in slavery...
10. Saudi Arabia (Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Terrorism)"
Racial diversity lacking in some sports here - "Of the 23 Lions called up for Singapore’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup Group E qualifier against Taiwan in June, 18 were Malay. The rest: one Chinese, two Indians, and two Caucasians, who are naturalised citizens. The SEA Games-bound national table tennis teams are made up entirely of Chinese players. It is almost likewise in the national basketball and badminton squads. The national men’s cricket team, on the other hand, consists mostly of Indian players, although the women’s team has a fair mix of players of various races... Mr Khairul said football’s lack of racial diversity can also be caused by coaches who tend to favour Malays because of their own pre-conceived notions and assumptions."
Bangladesh frets about population boom in Rohingya camps - "It is our religious duty to have children. Using medicines to prevent childbirth is a sin. I don't think my family will use this stuff"
60 Subway branches in Singapore have stopped selling pork - "Reactions to the news have been mixed, with some customers bemoaning the loss and threatening to "boycott Subway", while others hoped that they'll still be able to get the regular menu in Singapore."
Curiously the reaction seems stronger than I expected, despite most fast food being Halal. Or maybe because of it
Scientific American - Posts - ""We cannot stand by while Bill Nye uses his public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science." — 500 Women Scientists"
Comments: "This is why Progressives lose. We will never change things by wagging our fingers from without. Nye is clearly using his position and fame as a means to affect the system from within. How one could honestly believe he is supporting the Trump administration is absolutely unfathomable."
"The left demands absolute purity in their candidates or they withhold their vote in tantrum."
"Oh give me a freaking break. You're going to disavow him because he's attending a state of the union address? That really makes us (liberals) sound insane."
"I'm thinking of not following Scientific American after this crap opinion piece. I'm a woman and a scientist and I see the value in bringing a knowledge base to those who remain ignorant."
"I am a woman scientist & these 500 women scientists do not speak for me, this is the dumbest article I’ve read this week."
"If everyone who hates this guy refuses to do their jobs in protest, we won't have a functioning country."
"By the writers logic, the dreamers accompanying Democratic leaders are anti-immigration."
"The blog is a textbook case of cynicism and ultimately suggests a point of view as repressive as that of the administration."
Paris Muslim accused of killing Jewish woman no longer charged with hate crime - "In the Halimi case, Traore was heard shouting about Allah and calling her “a devil” in Arabic. Halimi’s daughter said he had called the daughter a “dirty Jewess” in the building two years before the murder. But the examining magistrate in Traore’s trial, which opened this week, dismissed the aggravated hate crime charge before the trial actually began, Le Parisien reported Wednesday. Traore is pleading temporary insanity, though he has no history of mental illness."
German shock at car exhaust tests on humans and monkeys
If you ban animal testing, only humans are left
Exclusive: FBI Confirms Jihadi Training Camps in America
St Patrick's Day crackdown: Irish flag banned at parade in Strabane - "THE IRISH tricolour has been banned from a St Patrick’s Day parade in case it offends people attending the event in a crackdown on flags at the annual celebration"
Engineer spent three months in jail on false rape claim - "A teenager suspected of rape spent three months in custody because police did not disclose text messages that proved his innocence, he has claimed. BT engineer Connor Fitzgerald, 19, was arrested last year after a complaint was made against him. But charges were dropped only last week when it emerged that the complainant, who is entitled to lifelong anonymity, had sent texts threatening to destroy him... The case is the latest in a string of investigations or trials that have collapsed after police failed to disclose vital evidence to defence lawyers"
What happens when you have a feminist legal system (and it's not just the CPS)
I’m Sikh and I can’t eat halal - "the religion’s code of conduct says Sikhs are strictly prohibited from eating meat killed in a ritualistic manner... Sikhs are supposed to eat meat that has been killed quickly, without causing suffering to the animal. A Sikh woman from Bournemouth who wanted to remain anonymous had a strong view: “It’s strange that some Subway stores have actually banned ham and bacon. That’s something I don’t understand because people have a choice not to buy it so it won’t affect them if stores are selling it. Sikh people aren’t supposed to eat beef, but it would never be banned from a shop and I wouldn’t want it to be.”
Aka Jhatka
How Dirt Could Save Us From Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs - "Since 1939, when René Dubos, a researcher at Rockefeller University, smeared dirt across a Petri plate and isolated the antibiotic gramicidin, the search for antibiotics has largely been culture dependent: It’s limited to the finite percentage of bacteria and fungi that grow in the laboratory. If the chance of finding a new antibiotic in a random soil screen was once one in 20,000, by some estimates the odds have dwindled to less than one in a billion. All the easy ones have already been found."
Post ID: 231120910592803593
The tradeoff between feminist policies and feminist outcomes
A Nordic mystery - Schumpeter
"THE Nordic countries have done more than anywhere else to provide women with equal opportunities. Maternity leave is generous. State provision of child care is first-rate. Female university graduates outnumber males by six to four. Half of Finland’s cabinet ministers and 57% of Sweden’s are female. The latest Global Gender Gap Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF), awards the first five places to the Vikings: Iceland comes top, followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The region has also led the world in introducing quotas for corporate boards. Norway started the trend, and now requires stockmarket-listed companies to allot at least 40% of board seats to women. Iceland, Finland and some other European countries have introduced similar requirements.
But such rules cover only board seats, and only at listed firms. Visit a typical Nordic company headquarters and you will notice something striking among the standing desks and modernist furniture: the senior managers are still mostly men, and most of the women are PAs... There may be more women sitting round the table at board meetings, but the person who runs the show is almost always a man: only 6% of Norwegian listed firms had a female chief executive in 2013, little better than the 5% of American companies on the Fortune 500 list that have a woman as CEO.
There is much discussion about why Viking women have failed to crack the glass ceiling. The left reckons they must still be suffering from unconscious prejudice. The right maintains it is a matter of individual women choosing to give priority to their children. The Nordics can hardly be faulted for spending too little money: as a share of GDP their public spending on child care is between seven and nine times America’s (where the proportion is a measly 0.1%). But there is no simple relationship between providing equality of opportunity and securing equality of results.
Indeed, it is possible that generous social policies can backfire. Studies by Nina Smith, an economist at Aarhus University in Denmark, and others raise two striking possibilities. First, Nordic women may suffer lower earnings later in their careers because generous maternity leave encourages them to take long breaks to raise children earlier on, when male competitors are gaining valuable experience. Second, women trying to climb the career ladder seem to find it harder to afford domestic help than their American equivalents, because those generous social policies have to be paid for with high taxes. And, when chores cannot be offloaded to domestic staff, working women still get lumbered with the time-inflexible household tasks, such as picking up children from school, whereas men do “their” chores at the weekend. Public-sector employers are more inclined to provide female staff with child-friendly hours, ample family leave and so on; and they have a larger proportion of women bosses than private firms. But the wage structure in such workplaces is much more compressed than in the predominantly male-led private sector.
Overall, then, policies that reduce the gender gap for the mass of workers may be increasing it at the upper levels of management. Ms Smith calculates that in Denmark and Sweden the gap between men and women at the upper end of the pay scale has actually increased in recent decades...
Overall, then, policies that reduce the gender gap for the mass of workers may be increasing it at the upper levels of management. Ms Smith calculates that in Denmark and Sweden the gap between men and women at the upper end of the pay scale has actually increased in recent decades.
Furthermore, in the first substantial study of the Norwegian reforms, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago’s Booth business school and three colleagues conclude that “there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled down.” They have done nothing to improve the career prospects of highly qualified women below board level. They have not helped close the gender gap in the incomes of recent business-school graduates. Nor have they done anything to encourage younger women to go to business school in the first place."
You can't legislate productivity.
Ironically a high minimum wage means it is hard for working women to get hired help - which would help them do better in their careers.
The fact that greedy companies exited the stock market in huge numbers suggests that they realised how damaging quotas would be.
Feminist logic - the most feminist policies in the world hasn't helped women, so it shows patriarchy is that strong and we need even more feminism (burning the witch didn't end the drought, so it shows that witch magic is very powerful and you need to burn more witches).
So much for the role model or women helping other women effect.
"THE Nordic countries have done more than anywhere else to provide women with equal opportunities. Maternity leave is generous. State provision of child care is first-rate. Female university graduates outnumber males by six to four. Half of Finland’s cabinet ministers and 57% of Sweden’s are female. The latest Global Gender Gap Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF), awards the first five places to the Vikings: Iceland comes top, followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The region has also led the world in introducing quotas for corporate boards. Norway started the trend, and now requires stockmarket-listed companies to allot at least 40% of board seats to women. Iceland, Finland and some other European countries have introduced similar requirements.
But such rules cover only board seats, and only at listed firms. Visit a typical Nordic company headquarters and you will notice something striking among the standing desks and modernist furniture: the senior managers are still mostly men, and most of the women are PAs... There may be more women sitting round the table at board meetings, but the person who runs the show is almost always a man: only 6% of Norwegian listed firms had a female chief executive in 2013, little better than the 5% of American companies on the Fortune 500 list that have a woman as CEO.
There is much discussion about why Viking women have failed to crack the glass ceiling. The left reckons they must still be suffering from unconscious prejudice. The right maintains it is a matter of individual women choosing to give priority to their children. The Nordics can hardly be faulted for spending too little money: as a share of GDP their public spending on child care is between seven and nine times America’s (where the proportion is a measly 0.1%). But there is no simple relationship between providing equality of opportunity and securing equality of results.
Indeed, it is possible that generous social policies can backfire. Studies by Nina Smith, an economist at Aarhus University in Denmark, and others raise two striking possibilities. First, Nordic women may suffer lower earnings later in their careers because generous maternity leave encourages them to take long breaks to raise children earlier on, when male competitors are gaining valuable experience. Second, women trying to climb the career ladder seem to find it harder to afford domestic help than their American equivalents, because those generous social policies have to be paid for with high taxes. And, when chores cannot be offloaded to domestic staff, working women still get lumbered with the time-inflexible household tasks, such as picking up children from school, whereas men do “their” chores at the weekend. Public-sector employers are more inclined to provide female staff with child-friendly hours, ample family leave and so on; and they have a larger proportion of women bosses than private firms. But the wage structure in such workplaces is much more compressed than in the predominantly male-led private sector.
Overall, then, policies that reduce the gender gap for the mass of workers may be increasing it at the upper levels of management. Ms Smith calculates that in Denmark and Sweden the gap between men and women at the upper end of the pay scale has actually increased in recent decades...
Overall, then, policies that reduce the gender gap for the mass of workers may be increasing it at the upper levels of management. Ms Smith calculates that in Denmark and Sweden the gap between men and women at the upper end of the pay scale has actually increased in recent decades.
Furthermore, in the first substantial study of the Norwegian reforms, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago’s Booth business school and three colleagues conclude that “there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled down.” They have done nothing to improve the career prospects of highly qualified women below board level. They have not helped close the gender gap in the incomes of recent business-school graduates. Nor have they done anything to encourage younger women to go to business school in the first place."
You can't legislate productivity.
Ironically a high minimum wage means it is hard for working women to get hired help - which would help them do better in their careers.
The fact that greedy companies exited the stock market in huge numbers suggests that they realised how damaging quotas would be.
Feminist logic - the most feminist policies in the world hasn't helped women, so it shows patriarchy is that strong and we need even more feminism (burning the witch didn't end the drought, so it shows that witch magic is very powerful and you need to burn more witches).
So much for the role model or women helping other women effect.
