Links - 8th February 2017

Hassan Raza - People involved in attacking, burning and destroying... - "People involved in attacking, burning and destroying Ahmedi mosque did not belong to ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda or Boko Haram. They were ordinary people. So your theory of "Hey the combined forces of all terrorist organizations make up only 0.003% of the global Muslim population, so ordinary Muslims are peaceful" fails because guess what? One call from mosque was enough to transform the so called ordinary "peaceful" Muslims into a mob today. These people were normal people who live among us, they are not affiliated with any terrorist outfits but the fact that one sermon was enough to turn them into a mob shows us the severity of the people we are dealing with. These people might not qualify to be labelled ''terrorists'' but by no means can they be called "peace loving" either so PLEASE spare me with your 0.003% bullshit."

The story behind the world's oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago - "In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world's first museum."

For the love of God, stop donating canned goods to the food bank - "Canned goods have a particularly low rate of charitable return. They’re heavy, they’re awkward and they can be extremely difficult to fit into a family’s meal plan. Worst of all, the average consumer is buying those canned goods at four to five times the rock-bottom bulk price that can be obtained by the food bank itself... And then there’s the logistical nightmare when these boxes show up at the food bank’s loading dock... It doesn’t feel as good to donate money. As much as we like to pretend that charitable giving is a selfless act, a lot of it is driven by the human need to feel special and magnanimous."

Why men might have a point about ‘man flu’ – viruses want to kill men more than women, scientists find - "They appear to be particularly nasty if they are the sort of virus that is transmitted from mother to child, such as rubella, chickenpox, zika and hepatitis. Put simply, women are more valuable to the virus than men are because they can pass it on to more people... "Survival of the fittest is relevant to all organisms, not just animals and humans. It's entirely probable that this sex-specific virulent behaviour is happening to many other pathogens causing diseases. It's an excellent example of what evolutionary analysis can do for medicine.""

Theresa May's leather trousers prompt political row - "Former chancellor Ken Clarke has not been impressed, telling the Sunday Politics it was "tedious" that stories about what women politicians were wearing featured in the newspapers. "I feel sorry for women in politics," he said. "I'm glad to say men in politics don't have great news stories about what they are wearing."
But people talk about Trump's hair...

Belgian porn photos prompt suspension of government worker - "The woman has worked for the ministry for six years, and insists the pictures are private and nothing to do with her job, Belgian reports say. But her boss is said to have disagreed, because photos posted on Twitter clearly featured the ministry itself. "

Two young girl 'suicide bombers' blow themselves up near Nigerian market - "One bomber appeared no older than seven and the second about eight years old... a female suicide bomber carrying a baby on her back was shot by soldiers at a checkpoint on 28 November, detonating her explosives and killing the woman and the baby"

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Treating the Sex Offender - "You feel a lot safer. If you were in a so-called normal prison, you have to hide your crime from certain people because certain people don't like it. I mean I don't like it meself, but I have to live with what I've done. But when you come here, you have nothing to hide from anybody. Everybody knows that everybody is a sex offender so people just get on with their time...
You can't cure people of a sexual attraction to children... It's there and it will be there forever. If someone has a sexual preference for violence, that may be there forever. What we give them are the tools to cope with those risky thoughts, those risky feelings, so they know the harm done, so they know ways that they can keep themselves and other people safe...
Around 1-2% of the general population could be classified as pedophiles. But defining a child sex offender with that term remains complex.
'The sort of definition of people who are pedophiles is that they are sexually interested in children. And I think that's sometimes quite different to people who have opportunistic interest in children. That's not necessarily about sexual gratification. It could be but it depends. It could be for other reasons. And that might not necessarily be their sexual preference. It might be who happens to be who's available for their sexual gratification'...
'A lot of the work we do is aimed at building the self-esteem of people that have committed a sexual offence, because a lot of sexual offending is as a direct result of low self-esteem, especially against children because they don't judge. They have no experience of sex. They have no experience of adult things, so people can feel more comfortable with children'..
'I am a victim of sexual abuse myself. And I think that caused a lot of trouble. I think my sexual development, it stopped when I was abused. And that's probably the... major factor'"

