Links - 24th June 2016

The road to Brexit: 16 things you need to know about what will happen if we vote to leave the EU - "Following a vote for Brexit, a period of negotiations about the UK’s future relationship with the EU would begin, as set out in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The Prime Minister triggers this by notifying the European Council (the collective body of the 28 member states’ prime ministers or presidents) that the UK intends to withdraw. That opens a two-year window for negotiating withdrawal terms – a period that can be extended, but only with the unanimous support of all the member states. We leave once a deal – which requires the support of the UK and a ‘qualified majority’ of the remaining 27 member states (specifically, 20 of them, comprising at least 65 per cent of their population) – is struck. If the two-year period comes to an end with neither a deal nor an extension, we leave automatically on terms we may not like"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, A Complex Man - "[On Duterte] He's presided over a remarkable recovery, with Davao now a prosperous and law abiding city. The local business community puts this entirely to the mayor's personal leadership style. He won't tolerate corruption, they told me. There's a strict smoking ban and a slow speed limit for traffic. Unlike almost anywhere else in the Philippines, these are actually enforced. Mr Duterte famously turned himself in for punishment when he was caught riding his motorbike without a helmet. Late at night, he likes to drive around town anonymously in a taxi checking on crime. He won't tolerate drug dealing either - a big issue in a country which is plagued by crystal meth addiction... She was warned by a police officer who'd been trying to arrest her oldest son Richard, then 18 years old, that if she didn't hand him over, all her boys would be killed one by one. And that's what happened. Over a period of 6 years, 4 of them were murdered, almost certainly by officially backed death squads. The youngest was 14 when he died. It's impossible not to feel queasy about a presidential candidate who sanctions that way of fighting crime. Yet there are many other sides of Rodrigo Duterte. He is applauded in Davao for example for measures he's taken to protect vulnerable women. He advocates negotiations, not confrontation with armed insurgents.And he supports LGBT rights. And in contrast to his macho image, he weeps freely and says he can't sleep without an old blanket that his mother gave him as a baby"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, India: How to Feed a Nation - "There is a downside to the Green Revolution basically made rice and wheat replace a lot of other cereals. A lot of them were far more nutritious than rice and wheat. All kinds of millets... pearl millets, I mean it's all sorts of millets... there's a helluva lot of them. All localised, different types. People have lost that taste. Most people will not go back to it. And there are minuses to all of these. There is also something which is an overhang of the fact that we have traditionally been a vegetarian society. Which means that much of our protein is coming really from pulses as well as from milk. These are the two main sources of protein in the country. Pulse production hasn't increased. Whatever increase has taken place has taken place in the last 10 years or so. Most countries in the world don't treat pulses as an important food. And therefore it's not easy to import. Milk has been one great saviour, that has grown, considerably. But there is an intrinsic problem when you try to use just 2 or 3 things as the source of protein. Most Indians are non vegetarians but we have a culture which dictates vegetarianism to a lot of people. They would actually go out and eat the other stuff, but they'll probably say that they don't"

The Office of Inclusive Excellence Sounds Like a Cult - "Yiannopoulos’s speaking series, which has generatedsimilar controversies at a host of other campuses, is called “The Dangerous Faggot Tour.” (Yiannopoulos is openly gay.) Yiannopoulos’s shtick involves deliberate provocation. One could even say that he is trying to reclaim faggot, a word that understandably offends a lot of people, although context should matter... Haynes’ eager repetition of meaningless buzzwords—Inclusive excellence! Collective sense of community! Ideological re-programming!—is both humorous and a little creepy, when one considers that his goal is to eliminate controversial expression from campus. Second, I might have expected the Office of Inclusive Excellence to support, well, inclusion: inclusion for pro-LGBT activists, inclusion for people like Yiannopolous who have a different opinion on the issues, inclusion for everybody. In UC-Irvine’s usage, inclusion appears to mean conformity (the better for “fortifying our collective sense of community,” I guess.) I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: look, college administrators, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual."

X-Men: Apocalypse has a bad case of Batman v Superman disease - "the massive success of Fox’s Deadpool(which incorporated two X-Men not seen here) suggested a possible new direction for hero action in general. Its rambunctious humor was a big hit with audiences, and it reminded filmmakers that fans don’t need all their heroes to be like the glowering, repressed trauma victims seen here... The entire film feels like a Prozac ad, where everything has gone emotionally gray, and the world is waiting for a serotonin hit"

Why Does the Democratic Party Have Superdelegates? - "The driving idea behind the creation of this new group of delegates was to prevent highly contested nomination processes from producing a non-competitive candidate at the expense of the Party as happened in 1968 and 1972"

What's an animal? Road Traffic Act to be reviewed to dispel doubts - "Under current rules, motorists are only required to stop and help when they hit animals listed in the Act — such as a dog, horse, ass, mule, sheep, pig, goat or cattle. Failure to do so may result in a fine of up to S$3,000 or a jail term of up to a year. The Act is silent on other animals, including cats, monkeys, birds, rabbits, and wild boars."

Indonesia’s sex trade ‘impossible’ to shut down - "In school, Putri dreamed of becoming a doctor, but soon realised she would not be able to afford it. Her mother could barely pay her school fees, and she says the family constantly faced a chronic shortage of money. Being in the sex trade has helped. Putri claims an income of about Rp 8 million (US$600) every month, compared to the Rp 2.15 million (US$160) minimum wage in her hometown. Putri tells me there are other girls who work alongside their mothers. Now a mother herself, Putri hopes against all hope that her daughter won’t eventually follow suit. “I really want to see my child become successful and make her mum proud. I don’t want her to follow in her mum’s or grandma’s footsteps,” she said."

