Links - 9th July 2016

M'sian student owns up to ‘I love Israel’ Facebook post with apology, plea for forgiveness - "Mr Jonathan Ong Ujang, the Sarawakian who sparked protests online with his “I love Israel” Facebook post, has apologised for the gaffe and said he will bear full responsibility for any hurt he may have caused those who took offence to his comments. The Kuching-based Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) student also said that he had acted of his own volition in issuing the comments and that he had no intention to shame his university. He noted that his remarks on the issue of Israel pulling out their windsurfing sports team from the Langkawi meet had gone viral on social media and created quite a stir, especially as he had shown his backing of Israel, a nation that does not share diplomatic ties with Malaysia... He pledged to never again compete in future campus elections, adding that he will take full blame for his actions. Mr Ong then added that he would understand if there are those who no longer wanted to be associated with him because of the incident, saying: “I will not blame you.” “This too has been a great lesson for me personally to be careful in posting things online. Apologies once again for lacking sensitivity towards you all. Any official action taken against me I will graciously accept,” he said."
Saying that you love something and being against the politicisation of sport means you offend people. Malaysia Boleh!

I’m dropping my protest of Washington’s football team name - "9 out of 10 Native Americans judge the name to be innocent — just as team owner Snyder and the National Football League have said all along... every major American Indian organization has resoundingly condemned the team name, going back 40 years. Multiple dictionaries have defined “redskin” as “often offensive” since the 1970s. I also acted partly out of what I saw as a high-minded desire to support a politically weak ethnic group. It felt like a token of penance for the sufferings imposed on Native Americans over the centuries by the continent’s European conquerors and their descendants... it’s unsettling to learn now that I vented all that energy and passion on behalf of such a small fraction of the Native American population... Those who have opposed the team name include more than a quarter of Washington-area residents, along with President Obama, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and 50 Democratic U.S. senators. Many of us thought we were defending a group that needed support. But it feels presumptuous for us to say we know Indians’ interests better than they do. We can’t credibly claim that 9 out of 10 Indians somehow just don’t realize they’re being insulted. Some Indians told The Post that they actively support the name, because its use means Native Americans haven’t been forgotten... Nearly three-quarters of Indians in the Post poll said they were “not at all” bothered by the use of Native American imagery in sports. The split between leaders and followers is so great that I don’t see how a non-Indian can champion the position backed by a sliver of the community... 4 out of 5 Native Americans said they would not be personally offended if a non-native person called them a “redskin.” That suggests that dictionaries should add some kind of caveat in defining the word as a slur"
Political correctness means even if 1 person is offended, the name must be changed! Even if 10 people think it's a good thing.

ISIS recruitment: Kerry faults Israel, Singapore’s Lee faults Saudi/Qatari ideology - "He claimed “there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation.” This, however, is perplexing, because ISIS is recruiting Asian jihadists in droves, and Asians for the most part do not care much about the Middle East Peace talks. On 25 September, U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Locklear disclosed that ISIS had recruited 1,000 Asian fighters using social media, a number that is probably higher by now. Moreover, it is likely that Secretary Kerry’s good friends in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, rather than the stalled Middle East peace process, are causing the jump in ISIS recruitment in Asia and elsewhere in the world. Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew already recognized the root cause of ISIS back in 2003, and pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia for the cause of terrorism in Asia."

The Bus Incident: 24-yr-old American Goes Ballistic - "The video of an apparent African-American man going off on an elderly Korean man has gone viral. According to a news report on TBSeFM this morning, on Saturday night the black man, who’s an American English teacher, was talking loudly on his cell phone when the Korean man told him to be quiet several times. The word Nee ga (니가), meaning you in Korean, was allegedly spoken, causing the black man to fly into a rage... 'By the time I left Korea I had begun to realize why there’s so much racism there in the first place – it’s partly because foreigners act so fucking dumb'"
When offence is subjective and the lowest common denominator wins...; some Americans think that Chinese people saying "那个" are being racist and using the word "nigger" too

Muslim nations block gay groups from UN Aids conference - "Major Western nations are protesting a move to block gay and transgender groups from attending a high-level United Nations conference on AIDS. A letter from Egypt on behalf of 51 countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation asked that 11 organizations not be allowed to attend the conference"
"LGBT Against Islamophobia"

Speaking to the Teenage Feminists of Twitter Who Are Obsessed with Serial Killers
No true feminist puts sugar in her porridge
Me: It could be "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". So maybe many feminists deep down want a man to dominate them
Someone: or maybe ppl are using the word 'feminist' as a shield to protect and absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. there seems to be no scenario where you can cross a 'feminist'

“Beer” Word Is Haram In Malaysia? - "Malaysian muslim are advise to avoid all non-alcoholic beer even when is certify Halal by other country Halal standard.
He said this was because the word “beer” was not suitable to be used for a non-alcholic drink, as to Muslims, beer was “haram” (prohibited).
- Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom"
What happened to violating the principle of Islamic jurisprudence that one should not doubt?

A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of acupuncture for the treatment of childhood persistent allergic rhinitis. - "active acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture in decreasing the symptom scores for persistent allergic rhinitis and increasing the symptom-free days. No serious adverse effect was identified"

Acupuncture for persistent allergic rhinitis: a randomised, sham-controlled trial - "Our findings suggest that acupuncture is effective in the symptomatic treatment of PAR"

Think acupuncture's a hoax? Think again - "new research published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience finds that the natural compound adenosine, known for its anti-inflammatory properties, floods tissue that is punctured or aggravated, and may be the secret ingredient in acupuncture."

