Links - 22nd April 2017 (2)

Italian Model Vows to Give 19 Million Men Oral Sex - "She promised everyone who voted “No” in Italy’s Brexit-like referendum a blowjob... So far during the first leg of her oral sex tour, Saulino has given approximately 400 blowjobs"

Rotherham child sex gang shout 'Allahu Akbar' in court as they are jailed for 80 years for abusing girls, including one who became pregnant at just 12, after being groomed with alcohol and drugs

Transexual murderer moved from female prison after 'having sex with female inmates' - "Paris Green, who was born a man, had been allowed to serve her sentence at HMP Edinburgh’s female wing. But authorities sent the 23-year-old back to a male institute after it was alleged she had been intimate with other prisoners. ‘The women want sex and Paris is the only person who can give it to them’... Green, who was previously known as Peter Laing, had been accused of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ with inmates before."

Single Mothers, Fathers Equally Successful At Raising Children - "A new nationwide study refutes the theory that children in single-mother households are disadvantaged because they lack the presence of a father. Researchers at Ohio State University compared a sample of 456 15- and 16-year-olds who lived in single-father households with 2,583 teens who lived in single-mother households. The results showed that the two groups were very similar in terms of deviance and behavior at school, relationships with others, and school performance once factors such as family income and parent education are accounted for... “It is well-known that there are a lot of problems associated with children who grow up in single-mother households,” Downey said. “But our results suggest the problems aren’t mainly due to the lack of a father. We believe the problems rise more from the absence of a second parent in general, and the fact that single mothers are more likely to be disadvantaged in terms of income and other factors.”"

Are Pakistan’s female medical students to be doctors or wives? - "In Pakistan's prestigious medical schools, female students outshine and outnumber their male counterparts. However, many do not end up as practising doctors - and now there are calls to limit their numbers... The government body that regulates the medical profession, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), says more than 70% of medical students are women... government figures suggest most of these bright female undergraduate doctors do not actually go on to practise. Only 23% of registered doctors are female... some female students are more keen on catching a husband than on pursuing a career. "It's much easier for girls to get married once they are doctors and many girls don't really intend to work as professional doctors," he says. "I know of hundreds of hundreds of female students who have qualified as a doctor or a dentist but they have never touched a patient"... the "doctor wife" is more than a trophy: her absence from hospitals has serious implications on the healthcare system of a poor country like Pakistan. The government spends millions of rupees on subsidies per student - yet there is a serious shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas where women prefer to be examined by female doctors"
This is a more extreme version of why Singapore had a quota on female medical students
Being progressive (the lack of a gender quota) can lead to worse social outcomes
Somehow a 50/50 quota (when women are in the majority) is sexist. But feminists don't hesitate to call for quotas when women are in the minority
Addendum: One progressive justification for quotas I've seen is that people don't need to be the best - just good enough. In that case, there's nothing wrong with quotas "discriminating" against women here since not only will they merely ensure gender parity, it's not as if they will let unqualified men in - all students who get in will be good enough, even if not the best

Unrealistic Realisms: Critique of NUS Open Day 2017 (Poster) | Messy Lines of Mantarui - "There are certain fields in the disciplines of the so-called social sciences which maintain that there are objective, ’empirical’, “social realities” that can still be measured, cut up and dissected. There is a belief that to conduct ‘good’ analysis, one must be distanced, unemotional and detached. There is a reason why these fields are not classed under the ‘Humanities’, and rightly so. Dispassion is a paragon, an ideal, in these disciplines. Emotions have no place in their high towers of cold realism... Don’t get me wrong. Essentialisations and categorizations are sometimes inevitable. They are footholds and signposts by which we navigate our everyday lives. We cannot run away from our internal biases and prejudices. Perhaps the best we can do is be aware of them. But this the tagline for my faculty. This is the tagline for a faculty that taught me about the religious, gender, cultural vibrance and vitality of Southeast Asia; the school that taught me to write sharp and think sharper; the place that introduced me to Foucault, Collingwood, Huntington, Marx, Yeoh, Kong, Loh, Lau, Hong."
You know something is written by a lit student when there's a contempt for objectivity and attempts to find out about the world, and gratuitous scare quotes to attempt to problematise concepts

Pakistan International Airlines goat slaughter mocked - "Pictures went viral showing PIA ground staff slaughtering a black goat next to an ATR-42 aircraft which was about to leave for a domestic flight. It was the first such flight since PIA grounded its ATR fleet for tests after a 7 December crash killed 47 people. In Pakistan killing a black goat is supposed by many to ward off evil."

