Links - 26th November 2018 (2)

Health Promotion Board takes down their ad that featured hate symbol Pepe the Frog in it
How come Red Swastika School and other Buddhist organisations are still around, then?

No, giving up burgers won’t actually save the planet - "Almost all articles on this topic suggest going vegetarian could achieve emission cuts of 50 percent or more. But these figures are never a reduction of total emissions, just those emitted from food. This is an important distinction because four-fifths of emissions are being ignored. The real impact is five times less. Anyway, a systematic peer review of studies shows vegetarian diets likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of 540 kg (1,190 lbs.) of CO2. For the average person in the industrialized world, that’s the equivalent of cutting emissions by just 4.3 percent. Vegetarian diets are also slightly cheaper, and saved money will be spent on goods and services that emit more CO2. A new Swedish study shows a vegetarian diet is 10 percent cheaper, freeing up about 2 percent of an individual’s budget. The extra money would likely be spent proportionally on existing purchases. This boosts one’s carbon emissions by about 2 percent. So eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about 2 percent. This won’t save the planet. Climate change is both trivialized and hampered by unrealistic senses of magnitude, and by silly suggestions that your or my actions can transform the planet... Similarly, neither subsidized solar panels nor wind turbines near shopping malls provide a meaningful solution to global warming. The International Energy Agency estimates that globally we get less than 1 percent of our energy needs from solar and wind, and even by 2040, doing everything promised in the Paris Treaty, we’ll get just 3.6 percent. Over the next quarter century, solar and wind will not be a major part of the picture. Nor does buying an electric car change things by much. The IEA estimates that, optimistically, we’ll go from around 2 million electric cars today to 300 million in 2040. This will reduce global emissions by less than 1 percent because these cars will still get half their electricity from fossil fuels, and because oil will become cheaper and used more elsewhere, as demand from cars falls. We have become so invested in the mistaken premise that the individual can take meaningful action against climate change that we are doing far too little to clamor collectively for the effective investment needed for global warming to be tackled."

Deepening our understanding of academic inbreeding effects on research information exchange and scientific output: new insights for academic based research - "We find that mobility(or lack of) at the early research career stage is decisive in influencing academic behaviorsand scientific productivity. Less mobile academics have more inward oriented informationexchange dynamics and lower scientific productivity. The analysis also indicates that theinformation exchange and scientific productivity of academics that changed institutionsonly once do not differ substantially from that of ‘‘mobile inbred academics’’. Thisemphasizes the need for mobility throughout scientific and academic careers and calls forpolicies to curtail academic inbreeding"

Navel Gazing: Academic Inbreeding and Scientific Productivity - "academic inbreeding is associated with lower scholarly output. Second, theacademically inbred faculty is relatively more centered on its own institution and less open to the rest of thescientific world. This navel-gazing tendency is a critical driver of its reduced scientific output when comparedwith noninbred faculties. Third, we reveal that academic inbreeding could be the result of an institutionalpractice, such that these faculty members contribute disproportionately more to teaching and outreach activities,which allows noninbred faculty members to dedicate themselves to the research endeavor. Thus, a limitedpresence of inbreds can benefit the research output of noninbreds and potentially the whole university, but adominantly inbred environment will stifle productivity, even for noninbreds"

The effect of academic inbreeding on scientific effectiveness

NYPD boss accused of stuffing her panties in co-worker’s mouth - "A ball-busting female boss at a Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for allegedly stuffing a pair of her panties into a male colleague’s mouth... Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra, the second-in-command at the 72nd Precinct Detectives Squad, flipped out on Detective Victor Falcon when he complained about her leaving her underwear all over the unisex locker room... “She has been on social media spouting man-hating rhetoric about fellow sergeants having ‘little d–ks’”"

School bans bags so boy turns up carrying books in a microwave - "Jacob staged a silent protest by using a wicker basket and a microwave to make a point... ‘How can you even get to places on time with all the right books, let alone do things like sanitary towels."

Ryan Miller - "This new goofy identity politics idea of innate virtue and evil corresponding to long ago historical wrongs driven by race and gender and ethnicity, and then applied to present day peeps totally removed from all that, is utterly absurd and confuses the shit out of the task of actually identifying real and ongoing incidents and episodes of racist and sexist discrimination." ~ Anonymous friend of mine."

