Friend's FB:
"Every time I read some acquaintances' fb posts, I cringe at how bigoted they sound and I feel that i should delete or at least silence them on fb.
But I stopped myself today cos I realised they are in their own echo chambers cos their friends are mostly likeminded and agree with them.
I conclude that each day I should see some stuff on my feed that makes me cringe. This daily uncomfortable feeling lets me know that my way of thinking is not the only one out there."
L'origine de Bert
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Links - 30th June 2015
30 cent satay at Geylang Bahru
In Greek crisis, Germany should learn from its fiscal past - "Unhappily, it has not learned the costs of a mad adherence to fiscal orthodoxy, despite the fact that its prosperity is rooted in the decision of its World War II adversaries to allow West Germany’s postwar government to write off half of its debts"
University union officer who wrote 'kill all white men’ tweet will remain in post - Telegraph
"Equality" = killing all white men and retaining your job, while making remarks about women (e.g. Tim Hunt) gets you fired
The Illiberal Persecution of Tim Hunt - "The response to Hunt is way more archaic than what Hunt said. Sure, his views might be a bit pre-women's lib, pre-1960s. But the tormenting and sacking of people for what they think and say is pre-modern. It's positively Inquisitorial. The irony is too much to handle: Hunt is railed against for expressing an old-fashioned view, yet the railers against him do something infinitely more old-fashioned: they expel from public life someone they judge to have committed heresy. Kick him out. Strip him of his titles. Mock his misfortune. "Savour the moment." How awfully ironic that the Royal Society, which played a key role in propelling Britain from medievalism to modernity, is now being asked to behave in a medieval fashion and send into the academic wilderness a heretic among its number. The Hunt incident is quite terrifying. For what we have here is a university, under pressure from an intolerant mob, judging a professor's fitness for office by his personal thoughts, his idea of humour. Profs should be judged by one thing alone: their depth of knowledge. It shouldn't matter one iota if they are sexist, stupid, unfunny, religious, uncouth, ugly, or whatever. All that should matter is whether they have the brainpower to do the job at hand. UCL and the mob's hounding of Hunt echoes the university of the pre-Enlightenment era, when only those who were 100 percent Good Catholics had a hope in hell of getting a job... In effectively dumping Hunt, UCL is sending the message that it will not tolerate deviant thinking. Oxford University did something similar last year when it cancelled a debate on abortion (which I was due to speak at) at the behest of an angry mob of feminists. The management of the London School of Economics gave the nod to the disbanding of its student rugby team for the crime of distributing a rude leaflet. In the U.S., Columbia has indulged the mattress girl, allowing her to defame both a man and campus life more broadly. UVa banned fraternities in response to what turned out to be an utterly made-up rape. Even the notorious Laura Kipnis case is not a simple case of mad, intolerant students trying to shut down an outspoken academic, but rather has been facilitated by educational structures themselves: in this case the federal Title IX rules dealing with gender issues on campus."
Rise of the 'upskirt perverts' - "the alarming rise in cases seems to mirror an expansion of an online social upskirt culture... Forensic psychiatrist Tommy Tan of Novena Psychiatry Clinic said most clients who compulsively take upskirt shots have depression or other psychiatric conditions."
"online social upskirt culture"?!
10 Comic Book Characters Whose Powers Are Actually Pretty Disgusting - "Heavy Flo is a villain who has appeared in the Savage Dragon comics. And her power? Well, her power is the ability to forcefully fire massive spouts of menstrual blood from her lady parts at her opponents. That’s right, what you’re seeing in the above image is a fat woman weaponising her periods for evil-doings (and an unfortunate victim receiving it full force in his face)."
The Revolt Against the Masses and the Roots of Modern Liberalism - "Who really won the 60s? Not the hippies but the bureaucrats who absorbed bohemian language in service of govt. programs"
Liberals and the Illiberal Left - "even as Chait’s critics dismissed the reality of political correctness he decried, real world examples pile up—some absurd, others ominous. In the absurd column comes this from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York: Professors and other employees at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center have been forbidden from addressing students and prospective students with the title “Mr.” and “Ms.” because, campus leaders say, the terms may be offensive... In the ominous column, consider this chart from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of attempts by students to ban speakers from campus, by means up through and including violent disruption. As FIRE notes, not only are disinvitation incidents on campus rising, but so too is the “success rate” for such incidents. FIRE statistics indicate that disinvitation incidents are almost three times as likely to target speakers perceived as conservative (including those, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who would angrily disavow such a label for themselves) as those perceived as liberal or left. The campus left is reviving, and liberal university administrators are surrendering to them... political correctness is a weapon deployed by leftists against liberals. Its political effect in the larger political context is to make liberals look hesitant and weak... America’s most effective liberals—from Harry Truman to Rahm Emanuel—have known how and when to defy the illiberal left, whether that illiberal left was communist or Third Worldist or, as it is today, infatuated with the jargon of “intersectionality.” The liberals who couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t have been dragged toward the same marginality that has always befallen the hard left in America—and always will. Republicans have suffered greatly over the past six years from their visible terror of their more extreme associates. The evolution toward a more responsible Republicanism remains incomplete, but is visibly under way. Now it seems to be the turn of liberals and Democrats to veer off into their own ideological fever-swamps"
Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism - "I also agree with Wolfe that equality is a core value of classical liberalism, but not as he means it. True liberal equality is not income equality; nor is it merely equality of liberty or equality under the law. The first would require continuous violent state interference with voluntary exchange, while the other two are inadequate in themselves. By equality, I mean what Roderick Long calls, per Locke, “equality of authority.” For Locke a state of equality is one in which “all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank . . . should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection . . . .” But now I must part ways with Wolfe because he has an utterly self-defeating idea of how to secure everyone’s mastery over his or her own one’s destiny: the welfare state. Judging by the history and nature of the state, we must conclude that Wolfe’s program would lead not to liberation but rather to subjugation of the individual... If the alternative we face is between grappling with market forces and trusting a ruling elite to orchestrate just social outcomes, anyone concerned with autonomy and equality should choose the market. A benevolent, peaceful state is not on the menu."
Museum of Selfies - "This is a project that started when my friend aka. right hand and I went to the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.
I took a picture for fun and liked how this simple thing could change their character and give their facial expression a whole new meaning."
Send migrants home to make room for refugees says European Commission - "Only 39 pc of migrants who were not granted asylum in the EU were returned to their home countries in 2014."
"Taking into account deaths at sea, above 50% of those who make the journey stay in the eu"
The late Roman Empire was not the twilight of popular myth - "I am reminded of something a lady who knew a great deal about the Middle East said to me at the time of Rowan Williams’s now famous Sharia Law speech. She told me she had had women ringing her up all day, all saying the same thing: “Doesn’t the Archbishop realise that we came to Britain in order to get away from the oppression of Sharia? And now the very person who should be resisting Sharia is trying to force us back into it.”"
Bishop warns of 'Islamic areas' - "Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for people of a different faith or race, a Church of England bishop has said. The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said non-Muslims may find it difficult to live or work in some places He said there was "hostility" in those areas and described the government's multicultural policies as divisive."
Threats to 'no-go areas' bishop - "A bishop who claimed Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims has received threats against himself and his family... "I deeply regret any hurt and do not wish to cause offence to anyone, let alone my Muslim friends. "But unless we diagnose the malaise from which we all suffer we shall not be able to discover the remedy.""
Marble Slab Creamery apologize to Muslim for their "Ramadhan Special" - "We have received some feedback and suggestions from the public that our promotion named "Ramadhan Special" at the Kallang Wave, Bugis+ and Causeway Point outlet is misleading to the Muslim community with the use of the word "Ramadhan" because we are not halal certified. We apologize sincerely for this negligence on our part and the bad use of the word. The promotion was done in good faith and was never meant to mislead nor to show any disrespect to the Muslim community, and we are really sorry about the inconvenience. The posters have been taken down with immediate effect. We will also like to clarify that none of our current MSC outlets are halal certified, but it is in our pipeline to do so for 2016. Thanks for your understanding"
Comments: "ramadhan special means promo for festive season lor..like that cny promo cannot sell to malays only for chinese...make sense ????"
"Ish it just moi or the current generation of peace and harmony ish becoming more radical and sensitive?
The generation that moi grew up with seem to be more carefree and more tolerance about such thing.
Or as our society become more and more world class under the great leadership of the higher mrotals, sinkie in general are becoming more and more unhappy and gloomy. So all the small small thing whether ish life or religion or culture or watsoever will easily irritate them."
In Greek crisis, Germany should learn from its fiscal past - "Unhappily, it has not learned the costs of a mad adherence to fiscal orthodoxy, despite the fact that its prosperity is rooted in the decision of its World War II adversaries to allow West Germany’s postwar government to write off half of its debts"
University union officer who wrote 'kill all white men’ tweet will remain in post - Telegraph
"Equality" = killing all white men and retaining your job, while making remarks about women (e.g. Tim Hunt) gets you fired
The Illiberal Persecution of Tim Hunt - "The response to Hunt is way more archaic than what Hunt said. Sure, his views might be a bit pre-women's lib, pre-1960s. But the tormenting and sacking of people for what they think and say is pre-modern. It's positively Inquisitorial. The irony is too much to handle: Hunt is railed against for expressing an old-fashioned view, yet the railers against him do something infinitely more old-fashioned: they expel from public life someone they judge to have committed heresy. Kick him out. Strip him of his titles. Mock his misfortune. "Savour the moment." How awfully ironic that the Royal Society, which played a key role in propelling Britain from medievalism to modernity, is now being asked to behave in a medieval fashion and send into the academic wilderness a heretic among its number. The Hunt incident is quite terrifying. For what we have here is a university, under pressure from an intolerant mob, judging a professor's fitness for office by his personal thoughts, his idea of humour. Profs should be judged by one thing alone: their depth of knowledge. It shouldn't matter one iota if they are sexist, stupid, unfunny, religious, uncouth, ugly, or whatever. All that should matter is whether they have the brainpower to do the job at hand. UCL and the mob's hounding of Hunt echoes the university of the pre-Enlightenment era, when only those who were 100 percent Good Catholics had a hope in hell of getting a job... In effectively dumping Hunt, UCL is sending the message that it will not tolerate deviant thinking. Oxford University did something similar last year when it cancelled a debate on abortion (which I was due to speak at) at the behest of an angry mob of feminists. The management of the London School of Economics gave the nod to the disbanding of its student rugby team for the crime of distributing a rude leaflet. In the U.S., Columbia has indulged the mattress girl, allowing her to defame both a man and campus life more broadly. UVa banned fraternities in response to what turned out to be an utterly made-up rape. Even the notorious Laura Kipnis case is not a simple case of mad, intolerant students trying to shut down an outspoken academic, but rather has been facilitated by educational structures themselves: in this case the federal Title IX rules dealing with gender issues on campus."
Rise of the 'upskirt perverts' - "the alarming rise in cases seems to mirror an expansion of an online social upskirt culture... Forensic psychiatrist Tommy Tan of Novena Psychiatry Clinic said most clients who compulsively take upskirt shots have depression or other psychiatric conditions."
"online social upskirt culture"?!
10 Comic Book Characters Whose Powers Are Actually Pretty Disgusting - "Heavy Flo is a villain who has appeared in the Savage Dragon comics. And her power? Well, her power is the ability to forcefully fire massive spouts of menstrual blood from her lady parts at her opponents. That’s right, what you’re seeing in the above image is a fat woman weaponising her periods for evil-doings (and an unfortunate victim receiving it full force in his face)."
The Revolt Against the Masses and the Roots of Modern Liberalism - "Who really won the 60s? Not the hippies but the bureaucrats who absorbed bohemian language in service of govt. programs"
Liberals and the Illiberal Left - "even as Chait’s critics dismissed the reality of political correctness he decried, real world examples pile up—some absurd, others ominous. In the absurd column comes this from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York: Professors and other employees at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center have been forbidden from addressing students and prospective students with the title “Mr.” and “Ms.” because, campus leaders say, the terms may be offensive... In the ominous column, consider this chart from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of attempts by students to ban speakers from campus, by means up through and including violent disruption. As FIRE notes, not only are disinvitation incidents on campus rising, but so too is the “success rate” for such incidents. FIRE statistics indicate that disinvitation incidents are almost three times as likely to target speakers perceived as conservative (including those, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who would angrily disavow such a label for themselves) as those perceived as liberal or left. The campus left is reviving, and liberal university administrators are surrendering to them... political correctness is a weapon deployed by leftists against liberals. Its political effect in the larger political context is to make liberals look hesitant and weak... America’s most effective liberals—from Harry Truman to Rahm Emanuel—have known how and when to defy the illiberal left, whether that illiberal left was communist or Third Worldist or, as it is today, infatuated with the jargon of “intersectionality.” The liberals who couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t have been dragged toward the same marginality that has always befallen the hard left in America—and always will. Republicans have suffered greatly over the past six years from their visible terror of their more extreme associates. The evolution toward a more responsible Republicanism remains incomplete, but is visibly under way. Now it seems to be the turn of liberals and Democrats to veer off into their own ideological fever-swamps"
Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism - "I also agree with Wolfe that equality is a core value of classical liberalism, but not as he means it. True liberal equality is not income equality; nor is it merely equality of liberty or equality under the law. The first would require continuous violent state interference with voluntary exchange, while the other two are inadequate in themselves. By equality, I mean what Roderick Long calls, per Locke, “equality of authority.” For Locke a state of equality is one in which “all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank . . . should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection . . . .” But now I must part ways with Wolfe because he has an utterly self-defeating idea of how to secure everyone’s mastery over his or her own one’s destiny: the welfare state. Judging by the history and nature of the state, we must conclude that Wolfe’s program would lead not to liberation but rather to subjugation of the individual... If the alternative we face is between grappling with market forces and trusting a ruling elite to orchestrate just social outcomes, anyone concerned with autonomy and equality should choose the market. A benevolent, peaceful state is not on the menu."
Museum of Selfies - "This is a project that started when my friend aka. right hand and I went to the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.
I took a picture for fun and liked how this simple thing could change their character and give their facial expression a whole new meaning."
Send migrants home to make room for refugees says European Commission - "Only 39 pc of migrants who were not granted asylum in the EU were returned to their home countries in 2014."
"Taking into account deaths at sea, above 50% of those who make the journey stay in the eu"
The late Roman Empire was not the twilight of popular myth - "I am reminded of something a lady who knew a great deal about the Middle East said to me at the time of Rowan Williams’s now famous Sharia Law speech. She told me she had had women ringing her up all day, all saying the same thing: “Doesn’t the Archbishop realise that we came to Britain in order to get away from the oppression of Sharia? And now the very person who should be resisting Sharia is trying to force us back into it.”"
Bishop warns of 'Islamic areas' - "Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for people of a different faith or race, a Church of England bishop has said. The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said non-Muslims may find it difficult to live or work in some places He said there was "hostility" in those areas and described the government's multicultural policies as divisive."
Threats to 'no-go areas' bishop - "A bishop who claimed Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims has received threats against himself and his family... "I deeply regret any hurt and do not wish to cause offence to anyone, let alone my Muslim friends. "But unless we diagnose the malaise from which we all suffer we shall not be able to discover the remedy.""
Marble Slab Creamery apologize to Muslim for their "Ramadhan Special" - "We have received some feedback and suggestions from the public that our promotion named "Ramadhan Special" at the Kallang Wave, Bugis+ and Causeway Point outlet is misleading to the Muslim community with the use of the word "Ramadhan" because we are not halal certified. We apologize sincerely for this negligence on our part and the bad use of the word. The promotion was done in good faith and was never meant to mislead nor to show any disrespect to the Muslim community, and we are really sorry about the inconvenience. The posters have been taken down with immediate effect. We will also like to clarify that none of our current MSC outlets are halal certified, but it is in our pipeline to do so for 2016. Thanks for your understanding"
Comments: "ramadhan special means promo for festive season lor..like that cny promo cannot sell to malays only for chinese...make sense ????"
"Ish it just moi or the current generation of peace and harmony ish becoming more radical and sensitive?
The generation that moi grew up with seem to be more carefree and more tolerance about such thing.
Or as our society become more and more world class under the great leadership of the higher mrotals, sinkie in general are becoming more and more unhappy and gloomy. So all the small small thing whether ish life or religion or culture or watsoever will easily irritate them."
