Links - 11th April 2016

timbre+ - Central Region - JTC LaunchPad @ one-North - "Going through Yelp reviews about timbre+ can be time consuming. Foursquare tips are short and right to the point."
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Bernie Sanders wants a contested convention for Democrats. - "Bernie has even less of a chance of locking up the nomination ahead of the convention. By my count, he’d need to win a whopping 77 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to reach the magic number without the help of superdelegates. He’d need to win an almost-as-daunting 67 percent of them just to arrive in Philadelphia with more pledged delegates that Clinton—which is central to his case that he deserves the nomination over his establishment-backed rival. Hitting that mark would take a major reversal of fortunes. To date, Sanders has won only 44 percent of pledged delegates. While the unfriendly terrain of the Old South is behind him, he’s currently trailing Clinton by double digits in the three biggest delegate-prizes remaining on the calendar: New York, Pennsylvania, and California. Even if Bernie gets hot and reels off wins in all three of those contests, he’d need blowout wins, not narrow victories—and that still might not be enough to take the lead. Team Sanders wants superdelegates to divvy themselves up between the candidates based on the popular vote, effectively removing themselves from the equation altogether. That, though, is not going to happen, since the party created superdelegates for the very purpose of picking the party’s preferred candidate in a tight race. The best Bernie can reasonably expect is to force the superdelegates to decide the race, and hope they abandon Clinton en masse at the convention. (Since the Democratic contest is a two-candidate race, the nomination is all but certain to be decided on the first ballot, unlike the GOP convention, which could go on indefinitely.) Barring some sort of Clinton catastrophe, that’s just not going to happen if he’s still trailing Hillary in the pledged delegate column.
Remember, superdelegates are, by definition, part of the Democratic establishment"
Not that the Bernie echo chamber cares

Jersey MP Steve Pallet goes to BUDAPEST instead of Bucharest after booking error - "It's not the first time a geographical mix up has caused embarrassment. Earlier this year a medical student attempted to fly to Guyana to begin his scholarship but ended up nearly 2,000 miles away in the Brazilian city of Goiania. In 2013 Lamenda Kingdon, a British woman, had planned a visit to the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. Instead she mistakenly caught a flight across the Atlantic to the tropical Caribbean island of Grenada. Also in 2013 Sandy Valdiviseo and her husband Triet Vo were intending to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar in Senegal with Turkish Airlines. However, instead they ended up almost 7,000 miles away – on an entirely different continent – in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, after the airport codes were mixed up."

Special Providence - "far from being amateurish and stumbling, American foreign policy has succeeded astonishingly well over two centuries. The United States was dealt a good hand, Mead concedes, but she has played her cards exceptionally well. Mead attributes this success to four schools of thought, named after four American statesmen: the Hamiltonian (protection of commerce), Jeffersonian (maintenance of a democratic system), Jacksonian (populist values, military strength), and Wilsonian (moral principle). The title of Mead's book comes from a remark usually attributed to Otto von Bismarck, who is alleged to have said, "God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.""

Sophie Turner Stands With Emilia Clarke: There's Hope For Jon Snow - "we also took the opportunity to ask Turner about her controversial rape scene and the media firestorm that followed… and from the looks of things, she’s taking the backlash with stride... “Listen, I think, if you don’t want to watch the show don’t watch the show,” she continued. “You know what you’re getting into when you sign up for HBO. But those kind of things… we’re not a show that distracts from what really happened back in medieval times, and still continues today. I think, why was my scene getting so much press, when so much is happening in the real world, and there’s no press about it? I mean, come on, it’s a TV show, concentrate on something more important, here.”"

'Breathing is overrated' for those immersed in underwater rugby - "“If it’s a choice between scoring or breathing, the choice is obvious. Breathing is overrated.”"

ELDERLY IN JAPAN: LONG-LIVE OKINAWANS, ROBOTS AND ACTIVE RETIREES - "Many of the working elderly work at menial jobs such as flag men, playground sweepers and park cleaners. A typical retiree receives $2,000 a month in pension and $700 a month from part time work."

Could Obesity Help Protect Against Dementia?

Journalists, Armenians, gays are ‘representatives of sedition,’ Erdoğan says

is a man's skin really different from a woman's? - "Androgen (testosterone) stimulation causes an increase in skin thickness, which accounts for why a man’s skin is about 25% thicker than a woman’s. In addition to being thicker, a man’s skin texture is tougher."
Men literally have thicker skin than women

We Thought Female Athletes Were Catching Up to Men, but They're Not - "Running. Swimming. Rowing. Kayaking. Short distance, long distance. Accomplished in teams or attempted alone.These are such diverse events, requiring different parts of the body and diverse types of talent. And yet they all share something: Their women's speed world records are all about 90 percent of their men's speed world records, in both short, middle and long distances... the 10 percent difference is clear from sport to sport and does not appear to be closely correlated with overall women's participation rates in athletics. Regardless of specifics, the factors which separate men and women probably seem to be, in Hammerman's words, "simple and basic." Taking a kind of wild shot at which biological factors might affect athletic performance, Hammerman looked at hemoglobin counts and the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete can use in a minute. And guess what he found? Men have an average of 13.6 to 17.5 grams of hemoglobin per decalliter in their blood. Women have 12.0 to 15.5 g/dl. The ratio? .88 to .89."