Placebos Work Even When You Know

For China’s upper middle class, driving for Uber is a cure for loneliness - "Uber is filling an empty niche created in an upwardly-mobile generation that finds itself far from extended families, or with lots of time on their hands after retirement. Many of them have no siblings and few cousins because of China’s one-child policy, so few relatives their own age. And they sometimes find making new friends difficult—to many Chinese who are naturally quiet and restrained, striking up a conversation with a stranger at a club or a bar is not a comfortable habit. Nor is it common for upwardly mobile workers to take on shifts as a bartender or waiter in order to meet new friends, because those jobs are deemed inferior. But there’s no such stereotype for drivers—especially when you own the car yourself... he uses Uber to find tennis partners. Signing on Uber’s driver app right after he plays at a court, he is likely to pick up another playerhe uses Uber to find tennis partners. Signing on Uber’s driver app right after he plays at a court, he is likely to pick up another player... He also intentionally picks up Uber passengers after he goes to a state-backed aerospace academy in Beijing to sell electronic components. He wants to know from the passengers coming from the academy “what products they are making,” he said. “I might get some opportunities.”"

Do More Women on the Board Mean Better Results? - "much of the research on financial performance and female leadership tends to be sponsored by groups with an interest in boosting women’s representation in business, like Catalyst, a U.S. nonprofit... A 2011 study by two University of Michigan professors showed that the stock price of Norwegian companies actually dropped when they began adding women to their boards... Better performance by companies with female board members doesn’t necessarily suggest that the women led to the stronger performance, either; it could also mean that companies that are financially successful tend to be more inclusive. Last year, professors at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the University of Edinburgh examined two thousand firms and found that larger companies with bigger boards were more likely to add women"

Dr M: I failed to change lazy Malays - ""I spend 22 years trying to change the Malays but I admit I failed. However, there are a few success stories," he said in his remarks after launching a book by Anas Zubedy on Thursday. Dr Mahathir lamented at the laziness of the Malays saying "if anyone asks me today, I would have to say Malays are lazy." He said the men would become Mat Rempit, referring to groups of youths road-racing on their motorcycles at night, when they failed. This is evident in the gender breakdown in public universities. "During my school time, if we fail our examination we feel embarassed. "Seventy percent of the students in our higher learning institution are female and only 30% are male."

The lazy, greedy, dishonest Malay - "if the Malays were more like the Chinese, then the British would not have needed to bring the Chinese to Malaya from the mid-1800s onwards to work the tin mines. It is because the Malays did not want to work the tin mines that they needed to bring in the Chinese labourers. And the same goes for the Indians who were brought in to work the estates. It was because the Malays did not want to do that job so they had to bring in the Indian estate labourers. If the Malays were prepared to do that job then, today, Malaysia’s population would not be only about 60% or so Malays. Malaysia’s population would probably be 95% Malay like in the East Coast of West Malaysia (except for the population of the main towns, of course). I faced this same problem back in the 1970s-1980s when I operated a small fleet of fishing boats in Terengganu. Initially I tried to use Malay fishermen but could not make any money. The Malays were not prepared to fish for long periods of time. They would go out in the morning and return the same day. Hence we lost money. I then brought in Chinese fishermen from Sungai Besar and Sabak Bernam. They would go out and return three, four or five days later once the hold was full of fish or once they ran out of ice and fuel. Invariably we made money because the cost of ice and fuel for three days or more was not that much different from the cost of ice and fuel if you just fished for one day... many Chinese and Indians talk fondly about the Malays they knew back in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, by the 1970s, things started to change. The Malays started to become more aggressive, abrasive, competitive and greedy. They started to look at things from a Malay versus non-Malay perspective."

Mahathir defends ‘lazy Malays’ remarks - "“I am ashamed when I see the Chinese students studying three different languages, but still have a better grasp of the English language compared with their Malay peers “The Malays study two languages, Bahasa Malaysia and English, but they keep saying ‘all right, that is enough, no need to learn English any more’.” He was referring to the government’s decision to abolish the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English, which he had introduced in 2003. He had said that despite all the government had done to help them, the Malays still expected things to come easy and refused to adopt working cultures of more successful races, such as those in Japan, the nation integral to the Mahathir administration’s Look East policy. “Values dictate if one race should succeed or not … like the Japanese, they are ashamed if they fail. That is why they are afraid to fail … but the Malays, they lack shame,” he said."

Why AMWF is viewed as better than WMAF on this subreddit. : hapas - "The main difference—and also the reason why AMWF, despite being so much rarer than WMAF, produces so many better quality children (yes, I'm considering this as a known fact by now)—is that due to the imbalance of racial perceptions by Caucasians, Asian men need to fight an uphill battle to get their "prized" white bride off their golden pedestal. It's basically all to do with how masculine the father is, how much of a fighter he is. As creepy as this Success Insider dude is for constantly talking about his fiancé's whiteness, this guy is out there getting what he wants, constantly focusing on self-improvement. What happens when he has a child? That child gets a killer education and mindset; I won't be surprised if this dude's son becomes famous. When the average Asian man is filtered out from the white dating game, the Asian man needs to be above average. Again, tendencies here; I've got to say this because there will always be a moron shouting the "not all" sentence. For WMAF on the other hand, there is no uphill battle on the man's part. A white man is born with the only thing he needs in order to find an East Asian bride: his race and skin colour. There is no need to be exceptional. In fact, many people are of the opinion that white men dating Asian women are on the lower end of masculinity—losers, as they call them—and that they date them not by choice, but by lack of choice: couldn't get a white woman, gets the next best thing (with the bonus stereotype of good sex)."

Calvin Cheng - This is what happens when you have aggressive... - [On Pink Dot & Wear White] "This is what happens when you have aggressive in-your-face activism.
Every action elicits a reaction.
Please do not import the western culture wars into Singapore.
If I had my way, I would ban both movements. Harmony and peace are much more important."