Links - 25th September 2016

The truth about the gender wage gap - "Consider a study of lawyers’ salaries from Mary Noonan at the University of Iowa. She found that men see their salaries decrease more than women when they switch to a part-time schedule for a year. "It seems that men in the legal profession who take on non-traditional gender roles (i.e., taking responsibility for child care) pay a high price for that behavior," Noonan and her study co-authors write. If the workplace penalizes men more than women for taking breaks from work, then it could be the wiser financial decision for a mother to take on more caregiving activities. — the decision that society overwhelmingly expects... Goldin tends to be skeptical of policy solutions because they can often play out in unpredictable ways. And they treat a symptom of the root problem — inflexible workplaces — rather than the problem itself... Consider paid maternity leave, a policy often advocated to support working women. It is undoubtedly great for newborns to have more time with their mother in the first months of life. But this could actually lead to lower wages for women, as they would be more likely to have disruption to their careers. "Well-intentioned policies backfire 98 percent of the time," Goldin argues. "We find it hard to think ahead to what will actually happen. We are thinking about policy when we should be thinking about the workplace. That's the cause of all of this.""

Happy Ending to Unfortunate Love Story of Dutchman in China - "The 41-year-old Alexander Pieter Cirk from the Netherlands recently traveled to China’s Hunan province in the hopes of meeting his online girlfriend there...
Cirk made headlines again when he was admitted to the hospital after waiting at the airport for over ten days, on July 31. The Dutchman reportedly was hospitalized for physical exhaustion and neglecting his diabetes, eating nothing but instant noodles and sleeping on airport benches. Doctors stated that he was critically ill... According to Zhang, she had met ‘Peter’ on an online platform only over a month ago and the two hit it off. They had discussed meeting one day, but according to Zhang, this would maybe take place a year from now. When he later suddenly send her a photo of him and an airplane, she thought he was joking and never expected him to really come to Changsha. In the days that followed, Zhang waited online to get in touch with Peter, but could not get hold of him. Zhang later traveled to Zhengzhou, where she underwent a plastic surgery procedure. It was from the hospital where she learned of Cirk’s arrival and hospitalization. She told reporters she was not able to come and meet him as she was still recovering from her plastic surgery, which was allegedly confirmed by her doctor... He flew back to Amsterdam on Tuesday, August 2, where he told reporters at the airport that he “took the wrong steps to meet the girl” and that it was “the wrong timing”. He also confirmed he did not have the girl’s phone number upon his arrival in China and that there was no way to reach her."

Caught on camera: Egyptian politicians talk covert Ethiopia attack - "Apparently unaware they were being filmed on live TV, Egyptian politicians meeting with Egypt’s president on Monday proposed to sabotage Ethiopia’s plans to build a massive dam on the Nile River upstream. Some politicians suggested backing rebels to carry out sabotage"

Bitten to death by a dead mans head: The unfortunate, deserving & true tale of Sigurd Eysteinsson - "Sigurd fastened Máels sethered head to his horses saddle and started the ride back north. During the ups and downs of the horse ride back , Máels dangling sethered and bucktoothed head uncontrollably and accidentally bit Sigurds leg. The wound on the leg quickly became infected and inflamed and before he reached home, Sigurd had dead. As unlikely as it was, he had been killed by the head of a dead man and the cheated Máel managed to get his revenge after death"