Post ID: 8083373748970457463
Vegetarianism and Moral Incoherence
Speciesm [Ed: Or speciesism] is a commonly invoked argument against the eating of animals. The suffering of animals is said to be the same as that of humans and since you wouldn't make a human suffer, you wouldn't make an animal suffer.
However, I don't see anything wrong with speciesm.
Just because an entity is sentient does not mean that harm done to it is wrong.
If I code a computer program to respond to my pressing of the "A" key with a response of "ow", am I harming it when I press the "A" key?
If the program is complicated enough to have routines that mimic the human response to pain, would we say it was suffering, much less that its "suffering" was morally equivalent to that of humans? (side note: if we don't, then we are guilty of biocentrism - why should artificial life be discriminated against?)
If the suffering of animals is morally equivalent to that of humans, then we are morally obliged to kill (or permanently incapacitate/incarcerate) those who cause animals to suffer, just as we would kill (or call the police, who would set in chain a process that could kill or permanently incapacitate/incarcerate) a murderer if we could (otherwise we would be condoning murder). Factory farms are worse than Auschwitz as many more sentient beings suffer.
Knowing that the Guinea Worm is going extinct due to an active campaign by humans, I should also regard this as a case of genocide and strongly condemn this - would it be okay to make humans go extinct?
Yet, the logic has to be extended further. If we knew a human was suffering in the wilderness we would try to save him. We mount expensive rescue missions to save humans who are trapped in the wilderness so they don't die.
With reference to Peter Singer's argument about "The Life You Can Save", we must extend this further to animals. You are a bad person if you don't donate everything above what you need for a reasonable life to the cause of animal welfare. Knowing that animals are suffering and dying in the wild, we need to save them.
Further, we need to prevent animals from harming other animals. If a cat would hunt and kill ten mice, we are obliged to kill the cat - we are saving ten lives at the cost of one. It doesn't matter that the cat does not know any better - if a criminally insane human shooter is on a shooting spree, we would kill him to stop him from killing more people, even if he weren't cognizant of his actions.
I doubt any animal rights activists - even those who, like the Animal Liberation Front, use bombs to fight for animal welfare, would go so far.
So we can see that even the most ardent vegan does not hold the suffering of animals to be morally equivalent to that of humans.
This does not mean that animals do not deserve any moral consideration at all, but we can see that it is surely less than that we give to humans.
Eating meat, for example, gives many great pleasure and a perpetual vegan diet would immiserate many. So even under utilitarianism meat eating can be justified. Recall too that as per JS Mill, it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Similarly, we could say that the pleasure of the meat-eating human being outweighs the suffering of the slaughtered pig .
Meanwhile, one peculiar claim is that we should look at biomass to uphold rights. So a tapeworm in a human gut can morally be killed because the human, being bigger, has rights to an improved quality of life that outweigh the tapeworm's right to life. Yet, invoking mass as a determinant of moral worth seems even more arbitrary than speciesm. Why should bigger animals have more of a right to survive than smaller animals?
If a starving lion (~250kg) is faced with a human baby (~2kg), does it have a right to eat it? Humans aside, lions prey on animals many times their size. Is it wrong for a lion of 100kg to hunt and kill a 290kg wildebeest and should we be coercing it to eat smaller prey?
Also does this mean humans can eat chickens and fish, since they are lighter than us?
Addendum: Actually utilitarian vegetarians should just kill themselves.
No matter what you eat or do, animals will die as long as you live.
Even organic farms kill mice (not to mention many other animals).
Since this is utilitarianism, intent is irrelevant - we need only look at the outcome.
So if you go by the principle that animal suffering (and life) is the same as human suffering (and life), you should kill yourself so hundreds of mice won't die for your food to be produced.
However, I don't see anything wrong with speciesm.
Just because an entity is sentient does not mean that harm done to it is wrong.
If I code a computer program to respond to my pressing of the "A" key with a response of "ow", am I harming it when I press the "A" key?
If the program is complicated enough to have routines that mimic the human response to pain, would we say it was suffering, much less that its "suffering" was morally equivalent to that of humans? (side note: if we don't, then we are guilty of biocentrism - why should artificial life be discriminated against?)
If the suffering of animals is morally equivalent to that of humans, then we are morally obliged to kill (or permanently incapacitate/incarcerate) those who cause animals to suffer, just as we would kill (or call the police, who would set in chain a process that could kill or permanently incapacitate/incarcerate) a murderer if we could (otherwise we would be condoning murder). Factory farms are worse than Auschwitz as many more sentient beings suffer.
Knowing that the Guinea Worm is going extinct due to an active campaign by humans, I should also regard this as a case of genocide and strongly condemn this - would it be okay to make humans go extinct?
Yet, the logic has to be extended further. If we knew a human was suffering in the wilderness we would try to save him. We mount expensive rescue missions to save humans who are trapped in the wilderness so they don't die.
With reference to Peter Singer's argument about "The Life You Can Save", we must extend this further to animals. You are a bad person if you don't donate everything above what you need for a reasonable life to the cause of animal welfare. Knowing that animals are suffering and dying in the wild, we need to save them.
Further, we need to prevent animals from harming other animals. If a cat would hunt and kill ten mice, we are obliged to kill the cat - we are saving ten lives at the cost of one. It doesn't matter that the cat does not know any better - if a criminally insane human shooter is on a shooting spree, we would kill him to stop him from killing more people, even if he weren't cognizant of his actions.
I doubt any animal rights activists - even those who, like the Animal Liberation Front, use bombs to fight for animal welfare, would go so far.
So we can see that even the most ardent vegan does not hold the suffering of animals to be morally equivalent to that of humans.
This does not mean that animals do not deserve any moral consideration at all, but we can see that it is surely less than that we give to humans.
Eating meat, for example, gives many great pleasure and a perpetual vegan diet would immiserate many. So even under utilitarianism meat eating can be justified. Recall too that as per JS Mill, it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Similarly, we could say that the pleasure of the meat-eating human being outweighs the suffering of the slaughtered pig .
Meanwhile, one peculiar claim is that we should look at biomass to uphold rights. So a tapeworm in a human gut can morally be killed because the human, being bigger, has rights to an improved quality of life that outweigh the tapeworm's right to life. Yet, invoking mass as a determinant of moral worth seems even more arbitrary than speciesm. Why should bigger animals have more of a right to survive than smaller animals?
If a starving lion (~250kg) is faced with a human baby (~2kg), does it have a right to eat it? Humans aside, lions prey on animals many times their size. Is it wrong for a lion of 100kg to hunt and kill a 290kg wildebeest and should we be coercing it to eat smaller prey?
Also does this mean humans can eat chickens and fish, since they are lighter than us?
Addendum: Actually utilitarian vegetarians should just kill themselves.
No matter what you eat or do, animals will die as long as you live.
Even organic farms kill mice (not to mention many other animals).
Since this is utilitarianism, intent is irrelevant - we need only look at the outcome.
So if you go by the principle that animal suffering (and life) is the same as human suffering (and life), you should kill yourself so hundreds of mice won't die for your food to be produced.
Post ID: 3250603733005488739
Monday, June 29, 2015
Links - 29th June 2015
Sir Tim Hunt investigation reveals flaws about Connie St Louis' testimony - "Troubled by Sir Tim’s fate, a collection of eminent scientists, including eight other Nobel Prize winners (and several senior female academics) chose to speak out publicly in support of him... All of them called for UCL, the Royal Society and the ERC to re‑instate him. The institutions, however, refused to play ball. Then, early this week, the simmering dispute took a further, seismic twist. It came courtesy of The Times newspaper, which revealed the contents of a leaked report into Sir Tim’s fall from grace compiled by an EU official who had accompanied him to the Seoul conference. This individual, who has not been named, sat with him at the lunch and provided a transcript of what Sir Tim ‘really said’. Crucially, it presented a very different take to the one which had been so energetically circulated by Connie St Louis... The report’s author added: ‘I didn’t notice any uncomfortable silence or any awkwardness in the room as reported on social and then mainstream media,’ going on to describe the speech as ‘warm and funny’... Perhaps, therefore, we should ask two other related questions: who exactly is Connie St Louis? And why, exactly, should we trust her word over that of a Nobel laureate?... it’s demonstrably false to say she ‘writes’ for The Independent, Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. Digital archives for all three newspapers, which stretch back at least 20 years, contain no by-lined articles that she has written for any of these titles, either in their print or online editions. The Mail’s accounts department has no record of ever paying her for a contribution... ‘He just ploughed on for five to seven minutes, actually,’ she said. ‘It was really shocking. It was culturally insensitive and it was very sexist.’ Strangely, the passage from Sir Tim’s speech that St Louis has so far made public is exactly 37 words long. It would take, at most, 20 seconds to recount. So did Sir Tim really ‘plough on’ for five to seven minutes? And, if so, what did he say? Why did she selectively quote just one statement from his toast? And how did such a remark end the 50-year career of a Nobel laureate? Once more, readers must draw their own conclusions."
Impressive investigative journalism by the Daily Mail!
How (Not) To Interpret and Report Main Effects and Interactions in Multiple Regression: Why Crawford and Pilanski Did Not Actually Replicate Lindner and Nosek (2009)
The title alone is awesome
Sex history calculator: Is your number of sexual partners low, average, or high?
If Your Car Will Be Idling for More Than 10 Seconds, Just Turn it Off
Stockholm riots leave Sweden's dreams of perfect society up in smoke - Telegraph - ""We have tried harder than any other European country to integrate, spending billions on a welfare system that is designed to help jobless immigrants and guarantee them a good quality of life," said Marc Abramsson, leader of the National Democrats Party. "Yet we have areas where there are ethnic groups that just don't identify with Swedish society. They see the police and even the fire brigade as part of the state, and they attack them. We have tried everything, anything, to improve things, but it hasn't worked. It's not about racism, it's just that multi-culturalism doesn't recognise how humans actually function." Aje Carlbom, a Swedish academic and author of a critical study into Swedish immigration policy, added that despite the increasing appeal of Far Right parties, mainstream Swedish politicians were still reluctant to even ask the kind of questions that the likes of Mr Abramsson was already offering answers to. "Anyone who wants to regulate immigration is immediately classified as a nationalist, which also implies a racist as well," he said. "It is still almost impossible to debate this question.""
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression - "Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future --- and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent."
Double standard allows soccer star Hope Solo to stay in the game - "Yet another renowned athlete has been hit with charges of domestic violence — allegedly pummeling two relatives, leaving a 17-year-old boy bleeding from a cut on his ear and a woman’s cheekbone swollen and purple. But while beleaguered officials of the NFL have made belated attempts to stop the violence — exiling players accused or convicted of using their hands for reasons unrelated to a playing field — this sports figure continues to smack a ball around... why is Solo, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, still allowed to play ball? Simple. She’s a woman. The double standard is alive and well.
A Half Century of Mate Preferences; The Cultural Evolution of Values - "The qualities people believe are important in selecting a marriage partner afford one domain for assessing human values. We examined the cultural evolution of these values over more than half a century. Building on existing data on mate preferences collected in 1939 (N= 628), 1956 (N= 120), 1967 (N= 566), and 1977 (N= 316), we collected data using the same instrument in 1984/1985 (N= 1,496) and in 1996 (N= 607) at geographically diverse locations. Several changes in values were documented across the 57-year span. Both sexes increased the importance they attach to physical attractiveness in a mate. Both sexes, but especially men, increased the importance they attach to mates with good financial prospects. Domestic skills in a partner plummeted in importance for men. Mutual attraction and love climbed in importance for both sexes. The sexes converged in the ordering of the importance of different mate qualities, showing maximum similarity in 1996. Discussion speculates about causes of the cultural evolution of values."
Male preferences have shifted more than female preferences, contrary to sociological theories where one would expect women's lib to have made a bigger difference
Sir Tim Hunt 'sorry' over 'trouble with girls' comments - ""I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field. I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. "I'm really, really sorry I caused any offence, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually." On his remarks about women crying, he said: "It's terribly important that you can criticise people's ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth. "Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.""
How can Science pursue Truth if you fire scientists every time they say something controversial?
Sweden school choice: The country’s disastrous experiment with Milton Friedman and vouchers. - "It’s the darker side of competition that Milton Friedman and his free-market disciples tend to downplay: If parents value high test scores, you can compete for voucher dollars by hiring better teachers and providing a better education—or by going easy in grading national tests. Competition was also meant to discipline government schools by forcing them to up their game to maintain their enrollments, but it may have instead led to a race to the bottom as they too started grading generously to keep their students."
Islamic 'radicals' at the heart of Whitehall - Telegraph - "Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in Cabinet, handed official posts to people linked to Islamist groups, including a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “megamosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect. He sits – alongside other radicals or former radicals and their allies – on a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. Some members of the group are using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some are also pressing to lift bans on foreign hate preachers from entering Britain, including Zakir Naik, who has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”... The working group was set up after Lady Warsi claimed in 2011 that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner-table test” and was “widespread and rising”. According to police figures at the time, anti-Muslim crime had been falling"
‘Muslim didn’t not (sic) eat food from church brand’: A tale of Chickens from Texas - "The little-known origins of fast food outlet Texas Chicken prompted one customer here to complain over its “Church’s” brand dipping sauce that he claimed was not suitable for Muslim consumption. In a question directed to the fried chicken chain on Facebook, the man attached a photograph of dipping sauces with the Texas Chicken label removed to show the original foil underneath bearing the word “Church’s”. “Dear TCM ... Please do explain your dipping sauce brand at Malaysia franchises ... Most of ur customer is a Muslim ... AND Muslim didn’t not eat food from church brands — feeling worried,” the man wrote. It is unclear what the man meant by “church brands”, but he was likely claiming that Muslims may not eat food from churches. There is no such prohibition in Islam. Texas Chicken Malaysia responded to explain that “Church’s Chicken” was the chain’s name in the US, and not related to Christianity."
Comments: "Charlotte Church the singer for example. Now they will not listen to her. Idiot."
"They will now avoid cross-roads because of the word 'cross'. what will they put on a ballot paper, not a cross. How about the plus sign. The list is endless. Where will all this idiocy stop?"
"The funny part of this from 2004-2009, Church's Chicken was owned by an Islamic VC firm called Crescent Capital Investments. They required their franchises to discontinue selling any pork-based products, which led to at least one lawsuit that I know od, from someone whose franchise failed at the Baltimore airport"
Africa - Tunisia's Amina quits ‘Islamophobic’ Femen - "Amina Sboui, the Tunisian activist who sparked controversy for posting topless pictures of herself on Facebook, said Tuesday she had left the radical feminist group Femen, accusing it of Islamophobia and a lack of financial transparency."
How Sexually Dimorphic Are Human Mate Preferences? - "Sex differences are large in multivariate terms, yielding an overall D = 2.41, corresponding to overlap between the sexes of just 22.8%. Moreover, knowledge of mate preferences alone affords correct classification of sex with 92.2% accuracy. Finally, pattern-wise sex differences are negatively correlated with gender equality across cultures but are nonetheless cross-culturally
Impressive investigative journalism by the Daily Mail!
How (Not) To Interpret and Report Main Effects and Interactions in Multiple Regression: Why Crawford and Pilanski Did Not Actually Replicate Lindner and Nosek (2009)
The title alone is awesome
Sex history calculator: Is your number of sexual partners low, average, or high?
If Your Car Will Be Idling for More Than 10 Seconds, Just Turn it Off
Stockholm riots leave Sweden's dreams of perfect society up in smoke - Telegraph - ""We have tried harder than any other European country to integrate, spending billions on a welfare system that is designed to help jobless immigrants and guarantee them a good quality of life," said Marc Abramsson, leader of the National Democrats Party. "Yet we have areas where there are ethnic groups that just don't identify with Swedish society. They see the police and even the fire brigade as part of the state, and they attack them. We have tried everything, anything, to improve things, but it hasn't worked. It's not about racism, it's just that multi-culturalism doesn't recognise how humans actually function." Aje Carlbom, a Swedish academic and author of a critical study into Swedish immigration policy, added that despite the increasing appeal of Far Right parties, mainstream Swedish politicians were still reluctant to even ask the kind of questions that the likes of Mr Abramsson was already offering answers to. "Anyone who wants to regulate immigration is immediately classified as a nationalist, which also implies a racist as well," he said. "It is still almost impossible to debate this question.""