Post ID: 1157630524094299988
Links - 4th June 2018 (2)
Promise of world's first head transplant is truly fake news - "As if the moral failures rocking our world were not enough, now comes Italian professor Sergio Canavero to tell us that he will soon be performing the world’s first head transplant. Performing is about right since Canavero has no proven science to back up his hype... He has been touting his head transplant for years via media comments and news conferences. His actual publications about his technique, his method for reattaching the spinal cord, which is key to transplanting a head, or successful animal studies are next to nothing. There is not a chance this P.T. Barnum of transplantation could ever get approval for a test on a living human in North America, Europe or most of the rest of the world. His plans are all centered in China, where regulation of surgical innovation seems spotty at best and where tough scrutiny of his scientific claims is minimal... If you promise the most severely disabled the hope of a cure on the basis of crackpot science you are at best cruel. If you promise longer life to those whose bodies are ravaged by disease on the basis of one surgery on corpses and animal experiments that have not worked you are an immoral shyster."
Feminists have a new target: working-class women | Coffee House - "This is the nature of feminism today: it has become a well-off women’s racket. It has become a means for educated women to secure their position in the media, business and politics. Witness the new feminism’s myopic obsession with numbers of women on company boards, or the exact ratio of male-to-female guests on the Today programme, or how female MPs are addressed on Twitter. The vast majority of women, and men, do not work in these fields, of course. Feminism, clearly, isn’t for them. In fact, feminism is very often against them, especially if they are those ‘bad women’ who take jobs or have points of view that mainstream feminists disapprove of. Those women will be raged against by the sisterhood. The way feminists talk about certain working-class women is disgraceful. The young glamorous hostesses at that ridiculous Presidents Club dinner were utterly infantilised by those FT reporters, and others in the media, to whom these women are not conscious creatures who made a decision to do a certain job but rather are wide-eyed victims in need of rescue. The glamorous darts women are laughed off the public stage as if their choices and lives do not matter. As journalist and feminist Sally Howard said on This Morning yesterday, their job losses are ‘necessary’ — ‘every social change has people who suffer from it’. Imagine being so cavalier about women’s livelihoods. Page 3 girls? Sack them. Women who work for lads’ mags? Erase them. Women who question the MeToo movement, whether it’s film stars like Catherine Deneuve or just an ordinary working woman on Twitter who doesn’t think a hand on the knee is all that bad? Shout them down. Shut them up. ‘Be silent, woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It increasingly seems that there is one kind of person who irritates the new feminists more than men do: women who don’t think or behave as feminists expect them to. Women who think for themselves. These women will be written off as suffering from ‘internalised misogyny’. Whether they’re voting for Trump or Brexit, or doing jobs that involve wearing revealing clothes, or questioning the sexual-harassment panic, or doing something else that the feminist elite disapproves of, these women will be diagnosed as having had their brains warped by The Culture. It is the most sexist idea of our times, this notion that certain women cannot think for themselves and thus must be corrected, saved or possibly condemned by rich, right-on women in the media and politics. Indeed, the feminist idea of ‘internalised misogyny’ rehabilitates the old, foul notion that women whose thinking diverges from the mainstream are mad somehow. The universe is barely large enough to contain the irony of this."
Ann Widdecombe is the feminist hero we need right now | Coffee House - "surely these older ladies are only restating what was once a core belief of women’s liberationists: that women don’t need chaperones or special protection and are quite capable of dealing with men, work and life? That Widdecombe and Barrie’s suggestion that women stand up for themselves, and reject or chastise men, was treated as a crazy ‘old lady’ thing to say tells us a lot about how feminism has changed — how a movement that once bigged up women’s strength now seems devoted to playing it down. But Widdecome wasn’t done. She tore through the house like a tiny storm of unpopular opinion, laying waste to new feminist orthodoxies that she thinks paint women as the fairer sex. She announced her opposition to all-women shortlists in politics because she thinks women should be judged by their beliefs and achievements, not by their gender. ‘You cannot wish the competition away’, she said. She rolled her eyes at some of the contestants’ tales of ‘discrimination’, including Ms Willoughby’s one piece of evidence that her life became harder when she transitioned from male to female: someone at work asked her to make coffee. She shut down a fact-lite debate about women getting paid less than men... And she told a wicked anecdote about the ‘Blair Babes’ of 1997. One of them complained to Widdecombe about the rudeness of male MPs to female MPs. ‘The men are rude to each other too’, Widdecome shot back. It turns out the male MPs weren’t rude to her because she was a woman but because ‘she was useless!’"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, To Be a Pilgrim - "A pilgrimage would always involve discomfort and expense and often also real risk. To this day in Germany the children's game of musical chairs is called the Journey to Jerusalem. Not everybody is going to make it to the end. Pilgrims might fall ill, be robbed or even killed and it's significant that many of the pilgrims badges now in museums in Britain were found in the mud of the Thames - when pilgrims docked safely they would often drop a pilgrimage badge into the water as a thank offering to God for their safe return from a perilous journey... The most frequently venerated relic of Beckett was the water in which his brains and blood had been washed which was endlessly diluted and little drops of which were put into lead capsules which would have a, an emblem of Canterbury of some kind. They enabled you to take away some of the holiness...
The place were things change is not necessarily the shrine or the sanctuary - it's often on the journey itself""
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Festivals - "'Some Protestants, Reformed Protestants or in England Puritans - that's what they objected to. Christmas is just an intruder and of course technically they were right'. And because they knew they were right the Puritans simply got rid of Christmas. The Pilgrim Fathers arriving in America in sixteen twenty made a point of working on Christmas Day. The Scottish Parliament abolished all celebration of the feast in sixteen forty and until nineteen fifty eight Christmas in Scotland was a normal working day. In England the holiday was also banned by Parliament under Cromwell to great public protest"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Replicating the Divine - "Supported by a wicker frame the bulk of the body is composed of clay. Great efforts are made to incorporate at least a bit of earth from all parts of the locality and there should always be some clay from the banks of the Ganges. Durga's a close connection to that sacred river. The whole of the community is present in this large image. A priest must beg for some soil from a prostitute's house in order to add it to the final mix"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Change Your Life - "I remember as a child looking at the crucifix. I had to tell myself: he did all this for me. This is a terrible burden to have... What is powerful one day may foster weariness or disgust the next. But objects like the two that we have been considering here have another much graver difficulty - in neither can the message be understood if we don't know quite a lot before we even begin to look. In a different cultural world, in another time or another place they are effectively incomprehensible. Left to our own devices few of us would I think guess at the effort of renunciation and detachment to which we are summoned by the tranquil Buddh'as hand gesture. And even fewer would read the crucifixion print correctly as a prayer to divine love. It's partly because images are so hard to read correctly and the emotions that they arouse are so powerful that most Protestant reformers were profoundly suspicious of them. Like many religious movements the Protestants believed that the best, perhaps the only reliable way of communicating supreme truths was by the word alone. The image was a danger to faith and was best destroyed"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Rejecting the Image - "Because of the prohibition in the Ten Commandments of graven images of making anything that is an image, people became very negative about any kind of image. I think my grandfather or my great grandfather must have been given a bust of Rossini the composer and because they didn't have images of the human body they knocked off his nose"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with Many Gods - "Romans treat their gods like they treat their citizens. When they conquer another place often they regularly give the conquered people some form of Roman citizenship, they incorporate them. And in many ways the same thing goes with the gods. When you conquer or bring somebody else into the empire then their gods become part of your world and it doesn't matter that you've just got you know a few more and it doesn't matter in some ways that they're slightly odd because one of the things that's happening is that oddity is being eroded - they're becoming you... In a hundred and seventy three BCE a decree of the Senate commented: iidem ubique di immortales - the immortal gods are the same everywhere. You can't imagine the government of any European colonial empire ever putting it quite like that...
Across the span of human history, one god systems have been very much the exception, not the rule. Living with many different gods, Mary Beard argues, allowed the Romans to live on good terms with many different peoples.
'One of the big advantages of having lots of gods is that you can have more or fewer according as you decide. So that there isn't that kind of head to head clash that you get when monotheistic cultures meet. Every polytheism is terribly porous at its edges'...
Ancient Mesopotamia gives a different angle on the potential benefits of having several gods and how useful it can be if they don't always agree... The flood had been a wrong decision taken by the group which a dissenter had put right. It's a governance model that's possible only if you have many gods and only if they're fallible. Placed side by side the two stories - Hebrew and Babylonian - raise the same fundamental question about natural disasters. But they radically different moral answers. For the Babylonians a lethal flood could be the result of drunken misguided gods. But that answer is not open to Jews or Christians with a single god who is both benign and just.
'When you have a monotheism you have to work out a different explanation for how is it that our god can do us damage, do harm. And the answer of course is that it's because we sin'"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Gods Living Together - "Our Lady of Glory is a tall brick church built in the best English Gothic style and as I stand on its steps I see on the other side of the road right opposite me a bright green mosque whose walls butt up against the orange and yellow temple of Hanuman the Hindu monkey god. A few hundred yards to my left is the synagogue and the same distance to my right the Zoroastrian fire temple and if I go just a little further afield I come to a giant sanctuary and then to a Buddhist temple. It may sound like a fantasy theme park for world religions but it is of course the very real, very modern, very noisy Mumbai on a busy weekday evening. Multilingual, multiracial, multifaith Mumbai. A city built over the last three hundred years by Christians and Hindus, Parsis and Jews, Muslims and Jains all living cheek by jowl in what has been for the most part astonishingly harmonious coexistence. In India the world's major faiths are practiced side by side in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world and there's a kind of civic faith here too - faith in a pluralist society and in a form of secularism grounded not in hostility towards religion but in what the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has called the principle of equidistance - that the state should be religiously even handed. Respectful of but equidistant from all faiths"
And yet ignorant Singaporeans are proud that it is Uniquely Singapore that you can find 3 houses of worship near each other
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with No Gods - "Each of the new months was named after natural rhythms of agriculture and the seasons. Brumaire, Misty. Frimaire, Frosty. Pluviôse , Rainy. And so on. Or, as a skeptical commentator from just across the English Channel put it in the sporting magazine of eighteen hundred, the French months are now called queasy, sneezy and freezy, slippy, drippy and nippy"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Turning the Screw - "Anybody suspected of being a Christian was obliged on pain of death to appear in a nearby Buddhist temple and stamp on a small plaque carrying the sculptured image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Some of these Fumi-e - literally stamp images, they're about the size of a smart phone, have survived. Evidence of how many Christians - real or alleged there must have been in Japan. They are I think inexpressibly poignant. In the history of art they form an almost unique category. Images of real quality made explicitly in order to be humiliated and destroyed"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with Each Other - "The decline of religion in the West, largely driven by a rejection of the faith narrative has not as many once feared led to an increase in immorality and crime. But it has I believe led to a profound loss of community. All the traditions we have looked at affirm that the life of the individual can be properly lived only in a community and all of them offer ways of making that belief. Jean Paul Sartre famously observed that hell is other people. All the narratives and practices that we have looked at argue precisely the contrary - that living properly with other people, living with each other is the nearest that we can get to heaven"
Hot Takes: Election Feels — The Art History Babes - "He's in Europe and he had been talking to a black girl at a club and he's very white, like Swedish looking white and someone came up to him and started explaining how by him talking to her he was exerting his white male privilege by being in a powerful position and that's why she was more attracted to him. But doing it, not explaining like the idea in an educational way but like shaming him about it and making him feel bad, or like talking to this girl"
The fact that they endorse the idea of white privilege being a factor in picking up black girls - even if not the delivery - is telling (even if they see the delivery, at least, as emblematic of why Trump won
Getting Graphic — The Art History Babes - "I have to go to a women's liter, literary conference versus just like a literary conference. Like that means I write differently, like yeah... I've heard men say that they can tell the difference between women's writing and men's writing, like you don't have to tell them who wrote it. If you give them two novels they can tell the difference and like shut up. That always bothering me, because just saying that you can is obnoxious...
