Links - 24th May 2018 (2)

Mother of Child Who Modeled ‘Monkey’ Hoodie for H&M Doesn’t See What the Problem Is - "H&M may be in boiling hot water for their ad that featured a black boy wearing a sweatshirt saying, "Coolest Monkey In The Jungle," but appears that the boy’s mother, Terry Mango, is cool with it. She took to social media to fully endorse the ad... "This is one of hundreds of outfits my son has modeled... stop crying Wolf all the time, unnecessary issue.""

No, that H&M ad isn’t racist - "Children of all backgrounds are referred to as ‘monkeys’ by their parents. The only people connecting the old anti-black slur to this little boy were the hypersensitive people are so offended by this advert. And H&M has endowed its critics with a legitimacy they do not deserve by withdrawing the ad and apologising for it... This borderline pathological tendency to racialise everything, to find racism where it simply doesn’t exist, is discrediting anti-racism as a progressive cause. Worse, it trivialises the thankfully increasingly rare kind of racism that does real damage to ethnic minorities"
Maybe the moral of the story is to not use minorities - people will take offence regardless but you might as well save yourself some trouble

South African protesters ransack H&M stores over 'racist' ad - "The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) protesters targeted six H&M stores in the Gauteng province, where South Africa’s economic hub of Johannesburg is located, tearing down shop displays and throwing clothes around... Protests over perceived corporate wrongdoing have a history of turning violent in South Africa, where some drivers for ride-hailing service Uber have had their vehicles torched over the past year by regular taxi operators."
Great way to dispel stereotypes

Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can’t you put it down? - "Consider the effect smartphones have on our ability to focus. In 2015, Microsoft Canada published a report indicating that the average human attention span had shrunk from 12 to eight seconds between 2000 and 2013. The finding was widely reported at the time and elicited some shock – for about eight seconds... Prof. Ratey has noticed a convergence between his ADD patients and the rest of the world. The symptoms of people with ADD and people with smartphones are "absolutely the same," he said. A recent study of Chinese middle schoolers found something similar. Among more than 7,000 students, mobile phone ownership was found to be "significantly associated" with levels of inattention seen in people with attention-deficit disorder... Workers at a British company who multitasked on electronic media – a decent proxy for frequent smartphone use – were found in a 2014 study to lose about the same quantity of IQ as people who had smoked cannabis or lost a night's sleep. Even people who are disciplined about their smartphone use feel the effect. The devices exert such a magnetic pull on our minds that just the effort of resisting the temptation to look at them seems to take a toll on our mental performance."
8 seconds is less than a goldfish

Doron Zeilberger's 158h Opinion - "The American Mathematical Society (henceforth AMS) has recently created the position of Diversity Officer, a full-time position, womanned by a prominent female mathematician. That's a good thing! Women and minorities should be encouraged. But it went too far when it proposed, effective Jan. 2019, to prohibit the use of the traditional names of the numerous programs (e.g. Erlangen, Langlands, ...), theories (e.g. Galois, Iwasawa, and dozens of others), theorems (e.g. Pythagoras, Lagrange, and thousands of others), polynomials (e.g. Legendre, Jacobi, and hundreds of other), conjectures (e.g. Riemann and many others), inequalities (e.g. Cauchy-Schwartz, Holder, and dozens of others), groups (e.g. Conway, O' Nan, Lyons, Sims, Thompson, ...), algorithms (e.g. Dijkstra, Buchberger, Robinson-Schenstead-Knuth, and thousands of others) etc. etc... In two years, you would open-up an AMS journal, and read an abstract that looks like this:
"Using Theory T1014, and Theorems Th100154, Th54135, and Th87651, as well as inequalities In54312, and In34567, we prove Conjecture C84231."
Please! Mathematics papers are hard enough to read the way they are written now, and this new policy would make reading them so much harder."

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 on Twitter: "Dick Durbin called Trump racist for wanting to end chain migration. Here's a video of Dick Durbin calling for an end to chain migration https://t.co/xcbXT4UH8Q"

China’s Young Children Are Overheating in the Middle of Winter - "Children have high metabolisms and lots of energy, which means they tolerate the cold better than adults. Medical studies have revealed that keeping children too warm and staying too long in an excessively hot or stuffy atmosphere can lead to a lack of oxygen, high fever, heavy sweating, and dehydration. These are potentially life-threatening conditions, and stories of overheated children have occasionally attracted the attention of Chinese media. Yet the compulsion to block out the cold runs deep in Chinese tradition; indeed, wrapping kids up in extra layers is similar to the custom of zuo yuezi, or postnatal recuperation, whereby new mothers stay in bed for several weeks following childbirth. Some women have even suffered from heatstroke after well-meaning but misguided family members piled on too many heavy blankets."

