Links - 20th November 2015

Man jailed 10 months for sex with underaged girl in Changi Beach handicapped toliet - "the girl had gone to Changi Beach at about 7am that day Khairulsabirrin, who was then in a shelter along the beach with his father, invited her to join them. While chatting with the victim, he learnt that she was a Secondary 3 student. They chatted until about 4pm before she decided to go home. Khairulsabirrin offered to send her off. When they arrived at a handicapped toilet, he suggested going into the cubicle and she agreed. He then committed the offence. They remained there for about 30 minutes to an hour and then went their separate ways. The offence came to light when the victim's aunt lodged a police report last December stating that the victim had been talking about sex with unknown persons on Facebook."
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Sulaiman Daud - I want to thank well-meaning non-Muslims who, in... - "as a Muslim, I wish that we weren't so quick to emphasise that this has nothing to do with us. While I personally have never killed anyone and none of my friends and family have ever resorted to violence, radicalism has everything to do with Islam. And the failure to address that out of a well-intentioned commitment to tolerance is making the problem worse. ISIS is a Muslim organisation, and it is an Islamic problem. Let me say it again to be perfectly clear. ISIS is a Muslim organisation, and they are a cancer at the heart of Islam. And the problem will not go away until Muslims confront that... There are no Christians in ISIS. There are no Buddhists, Jews, Pagans, Taoists, Houngans, Catholics, Wiccans, Hindus or even Scientologists in ISIS. ISIS is a Muslim organisation and they kill in the name of Islam. So don't say that ISIS aren't 'true Muslims' or that they are 'not really Muslims'... you also have pious professionals, businessmen, and academics who read their Qur'an cover to cover, pray every day, were seduced into radicalism, and truly believe that the Islamic State's goal of conquest is a noble one. The so-called 'Caliph' Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has a doctorate in Islamic studies. So if you feel that Muslims are being oppressed or killed in Muslim countries, I expect you to also be just as outraged by ISIS. Because they have killed more Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Jordan than the entire US army. They have done more damage to the name and reputation of Islam than any Western nation. ISIS is Islam's biggest enemy... We have to own the problem... ISIS is not America's problem, nor the British, nor the French. ISIS is not Syria or Iraq's problem. ISIS is a problem for Muslims. And if you can't admit that, you're not really a good Muslim either."

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Marine study finds all-male infantry units outperformed teams with women - ""If you were to turn down a request for a waiver like that I guess the political machine in the White House would be saying we don’t care about the effectiveness of the ground combat units," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the Armed Services Committee who served in the Marine Corps and ha expressed concerns about opening up all positions to women... The Marine study is the first effort to measure what impact gender integration could have on combat effectiveness. "This is unprecedented research across the services," Marine Col. Anne Weinberg said... The all-male units outperformed gender-integrated units on 69% of the 134 tasks that were evaluated, according to the summary. The integrated teams performed better in two machine-gun related tasks than the all-male teams. There was no difference on the remaining tasks... Marine infantry units are required to walk long distances carrying equipment weighing more than 100 pounds and be prepared to fight once they arrive at their destination. The study concluded that all-male squads moved faster than integrated units, particularly when carrying heavy weapons, such as machine guns and mortars... On marksmanship, men who had not been through infantry school hit targets 44% of the time with M4 rifles, besting infantry-trained women, who hit targets 28% of the time. Women also struggled with obstacles designed to test upper body strength in simulated combat... The rate of injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments was 40.5% for women, compared to 18.8% for men."
Addendum: Marine Corps Study: All-Male Combat Units Performed Better Than Mixed Units - "The summary of the Marine Corps study quotes a 1992 report from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. That was the last time the government studied the effect of gender integration on ground combat units. According to that commission, winning a war is sometimes "only a matter of inches." Back then, the commission concluded: "unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong."
Keywords: women in combat, mixed squads, opening combat roles to women

Putting Women in Combat -- Ineffective, Terrible Idea - "A recent study, for instance, by Britain’s Tri-Service Review found that mixed-gender combat units have “lower survivability,” a “reduced lethality rate” and reduced deployability. This study, along with countless others done over the last 40 years, demonstrate that combat capabilities are so heavily weighted toward men that the gap cannot be closed. As Marine Corps captain Lauren Serrano put it in a September 2014 article in the Marine Gazette: “Acknowledging that women are different (not just physically) than men is a hard truth that plays an enormous role in this discussion”... the last 40 years of aggressive integration efforts by the U.S. military have shown that women cannot meet the same rigorous standards as men — and the answer has been to implement different standards for women, while lowering the standards for men, too... the military’s physical and psychological toughness standards for men have also declined. The military as whole — even in basic training — has become kinder and gentler, partly in order to accommodate women. In one of the more ridiculous examples of this, Army drill instructors were required to wear “empathy bellies” and fake breasts to better empathize with pregnant women... The women who have died in service to their country need to be honored, but they should not be honored by increasing the chances that other servicemen and women will die as well. As former Marine Jude Eden writes in the April 2015 edition of Military Review, “Being in the combat zone, dangerous as it is, is still worlds away from the door-kicking offensive missions of our combat units.” Being killed in a crash or by an IED is not the same as surviving physically demanding combat patrols carrying combat loads of 60 to 140 pounds, which challenge even men’s superior endurance and strength... In terms of reflexes and reaction times, men significantly outperform women. When confronted with immediate danger, studies suggest men are “more likely than women to take action.” Women are far more likely to experience motion sickness and vertigo. In the Navy women go on sick call 60 to 70 percent more frequently. For the kind of violent events and situations found on the battlefield, women are far more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and experience the symptoms for a longer duration than men. Despite the gender-specific ability to handle the pain of childbirth, “study after study” conclusively shows that men have a much higher overall tolerance for pain than women... Blows to the head or other concussive events that a man can shrug off will stun or render a woman unconscious, reducing her unit’s chances of survival, especially in hand-to-hand combat. Units will have to deal with feminine-hygiene issues that significantly reduce unit effectiveness... A Royal Society of Medicine study on the British military found that that injuries skyrocketed for women “when they undertake the same arduous training as male recruits”... The U.S. military is already awash in discipline and morale problems coming out of female–male interactions"