I am a Muslim doctor. I saved a Christian in Pakistan and it nearly cost my life - "Fearing he might die, I instinctually grabbed the emergency medicine donated via zakaat, an Islamic system of alms-giving, and performed the life-saving hemodialysis. He survived but I immediately faced the wrath of the nurse. She was mad at me because the patient was a Christian and she said Islamic alms are not meant to be used on non-Muslims. But I did not know the patient’s faith, nor did I know that such a law existed. I promptly replaced the medicine, which cost around $20. But it didn’t end there. The representative of a conservative Islamic NGO, which was a donor to the clinic, was furious about what I had done. They attributed my lack of knowledge about the alms laws to the fact that I belong to a minority Muslim sect. A departmental inquiry followed and I was discriminated throughout the entire process. The workplace discrimination gave way to threatening phone calls and vandalism of my car and bike. They found out my family lived in America and that I was alone. This made me an easy target. I was threatened with death at a medical conference hosted by the chair of the same NGO which had complained about me"

As giant rats menace Pakistan, conspiracy theories swirl - The Washington Post - "Others believe the rats were bred on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan and brought to ­Peshawar in the trucks that are withdrawing coalition supplies on Pakistani highways... There have been allegations that the rats were genetically modified by a foreign power and left here to terrorize Muslims"
It's not just the Arabs who love the conspiracy theories

Pakistan: Moderate Muslim scholars say no grief/sympathy allowed for murdered governor - "Moderate Muslim leaders in Pakistan have warned muslims against expressing any sympathy towards the assasinated Punjab Governor in Pakistan, Salman Taseer... 'Five hundred Pakistani religious scholars have warned that anyone who expresses grief over the assassination of a senior ruling party official who opposed the country's blasphemy law could suffer the same fate.'"

College Apologizes For Serving Mexican Food During Sci-Fi Event - "Stevenson College has different themed nights each month for students. He explained that officials at the school decided to serve Mexican food during "Intergalactic" night. Kilmeade said that some students were offended, because they felt the combination of food and the theme was racist. Students cited the association between Mexicans and illegal immigrants."

Every time a Disney villain falls in defeat: ChiefBrodyRules makes a supercut of baddies plunging to their death (VIDEO). - "it’s not just the villains of Disney who tumble to their death—moment of silence for Mufasa, please—but the trope does make particular sense as a way of dispatching the bad guy: It spares impressionable kids the gore of a more visceral demise, and allows the hero to emerge triumphant yet unscathed by a messy murder"

When life gives you bad Chinese tatto, what could you make? 當 AV 女郎遇上錯誤的中文紋身 ... - "When life gives you bad Chinese tatto, what could you make?
當 AV 女郎遇上錯誤的中文紋身
#RileyReid
#tattoofail
"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade", we can find a Chinese version on the back of an awarded pornstar, Riley Reid, although it is in a wrong grammar form.
"生活帶來您時檸檬做檸檬水" is what we can see on Riley Reid's back. But by reading it in Chinese, it just says, "life brings you when lemons make lemonade" , [生活 (life) 帶來 (brings) 您 (you) 時 (when) 檸檬 (lemons) 做 (make) 檸檬水 (lemonade)] . It is totally not the same as the original one."

Domestic violence is most commonly reciprocal - "In recent years researchers have approached populations without preconceptions as to the direction of violence. Large epidemiological studies have demonstrated that domestic violence is most commonly reciprocal and that when only one partner is violent there is an excess of violent women. Whitaker et al, in a study of 14 000 young US couples aged 18-28 years, found that 24% of relationships had some violence and half of those were reciprocally violent. In 70% of the non-reciprocally violent relationships women were the perpetrators of violence. Reciprocal violence appears to be particularly dangerous, leading to the highest rate of injury (31.4%). This may be because reciprocal violence is more likely to escalate... a significant proportion of females seeking help for victimisation are also perpetrators of intimate partner violence, and that those who treat battered women may need to consider addressing the perpetration of violence with their female clients... women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Younger aged couples showed more female-perpetrated aggression.Only examining rates of violence perpetrated against women risks perpetuating an inaccurate stereotype of women as victims and men as aggressors"
This won't stop the "men are evil" narrative, of course

Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability - "For women marrying since the start of the new millennium:
Women with 10 or more partners were the most likely to divorce, but this only became true in recent years;
Women with 3-9 partners were less likely to divorce than women with 2 partners; and,
Women with 0-1 partners were the least likely to divorce.
Earlier research found that having multiple sex partners prior to marriage could lead to less happy marriages, and often increased the odds of divorce... premarital sex with one partner substantially increases the odds of divorce"

