Links - 24th January 2015

Everything ‘Back to the Future Part II’ Got Right and Wrong About 2015, According to Futurists

Elected Missouri Democrat threatens voters over white privilege on Twitter

The Woman Who Published Darren Wilson's Address Found Out How the Real World Works - "When the Oxford English Dictionary publishes its 2015 edition, you may want to check the entry for “hypocrite.” I’m pretty certain it’ll have Julie Bosman’s picture next to it. Bosman, you may recall, is the The New York Times reporter who decided to publish officer Darren Wilson’s address in the wake of the grand jury’s decision not to charge him in the death of Michael Brown. When Bosman disclosed the street where Wilson and his pregnant wife were residing, controversy ensued and the reporter received widespread criticism for her actions. One of the sources of the criticism was her own employer, The Times... In retribution, bloggers found and posted Bosman’s address online, sending the reporter scrambling hysterically for protection from the very people she had sold out — the police. And apparently, she did so in a none-too-subtle fashion. “She came in thinking she was Steven Spielberg or something shooting a movie,” a source within the Chicago Police Department was quoted as saying (H/T Western Journalism). The source confirmed that not only did she grossly exaggerate the threats she had received, but she demanded “top-tier” protection of the sort usually accorded to movie stars and visiting dignitaries."

The Hidden Costs That Engineers Ignore - "other times, the complexity that we wrestle with is complexity that we introduced ourselves. We wrote code in a new programming language that few people knew and now we have to maintain it. Or we added additional infrastructure because we wanted to try the new, hot technology stack that we read about on Hacker News, but it fails in ways that we didn’t initially expect. Or we introduced a feature that few people use but that consumes a disproportionate amount of our time through fixes and bug reports."

What research says about cats: they're selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures - "cats kill as many birds as threats like collisions with cell phone towers, power lines, cars, and wind turbines"

The Internet Is a Major Driver of the Growth of Cognitive Inequality - "Moral of the story: the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don't know how to use it, or don't have the background to ask the right questions, you'll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it's an endless wealth of information. Just as globalization and de-unionization have been major drivers of the growth of income inequality over the past few decades, the internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality. Caveat emptor."

Today I Learned Something about My Boyfriend That No Girl Should Ever Have to Discover - "Mark was the stuff of dreams. Kind, caring, attentive. Enough to make all of my friends jealous. But today something horrible happened, something that I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy. I found out something about Mark that will forever change my opinion about him, and my ability to trust men has been forever shattered."

How American parenting is killing the American marriage - "To understand the frightening power of the parenthood religion, one need look no further than the 2005 essay in The New York Times by Ayelet Waldman, where the author explained that she loved her husband more than her four children. On “Oprah Where Are They Now,” the author recently reaffirmed the sentiments reflected in her New York Times article, and she added that her outlook has had a positive impact on her children by giving them a sense of security in their parents’ relationship. Following the publication of her essay, Waldman was not only shouted down by America for being a bad mother; strangers threatened her physically and told her that they would report her to child protective services. This is not how a civil society conducts open-minded discourse. This is how a religion persecutes a heretic... Parents who do not feel free to express their feelings honestly are less likely to resolve problems at home. Children who are raised to believe that they are the center of the universe have a tough time when their special status erodes as they approach adulthood. Most troubling of all, couples who live entirely child-centric lives can lose touch with one another to the point where they have nothing left to say to one another when the kids leave home... Is it surprising that divorce rates are rising fastest for new empty nesters?"

When Women Sexually Assault Men - "More than a quarter of the male students in the 1985 survey said they had good or very good experiences with the sex despite their initial refusals, while none of the women did. Another 27 percent of the men called the experience bad or very bad, compared with 88 percent of the women. Only 22 percent of men reported bad long-term effects, compared with 78 percent of the women... college students sometimes seem surprisingly willing to downplay sexual coercion by either gender. In one 2006 study, researchers presented students with scenarios in which “John” and “Carla” are on a date and one of them clearly states that he or she doesn’t want to have sex. The aggressor ends up having sex with the partner anyway, either by threatening to end the relationship, getting him or her drunk, or physically holding the other down. On a seven-point scale of victimization, students rated John at only 4.6 when he was held down, but even in the reverse scenario, the rating for Carla was only 5.18. In contrast, Carla was rated 6.02 for promiscuity in the scenario where she got John drunk. The study suggests that sexual coercion isn’t particularly worrisome to many college students"

