Links - 2nd November 2015

The Monsters Who Screamed for Dead Cops - "Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is no definitive proof that TMOC led the call for dead cops, but there is a web of circumstantial ties with the group at its center. TMOC’s own social-media posts put them near the scene of the cry for police blood. Some of the slogans used that night—including “arms up, shoot back!”—are the same as the ones used by TMOC. And recently TMOC has been soliciting money for the legal defense of people it calls its “comrades” who were arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers on the Brooklyn Bridge, just hours after the “dead cops” chant was recorded. The bedrock of TMOC’s politics, judged by their social-media output, is hatred for police and endorsement of violence against them... “We know they are the victims here—not the NYPD. We are all victims at the hands of the white supremacist, capitalist state”... out of the people arrested on the bridge, one is a Harvard-educated poet and another was making more than $100,000 a year working for one of the most the most powerful unions in New York City... On message boards and social media, people were cheering and justifying the police murders almost as soon as they happened."

Black Lives Matter: 'Pigs In A Blanket, Fry 'Em Like Bacon' - "The activists sang out the violent chorus chant just hours after a lone gunman shot 47-year-old Harris County sheriff’s deputy Darren Goforth while he was getting gas... During a press conference on Saturday — before protesters in St. Paul called for cops’ deaths — Harris County sheriff Ron Hickman condemned what he characterized as “some of the very dangerous national rhetoric that’s out there today.” “So any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point that calculated, cold-blooded, assassination of police officers happen, this rhetoric has gotten out of control,” he added. “We’ve heard ‘black lives matter,’ ‘all lives matter’ — well, cops’ lives matter too. So why don’t we just drop the qualifier and say ‘lives matter,’ and take that to the bank.”"

Are Peter Singer’s ideas too dangerous to hear? - "Amy Hasbrouck, a Montreal lawyer and chair of Not Dead Yet, a North American disability rights group, agrees completely, but with a twist. “Given the prestige of his position, Singer gives legitimacy not only to eugenicist views, but also to the related and commonly held view that life with a disability is a fate worse than death,” she said in an interview. “This view is what drives the current push toward legalization of assisted suicide.”"
Utilitarians are morally obliged to murder some disabled people

Divine Comedy is 'offensive and discriminatory', says Italian NGO - "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Dante's medieval classic the Divine Comedy has been condemned as racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic by a group calling for it to be removed from classrooms. The epic poem, written in the 14th century, is split into three parts, tracing the poet's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is seen as one of the cornerstones of world literature. But the Italian human rights organisation Gherush92, which advises UN bodies on human rights issues, wants it to be removed from school curriculums, or at least used with more caution, because it is "offensive and discriminatory" and young people lack the "filters" to understand it in context. Gherush92 singled out some particular cantos from Dante's masterwork for criticism: Inferno's 34th, which tells of Judas, endlessly chewed in the teeth of Lucifer, and 28th, in which Mohammed is depicted torn "from the chin down to the part that gives out the foulest sound", as well as Purgatorio's 26th, which shows homosexuals under a rain of fire in purgatory. The work, it says, slanders the Jewish people, depicts Islam as a heresy and is homophobic."

The Folly of Scientism - "When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners... The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects... As utilitarians have for some time, Harris purports to challenge the fact-value distinction, or rather, to sidestep the tricky question of values entirely by just focusing on facts. But, as has also been true of utilitarians for some time, this move ends up being a way to advance certain values over others without arguing for them, and to leave large questions about those values unresolved"

Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places - "the paper provides evidence for a paradox: the happiest places tend to have the highest suicide rates"

Former The Real Singapore editors open ramen stalls at NUS canteens - "Named the Takagi Ramen Shop (TRS), both outlets opened at the end of August and are located in the canteens of Prince George's Park Residences and the university's Bukit Timah Campus, near the Singapore Botanic Gardens... The shop carries the tagline "Ramen for the Average Singaporean""