Even if they can like so what? So maybe women have more empathy... we can touch on things that men can't exactly think of"
SPOING
Ancient Greek Monsters — The Art History Babes - "The monster as Other in ancient Greek mythology and art exhibits both the fear of what is foreign and fear of being outside of or disconnected from Greek society. And by extension that train of thought leads to monsters being used as a visual, as a literary form of control. So monsters can act as markers of borders not to be crossed, whether this is a societal border not to be crossed or an actual geographical border not to be crossed. Like don't leave the city especially if you are a young woman and you're unmarried you might get raped by a centaur, something like that. They warn of the danger of moving outside of society and culturally held standards. To quote Cohen from his Monster Theory: to step outside of this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol, or worse to become monstrous oneself. And really in their very nature as monsters they are beyond the norm. They are beyond the norm of ancient Greek society and warn against taking such actions oneself through their monstrosity, so they're just a warning in a lot of ways. And the interesting thing about ancient Greek monsters is they seem to embody this weird sort of juxtaposition between desire and repulsion. So on one hand they can embody the fantasy of escape. They can embody this desire to get outside of the city center and seek adventure and see new areas. There is fascination in the bizarre and monsters can really act as Cohen says, difference made flesh. Monsters can represent immortality or human, and human resilience. Like when we look at the ancient Greek monster the hydra, which is a multiple headed like serpentine water monster. If you cut off one of its heads two will grow back in its place. And when we look at sirens they represent beauty as well as danger with voices to lure sailors to their deaths. More often than not it's the monstrous bodies themselves in ancient Greek mythology and art, their deformities the - animal attributes that repulse and frighten us most. So it's difference that frightens the most... all wrong doings are blamed on the monster so its defeat can be a form of redemption"
Demographic Profile of Drug Abusers-Data.gov.sg
Singapore releases statistics on drug abusers by ethnic group but data on arrests/convictions by ethnic group is not publicly released
Feminists have a new target: working-class women | Coffee House - "This is the nature of feminism today: it has become a well-off women’s racket. It has become a means for educated women to secure their position in the media, business and politics. Witness the new feminism’s myopic obsession with numbers of women on company boards, or the exact ratio of male-to-female guests on the Today programme, or how female MPs are addressed on Twitter. The vast majority of women, and men, do not work in these fields, of course. Feminism, clearly, isn’t for them. In fact, feminism is very often against them, especially if they are those ‘bad women’ who take jobs or have points of view that mainstream feminists disapprove of. Those women will be raged against by the sisterhood. The way feminists talk about certain working-class women is disgraceful. The young glamorous hostesses at that ridiculous Presidents Club dinner were utterly infantilised by those FT reporters, and others in the media, to whom these women are not conscious creatures who made a decision to do a certain job but rather are wide-eyed victims in need of rescue. The glamorous darts women are laughed off the public stage as if their choices and lives do not matter. As journalist and feminist Sally Howard said on This Morning yesterday, their job losses are ‘necessary’ — ‘every social change has people who suffer from it’. Imagine being so cavalier about women’s livelihoods. Page 3 girls? Sack them. Women who work for lads’ mags? Erase them. Women who question the MeToo movement, whether it’s film stars like Catherine Deneuve or just an ordinary working woman on Twitter who doesn’t think a hand on the knee is all that bad? Shout them down. Shut them up. ‘Be silent, woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It increasingly seems that there is one kind of person who irritates the new feminists more than men do: women who don’t think or behave as feminists expect them to. Women who think for themselves. These women will be written off as suffering from ‘internalised misogyny’. Whether they’re voting for Trump or Brexit, or doing jobs that involve wearing revealing clothes, or questioning the sexual-harassment panic, or doing something else that the feminist elite disapproves of, these women will be diagnosed as having had their brains warped by The Culture. It is the most sexist idea of our times, this notion that certain women cannot think for themselves and thus must be corrected, saved or possibly condemned by rich, right-on women in the media and politics. Indeed, the feminist idea of ‘internalised misogyny’ rehabilitates the old, foul notion that women whose thinking diverges from the mainstream are mad somehow. The universe is barely large enough to contain the irony of this."
Ann Widdecombe is the feminist hero we need right now | Coffee House - "surely these older ladies are only restating what was once a core belief of women’s liberationists: that women don’t need chaperones or special protection and are quite capable of dealing with men, work and life? That Widdecombe and Barrie’s suggestion that women stand up for themselves, and reject or chastise men, was treated as a crazy ‘old lady’ thing to say tells us a lot about how feminism has changed — how a movement that once bigged up women’s strength now seems devoted to playing it down. But Widdecome wasn’t done. She tore through the house like a tiny storm of unpopular opinion, laying waste to new feminist orthodoxies that she thinks paint women as the fairer sex. She announced her opposition to all-women shortlists in politics because she thinks women should be judged by their beliefs and achievements, not by their gender. ‘You cannot wish the competition away’, she said. She rolled her eyes at some of the contestants’ tales of ‘discrimination’, including Ms Willoughby’s one piece of evidence that her life became harder when she transitioned from male to female: someone at work asked her to make coffee. She shut down a fact-lite debate about women getting paid less than men... And she told a wicked anecdote about the ‘Blair Babes’ of 1997. One of them complained to Widdecombe about the rudeness of male MPs to female MPs. ‘The men are rude to each other too’, Widdecome shot back. It turns out the male MPs weren’t rude to her because she was a woman but because ‘she was useless!’"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, To Be a Pilgrim - "A pilgrimage would always involve discomfort and expense and often also real risk. To this day in Germany the children's game of musical chairs is called the Journey to Jerusalem. Not everybody is going to make it to the end. Pilgrims might fall ill, be robbed or even killed and it's significant that many of the pilgrims badges now in museums in Britain were found in the mud of the Thames - when pilgrims docked safely they would often drop a pilgrimage badge into the water as a thank offering to God for their safe return from a perilous journey... The most frequently venerated relic of Beckett was the water in which his brains and blood had been washed which was endlessly diluted and little drops of which were put into lead capsules which would have a, an emblem of Canterbury of some kind. They enabled you to take away some of the holiness...
The place were things change is not necessarily the shrine or the sanctuary - it's often on the journey itself""
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Festivals - "'Some Protestants, Reformed Protestants or in England Puritans - that's what they objected to. Christmas is just an intruder and of course technically they were right'. And because they knew they were right the Puritans simply got rid of Christmas. The Pilgrim Fathers arriving in America in sixteen twenty made a point of working on Christmas Day. The Scottish Parliament abolished all celebration of the feast in sixteen forty and until nineteen fifty eight Christmas in Scotland was a normal working day. In England the holiday was also banned by Parliament under Cromwell to great public protest"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Replicating the Divine - "Supported by a wicker frame the bulk of the body is composed of clay. Great efforts are made to incorporate at least a bit of earth from all parts of the locality and there should always be some clay from the banks of the Ganges. Durga's a close connection to that sacred river. The whole of the community is present in this large image. A priest must beg for some soil from a prostitute's house in order to add it to the final mix"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Change Your Life - "I remember as a child looking at the crucifix. I had to tell myself: he did all this for me. This is a terrible burden to have... What is powerful one day may foster weariness or disgust the next. But objects like the two that we have been considering here have another much graver difficulty - in neither can the message be understood if we don't know quite a lot before we even begin to look. In a different cultural world, in another time or another place they are effectively incomprehensible. Left to our own devices few of us would I think guess at the effort of renunciation and detachment to which we are summoned by the tranquil Buddh'as hand gesture. And even fewer would read the crucifixion print correctly as a prayer to divine love. It's partly because images are so hard to read correctly and the emotions that they arouse are so powerful that most Protestant reformers were profoundly suspicious of them. Like many religious movements the Protestants believed that the best, perhaps the only reliable way of communicating supreme truths was by the word alone. The image was a danger to faith and was best destroyed"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Rejecting the Image - "Because of the prohibition in the Ten Commandments of graven images of making anything that is an image, people became very negative about any kind of image. I think my grandfather or my great grandfather must have been given a bust of Rossini the composer and because they didn't have images of the human body they knocked off his nose"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with Many Gods - "Romans treat their gods like they treat their citizens. When they conquer another place often they regularly give the conquered people some form of Roman citizenship, they incorporate them. And in many ways the same thing goes with the gods. When you conquer or bring somebody else into the empire then their gods become part of your world and it doesn't matter that you've just got you know a few more and it doesn't matter in some ways that they're slightly odd because one of the things that's happening is that oddity is being eroded - they're becoming you... In a hundred and seventy three BCE a decree of the Senate commented: iidem ubique di immortales - the immortal gods are the same everywhere. You can't imagine the government of any European colonial empire ever putting it quite like that...
Across the span of human history, one god systems have been very much the exception, not the rule. Living with many different gods, Mary Beard argues, allowed the Romans to live on good terms with many different peoples.
'One of the big advantages of having lots of gods is that you can have more or fewer according as you decide. So that there isn't that kind of head to head clash that you get when monotheistic cultures meet. Every polytheism is terribly porous at its edges'...
Ancient Mesopotamia gives a different angle on the potential benefits of having several gods and how useful it can be if they don't always agree... The flood had been a wrong decision taken by the group which a dissenter had put right. It's a governance model that's possible only if you have many gods and only if they're fallible. Placed side by side the two stories - Hebrew and Babylonian - raise the same fundamental question about natural disasters. But they radically different moral answers. For the Babylonians a lethal flood could be the result of drunken misguided gods. But that answer is not open to Jews or Christians with a single god who is both benign and just.
'When you have a monotheism you have to work out a different explanation for how is it that our god can do us damage, do harm. And the answer of course is that it's because we sin'"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Gods Living Together - "Our Lady of Glory is a tall brick church built in the best English Gothic style and as I stand on its steps I see on the other side of the road right opposite me a bright green mosque whose walls butt up against the orange and yellow temple of Hanuman the Hindu monkey god. A few hundred yards to my left is the synagogue and the same distance to my right the Zoroastrian fire temple and if I go just a little further afield I come to a giant sanctuary and then to a Buddhist temple. It may sound like a fantasy theme park for world religions but it is of course the very real, very modern, very noisy Mumbai on a busy weekday evening. Multilingual, multiracial, multifaith Mumbai. A city built over the last three hundred years by Christians and Hindus, Parsis and Jews, Muslims and Jains all living cheek by jowl in what has been for the most part astonishingly harmonious coexistence. In India the world's major faiths are practiced side by side in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world and there's a kind of civic faith here too - faith in a pluralist society and in a form of secularism grounded not in hostility towards religion but in what the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has called the principle of equidistance - that the state should be religiously even handed. Respectful of but equidistant from all faiths"
And yet ignorant Singaporeans are proud that it is Uniquely Singapore that you can find 3 houses of worship near each other
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with No Gods - "Each of the new months was named after natural rhythms of agriculture and the seasons. Brumaire, Misty. Frimaire, Frosty. Pluviôse , Rainy. And so on. Or, as a skeptical commentator from just across the English Channel put it in the sporting magazine of eighteen hundred, the French months are now called queasy, sneezy and freezy, slippy, drippy and nippy"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Turning the Screw - "Anybody suspected of being a Christian was obliged on pain of death to appear in a nearby Buddhist temple and stamp on a small plaque carrying the sculptured image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Some of these Fumi-e - literally stamp images, they're about the size of a smart phone, have survived. Evidence of how many Christians - real or alleged there must have been in Japan. They are I think inexpressibly poignant. In the history of art they form an almost unique category. Images of real quality made explicitly in order to be humiliated and destroyed"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with Each Other - "The decline of religion in the West, largely driven by a rejection of the faith narrative has not as many once feared led to an increase in immorality and crime. But it has I believe led to a profound loss of community. All the traditions we have looked at affirm that the life of the individual can be properly lived only in a community and all of them offer ways of making that belief. Jean Paul Sartre famously observed that hell is other people. All the narratives and practices that we have looked at argue precisely the contrary - that living properly with other people, living with each other is the nearest that we can get to heaven"
Hot Takes: Election Feels — The Art History Babes - "He's in Europe and he had been talking to a black girl at a club and he's very white, like Swedish looking white and someone came up to him and started explaining how by him talking to her he was exerting his white male privilege by being in a powerful position and that's why she was more attracted to him. But doing it, not explaining like the idea in an educational way but like shaming him about it and making him feel bad, or like talking to this girl"
The fact that they endorse the idea of white privilege being a factor in picking up black girls - even if not the delivery - is telling (even if they see the delivery, at least, as emblematic of why Trump won
Getting Graphic — The Art History Babes - "I have to go to a women's liter, literary conference versus just like a literary conference. Like that means I write differently, like yeah... I've heard men say that they can tell the difference between women's writing and men's writing, like you don't have to tell them who wrote it. If you give them two novels they can tell the difference and like shut up. That always bothering me, because just saying that you can is obnoxious...
Even if they can like so what? So maybe women have more empathy... we can touch on things that men can't exactly think of"
SPOING
Ancient Greek Monsters — The Art History Babes - "The monster as Other in ancient Greek mythology and art exhibits both the fear of what is foreign and fear of being outside of or disconnected from Greek society. And by extension that train of thought leads to monsters being used as a visual, as a literary form of control. So monsters can act as markers of borders not to be crossed, whether this is a societal border not to be crossed or an actual geographical border not to be crossed. Like don't leave the city especially if you are a young woman and you're unmarried you might get raped by a centaur, something like that. They warn of the danger of moving outside of society and culturally held standards. To quote Cohen from his Monster Theory: to step outside of this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol, or worse to become monstrous oneself. And really in their very nature as monsters they are beyond the norm. They are beyond the norm of ancient Greek society and warn against taking such actions oneself through their monstrosity, so they're just a warning in a lot of ways. And the interesting thing about ancient Greek monsters is they seem to embody this weird sort of juxtaposition between desire and repulsion. So on one hand they can embody the fantasy of escape. They can embody this desire to get outside of the city center and seek adventure and see new areas. There is fascination in the bizarre and monsters can really act as Cohen says, difference made flesh. Monsters can represent immortality or human, and human resilience. Like when we look at the ancient Greek monster the hydra, which is a multiple headed like serpentine water monster. If you cut off one of its heads two will grow back in its place. And when we look at sirens they represent beauty as well as danger with voices to lure sailors to their deaths. More often than not it's the monstrous bodies themselves in ancient Greek mythology and art, their deformities the - animal attributes that repulse and frighten us most. So it's difference that frightens the most... all wrong doings are blamed on the monster so its defeat can be a form of redemption"
Demographic Profile of Drug Abusers-Data.gov.sg
Singapore releases statistics on drug abusers by ethnic group but data on arrests/convictions by ethnic group is not publicly released
Post ID: 8713114185858093065
Liberals vs Free Speech and Habeas Corpus
A: Nazis always hide behind liberal notions of freedom of speech.
Me: Yup. Soon liberals will advocate suspending habeas corpus to deal with Nazis. So if you defend legal due process you'll literally be a Nazi
A: Ironically, you’re not wrong.
Me: Sounds like Nazism isn't so bad after all, compared to the alternative
A: I guess that proves my point.
Me: Lol
Me: Yup. Soon liberals will advocate suspending habeas corpus to deal with Nazis. So if you defend legal due process you'll literally be a Nazi
A: Ironically, you’re not wrong.
Me: Sounds like Nazism isn't so bad after all, compared to the alternative
A: I guess that proves my point.
Me: Lol
Post ID: 3856624366913708736
Links - 4th June 2018 (1)
This is how Google will collapse - "Google was a driving force in the technology industry ever since its disruptive entry in 1998. But in a world where people despised ads, Google’s business model was not innovation-friendly, and they missed several opportunities to pivot, ultimately rendering their numerous grand and ambitious projects unsustainable. Innovation costs money, and Google’s main stream of revenue had started to dry up."
Canadian Hijab Hoax: Are We Ignoring a Disturbing Reality? - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to arrive at the scene to posture and wax eloquent at how sad he felt over the ‘attack’ on the poor girl... The same humanity, however, was lacking last year when a Canadian Muslim man was caught beating his daughter for taking off her hijab after leaving home. The father was accused of physically torturing his daughter for more than a year over the issue. But the Canadian Prime Minister offered no public sympathy in response to the incident. The public never heard her side of the story, and the incident passed without spectacle or fanfare. The girl sought refuge in the police and revealed that her father had attacked her with a weapon for exercising her choice to not wear the religious modesty garment. Prime Minister Trudeau, despite posturing as a feminist, never condemned the father nor gave any statement defending the girl’s right to not wear religious gender-based dress. Nor did any champion of women’s rights come forward to support the victim. Instead, there was resounding pin-drop silence over the incident–no ‘Motion 103’ tabled in the Canadian Parliament in favour of her right to say no to the hijab or any other religious practice. Evidently, this is not the first example of duplicity brought on by a desire to parade one’s victimhood... Meanwhile in the UK, the public downplayed serious death threats and harassment of a British hijabi girl who was captured on video dancing outside a market in Birmingham, UK. For her alleged transgression against the hijab (a symbol of Islamic modesty that her twerking had allegedly blemished, according to her accusers), the video was posted on social media. After it went viral, the girl was subjected to online harassment, vitriol, and threats. Eventually she was compelled to make a public apology for ‘dishonouring’ the hijab."
Leaked Intelligence Documents Show Greater Threat of Islamic Terror than Government Admits - "Leaked documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) show that the intelligence service is far more concerned with Islamic terrorism behind closed doors than the left-wing Trudeau government will admit in public. One of the documents, a report from a committee hearing in October of 2016, states: “The Service has never before faced a terrorist threat of the scope, scale and complexity of Sunni Islamist-inspired terrorism”... Trudeau provoked widespread criticism last month after he commented that returning fighters “can be an extraordinarily powerful voice for preventing radicalisation in future generations”. While the Liberal government has focused on deradicalisation, announcing plans to use “poetry and podcasts” to do so, CSIS warns that “Returnees may respond in a number of different ways – from returning to regular life, radicalizing others, or financing and facilitating the travel of others, to attack planning.”... Liberal MP for St. Catherines Chris Bittle also received criticism after he referred to anti-Islamic State protestors as “white supremacists”."
FUREY: New docs reveal CSIS foreign fighter concerns - "At no point in the document – or any of the other related CSIS material the Sun received – is there talk of deradicalization... Some of the sections in the note are similar to remarks previously made by senior CSIS officials in public testimonies but others appear to be fresh revelations. The top level note also shows that the words used by CSIS in documents can differ from the language employed in public statements."
Canada: Leaked intelligence documents show greater threat of Islamic terror than government admits - "Some other points of concern about the Trudeau government:
Trudeau is in violation of conflict of interest rules over lavish vacations that he and his family took at the Agha Khan’s Island, and that Canadians paid for. It emerged that a $15-million grant from Canada went to the endowment fund of the Aga Khan’s Global Centre for Pluralism. Now Trudeau is pretending to be sorry about it.
Trudeau paid out jihadist Omar Khadr 10.5 million dollars for shoddy treatment in Gitmo; Trudeau made up silly excuses and said he also felt the frustration of Canadians when questioned about it.
Trudeau also accused the Conservative party of “Islamophobia” for inquiring about jihad terrorism.
He’s met privately with Joshua Boyle, a suspicious former Taliban captive who is also now up on 15 criminal charges.
He has heavily and passionately advocated for returning Islamic State fighters and welcomed any immigrants rejected by America.
His government has been trying to reopen relations with the Iranian regime, with his Iranian MP Majid Jowhari starting a petition to do so.
His sharia-supporting MP Omar Alghabra represented Canada at the 44th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Since when is Canada an OIC state?"
There is no ban on words at the CDC. - "if reality is indeed in danger here, it’s not because of Donald Trump. The story of the language rules at CDC has quickly broken free of underlying facts. Despite what you may have heard, the alleged “ban” of seven words does not reveal a secret “War on Science” carried out by thought police in Washington; nor is it some evil plot to “enforce a political and ideological agenda,” as the Washington Post editorial board suggested. A more sober measure of this soggy crumb of news—one that’s, well, evidence-based rather than reflexive—suggests it should be understood as a byproduct of the Trump administration’s much-less-secret war on science funding. It appears that the ban is an attempt by bureaucrats to save their favorite projects from unforgiving budget cuts. That explanation would be consistent with what’s been reported to this point. According to CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, “There are no banned, prohibited or forbidden words at the CDC—period.” Meanwhile, anonymous sources at the Department of Health and Human Services told the National Review’s Yuval Levin this week that any language changes did not originate with political appointees, but instead came from career CDC officials who were strategizing how best to frame their upcoming budget request to Congress. What we’re seeing, his interviews suggest, is not a top-down effort to stamp out certain public-health initiatives, like those that aim to help the LGTBQ community, but, in fact, the opposite: a bottom-up attempt by lifers in the agency to reframe (and thus preserve) the very work they suspect may be in the greatest danger... What we’re seeing from the CDC is not an effort to suppress unwelcome research, but rather an effort to conceal it under euphemism... it’s the scientists who have been using doublespeak to manipulate their bosses, not vice-versa. Yet journalists have reported on these middle-management directives as if they were new and shocking evidence of the Trump administration’s sneaky plan to interfere with scientific research... directed euphemisms are the norm in Washington: Barack Obama’s budget team, for example, swapped out the “global war on terror” for what it called “overseas contingency operations”... Same goes for all that news—so much news—about the Trump administration’s efforts to excise every use of “climate change” or “global warming” from its official websites. We’ve heard these words have been “purged” from WhiteHouse.gov; that they’ve been “deleted” from NIH.gov; that they’ve been “scrubbed” from EPA.gov. If we claim those purges and deletions are informative, then what should we make of the fact that one can still find those phrases, climate change and global warming, on several of the sites from which they’ve supposedly been erased?"
If the press lies, evidently it's still fascist to say that
Obama bans terms `Islam` and `jihad` from U.S. security document - "President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy"
What banning words really looks like
As a Muslim, I am Shocked by Liberals and Leftists - "My father was brutally tortured -- justified by some of the fundamentalist Islamic laws of the ruling governments in both Iran and Syria. The punishment extended to my mother, my family, and other relatives, who were tormented on a regular basis. What was even more painful was, upon coming to the West, seeing the attitude of many people who label themselves liberals and leftists, towards radical Islam... sympathizing with all kinds of Islamist practices and radical Islam seems to fit a wider narrative of bashing the West and white people for "imperialism, colonialism, and any sense of superiority". Unfortunately that view fails to take into account that there have been no greater imperialists the Muslim armies; they conquered Persia, the great Christian Byzantine Empire in Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, virtually all of Eastern Europe, most of Spain, and Greece. As, in Islam, one is not allowed to attack except to defend the prophet Muhammed or Islam, extremist Muslims need to keep either finding or creating supposed attacks to make themselves appear as victims. Many liberals, not knowing the background, buy into this claim. By siding with the "other", they probably feel a moral superiority: they are helping a cause, championing the "other" and rescuing a "victim"! But this moral superiority is both superficial and misplaced. It is more like that of the proverbial boy who murders his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he is an orphan."