Reader Story: I Quit My Passion and Took a Boring Job - "I realized that the job I loved so much was actually destroying me... It took some painful life lessons and some hard financial times to learn that doing what you love is, in fact, absolutely not the paradigm we need to follow as individuals or a society. Instead, get out there and grab what affords you the most opportunities to be the best overall person you can be."

Was This Old-School Meme the First Ever "Netflix and Chill"? - "There's also another element at play in the "would you like to come up and see my etchings?" phenomenon: It requires that the asker have a removed space for their suitor to visit . And, according to Sherman, during and before the Restoration era, most people did not have access to any private space at all. In fact, he said that while Shakespeare and Restoration comedy abounded in sexual innuendo, almost none of it was in private. "All of the seduction happens on the public streets," Sherman said. Here's the thing about private space: It was a rarity before the 18th century. Back then, even royalty had public rooms. "Kings and queens often had public levees where they would wake up in the morning and courtiers would attend to them in the room," Sherman said. "That's to say that there are walls and a door, but basically where we have separate rooms, they had huge public shared rooms." Innuendo has clearly titillated us for centuries, and sexual invitations have existed as long as we've had private space, but the question remains: Why can't we just ask for a good fuck? Or, as Sherman put it, "Isn't it interesting that people would still want euphemisms of any kind at a moment when a kind of open, blatant language is available for sex?""

Language as a window into human nature - "Language has to do two things: It’s got to convey some content such as a bribe, a command, or a proposition; at the same time it’s got to negotiate a relationship type. The solution is to use language at two levels: the speaker uses the literal form to signal the safest relationship to the listener while counting on the listener to read between the lines to entertain a proposition that might be incompatible with that relationship. And politeness is a simple example... Why we resort to indirectness even when there is no real uncertainty? For example, when the listener knows the speaker’s intent people aren’t naive and it’s hard to believe that any grown woman can be fooled by the line about the “etchings”... if Harry would say, “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?” and Sally says, “No!” then Sally knows that she’s turned down an overture and Harry knows that she’s turned down a sexual overture. But does Sally know that Harry knows? She could be thinking, “Maybe Harry thinks I’m naive!” And does Harry know that Sally knows that he knows? He could be wondering, “Maybe Sally thinks I’m dense!” There’s no mutual knowledge and they can maintain the fiction of friendship. Whereas if Harry would say, “Would you like to come up and have sex?” and Sally turns him down now Harry knows that Sally knows that Harry knows that Sally knows they cannot maintain the fiction of a friendship."

We Want It All Or Nothing At All When It Comes To Living The High Life, Study Says - "It turns out you can buy happiness after all -- you just can't rent it. It's no surprise that driving flashy cars, dripping in diamonds, and carrying the latest "it"-bag can all bring us joy, but a new study suggests it's only if the luxuries are ours to keep"

Africa expert: ′Sustainable living is a luxury′ - "When talking about sustainability we have to explain what is meant by that. 'Sustainable' only means that a situation continues over a long period. And that can also be negative! Just think about sustainable poverty and social imbalance...
How can Kenyan people overcome poverty?
First of all, they have to leave victimhood. I mainly work with young people in very poor circumstances. They believe that they can only leave those poor conditions with development aid. They expect someone to help them. We try to explain to these people that they can help themselves and that they have to utilize the resources that they have. A farmer who works only one acre of his land and leaves the other acre untouched, has to learn that land is valuable. And that he is not as poor as he thinks."

No Uncircumcised Man Will Ever Know the True Pleasure of a Blow Job
"are they saying that they circumcise the kids so that they can get blowjobs next time?"
"well its jezabel"

The Circumcision Wars: What's a Parent to Do? - "The twins’ parents, who both have advanced degrees, based their original decision to circumcise not on sound reasoning, as one might expect, but rather on what was the most common deciding factor we heard—whether or not the father had been circumcised. When our pediatrician told us that this is also the most common reason she encounters, I started referring to this as the golden rule of penises: Do unto your son what was done unto you... Almost half of our friends admitted that they considered the best way to help their sons procure oral sex as adults when making their “circumcision decision.”"

Why not let kids walk home alone? - "When I started secondary school in 1985 aged 11, it was taken for granted that I’d make the hour-long journey there and back on my own... The Scottish government plans to take this suspicion a step further and formally appoint a so-called named person, such as a teacher, social worker or health visitor, for every child. These state-sanctioned officials will have responsibility, above and beyond that of the parents, for safeguarding children’s development and wellbeing. As Josie Appleton has pointed out on spiked, such an arrangement inserts ‘a surveying, coercive authority – a spy – in the midst of every family’. The message behind the named-person proposals is clear: the state does not trust parents to bring up their own children. Many interactions between grown-ups and children are now characterised by this lack of trust and conducted defensively, with adults seeking to cover their own backs rather than spontaneously act in the best interests of the child. Sadly, if children are out in public on their own, some adults are more likely to call the police than talk to either the children or their parents... Children who grow up sheltered and suspicious of others move from wariness about ‘stranger danger’ to a fear of ‘rape culture’."