Links - 30th November 2015

How Marcuse made today’s students less tolerant than their parents - "Americans have not, in fact, become more tolerant. Rather, they have shifted their dislike to new groups... people in their 40s are the most tolerant of Muslim clergymen who preach anti-American hatred... Young people are also less tolerant than the middle aged groups toward militarists, communists, and racists. This is not true for tolerance towards homosexuals or atheists, because younger people simply like these groups more. (Political tolerance is not a measure of liking someone, but the willingness to extend political freedoms to those one dislikes)... youthful intolerance is driven by different factors than old fashioned intolerance, and that this change reflects the ideology of the New Left. Herbert Marcuse, considered “The Father of the New Left,” articulates a philosophy that denies political expression to those who would oppose a progressive social agenda... The idea of “liberating tolerance” then is one in which ideas that the left deems to be intolerant are suppressed. It is an Orwellian argument for an “intolerance of intolerance” and it appears to be gaining traction in recent years, reshaping our commitments to free speech, academic freedom, and basic democratic norms. If we look only at people under the age of 40, intolerance is correlated with a “social justice” orientation. That is, I find that people who believe that the government has a responsibility to help poor people and blacks get ahead are also less tolerant. Importantly, this is true even when we look at tolerance towards groups other than blacks. For people over 40, there is no relationship between social justice attitudes and tolerance... intolerance itself is being reclassified as a social good. For six decades, social scientists have almost universally treated intolerance as a negative social disease. Yet, now that liberties are surrendered for equality rather than security, the Left seems less concerned about the harmful effects of intolerance. In fact, they have reframed the concept altogether. For example, political scientist Allison Harell (2010) uses the term “multicultural tolerance,” which she defines as the willingness to “support speech rights for objectionable groups” but not for “groups that promote hatred.” In other words, multicultural tolerance allows individuals to limit the rights of political opponents, so long as they frame their intolerance in terms of protecting others from hate... tolerance for all groups is positively correlated. It is not simply the fact that leftists oppose the expression of right-wing groups. Rather, those who are intolerant of one group tend to be intolerant of others and of political communication in general... the willingness to listen to opposing viewpoints and exercise tolerance is predicted by one’s exposure to counter-attitudinal messages (Mutz, 2006) . In other words, listening to viewpoints that contradict our own makes us more tolerant. In this way, the lack of ideological diversity in higher education contributes to intolerance, especially among leftist students"
Evidence that SJWs are intolerant, and that exposure to ideological diversity makes one more tolerant

The University of Missouri's Tim Tai and the Weaponization of Safe Space - "student activists did not want their tent city or the people in it photographed, and forcibly prevented him from taking pictures. “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American... I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe. It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces”... This behavior is a kind of safe-baiting: using intimidation or initiating physical aggression to violate someone’s rights, then acting like your target is making you unsafe... the mask has fallen.“Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?” an unusually frank protestor yells. “I need some muscle over here!” The woman calling for muscle? An assistant professor of mass media at the University of Missouri ... who had previously asked the campus for help attracting media attention."

Malcolm Gladwell critique: David and Goliath misrepresents the science. - "There were some interesting reactions to my review. Some people tagged me as a jealous hater. One even implied that as a cognitive scientist (rather than a neuroscientist) I somehow lacked the capacity or credibility to criticize anyone's logic or adherence to evidence... 'The world becomes less complicated with a Malcolm Gladwell book in hand. Mr. Gladwell raises questions — should David have won his fight with Goliath? — that are reassuringly clear even before they are answered. His answers are just tricky enough to suggest that the reader has learned something, regardless of whether that’s true'... the main flaw is a lack of logic and proper evidence in the argumentation. But consider what Gladwell's quote means. He is saying that if you understand his topics well enough to see what is erroneous or missing, then you are not the reader he wants. At a stroke he has said that anyone equipped to critically review his work should not be reading it. How convenient! Those who are left are only those who do not think the material is oversimplified... Gladwell sees a conflict between logical argument and what readers want... When someone with the reach and persuasive power of Malcolm Gladwell says that he is a storyteller who just uses research to "augment" the stories—who places the stories in the lead and the science in a supporting role, rather than the other way around—he's essentially placing his work in the category of inspirational books like The Secret"

The Misery of Finding an Apartment in Stockholm - "The apartment queue was started sometime in the 1960s. Anyone with a personal number could get in line for an apartment and obtain a first hand contract apartment at rent controlled prices, thus distorting real market prices. The geniuses that planned this decided to let ANYONE with a swedish social security number be in the queue. This resulted in people popping out kids and putting them in the queue right away before the kid was even 10 days old. As a result, some people have been in this queue for 19 years, even though they were probably not even ABLE to rent an apartment for 17 years (the average wait time is 7 years). When these people are legally allowed to rent, they are obviously at the front of the line and can get an apartment in the city center without problems. Meanwhile, everyone from outside of Stockholm has to wait at least a few years to get an apartment in the queue"