Liberals' Misguided Love Affair With Islam - Michael Brown - "I read about a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rally led by feminists and LGBT activists, among others on the left. Why in the world would groups like this support Hamas, which would kill or imprison them for their beliefs (and their sexual or romantic proclivities)? And why would they oppose Israel, which would welcome them with open arms? (I’m not talking about religious Jews, who would certainly not welcome them. I’m talking about the population as a whole, which is quite “progressive.” Note also that it wasn’t the ultra-Orthodox Jews who were fighting Hamas, so the rally was not targeting them.)... Spencer wrote, “These students have been hoodwinked into thinking that ‘Islamophobes,’ rather than jihad terrorists, are killing people around the world.”... Spencer noted the biting irony of it all: “For example, one man held a sign that read ‘Queers Against Islamophobia.’ The crowd booed lustily when I attempted to read from Islamic authorities about Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality. Even to read from Islamic sources is hate, apparently, at the University at Buffalo -- unless, of course, one endorses such penalties rather than oppose them.”"
5 Strange Problems You Face When You're A Liberal Ex-Muslim - "Eiynah pointed out that if you Google the words "Muslim American Olympian," you'll get pages and pages of results about Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Muslim fencer who competed for America in Rio de Janeiro while wearing the hijab. You're far less likely to see any mention of Dalilah Muhammad, a Muslim woman who took home the gold in the 400m hurdles while wearing shorts and a sports bra. Both women are incredible athletes, and could probably crush us both metaphorically and physically, but it's weird that only one is thought of as the "Muslim American Olympian." Especially since for a lot of Muslim women, the hijab brings back painful memories. "I've seen the Morality Police hit my mother with a cane because her headscarf slipped. It's like, would we feel as comfortable celebrating purity balls that are held in the South?"... Eiynah doesn't like the term "Islamophobia": "Allowing any criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, homophobia, etc. to be labeled as 'Islamophobia' gives right-wing fundamentalist Muslims a chance to shield their religion from valid criticism. It's essentially the same thing right-wing Christians [do]. Think of the absurdity of the 'War on Christmas' to get a feel for how 'Islamophobia' sounds to us. That's why I prefer the more precise term 'anti-Muslim bigotry.' The problem is not theological criticisms of Islam or criticisms of literalist interpretations -- it is the generalizations, hatred, and fearmongering around Muslims." "Islam is not a monolith -- neither its adherents nor its critics," says Eiynah. "Just like Islam can be interpreted and practiced in a million different ways, so too can criticism of it come from different angles and politics"
The Trouble With How Liberals Talk About Terrorism - "Terrorists attack not just individuals but society, which makes mortality rates a poor measure of the danger terrorism poses. Falling objects “attack” neither... Obama’s stance on terrorism also contained a contradiction. He argued that the terrorist threat was much less severe than other challenges such as climate change and gun violence. But he didn’t scale back his counterterrorism policies to reflect that assessment"
Plus falling objects aren't trying to get weapons of mass destruction, and security services are not actively monitoring and disrupting falling objects, preventing them from killing more people than they otherwise would; the liberal response to Islamic terrorism is like saying that few people die from Measles in developed countries, so Measles can't really kill you and vaccination is a waste of time
An atheist Muslim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam - "“The left is wrong on Islam. The right is wrong on Muslims.”... Do you know Jewish people who eat bacon? Almost all of my Jewish friends eat bacon. Now, does that mean that Judaism is suddenly okay with bacon? This is the difference between religion and people. You can’t say, hey, I have a lot of Jewish friends who eat bacon, so Judaism must be okay with pork... when I say that most Muslims I know are very peaceful and law-abiding, that they wouldn't dream of violence, that doesn't erase all of the violence and the calls for martyrdom and jihad and holy war against disbelievers in Islamic scripture. Most of my Muslim friends, both in Pakistan and here, had premarital sex and drank alcohol too. That doesn’t mean Islam allows either of those things. The hard truth is there is a lot of violence endorsed in the Quran, and there are other terrible things, as there are in the Old Testament... It’s dishonest to say that violent Muslim groups like ISIS are being un-Islamic... if you're a young Iraqi man and your family was bombed by the US, your reaction may be that you may become anti-American. You might say, okay, I'm going to fight these guys. But would your reaction to US foreign policy be to start enslaving and raping 9-year-old Yazidi girls? Or forcing local non-Muslim minorities to pay a tax or convert to Islam, or be crucified publicly, as commanded in the Quranic verses 9:29-30 and 5:33? Or beheading Shias or apostates who have left Islam? Or throwing gays off rooftops?... Step back and take a broader historical view. The contents of these texts haven’t changed — it’s the political and social and economic conditions that have changed. So the question then becomes what is it about these conditions that produces certain interpretations or leads to certain doctrines becoming more manifest?... When someone tells us they did something for political reasons, we accept it easily. “Sure, they did it for politics." When someone says, "I did this for money," we believe them. Even when people say, "I played Doom, the video game, and I listened to Marilyn Manson," we take it at face value and have all these cultural conversations about the role of video games and music in violence... Think of the [National Rifle Association] slogan, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” The typical liberal response to that, and rightly so, is no, don’t downplay the deadliness of guns. You can’t take them out of the equation. Even if they’re just a tool or prop, they’re central to it. Now replace “guns” in that statement with “religion” or “beliefs.”... In Islam, the divinity and infallibility of the Quran is the only thing that every sect and denomination agrees on... I say that the first step to reform in Islam is rejection of infallibility. This seems outrageous to some. They say it’ll never happen. But it has happened in the past. Reform Jews today make up a majority of American Jews. None of them believe the Torah is the literal word of God anymore. But for a long time, that was the deal... This is why I say I believe in Muslim reform, not Islamic reform. I don’t think using mental gymnastics to reinterpret scripture is convincing. You can’t keep saying “kill” actually means “love,” or “beat your wife” is misinterpreted and actually means “kiss your wife,” and stay credible. In the internet age, everything is exposed. It's online, you can look it up in a dozen languages, multiple translations, the context and syntax and etymology of every word — any 12-year-old can dig that up today... Several white Western liberals have confided to me that they agree with what I say, but won’t say it themselves because they’re afraid they’ll be labeled bigots or Islamophobes. I call that “Islamophobo-phobia,” the fear of being called Islamophobic. It’s a great way to shut down the conversation and silence people with colonial or white guilt"
This Video Proves We All Share the Exact Same Travel Photos on Instagram
Sylvain ️🏻 on Twitter: "When you try to replicate a paper using the methods section… "
Bitter Feminists Go After The Hot Cheerleaders. Here Are Their First Victims. - "Formula One has officially canned their so-called "grid girls," the female models used in promotional tasks in the pit-lanes and starting grids before and after races. The organization said they will no longer continue the practice because it is "at odds with modern-day societal norms" and doesn't reflect their "brand values."
Lauren-Jade on Twitter - @laurenjadepope: "Get me on @thismorning so I can defend us #gridgirls Because of these feminists, they’ve have cost us our jobs! I have been a grid girl for 8 years and I have Never felt uncomfortable! I love my job, if I didn’t I wouldn’t do it! Noone forces us to do this! This is our choice!"
@JohnRobb1231: "Time this nonsense was dropped and good riddance! Formula One #GridGirls near naked in bikinis has no place in 2018 and #MeeToo - sad to see men & women bemoaning the demise as some sort of attack on sexuality or some claptrap like that."
@laurenjadepope: "1. Formula one grid girls do not wear bikinis. 2. We are there to advertise teams and sponsors so we have a purpose. 3. Women depend on this income, why should we lose our jobs because somebody has got their knickers in a twist. You deserve Ebola #goodriddance"
@JohnRobb1231: "No need for that. I understand that but there are other jobs you can do. A nurse, a teacher, a veterinarian, a tv presenter, if you apply yourself I'm sure you could do anything!"
@laurenjadepope: "I’m a qualified fashion & photographic make up artist and a qualified beautician. I’m an account manager in my 9-5 and I also run an online business. I also do this because I CHOOSE to do this. You could of been one of the above you listed, instead you chose to be a dick."
If a male feminist lectures a woman on her choices, is that anti feminist?
In this thread I learnt that Grid Boys have existed (but presumably they weren't popular enough to be widespread)
LALO DAGACH on Twitter - "Watching “progressives” slut-shame a Formula 1 Grid Girl on Twitter for doing a job she loves, is the most pathetic and backwards thing I’ve seen all day. Where are the #WearWhatYouWant feminists? Too busy trying on hijabs?"
F1 'grid girls' have lost their jobs but are fighting back on Twitter - "Cooper also implied that grid girls have been misrepresented and put together a photograph collage to highlight that women who work in her trade are not "scantily clad furniture" and that the outfits are more modest. For Michelle Westby, working as a promotional model in motorsports led to a successful career as a stunt driver and a drift racing driver"
Canadian Hijab Hoax: Are We Ignoring a Disturbing Reality? - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to arrive at the scene to posture and wax eloquent at how sad he felt over the ‘attack’ on the poor girl... The same humanity, however, was lacking last year when a Canadian Muslim man was caught beating his daughter for taking off her hijab after leaving home. The father was accused of physically torturing his daughter for more than a year over the issue. But the Canadian Prime Minister offered no public sympathy in response to the incident. The public never heard her side of the story, and the incident passed without spectacle or fanfare. The girl sought refuge in the police and revealed that her father had attacked her with a weapon for exercising her choice to not wear the religious modesty garment. Prime Minister Trudeau, despite posturing as a feminist, never condemned the father nor gave any statement defending the girl’s right to not wear religious gender-based dress. Nor did any champion of women’s rights come forward to support the victim. Instead, there was resounding pin-drop silence over the incident–no ‘Motion 103’ tabled in the Canadian Parliament in favour of her right to say no to the hijab or any other religious practice. Evidently, this is not the first example of duplicity brought on by a desire to parade one’s victimhood... Meanwhile in the UK, the public downplayed serious death threats and harassment of a British hijabi girl who was captured on video dancing outside a market in Birmingham, UK. For her alleged transgression against the hijab (a symbol of Islamic modesty that her twerking had allegedly blemished, according to her accusers), the video was posted on social media. After it went viral, the girl was subjected to online harassment, vitriol, and threats. Eventually she was compelled to make a public apology for ‘dishonouring’ the hijab."
Leaked Intelligence Documents Show Greater Threat of Islamic Terror than Government Admits - "Leaked documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) show that the intelligence service is far more concerned with Islamic terrorism behind closed doors than the left-wing Trudeau government will admit in public. One of the documents, a report from a committee hearing in October of 2016, states: “The Service has never before faced a terrorist threat of the scope, scale and complexity of Sunni Islamist-inspired terrorism”... Trudeau provoked widespread criticism last month after he commented that returning fighters “can be an extraordinarily powerful voice for preventing radicalisation in future generations”. While the Liberal government has focused on deradicalisation, announcing plans to use “poetry and podcasts” to do so, CSIS warns that “Returnees may respond in a number of different ways – from returning to regular life, radicalizing others, or financing and facilitating the travel of others, to attack planning.”... Liberal MP for St. Catherines Chris Bittle also received criticism after he referred to anti-Islamic State protestors as “white supremacists”."
FUREY: New docs reveal CSIS foreign fighter concerns - "At no point in the document – or any of the other related CSIS material the Sun received – is there talk of deradicalization... Some of the sections in the note are similar to remarks previously made by senior CSIS officials in public testimonies but others appear to be fresh revelations. The top level note also shows that the words used by CSIS in documents can differ from the language employed in public statements."
Canada: Leaked intelligence documents show greater threat of Islamic terror than government admits - "Some other points of concern about the Trudeau government:
Trudeau is in violation of conflict of interest rules over lavish vacations that he and his family took at the Agha Khan’s Island, and that Canadians paid for. It emerged that a $15-million grant from Canada went to the endowment fund of the Aga Khan’s Global Centre for Pluralism. Now Trudeau is pretending to be sorry about it.
Trudeau paid out jihadist Omar Khadr 10.5 million dollars for shoddy treatment in Gitmo; Trudeau made up silly excuses and said he also felt the frustration of Canadians when questioned about it.
