Links - 5th August 2017

The Impact of Moral Incentives on Credit Card Repayment in Indonesia - "Messages stating that “non-repayment of debts by someone who is able to repay is an injustice” significantly increased the number of clients meeting minimum payments, proving more effective than substantial financial incentives for repayment. Sending either a simple reminder or an Islamic quote unrelated to debt repayment had no effect... Cash rebates equal to 50 percent of the customer’s minimum payment increased the share of customers making the minimum repayment by 7 percent, less than half the effect of the moral messages. The cost of text message reminders was negligible, but the bank incurred additional costs to fulfill rebates, making the moral appeal significantly more cost-effective at increasing repayment."

Oh, My God | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "This goes back to the concept of a mamzer. Now in Yiddish and in Hebrew a mamzer is a bastard and so you'll hear this in America: you know that guy who took my parking space. What a mamzer, right? But actually in Torah a mamzer is the issue of an adulterous woman - not an adulterous man, a married men can do whatever he wants... but if a married woman has a child born to somebody who is not her husband that child is considered a mamzer and mamzerum - mamzers - have a particular stigma. Which is that they can't marry a fellow Jew except for a fellow mamzer or a convert. And the stigma is so severe that it carries on to ten generations of the issue of the original mamzer. So basically the mamzer has almost no marriage pool so Israeli civil courts never order paternity tests to determine if a child was born to a married woman who's had an affair because they don't want any child or those subsequent generations to bear that stigma. They also interestingly do their best to look the other way - they do back flips to presume that maybe it wasn't adulterous. So even if she is estranged from her husband and her husband's been living in a foreign land they say well maybe about nine months before the birth he took an overnight flight, he took a red eye back and they rekindled that original spark. So we can't prove they didn't have sex that night so maybe it's actually the husband's child and it's not a mamzer...
[On the slave boy in Matthew and Luke] Interestingly enough both Matthew and Luke in the original text did not use the word slave or servant, they use the word pais, from the Greek. Which means beloved boy. What do we know about our friends the Romans? We know that they would leave their wives at home and bring their young men with them and when you actually consider it through that prism the story makes a lot more logical sense. Why would an occupying officer seek out a local homeless Jewish mystic faith healer to come into his house to heal a common slave unless he was much more than just a common slave and why would the apostles be so repulsed by this? Viewed in this context the story makes a lot of sense especially considering Jesus's record of forgiving prostitutes and adulterers and blessing a gay union"

Pilot Cancels Transatlantic Flight Because Of Passenger's Wifi Hotspot Name - "Shortly before the flight was scheduled to depart, a passenger discovered a wifi hotspot with the name “Jihadist Cell London 1.”"

The cherry picked science in Vox’s Charles Murray article - "As Timothy B. Lee writes, “This debunking of Charles Murray doesn’t appear to include a single quote of Murray’s arguments in his own words.” (Lee is a reporter at Vox, but presumably he was not involved in editing the article.) ... it is important to emphasize just how mainstream Murray’s views are in the field of intelligence research. The most controversial sentence in The Bell Curve attributed about half of the black-white IQ gap to genetics, the rest to environment. In 2013, a survey of 228 intelligence researchers found that the typical scientist in this field agrees... behavioral geneticists will announce over 600 SNPs statistically associated with educational attainment — and IQ by proxy. Are you ready to come back to this topic with that data in hand?"

Black Lives Matter Hosted Black-People-Only Party on Memorial Day - "The venue was evasive when Heat Street questioned them on whether holding racially-segregated events is legal."

Doctors warn women against putting wasp nests in their vaginas - "Some online retailers have been selling oak galls, which are nests that house wasp eggs before they hatch, and touting them as a natural way of cleaning female genitals. The product reportedly is crushed into a paste and applied topically, with one listing on Etsy, which has now been removed, claiming it can improve a woman’s sex life."

Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album attacked by feminist writer - "Amanda Marcotte slammed the Fab Four's seminal album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, because it 'repelled the female gaze.' Marcotte, who writes for left-wing US website Salon, 'resents' Sgt Pepper because it transformed the Beatles from being a band teenage girls could enjoy to 'respectable art' aimed at 'grown men'... Marcotte courted controversy in 2007 when she called supporters of defendants in the Duke lacrosse rape case: 'rape-loving scum'. It was later found that all three men, students at Duke University in the US, were falsely accused of the crime."