California's Campus Consent Laws: Every Sex Act Is a Potential Crime - "A failure to procure “affirmative agreement” means that sexual assault has taken place. If that is the case, absent such affirmative signifiers, how exactly do you know whom to arrest? Let’s say the woman brings a complaint; hasn’t she also technically raped her male partner, according to the new bill? Of course not, critics will argue. His consent was visible; sex couldn’t have happened without his consent, they will say. But here lies the crux: while male desire is deemed equivalent to “affirmative consent," female desire is not. A double standard is actually ratified into law whereby the phallus represents true, unmediated desire, while female desire must be interpolated through words. While the law must protect women from the inequality of force men have at their disposal, what is the utility of demanding that women require an extra level of mediation to signal desire, under conditions where no imbalance exists? Herein we find one of the most outrageous part of the bill: Its assumption of men as the initiators of sex acts, and women as their recipients... a mere 3 percent of men committed over 90 percent of college rapes (there is no reliable research on female college perpetrators). And yet California’s law governs every college student’s encounters. A different method entirely is required to deal with an epidemic of rapes perpetrated by a small percentage of repeat rapists than would be required to treat an epidemic of rapists... Much of what we call courtship—and the pleasures therein—revolves around sending, reading, interpreting, and changing these signals. Surely a misunderstanding should be judged under the law differently than an outright desire to harm. Surely we are all guilty of trying to convince people to have sex with us. Are we rapists?... The law proposes to declare a large swatch of normal activity criminal (drinking before sex, reading/sending signs instead of verbalizing request/consent)"

Calif. College Students Demand Sex-Consent Ed--for Kindergarteners - "Despite Warner’s claim that college students do not understand consent, the Department of Justice in December published a report that stated only 6 out of every 1,000 female college students ages 18-24 were victims of rape between 1995 and 2013. Another 2 students per every 1,000 were victims of attempted rape, and less than 2 out of every 1,000 students were victims of sexual assault... When it comes to educating kindergarteners on consent, Alejandra Melgoza, another student supporter of the activist group’s demands, told the Huffington Post that “concerned parents might think we’re talking about consent in purely sexual context, when really we’re talking on a day-to-day basis.” Melgoza went on to explain personal space should be explained to children, claiming that traumatic memories of past violence or sexual assault could be triggered by a simple hug, the article stated."
Comment: "It's never to early to f up our children's minds. Thanks libs."
Yet the myth of 1 in 5 college students being a victim of rape will remain, because it's ultimately a sexier claim

Malmö's Mayor Blames Jews for Wave of Anti-Semitism - "“I left Poland to get away from anti-Semitism,” he later told the police. “But at least there I never experienced any violence. That only happened to me here, in Sweden”... In Swedish discourse, the violence, rioting, and attacks on fire-fighters and paramedics in areas like Rosengård are often explained with the same well-worn references to social inequalities that the left uses to account for similar phenomena in London and Paris. But those explanations are even less convincing in Sweden: When young people in Rosengård torch cars and attack ambulance drivers, their actions take place in one of the world’s most generous countries of asylum for refugees in one of the world’s most generous welfare states. Sweden receives the world’s largest number of asylum-seekers per capita, not counting some countries that share borders with conflict areas. The county has received one of the highest numbers of Iraqi refugees per capita, and the Somali diaspora in Sweden is one of the world’s largest. Swedish generosity is visible not only in the number of refugees that the country admits every year, but also in how they are treated once in the country. The Migrant Integration Policy Index, MIPEX, gives Sweden a perfect score (100 points out of 100) in giving immigrants equal opportunities to natives... If this is social inequality, how far must a European society go in order to avoid violence and riots?"

Terrorists Plot Two Failed Attacks In Sweden - "Facebook commenters wondered why Sweden would be targeted by terrorists, though it is clear that organizations such as Islamic State, or ISIS, are dedicated to striking targets around the world. In addition to claiming responsibility for the brutal murders of two Americans, the group has also reportedly been planning an attack on or near the U.S.-Mexico border."
If Islamic terrorism were truly motivated by Western foreign policy, why would they attack Sweden?

Footwear Advice: What You Should Look Out for in a Shoe - "Types of shoes that spell danger
Ballet flats
Shoes that are too flat don't provide adequate arch support, which is especially an issue for those with flat feet. Furthermore, as the soles are often very thin, they provide insufficient shock absorption. The force from the ground is directly transferred onto the soles of your feet, which can lead to discomfort in prolonged walking.
There's also a higher risk of the sole being pierced by a foreign object. "
High heels, ballet flats and flip flops are all bad for the feet. Poor women.