Trudeau also accused the Conservative party of “Islamophobia” for inquiring about jihad terrorism.
He’s met privately with Joshua Boyle, a suspicious former Taliban captive who is also now up on 15 criminal charges.
He has heavily and passionately advocated for returning Islamic State fighters and welcomed any immigrants rejected by America.
His government has been trying to reopen relations with the Iranian regime, with his Iranian MP Majid Jowhari starting a petition to do so.
His sharia-supporting MP Omar Alghabra represented Canada at the 44th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Since when is Canada an OIC state?"
There is no ban on words at the CDC. - "if reality is indeed in danger here, it’s not because of Donald Trump. The story of the language rules at CDC has quickly broken free of underlying facts. Despite what you may have heard, the alleged “ban” of seven words does not reveal a secret “War on Science” carried out by thought police in Washington; nor is it some evil plot to “enforce a political and ideological agenda,” as the Washington Post editorial board suggested. A more sober measure of this soggy crumb of news—one that’s, well, evidence-based rather than reflexive—suggests it should be understood as a byproduct of the Trump administration’s much-less-secret war on science funding. It appears that the ban is an attempt by bureaucrats to save their favorite projects from unforgiving budget cuts. That explanation would be consistent with what’s been reported to this point. According to CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, “There are no banned, prohibited or forbidden words at the CDC—period.” Meanwhile, anonymous sources at the Department of Health and Human Services told the National Review’s Yuval Levin this week that any language changes did not originate with political appointees, but instead came from career CDC officials who were strategizing how best to frame their upcoming budget request to Congress. What we’re seeing, his interviews suggest, is not a top-down effort to stamp out certain public-health initiatives, like those that aim to help the LGTBQ community, but, in fact, the opposite: a bottom-up attempt by lifers in the agency to reframe (and thus preserve) the very work they suspect may be in the greatest danger... What we’re seeing from the CDC is not an effort to suppress unwelcome research, but rather an effort to conceal it under euphemism... it’s the scientists who have been using doublespeak to manipulate their bosses, not vice-versa. Yet journalists have reported on these middle-management directives as if they were new and shocking evidence of the Trump administration’s sneaky plan to interfere with scientific research... directed euphemisms are the norm in Washington: Barack Obama’s budget team, for example, swapped out the “global war on terror” for what it called “overseas contingency operations”... Same goes for all that news—so much news—about the Trump administration’s efforts to excise every use of “climate change” or “global warming” from its official websites. We’ve heard these words have been “purged” from WhiteHouse.gov; that they’ve been “deleted” from NIH.gov; that they’ve been “scrubbed” from EPA.gov. If we claim those purges and deletions are informative, then what should we make of the fact that one can still find those phrases, climate change and global warming, on several of the sites from which they’ve supposedly been erased?"
If the press lies, evidently it's still fascist to say that
Obama bans terms `Islam` and `jihad` from U.S. security document - "President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy"
What banning words really looks like
As a Muslim, I am Shocked by Liberals and Leftists - "My father was brutally tortured -- justified by some of the fundamentalist Islamic laws of the ruling governments in both Iran and Syria. The punishment extended to my mother, my family, and other relatives, who were tormented on a regular basis. What was even more painful was, upon coming to the West, seeing the attitude of many people who label themselves liberals and leftists, towards radical Islam... sympathizing with all kinds of Islamist practices and radical Islam seems to fit a wider narrative of bashing the West and white people for "imperialism, colonialism, and any sense of superiority". Unfortunately that view fails to take into account that there have been no greater imperialists the Muslim armies; they conquered Persia, the great Christian Byzantine Empire in Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, virtually all of Eastern Europe, most of Spain, and Greece. As, in Islam, one is not allowed to attack except to defend the prophet Muhammed or Islam, extremist Muslims need to keep either finding or creating supposed attacks to make themselves appear as victims. Many liberals, not knowing the background, buy into this claim. By siding with the "other", they probably feel a moral superiority: they are helping a cause, championing the "other" and rescuing a "victim"! But this moral superiority is both superficial and misplaced. It is more like that of the proverbial boy who murders his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he is an orphan."
Liberals' Misguided Love Affair With Islam - Michael Brown - "I read about a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rally led by feminists and LGBT activists, among others on the left. Why in the world would groups like this support Hamas, which would kill or imprison them for their beliefs (and their sexual or romantic proclivities)? And why would they oppose Israel, which would welcome them with open arms? (I’m not talking about religious Jews, who would certainly not welcome them. I’m talking about the population as a whole, which is quite “progressive.” Note also that it wasn’t the ultra-Orthodox Jews who were fighting Hamas, so the rally was not targeting them.)... Spencer wrote, “These students have been hoodwinked into thinking that ‘Islamophobes,’ rather than jihad terrorists, are killing people around the world.”... Spencer noted the biting irony of it all: “For example, one man held a sign that read ‘Queers Against Islamophobia.’ The crowd booed lustily when I attempted to read from Islamic authorities about Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality. Even to read from Islamic sources is hate, apparently, at the University at Buffalo -- unless, of course, one endorses such penalties rather than oppose them.”"
5 Strange Problems You Face When You're A Liberal Ex-Muslim - "Eiynah pointed out that if you Google the words "Muslim American Olympian," you'll get pages and pages of results about Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Muslim fencer who competed for America in Rio de Janeiro while wearing the hijab. You're far less likely to see any mention of Dalilah Muhammad, a Muslim woman who took home the gold in the 400m hurdles while wearing shorts and a sports bra. Both women are incredible athletes, and could probably crush us both metaphorically and physically, but it's weird that only one is thought of as the "Muslim American Olympian." Especially since for a lot of Muslim women, the hijab brings back painful memories. "I've seen the Morality Police hit my mother with a cane because her headscarf slipped. It's like, would we feel as comfortable celebrating purity balls that are held in the South?"... Eiynah doesn't like the term "Islamophobia": "Allowing any criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, homophobia, etc. to be labeled as 'Islamophobia' gives right-wing fundamentalist Muslims a chance to shield their religion from valid criticism. It's essentially the same thing right-wing Christians [do]. Think of the absurdity of the 'War on Christmas' to get a feel for how 'Islamophobia' sounds to us. That's why I prefer the more precise term 'anti-Muslim bigotry.' The problem is not theological criticisms of Islam or criticisms of literalist interpretations -- it is the generalizations, hatred, and fearmongering around Muslims." "Islam is not a monolith -- neither its adherents nor its critics," says Eiynah. "Just like Islam can be interpreted and practiced in a million different ways, so too can criticism of it come from different angles and politics"
The Trouble With How Liberals Talk About Terrorism - "Terrorists attack not just individuals but society, which makes mortality rates a poor measure of the danger terrorism poses. Falling objects “attack” neither... Obama’s stance on terrorism also contained a contradiction. He argued that the terrorist threat was much less severe than other challenges such as climate change and gun violence. But he didn’t scale back his counterterrorism policies to reflect that assessment"
Plus falling objects aren't trying to get weapons of mass destruction, and security services are not actively monitoring and disrupting falling objects, preventing them from killing more people than they otherwise would; the liberal response to Islamic terrorism is like saying that few people die from Measles in developed countries, so Measles can't really kill you and vaccination is a waste of time
An atheist Muslim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam - "“The left is wrong on Islam. The right is wrong on Muslims.”... Do you know Jewish people who eat bacon? Almost all of my Jewish friends eat bacon. Now, does that mean that Judaism is suddenly okay with bacon? This is the difference between religion and people. You can’t say, hey, I have a lot of Jewish friends who eat bacon, so Judaism must be okay with pork... when I say that most Muslims I know are very peaceful and law-abiding, that they wouldn't dream of violence, that doesn't erase all of the violence and the calls for martyrdom and jihad and holy war against disbelievers in Islamic scripture. Most of my Muslim friends, both in Pakistan and here, had premarital sex and drank alcohol too. That doesn’t mean Islam allows either of those things. The hard truth is there is a lot of violence endorsed in the Quran, and there are other terrible things, as there are in the Old Testament... It’s dishonest to say that violent Muslim groups like ISIS are being un-Islamic... if you're a young Iraqi man and your family was bombed by the US, your reaction may be that you may become anti-American. You might say, okay, I'm going to fight these guys. But would your reaction to US foreign policy be to start enslaving and raping 9-year-old Yazidi girls? Or forcing local non-Muslim minorities to pay a tax or convert to Islam, or be crucified publicly, as commanded in the Quranic verses 9:29-30 and 5:33? Or beheading Shias or apostates who have left Islam? Or throwing gays off rooftops?... Step back and take a broader historical view. The contents of these texts haven’t changed — it’s the political and social and economic conditions that have changed. So the question then becomes what is it about these conditions that produces certain interpretations or leads to certain doctrines becoming more manifest?... When someone tells us they did something for political reasons, we accept it easily. “Sure, they did it for politics." When someone says, "I did this for money," we believe them. Even when people say, "I played Doom, the video game, and I listened to Marilyn Manson," we take it at face value and have all these cultural conversations about the role of video games and music in violence... Think of the [National Rifle Association] slogan, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” The typical liberal response to that, and rightly so, is no, don’t downplay the deadliness of guns. You can’t take them out of the equation. Even if they’re just a tool or prop, they’re central to it. Now replace “guns” in that statement with “religion” or “beliefs.”... In Islam, the divinity and infallibility of the Quran is the only thing that every sect and denomination agrees on... I say that the first step to reform in Islam is rejection of infallibility. This seems outrageous to some. They say it’ll never happen. But it has happened in the past. Reform Jews today make up a majority of American Jews. None of them believe the Torah is the literal word of God anymore. But for a long time, that was the deal... This is why I say I believe in Muslim reform, not Islamic reform. I don’t think using mental gymnastics to reinterpret scripture is convincing. You can’t keep saying “kill” actually means “love,” or “beat your wife” is misinterpreted and actually means “kiss your wife,” and stay credible. In the internet age, everything is exposed. It's online, you can look it up in a dozen languages, multiple translations, the context and syntax and etymology of every word — any 12-year-old can dig that up today... Several white Western liberals have confided to me that they agree with what I say, but won’t say it themselves because they’re afraid they’ll be labeled bigots or Islamophobes. I call that “Islamophobo-phobia,” the fear of being called Islamophobic. It’s a great way to shut down the conversation and silence people with colonial or white guilt"
This Video Proves We All Share the Exact Same Travel Photos on Instagram
Sylvain ️🏻 on Twitter: "When you try to replicate a paper using the methods section… "
Bitter Feminists Go After The Hot Cheerleaders. Here Are Their First Victims. - "Formula One has officially canned their so-called "grid girls," the female models used in promotional tasks in the pit-lanes and starting grids before and after races. The organization said they will no longer continue the practice because it is "at odds with modern-day societal norms" and doesn't reflect their "brand values."
Lauren-Jade on Twitter - @laurenjadepope: "Get me on @thismorning so I can defend us #gridgirls Because of these feminists, they’ve have cost us our jobs! I have been a grid girl for 8 years and I have Never felt uncomfortable! I love my job, if I didn’t I wouldn’t do it! Noone forces us to do this! This is our choice!"
@JohnRobb1231: "Time this nonsense was dropped and good riddance! Formula One #GridGirls near naked in bikinis has no place in 2018 and #MeeToo - sad to see men & women bemoaning the demise as some sort of attack on sexuality or some claptrap like that."
@laurenjadepope: "1. Formula one grid girls do not wear bikinis. 2. We are there to advertise teams and sponsors so we have a purpose. 3. Women depend on this income, why should we lose our jobs because somebody has got their knickers in a twist. You deserve Ebola #goodriddance"
@JohnRobb1231: "No need for that. I understand that but there are other jobs you can do. A nurse, a teacher, a veterinarian, a tv presenter, if you apply yourself I'm sure you could do anything!"