Freedom of Information Act: The pursuit of transparency is leading to dishonesty and intrigue - Telegraph - "Being a journalist, I naturally enjoy telling the public things which powerful people do not want them to know. (One of those things, by the way, is that media organisations virtually never practise the transparency we preach, so we are pots who spend our time blackening kettles. And funnily enough, FoI provides an exemption for journalistic endeavour, so we are more privileged than ministers.) But I come at this subject from a different perspective because of the historical work in which I am also engaged. I am writing the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher. I therefore study a great deal of government paper from her period. I am constantly struck by how frank and full these documents are... Why? Because the people writing and collating these papers knew that no unauthorised person would see them. It is a matter of confidence, in both senses of that word... the effect of FoI is to promote dishonesty and concealment... This is a sad loss to history, and therefore to the public understanding of government which FoI is supposed to assist. But it is even more serious than that. It does not mean only that the records of government are skimped. It means also that government itself is corrupted."

Keith Richards blasts heavy metal, rap in interview - "“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.”"

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ASOS isn't always online shopping

BOMBING POLICY. (Hansard, 9 February 1944) - "The noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, at the beginning of this war, in reference to this very thing, described war as bloody and brutal. It is idle to suppose that it can be carried on without fearful injury and violence from which non-combatants as well as combatants suffer. It is still true, nevertheless, that there are recognized limits to what is permissible. The Hague Regulations of 1907 are explicit. "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." M. Bonfils, a famous French jurist, says: If it is permissible to drive inhabitants to desire peace by making them suffer, why not admit pillage, burning, torture, murder, violation? I have recalled the joint declaration and these pronouncements because it is so easy in the process of a long and exhausting war to forget what they were once held without question to imply, and because it is a common experience in the history of warfare that not only war but actions taken in war as military necessities are often supported at the time by a class of arguments which, after the war is over, people find are arguments to which they never should have listened... What we do in war—which, after all, lasts a comparatively short time—affects the whole character of peace, which covers a much longer period. The sufferings of Europe, brought about by the demoniac cruelty of Hitler and his Nazis, and hardly imaginable to those in this country who for the last five years have not been out of this island or had intimate association with Hitler's victims, are not to be healed by the use of power only, power exclusive and unlimited. The Allies stand for something greater than power. The chief name inscribed on our banner is "Law." It is of supreme importance that we who, with our Allies, are the liberators of Europe should so use power that it is always under the control of law"

Nitric Oxide - Official Journal of the Nitric Oxide Society - "Nitric Oxide includes original research, methodology papers and reviews relating to nitric oxide and other gasotransmitters such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. Special emphasis is placed on the biological chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, enzymology and pathological significance of these molecules in human health anddisease. The journal also accepts manuscripts relating to plant and microbial studies involving these molecules."
This must be a very fascinating gas

China's one-child policy has created an amoral generation, says author Xinran Xue 25/05/2015 - "I got this news from China that said one pianist student, he's a top pianist in China, his parents really hope he make it. He very much want to be that top person, so he protect his fingers, he never touched anything sharp. So even he wants fruit, either his family chop or his classmates. So one night, he drive his girlfriend back and he hit a passing women who's a mother of a young boy. He stopped the car. When he saw the women was bleeding, asked him for help, then he suddenly, he didn't think he's facing the bleeding life-endangered women. First thing he thinks is his father will punish him, so surprised, shockingly, he took the fruit knife, which he never touched, used his fingers, which played beautiful piano, stabbed this women to death. Then the story not finished because this case and the whole of China on the internet divide this different group. I was really shocked by one group of students from one child policy, they are all single, and even the girls say, if I were him I would do the same thing, because our lives are much more valuable than them and we don't want those peasants to give our future trouble... he has no idea how to open his suitcase and hang out his own clothes. I said he just graduated from university, and mum said, yes every single weekend I went to his university to tidy up his bedroom...
ELEANOR HALL: Well, that's another interesting question too, but before we get to the issue of whether these children will in fact have their own children, there's another chapter that you have on Golden Swallow. You write that she hates her mother.
XINRAN XUE: She's totally protected by her parents until she was 26. This is why she said my parents treated me as a pet, not a human being. So she decided to cut off from her parents until she become an independent woman but I didn't realise she just cut off from her parents, no contacts... single children family, many of them, they don't want a child because they don't want another baby replace the power of such attention... many parents want to take a chance before they come to their 40 to have a second child. Then surprisingly or shockingly is their first child is against it. So the one girl was 13 and she told her mum if you don't stop, I don't want anyone to share my family, I will jump off the building. So the mum had abortion."

Chinatownology - "Chinatownology is dedicated to the history, heritage and culture of Singapore Chinatown and Chinatowns around the world. In this website, you can find articles on the history, culture and events in Singapore Chinatown, and Chinatowns around the world. We use Chinatowns as a platform to explore and to understand the development of overseas Chinese 华侨 societies, its food culture and material culture."

The Food Lab: Is Good Pizza Really All About the Water? - "If everything went according to theory, the red and blue line should show a definite and steady increase as mineral content goes up, while the green line should show a definite and steady decrease. This is clearly not the case, with the lines zig-zagging all over the place. True, the two batches made with Evian—the highest mineral content of all the water we tried—delivered the crispest crusts, but overall, there is not enough of a trend in the data to make a definitive statement. But the most interesting part of the graph is that every step up the red line takes, the purple line is right there along with it. Apparently, our overall enjoyment of pizza crust is strongly related to how crisp it is. I am confident that a secret underground laboratory at Domino's headquarters came to this same conclusion back in 1993, prompting them to overcompensate for its normal doughy fare by rolling out its Thin Crust line."