Taiwanese Guy's Russian Girlfriend Encourages Single Chinese Men - chinaSMACK - "A Taiwan zhainan successfully captured a Russian girl. Owing to a severe gender imbalance in Russia, over 10 million Russian girls can’t find men to marry, so international marriages are extremely trendy amongst Russian girls and furthermore, Russian girls’ demands in a perfect man (shown at the end) aren’t high either. So guys who can’t find girls, what are you waiting for? Go find a Russian girl, both pretty and strong, able to catch thieves and beat up hooligans, no need to fear others bullying you ever again!"

fakehatecrimes.org - "The purpose of this site is to compile a comprehensive database of the false reports of "hate crimes" committed in the USA. It builds on the work of Laird Wilcox, whose 1994 Crying Wolf (PDF) is the only book dedicated to this subject so far."

Fake 'hate crimes' continue to plague campuses - "Earlier this year, a student at the University of Wyoming was charged with reporting to police that she had been threatened with rape online — a threat that police later determined she made herself. Last year, at Montclair State University in New Jersey, two students who reported racist graffiti written on the door of their dorm room were charged with “making false reports, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct” when police determined that they themselves were the perpetrators. And in 2011, a University of Virginia law student admitted to fabricating a story about campus police officers harassing him because of his race. The list goes on and on. One of the weirdest in memory happened in 2004, when a Claremont College professor savagely vandalized her own car with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti. Why does this keep happening? The sad truth is that students (and professors) commit these hoaxes because they know that they can make a political statement or at least get a major reaction out of their college campuses with very little relative effort... since people have a tendency to remember the first reports of alleged crimes, while many fewer are likely remember which ones turned out to be a hoax, these incidents bolster the arguments of would-be censors for greater speech restrictions on campus"

Annuar Musa: ‘I am racist, Islamically’ - "An Umno leader today admitted that he, along with today’s “Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu” was “racist” in nature, but insisted that this was still in line with Islamic teachings. Tan Sri Annuar Musa maintained that acting in defence of Malay honour was permitted in Islam so long as other races were not oppressed in the process. “Being racial is endorsed in Islam as long as you are not cruel towards other people. This rally if you say is racist, yes. What are you scared of? Islam has put in place guidelines, what is not allowed is racism that is cruel towards other races... He added that the Malays have done the other races a great service by sharing the country and its resources them. “And when has the Malays even behaved cruelly towards other races? We share this country, we shared citizenship. We share all our rights. Who was the one who made thus county open to other races? It was the Malays,” he added."

Recall or replace an email message that you sent - "Action:
You send a message to someone. You recall the original message and replace it with a new one.
On the recipient's computer, under Tracking, the Automatically process requests and responses to meeting requests and polls check box is not selected.
Result:
Both the original message and the recall message are received in the recipient's Inbox.
On the recipient's computer, one of the following results occurs:
- If the recipient opens the recall message first, the original message is deleted, and the recipient is informed that you, the sender, have deleted the message from their mailbox.
- If the recipient opens the original message first, the recall fails, and both the original and recall messages are available."
This is how to prevent message recall in Outlook

‘There’s no stigma’: why so many Danish women are opting to become single mothers - "Researchers recently categorised the different family types in Denmark and found that there were 37 – from solomor to lesbian couples and various blended families. Denmark is famously family-friendly, with 52 weeks’ paid parental leave for a new baby and a generous welfare state paying three-quarters of the costs of childcare , enabling 85% of mothers to return to work. “It’s easier to be a solomor in Denmark than elsewhere because society accepts and supports you – we’re pretty liberal about most things,” says Erb... "studies show that children born to elective single mothers perform slightly better in tests than other children – and better than children of mothers who are single through divorce.”"
Feminism: where the State replaces a Man

19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America - "#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.
#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class...
#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.
#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.
#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.
#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.
#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.
#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture...
#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.
#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.
#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.
#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl."