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Thursday, November 22, 2018

Links - 22nd November 2018 (1)

The smears get increasingly serious as PZ Myers crosses a new line - Michael Nugent - "since I defended Richard Dawkins and the atheist movement from misrepresentations and smears in mainstream media articles, I have become the target of similar smears on various blogs. You can read details here. Now PZ Myers has crossed a new line by publicly alleging that I am defending rapists (that’s rapists, plural) because certain people comment on my blog. The desensitisation process is ratcheting along, with increasingly serious allegations now being casually made as if they were normal discourse."

'Too Different to Be Chinese, Not Good Enough to Be Korean' - "much that I saw and heard in Yanbian supported the idea that China comes first—should come first—both for the prefectural government and Joseonjok. Official historical narratives such as those in the Yanbian History Museum either bury Yanbian’s biculturality under vague concepts such as the “Yanbian Dream”—nothing more than a more provincial version of Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream—or memorialize the legacy of the Joseonjok who died fighting for China as soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)... while most ethnic minorities in China receive bonus points to compensate for the lack of educational resources they have to succeed in the gaokao, some ethnicities receive more bonus points than others. Because Joseonjok’s average economic status is higher than those of most other ethnicities (barring the Han majority), they receive the lowest number of bonus points, ranging between five to fifteen, in contrast to, for example, the Uyghur who can get up to one hundred bonus points. (I couldn’t independently verify Piao’s claim.).. Despite the description of contemporary Joseonjok identity as “China first, Korea second” both in official rhetoric and some foreign commentary, the situation on the ground is much more complex than that. Intermarriage between Joseonjok and Han Chinese remains a rarity, and there are profound feelings of cultural displacement within the ethnic Korean community of Yanji."

Murdered man's body found after tree 'unusual for the area' grew from seed in his stomach - "the dead man had been taken into a cave with two others and both of them had been killed by dynamite that was then thrown in after them. Yet the dynamite also blew a hole in the side of the cave, allowing light to flood into the darkened interior which in turn allowed the fig tree to grow from the man's body."

Young S’poreans seeking to emigrate no longer held back by social class and academic qualifications: Survey - "an individual who speaks English at home has a higher desire to move overseas. This, however, does not necessarily correlate with a diminishing sense of national pride... the 2016 study found that 29.2 per cent of the respondents said they either agreed or strongly agreed that they would "actively examine" the possibility of emigrating to another country within the next five years. This was a slight increase compared to the 2010 study, which saw 26.4 per cent respondents expressing such views... When asked to name their preferred destinations, respondents from the 2010 and 2016 surveys placed Australia at the top of their list. In the latest survey, New Zealand replaced the United States in second spot, with the US dropping to third...
36.7 per cent agreed that they view emigration as a "backup plan" in case Singapore fails, compared to 26.3 per cent in 2010.
45 per cent agreed that an increase in emigration is inevitable as Singapore gets more stressful and competitive"

18-year-old Thai girl got rid of acne & lost 44kg in just 1 year after being teased by school mates
Fat shaming works after all

Women who wear makeup get paid more at work

Miscalibrations in judgements of attractiveness with cosmetics. - "Women use cosmetics to enhance their attractiveness. How successful they are in doing so remains unknown--how do men and women respond to cosmetics use in terms of attractiveness? There are a variety of miscalibrations where attractiveness is concerned--often, what one sex thinks the opposite sex finds attractive is incorrect. Here, we investigated observer perceptions about attractiveness and cosmetics, as well as their understanding of what others would find attractive. We used computer graphic techniques to allow observers to vary the amount of cosmetics applied to a series of female faces. We asked observers to optimize attractiveness for themselves, for what they thought women in general would prefer, and what they thought men in general would prefer. We found that men and women agree on the amount of cosmetics they find attractive, but overestimate the preferences of women and, when considering the preferences of men, overestimate even more. We also find that models' self-applied cosmetics are far in excess of individual preferences. These findings suggest that attractiveness perceptions with cosmetics are a form of pluralistic ignorance, whereby women tailor their cosmetics use to an inaccurate perception of others' preferences. These findings also highlight further miscalibrations of attractiveness ideals."
i.e. women think men want them to wear more makeup than they do

Women Are More Likely Than Men to Use Tentative Language, Aren’t They? A Meta-Analysis Testing for Gender Differences and Moderators - "Robin Lakoff proposed that women are more likely than men to use tentative speech forms (e.g., hedges, qualifiers/disclaimers, tag questions, intensifiers). Based on conflicting results from research testing Lakoff’s claims, a meta-analysis of studies testing gender differences in tentative language was conducted. The sample included 29 studies with 39 independent samples and a combined total sample of 3,502 participants. Results revealed a statistically significant but small effect size (d = .23), indicating that women were somewhat more likely than men to use tentative speech. In addition, methodological moderators (operational definition, observation length, recording method, author gender, and year of study) and contextual moderators (gender composition, familiarity, student status, group size, conversational activity, and physical setting) were tested. Effect sizes were significantly larger in studies that (a) observed longer (vs. shorter) conversations, (b) sampled undergraduates (vs. other adults), (c) observed groups (vs. dyads), and (d) occurred in research labs (vs. other settings). The moderator effects are interpreted as supporting proposals that women's greater likelihood of tentative language reflects interpersonal sensitivity rather than a lack of assertiveness. In addition, the influence of self-presentation concerns in the enactment of gender-typed behavior is discussed."
Some evidence that women are more indirect than men

Gender, Gender Role, and Physical Appearance - "Women and men who differed in their gender roles rated the attractiveness of, importance of, and desire to change their physique and facial appearance. Results indicated that women considered all components of appearance except height to be more important than did men and were more interested in changing their appearance than were men. Masculine women perceived themselves as “too large” but were more satisfied with their facial appearance than were traditional (feminine) women"
In other words, height aside women are more concerned/care more about their appearance and bodies than men. The fact that there is a masculinity effect for women is telling

Blame parents for ‘snowflake’ millennials, says author Fay Weldon - "In her novel, Weldon refers to “a millennial for whom the past was an irrelevancy”. She blames both parents and the education system, saying: “They’re not taught it, so how can they know? Teachers don’t teach history, or only certain bits of history which they approve of. They know about Hitler. But absolutely nothing about Charles I.” She believes ignorance about the past has led to campaigns to remove monuments of historical figures. “Give them background about the past because they know so little about it. Society was different once upon a time. They don’t realise how different times were, how different values were.” Weldon also criticised parents who constantly tell their children how beautiful and clever they are in order to give them high self-esteem. Instead it gave them low self-esteem, she said, observing that when children could not live up to such ideals “they get depressed and cut themselves”."

Different nationalities really have different personalities - "these average differences in personality between nations are not the same as the stereotypes we hold. Although we tend to agree with each other about what the typical personality type is in a given country, including our own, the research suggests that our assumptions are often wide of the mark... islanders are less extraverted and open-minded, but more conscientious and emotionally stable, than their mainland neighbours located 10 to 40 miles away. This is likely because, over time, bolder more open-minded individuals have chosen to emigrate away from the islands... countries with higher average trait Openness tended to have more democratic institutions"

School official says ‘blame the girls’ for dress code policy because ‘they pretty much ruin everything’ - "The vice principal of Tennessee's Soddy Daisy High School has been suspended after telling students to "blame the girls" for changes to the school's dress code... Hensley explained that if students don’t want to get a detention, then avoid wearing athletic shorts."
Presumably, the boys were equally responsible for dress code violations as the girls

Man eats bloody raw meat outside vegan food festival - "Witnesses say the meat was “literally dripping” with blood as it was being eaten by the man, who was wearing a black vest top with the slogan: “Go vegan and die” written across it at the time."

Obama's curtain call: A look back on a legacy of executive overreach - "It has been less than a month since President-elect Trump shocked the nation by winning the presidency. In that time, those on the left have shifted their sights from expanding big government programs to preserving the legacy left by President Obama — all while worrying about the possibility of executive overreach during the next administration. This new-found concern for executive power is ironic given that the Obama administration’s signature move has been aggressively to sidestep the democratic process. President Obama has been unapologetic about his unprecedented use of executive power, and of course, that robust view of the executive’s prerogative does not occur in a vacuum but creates an important precedent. “The New York Times” acknowledged as much prior to the election noting that Obama’s pursuit of “executive power without apology … will shape the presidency for decades to come.”"

Labour's domestic abuse Minister Sarah Champion's ex-husband 'still has nightmares' - "Labour’s Shadow Minister for domestic violence was an ‘abusive bully’ who terrified her former husband and cost him £200,000 in their divorce settlement"

Man who sexually groomed suspected minor through texting jailed 4 months - "He downloaded a mobile application for the purpose of chatting with young girls and began sexually grooming a girl who was believed to be 15 years old. Muhammad Syazili Muhammad Noor Aal Toha, a 53-year-old Singaporean, later asked the girl to send a photograph of her private parts to him. On Thursday, the technician was jailed for four months after pleading guilty to one count of attempting to procure the commission of an indecent act by the girl through the photo request – a breach under the Children and Young Persons Act – and one count of sending an obscene photograph of his private parts to the girl. The case was unique in that the police were unable to identify the supposed teenage girl. In May this year, a trial was called to determine if Syazili had a case to answer to given that the girl could not be identified and the court ruled that the case should proceed. However, instead of taking the stand, Syazili decided to plead guilty... The police received information about the case through an unknown informant. During the course of investigations, Syazili told the police that he preyed on young girls as “they are easily to be tackle (sic) with when I talk about sex topics with them”
Of course, the 'teenage girl' could've been a 50 year old man

Married man jailed for sexting unknown victim believed to be a minor - "Syazili was identified and arrested. Investigations found that he downloaded the app Tagged in late 2016 to chat with young girls. In December that year, he began chatting with the victim, who looked "very young based on the profile picture shown"... Their conversations were interrupted when the victim told Syazili that her older brother had seen her performing sexual acts. Her brother then engaged in other sexual acts with her."

Watch Scientists Accidentally Blow Up Their Lab With The Strongest Indoor Magnetic Field Ever

China’s Leaders Confront an Unlikely Foe: Ardent Young Communists - The New York Times - "Carrying portraits of Mao and singing socialist anthems, they espoused the very ideals that the government fed them for years in mandatory ideological classes, voicing grievances about issues like poverty, worker rights and gender equality — some of communism’s core concerns... police officers wearing riot gear raided the four-bedroom apartment the activists were renting in Huizhou and detained about 50 people. As the police burst through the door, the activists held hands and sang “L’Internationale.”"
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