Civil society's role cannot be to provide public goods - "While there are important roles for civil society, the argument that we should count on civil society to provide housing solutions instead of pursuing policy change reflects a misunderstanding about the nature of housing problems, how public policies work, and what civil society can and cannot do... policies represent collective decisions about what society deems important and who may claim public resources. For instance, if education or healthcare policiesdiscriminate against the children of single, unmarried parents, we would find that deeply objectionable... The issue at hand is therefore also one of fairness and equality: Public goods should be evenly accessible to all members of society. When we see unevenness in our public policy, we should work harder to resolve it collectively, rather than push the resolution to individual actors such as civil society."
The definition of public goods is really broad nowadays
Why is it okay for housing policy to "discriminate" against singles? Or cigarette smokers. And non-Singaporeans, for that matter

Trump protesters could be facing decades in prison for inauguration demonstrations - "the 212 protesters were arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department and initially charged with felony rioting, a crime that carries a 10-year prison sentence and a $25,000 fine. On April 27, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia added additional charges that include urging to riot, conspiracy to riot and destruction of property.The possibility of long-term prison sentences for these protesters could have a chilling effect on participation in future rallies, particularly at a time of heightened levels of anti-Trump activism... Alsip and the other defendants face the additional strain of having to pay for travel expenses to and from Washington for each of their court hearings before they go to trial. “Most of us don’t have a whole lot of money,” she said. “Generally we are fighting the rich because we are economically or politically disadvantaged and don’t have a lot of capital.”"
Apparently it's a threat to free speech to prosecute Trump protesters for rioting and destroying property

Feminist writer says wonder woman isn't feminist enough, because she's sexy and good looking - "Christina Cauterucci – a writer for Slate, argues that Wonder woman fails as a Feminist movie because of the super-heroine’s sex appeal... It gets worse.She also thinks the movie is homophobic. I can’t even see the logic here... Maybe the reason there aren’t enough women in the movie is because this is a movie about the allied powers fighting Germany and the Ottoman empires in the first world war – a war I don’t remember many women lining up to fight in?"
Can't help that she's Jewish either
Feminists would say that since Wonder Woman is fiction anyway, we should pretend that lots of women fought in World War I too

Israeli 'Wonder Woman' Star Gal Gadot Attacked On Twitter For 'Zionist' Pro-IDF Views - "The comments come in response to Gadot’s military service, where she spent a mandatory two years in the Israeli Defense Force. Gadot has been vocally supportive of the Israeli military since her service and has been criticized frequently for it. “I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens” wrote Gadot in a Facebook post two years ago. “Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children…We shall overcome!!! Shabbat Shalom! #weareright #freegazafromhamas #stopterror #coexistance #loveidf”. The post received over 200,000 likes in support, but started a very bitter group of critics against Gadot’s work."
If saying you support the IDF means you support genocide, does saying you support US troops mean you endorse waterboarding and Abu Ghraib style torture? Then again at least waterboarding and Abu Ghraib style torture actually happened

When Will Wonder Woman Be a Fat, Femme Woman of Color? - Ms. Magazine Blog - "On Paradise Island, there are Black warriors in addition to white ones, which is a good start, but other women of color are missing. Also, while the female warriors are strong and ass-kicking, they all have tall, thin body types and they all could be models on a runway. In fact, in a pivotal battle scene, Wonder Woman struts across the battlefield as if on a catwalk. As a result, their physical strength plays second fiddle to their beauty, upholding the notion that in order to access power women must be beautiful in a traditional way. Especially with the body positivity movement gaining steam, the film could have spotlighted female warriors with fat, thick and short body types"
Not the Onion, but Ms Magazine

