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Saturday, March 02, 2013

Links - 2nd March 2013

Jack Anderson's answer to Girlfriends: Just what does "girl talk" consist of? - Quora - "when women Girl Talk, they talk mostly about stereotypically girly subjects like shopping and men, and then they validate each other's preconceived notions on the subject, being careful not to rock the boat... the idea of Girl Talk isn't to really discuss any particular topic or situation, at all. The whole point of Girl Talk is for girls to get together and make their friends feel good about themselves. I can't say that this is automatically a bad thing. However, as the author is quick to point out, your fellow Girl Talkers are communicating like they're giving you advice, but in reality, they're just trying desperately to figure out what you want to hear, and telling you that. So, I guess you shouldn't substitute your girlfriends for, say, a real therapist if you want to talk through a real issue. If all of this is correct, I don't think that men would do very well with Girl Talk, which is the likely reason that women exclude us from it. We haven't been conditioned by society to validate others and avoid conflict like women have, so we aren't very good at it. We pretty much just say what's on our minds, simple creatures that we are. In other words, the complete antithesis of Girl Talking. From what I've heard of it, it sounds positively dreadful, and women are doing us a huge favor by "taking it offline", to use the corporate jargon."

Diane Meriwether's answer to Societal Pressure: Why are there so many smug old ladies who will tell women that they'll want children "eventually"? - Quora - "I am one of those old women, but perhaps more quietly so... I had three abortions: the first at 13, the last at 27.  At the time I was certain they were the right choice for everyone involved.... Things change. I hardly recognize the young woman who stopped my three sons from being born, but I remember her unwavering conviction and her fear. At the time, she did not think of them as sons, of course; she thought of them as little white bits of tissue, as a late period, as something best postponed. Actually, she was careful to not think of them at all. Looking back, my determination seems sad and strange. The first abortion took place in the Santa Ana Woman's Feminist Clinic, where anesthesia was an option, but one that was presented as neither necessary nor in line with the politics of the revolution. .. I turned my attention upward. A Woman Needs a Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle, the poster said... Even the things I didn't think would change, changed... Scratch an old lady's smug advice and you may find a fear of dying alone."

Angry Birds Theme by Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà - YouTube

Dutch ask should older workers earn less? - "In the Netherlands - as well as in France and Belgium -employees have always earned more as they grow older and Dutch workers see the principle of a salary increasing with age and experience as sacrosanct. But with ageing workforces around much of the world, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned age-linked pay scales are becoming costlier."

Harvard professor spots Web search bias - "Google searches of names more likely associated with black people often yielded advertisements for a criminal records search in that person’s name... Sweeney’s results dovetail somewhat with other research on “black” names, most notably a 2004 study that found employers were less likely to respond to resumes sent by people with black-sounding names... He also said that the results could be caused by black Google users clicking on those ads as much as white users. “It could be that black people themselves could be causing the stuff that causes the negative copy to be selected more,” said Sullivan. “If most of the searches for black names are done by black people . . . is that racially biased?”"
If humans are not involved, you can't blame human bias. So cases where there supposedly is human bias might not actually be evidence of human bias

snopes.com: Stapled Scrotum - "A masturbating machine-shop worker catches his scrotum in a piece of machinery and tears it open, then staples it back together and resumes work before finally visiting a doctor three days later
Status: True."

snopes.com: Woofing Wedding Video - "Wedding guests were shocked when they sat down at a reception to watch film of the ceremony but instead saw sex scenes involving a naked man and a dog, a court heard today. Derek Jeffrey, 59, who had filmed himself in sex acts with a neighbour's bull terrier — named Ronnie — had later lent his camcorder to a friend to video a wedding thinking the footage had been erased."

Father's surprise: call-girl daughter - "As the prostitute entered the room, the full horror for him of discovering his daughter's occupation hit him. The father began feeling chest pains which may have been a mild heart attack."

Girl expelled over stripper mother - "Christina Silvas, aged 25, said she took the job as an exotic dancer at Centrefolds nightclub in Sacramento to pay for her daughter's $400 a month tuition fees. But the headmaster at the Christian school, Rick Cole, said that all parents signed an agreement that they would only engage in spiritually-enhancing activities and that therefore Ms Silvas had broken the contract. The controversy has sparked a debate over whether a child should be punished for the sins of the parents."

A Penis-Powered Controller That Looks Familiar - "Upcoming erotic game Custom Maid 3D will be bundled with a very special controller. It looks like the PS Move, but with a few key differences—one of which is you put dicks in it... Those motions will also cause the in-game characters to react accordingly, too, with different characters reacting, um, differently. Okay, then!"