@laurenjadepope: "I’m a qualified fashion & photographic make up artist and a qualified beautician. I’m an account manager in my 9-5 and I also run an online business. I also do this because I CHOOSE to do this. You could of been one of the above you listed, instead you chose to be a dick."
If a male feminist lectures a woman on her choices, is that anti feminist?
In this thread I learnt that Grid Boys have existed (but presumably they weren't popular enough to be widespread)
LALO DAGACH on Twitter - "Watching “progressives” slut-shame a Formula 1 Grid Girl on Twitter for doing a job she loves, is the most pathetic and backwards thing I’ve seen all day. Where are the #WearWhatYouWant feminists? Too busy trying on hijabs?"
F1 'grid girls' have lost their jobs but are fighting back on Twitter - "Cooper also implied that grid girls have been misrepresented and put together a photograph collage to highlight that women who work in her trade are not "scantily clad furniture" and that the outfits are more modest. For Michelle Westby, working as a promotional model in motorsports led to a successful career as a stunt driver and a drift racing driver"
Post ID: 7550699648948305564
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Links - 30th May 2018
The Not-So-Surprising Survival of Foursquare - "Foursquare can now pinpoint a phone’s location with an accuracy that matches, and may in some cases surpass, that of much larger rivals. “Facebook has a much larger sample of data points,” he said, but “Foursquare has more accurate and reliable data.” Fourquare says its map now includes more than a hundred million locations, many of them in tightly crowded areas, like office buildings and malls, that other services still struggle to identify. “Knowing that we’re on the tenth floor versus the Equinox downstairs is a really difficult thing”... The accuracy of Foursquare’s Places database has led more than a hundred thousand other apps and developers—including Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Uber, and Microsoft—to use its application programming interface (A.P.I.) to power their own features. Meanwhile, Foursquare gets access to some of those companies’ data in return, using it to further enhance its picture of the world. Foursquare likes to show off its data-crunching prowess with predictions. It forecast the sales figures for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, for instance, and the decline in revenue, almost to the burrito bowl, for Chipotle following the E. coli mess. The company currently derives ninety per cent of its revenue from allowing a variety of businesses to use not just its A.P.I. but its data, too... it’s a simple matter to tie even a small amount of anonymized location data to an actual person. A 2013 study determined that ninety-five per cent of individuals could be positively identified based on just four locations they’d visited... Foursquare boosters have recently taken to heralding the company’s modest size as a selling point, especially for partners wary of basing their survival on the benevolence of Facebook and other Web behemoths. “You don’t want to live in a world where three or four companies have all the location data,” Wenger said. “That would be a very, very bad world.”"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Losing Its Sparkle - "The Hungarian Jazz pianist János Gonda was called into party headquarters to explain his passion for a musical genre which came from that bourgeois capitalist nest of vipers the United States. You misunderstand the pianist told the representative of the agitation and propaganda department of the party. Jazz is the music of the slaves, the oppressed of the earth dragged in chains across the Atlantic Ocean to serve the white oppressors. They are our friends. The party secretary bowed to his wisdom and permitted a jazz scene to grow and multiply which is still flourishing in Budapest to this day"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with the Dead - "[On China] The man in our portrait has a panel of splendid embroidery on his chest, a badge of rank. But fascinatingly it may not be his rank. If a son or a grandson got a promotion the ancestor would also be promoted. A new portrait would be painted - a close copy of the first but now featuring a higher ranking badge and the older portrait would be ritually burned. Ancestors treated in this way sharing in the family's successes would bring further good fortune from the birth of sons to increasing wealth... not until four or five generations had passed did a person's relative become what is known as a distant ancestor. The spirit no longer needing offerings of food or wine, their portraits no longer needing to be displayed. But ancestors not properly venerated could wreak havoc and among other consequences of Mao Tzetung's one child policy is a widespread worry among those now old that there may be no one in the future to pay proper honor to their spirit"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Holy Killing - "'Those gods, they can't eat anything. So what they're actually receiving is the smell of the sacrifice. So the smell's got to be able to reach them.' In theory at least the animals had to consent to being sacrificed and so water would be splashed on the heads of the bigger beasts to make them nod before they were killed"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Contain Yourself! - "Fish and chips can no longer be sold wrapped in newspaper. In nineteen seventy six the European Council issued a directive which stated materials that come into contact with food must not change its composition, appearance, taste or smell or endanger human health. Soon afterwards British law changed amid concerns that newspaper ink could be toxic"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, My Life in Five Dishes: Antonio Carluccio - "Instead to say: come and see my etchings to girls I could say come and eat my pasta and it was very successful. So now I started then to cook all the time... A cook does it for passion and for love and does is when he wants and the chef has to do it when he has to...
'I saw for example spaghetti bolognse which they don't exist in Italy. Exists tagliatelle bolognese. A the bolognese is different and secondly it is a flat noodle, the original recipe and not a spaghetti. That was the first faux pas'
'But it still tastes good'
'That's the point. You put exactly the finger on the spot. Tasting good and tasteing very good, there's the difference. And for an Italian with 600 shapes of pasta you can vary so much that one pasta fits perfectly to a type of sauce and the pallete sort of reacts a little better for example to the squarey shape of the tagliatelle. Spaghetti the more wonderful for aglio olio and peperencino for spaghetti with fish'"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Fire and State - "The close link between the fire of Vesta and female political power becomes even clearer when you turn the coin over. Here you find not the Emperor as you might expect but the Emperor's wife Julia Domina, wife of Emperor Septimius Severus. This coin suggests that she like her husband has a supremely important role. As the mother of the state she will join the Vestal Virgins in tending the flame which guarantees the safety of the family and the Empire. It's an image of female political authority that fascinated and attracted powerful women long after the end of the Roman Empire. One canny user of this imagery was Elizabeth the First of England whose unmarried state kept the country safe from Civil War and from foreign threats. And so on more than one occasion Elizabeth had herself painted not as the English virgin queen but as a Roman Vestal Virgin...
[On the Parsis] 'Ultimately it takes at least two and a half year to consecrate one fire temple. It's not that we just make the logs of wood and just burn it up and then the fire takes place. There are sixteen different types of fire which are consecrated. Each one by one. Fires from the finest meat, fire from the dive maker, fire from a warrior, from the house of all these places'
'So from every heart in the community'...
There is one state which still officially venerates sacred fire as a symbol of the whole of society - France"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Mother and Child - "Commonly pregnant women in Japan wear pregnancy sash after the fifth month of pregnancy. Traditionally after a so called quickening - after you feel the baby inside... They compare omamori to an electric battery. So the blessing or the force that protect you is going to run out after a while. Certainly for pregnancy the recommendation is that you shouldn't reuse the same omamori for subsequent pregnancies. So you should keep buying new omamori for the second, third, fourth babies"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Becoming an Adult - "Modern western society hardly lacks for rites of passage - from the school prom to the first holidays with friends or descending into muddy drunken festival chaos at Reading, the v festival or wherever. But we moved away from a model of elders initiating children into an adult world, children joining their parents in a new role after an intergenerational transfer of wisdom. Instead the young now initiate each other into worlds of their own with joyous baptisms of beer, song and dance. Adulthood may become something into which we stumble in more ways than one with no clear transition"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Lines of Communication - "The angelus bell didn't call people to church - it called them to stay where they were but to redirect their thoughts away from the immediate everyday concerns and towards God. A public summons to a private act. But by the time our engraving was produced in eighteen eighty one, the tradition of the angelus - indeed the idea that you might stop to pray in the middle of the day's work - was to most Europeans living in cities at best a memory"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, The Power of Song - "In all three Abrahamic faiths great pains are taken to mark this transition from ordinary life into time set aside for presenting yourself to God and to one another. One of the ways in which you can show on this day the focus of your life has shifted is to dress up. To don what in the Christian world used to be called your Sunday best"
Why Is the Alt-Right Obsessed with Pedophilia? - "Rosenthal struggled to understand the right’s fixation on pedophilia. Cautioning that this is mere speculation, he says some on the right have resorted to the pedophilia accusation because lesser “charges”—homosexuality, interracial marriage, one-parent households—no longer have the power they once did. “What are you gonna do to make them seem worse? I offer you pedophilia,” he says."
Botanist Calls Out Wellness Blogger for Putting Toxic Flowers on Food - "The flower featured in the piece, a variation of lily, contains the toxic substance lycorine, which can cause symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, and nausea if consumed even in small amounts. Hey, at least it’s vegan."
What Is the Angelus? - "Designed to commemorate the mystery of the Incarnation and pay homage to Mary’s role in salvation history, it has long been part of Catholic life. Around the world, three times every day, the faithful stop whatever they are doing and with the words “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary” begin this simple yet beautiful prayer"
Teachers Explain How 风和日丽 Became the Default Composition Intro - "“The general trend is that schools are taking the approach of teaching a “third language” for mother tongue. Students will encounter sample vocabulary in sentence structure questions, and they are supposed to just substitute the vocabulary – it’s just like how I study Korean,” says Bei Jin. Yet, the styles of teaching Chinese still varies across different primary schools, and this can have an effect on students’ performance. “Some schools like ACS even use a bilingual approach by printing English words on Chinese worksheets. It all depends on the learning outcomes that each school aims to achieve,” shares Bei Jin."
Crypto coin company 'disappears with millions', leaving one-word message: ‘Penis’ - "For hours, the site for Prodeum simply read: ‘Penis’. To make the joke even better, Prodium is a medication designed to reduce infections of the urinary tract. The site had masqueraded as a blockchain start-up which would use crypto technology to ensure fresh vegetable delivery, with its own coin offering. It had reportedly raised millions in venture capital money"
Biscuits and chocolates take the 'shrinkflation' test - "Chocoholics and biscuit-lovers have been outraged in recent years by news of so-called "shrinkflation". That is when food manufacturers reduce the weight of their products without shrinking the price... Four of our 19 products have got cheaper per 100g, while others have risen sharply."
Winston Churchill-inspired 'Blighty cafe' is stormed - "Halimo Hussein, 24, stormed the Blighty UK cafe in Finsbury Park, north London, and urged customers to boycott it for 'colonialism' and chanted 'Churchill was racist'. The politics student, who is the co-president of Equality and Liberation at SOAS, University of London, later asked the owner to apologise to the local community... 'Without the bravery, courage and leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, we would not be living in a free country where we have the freedom to express our personal views, regardless of how, in their case, ridiculous or offensive they are.' Michael Fabricant, Tory MP for Lichfield, told MailOnline: 'It is thanks to Winston Churchill that fools like these are able to hold their childish views and not be thrown into a concentration camp. 'They should think about this before the next time they behave like yobs... Police were called after the nine campaigners stormed the eatery, which has already been under attack from vandals and more Labour activists... He was also forced to remove a giant mural of Churchill after it was daubed with graffiti which branded the former prime minister 'scum' and and 'imperialist Mr Evans said: 'If you cannot celebrate Britain and great Britons you are just erasing history. And if you cannot celebrate Churchill, you cannot celebrate anyone.' It has now emerged that the group's leader, Ms Hussein, is an avid Labour supporter and Jeremy Corbyn fan. Ms Hussein, whose family fled the civil war in Somalia, could be heard shouting: 'We have nothing to lose but our chains.'... It also emerged that she has backed the anarchist online trend which uses the hashtag #RobThisEngland. People on social media who use the hashtag are seen to be committed to not paying for services and goods."