BBC World Service - Assignment , The Battle for Barcelona - "There are 14 of these bike, scooter, segway rental places in the neighbourhood. And of course they're for the tourists. She says you turn the corner and you walk smack into one all the time... It was about in 2011 when our old people couldn't go onto the balconies anymore and hang out the washing because they would be looking into a tourist apartment and seeing a couple with the curtains open having sex... The problem we're hearing about again and again from the people who live in the city is the springing up of accommodation for tourists in residential areas. In other words, working Barcelonans having to live cheek by jowl with visitors who are on holiday. Exactly what the websites advertising this sort of accommodation promote as a way of having an authentic experience...
[Airbnb spokesman:] Of the 9 million people that were reported to be coming to Barcelona last year, our community probably hosted around 900,000 of them. About 80% of the hosts who are listing on our site have 1 listing. They are generally renting the home that they live in. A typical host in Barcelona earns about 5,000 euros a year. We think that home-sharing is a solution to many of the problems that the City Hall has recognised, which is about concentration of tourists in very very tight areas of the city. By embracing home-sharing, we can be spreading tourists more widely, more of that money can be going into the pockets of regular Barcelona residents. And we think that a holistic approach to tourism is the right way for the city and for the government to be tackling what is undoubtedly a challenge for the city...
'A majority [of AirBNB users] are now either individuals or even private companies that own several properties. So in Barcelona we know that 54% of individuals advertising on AirBNB for the city advertise more than 1 room or property. That's more than half. And that this is a very different type of activites than sharing a room in a flat where you live. It's very different in terms of scale. It's very different in terms of its impact on the housing market'...
'Some serious studies have been done by colleagues here in Barcelona and there's ample evidence that about 60% of the listings are concentrated in Ciutat Vella the Old Town and the Eixample, which are already the neighbourhoods suffering from the greatest mass and flows of tourism and which are also the neighbourhoods where most of the hotels are concentrated. And there is much less AirBNB offer in peripheral neighbourhoods of Barcelona.'
'AirBNB disagrees with this but won't share its data so it can be independently verified'

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Cruising, Cruising - New Destinations - "Chinese travel in a different way... they travel, first of all, rather in small groups than than as couples or individuals. So that means they want to have a living situation - the cabins in a way that they can stay together or they have some private space. Most Chinese people think it's boring to travel by yourself or only with your spouse. So the men want to talk to other men. Ladies want to talk to other ladies'
'For Chinese, especially for senior people, they feel comfortable and safe to travel by cruise. They don't need to worry about get lost. They don't worry, there's no panic of catching the flights, the trains and they don't worry about the language problem... the younger generation. They've earn through hard work and they get good salary, like to return the love to the parents'...
The Chinese do not like to be on the sun. Meanwhile all the Western people all the cruise vessel in general have a lot of swimming pool, sun deck, some chairs, enormous space in the open air. So Chinese vessels should have more covered space...
Colour contrast, more contrast. Which is often the sort of the more muted tones that we would say is modern can often appear cheap for the Chinese market"

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Leaving the Fold - "One of the most memorable things that happened to me that whole time I was at that Christian school was one teachers always used to pull us out of lessons to give us long lectures about something that she was angry about that particular day, and on this day, she was angry because one of the kids had been heard in the playground singing a secular song and she said if you were out in the park and you saw some dog dirt on the floor, would you pick it up and rub it in your friend's face? And she mimed picking up the dog dirt and rubbing it on the child's face, kind of crouched down in front of this kid and mimed rubbing it on the face. I remember she used this phrase dog dirt over and over again and this sort of curled lip as she said her disgust at dog dirt. You rub it on her face. Said, singing... it's bad enough that you would listen to this evil music in your own time, but by singing it within the earshot other Christian children in this school is the same as rubbing dog dirt in their faces...
'At my first wedding... it was the first time I had thought about leaving religion... we were both Hindus but of different community with different beliefs. The bone of contention at our wedding was that my family wanted to have alcohol and meat served on the wedding day which is when the religious ceremonies are performed and her side of the family didn't believe in that. And that was not acceptable to my side of the family who in fact came for the wedding and did not eat or drink anything at the wedding, and I think that was an appalling act of intolerance. I felt that how can somebody not have tolerance and actually you know turn an event of love and a lot of religious significance into an event of hatred and intolerance... if they would have just embraced each other with love and affection, they would have forgotten about what was served. But I think they felt that their belief was more important than the celebration of love of two people. So it just made me believe that if there's a belief that supercedes love, then that's not a belief that I want to be a part of'"

BBC World Service - Assignment , Basques Face the Future - "People are standing in the street, drinking, talking. And there's gonna be a competition later on to decapitate a goose down in the port. Luckily the goose is already dead...
That's kalimotxo [Ed: aka calimocho]. It's a mixture of red wine and Coke... it's very popular here"

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Forgotten Prisoners of Apartheid - "[On refusing to play ball with the Truth & Reconciliation Commission] What I committed could not be classified as crime, because one cannot combat/compare poison with antidote. Because the violence of the oppressed is radically different from the violence of the oppressors... I did apply for amnesty, and in the application I stated that I was responsible for all ABLA [sp?] operations that took place while I was its commander. They answered did cheer see? [???] Said crime cannot be collectivised. Had to be individualised. So tell us what crime you have committed. Then I said I was not going to be part and parcel of a process that criminalised the African noble struggle...
The TRC say the person who pulled the trigger is the one who should confess. Which means leaders: none of them of both the PAC and ANC appeared before the TRC. Some of them were commanders in chief who, when it is bad, they are exonerated and the footsoldiers are punished...
People get offended when you compare them with the apartheid regime. But the apartheid regime was better. Because both the apartheid regime and the ANC regime say they have no political prisoners. But the apartheid regime, to its credit, said much as we don't have political prisoners, we have security prisoners. And security prisoners were treated better than common prisoners...
'Any mistake, I would be inside and forever... Even now. Like, I cannot get angry like anybody else. I cannot point anybody with the finger and say 'hey, don't do that to me' otherwise if that person can go to, report me in the police station I'm back'"