Waitrose forced to change name of 'sexist' sandwich following complaints - "'Gentleman's Smoked Chicken Caesar Roll'. The roll, which is part of the Heston Blumenthal range at the chain, contains 'gentleman's relish', an anchovy mayonnaise, so there is some logic behind the name... There has been some backlash (mostly from men) to the suggestion that the name of the sandwich is sexist, as there are plenty of other foods which have been given female names [like Pink Lady and Granny Smith Apples, Woman's Weekly, Ladyfingers and Bombay Bad Boy pot noodles]"
The modern meaning of "sexist" is "anything that makes a distinction between the sexes" (when not used for feminist ends, naturally)

Liz - "All White People Are Racist. The Sooner We Realize This the Sooner We Can Be Critical of Ourselves and the Ways We Benefit From Whiteness"
"Ive Noticed People Who Claim to Be Anti-Racist End Up Being Extremely Racist"

Inspectors knock - Japanese citizenship - "TO BECOME a Japanese citizen, a foreigner must display “good conduct”, among other things. The rules do not specify what that means, and make no mention of living wafu (Japanese-style). But for one candidate, at least, it involved officials looking in his fridge and inspecting his children’s toys to see if he was Japanese enough (he was)."

Linda Gottfredson’s Scientific Keynote Cancelled: Why? - "Linda Gottfredson, Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware, has been disinvited from giving a keynote talk at the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance meeting in Sweden... The title of her planned talk was “What should I do? Ethical challenges in helping youth navigate career choices in a world where family expectation, ingrained stereotypes, social engineers and genetic proclivities compete for influence.” I haven’t seen the talk, but the title indicates its likely content: young people must find their way into jobs, how should counseling specialists advise them, given all the sound and fury? Why was such an unremarkable keynote talk cancelled? The talk was dropped following four letters of complaint. Written no doubt by well-meaning scholars, the letters express great anxiety about intelligence research... A profound discomfort with empirical findings emerging from intelligence research lies at the heart of the disinvitation. People who work in this field are equable about these findings (see, for example the open-access article ‘Top 10 replicated findings from Behavioral Genetics’) — they are, after all, descriptive not prescriptive... Gottfredson has for years supported healthcare providers concerned with Type II Diabetes. Among the millions of patients some, inevitably, cope less well with this illness, which, by the way, is about as tricky to manage as a complex investment portfolio. Gottfredson uses her expertise to evaluate the cognitive burden entailed in diabetes self-care — such as figuring out how and when to take the medications, what to do in a crisis, and how to manage blood sugar levels. Rather than ignore the data on variation in intelligence, or soft-pedal its implications, Gottfredson works to reduce harms from this particular source of inequality... We should be vigilant against threats to free speech, because free speech protects us from much that is evil. It is especially disappointing to see Gottfredson treated this way because she can be trusted. She does not shirk from telling the truth even when it hurts her"

Lawsuit accuses Seneca Valley 'mean girls' of targeting boy with false allegations - "The 26-page lawsuit — filed in Pittsburgh on the eve of Mean Girls Day — alleges that T.F. “was forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty and other damages until several of the girls reluctantly admitted that their accusations were false” this summer. The lawsuit contends T.F. was bullied on multiple occasions by classmates. In one example, the lawsuit said students last year placed masking tape with the word “PREDATOR” written on it on his back without his knowledge during choir practice. The lawsuit alleges the boy was further damaged from “gender bias” by school officials and Goldinger’s office, which even after learning the girls’ accusations were false “did not take any action against the females involved,” said attorney Craig Fishman of Pittsburgh, who represents the Floods. “(T.F.) was basically being tortured in school by the other students and investigators, but the administration was only focused on protecting the girls who were lying”"
Believe. Women.

Aziz Ansari’s New Standup Tour Is a Cry Against Extreme Wokeness - "The furor directed at Ansari, though, was not simply a consequence of his alleged misbehavior. The more complex concern was his apparent hypocrisy. Ansari had built a reputation as an ardent feminist and amateur dating guru... In his latest set, Ansari suggests that collective anger has overcorrected; now, rather than hold power to account, it targets the slightest and least consequential controversies. “Why is everyone weighing in on this shit?” Ansari asked of the Twitter users who flocked to debate whether an American teen-ager’s choice of prom dress constituted so-called cultural appropriation. “Everyone weighs in on everything. They don’t know anything. People don’t wanna just say, ‘I don’t know.’ ” The amused but progressive spirit that once informed Ansari’s commentary on current events seems to have crusted into suspicion about wokeness and its excesses. Without ever mentioning the #MeToo movement—or his own experience as one of its most disputed casualties—Ansari decries the destructive performativity of Internet activism and the fickle, ever-changing standards of political correctness"
So much for riding the SJW tiger

British chicken sexing in crisis: experts needed to spot a 'very, very small' difference - "“The mark is remarkably very, very small, less than 0.1mm,” she says. “It’s a very small difference to look for. Males look more three-dimensional and females look flat. In about 10 per cent of chicks, it’s very similar but you have to find out which is which.”"

Christian bakers in 'gay cake' row did not discriminate against same-sex marriage activist, Supreme Court rules - ""As to Mr Lee's claim based on sexual discrimination, the bakers did not refuse to fulfil his order because of his sexual orientation. "They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation."... "The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.""