Links - 17th June 2014

Toddler who Peed in Street Sparks Culture Clash between Hong Kong and China - "Netizens and newspapers on opposite sides of the internal border have been squabbling since a mainland couple allowed their little girl to relieve herself in the kerb in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district... "The radical passersby in Hong Kong tried to show their moral superiority while they only revealed the vulgar side of the region," an editorial published by the Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times read. Chinese commentators lashed out at what they said was an over-reaction. An opinion poll by Sina.com revealed tha, out of more than 120,000 Chinese interviewed, only 11% thought that it was not okay for a child to urinate in the street... "Bring children to Hong Kong and let them urinate in Hong Kong's streets. Let's see who will come and take photos," Haijiao No68 wrote, according to SCMP. "They will see it as natural after they have been familiarised with the act.""

Women and Men Policymakers: Does the Judge's Gender Affect the Sentencing of Criminal Defendants? - "Women judges are somewhat harsher (i.e., more likely to incarcerate and impose longer sentences), and they slant toward a more contextualized style in weighing the effects of defendant characteristics and prior record on sentencing outcomes. Notably, they are particularly harsh toward repeat black offenders"
Female judges: racist towards black men!

Career, Family, and the Well-Being of College-Educated Women - "I report on measures of life satisfaction and emotional well-being across groups of college-educated women, based on whether they have a career, a family, both, or neither. The biggest premium to life satisfaction is associated with having a family. While there is also a life satisfaction premium associated with having a career, women do not seem able to "double up" on these premiums. A qualitatively similar picture emerges from the emotional well-being data. Among college-educated women with family, those with a career spend a larger share of their day unhappy, sad, stressed and tired."
The happiest women are those with no career and a family, followed by those with both, followed by those with only a career (as reported). So more gender equality in a broad measure of employment 'hurts' women

Female Labor Supply: Why is the US Falling Behind? - "In 1990, the US had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 OECD countries. By 2010, its rank had fallen to 17th. We find that the expansion of “family-friendly” policies including parental leave and part-time work entitlements in other OECD countries explains 28-29% of the decrease in US women’s labor force participation relative to these other countries. However, these policies also appear to encourage part-time work and employment in lower level positions: US women are more likely than women in other countries to have full time jobs and to work as managers or professionals."
Family-friendly/part-time work policies lead to more labour force participation - but also a larger gender wage gap

Family Ties and Political Participation - "We establish an inverse relationship between family ties, generalized trust and political participation. The more individuals rely on the family as a provider of services, insurance, transfer of resources, the lower is civic engagement and political participation. The latter, together with trust, are part of what is known as social capital, therefore in this paper we contribute to the investigation of the origin and evolution of social capital over time. We establish these results using within country evidence and looking at the behavior of immigrants from various countries in 32 different destination places"
The only way to Build Society is to Destroy the Family; no wonder in Singapore we try to encourage the role of the Family

On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough - "We find that, consistent with existing hypotheses, the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture, today have lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politics, and in entrepreneurial activities, as well as a greater prevalence of attitudes favoring gender inequality. We identify the causal impact of traditional plough use by exploiting variation in the historical geo-climatic suitability of the environment for growing crops that differentially benefited from the adoption of the plough"

Steely grit needed to break the glass ceiling - "Ruthless is not a word to be associated with but look behind the social meaning and see how some ruthlessness is vital to breaking the glass ceiling. Desire, ambition, charm, good communication skills and the ability to get people's trust are essential to get to be "boss". Both women had those - both were kind, helping the young, caring for weaker team members. Liz had singleness of purpose - to reach the top. Not at any price or ignoring good behaviour towards others, but reach the top she was determined to do. Mary had multiple purposes - being liked, making social contributions beyond work and being a shoulder to cry on. Liz "read" those she met to advance her own career, as well as her colleagues'. Mary "empathised" with everyone, helping with their immediate needs.
Ask yourself eight questions about these two women. Which one…
Made the bigger contribution to the welfare of those they met and worked with?
Would you rather work with?
Would you rather employ if you were a boss?
Would you rather be?
Would you marry if you were a man?
Has the most relaxed retirement?
Will live the longest?
Has, on balance, been happiest?
No right answers, but your answers will tell you if you will break the glass ceiling, while remaining a decent human being. They will tell you more than that if you think about them."