Tennessee grandmother marries a 17-year-old she met at her son's funeral - "When grieving pensioner Almeda Errell from Sevierville, Tennessee went to pay her last respects at her son's funeral, the last thing she expected to find was love. Following a whirlwind three-week romance, she and Gary Hardwick – now 18, and who had previously dated a woman of 77 – tied the knot in a ceremony which he arranged for just $200 (£137) in six days... Lisa asked them both along to a family meal at the nearby Chuck E Cheese's pizza restaurant for her daughter Evelyn's ninth birthday. Sitting next to each other, it didn't take long for the old spark to reignite... 'I just came out with it and said to him, 'Look, I'm 71 and you're 17. Am I too old for you?' He squeezed my hand, grinned, and replied: 'Age is just a number.'' That night, after returning to Lisa's with the others, Gary surprised her with red roses and a bracelet for her birthday which had been a few days before. Then they shared their first tender kiss under the moonlight outside on a bench. 'It made me feel like a teenager again,' smiled Almeda... on their wedding night, they had sex for the first time. 'It was wonderful, beyond my wildest dreams,' revealed Gary. 'She really is my dream woman and the physical side of our relationship couldn't be better.' 'It was the best ever,' agreed Almeda. 'I'd never had a connection like it before.'"

What’s the Difference Between Canoes and Kayaks? - "Exactly when a canoe should be called a kayak is not always clear, although there are some basic differences in design and how they're usually used. For example, paddlers usually sit on a seat or kneel in a canoe, whereas kayakers are usually seated on the bottom of the boat with their legs stretched out in front of them."

Revolution begins to devour its own in a PC whitewash - "Unlike other identities, which are to be celebrated, whiteness is vile. Among leading figures in the whiteness studies movement we find statements such as, “there is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of colour”. One of the pioneers of the field, US social scientist and historian Noel Ignatiev, has called for the “abolition of whiteness”. Statements such as this are hate speech under an academic veneer. Just imagine the response if any other race or identity were substituted... According to an online Harvard law article, “critical race scholars identify and embrace a radical tradition of race-conscious mobilisation as an empowerment strategy for African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other persons of colour”. “Race-conscious mobilisation”? Is this 21st-century progressive thought? That phrase would not be out of place in the 1930s Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer... Whiteness studies is the logical end point of PC academe’s loathing of Western civilisation and all its works, and its exaltation of the “other”. It is striking how traditional progressive concerns such as women’s rights and opposition to cruel practices dissolve at the first whiff of conflict with the imperatives of culture and identity. Expatriate feminist Germaine Greer has been pilloried, rightly, for comments on the ABC’s Q&A where she compared female genital mutilation, which she euphemised to “genital cutting”, with voluntary cosmetic surgery. According to her, banning it would be “an attack on cultural identity”."

London Airbnb Host Turns Away Israeli Guest For 'Occupying Lands' - "“This is how the world pictures you: aggressive settlers occupying land, destroying houses. In a few words: not respecting basic human rights,” wrote Mario. “On that basis, I just cannot even consider hosting you, even if you pay me millions.” Kelmer, speaking to Newsweek from Tel Aviv, said he raised the issue on the Airbnb Facebook page just to highlight the problem he was facing in trying to get a room in London but was met by a wave of criticism and abuse. “I started getting harassment and people have put up a picture of me on Facebook that I am like a stuck-up Israeli, all kinds of sh*t,” he says. “I’ve really had enough. I just pointed out an issue, a problem I had with the guy, and it became like me representing Israel”,,, In reaction to the incident, Airbnb said they have removed Mario from their platform"
If hatred under the guise of being anti-Israel is acceptable, all forms of traditionally sanctioned bigotry can be

Britain’s Second World War and the Country House | Podcast | History Extra - "I try not to talk about misconceptions in the sense that often what people believe about the war matters to them a great deal. And I think previously in my historical career I've made the mistake of setting myself up as mythbuster but actually I think that's a bit disrespectful. You know, who am I to say that people's myths aren't important? They might be not based on the same sort of interpretation of evidence that I put forward. But what I think is interesting is the extent to which those ideas are being constructed at the time. So one of the things that I try to bring out is that this isn't something which is happening afterwards. I think often when we think about the past, we can think about there's
a set historical reality and then somewhere between then and us it gets mythologised. Whereas actually what's happening is that even at the time, the way the war is being written about, it shapes how people understand it. And that comes down to us in the present day."
Post-modernist history!