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression - "Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future --- and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent."
Double standard allows soccer star Hope Solo to stay in the game - "Yet another renowned athlete has been hit with charges of domestic violence — allegedly pummeling two relatives, leaving a 17-year-old boy bleeding from a cut on his ear and a woman’s cheekbone swollen and purple. But while beleaguered officials of the NFL have made belated attempts to stop the violence — exiling players accused or convicted of using their hands for reasons unrelated to a playing field — this sports figure continues to smack a ball around... why is Solo, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, still allowed to play ball? Simple. She’s a woman. The double standard is alive and well.
A Half Century of Mate Preferences; The Cultural Evolution of Values - "The qualities people believe are important in selecting a marriage partner afford one domain for assessing human values. We examined the cultural evolution of these values over more than half a century. Building on existing data on mate preferences collected in 1939 (N= 628), 1956 (N= 120), 1967 (N= 566), and 1977 (N= 316), we collected data using the same instrument in 1984/1985 (N= 1,496) and in 1996 (N= 607) at geographically diverse locations. Several changes in values were documented across the 57-year span. Both sexes increased the importance they attach to physical attractiveness in a mate. Both sexes, but especially men, increased the importance they attach to mates with good financial prospects. Domestic skills in a partner plummeted in importance for men. Mutual attraction and love climbed in importance for both sexes. The sexes converged in the ordering of the importance of different mate qualities, showing maximum similarity in 1996. Discussion speculates about causes of the cultural evolution of values."
Male preferences have shifted more than female preferences, contrary to sociological theories where one would expect women's lib to have made a bigger difference
Sir Tim Hunt 'sorry' over 'trouble with girls' comments - ""I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field. I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult. "I'm really, really sorry I caused any offence, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually." On his remarks about women crying, he said: "It's terribly important that you can criticise people's ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth. "Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.""
How can Science pursue Truth if you fire scientists every time they say something controversial?
Sweden school choice: The country’s disastrous experiment with Milton Friedman and vouchers. - "It’s the darker side of competition that Milton Friedman and his free-market disciples tend to downplay: If parents value high test scores, you can compete for voucher dollars by hiring better teachers and providing a better education—or by going easy in grading national tests. Competition was also meant to discipline government schools by forcing them to up their game to maintain their enrollments, but it may have instead led to a race to the bottom as they too started grading generously to keep their students."
Islamic 'radicals' at the heart of Whitehall - Telegraph - "Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in Cabinet, handed official posts to people linked to Islamist groups, including a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “megamosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect. He sits – alongside other radicals or former radicals and their allies – on a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. Some members of the group are using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some are also pressing to lift bans on foreign hate preachers from entering Britain, including Zakir Naik, who has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”... The working group was set up after Lady Warsi claimed in 2011 that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner-table test” and was “widespread and rising”. According to police figures at the time, anti-Muslim crime had been falling"
‘Muslim didn’t not (sic) eat food from church brand’: A tale of Chickens from Texas - "The little-known origins of fast food outlet Texas Chicken prompted one customer here to complain over its “Church’s” brand dipping sauce that he claimed was not suitable for Muslim consumption. In a question directed to the fried chicken chain on Facebook, the man attached a photograph of dipping sauces with the Texas Chicken label removed to show the original foil underneath bearing the word “Church’s”. “Dear TCM ... Please do explain your dipping sauce brand at Malaysia franchises ... Most of ur customer is a Muslim ... AND Muslim didn’t not eat food from church brands — feeling worried,” the man wrote. It is unclear what the man meant by “church brands”, but he was likely claiming that Muslims may not eat food from churches. There is no such prohibition in Islam. Texas Chicken Malaysia responded to explain that “Church’s Chicken” was the chain’s name in the US, and not related to Christianity."
Comments: "Charlotte Church the singer for example. Now they will not listen to her. Idiot."
"They will now avoid cross-roads because of the word 'cross'. what will they put on a ballot paper, not a cross. How about the plus sign. The list is endless. Where will all this idiocy stop?"
"The funny part of this from 2004-2009, Church's Chicken was owned by an Islamic VC firm called Crescent Capital Investments. They required their franchises to discontinue selling any pork-based products, which led to at least one lawsuit that I know od, from someone whose franchise failed at the Baltimore airport"
Africa - Tunisia's Amina quits ‘Islamophobic’ Femen - "Amina Sboui, the Tunisian activist who sparked controversy for posting topless pictures of herself on Facebook, said Tuesday she had left the radical feminist group Femen, accusing it of Islamophobia and a lack of financial transparency."
How Sexually Dimorphic Are Human Mate Preferences? - "Sex differences are large in multivariate terms, yielding an overall D = 2.41, corresponding to overlap between the sexes of just 22.8%. Moreover, knowledge of mate preferences alone affords correct classification of sex with 92.2% accuracy. Finally, pattern-wise sex differences are negatively correlated with gender equality across cultures but are nonetheless cross-culturally
Post ID: 4590744877142681721
Spying on Allies
Best of Today: It's not the Cold War any more:
Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer:
"What do they say, the second oldest profession... If you read about America's entry into World War I and World War II, the British were collecting intelligence against us and before those of those wars and using it to press our public to support entry into the two great wars.
I'm not saying that with any animosity, that's what nation states do, but I think in this day and age we probably shouldn't be so shocked. Everybody listens to everybody now...
[The French will mind] There'll be a big brouhaha about it... If you just sit back and look at them, we went, what, from 14 NATO members to 28. I'm very sure we want to keep an eye on what the Bulgarians and the East Europeans are doing viz-a-viz the Russians. It's just a very different world and a very different set of requirements...
[It coming via Wikileaks isn't a particularly good thing,] I suspect the French probably knew we were listening and now they've got to go through the act and there'll be some cold period between us and them over it."
Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer:
"What do they say, the second oldest profession... If you read about America's entry into World War I and World War II, the British were collecting intelligence against us and before those of those wars and using it to press our public to support entry into the two great wars.
I'm not saying that with any animosity, that's what nation states do, but I think in this day and age we probably shouldn't be so shocked. Everybody listens to everybody now...
[The French will mind] There'll be a big brouhaha about it... If you just sit back and look at them, we went, what, from 14 NATO members to 28. I'm very sure we want to keep an eye on what the Bulgarians and the East Europeans are doing viz-a-viz the Russians. It's just a very different world and a very different set of requirements...
[It coming via Wikileaks isn't a particularly good thing,] I suspect the French probably knew we were listening and now they've got to go through the act and there'll be some cold period between us and them over it."
Post ID: 7068373833046648993
Technology Entrepreneurs and Making the World A Better Place
Best of Today: Friday's Business with Simon Jack (5/6/2015):
Taavet Hinrikus (founder of TransferWise): We're just getting started building a global sustainable business and our only goal is to make sure we can help as many people as possible move their money.
Simon Jack: That's what all technology entrepreneurs say. They're just trying to make the world a better place. You must be sort of aware that you'll accumulate vast wealth in the process.
Taavet Hinrikus: It's something that we don't really think about. You know.
Simon Jack: I don't believe that, I just don't believe it...
Taavet Hinrikus: What gets me and the team excited right now is making sure we can help our customers
Taavet Hinrikus (founder of TransferWise): We're just getting started building a global sustainable business and our only goal is to make sure we can help as many people as possible move their money.
Simon Jack: That's what all technology entrepreneurs say. They're just trying to make the world a better place. You must be sort of aware that you'll accumulate vast wealth in the process.
Taavet Hinrikus: It's something that we don't really think about. You know.
Simon Jack: I don't believe that, I just don't believe it...
Taavet Hinrikus: What gets me and the team excited right now is making sure we can help our customers
Post ID: 6275688631013739840
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Links - 28th June 2015
Peter Singer, Princeton bioethics professor, faces calls for resignation over infanticide support - "Mr. Singer, who teaches bioethics at the private Ivy League university, has for years promoted public policy that would legalize the killing of severely disabled infants, the petition states... Dozens of activists with the national disability rights group Not Dead Yet descended on Princeton last week to protest Mr. Singer’s employment with the university. Activists in wheelchairs blocked traffic and chanted “Hey hey! Ho ho! Singer’s got to go!” Campus Reform reported. Their petition, which has over 800 signatures, demands that Mr. Singer resign and asks that Princeton officials disavow his comments. It also demands that Gov. Chris Christie “publicly denounce the lethal and discriminatory public health care policy advocated by Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer.” “Rather than challenging Singer’s advocacy as a form of hate speech, Princeton University has provided Singer with a prominent platform and increased access to US media and policymakers for 16 years, establishing itself as the home for the worst of overt — and deadly — bigotry against disabled people of all ages,” the petition states."
How come the decades-long campaign to get Peter Singer isn't working? Maybe philosophy departments have more mettle than most organisations. Or disability activists don't have as much clout as feminists, "anti-racists" etc
Pixar, 1995: What if toys had feelings Pixar,... - "Pixar, 2007:What if rats had feelings
Pixar, 2008:What if robots had feelings
Pixar, 2009:What if dogs had feelings
Pixar, 2012:What if Scotland had feelings
Pixar, 2015:WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS "
LOOK Is this the most inappropriate Father's Day ad ever? - "The company drew some flak for its distasteful Father’s Day ad found in a Sri Lankan newspaper which promotes a 15% discount on bras on 21 June – Father’s Day – with the tagline “For the ladies…who pamper their dads..!”"
Travellers Inn in Mumbai, India | Hostel - "No rooms will be alloted to Nigerians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis..If the girl or boy is an Indian and if the partner is of any country no room will be alloted as the room are strictly give to only foreigners..vice e versa"
IKEA puts the “Slim” in Muslim, and not everyone’s happy about it
Moral of the story: don't feature Muslims in your ads, or they'll complain
The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law - "Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do? Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law... Student organizations representing women’s interests now routinely advise students that they should not feel pressured to attend or participate in class sessions that focus on the law of sexual violence, and which might therefore be traumatic. These organizations also ask criminal-law teachers to warn their classes that the rape-law unit might “trigger” traumatic memories. Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well. One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word “violate” in class—as in “Does this conduct violate the law?”—because the word was triggering. Some students have even suggested that rape law should not be taught because of its potential to cause distress... asking students to challenge each other in discussions of rape law has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject... In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, feminist reformers developed the idea that the disrespectful treatment of rape complainants in the criminal process—including cross-examinations meant to show that complainants were promiscuous—made the courtroom the scene of a “second rape”... Something similar to the “second rape” concept now appears to be influencing the way we think about the classroom... At Harvard, twenty-eight law professors, myself included, have publicly objected to a new sexual-harassment policy on the grounds that, in an effort to protect victims, the university now provides an unfair process for the accused. This unfairness hurts the cause of taking sexual violence and its redress seriously."
Another great advance brought to you by feminism
20 Stupid Feminist Questions For Men Answered - ""Have you ever expressed a strong opinion and been called a meninazi?
No because that’s not a word that has entered popular culture. We’re just called Nazis, or misogynists.
have you ever had trouble breaking into your chosen field because it's a 'girl's club?'
Abso-freaking-lutely. In the media and journalism field, it’s sure as hell not a meritocracy. Ladies, if you’re gorgeous, you don’t need to be all that talented to get a job in reporting. You just have to be able to read off the teleprompter, look great in a tight dress, and you’re booked. For us chubby white dudes, no one wants to see us on TV. We’ve got to be smarter, more educated, have all of our hair, and be willing to claw our way to the top.
Has your body been compared to an unlocked car, wallet or other object that can be carelessly left unattended?
Are you serious? Has my body ever been compared to a wallet? That’s all we are. A wallet. Maybe I’m missing something here because I can’t imagine that anyone would seriously wonder whether men are ever compared to open wallets."
Do you struggle to identify with playable male characters because they are hyper-sexualised objects of fantasy?
Well, I don’t identify with fantasy characters that much because I’m not 12 years old. I do play video games, and I do enjoy RPG’s. I’ll try not to be condescending to the intelligence of someone who seriously compares themselves to Hobbits, Twileks, Elves, He-Men and mutants. Still, let me just say that if you think that men don’t have to deal with peer pressure to be huge, hulking Wolverines, then please do spend some time playing male characters in these games. I promise you that we dudes (when we’re 12) do struggle to identify with being a monstrous Orc barbarian."
Man who boycotts Mormons says good-bye to beloved accountant - LarkNews.com - A Good Source for Christian News
Conscience and cake | UK Human Rights Blog - "the judge’s findings in relation to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation do not make much sense. One key misstep appears to be that she conflates support for same-sex marriage with a homosexual orientation, when they are clearly different things. Many people who are not gay (including the Prime Minister) support same-sex marriage. Some people who are gay (including Rupert Everett and Dolce and Gabbana) oppose same-sex marriage... As it stands, this judgment leaves little or no room for freedom of conscience in business. The analysis used by the judge would mean a Muslim baker would have to bake a cake with a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed on it and the slogan ‘Je Suis Charlie’. An atheist printer would have to print leaflets proclaiming ‘the fool says in his heart “There is no God”’. A gay graphic designer would have to accept a contract to design a flyer saying ‘why sodomy is a sin’. None of those situations seem right."
Ashers 'gay cake' decision is a threat to our freedom of conscience - "So, there we have it. The State demands that all the bakers in the land must be in favour of same-sex marriage... When will this warped totalitarian fairy tale end? I'll tell you what this verdict is not about. It's not about tolerance, or liberalism, or freedom, or casting out the evils of discrimination. It's about silencing and punishing those who refuse to sign up to a clearly-flawed 'equality' agenda. This is an agenda that cannot distinguish between actual discrimination - which is always wrong, and rightly punishable by law - and the vital exercise of freedom of conscience, the fundamental human right not to be forced to express approval for a particular political position... What makes the whole thing even more of a sorry farce is that the State itself, in the form of the Stormont Assembly, itself rejects marriage equality. Bake a cake about that!... I'm standing here - although it's uncomfortable, and leaves me open to taunts, jibes and incredulity from supposedly liberal people I consider to be my friends - because I believe, above all else, in freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Quite frankly, without those vital principles, we're screwed. And that means all of us - straight, gay, religious, whatever... Jonathan Rauch, the gay American activist and author, cautions strongly against the impulse to silence views we don't like. "The quest to stamp out discrimination or bigotry or racism wherever it appears is a quest to force all opinion into a single template," he warns."
The Gay Cake ruling: an example of the Gay Agenda
Transgender ‘female’ MMA fighter gives female opponent concussion, broken eye socket - "UFC announcer Joe Rogan made his opinion unambiguously and graphically clear, saying on his podcast that a transgendered man would "have all the bone structure that comes with” being a man. “You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints"... In an interview with "Inside MMA," Fallon said that "I don’t believe that a transgender fighter should have to disclose her personal medical history to other female fighters before they fight. It’s simply for the reason the medical community and the scientific community have come to the consensus that post-operative transsexual fighters who have been on hormone-replacement therapy and testosterone suppression, when they’re going from male to female, haven’t been found to have any physiological advantages over other women.”"
The fight is interesting, set off infighting within the LGBT/SJW movement. Transactivists are calling it a victory while feminists are unsure of what to think. Lesbians up in arms because Trans fighter denounced lesbians who don't do transwoman.
Is it transphobic to not let transwomen compete in women's sports?
The one woman in tech on the Ellen Pao jury explains why she would have sided with Kleiner - "Pao's friendly demeanor crumbled somewhat under cross examination and her performance fell short, Malone said in an interview, echoing the comments of two other jurors interviewed by Reuters who were part of deliberations... Malone said Pao's peers who earned black marks worked from year to year to eliminate their flaws, but Pao seemed to show less effort. She did not see signs that Pao tried harder to work collaboratively, whereas another Kleiner partner who was given feedback on the need to get more operating experience went out to get it."