BBC Radio 4 - They Call Us Viet Kieu - "My mom was always keen to pass her culinary skills on to us. Endless details of exact temperatures for boiling rice and instuctions on how to lift a chicken out of a pot. It was the setting for where our conversations about her life in Vietnam began. She would tell me about her Vietnamese childhood chasing fireflies in the moonlight, selling vegetables in the market and playing in the ricefields. But whenever my questions turned to the Vietnam War, which would eventually make her leave it all behind, she'd become elusive and shake her head. And every once in a while she'd give us an odd warning that we shouldn't speak ill of the Vietnamese government or else. Or else what? She wouldn't say. Instead, she would make us food, but her fear was inherited by me all the same. And a mountain of questions was starting to pile up. Does the Vietnam my mother feared still exist?...
Viet Kieus have a sort of stigma attached to them from Vietnam because about 10 years ago, the waves of Viet Kieus that came back, we're like yeah, you know, we're rich, let's go back and help the people. Let's give them clean water and there was a certain type of entitlement which I like to call a Viet guilt. The mentality of like I know so much, I'm coming back here to help the people... I'm gonna fix things...
I thought to this day that simply voicing your disdain for the Communist party, which still rules Vietnam, would be enough to make you disappear, have your family violently threatened and have your head chopped off. Turns out I was quite wrong.
'The worst thing that could happen is that [we] would get a call, probably at midnight, and the next morning we'd have to go see either the Cultural Police or the Ministry of Culture and we'll be given a session of mmm mmm, you've done it wrong here here and here. Now you can either pay a fine or we'll shut you down'

BBC Radio 4 - Moving Pictures, The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder - "The wonderful thing about Breugel and really to me the wonderful thing about Northern Renaissance art in general is the more you look at it the more you find. There's no area that isn't thought about. Even the background is treated like foreground...
A cruel animal game. You can see these children, and even a guard and these farmers and they are throwing sticks to a live goose. And the goose is hanging there and the one who would kill the goose could have it and eat it. But you can imagine that this gives a lot of screaming from the goose and they liked it that way. They liked to see the suffering of the goose and the noises would only make their excitement larger and the more silent the goose gets the more excited they become again because it means the end is near...
The year 1565 saw the coldest winter anyone could remember. Bruegel's response was to produce the first oil paintings of snow in art history"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Why do we misunderstand Africa? - "A really good example is the migrant crisis right now. The Africans who are turning up, crossing the Mediterranean and so on, are given this term economic migrants, and the idea is that they're coming from a place of destitution and trying to sort of better themselves. Consider what they're paying to get here. It's $5-10,000 a head. The amazing thing about that is not the inequality or the fact that it costs me $500 to go to Africa but the fact that so many people can afford it. They're not coming because they're poor. They're coming because increasingly they're not...
'There are some of Africa's 54 countries are doing incredibly well, I mean better, growing faster than any other country in the world'
'Since about 2003, Africa has doubled global economic growth and pick any year, at least 5 out of 10 of the fastest growing countries in the world are Africac. They beat India, they beat China. There's actually no greater recognition of how well Africa doing than there are now a million Chinese who have emigrated to Africa. A million people from the hottest economy of the last 30 years have moved to Africa. What does that tell you? It is the land of opportunity'...
[On the West missing out on Africa to China] 'The biggest investor in Africa is France, then comes the US, then the UK, then South Africa, then Malaysia. After that is China. So there are all sorts of misexceptions, but the biggest one is the idea that anybody gets to boss Africa around these days. Africa has got lots of stuff that everybody wants, but these days that draws suitors, not conquerors'
Is it racist to think economic migrants are rich for being able to try to migrate to Europe or racist to think that they're poor?

When Your Hedge Fund Manager Buys a Ferrari, Find a New Manager - "the car your hedge fund manager drives says something about his capacity for risk taking -- and his ability to generate market-beating returns. Minivan owners in particular run funds that tend to take on far less risk and exhibit lower volatility than sports-car driving managers, according to a new study by academics Yan Lu, Sugata Ray and Melvyn Teo. The researchers say car ownership can be a good gauge of a trait they call “sensation seeking,” which has been linked to substance abuse and crime -- not the most comforting behavior when it comes to money management. They found that the increased proclivity for risk taking comes “without being compensated for higher returns.”"