Blind woman Mary Ann Franco gets her sight back after falling over - "A woman who has been blind for the past 20 years has regained her sight after she fell over at her home."

Sex Talk for Muslim Women - NYTimes.com - "I am an Egyptian, Muslim woman who waited until she was 29 to have sex and has been making up for lost time. My upbringing and faith taught me that I should abstain until I married. I obeyed this until I could not find anyone I wanted to marry and grew impatient. I have come to regret that it took my younger self so long to rebel and experience something that gives me so much pleasure.

Arthur and Paul - gay-men-only-hotel-in-phnom-penh - "Not only are we gay-friendly, but we are a men-only hotel... Our rooms bear the names of the most famous and glamorous gay personalities and gay couples: Jules and Jim, Yves and Pierre, Pierre and Gilles, Kola Botom, Mika, Stefano and Domenico, Ricky, Jean and Jean, Tom and Richard, Elton and David. That should give you a head start to unleash your most wild fantasies. You will be welcomed, pampered and massaged by a staff exclusively composed of boys, providing highest quality service to the greatest degrees of elegance and discretion."
Apparently Cambodia is a gay paradise

Muslim women 'banned' from Facebook - "Muslim women should delete their Facebook accounts, not wear trousers or leave the house without their husband's permission under controversial rules published by British Islamic associations... It comes after the Blackburn Muslim Association, which is an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain, stated women should not be able to travel further than 48 miles without a male chaperone."

Shahr-e Gholghola - "Bamiyan's ruler Jalaludin held strong under Genghis Khan's siege, but he didn't reckon on the treachery of his daughter. She had quit her widowed father's castle in a fit of pique over his remarrying a princess from Ghazni. She betrayed the castle's secret entrance, expecting to be rewarded through her own betrothal to the Mongol ruler. But he put her to the sword anyway and slaughtered the rest of the defenders. The noise of the furious violence gave the citadel's modern name - 'City of Screams'."

TURKMENISTAN by Kim Lau - "While it bears many similarities to other markets of Central-Asia, Tolkuchka is unique in its way: screaming camel being hauled into trucks, trading of doors, cauldrons and satellites captures much attention."

Single Bronze Age 'king' responsible for half of western European men - "100 percent of the men tested descend from just one man who lived 190,000 years ago, more than a centamillennium before humanoids left Africa to explore the planet... 18th century Russian peasant Feodor Vassilyev fathered 87 children, including 22 sets of twins. To her credit, his first wife gave birth to 69 of them - and they're both in the Guinness Book of Records."

Cecil Jacobson The Baby Maker - "Cecil Jacobson was a US fertility doctor who was indicted in 1992 for using his own sperm to impregnate his female patients... It’s suspected that Jacobson may have fathered as many as 75 of these children by inseminating women with his sperm."

Can't Hack a Hacker: Reverse Engineering a Discovered ATM Skimmer

Do Singaporeans Really Vote Along Racial Lines? - "Would you simply believe someone’s questionable claims without concrete proof? For more than three decades, the People’s Action Party (PAP) government in Singapore has been peddling the notion that many Singaporeans vote along racial lines and that this has the potential to trigger a lack of minority representation in Parliament... Using all election statistical data since 1959, this article provides empirical evidence confirming the veracity of these two statements.
1) The assertion that Singaporeans vote along racial lines is fiction.
2) The assertion that Singaporeans vote along political lines is fact."

Modest makeover for Barbie - "Haneefah designs 'Hijarbies' to reflect modern Muslim culture and religion."

Ustad Metal: Muslim cleric by day, band singer by night - "Now hailed as the "new mainstream", metal music has captivated hundreds of thousands of fans, from the pluralistic city of Bandung, where metal is said to have taken root in the 1990s, to deeply religious Aceh province, where a concert last month saw teenage girls in headscarves head-banging along with boys... "My voice is not used for phone porn sex so, why haram?" Ms Asri retorted. "Metal sounds rough, but it is tolerant and celebrates diversity and creativity. It is not deviant"... "Allah's laws must not be violated, like getting drunk and womanising. We don't want to send wrong messages, so we always check our lyrics against religious scripts," he said."

How Ahsoka Tano Completed the Arc of Anakin Skywalker - "The problem with the large gap between Episodes 2 and 3 is that Anakin’s arc is essentially missing. We see the beginning; we see the end, but we don’t get any of his transformation from A to B. Thus, audiences had a hard time connecting with the character. Enter Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s Padawan learner"

Hexi Corridor - "Hexi Corridor (河西走廊), Gansu China, is the historical passage into and out of China from the Xiyu (西域) – the western territories. This passage corridor contains many artifacts"

Effects of Infidelity on Men vs. Women Surprise Researchers - "Across the board, men felt guiltier about sexual cheating, while women felt guiltier about emotional infidelity... people might have an inherent inability to see one's values as different from that of a partner's... while both men and women think it would be harder for their significant other to forgive sexual, as opposed to emotional, infidelity, women —not men — say that they'd be more likely to leave if they found out their partner was sleeping with someone else."