There's No Evidence that Conservatives Buy More Porn - "Other variables analyzed make the story complicated, to say the least, for advocates of the “conservative porn” hypothesis. For example, porn subscriptions were more prevalent in urban than in rural areas. This is a particularly striking counterexample for our showcased state Utah, since its only urban area is also its most liberal/Democratic/non-Mormon area. Also, zip codes with higher marriage rates were much less likely to consume porn. Further, there was no statistically significant difference in porn consumption between zip codes with high and low church attendance. There was also no relationship between presidential voting in 2004 and porn usage at the zip-code level. In fact, the only number that appeared even remotely to make the “conservative porn” case was a zip-code level positive correlation between porn consumption and aggregate conservative positions on some social issues. But again, it could very well be the liberals in those areas who, feeling repressed by the dominant social norms, turn to porn. Or not. But the bottom line is, we can’t know from the data."

MoMA Hung Matisse Gouache Upside Down for 47 Days - "an exhibit “The Last Works of Henri Matisse” opened at the New York Museum of Modern Art. It consisted of large cut gouaches – including Matisse Le Bateau (The Boat). Le Bateau is an image of a boat and its reflection executed in very simple lines and shapes. For 47 days Le Bateau hung upside down in the gallery until a stockbroker by the name of Genevieve Habert came to visit. Up until this point, none of the torrent of visitors, critics, the curators nor the art dealing son of Matisse, Pierre, had noticed the mistake"
Modern art!

Is Battlestar Galactica Racist? - "Does adding central hispanic and asian characters really make up for the lack of black actors on the show? Out of the entire human population in the civilian and military fleets, there have only been two black characters. One completely minor, and the other the subject of an entire episode (which exposed Admiral Adama's abandonment of him in Cylon territory previously."
Everything is racist

URL Decoder—URL Converter—Remove special characters from web addresses - "Sometimes, you try to grab a URL (website address) nested inside a link. Or you try to copy an URL from the source code of a page. But the address has been encoded with all kinds of strange characters, such as "%20". The characters are formed with a "%" symbol and a hexadecimal number. This technique is called percent encoding, and in some ways it is very useful for people who make web systems, but for users it can be a real pain."

Time limit on kissing to avoid parking problems - "exactly 3 minutes at the Aalborg Airport in Denmark. The Aalborg Airport features a Kiss & Goodbye zone where people can park for a moment to say goodbye to the traveller. It’s a place that has probably seen a lot of hugs, kisses and tears. Maybe too much…"

Job seekers getting asked for Facebook passwords

7 Of The Strangest Services Offered On Fiverr - "I Will Dance To Any Song In A Hot Dog Costume"

How Did Insect Metamorphosis Evolve? - "The primary advantage of complete metamorphosis is eliminating competition between the young and old. Larval insects and adult insects occupy very different ecological niches. Whereas caterpillars are busy gorging themselves on leaves, completely disinterested in reproduction, butterflies are flitting from flower to flower in search of nectar and mates. Because larvas and adults do not compete with one another for space or resources, more of each can coexist relative to species in which the young and old live in the same places and eat the same things"

Cheating Frenchman sues Uber for tipping off wife about affair

Islamic fundamentalism is widely spread | WZB - "The author analyzed data from a representative survey among immigrants and natives in six European countries. Two thirds of the Muslims interviewed say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live. Three quarters of the respondents hold the opinion that there is only one legitimate interpretation of the Koran. These numbers are significantly higher than those from local Christians. Only 13 percent of this group put religious rules above national law; just under 20 percent refuse to accept differing interpretations of the Bible. For Ruud Koopmans, this powerful tendency toward Muslim religious fundamentalism is alarming... Almost 60 percent of the Muslim respondents reject homosexuals as friends; 45 percent think that Jews cannot be trusted; and an equally large group believes that the West is out to destroy Islam. The Christians’ answers for comparison: As many as 9 percent are openly anti-Semitic; 13 percent do not want to have homosexuals as friends; and 23 percent think that Muslims aim to destroy Western culture."

Some Muslims 'support those who carry out terror attacks' - "Koopmans, who is a professor of sociology and migration research at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the director of integration research at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, stressed that not every one of them was ready to exert violence directly. But he added: 'They support the radicals, they encourage them and provide them shelter or simply keep their mouths shut when they observe radicalization.'"