How campus politics hijacked American politics - The Boston Globe - "For now, the First Amendment seems safe. But the campus-bred identitarian left is leaving its mark on society in other ways, especially in areas directly connected to culture: media, publishing, and entertainment, which in turn help shape the social climate. Dissident progressive Phoebe Maltz Bovy notes in her recent book, “The Perils of Privilege,” that mainstream-media culture criticism is now heavily fixated on identity politics: Films, shows and entertainers are routinely discussed in terms of their treatment of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality and often sternly reprimanded for taking an incorrect approach. (The recent backlash against the Golden Globe-winning movie “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” for its alleged blind spot on race is a case in point.)... after an outcry against “culinary white supremacy” in the online press and social media in Portland, Ore. — two women (one white, one part Chinese) felt obliged to shut down the burrito shop they had started after a trip to Mexico. Their handmade tortillas, it seems, were too oppressive. How do ideas like “culinary white supremacy” make it off university grounds? Partly, it’s because professors who marinate in campus politics enjoy intellectual authority in the outside world, and their opinions appear in the national media. Partly, it’s also because a huge generation of students who have absorbed the “social justice” creed of the campus left, often promoted not only in class but in mandatory workshops, take that outlook with them when they graduate."

Sullivan: The Gay Rights Movement Is Undoing Its Best Work - "A new report out from GLAAD suggests that there has been something of a retrenchment in comfort with gay equality... “In 2014, for example, 27 percent of non-LGBT Americans said they would be ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ uncomfortable looking at a wedding picture on an LGBT co-worker’s desk. The following year, that figure dipped to 25 percent. Now, it has returned to 27 percent.”... no one seems to notice the profound shift in the tone and substance of advocacy for gay equality in recent years, and the radicalization of the movement’s ideology and rhetoric... since Obergefell? As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. The movement is now rhetorically as much about race and gender as it is about sexual orientation (“intersectionality”), prefers alternatives to marriage to marriage equality, sees white men as “problematic,” masculinity as toxic, gender as fluid, and race as fundamental. They have no desire to seem “virtually normal”; they are contemptuous of “respectability politics” — which means most politics outside the left. Above all, they have advocated transgenderism, an ideology that goes far beyond recognizing the dignity and humanity and civil equality of trans people into a critique of gender, masculinity, femininity, and heterosexuality. “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays. The left’s indifference to religious freedom — see the question of Masterpiece Cakeshop — has also taken a toll. So have the PC bromides of the LGBTQRSTUV reformulation... The Trump era is, I fear, not just about this hideous embarrassment of a president. It’s also fueled by a reaction of many ordinary people to the excesses of the social-justice left — on immigration, race, gender, and sexual orientation. If the gay-rights movement decides to throw in with this new leftism, and abandon the moderation and integrationism of the recent past, they risk turning gay equality from being about a win-win process for gays and straights into a war between “LGBT” people and the rest"

Advertised Waist-to-Hip Ratios of Online Female Escorts: An Evolutionary Perspective - "The Web’s global reach provides evolutionary behavioral scientists unique opportunities to investigate human universals steeped in a common and evolved human nature. In the current article, it is argued that many forms of online sexual communication are indicative of our evolved mating minds, including the manner by which female escorts are “advertised” online. It is demonstrated that online advertisers provide a restricted set of morphological cues whilst advertising female escorts, these being congruent with men’s evolved aesthetic preferences. Specifically, it is shown that irrespective of cultural setting, online escorts advertise waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) that are in line with the near-universal male preference for women that possess WHRs of 0.70."

Study Suggests Society's View of Males Has Soured - "The likelihood of being an elementary school teacher was rated 64 for a woman and 36 for a man, nearly the same as in 1983; the likelihood of being a firefighter, 61 for a man and 18 for a woman... the Women’s Health website caustically summed up the study as reflecting the belief that men should be responsible for “bringing home the bacon and fixing the car” and women for “raising the kids, cooking, and cleaning,” the respondents were not expressing prescriptive opinions but estimating actual probabilities. If anything, their ratings underestimated gender disparities in many jobs: in reality, a woman is four times more likely than a man to be an elementary school teacher, while the ratio of male to female firefighters is a staggering 24:1. Where things get interesting is in ratings on perceived personality traits and related roles... Men are still given a slight edge on “makes decisions easily” (61 points versus 57 for women), but that’s down from a 14-point gap in 1983; again, the change is due to a sharp drop in male scores and a small increase in female ones... Contrary to the “nothing has changed” tenor of many reports, the new survey shows a dramatic decline in the male-provider norm. In the 1983 survey, the likelihood of being a “financial provider” was scored at 83 for a man, 46 for a woman; the 2014 numbers were 72 and 58. What’s more, men and women in 2014 were seen as equally likely to “assume financial obligations,” while in 1983 the score for men on this item was 22 points higher. And here’s another fascinating nugget. In 1983, men and women were rated equally likely to “plan for the future,” with median scores around 75 for both. In 2014, the score for women remained unchanged — but the score for men dropped below 62. Bizarrely, the New York report specifically cited this item as one of the categories in which “gender stereotypes stayed consistent when compared to the 1983 study.”... the trend toward a more jaundiced view of males seems unmistakable —particularly among women... Recent research, such as the work of political scientists Deborah Jordan Brooks, Jennifer Lawless and Danny Hayes, suggests that today gender is more an asset than an obstacle for female politicians... there are also times when the tendency to stereotype men as less understanding, warm, and capable of providing emotional support can result in unfairness to men. And some of that stereotyping is likely due not to patriarchy or lack of feminist progress, but do the direction feminism has taken in the last thirty years."