Parenthood and life satisfaction: Why don’t children make people happy? - "parenthood by itself has a substantial and enduring positive effect on life satisfaction. These positive effects, however, are suppressed by the financial and time costs of children. Whereas the positive effects of parenthood on fathers’ levels of life satisfaction are primarily overshadowed by the financial cost of children, the positive effects for women are offset by both financial and time costs. The results indicate
that previous findings of no positive association between children and life satisfaction are due to interrelated costs that interfere with well-being"
Children and Life Satisfaction - "In line with conventional wisdom, we find that female life satisfaction increases more than male life satisfaction in the presence of children. The difference is small for individuals having one or two children but becomes quite sizeable for individuals with three and four or more children. For the case of three children, for instance, the size of the effect is 0.246 for women and 0.138 for men. These results coincide with the findings of Kohler et al. (2005), who show that female happiness responds more than male happiness to the presence of children"
This is evidence that women like children more than men do
How Children Affect Parents’ Life Satisfaction: It’s Complicated - "when financial and time costs are held constant, parents of children under age two seem to derive the most satisfaction from parenting, and experience a decline in satisfaction as their first (or only) child grows up. Pollmann-Schult says that “might be due to a decrease in the emotional benefits of parenthood.”"
How come the decades-long campaign to get Peter Singer isn't working? Maybe philosophy departments have more mettle than most organisations. Or disability activists don't have as much clout as feminists, "anti-racists" etc
Pixar, 1995: What if toys had feelings Pixar,... - "Pixar, 2007:What if rats had feelings
Pixar, 2008:What if robots had feelings
Pixar, 2009:What if dogs had feelings
Pixar, 2012:What if Scotland had feelings
Pixar, 2015:WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS "
LOOK Is this the most inappropriate Father's Day ad ever? - "The company drew some flak for its distasteful Father’s Day ad found in a Sri Lankan newspaper which promotes a 15% discount on bras on 21 June – Father’s Day – with the tagline “For the ladies…who pamper their dads..!”"
Travellers Inn in Mumbai, India | Hostel - "No rooms will be alloted to Nigerians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis..If the girl or boy is an Indian and if the partner is of any country no room will be alloted as the room are strictly give to only foreigners..vice e versa"
IKEA puts the “Slim” in Muslim, and not everyone’s happy about it
Moral of the story: don't feature Muslims in your ads, or they'll complain
The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law - "Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do? Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law... Student organizations representing women’s interests now routinely advise students that they should not feel pressured to attend or participate in class sessions that focus on the law of sexual violence, and which might therefore be traumatic. These organizations also ask criminal-law teachers to warn their classes that the rape-law unit might “trigger” traumatic memories. Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well. One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word “violate” in class—as in “Does this conduct violate the law?”—because the word was triggering. Some students have even suggested that rape law should not be taught because of its potential to cause distress... asking students to challenge each other in discussions of rape law has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject... In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, feminist reformers developed the idea that the disrespectful treatment of rape complainants in the criminal process—including cross-examinations meant to show that complainants were promiscuous—made the courtroom the scene of a “second rape”... Something similar to the “second rape” concept now appears to be influencing the way we think about the classroom... At Harvard, twenty-eight law professors, myself included, have publicly objected to a new sexual-harassment policy on the grounds that, in an effort to protect victims, the university now provides an unfair process for the accused. This unfairness hurts the cause of taking sexual violence and its redress seriously."
Another great advance brought to you by feminism
20 Stupid Feminist Questions For Men Answered - ""Have you ever expressed a strong opinion and been called a meninazi?
No because that’s not a word that has entered popular culture. We’re just called Nazis, or misogynists.
have you ever had trouble breaking into your chosen field because it's a 'girl's club?'
Abso-freaking-lutely. In the media and journalism field, it’s sure as hell not a meritocracy. Ladies, if you’re gorgeous, you don’t need to be all that talented to get a job in reporting. You just have to be able to read off the teleprompter, look great in a tight dress, and you’re booked. For us chubby white dudes, no one wants to see us on TV. We’ve got to be smarter, more educated, have all of our hair, and be willing to claw our way to the top.
Has your body been compared to an unlocked car, wallet or other object that can be carelessly left unattended?
Are you serious? Has my body ever been compared to a wallet? That’s all we are. A wallet. Maybe I’m missing something here because I can’t imagine that anyone would seriously wonder whether men are ever compared to open wallets."
Do you struggle to identify with playable male characters because they are hyper-sexualised objects of fantasy?
Well, I don’t identify with fantasy characters that much because I’m not 12 years old. I do play video games, and I do enjoy RPG’s. I’ll try not to be condescending to the intelligence of someone who seriously compares themselves to Hobbits, Twileks, Elves, He-Men and mutants. Still, let me just say that if you think that men don’t have to deal with peer pressure to be huge, hulking Wolverines, then please do spend some time playing male characters in these games. I promise you that we dudes (when we’re 12) do struggle to identify with being a monstrous Orc barbarian."
Man who boycotts Mormons says good-bye to beloved accountant - LarkNews.com - A Good Source for Christian News
Conscience and cake | UK Human Rights Blog - "the judge’s findings in relation to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation do not make much sense. One key misstep appears to be that she conflates support for same-sex marriage with a homosexual orientation, when they are clearly different things. Many people who are not gay (including the Prime Minister) support same-sex marriage. Some people who are gay (including Rupert Everett and Dolce and Gabbana) oppose same-sex marriage... As it stands, this judgment leaves little or no room for freedom of conscience in business. The analysis used by the judge would mean a Muslim baker would have to bake a cake with a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed on it and the slogan ‘Je Suis Charlie’. An atheist printer would have to print leaflets proclaiming ‘the fool says in his heart “There is no God”’. A gay graphic designer would have to accept a contract to design a flyer saying ‘why sodomy is a sin’. None of those situations seem right."
Ashers 'gay cake' decision is a threat to our freedom of conscience - "So, there we have it. The State demands that all the bakers in the land must be in favour of same-sex marriage... When will this warped totalitarian fairy tale end? I'll tell you what this verdict is not about. It's not about tolerance, or liberalism, or freedom, or casting out the evils of discrimination. It's about silencing and punishing those who refuse to sign up to a clearly-flawed 'equality' agenda. This is an agenda that cannot distinguish between actual discrimination - which is always wrong, and rightly punishable by law - and the vital exercise of freedom of conscience, the fundamental human right not to be forced to express approval for a particular political position... What makes the whole thing even more of a sorry farce is that the State itself, in the form of the Stormont Assembly, itself rejects marriage equality. Bake a cake about that!... I'm standing here - although it's uncomfortable, and leaves me open to taunts, jibes and incredulity from supposedly liberal people I consider to be my friends - because I believe, above all else, in freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Quite frankly, without those vital principles, we're screwed. And that means all of us - straight, gay, religious, whatever... Jonathan Rauch, the gay American activist and author, cautions strongly against the impulse to silence views we don't like. "The quest to stamp out discrimination or bigotry or racism wherever it appears is a quest to force all opinion into a single template," he warns."
The Gay Cake ruling: an example of the Gay Agenda
Transgender ‘female’ MMA fighter gives female opponent concussion, broken eye socket - "UFC announcer Joe Rogan made his opinion unambiguously and graphically clear, saying on his podcast that a transgendered man would "have all the bone structure that comes with” being a man. “You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints"... In an interview with "Inside MMA," Fallon said that "I don’t believe that a transgender fighter should have to disclose her personal medical history to other female fighters before they fight. It’s simply for the reason the medical community and the scientific community have come to the consensus that post-operative transsexual fighters who have been on hormone-replacement therapy and testosterone suppression, when they’re going from male to female, haven’t been found to have any physiological advantages over other women.”"
The fight is interesting, set off infighting within the LGBT/SJW movement. Transactivists are calling it a victory while feminists are unsure of what to think. Lesbians up in arms because Trans fighter denounced lesbians who don't do transwoman.
Is it transphobic to not let transwomen compete in women's sports?
The one woman in tech on the Ellen Pao jury explains why she would have sided with Kleiner - "Pao's friendly demeanor crumbled somewhat under cross examination and her performance fell short, Malone said in an interview, echoing the comments of two other jurors interviewed by Reuters who were part of deliberations... Malone said Pao's peers who earned black marks worked from year to year to eliminate their flaws, but Pao seemed to show less effort. She did not see signs that Pao tried harder to work collaboratively, whereas another Kleiner partner who was given feedback on the need to get more operating experience went out to get it."
Parenthood and life satisfaction: Why don’t children make people happy? - "parenthood by itself has a substantial and enduring positive effect on life satisfaction. These positive effects, however, are suppressed by the financial and time costs of children. Whereas the positive effects of parenthood on fathers’ levels of life satisfaction are primarily overshadowed by the financial cost of children, the positive effects for women are offset by both financial and time costs. The results indicate
that previous findings of no positive association between children and life satisfaction are due to interrelated costs that interfere with well-being"
Children and Life Satisfaction - "In line with conventional wisdom, we find that female life satisfaction increases more than male life satisfaction in the presence of children. The difference is small for individuals having one or two children but becomes quite sizeable for individuals with three and four or more children. For the case of three children, for instance, the size of the effect is 0.246 for women and 0.138 for men. These results coincide with the findings of Kohler et al. (2005), who show that female happiness responds more than male happiness to the presence of children"
This is evidence that women like children more than men do
How Children Affect Parents’ Life Satisfaction: It’s Complicated - "when financial and time costs are held constant, parents of children under age two seem to derive the most satisfaction from parenting, and experience a decline in satisfaction as their first (or only) child grows up. Pollmann-Schult says that “might be due to a decrease in the emotional benefits of parenthood.”"
Post ID: 378689205759595521
On Drones and Empathy
BBC Radio Ulster - Everyday Ethics, Alcoholism, Drone Morals, WB Yeats:
Interview with Chris Woods, author of Sudden Justice. America's Secret Drone Wars, on Drones and Empathy
"When I started writing the book... I bought in to the idea of the Playstation Mentality that'd been around for quite a while, the idea of these drone operators thousands of miles away being cold and distant from the battlefield.
What I actually found really surprised me. The men and women I spoke with for the book - and I did get to speak to a lot of former and present drone operators, were actually quite emotionally connected to the battlefield.
And that's because they watch their victims for some time before they kill them. They'll monitor them for hours, days, sometimes even weeks, and build up very intimate patterns of understanding of the people that they're observing, and then sometimes will kill them...
One of the generals I spoke to likened drones to an aerial sniper rifle and I think that's a good way of putting it. So we have this contradiction where the pilots are as far away from the battlefield as they can possibly be and yet in terms of emotional empathy with their victims, they're probably the the closest on the battlefield. They also stay behind afterwards. Usually in war when people are killed, the action moves on, the jet fighter moves on, the patrol moves on or whatever. The drone operators stay and they watch for a long time. Sometimes they'll watch people die, they'll watch the life bleed out them in infra-red, and a few operators spoke to me about this as quite a traumatic experience...
That's one of the very challenging things. One describes his role as being the ultimate voyeur. He described to me watching an Iraqi wedding once, where there was a target there they would later go on to kill. And he was watching from above. He'd never left the United States at that point in his life, and yet here he was watching a wedding in Iraq and getting caught up. He was watching from a mile above... The use of armed drones is full of these contradictions...
Some of the operators I've spoken to are morally damaged but I think no more or no less I would say than many of the soldiers, sailors and airmen that I've spoken to caught up in conflict.
I think for the drone operators it brings its own bundle of problems and so for example, the fact that they do a shift at work and then they go home to their families. This is unique in war. We've never had part time warriors like this before.
The US Air Force thought this was a good thing initially. What they found and are continuing to find is that when operators go home at night they can't unburden, they can't share in the same way that they could if they were based on the battlefield or nearby.
And so operators keeping things very tightly bound up in themselves and that is well damaging but many of the other operators I spoke to are very proud of their work, very comfortable with what they've done. And that I suppose is what you'd expect with the warrior class."
Interview with Chris Woods, author of Sudden Justice. America's Secret Drone Wars, on Drones and Empathy
"When I started writing the book... I bought in to the idea of the Playstation Mentality that'd been around for quite a while, the idea of these drone operators thousands of miles away being cold and distant from the battlefield.
What I actually found really surprised me. The men and women I spoke with for the book - and I did get to speak to a lot of former and present drone operators, were actually quite emotionally connected to the battlefield.
And that's because they watch their victims for some time before they kill them. They'll monitor them for hours, days, sometimes even weeks, and build up very intimate patterns of understanding of the people that they're observing, and then sometimes will kill them...
One of the generals I spoke to likened drones to an aerial sniper rifle and I think that's a good way of putting it. So we have this contradiction where the pilots are as far away from the battlefield as they can possibly be and yet in terms of emotional empathy with their victims, they're probably the the closest on the battlefield. They also stay behind afterwards. Usually in war when people are killed, the action moves on, the jet fighter moves on, the patrol moves on or whatever. The drone operators stay and they watch for a long time. Sometimes they'll watch people die, they'll watch the life bleed out them in infra-red, and a few operators spoke to me about this as quite a traumatic experience...
That's one of the very challenging things. One describes his role as being the ultimate voyeur. He described to me watching an Iraqi wedding once, where there was a target there they would later go on to kill. And he was watching from above. He'd never left the United States at that point in his life, and yet here he was watching a wedding in Iraq and getting caught up. He was watching from a mile above... The use of armed drones is full of these contradictions...
Some of the operators I've spoken to are morally damaged but I think no more or no less I would say than many of the soldiers, sailors and airmen that I've spoken to caught up in conflict.
I think for the drone operators it brings its own bundle of problems and so for example, the fact that they do a shift at work and then they go home to their families. This is unique in war. We've never had part time warriors like this before.
The US Air Force thought this was a good thing initially. What they found and are continuing to find is that when operators go home at night they can't unburden, they can't share in the same way that they could if they were based on the battlefield or nearby.
And so operators keeping things very tightly bound up in themselves and that is well damaging but many of the other operators I spoke to are very proud of their work, very comfortable with what they've done. And that I suppose is what you'd expect with the warrior class."
Post ID: 4164571512287742405
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Mill and Utilitarianism
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Utilitarianism:
"Mill was really raised as a utilitarian baby, to be the perfect utilitarian sage.
And he had a breakdown precisely along the fault lines that Brad was describing earlier, because he was raised to pursue the happiness of everyone, but what did that mean for his own happiness?
And in healing from that breakdown as you say, reading the Romantics and Idealists, he, what he came to realise was missing in Bentham was a distinction between what he came to call the higher and lower pleasures, and the idea was that push-pin is not as good as poetry, which is something that he, Bentham had said...
What Mill said was, well, no. Because we have to think of Utility in terms of our capacity to develop as Human Beings. That we can have these Higher Pleasures of Art and Science and Beauty and Friendship and so on.
And so the Higher Pleasures can only be judged by the person who's actually experienced them... "The permanent interests of man as a progressive being". it was really drawing on these Romantic and Idealist thinkers that gave him the grounds for 'Higher'."
"Mill was really raised as a utilitarian baby, to be the perfect utilitarian sage.
And he had a breakdown precisely along the fault lines that Brad was describing earlier, because he was raised to pursue the happiness of everyone, but what did that mean for his own happiness?
And in healing from that breakdown as you say, reading the Romantics and Idealists, he, what he came to realise was missing in Bentham was a distinction between what he came to call the higher and lower pleasures, and the idea was that push-pin is not as good as poetry, which is something that he, Bentham had said...
What Mill said was, well, no. Because we have to think of Utility in terms of our capacity to develop as Human Beings. That we can have these Higher Pleasures of Art and Science and Beauty and Friendship and so on.
And so the Higher Pleasures can only be judged by the person who's actually experienced them... "The permanent interests of man as a progressive being". it was really drawing on these Romantic and Idealist thinkers that gave him the grounds for 'Higher'."
Post ID: 4563707037962023578
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Women and Sponsors at Work
Sponsor Effect: UK
"Sponsors, unlike mentors, put their reputation on the line for their sponsees. They weren’t just counseling in private; they were advocating in public. Like Jenkins’ sponsor, they provided stretch opportunities and high-visibility assignments, so that their peers might see their chosen talent in action. And they didn’t just connect a sponsee to the inner circle, but ensured that, once singled out for scrutiny, she had the support she needed to outshine everybody else...
The UK’s generous flexible work/maternity leave policies are a double-edged sword, notes Kate Grussing, managing director of Sapphire Partners, a UKbased executive search firm that focuses on senior women. By law, companies in the UK must provide six months of ordinary maternity leave and six months of additional maternity leave; many also offer flex-work schemes and, according to Grussing, many returning mothers feel strong peer pressure to work four days a week. Yet in fast-moving industries and challenging economic times, being out of the loop for an extended period of time carries a huge cost...