The secret to becoming a famous writer - "It's understandable that very successful writers would see writing as a meritocracy. When you work hard to reach a goal, you naturally attribute any success to the hard work. Yet many talented people toil a lifetime and never become J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. On the other hand, some folks like, say, George Will or Maureen Dowd churn out piffle with no particular craft or insight, and are rewarded with cushy sinecures and prestigious bylines. The truth is that, in writing, as in any profession, merit is only tangentially related to success, if at all... Become really famous doing something else first. In writing, as in all things, who you are is more important than what you do. If you're a widely recognized politician or actor, it's relatively easy to parlay that notoriety into a writing career... If you can't be somebody important, the next best thing you can do as an aspiring writer is to know someone important... Be privileged... Be lucky"
Tat Will Tell: Tattoos and Time Preferences by Bradley J. Ruffle, Anne Wilson - "Forty percent of Americans under the age of 40 have at least one tattoo. Yet survey and experimental evidence suggests that the tattooed are viewed negatively and may face discrimination in the labor market and in commercial transactions. In view of the potentially adverse economic consequences of a tattoo, the decision to get one may be regarded as short-sighted and impulsive. We collect numerous measures of time preferences and impulsivity of tattooed and non-tattooed subjects and find broad-ranging and robust evidence that those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed. Almost nothing mitigates these results, neither the motive for the tattoo, nor the time contemplated before getting tattooed, nor the time elapsed since the most recent tattoo. Even the expressed intention to get a(nother) tattoo predicts increased short-sightedness and helps to pin down the direction of causality between tattoos and short-sightedness."
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Losing Its Sparkle - "The Hungarian Jazz pianist János Gonda was called into party headquarters to explain his passion for a musical genre which came from that bourgeois capitalist nest of vipers the United States. You misunderstand the pianist told the representative of the agitation and propaganda department of the party. Jazz is the music of the slaves, the oppressed of the earth dragged in chains across the Atlantic Ocean to serve the white oppressors. They are our friends. The party secretary bowed to his wisdom and permitted a jazz scene to grow and multiply which is still flourishing in Budapest to this day"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Living with the Dead - "[On China] The man in our portrait has a panel of splendid embroidery on his chest, a badge of rank. But fascinatingly it may not be his rank. If a son or a grandson got a promotion the ancestor would also be promoted. A new portrait would be painted - a close copy of the first but now featuring a higher ranking badge and the older portrait would be ritually burned. Ancestors treated in this way sharing in the family's successes would bring further good fortune from the birth of sons to increasing wealth... not until four or five generations had passed did a person's relative become what is known as a distant ancestor. The spirit no longer needing offerings of food or wine, their portraits no longer needing to be displayed. But ancestors not properly venerated could wreak havoc and among other consequences of Mao Tzetung's one child policy is a widespread worry among those now old that there may be no one in the future to pay proper honor to their spirit"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Holy Killing - "'Those gods, they can't eat anything. So what they're actually receiving is the smell of the sacrifice. So the smell's got to be able to reach them.' In theory at least the animals had to consent to being sacrificed and so water would be splashed on the heads of the bigger beasts to make them nod before they were killed"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Contain Yourself! - "Fish and chips can no longer be sold wrapped in newspaper. In nineteen seventy six the European Council issued a directive which stated materials that come into contact with food must not change its composition, appearance, taste or smell or endanger human health. Soon afterwards British law changed amid concerns that newspaper ink could be toxic"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, My Life in Five Dishes: Antonio Carluccio - "Instead to say: come and see my etchings to girls I could say come and eat my pasta and it was very successful. So now I started then to cook all the time... A cook does it for passion and for love and does is when he wants and the chef has to do it when he has to...
'I saw for example spaghetti bolognse which they don't exist in Italy. Exists tagliatelle bolognese. A the bolognese is different and secondly it is a flat noodle, the original recipe and not a spaghetti. That was the first faux pas'
'But it still tastes good'
'That's the point. You put exactly the finger on the spot. Tasting good and tasteing very good, there's the difference. And for an Italian with 600 shapes of pasta you can vary so much that one pasta fits perfectly to a type of sauce and the pallete sort of reacts a little better for example to the squarey shape of the tagliatelle. Spaghetti the more wonderful for aglio olio and peperencino for spaghetti with fish'"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Fire and State - "The close link between the fire of Vesta and female political power becomes even clearer when you turn the coin over. Here you find not the Emperor as you might expect but the Emperor's wife Julia Domina, wife of Emperor Septimius Severus. This coin suggests that she like her husband has a supremely important role. As the mother of the state she will join the Vestal Virgins in tending the flame which guarantees the safety of the family and the Empire. It's an image of female political authority that fascinated and attracted powerful women long after the end of the Roman Empire. One canny user of this imagery was Elizabeth the First of England whose unmarried state kept the country safe from Civil War and from foreign threats. And so on more than one occasion Elizabeth had herself painted not as the English virgin queen but as a Roman Vestal Virgin...
[On the Parsis] 'Ultimately it takes at least two and a half year to consecrate one fire temple. It's not that we just make the logs of wood and just burn it up and then the fire takes place. There are sixteen different types of fire which are consecrated. Each one by one. Fires from the finest meat, fire from the dive maker, fire from a warrior, from the house of all these places'
'So from every heart in the community'...
There is one state which still officially venerates sacred fire as a symbol of the whole of society - France"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Mother and Child - "Commonly pregnant women in Japan wear pregnancy sash after the fifth month of pregnancy. Traditionally after a so called quickening - after you feel the baby inside... They compare omamori to an electric battery. So the blessing or the force that protect you is going to run out after a while. Certainly for pregnancy the recommendation is that you shouldn't reuse the same omamori for subsequent pregnancies. So you should keep buying new omamori for the second, third, fourth babies"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Becoming an Adult - "Modern western society hardly lacks for rites of passage - from the school prom to the first holidays with friends or descending into muddy drunken festival chaos at Reading, the v festival or wherever. But we moved away from a model of elders initiating children into an adult world, children joining their parents in a new role after an intergenerational transfer of wisdom. Instead the young now initiate each other into worlds of their own with joyous baptisms of beer, song and dance. Adulthood may become something into which we stumble in more ways than one with no clear transition"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, Lines of Communication - "The angelus bell didn't call people to church - it called them to stay where they were but to redirect their thoughts away from the immediate everyday concerns and towards God. A public summons to a private act. But by the time our engraving was produced in eighteen eighty one, the tradition of the angelus - indeed the idea that you might stop to pray in the middle of the day's work - was to most Europeans living in cities at best a memory"
BBC Radio 4 - Living With The Gods, The Power of Song - "In all three Abrahamic faiths great pains are taken to mark this transition from ordinary life into time set aside for presenting yourself to God and to one another. One of the ways in which you can show on this day the focus of your life has shifted is to dress up. To don what in the Christian world used to be called your Sunday best"
Why Is the Alt-Right Obsessed with Pedophilia? - "Rosenthal struggled to understand the right’s fixation on pedophilia. Cautioning that this is mere speculation, he says some on the right have resorted to the pedophilia accusation because lesser “charges”—homosexuality, interracial marriage, one-parent households—no longer have the power they once did. “What are you gonna do to make them seem worse? I offer you pedophilia,” he says."
Botanist Calls Out Wellness Blogger for Putting Toxic Flowers on Food - "The flower featured in the piece, a variation of lily, contains the toxic substance lycorine, which can cause symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, and nausea if consumed even in small amounts. Hey, at least it’s vegan."
What Is the Angelus? - "Designed to commemorate the mystery of the Incarnation and pay homage to Mary’s role in salvation history, it has long been part of Catholic life. Around the world, three times every day, the faithful stop whatever they are doing and with the words “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary” begin this simple yet beautiful prayer"
Teachers Explain How 风和日丽 Became the Default Composition Intro - "“The general trend is that schools are taking the approach of teaching a “third language” for mother tongue. Students will encounter sample vocabulary in sentence structure questions, and they are supposed to just substitute the vocabulary – it’s just like how I study Korean,” says Bei Jin. Yet, the styles of teaching Chinese still varies across different primary schools, and this can have an effect on students’ performance. “Some schools like ACS even use a bilingual approach by printing English words on Chinese worksheets. It all depends on the learning outcomes that each school aims to achieve,” shares Bei Jin."
Crypto coin company 'disappears with millions', leaving one-word message: ‘Penis’ - "For hours, the site for Prodeum simply read: ‘Penis’. To make the joke even better, Prodium is a medication designed to reduce infections of the urinary tract. The site had masqueraded as a blockchain start-up which would use crypto technology to ensure fresh vegetable delivery, with its own coin offering. It had reportedly raised millions in venture capital money"
Biscuits and chocolates take the 'shrinkflation' test - "Chocoholics and biscuit-lovers have been outraged in recent years by news of so-called "shrinkflation". That is when food manufacturers reduce the weight of their products without shrinking the price... Four of our 19 products have got cheaper per 100g, while others have risen sharply."
Winston Churchill-inspired 'Blighty cafe' is stormed - "Halimo Hussein, 24, stormed the Blighty UK cafe in Finsbury Park, north London, and urged customers to boycott it for 'colonialism' and chanted 'Churchill was racist'. The politics student, who is the co-president of Equality and Liberation at SOAS, University of London, later asked the owner to apologise to the local community... 'Without the bravery, courage and leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, we would not be living in a free country where we have the freedom to express our personal views, regardless of how, in their case, ridiculous or offensive they are.' Michael Fabricant, Tory MP for Lichfield, told MailOnline: 'It is thanks to Winston Churchill that fools like these are able to hold their childish views and not be thrown into a concentration camp. 'They should think about this before the next time they behave like yobs... Police were called after the nine campaigners stormed the eatery, which has already been under attack from vandals and more Labour activists... He was also forced to remove a giant mural of Churchill after it was daubed with graffiti which branded the former prime minister 'scum' and and 'imperialist Mr Evans said: 'If you cannot celebrate Britain and great Britons you are just erasing history. And if you cannot celebrate Churchill, you cannot celebrate anyone.' It has now emerged that the group's leader, Ms Hussein, is an avid Labour supporter and Jeremy Corbyn fan. Ms Hussein, whose family fled the civil war in Somalia, could be heard shouting: 'We have nothing to lose but our chains.'... It also emerged that she has backed the anarchist online trend which uses the hashtag #RobThisEngland. People on social media who use the hashtag are seen to be committed to not paying for services and goods."
The secret to becoming a famous writer - "It's understandable that very successful writers would see writing as a meritocracy. When you work hard to reach a goal, you naturally attribute any success to the hard work. Yet many talented people toil a lifetime and never become J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. On the other hand, some folks like, say, George Will or Maureen Dowd churn out piffle with no particular craft or insight, and are rewarded with cushy sinecures and prestigious bylines. The truth is that, in writing, as in any profession, merit is only tangentially related to success, if at all... Become really famous doing something else first. In writing, as in all things, who you are is more important than what you do. If you're a widely recognized politician or actor, it's relatively easy to parlay that notoriety into a writing career... If you can't be somebody important, the next best thing you can do as an aspiring writer is to know someone important... Be privileged... Be lucky"
Tat Will Tell: Tattoos and Time Preferences by Bradley J. Ruffle, Anne Wilson - "Forty percent of Americans under the age of 40 have at least one tattoo. Yet survey and experimental evidence suggests that the tattooed are viewed negatively and may face discrimination in the labor market and in commercial transactions. In view of the potentially adverse economic consequences of a tattoo, the decision to get one may be regarded as short-sighted and impulsive. We collect numerous measures of time preferences and impulsivity of tattooed and non-tattooed subjects and find broad-ranging and robust evidence that those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed. Almost nothing mitigates these results, neither the motive for the tattoo, nor the time contemplated before getting tattooed, nor the time elapsed since the most recent tattoo. Even the expressed intention to get a(nother) tattoo predicts increased short-sightedness and helps to pin down the direction of causality between tattoos and short-sightedness."
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