Unidentified Defendants Have Bedeviled Courts for Decades - NYTimes.com - "Court records had listed the man as “Fnu Lnu,” shorthand for “First name unknown, Last name unknown”... a Chinese gang indictment in New York about a decade ago listed 28 defendants, almost half of which were Fnu Lnus... In 1994, a Newport News, Va., newspaper, The Daily Press, published an article about a drug and murder case and listed people who had been charged, including one named Fnu Lnu, as if that were a real person. The newspaper ran a correction, which might have been overlooked or forgotten, had it not been reprinted playfully in the Columbia Journalism Review, where a playwright, Mac Wellman, saw it and wrote a play with songs about it. The show, called “Fnu Lnu,” was produced by Soho Rep, an Off Broadway theater. A 1997 review in The New York Times called the play “a work with important clues missing.” Mr. Wellman, who teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College, said the reprinted correction “was completely the inspiration for my play.”"

High ‘high elf’ stabs Portland woman’s car with sword - "A Glendale, Ore., man decked out for battle and allegedly high on LSD thought he was fighting the evil ‘Morgoth,’ but really, he was stabbing a woman’s car in a Portland, Ore., intersection."

What is the mass of a photon? - "In classical electromagnetic theory, light turns out to have energy E and momentum p, and these happen to be related by E = pc. Quantum mechanics introduces the idea that light can be viewed as a collection of "particles": photons. Even though these photons cannot be brought to rest, and so the idea of rest mass doesn't really apply to them, we can certainly bring these "particles" of light into the fold of equation (1) by just considering them to have no rest mass. That way, equation (1) gives the correct expression for light, E = pc, and no harm has been done. Equation (1) is now able to be applied to particles of matter and "particles" of light. It can now be used as a fully general equation, and that makes it very useful."

MRT molester wins appeal for shorter jail term - "Forhad was originally sentenced to 15 months' jail late last year after he pleaded guilty in the State Courts to three counts of outrage of modesty, with a fourth taken into consideration. He appealed to the High Court for a shorter term. Yesterday, Justice Chao Hick Tin cut the jail term - from six months to two months - on one of the charges for rubbing the victim's thigh, saying it was not a private part. Judge of Appeal Chao made it clear the court was not condoning his actions. Every person who travels on public transport should feel "comfortable" and not feel concerned about others trying to take advantage of them, he said."
Rubbing a woman's thigh = 2 months in jail. Maybe the hand merits 3 weeks

Comparing The Top Artists, Past And Present, By Vocal Range - "At the top of the chart: Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose, closely followed by Mariah Carey, Prince, Steven Tyler and James Brown. At the very bottom: country singer Luke Bryan, who is just topped by Taylor Swift, Karen Carpenter, Sam Cooke and Justin Bieber."

Why Does Nobody Know What 'Trolling' Means? - "Obviously, sending an email threatening to murder somebody's children is not "trolling," it's "being a cunt"... In conclusion, either no one in the mainstream media knows what the word "troll" really means in this context, or they're deliberately misusing it because it's a term that's been wrongly thrown around so much now that people are just used to it. Or perhaps they're just trolling people like me. In which case, good one."

Dolce & Gabbana Officially Apologizes To Hong Kong For That Photo-Banning Incident - "the store had released a policy forbidding Hong Kong residents from taking photos inside or outside its flagship store, purportedly in order to protect its "intellectual property." But residents were enraged, especially after learning that mainland Chinese and foreign tourists were excluded from the photo ban."

Jim Hill: Butterbeer: How the Harry Potter Beverage Was Made Real - "Based on surveys that UOR employees have done, the greatest Guest Satisfier in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, that piece-of-the-magic that people most wish that they could take home and share with friends and family... is a beverage. Butterbeer, to be precise... given that this beverage was going to be served in a family-friendly theme park, one aspect of this beverage (i.e. according to the Harry Potter books, quaffing this ale can give you a bit of a buzz) had to be dropped right off the bat. Furthermore, because Universal Orlando wanted as many guests as possible to be able to sample this brew (and that included the lactose intolerant), there could be no butter, or dairy products of any kind, in Butterbeer. J.K. allegedly agreed to these terms as Steven laid them out, but then added a few of her own. Chief among these was that -- because Rowling believed that corn syrup was about to become the next trans-fat (i.e. the ingredient that people now deliberately avoid whenever they're making their food choices) -- she insisted that Butterbeer be made with real sugar... And then J.K. carefully sampled all five glasses. And upon arriving at the real glass of Butterbeer, Rowling reportedly took one sip and then reportedly broke into a big smile, saying "Yes, Chef. That's it.""