59 percent of our senior- and executive-level female respondents say that men make better sponsors...
Our female respondents are searching for a professional woman, that is, who has it all, does it all, and can show them how to be superwomen as well. That’s a high bar for a sponsor. According to management expert Elisabeth Kelan and sociologist Alice Mah, “female role models are caught, like women in management in general, in the double bind of combining being an ideal manager, which means being masculine, with being an ideal woman, which means being feminine”...
For at least the beginning stages, life does seem to reward best those who put forth the most. Those who can sit still and pay attention, who study for exams and go the extra mile on papers—these are the students who get the top grades and garner prizes and awards. And nowadays, the star students are mostly female. Study after study shows that girls outperform boys at school. They get better grades. They score better on standardized tests. They are disproportionately represented in universities.
During the early years of most women’s careers, the pattern continues. “You can come into the organization at the very bottom rung and go up two or three rungs absolutely based on merit,” says Bank of Scotland’s Audrey Connolly.
Things change, however, in middle management. “At that point, it’s not just about doing a good job,” Connolly continues. “Doing well begins to include proactively forming good working relationships with key professionals inside and outside your organization. What got you where you are won’t get you where you want to go, and women get stuck because they don’t know that critical fact. They expect that merit thing to keep working and don’t know how to get their head into a different place.” Or as Carnegie Mellon economics professor Linda Babcock puts it, they “expect life to be fair and they often don’t realize that it’s up to them to make sure that it is”...
Ironically, the very gender difference that handicaps women most in the sponsorship game holds the greatest potential to vault them ahead: women tend to be much better than men at relationships. They have more friends and maintain deeper ties to these friends than men do. So why are guys good at professional relationships and women aren’t?
Research in the field suggests that men and women go about friendship— and perceive its value—very differently. For men, every contact they make, at work or outside of it, is potentially useful, even if that potential is never developed beyond the exchange of business cards. Even in their valuation of relationships, the sexes differ: men say they gain advice from friends, whereas women are more likely to say they get support, according to Geoffrey Grief, a University of Maryland professor and the author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships. Perhaps as an outgrowth of boys being more involved with team sports than girls, men learn that playing well, not talking, forges loyalties. According to Grief, men are not after personal relationships; rather, they focus on playing a game where they barter, broker power and make alliances among contacts they barely know in order to win.
Women, on the other hand, are all about emotional connections...
Men are significantly more likely than women to look to friends at work to help them land a job or close a business deal. In sharp contrast, women turn to colleagues as someone to confide in, laugh with, and lean on, but not use. Hence, when it comes to asking for help, more than half of the women surveyed—upward of 57 percent—feel reluctant...
Getting feedback on executive presence becomes particularly important as women ascend to the marzipan-level, where it’s imperative they’re attuned in their dress, speech, and bearing to the leadership culture. Yet here the silence is deafening: men, according to 28 percent of the women we surveyed, are hesitant to criticize their appearance. Even among sponsored women, 33 percent of them say that their male sponsors hesitate to give feedback on their appearance. Why? Senior men tell us they’re scared to, fearful that a woman will “over-rotate” (take a style suggestion as an insult or burst into tears) or, even more seriously, an offended woman will sue them for sexual harassment. So they look the other way...
One of the senior men we interviewed still recalls how he chickened out when he should have given honest feedback to a woman on his team. “She was a very attractive “bottle blonde,” and the unfortunate thing was, the way she dressed and presented herself reinforced the ‘dumb blonde’ cliché. One client actually told me, ‘It doesn’t help to have this trolley-dolly image.’ But I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about her tight blouses or high heels and how these things undermined her authority and impact. I was fearful of her reaction”...
For a fact, senior men find it far easier to advise junior men. A senior male will tell a male subordinate he needs to polish his shoes, get a decent haircut, buy a better suit, lose a few pounds, or even improve his personal hygiene. “Man on man, we can always make it a joke,” says Steve Richardson, president of Diverse Outcomes and a former senior vice president at American Express. “Not that I’m one of your best friends, mate, but your breath’s a bit off today. Might want to take a mint.” So casually, even unconsciously, do men exchange style pointers that some cannot even fathom why the style component of executive presence is such a conundrum for women. “Joining a firm is like joining a football team,” one male Deloitte manager told us. “You’re issued a uniform and, starting on Day One, you wear it”...
More than half (52 percent) of our female survey respondents (and 47 percent of men) at large companies believe that if female managers were to commit at least one of the following, it would be an EP blunder: their waistlines bulge, their fingernails or hair are unkempt, they wear too much or too little makeup, their skirts are too tight, or their necklines dip dangerously low. Women whose look is sexual or provocative are at particular risk of being struck off the list of those with leadership potential. In the words of Patricia Fili-Krushel, executive vice president at NBCUniversal, they will find themselves in men’s offices “for all the wrong reasons.”
Our respondents are also certain that toeing a conservative line is a far safer strategy than pushing the limits of self-expression. Fifty percent of women (and 41 percent of men) feel that aspiring female execs should observe at least one of the following rules: conservative suit jackets, coiffed hair, well-puttogether accessories, and subtle make-up. In other words, make the mistake of looking too glamorous and you’re seen as a siren; make the mistake of looking too relaxed or casual, and you’re seen as a P.A. or administrative assistant. There are all kinds of ways to get it wrong.
For women of color, figuring out the right look can be especially treacherous. One African-Caribbean female lawyer told us in a focus group that she always dressed in designer suits, despite the office-casual dress code, because when she first started at the firm other employees mistook her for a secretary. She also noted that since she was a black woman, no one would dare approach her with any honest feedback on either her appearance or her performance, for fear of sounding racist...
Some 38 percent of senior men at the level of vice president and above tell us they’re reluctant to have one-on-one meetings with junior women—and 26 percent of junior women say they’re likewise hesitant to initiate such contact. The fact that male-to-male relationships are far less fraught than male-to-female relationships certainly helps explain why men are 25 percent more likely than women to have sponsors...
Survey after survey points to a strong likelihood of an office fling: 60 percent is the average statistic, a figure that has held steady since 2004. According to a recent CareerBuilder.co.uk survey, 43 percent of respondents said they had dated someone above them in the company hierarchy, and 26 percent admitted to dating their boss. Certainly quite a few employees know someone who is sleeping with the boss: Our own research reveals that 45 percent of women and 44 percent of men can “name names”...
At least half (48 percent of men, 52 percent of women) of UK respondents believe that if a senior male at their company so much as socializes one-on-one with a junior woman, he will be the target of office gossip...
If senior male executives in the UK (31 percent) hesitate to spend one-on-one time with female junior staffers because they fear their motives will be misconstrued, and 26 percent of junior women avoid one-on-one time with senior males, a culture of sponsorship may not take root—at least organically...
In the US, sponsorship between high-potential junior women and senior men slams all too often into the barrier of sexual politics. A majority—64 percent— of male executives in the US say they hesitate to spend one-on-one time with a junior woman because of the potential for gossip or lawsuits. For identical reasons, 50 percent of US high-potential junior women avoid one-on-one time with senior males—the pool of target sponsors.
Interestingly, the issue in the UK is less incendiary. Although innuendo is rife— UK women are 40 percent and UK men are 43 percent more likely than their US counterparts to gossip if a senior man socializes with a junior woman— sexual liaisons between a male supervisor and a female subordinate just don’t seem to get in the way of getting work done. Only 38 percent of senior men and 26 percent of junior women say they hesitate to have one-on-one contact of this sort."
You can't get something for nothing: making it easy for women to accuse employers of sexual harassment (It is not a coincidence that the US is more lawsuit-happy than the UK) results in less mentorship of women by men (ditto for the racism worry).
Proclaiming that it is inappropriate for men to comment on women's physical appearance at work means they don't make such comments even when necessary.
Generous maternity benefits means women are held back at work (as in the Nordics).
Also, under the protection of anonymity, it seems senior male executives share Tim Hunt's concerns about women bursting into tears.
"Sponsors, unlike mentors, put their reputation on the line for their sponsees. They weren’t just counseling in private; they were advocating in public. Like Jenkins’ sponsor, they provided stretch opportunities and high-visibility assignments, so that their peers might see their chosen talent in action. And they didn’t just connect a sponsee to the inner circle, but ensured that, once singled out for scrutiny, she had the support she needed to outshine everybody else...
The UK’s generous flexible work/maternity leave policies are a double-edged sword, notes Kate Grussing, managing director of Sapphire Partners, a UKbased executive search firm that focuses on senior women. By law, companies in the UK must provide six months of ordinary maternity leave and six months of additional maternity leave; many also offer flex-work schemes and, according to Grussing, many returning mothers feel strong peer pressure to work four days a week. Yet in fast-moving industries and challenging economic times, being out of the loop for an extended period of time carries a huge cost...
59 percent of our senior- and executive-level female respondents say that men make better sponsors...
Our female respondents are searching for a professional woman, that is, who has it all, does it all, and can show them how to be superwomen as well. That’s a high bar for a sponsor. According to management expert Elisabeth Kelan and sociologist Alice Mah, “female role models are caught, like women in management in general, in the double bind of combining being an ideal manager, which means being masculine, with being an ideal woman, which means being feminine”...
For at least the beginning stages, life does seem to reward best those who put forth the most. Those who can sit still and pay attention, who study for exams and go the extra mile on papers—these are the students who get the top grades and garner prizes and awards. And nowadays, the star students are mostly female. Study after study shows that girls outperform boys at school. They get better grades. They score better on standardized tests. They are disproportionately represented in universities.
During the early years of most women’s careers, the pattern continues. “You can come into the organization at the very bottom rung and go up two or three rungs absolutely based on merit,” says Bank of Scotland’s Audrey Connolly.
Things change, however, in middle management. “At that point, it’s not just about doing a good job,” Connolly continues. “Doing well begins to include proactively forming good working relationships with key professionals inside and outside your organization. What got you where you are won’t get you where you want to go, and women get stuck because they don’t know that critical fact. They expect that merit thing to keep working and don’t know how to get their head into a different place.” Or as Carnegie Mellon economics professor Linda Babcock puts it, they “expect life to be fair and they often don’t realize that it’s up to them to make sure that it is”...
Ironically, the very gender difference that handicaps women most in the sponsorship game holds the greatest potential to vault them ahead: women tend to be much better than men at relationships. They have more friends and maintain deeper ties to these friends than men do. So why are guys good at professional relationships and women aren’t?
Research in the field suggests that men and women go about friendship— and perceive its value—very differently. For men, every contact they make, at work or outside of it, is potentially useful, even if that potential is never developed beyond the exchange of business cards. Even in their valuation of relationships, the sexes differ: men say they gain advice from friends, whereas women are more likely to say they get support, according to Geoffrey Grief, a University of Maryland professor and the author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships. Perhaps as an outgrowth of boys being more involved with team sports than girls, men learn that playing well, not talking, forges loyalties. According to Grief, men are not after personal relationships; rather, they focus on playing a game where they barter, broker power and make alliances among contacts they barely know in order to win.
Women, on the other hand, are all about emotional connections...
Men are significantly more likely than women to look to friends at work to help them land a job or close a business deal. In sharp contrast, women turn to colleagues as someone to confide in, laugh with, and lean on, but not use. Hence, when it comes to asking for help, more than half of the women surveyed—upward of 57 percent—feel reluctant...
Getting feedback on executive presence becomes particularly important as women ascend to the marzipan-level, where it’s imperative they’re attuned in their dress, speech, and bearing to the leadership culture. Yet here the silence is deafening: men, according to 28 percent of the women we surveyed, are hesitant to criticize their appearance. Even among sponsored women, 33 percent of them say that their male sponsors hesitate to give feedback on their appearance. Why? Senior men tell us they’re scared to, fearful that a woman will “over-rotate” (take a style suggestion as an insult or burst into tears) or, even more seriously, an offended woman will sue them for sexual harassment. So they look the other way...
One of the senior men we interviewed still recalls how he chickened out when he should have given honest feedback to a woman on his team. “She was a very attractive “bottle blonde,” and the unfortunate thing was, the way she dressed and presented herself reinforced the ‘dumb blonde’ cliché. One client actually told me, ‘It doesn’t help to have this trolley-dolly image.’ But I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about her tight blouses or high heels and how these things undermined her authority and impact. I was fearful of her reaction”...
For a fact, senior men find it far easier to advise junior men. A senior male will tell a male subordinate he needs to polish his shoes, get a decent haircut, buy a better suit, lose a few pounds, or even improve his personal hygiene. “Man on man, we can always make it a joke,” says Steve Richardson, president of Diverse Outcomes and a former senior vice president at American Express. “Not that I’m one of your best friends, mate, but your breath’s a bit off today. Might want to take a mint.” So casually, even unconsciously, do men exchange style pointers that some cannot even fathom why the style component of executive presence is such a conundrum for women. “Joining a firm is like joining a football team,” one male Deloitte manager told us. “You’re issued a uniform and, starting on Day One, you wear it”...
More than half (52 percent) of our female survey respondents (and 47 percent of men) at large companies believe that if female managers were to commit at least one of the following, it would be an EP blunder: their waistlines bulge, their fingernails or hair are unkempt, they wear too much or too little makeup, their skirts are too tight, or their necklines dip dangerously low. Women whose look is sexual or provocative are at particular risk of being struck off the list of those with leadership potential. In the words of Patricia Fili-Krushel, executive vice president at NBCUniversal, they will find themselves in men’s offices “for all the wrong reasons.”
Our respondents are also certain that toeing a conservative line is a far safer strategy than pushing the limits of self-expression. Fifty percent of women (and 41 percent of men) feel that aspiring female execs should observe at least one of the following rules: conservative suit jackets, coiffed hair, well-puttogether accessories, and subtle make-up. In other words, make the mistake of looking too glamorous and you’re seen as a siren; make the mistake of looking too relaxed or casual, and you’re seen as a P.A. or administrative assistant. There are all kinds of ways to get it wrong.
For women of color, figuring out the right look can be especially treacherous. One African-Caribbean female lawyer told us in a focus group that she always dressed in designer suits, despite the office-casual dress code, because when she first started at the firm other employees mistook her for a secretary. She also noted that since she was a black woman, no one would dare approach her with any honest feedback on either her appearance or her performance, for fear of sounding racist...
Some 38 percent of senior men at the level of vice president and above tell us they’re reluctant to have one-on-one meetings with junior women—and 26 percent of junior women say they’re likewise hesitant to initiate such contact. The fact that male-to-male relationships are far less fraught than male-to-female relationships certainly helps explain why men are 25 percent more likely than women to have sponsors...
Survey after survey points to a strong likelihood of an office fling: 60 percent is the average statistic, a figure that has held steady since 2004. According to a recent CareerBuilder.co.uk survey, 43 percent of respondents said they had dated someone above them in the company hierarchy, and 26 percent admitted to dating their boss. Certainly quite a few employees know someone who is sleeping with the boss: Our own research reveals that 45 percent of women and 44 percent of men can “name names”...
At least half (48 percent of men, 52 percent of women) of UK respondents believe that if a senior male at their company so much as socializes one-on-one with a junior woman, he will be the target of office gossip...
If senior male executives in the UK (31 percent) hesitate to spend one-on-one time with female junior staffers because they fear their motives will be misconstrued, and 26 percent of junior women avoid one-on-one time with senior males, a culture of sponsorship may not take root—at least organically...
In the US, sponsorship between high-potential junior women and senior men slams all too often into the barrier of sexual politics. A majority—64 percent— of male executives in the US say they hesitate to spend one-on-one time with a junior woman because of the potential for gossip or lawsuits. For identical reasons, 50 percent of US high-potential junior women avoid one-on-one time with senior males—the pool of target sponsors.
Interestingly, the issue in the UK is less incendiary. Although innuendo is rife— UK women are 40 percent and UK men are 43 percent more likely than their US counterparts to gossip if a senior man socializes with a junior woman— sexual liaisons between a male supervisor and a female subordinate just don’t seem to get in the way of getting work done. Only 38 percent of senior men and 26 percent of junior women say they hesitate to have one-on-one contact of this sort."
You can't get something for nothing: making it easy for women to accuse employers of sexual harassment (It is not a coincidence that the US is more lawsuit-happy than the UK) results in less mentorship of women by men (ditto for the racism worry).
Proclaiming that it is inappropriate for men to comment on women's physical appearance at work means they don't make such comments even when necessary.
Generous maternity benefits means women are held back at work (as in the Nordics).
Also, under the protection of anonymity, it seems senior male executives share Tim Hunt's concerns about women bursting into tears.
Post ID: 2458029083519915815
Links - 23rd June 2015
As Mary Portas reveals her brother's the biological father of her son - "the fashion guru, who is proud to be part of one of Britain’s most high-profile lesbian marriages, changed her name to Portas following her marriage to a man in 1990. That marriage — which she has previously described as a happy one — produced two children who are now grown-up. She became a lesbian only in her 40s, when she met Melanie and fell for her... Until that point, Portas had never considered a relationship with a woman — ‘I certainly wasn’t a suppressed lesbian,’ she later reflected"
Is it wrong for a woman to have a son whose father is her brother?
Also, yet another woman whose sexual orientation changes (and becomes lesbian)
In China: Honesty is not the best policy - China - "After nearly a year of living and reporting here, I’ve come to realise that honesty doesn’t rank high on the list of virtues in China... Dishonesty starts young too. According to a poll of 250 students, parents and agents conducted in 2011 by Zinch China – a consultancy that advises United States colleges and universities about China – about 90 per cent of them submitted false recommendations... Chinese scholars and friends tell me that deceit is not widely frowned upon in China as it is sometimes seen as a means to survival in a society without clear rules – or at least without a culture of abiding by them. Said sociologist Hu Xingdou: “People realise that it doesn’t pay to be honest as not telling the truth may even yield benefits while being honest could even reap repercussions”... Another reason, said Mr Hu, is the society’s view that being kind (shan in Mandarin) is more important than being real (zhen). One factor could be the Confucian teachings that virtues like honesty can be subjugated for greater good like family peace and community unity, he added... I have to confess that I have become more wary here than in Singapore of strangers, including even acquaintances and shops that I frequent regularly."
White Hot Harlots: Manspreading: the rise of broken windows liberalism - "Of all the conflagrations of online outrage that have burst forward these past couple years, few have elicited as much long-lasting passion as the concerns over “manspreading"... What engendered this anger, this meanness? In order to understand where the ire comes from, we have to look at a means of analysis that’s common throughout lazy writing and has recently, sadly entered into a lot of social justice commentary. It’s based around taking erstwhile inoffensive or mildly offensive actions, embusing them with a pervasive secret meaning indicative of some kind of hatred, and then getting mad not at the action itself, but the evil subconscious mindsets that underlie it. Hence, manspreaders aren’t spreading for any material reasons—not because they’re tired or there’s plenty of space or even because they are fat and physically have to take up more room. They spread only because of their hidden ideology. They secretly believe themselves superior to women, which is why they want to take up space. Basically, your posture says more about your ideology than your actual ideology does. That’s the sort of logic that’s so stupid it has an air of infallibility to it"
The Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis - "Decades of research in social and political psychology have demonstrated that political conservatives appear more intolerant toward a variety of groups than do political liberals. Recent work from our three independent labs has challenged this conventional wisdom by suggesting that some of the psychological underpinnings of intolerance are not exclusive to people on either end of the political spectrum. These studies have demonstrated that liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance toward ideologically dissimilar and threatening groups... one open question is whether an ideological commitment to tolerance in the abstract translates into actual expressions of tolerance toward ideological out-groups."
List of Campus Disinvitation Attempts, 2000–2014 - FIRE
2000: 6 disinvitations attempts
2001: 4
2002: 10
2003: 10
2004: 7
2005: 13
2006: 10
2007: 9
2008: 13
2009: 23
2010: 16
2011: 19
2012: 17
2013: 29
2014: 16
2014 only has 5 months of data so do note that corrected for the full year figures one would assume there were 38 disinvitations in 2014 - truly a record
Disinvitation Report 2014: A Disturbing 15-Year Trend - FIRE - "Our research on disinvitations over the past 15 years identifies five trends:
1. The number of “disinvitation incidents”—i.e., efforts to prevent invited speakers from conveying their message on campus—has risen dramatically.
2. The number of “successful” disinvitations where a speaker ultimately does not speak as a result of a concerted effort to prevent them from doing so has increased as well.
3. Speakers are much more likely to be targeted for disinvitation for holding or expressing viewpoints perceived as conservative by faculty or students.
4. Disinvitation incidents occur with nearly equal frequency among public, private, and sectarian schools, demonstrating that disinvitations are not isolated to any particular type of university.
5. Institutions that have seen the highest number of disinvitation incidents also maintain severely speech-restrictive policies."
New FIRE Report: ‘Disinvitations’ Skyrocketing - FIRE - "The top three reasons behind disinvitation incidents were disagreements with a speaker’s perceived views on gay rights (21), followed by abortion (18) and the “War on Terror” (18)."
Freakonomics » The Maddest Men of All Full Transcript - "the honest employees tested better on just about every performance metric, which you mind find heartening, the idea that honesty really is a valuable trait. But there was one metric for which honesty was not correlated with better performance: sales."
Transgender Man and Woman Both Identify as Opposite Sex, Conceive Two Kids Together - "The "mom", Bianca, is a man who identifies as a woman.
The "dad", Nick, is a woman who identifies as a man.
The thing that I don't understand is the fact that instead of adopting, they had kids naturally which requires the "woman" of the relationship to stick her penis in the "man" of the relationship.
The "dad" said that her pregnancy and the process of getting pregnant was a horrible experience (5:00), yet they also apparently have sex "the same way everyone does" (4:10). And oh yeah, the "husband" basically said at 4:25 that she doesn't view her "wife" as a man even when her "wife" is fucking her in the vagina with his dick."
Eurisko, The Computer With A Mind Of Its Own - "In 1981, Eurisko, a computer program that arguably displays the rudiments of such skills, easily won the Traveller tournament, becoming the top-ranked player in the United States and an honorary Admiral in the Traveller navy. Eurisko had designed its fleet according to principles it discovered itself -with some help from its inventor, Douglas B. Lenat, an assistant professor in Stanford University's artificial-intelligence program... After weeks of experimentation, and some 10,000 two-to-thirty-minute battles, Eurisko came up with what would be the winning fleet. To the humans in the tournament, the program's solution to Traveller must have seemed bizarre. Most of the contestants squandered their trillion-credit budgets on fancy weaponry, designing agile fleets of about twenty lightly armored ships, each armed with one enormous gun and numerous beam weapons. Eurisko, however, had judged that defense was more important than offense, that many cheap, invulnerable ships would outlast fleets consisting of a few high-priced, sophisticated vessels. There were ninety-six ships in Eurisko's fleet, most of which were slow and clumsy because of their heavy armor. Rather than arming them with a few big, expensive guns, Eurisko chose to use many small weapons."
Now Russia makes transgender driving a criminal offence
Comment: "1. This is a resolution by the government, not a law. It's their opinion, nothing more.
2. The resolution refers to people with mental illnesses, not specifically transgendered people. For example, it also applies to people with OCD.
3. The implication for transgendered people comes from the resolution using a list of mental issues being taken from the ICD-10, a list of mental illnesses recognised by the World Health Organisation.
4. The resolution refers to cases where the mental illness is 'harmful'.
5. The resolution doesn't apply to people who already have driving licenses.
6. The resolution means that when you are applying for a driving license, if you are exhibiting behaviour that suggests you might be dangerous on the road, you can be denied your license."
5 Reasons For Why Animal Rights Are A Feminist Issue — Everyday Feminism - "1. Animal Bodies Are Objectified, Too
2. Animal Bodies Are Used to Normalize Rape Culture
3. Domestic Violence Harms Animals
4. Intersectionality Must Include All Oppressed Groups
5. Our Society Spreads Lies About Animals, Too"
23 Words Mispronounced By Singaporeans Their Whole Lives
Chris Rock Stopped Playing Colleges Because They're 'Too Conservative' - "Not in their political views -- not like they’re voting Republican -- but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive."
The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States - "We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals"
Iran bans ‘devil-worshipping’ spiky haircuts and male eyebrow plucking - "Excessive hair gel and male eyebrow plucking also were on the 2010 list of no-no's, as they have been in the past. Authorities apparently had some outdated ideas of current Western styles: They also banned mullets."
Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe - "The passengers on some of the overcrowded boats are thought to have been told to scupper them as soon as they see a rescue ship, to ensure they will be saved, even though many of them cannot swim... One government official said: “The more the traffickers see that people are being resettled, the greater the incentive there is for them.”"
People respond to incentives
Sinclair C5 voted biggest innovation disaster - Telegraph
Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education - "right-leaning students are far more likely to select “practical” majors that are less likely to lead to advanced degrees. Their emphasis on vocational fields such as business and criminal justice permits them to move directly into the workforce. In contrast, left-leaning students are more apt to pursue majors in the liberal arts, such as sociology and philosophy, which, absent additional graduate training, provide fewer career opportunities immediately on graduation. Even within a major like political science, college seniors of different political leanings have different expectations with regard to their forthcoming careers. Whereas students on both the left and the right place a premium on securing a comfortable salary and having the time to raise a family, conservative students consistently rate these priorities as more important than do liberal students... April was fond of reminding me that “students aren’t sponges.” By the age of eighteen, she argued, most people are already set in their ways. Sure enough, our research indicated she was right... A journal referee’s propensity to fixate on seemingly trivial methodological flaws seems to increase dramatically if my conclusions undermine a leftist policy position... Focusing on the 494 books with an ideological thesis, the researchers found that only 2 percent of Harvard University Press publications had conservative or classically liberal perspectives"
The call of monkhood: Princeton degree, dating brought no joy - "Growing up, Ms Ruby Pan wanted to be a writer. In her teens, she fell in love with the theatre and dreamt of being a playwright. She won a Public Service Commission teaching scholarship to study English literature at Princeton University in the United States, where she bagged prizes for a play and a collection of short stories she wrote. She even got to perform a monologue she wrote at a show produced by the famous Royal Shakespeare Company in England. She thought she had done everything that was artistically fulfilling, but when she graduated in 2006, she felt no joy. She says: "Instead, I felt burnt out, like I had run a very long race for no reason." Ms Pan, 31, who now goes by her ordained name, Thubten Damcho, was speaking over the telephone from Sravasti Abbey, a Tibetan Buddhist monastry in a forested area in Washington in the United States, where she now lives... she was jealous of her then boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, whom she did not even know. Conversely, she saw how the abbess was always joyous and equanimous regardless of the situation, the "fruit of decades of spiritual practice as a monastic"."
Is it wrong for a woman to have a son whose father is her brother?
Also, yet another woman whose sexual orientation changes (and becomes lesbian)
In China: Honesty is not the best policy - China - "After nearly a year of living and reporting here, I’ve come to realise that honesty doesn’t rank high on the list of virtues in China... Dishonesty starts young too. According to a poll of 250 students, parents and agents conducted in 2011 by Zinch China – a consultancy that advises United States colleges and universities about China – about 90 per cent of them submitted false recommendations... Chinese scholars and friends tell me that deceit is not widely frowned upon in China as it is sometimes seen as a means to survival in a society without clear rules – or at least without a culture of abiding by them. Said sociologist Hu Xingdou: “People realise that it doesn’t pay to be honest as not telling the truth may even yield benefits while being honest could even reap repercussions”... Another reason, said Mr Hu, is the society’s view that being kind (shan in Mandarin) is more important than being real (zhen). One factor could be the Confucian teachings that virtues like honesty can be subjugated for greater good like family peace and community unity, he added... I have to confess that I have become more wary here than in Singapore of strangers, including even acquaintances and shops that I frequent regularly."
White Hot Harlots: Manspreading: the rise of broken windows liberalism - "Of all the conflagrations of online outrage that have burst forward these past couple years, few have elicited as much long-lasting passion as the concerns over “manspreading"... What engendered this anger, this meanness? In order to understand where the ire comes from, we have to look at a means of analysis that’s common throughout lazy writing and has recently, sadly entered into a lot of social justice commentary. It’s based around taking erstwhile inoffensive or mildly offensive actions, embusing them with a pervasive secret meaning indicative of some kind of hatred, and then getting mad not at the action itself, but the evil subconscious mindsets that underlie it. Hence, manspreaders aren’t spreading for any material reasons—not because they’re tired or there’s plenty of space or even because they are fat and physically have to take up more room. They spread only because of their hidden ideology. They secretly believe themselves superior to women, which is why they want to take up space. Basically, your posture says more about your ideology than your actual ideology does. That’s the sort of logic that’s so stupid it has an air of infallibility to it"
The Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis - "Decades of research in social and political psychology have demonstrated that political conservatives appear more intolerant toward a variety of groups than do political liberals. Recent work from our three independent labs has challenged this conventional wisdom by suggesting that some of the psychological underpinnings of intolerance are not exclusive to people on either end of the political spectrum. These studies have demonstrated that liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance toward ideologically dissimilar and threatening groups... one open question is whether an ideological commitment to tolerance in the abstract translates into actual expressions of tolerance toward ideological out-groups."
List of Campus Disinvitation Attempts, 2000–2014 - FIRE
2000: 6 disinvitations attempts
2001: 4
2002: 10
2003: 10
2004: 7
2005: 13
2006: 10
2007: 9
2008: 13
2009: 23
2010: 16
2011: 19
2012: 17
2013: 29
2014: 16
2014 only has 5 months of data so do note that corrected for the full year figures one would assume there were 38 disinvitations in 2014 - truly a record
Disinvitation Report 2014: A Disturbing 15-Year Trend - FIRE - "Our research on disinvitations over the past 15 years identifies five trends:
1. The number of “disinvitation incidents”—i.e., efforts to prevent invited speakers from conveying their message on campus—has risen dramatically.
2. The number of “successful” disinvitations where a speaker ultimately does not speak as a result of a concerted effort to prevent them from doing so has increased as well.
3. Speakers are much more likely to be targeted for disinvitation for holding or expressing viewpoints perceived as conservative by faculty or students.
4. Disinvitation incidents occur with nearly equal frequency among public, private, and sectarian schools, demonstrating that disinvitations are not isolated to any particular type of university.
5. Institutions that have seen the highest number of disinvitation incidents also maintain severely speech-restrictive policies."
New FIRE Report: ‘Disinvitations’ Skyrocketing - FIRE - "The top three reasons behind disinvitation incidents were disagreements with a speaker’s perceived views on gay rights (21), followed by abortion (18) and the “War on Terror” (18)."
Freakonomics » The Maddest Men of All Full Transcript - "the honest employees tested better on just about every performance metric, which you mind find heartening, the idea that honesty really is a valuable trait. But there was one metric for which honesty was not correlated with better performance: sales."
Transgender Man and Woman Both Identify as Opposite Sex, Conceive Two Kids Together - "The "mom", Bianca, is a man who identifies as a woman.
The "dad", Nick, is a woman who identifies as a man.
The thing that I don't understand is the fact that instead of adopting, they had kids naturally which requires the "woman" of the relationship to stick her penis in the "man" of the relationship.
The "dad" said that her pregnancy and the process of getting pregnant was a horrible experience (5:00), yet they also apparently have sex "the same way everyone does" (4:10). And oh yeah, the "husband" basically said at 4:25 that she doesn't view her "wife" as a man even when her "wife" is fucking her in the vagina with his dick."
Eurisko, The Computer With A Mind Of Its Own - "In 1981, Eurisko, a computer program that arguably displays the rudiments of such skills, easily won the Traveller tournament, becoming the top-ranked player in the United States and an honorary Admiral in the Traveller navy. Eurisko had designed its fleet according to principles it discovered itself -with some help from its inventor, Douglas B. Lenat, an assistant professor in Stanford University's artificial-intelligence program... After weeks of experimentation, and some 10,000 two-to-thirty-minute battles, Eurisko came up with what would be the winning fleet. To the humans in the tournament, the program's solution to Traveller must have seemed bizarre. Most of the contestants squandered their trillion-credit budgets on fancy weaponry, designing agile fleets of about twenty lightly armored ships, each armed with one enormous gun and numerous beam weapons. Eurisko, however, had judged that defense was more important than offense, that many cheap, invulnerable ships would outlast fleets consisting of a few high-priced, sophisticated vessels. There were ninety-six ships in Eurisko's fleet, most of which were slow and clumsy because of their heavy armor. Rather than arming them with a few big, expensive guns, Eurisko chose to use many small weapons."
Now Russia makes transgender driving a criminal offence
Comment: "1. This is a resolution by the government, not a law. It's their opinion, nothing more.
2. The resolution refers to people with mental illnesses, not specifically transgendered people. For example, it also applies to people with OCD.
3. The implication for transgendered people comes from the resolution using a list of mental issues being taken from the ICD-10, a list of mental illnesses recognised by the World Health Organisation.
4. The resolution refers to cases where the mental illness is 'harmful'.
5. The resolution doesn't apply to people who already have driving licenses.
6. The resolution means that when you are applying for a driving license, if you are exhibiting behaviour that suggests you might be dangerous on the road, you can be denied your license."
5 Reasons For Why Animal Rights Are A Feminist Issue — Everyday Feminism - "1. Animal Bodies Are Objectified, Too
2. Animal Bodies Are Used to Normalize Rape Culture
3. Domestic Violence Harms Animals
4. Intersectionality Must Include All Oppressed Groups
5. Our Society Spreads Lies About Animals, Too"
23 Words Mispronounced By Singaporeans Their Whole Lives
Chris Rock Stopped Playing Colleges Because They're 'Too Conservative' - "Not in their political views -- not like they’re voting Republican -- but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive."
The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States - "We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals"
Iran bans ‘devil-worshipping’ spiky haircuts and male eyebrow plucking - "Excessive hair gel and male eyebrow plucking also were on the 2010 list of no-no's, as they have been in the past. Authorities apparently had some outdated ideas of current Western styles: They also banned mullets."
Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe - "The passengers on some of the overcrowded boats are thought to have been told to scupper them as soon as they see a rescue ship, to ensure they will be saved, even though many of them cannot swim... One government official said: “The more the traffickers see that people are being resettled, the greater the incentive there is for them.”"
People respond to incentives
Sinclair C5 voted biggest innovation disaster - Telegraph
Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education - "right-leaning students are far more likely to select “practical” majors that are less likely to lead to advanced degrees. Their emphasis on vocational fields such as business and criminal justice permits them to move directly into the workforce. In contrast, left-leaning students are more apt to pursue majors in the liberal arts, such as sociology and philosophy, which, absent additional graduate training, provide fewer career opportunities immediately on graduation. Even within a major like political science, college seniors of different political leanings have different expectations with regard to their forthcoming careers. Whereas students on both the left and the right place a premium on securing a comfortable salary and having the time to raise a family, conservative students consistently rate these priorities as more important than do liberal students... April was fond of reminding me that “students aren’t sponges.” By the age of eighteen, she argued, most people are already set in their ways. Sure enough, our research indicated she was right... A journal referee’s propensity to fixate on seemingly trivial methodological flaws seems to increase dramatically if my conclusions undermine a leftist policy position... Focusing on the 494 books with an ideological thesis, the researchers found that only 2 percent of Harvard University Press publications had conservative or classically liberal perspectives"
The call of monkhood: Princeton degree, dating brought no joy - "Growing up, Ms Ruby Pan wanted to be a writer. In her teens, she fell in love with the theatre and dreamt of being a playwright. She won a Public Service Commission teaching scholarship to study English literature at Princeton University in the United States, where she bagged prizes for a play and a collection of short stories she wrote. She even got to perform a monologue she wrote at a show produced by the famous Royal Shakespeare Company in England. She thought she had done everything that was artistically fulfilling, but when she graduated in 2006, she felt no joy. She says: "Instead, I felt burnt out, like I had run a very long race for no reason." Ms Pan, 31, who now goes by her ordained name, Thubten Damcho, was speaking over the telephone from Sravasti Abbey, a Tibetan Buddhist monastry in a forested area in Washington in the United States, where she now lives... she was jealous of her then boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, whom she did not even know. Conversely, she saw how the abbess was always joyous and equanimous regardless of the situation, the "fruit of decades of spiritual practice as a monastic"."
Post ID: 3720340047043469857
Monday, June 22, 2015
Links - 22nd June 2015
Can Changing Economic Factors Explain the Rise in Obesity? - "A growing literature examines the effects of economic variables on obesity, typically focusing on only one or a few factors at a time. We build a more comprehensive economic model of body weight, combining the 1990-2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System with 27 state-level variables related to general economic conditions, labor supply, and the monetary or time costs of calorie intake, physical activity, and cigarette smoking. Controlling for demographic characteristics and state and year fixed effects, changes in these economic variables collectively explain 37% of the rise in BMI, 43% of the rise in obesity, and 59% of the rise in class II/III obesity. Quantile regressions also point to large effects among the heaviest individuals, with half the rise in the 90th percentile of BMI explained by economic factors. Variables related to calorie intake – particularly restaurant and supercenter/warehouse club densities – are the primary drivers of the results."
Too many restaurants and warehouse clubs = obesity
McDonald’s “New Policy” Bans Customers From Buying Food For Homeless - "When questioned again by the media, McDonalds has continued to insist that this is not an official policy at any of their stores."
Bolivia – The First Latin-American Country to Close All McDonald’s Restaurants - "Everything indicates that “fast food” is literally the opposite of a Bolivian’s conception of how to prepare a meal. In Bolivia, the food to be good requires, in addition to taste, care, and hygiene, a lot of preparation time. This is how a consumer values the quality of what goes into the stomach, also by the amount of time it took to make the meal. Fast food is not for these people, the Americans concluded."
Apparently it returned in April 2015 after 13 years
After 13 years of burger banishment, McDonald's opens new location in Bolivia - "According to food researchers, it's not that Bolivians don't like burgers – they actually love them, but they just prefer to buy them from the thousands of indigenous women selling on the streets than from a global company... "They look on these foreign entities with suspicion — and rightly so. They prefer to purchase from, to have a relationship with, people from their own country or community or family." Bolivia now leaves the short list of countries – North Korea, Libya, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Vatican City – without the Golden Arches. Even Bolivia's political ideological ally, Venezuela, the country of the late Hugo Chávez, has 148 places to get a Big Mac and fries."
After exercise, fast food helps you recover just as well as sports supplements
Mother Posts India’s First Gay Marriage Advert to Seek Groom for Her Son - “Last week, she asked me a question any mom would ask her 36-year-old son: ‘Are you dating someone? Are you fond of someone?’ And when my answer was in the negative, my mom did what any Indian mother would do — she decided to place an ad in a newspaper.”
Robotic chef can cook Michelin star food in your kitchen by mimicking world's best cooks - "Moley Robotics hopes the robot chef will go on sale to the general public in 2017 and it is aiming to charge £10,000. This may sound a lot for a kitchen gadget but, given the system includes the over, hob, sink, work surface and storage, the price is not as steep as it may first seem. A recent survey carried out by The Times newspaper found almost half of Britons paid between £5,000 and £20,000 for their kitchen."
Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise - NYTimes.com - "The real question is not how people like Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombers, came to be radicalized, but why so many young men, who by all accounts are intelligent, articulate and integrated, come to find this violent, reactionary ideology so attractive. To answer it, we need to look not at extremist preachers or university lecturers but also at public policy, and in particular the failed policy of multiculturalism... The British government developed a new political framework for engaging with minority groups. Britain was now in effect divided into a number of ethnic boxes — Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, African, Caribbean and so on. The claims of minorities upon society were defined less by the social and political needs of individuals than by the box to which they belonged. Political power and financial resources were distributed by ethnicity. The new policy did not empower individuals; instead, it enhanced the authority of so-called community leaders, often the most conservative voices, who owed their positions and influence largely to their relationship with the state... Politicians effectively abandoned their responsibility to engage directly with minorities, subcontracting it out to often reactionary “leaders”... More progressive movements became sidelined. Today “radical” in an Islamic context means someone who is a religious fundamentalist. Thirty years ago it meant the opposite: a secularist who challenged both racism in the streets and the power of the mosques. Secularism was once strong within Muslim communities, but it has been squeezed out by the new relationship between the state and religious leaders"
The Many Wives of Oei Tiong Ham - " I came across a biography—nay, a hagiography—ofOei Tiong Ham, the “world’s sugar king” and “richest man from Semarang.” (Raja Gula Dunia, Orang Terkaya Dari Semarang) who died in Singapore in 1924. Now it turns out that Oei is not really useful for my purposes, but the book is a fun read. It is full of interesting tidbits like “Tiong Ham liked to party” (gemar berpesta), as well as this complete list of his many wives and children. Note: this list of 8 wives does not include concubines. The book details that Oei had 18 concubines that he acknowledged, and there were rumors of as many as 50. We also see here that his first wives was the prettiest of the 16 children of an elite Chinese family in Semarang, the Goeis. Alas, this isn’t really a serious source, but I’d be interested to know if the concubines were more likely to be Javanese than Chinese."
What is it about the Singapore/Malaya merger and Operation Coldstore? - "Singapore’s PAP won the 1959 elections and formed the government. But the leadership’s inexperience showed, and they made a lot of mistakes in their first year. They moved away from the progressive platform on which they had been elected, failing to fulfil a number of election promises. To compound this, they refused to admit their mistakes, and acted in a very arrogant and smug manner. Thus, the British and the PAP’s backbenchers grew very frustrated with the government, and the popularity of the PAP government declined heavily from 1959-60... To win the next election, Lee needed an achievement he could campaign on. The only popular desire he could deliver quickly was the achievement of merger. The British already wanted merger, but the Tunku didn’t. Thus, to get the Tunku on board, they told the Tunku that the PAP’s unpopularity was a sign that the island would soon be taken over by communists, and only the Tunku could save the island by taking it over. The British also urged the Tunku to accept merger, and offered the inclusion of North Borneo and Sarawak. This would dilute the influence of Singapore’s Chinese in Federation politics, as well as give the Federation access to Borneo’s vast natural resources. Eventually, after much persuading, pleading, and bargaining, the Tunku agreed to merge... The original Operation Coldstore collapsed when, at the last minute, Lee Kuan Yew inserted fifteen extra names of his political opponents into the arrest list... The primary purpose of merger was for political gain, not to reunify a divided nation... if the Federation’s and PAP’s rationale for merger and the creation of Malaysia was to neutralise Singapore’s political opposition, then once the opposition was gone, what was the rationale for both parties to stay together?"
How to Spot a Narcissist Online - "Online, people are very good at gaining relationships, but they don’t fall off naturally. If you’re incredibly annoying, they just ignore you, and even then it might be worth it for entertainment value. There’s a reason why, on reality TV, you find high levels of narcissism. It’s entertaining"
Shock the Puppy! - "When Stanley Milgram published the results of his obedience experiment in 1963, it sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Other researchers found it hard to believe that people could be so easily manipulated, and they searched for any mistakes Milgram might have made. Charles Sheridan and Richard King theorized that perhaps Milgram's subjects had merely played along with the experiment because they realized the victim was faking his cries of pain. To test this possibility, Sheridan and King decided to repeat Milgram's experiment, introducing one significant difference. Instead of using an actor, they would use an actual victim who would really get shocked. Obviously they couldn't use a human for this purpose, so they used the next best thing — a cute, fluffy puppy... Intriguingly, the six students who refused to go on were all men. All thirteen women who participated in the experiment obeyed right up until the end"
This is linked to Psychologists Find that Nice People Are More Likely to Hurt You
Tushar Ismail - No. No. No. "In other words, regardless of... - ""In other words, regardless of whether you receive a text like “Hi dear, :)”, or a chain of messages asking about you, it is harassment as long as you are not comfortable with it."
A million times no. What in the actual fuck. By that logic, I can accuse the journalist of harassment because I'm not "comfortable" with his article?... The day that a single, "Hi Dear, :)" becomes harassment is day these people need to pull their heads out of their asses and look in a dictionary..."
Feminist 'harassment', isn't
The Cost of Saving Face in Singapore - "The fact that there is even a website dedicated to wedding ang bao rates demonstrates the amount of effort we put in to save our face and preserve our honour. Assuming we go to four weddings a year and stuff an average of S$150 into our red packets, that’s S$600 annually. The average cost of a typical face-saving banquet wedding in Singapore would probably be around S$1,500 per table including extraneous costs. Since you need to invite all your relatives, you’ll need 30 tables. That would add up to S$45,000. If you managed to recoup half of your costs (and this is a big if), you’re still spending more than S$22,000 on something that could have been better spent on an appreciating asset such as your house... The next time you’re grappling with a decision that involves saving face or saving money, always ask yourself this: will the face I’ve saved throughout my life help me out when the banks or creditors come knocking?"
Malay voters look for Islamic credentials in future PM, survey shows - "Most Malay voters feel that the number one criterion a prime minister of Malaysia must have is "Islamic credentials", with the majority preferring it over qualities such as "hardworking" and "economic and management skills"... Asked to pick the top two qualities they were looking for in a prime minister, 35.8% of Malays chose "Islamic credentials", while just 24.3% chose "tough stand on corruption"... Meanwhile, most of the Chinese interviewed in the survey preferred a prime minister with economic and management skills, with 28.5% choosing it as one of their top two criteria, followed by "tough stand on corruption" (27.2%) and "fair to all races" (18.5%). Indian voters were more concerned about a prime minister who is fair to all races (38.2%) and hardworking (17.6%)"
I'm a Devout Atheist — Here's What I Love About Religion - "The power of community is invaluable.
People need a strong sense of purpose to live well.
Prayer is an essential tool for modern life.
Holiday rituals offer people a unique kind of meaning and joy."
Psychology Journal Bans Significance Testing - "the p-value was never meant to be the sole measure of whether or not a particular hypothesis is true. Rather it was meant only as a measure of whether or not the data should be taken seriously. Further, the p-value is widely misunderstood... published p-values cluster suspiciously around this 0.05 level, suggesting that some degree of p-hacking is going on."
The 10 Worst Things You Can Do In A Negotiation | James Altucher
Why one science journal wants to publish negative studies - "The issue is so severe right now that some have wondered whether negative results are disappearing entirely from some countries and fields of science. Now, one journal is trying to correct publication bias: PLoS One this week launched its "Missing Pieces" collection of negative, null, and inconclusive studies — in other words, a celebration of the seamier side of botched and boring experiments that usually never sees the light of day"
Too many restaurants and warehouse clubs = obesity
McDonald’s “New Policy” Bans Customers From Buying Food For Homeless - "When questioned again by the media, McDonalds has continued to insist that this is not an official policy at any of their stores."
Bolivia – The First Latin-American Country to Close All McDonald’s Restaurants - "Everything indicates that “fast food” is literally the opposite of a Bolivian’s conception of how to prepare a meal. In Bolivia, the food to be good requires, in addition to taste, care, and hygiene, a lot of preparation time. This is how a consumer values the quality of what goes into the stomach, also by the amount of time it took to make the meal. Fast food is not for these people, the Americans concluded."
Apparently it returned in April 2015 after 13 years
After 13 years of burger banishment, McDonald's opens new location in Bolivia - "According to food researchers, it's not that Bolivians don't like burgers – they actually love them, but they just prefer to buy them from the thousands of indigenous women selling on the streets than from a global company... "They look on these foreign entities with suspicion — and rightly so. They prefer to purchase from, to have a relationship with, people from their own country or community or family." Bolivia now leaves the short list of countries – North Korea, Libya, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Vatican City – without the Golden Arches. Even Bolivia's political ideological ally, Venezuela, the country of the late Hugo Chávez, has 148 places to get a Big Mac and fries."
After exercise, fast food helps you recover just as well as sports supplements
Mother Posts India’s First Gay Marriage Advert to Seek Groom for Her Son - “Last week, she asked me a question any mom would ask her 36-year-old son: ‘Are you dating someone? Are you fond of someone?’ And when my answer was in the negative, my mom did what any Indian mother would do — she decided to place an ad in a newspaper.”
Robotic chef can cook Michelin star food in your kitchen by mimicking world's best cooks - "Moley Robotics hopes the robot chef will go on sale to the general public in 2017 and it is aiming to charge £10,000. This may sound a lot for a kitchen gadget but, given the system includes the over, hob, sink, work surface and storage, the price is not as steep as it may first seem. A recent survey carried out by The Times newspaper found almost half of Britons paid between £5,000 and £20,000 for their kitchen."
Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise - NYTimes.com - "The real question is not how people like Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombers, came to be radicalized, but why so many young men, who by all accounts are intelligent, articulate and integrated, come to find this violent, reactionary ideology so attractive. To answer it, we need to look not at extremist preachers or university lecturers but also at public policy, and in particular the failed policy of multiculturalism... The British government developed a new political framework for engaging with minority groups. Britain was now in effect divided into a number of ethnic boxes — Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, African, Caribbean and so on. The claims of minorities upon society were defined less by the social and political needs of individuals than by the box to which they belonged. Political power and financial resources were distributed by ethnicity. The new policy did not empower individuals; instead, it enhanced the authority of so-called community leaders, often the most conservative voices, who owed their positions and influence largely to their relationship with the state... Politicians effectively abandoned their responsibility to engage directly with minorities, subcontracting it out to often reactionary “leaders”... More progressive movements became sidelined. Today “radical” in an Islamic context means someone who is a religious fundamentalist. Thirty years ago it meant the opposite: a secularist who challenged both racism in the streets and the power of the mosques. Secularism was once strong within Muslim communities, but it has been squeezed out by the new relationship between the state and religious leaders"
The Many Wives of Oei Tiong Ham - " I came across a biography—nay, a hagiography—ofOei Tiong Ham, the “world’s sugar king” and “richest man from Semarang.” (Raja Gula Dunia, Orang Terkaya Dari Semarang) who died in Singapore in 1924. Now it turns out that Oei is not really useful for my purposes, but the book is a fun read. It is full of interesting tidbits like “Tiong Ham liked to party” (gemar berpesta), as well as this complete list of his many wives and children. Note: this list of 8 wives does not include concubines. The book details that Oei had 18 concubines that he acknowledged, and there were rumors of as many as 50. We also see here that his first wives was the prettiest of the 16 children of an elite Chinese family in Semarang, the Goeis. Alas, this isn’t really a serious source, but I’d be interested to know if the concubines were more likely to be Javanese than Chinese."
What is it about the Singapore/Malaya merger and Operation Coldstore? - "Singapore’s PAP won the 1959 elections and formed the government. But the leadership’s inexperience showed, and they made a lot of mistakes in their first year. They moved away from the progressive platform on which they had been elected, failing to fulfil a number of election promises. To compound this, they refused to admit their mistakes, and acted in a very arrogant and smug manner. Thus, the British and the PAP’s backbenchers grew very frustrated with the government, and the popularity of the PAP government declined heavily from 1959-60... To win the next election, Lee needed an achievement he could campaign on. The only popular desire he could deliver quickly was the achievement of merger. The British already wanted merger, but the Tunku didn’t. Thus, to get the Tunku on board, they told the Tunku that the PAP’s unpopularity was a sign that the island would soon be taken over by communists, and only the Tunku could save the island by taking it over. The British also urged the Tunku to accept merger, and offered the inclusion of North Borneo and Sarawak. This would dilute the influence of Singapore’s Chinese in Federation politics, as well as give the Federation access to Borneo’s vast natural resources. Eventually, after much persuading, pleading, and bargaining, the Tunku agreed to merge... The original Operation Coldstore collapsed when, at the last minute, Lee Kuan Yew inserted fifteen extra names of his political opponents into the arrest list... The primary purpose of merger was for political gain, not to reunify a divided nation... if the Federation’s and PAP’s rationale for merger and the creation of Malaysia was to neutralise Singapore’s political opposition, then once the opposition was gone, what was the rationale for both parties to stay together?"
How to Spot a Narcissist Online - "Online, people are very good at gaining relationships, but they don’t fall off naturally. If you’re incredibly annoying, they just ignore you, and even then it might be worth it for entertainment value. There’s a reason why, on reality TV, you find high levels of narcissism. It’s entertaining"
Shock the Puppy! - "When Stanley Milgram published the results of his obedience experiment in 1963, it sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Other researchers found it hard to believe that people could be so easily manipulated, and they searched for any mistakes Milgram might have made. Charles Sheridan and Richard King theorized that perhaps Milgram's subjects had merely played along with the experiment because they realized the victim was faking his cries of pain. To test this possibility, Sheridan and King decided to repeat Milgram's experiment, introducing one significant difference. Instead of using an actor, they would use an actual victim who would really get shocked. Obviously they couldn't use a human for this purpose, so they used the next best thing — a cute, fluffy puppy... Intriguingly, the six students who refused to go on were all men. All thirteen women who participated in the experiment obeyed right up until the end"
This is linked to Psychologists Find that Nice People Are More Likely to Hurt You
Tushar Ismail - No. No. No. "In other words, regardless of... - ""In other words, regardless of whether you receive a text like “Hi dear, :)”, or a chain of messages asking about you, it is harassment as long as you are not comfortable with it."
A million times no. What in the actual fuck. By that logic, I can accuse the journalist of harassment because I'm not "comfortable" with his article?... The day that a single, "Hi Dear, :)" becomes harassment is day these people need to pull their heads out of their asses and look in a dictionary..."
Feminist 'harassment', isn't
The Cost of Saving Face in Singapore - "The fact that there is even a website dedicated to wedding ang bao rates demonstrates the amount of effort we put in to save our face and preserve our honour. Assuming we go to four weddings a year and stuff an average of S$150 into our red packets, that’s S$600 annually. The average cost of a typical face-saving banquet wedding in Singapore would probably be around S$1,500 per table including extraneous costs. Since you need to invite all your relatives, you’ll need 30 tables. That would add up to S$45,000. If you managed to recoup half of your costs (and this is a big if), you’re still spending more than S$22,000 on something that could have been better spent on an appreciating asset such as your house... The next time you’re grappling with a decision that involves saving face or saving money, always ask yourself this: will the face I’ve saved throughout my life help me out when the banks or creditors come knocking?"
Malay voters look for Islamic credentials in future PM, survey shows - "Most Malay voters feel that the number one criterion a prime minister of Malaysia must have is "Islamic credentials", with the majority preferring it over qualities such as "hardworking" and "economic and management skills"... Asked to pick the top two qualities they were looking for in a prime minister, 35.8% of Malays chose "Islamic credentials", while just 24.3% chose "tough stand on corruption"... Meanwhile, most of the Chinese interviewed in the survey preferred a prime minister with economic and management skills, with 28.5% choosing it as one of their top two criteria, followed by "tough stand on corruption" (27.2%) and "fair to all races" (18.5%). Indian voters were more concerned about a prime minister who is fair to all races (38.2%) and hardworking (17.6%)"
I'm a Devout Atheist — Here's What I Love About Religion - "The power of community is invaluable.
People need a strong sense of purpose to live well.
Prayer is an essential tool for modern life.
Holiday rituals offer people a unique kind of meaning and joy."
Psychology Journal Bans Significance Testing - "the p-value was never meant to be the sole measure of whether or not a particular hypothesis is true. Rather it was meant only as a measure of whether or not the data should be taken seriously. Further, the p-value is widely misunderstood... published p-values cluster suspiciously around this 0.05 level, suggesting that some degree of p-hacking is going on."
The 10 Worst Things You Can Do In A Negotiation | James Altucher
Why one science journal wants to publish negative studies - "The issue is so severe right now that some have wondered whether negative results are disappearing entirely from some countries and fields of science. Now, one journal is trying to correct publication bias: PLoS One this week launched its "Missing Pieces" collection of negative, null, and inconclusive studies — in other words, a celebration of the seamier side of botched and boring experiments that usually never sees the light of day"
Post ID: 6098985887338133397
The limits of anti-racism
Antiracism: vague politics about an nearly indescribable thing
"The contemporary discourse of “antiracism” is focused much more on taxonomy than politics. It emphasizes the name by which we should call some strains of inequality—whether they should be broadly recognized as evidence of “racism”— over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them. And, no, neither “overcoming racism” nor “rejecting whiteness” qualifies as such a step any more than does waiting for the “revolution” or urging God’s heavenly intervention. If organizing a rally against racism seems at present to be a more substantive political act than attending a prayer vigil for world peace, that’s only because contemporary antiracist activists understand themselves to be employing the same tactics and pursuing the same ends as their predecessors in the period of high insurgency in the struggle against racial segregation.
This view, however, is mistaken. The postwar activism that reached its crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in the South. The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production. Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.
Whether or not one considers those goals correct or appropriate, they were clear and strategic in a way that “antiracism” simply is not. Sure, those earlier struggles relied on a discourse of racial justice, but their targets were concrete and strategic. It is only in a period of political demobilization that the historical specificities of those struggles have become smoothed out of sight in a romantic idealism that homogenizes them into timeless abstractions like “the black liberation movement”—an entity that, like Brigadoon, sporadically appears and returns impelled by its own logic.
Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of “prejudice” or “intolerance”...
All too often, “racism” is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity or is characterized as an autonomous “force.” In this kind of formulation, “racism,” a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity. Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn’t be given independent life.
I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not. Properly speaking, however, “racism” itself doesn’t do anything more than the Easter Bunny does.
Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and those who deny it...
of course racism persists, in all the disparate, often unrelated kinds of social relations and “attitudes” that are characteristically lumped together under that rubric, but from the standpoint of trying to figure out how to combat even what most of us would agree is racial inequality and injustice, that acknowledgement and $2.25 will get me a ride on the subway. It doesn’t lend itself to any particular action except more taxonomic argument about what counts as racism.
And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize...
My point is that it’s more effective politically to challenge the inequality and injustice directly and bypass the debate over whether it should be called “racism.”
I do recognize that, partly because of the terms on which the civil rights movement’s victories have been achieved, there is a strong practical imperative for stressing the racially invidious aspects of injustices: they have legal remedies. Race is one of the legal classes protected by anti-discrimination law; poverty, for instance, is not. But this makes identifying “racism” a technical requirement for pursuing certain grievances, not the basis of an overall political strategy for pursuit of racial justice, or, as I believe is a clearer left formulation, racial equality as an essential component of a program of social justice.
I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics. It’s not clear to me what drives it because it takes the form of snide dismissals than direct arguments. Moreover, the dismissals typically include empty acknowledgment that “of course we should oppose capitalism,” whatever that might mean...
What the political scientist Preston Smith calls “racial democracy” came gradually to replace social democracy as a political goal—the redress of grievances that could be construed as specifically racial took precedence over the redistribution of wealth, and an individualized psychology replaced notions of reworking the material sphere. This dynamic intensified with the combination of popular demobilization in black politics and emergence of the post-segregation black political class in the 1970s and 1980s.
We live under a regime now that is capable simultaneously of including black people and Latinos, even celebrating that inclusion as a fulfillment of democracy, while excluding poor people without a whimper of opposition. Of course, those most visible in the excluded class are disproportionately black and Latino, and that fact gives the lie to the celebration. Or does it really? From the standpoint of a neoliberal ideal of equality, in which classification by race, gender, sexual orientation or any other recognized ascriptive status (that is, status based on what one allegedly is rather than what one does) does not impose explicit, intrinsic or necessary limitations on one’s participation and aspirations in the society, this celebration of inclusion of blacks, Latinos and others is warranted...
I remain curious why the “debate” over antiracism as a politics takes such indirect and evasive forms—like the analogizing and guilt by association, moralistic bombast in lieu of concrete argument—and why it persists in establishing, even often while denying the move, the terms of debate as race vs. class. I’m increasingly convinced that a likely reason is that the race line is itself a class line, one that is entirely consistent with the neoliberal redefinition of equality and democracy. It reflects the social position of those positioned to benefit from the view that the market is a just, effective, or even acceptable system for rewarding talent and virtue and punishing their opposites and that, therefore, removal of “artificial” impediments to its functioning like race and gender will make it even more efficient and just.
From this perspective even the “left” antiracist line that we must fight both economic inequality and racial inequality, which seems always in practice to give priority to “fighting racism” (often theorized as a necessary precondition for doing anything else), looks suspiciously like only another version of the evasive “we’ll come back for you” (after we do all the business-friendly stuff) politics that the Democrats have so successfully employed to avoid addressing economic injustice."
"The contemporary discourse of “antiracism” is focused much more on taxonomy than politics. It emphasizes the name by which we should call some strains of inequality—whether they should be broadly recognized as evidence of “racism”— over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them. And, no, neither “overcoming racism” nor “rejecting whiteness” qualifies as such a step any more than does waiting for the “revolution” or urging God’s heavenly intervention. If organizing a rally against racism seems at present to be a more substantive political act than attending a prayer vigil for world peace, that’s only because contemporary antiracist activists understand themselves to be employing the same tactics and pursuing the same ends as their predecessors in the period of high insurgency in the struggle against racial segregation.
This view, however, is mistaken. The postwar activism that reached its crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in the South. The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production. Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.
Whether or not one considers those goals correct or appropriate, they were clear and strategic in a way that “antiracism” simply is not. Sure, those earlier struggles relied on a discourse of racial justice, but their targets were concrete and strategic. It is only in a period of political demobilization that the historical specificities of those struggles have become smoothed out of sight in a romantic idealism that homogenizes them into timeless abstractions like “the black liberation movement”—an entity that, like Brigadoon, sporadically appears and returns impelled by its own logic.
Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of “prejudice” or “intolerance”...
All too often, “racism” is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity or is characterized as an autonomous “force.” In this kind of formulation, “racism,” a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity. Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn’t be given independent life.
I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not. Properly speaking, however, “racism” itself doesn’t do anything more than the Easter Bunny does.
Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and those who deny it...
of course racism persists, in all the disparate, often unrelated kinds of social relations and “attitudes” that are characteristically lumped together under that rubric, but from the standpoint of trying to figure out how to combat even what most of us would agree is racial inequality and injustice, that acknowledgement and $2.25 will get me a ride on the subway. It doesn’t lend itself to any particular action except more taxonomic argument about what counts as racism.
And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize...
My point is that it’s more effective politically to challenge the inequality and injustice directly and bypass the debate over whether it should be called “racism.”
I do recognize that, partly because of the terms on which the civil rights movement’s victories have been achieved, there is a strong practical imperative for stressing the racially invidious aspects of injustices: they have legal remedies. Race is one of the legal classes protected by anti-discrimination law; poverty, for instance, is not. But this makes identifying “racism” a technical requirement for pursuing certain grievances, not the basis of an overall political strategy for pursuit of racial justice, or, as I believe is a clearer left formulation, racial equality as an essential component of a program of social justice.
I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics. It’s not clear to me what drives it because it takes the form of snide dismissals than direct arguments. Moreover, the dismissals typically include empty acknowledgment that “of course we should oppose capitalism,” whatever that might mean...
What the political scientist Preston Smith calls “racial democracy” came gradually to replace social democracy as a political goal—the redress of grievances that could be construed as specifically racial took precedence over the redistribution of wealth, and an individualized psychology replaced notions of reworking the material sphere. This dynamic intensified with the combination of popular demobilization in black politics and emergence of the post-segregation black political class in the 1970s and 1980s.
We live under a regime now that is capable simultaneously of including black people and Latinos, even celebrating that inclusion as a fulfillment of democracy, while excluding poor people without a whimper of opposition. Of course, those most visible in the excluded class are disproportionately black and Latino, and that fact gives the lie to the celebration. Or does it really? From the standpoint of a neoliberal ideal of equality, in which classification by race, gender, sexual orientation or any other recognized ascriptive status (that is, status based on what one allegedly is rather than what one does) does not impose explicit, intrinsic or necessary limitations on one’s participation and aspirations in the society, this celebration of inclusion of blacks, Latinos and others is warranted...
I remain curious why the “debate” over antiracism as a politics takes such indirect and evasive forms—like the analogizing and guilt by association, moralistic bombast in lieu of concrete argument—and why it persists in establishing, even often while denying the move, the terms of debate as race vs. class. I’m increasingly convinced that a likely reason is that the race line is itself a class line, one that is entirely consistent with the neoliberal redefinition of equality and democracy. It reflects the social position of those positioned to benefit from the view that the market is a just, effective, or even acceptable system for rewarding talent and virtue and punishing their opposites and that, therefore, removal of “artificial” impediments to its functioning like race and gender will make it even more efficient and just.
From this perspective even the “left” antiracist line that we must fight both economic inequality and racial inequality, which seems always in practice to give priority to “fighting racism” (often theorized as a necessary precondition for doing anything else), looks suspiciously like only another version of the evasive “we’ll come back for you” (after we do all the business-friendly stuff) politics that the Democrats have so successfully employed to avoid addressing economic injustice."
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