'Wonder Woman' And The Power Of Watching A Woman Save The World - "I cried within the first five minutes of “Wonder Woman.” And then about 10 minutes later. And then another 15 minutes after that. In fact, I found myself choking up on and off throughout the entire 2+ hour film ― not because the movie was sad, but because I had never seen anything quite like it. Just the visual of seeing an army of ripped, powerful women charging down to protect each other and their world was enough to bring me to tears.. “I blacked out with joy,” Meredith Fineman, CEO of FinePoint told HuffPost about watching the film’s opening scenes. “It was only women ― fighting, being strong, putting themselves in danger, with muscles and beauty”... When it comes to pop culture, we speak often about representation; the simple yet often unfulfilled idea that it matters to see someone like you fill a variety of imagined roles on screen... Movies and TV shows help expand (and reinforce) what we see as “normal” and what we believe to be possible. It should feel both normal and possible to see a woman help save the world, even if she’s not an immortal Amazonian daughter of Zeus."
In the grand scheme of things, these people have slightly fewer issues than the feminists who want a fat, ugly, brown/black Wonder Woman
If representation matters, why isn't anyone calling for a superhero who's a fat, ugly neckbeard who has bad skills with women?
Comments: "its not like she's the first (or only) comic book super heroin in a movie. It all just feels manufactured to me. Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs, Ellen Ripley in Aliens, Katniss in the Hunger Games, Sarah Connor in Terminator, Alice in Resident Evil, Rhona Mitra as Eden Sinclair in Doomsday, and Sonja in Underworld: Rise of Lycans, Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider, Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron in Prometheus, Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Halli Berry in Catwoman and X-Men, Gina Carano in Haywire, Furiosa in Mad Max, Rey in Star Wars, Pam Grier in Foxy Brown, all are movies with strong female leads (or at least co-stars). Why the floodworks for this movie?"
Of course there's a lot more misandry and racism in the comments but it is Huffpost

Grant Morrison Weighs In On “Batman v Superman’s” Wonder Woman - "Grant Morrison says that while he can appreciate why current takes on Wonder Woman are so aggressive, readers should expect something closer to her creator’s vision when they pick up the “Wonder Woman: Earth One” graphic novel. “I can understand why they’re [depicting a warrior Wonder Woman],” Morrison said in an interview with Nerdist. “I get all that, but that’s not what [creator] William Marston wanted, that’s not what he wanted at all!”... “[Marston’s] original concept for Wonder Woman was an answer to comics that he thought were filled with images of blood-curdling masculinity”... “Yanick Paquette did this amazing design job, where there are no phallic objects. The only phallic objects are like these Greek towers that are almost like this haunting echo of the culture they came from… Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane is now shaped like a vagina, it’s the most incredible thing. It opens up in the back and it has a little clitoris hood, everything is a female-based design. It’s all based on shells and natural stuff. He’s created this entire newly designed world for the Amazons. And for the first 48 pages, there are no men — it’s just women talking to each other.”"

Sex, Love, Bondage: The Vision of William Moulton Marston - "It was while working in this capacity that Marston had the idea to create a new kind of superhero, one who would combat crime with love, rather than violence. It was his wife’s idea that this new hero should be a woman...
Wonder Woman is very much the product of Marston’s worldview. Through his psychological research, Marston had come to the conclusion that women were naturally superior to men, both morally and in terms of skill. Further, he believed that women’s tendency toward loving submission was far preferable to masculine authority, which he viewed as toxic and violent.
Such themes were apparent in the early Wonder Woman stories, where the all-women utopia of Paradise Island was accompanied by the Reform Island penal colony, where enemies of the Amazons were not punished, but rehabilitated. Additionally, the goal of the much-vaunted bondage imagery that pervaded Marston’s stories was two-fold: first, to serve as a metaphor for the oppression women suffer in patriarchal society, and second, to add an erotic element so that young readers found themselves associating submission with love, through what Marston called “sex love training.”"

Why 'Wonder Woman' Soared and 'Ghostbusters' Sagged - "One film ignored gender politics while the other tried to capitalize on it — and audiences made their choice"
Misogyny was the reason Ghostbusters failed huh?

Is 'Wonder Woman' the New 'Ghostbusters?' - "Some social justice warriors aren’t keen on the finished product anyway. Turns out they didn’t like giving co-star Chris Hemsworth, a man, so many funny moments. The movie failed to properly “out” Kate McKinnon’s character as a lesbian. Even director Paul Feig slyly suggested the character is gay, but the studio preferred to blur that matter. And it didn’t give the women more fully developed characters.Then again, it looks like the “Wonder Woman” movie may not be perfect, either.: Three men wrote Wonder Woman, and that's a problem"
Even such blatant SJW pandering as Ghostbusters didn't satisfy some of them. So why bother?