These Amazon Reviews Of "Mr Men" Books Are A Triumph Of Literary Criticism - "We meet Mr Uppity with his top hat and monocle - a clear and overt representation of the bourgeois industrialist. Other arriviste trappings such as his long limousine and imposing townhouse further give the game away. In a thinly-veiled reference to the oppression of the workers by the ruling class, we are told that Mr Uppity is rude to everyone, and the detail that he has no friends in Bigtown explicitly informs us that the masses are on the brink of revolution. Are we about to bear witness to class war, Hargreaves-style? To see Mr Uppity brought to account by the revolutionary power of the proletariat? Vanquished and overthrown by the party of the workers?"

Bumiputera will steal if left unaided, says law minister - "Poor Bumiputera will resort to theft, minister Nancy Shukri said today in her defence of the government’s recent move to reintroduce a race-preferential economic policy that has drawn the ire of Malaysia’s minority Chinese and Indian communities."
Since a Malaysian minister has said it, does that mean everyone can say that Malays are thieves?

Japan its own enemy in push to improve cybersecurity - "Mr Nawa found that five different cybersecurity contractors employed by the agency had discovered the breach — but that not one reported or shared their findings... “In the US, if they find a problem, they have to report,” he said. “The Japanese engineer feels he fails his duty if he escalates a report. They feel ashamed.”

Statistics Show Women Fare Badly in Muslim Countries, but U.N. Official Says Critics Are ‘Stereotyping’ Islam

Avoiding Last Place: Some Things We Don't Outgrow - "People near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder often oppose policies that help those below them, according to a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The phenomenon is called "last-place aversion."
People love to bash the rich for being assholes. But poor people can be assholes too

This man is painting penises on potholes so the council has to take action

These common vegetables are actually all the same plant - "Kale, collard greens, and Chinese broccoli were created by making the leaves of the ancestor plant's leaves bigger, and were the first brassica domesticated, sometime before 300 BCE. Collard greens were developed in Europe, while Chinese broccoli was domesticated in China. Red, green and savoy cabbages were created from a kale cultivar (likely the European collard greens) in the 1200s by selecting for a large terminal bud — the growing end at the top of the plant. The leaves are tightly wound around a short, wide stem (the cabbage's core). Brussels sprouts are like tiny cabbages, except they grow from the buds along the plant’s stem. They first hit the scene in the 1200s as well. Kohlrabi was created by selecting for a thicker stalk in a kale plant around the 1400s. Broccoli was created from a kale predecessor in the 1500s by selecting for the larger flower clusters, which are then harvested before they bloom. Cauliflower was developed from one of hundreds of broccoli varieties. The amazing evolution of Brassica Oleracea just goes to show: Humans have been tinkering with the genetics of our food for much longer than we've been creating what are now known as genetically modified foods, or GMOs. These new lab techniques just let us do it in a more precise and directed way."

Coliving: A Solution for Lonely Millennials? - "Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect."

The U.K. has a serious curry problem - "Immigration restrictions have created a severe shortage of chefs from South Asia. It's become an acute problem in recent years as the first generation of mostly Bangladeshi chefs who opened curry houses (as they are known in the U.K.) in the 1950s and 1960s retire from the kitchen... At least two to three curry houses are closing every week, said Oli Khan, a chef and senior vice president of the Bangladesh Caterers Association UK, which represents more than 12,000 curry houses across Britain. Khan told GlobalPost he feared the industry could "collapse" in four or five years unless the government relaxes its immigration restrictions and reduces the minimum salary requirements. While many of Britain's curry houses are family owned and operated, fewer young people are interested in taking over their parents' business when they retire... Curry houses employ roughly 150,000 people and generate 4.5 billion pounds (nearly $7 billion) in sales every year, according to Khan. In other words, it's a significant part of the British economy. Leaving the EU could be the solution, according to Paul Scully, who heads the all-party parliamentary group on the curry catering industry."

How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained - "If you were to go to southern Italy, you wouldn’t find people saying “gabagool.” But some of the old quirks of the old languages survived into the accents of Standard Italian used there. In Sicily or Calabria, you might indeed find someone ordering “mutzadell.” In their own weird way, Jersey (and New York and Rhode Island and Philadelphia) Italians are keeping the flame of their languages alive even better than Italian-Italians"