タコ地獄焼き1/2 - YouTube
Really fresh octopus

Do people fall in love on trains? - "While many might associate the train or bus with being crushed and horrible smells, for some it is very romantic. There is even a Facebook group called "I temporarily fall in love with people on public transport""

Coughing in classical concerts 'twice as likely' - "He said the finding held true even when the demographic make-up of the average classical concert audience was accounted for... certain types of music appear to attract more coughs... “It is the more modern pieces of 20th century classical music, it is the more quiet and slow movements that are interrupted by coughs,” Prof Wagner said. “It is also non-random, in that coughing sometimes appears to occur in sort of avalanches or cascades through the audience so there are some patterns.” But Prof Wagner has not yet managed to explain the reasons behind the excess coughing... “You cannot really distinguish whether it’s a deliberate thing that happens, a sort of comment you wish to make on the music, or whether it’s something that’s just a reflex because you have an itching throat and this ambiguity makes a cough a rather attractive way to comment on the music, to participate in the performance and to show your existence in the concert”"

Four reasons why U.K. cartoon of Netanyahu isn't anti-Semitic in any way - "there are more than enough real manifestations of racism and xenophobia, directed at Jews and other religious and ethnic groups in Britain and the rest of the continent, for us to be spending our efforts confronting. Pillorying Scarfe and his cartoon cheapens a noble cause... Should the Sunday Times have not published the cartoon on International Holocaust Memorial Day? Only if one believes that is a day in which Israeli politicians have immunity from being caricatured. Such a belief would certainly cheapen the memory of the Shoah... Netanyahu's depiction is grossly offensive and unfair, but that is only par for the course for any politician when Scarfe is at his drawing-board. Scarfe has spent his entire career viciously lampooning the high and mighty - Netanyahu is in illustrious company"

The family in figures: Men and marriage | The Economist - "the growing economic clout of women increases their power within marriage. According to Pew, in households where the husband earns more, women are still just as likely to make the final decisions regarding household finances; where the wife earns more, she is more than twice as likely to do so"
Men may earn more, but women spend more (or at least control spending more)

Yammering away at the office | The Economist - "To veterans of the technology industry, the fuss over social networking sounds all too familiar. Whenever a new and disruptive technology appears, there is initially a backlash against it before it becomes broadly accepted. Even a seemingly innocent application such as Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet was greeted with much scepticism because managers assumed workers would use it to make lists of their fantasy football teams or their weekend shopping—which is exactly what they did and still do. But along the way, Excel has also become an invaluable business tool."
Some "thought the web could never be used to make money... bosses who assumed that workers would use it simply to watch pornography and play online poker"

Evolution: mutated gene cause of smaller breasts, thicker hair in East Asians? - " "East Asian Physical Traits Linked to 35,000-year-old Mutation", based on a study conducted by the Broad Institute. According to this published report, East Asians evolved differently from other humans. The reason for this may be found in the mutation of a particular gene (named EDAR), which - according to researchers - is the reason why Asians have smaller breasts, more sweat glands, distinctly different teeth, and thicker hair"

Ancient language controls crime rings - "Some gang members serving prison sentences are using an ancient language to try to keep control of their criminal organizations on the outside as corrections officers work fast to crack the code. Capt. Joe Lytle said the inmates are sending out messages written in Nahuatl, a 1,400-year-old Aztec language."

Why the Population White Paper is Ill-Conceived - "Over the last few years, I have been asking random Singaporeans that I meet, "Tell me: what fraction of your colleagues that you work with do you think are incompetent?" To be more precise, "incompetent" refers to the people that they would never hire if they were the boss. .. I got a whole range of answers and it ranges from 20% to 80% (Yikes!)... Some have suggested that firms be allowed to hire only if they can prove that they cannot find Singaporeans who can do the work locally. Bad idea. What we are currently doing is actually much more clever. By imposing a dependency ratio and telling the employers that they can hire x foreign workers for every y locals, the Government is effectively forcing the employers to create y jobs for the locals. We can do this indefinitely and ensure that every single local gets employed eventually. Basically, the bosses will now be willing to tolerate less productive locals if they can hire and make up for the productivity with the foreigners... When the White Paper was unveiled, I asked myself, "what is the PAP trying to get out of this debate?" If the Government is asking for the people's permission and concurrence to build infrastructure to support 6.9 m, may I suggest that there's no need to ask one. Just build lah. Are we worrying about people complaining that the MRT is too spacious, houses are too affordable and COEs are too cheap? If the Government is asking the people to agree to the economic model of the past decade, then the only thing that I can come up with is a conspiracy theory that the PAP is tired of running this country and is trying to get itself booted out of office by the next GE. @.@"
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