Medieval kebabs and pasties: 5 foods you (probably) didn’t know were being eaten in the Middle Ages

7 (more) surprising facts about the history of medicine - "The Indian surgeon Sushruta (c600 BC) used a plant-leaf template to dissect a flap of skin from the patient's cheek, leaving it attached by a strip called a pedicle. Twisting it so the wound surface remained downwards, Sushruta would suture it into the place of the missing nose and affix small reed tubes to act as nostrils."

Nazi super-cows and defamed Gods: 7 strange and forgotten moments in history - "fast-forward to Christian Europe, 0 is associated with a null point or void. The void is where the devil (supposedly) lurks; you can’t have a demonic value, so the humble 0 was banned for centuries. It’s also why our calendar is wrong. You can’t have Jesus born in a year 0, so he was born in year 1, and the year before was 1 BC (ignoring completely any need for a year 0)."

Forgotten science: 7 of the strangest scientific theories in history - "Perhaps the most ingenious attempt to reconcile the poetic testimony of the Bible with actual geological fact came from the Victorian zoologist Philip Gosse (1810–88). Gosse was a well-respected naturalist who was both the inventor of the aquarium and the world’s leading expert upon the genitalia of butterflies (strange but true), so the outrageous claims he made in his controversial 1857 book Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot shocked the world of Victorian science. In this much-mocked title, Gosse made the extraordinary assertion that all fossils and timeworn geological features were simply fakes that had been placed there by God to test our faith. The bones of extinct animals, the remnants of vanished volcanoes, the tell-tale signs that our landscapes have been formed over millions of years by the actions of glaciers and rivers – all, said Gosse, were created by Jehovah purely in order to make our planet seem more ‘realistic’. Just as a set-designer might position food and dishes on a table on-stage from a meal that never really took place so as not to break the illusion of reality for theatre-goers, so God left the fossilised remains of animals like woolly mammoths that never really existed lying buried within rock-strata and sediments. Such was the Deity’s commitment to verisimilitude, Gosse explained, that he even went so far as to scatter the globe with fossilised dinosaur excrement!"

Kidding/not kidding: a medieval sense of humour - "The comedian Kumail Nanjiani performs a skit about a birthday party he went to as a child in Karachi, which he prefaces by saying that “at most birthdays in Pakistan, a monkey shows up.” Should his (American) audience laugh here, or shouldn’t they? If they don’t, Nanjiani says – because it makes sense to them that monkeys and parties mix in Pakistan – “that’s kind of racist.” But Pakistani children really do have monkeys show at their birthday parties, and laughing at that is probably also kind of racist. Laugh, don’t laugh: either way, it’s half right and half wrong."

I am pro-abortion, not just pro-choice: 10 reasons why we must support the procedure and the choice
That some people are pro-abortion is not a conservative straw man

American 'abortion addict' who had 15 terminations in 17 years publishes her memoir - "Irene Vilar said she had the abortions not from poverty or fear but as an extraordinary act of rebellion against her 'controlling' husband who did not want children"

The naughty nun – a raunchy woodcut from 1555

Facebook Has Been Intentionally Crashing Its Android App on Users - "The purpose of the test, which happened several years ago, was to see at what threshold would a person ditch the Facebook app altogether. The company wasn't able to reach the threshold. "People never stopped coming back," this person says."

China attacks Hong Kong 'separatists' as pro-independence candidate blocked from election - "Beijing has accused the U.S. of working with so-called separatists in Hong Kong and Taiwan to undermine China and plunge it into chaos. In a video posted online by the Chinese Supreme People's Procuratorate, apocalyptic images of Syria and Iraq are contrasted with bucolic views of China today. "The haze of 'domestic and international concerns' has not dispersed from the Chinese sky," the video says."
If Hong Kong or Taiwan's independence will make China like Syria or Iraq, it means the CCP has screwed up China like how the Baathists fractured Syria and Iraq with their tactics