Academics say research is being hindered by universities' fear of online backlash - "Academics say they have been forced to leave the country to pursue their research interests as British universities are accused of blocking studies over fears of backlash on social media... a critical analysis she published of Vanity Fair magazine’s visual representation of the transgendering of Bruce to Caitlyn Jenner had been pulled after complaints were made."
How SJWing is harming academic freedom

The Empire Slinks Back - The New York Times - "The British Empire has had a pretty lousy press from a generation of ''postcolonial'' historians anachronistically affronted by its racism. But the reality is that the British were significantly more successful at establishing market economies, the rule of law and the transition to representative government than the majority of postcolonial governments have been. The policy ''mix'' favored by Victorian imperialists reads like something just published by the International Monetary Fund, if not the World Bank: free trade, balanced budgets, sound money, the common law, incorrupt administration and investment in infrastructure financed by international loans... The British regarded long-term occupation as an inherent part of their self-appointed ''civilizing mission.'' This did not mean forever. The assumption was that British rule would end once a country had been sufficiently ''civilized'' -- read: anglicized -- to ensure the continued rule of law and operation of free markets (not to mention the playing of cricket). But that clearly meant decades, not days; when the British intervened in a country like Iraq, they simply didn't have an exit strategy. The only issue was whether to rule directly -- installing a British governor -- or indirectly, with a British ''secretary'' offering ''advice'' to a local puppet like Faisal... The imperial impulse arose from a complex of emotions: racial superiority, yes, but also evangelical zeal; profit, perhaps, but also a sincere belief that spreading ''commerce, Christianity and civilization'' was not just in Britain's interest but in the interests of her colonial subjects too.The contrast with today's ''wannabe'' imperialists in the United States -- call them ''nation-builders'' if you prefer euphemism -- could scarcely be more stark... Until there are more Americans not just willing but eager to shoulder the ''nation-builder's burden,'' adventures like the current occupation of Iraq will lack a vital ingredient. For the lesson of Britain's imperial experience is clear: you simply cannot have an empire without imperialists -- out there, on the spot -- to run it."

Hard Evidence: do we become more conservative with age? - "By taking the average of seven different groups of several thousand people each over time – covering most periods between general elections since the 1960s – we found that the maximum possible ageing effect averages out at a 0.38% increase in Conservative voters per year. The minimum possible ageing effect was only somewhat lower, at 0.32% per year. This may not sound like a massive effect, but over the course of a lifetime these increments do add up. Even if only the minimum estimate is correct, the difference between 20 and 80-year-olds is nearly 20 percentage points. This means that our estimate of ageing effects precisely explains the 19-point difference between the percentage of 20 and 80-year-olds who voted Conservative in the 1997 election."

University apologizes to janitor over KKK book - "A janitor whom a university official had accused of racial harassment for reading a historical book about the Ku Klux Klan on his break has gotten an apology — months later — from the school... a co-worker complained after seeing him reading a book titled "Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan."... "You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers," Lillian Charleston wrote in a letter to Sampson. Civil liberties groups and bloggers who took up his cause said Sampson had been wrongly cited for reading a book that is carried by the school's library."
Presumably white people must not only educate themselves - they must do it in private

Why are they Replacing All the Concrete Roads with Asphalt? Ask an Engineer! - "Concrete roads are highly durable and more environmentally friendly as compared to asphalt roads. However asphalt paving costs far less than concrete paving. Also, asphalt road provides a little better safety of the vehicle against snow and skidding."

13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) - Wikipedia - "The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Handschar" (1st Croatian) was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. From March to December 1944, it fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state of Germany that encompassed almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as parts of Serbia. It was given the title Handschar after a local fighting knife or sword carried by Ottoman policemen during the centuries that the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first non-Germanic Waffen-SS division, and its formation marked the expansion of the Waffen-SS into a multi-ethnic military force. Composed of Bosnian Muslims (ethnic Bosniaks) with some Catholic Croat soldiers and mostly German and Yugoslav Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) officers and non-commissioned officers, it took an oath of allegiance to both Adolf Hitler and the Croatian leader Ante Pavelić."
Since people bitched about Dunkirk not featuring the handful of non-white soldiers who were there, presumably they will complain about there being no Muslim Nazis portrayed in popular media