Links - 3rd January 2018 (2)

Germany Must Come to Terms With Refugee Crime - "The researchers asked for data that specifically concerned asylum applicants, both successful and unsuccessful, who had arrived in 2015 and 2016. The state police -- in keeping with the unspoken taboo -- hadn't published such statistics, but they obliged the research team. It turned out the asylum seekers had reversed the decreasing violent crime trend in Lower Saxony. While such crime went down by 21.9 percent between 2007 and 2014, it was up again by 10.4 percent by the end of 2016. Some 83 percent of the cases were solved -- and 92.1 percent of the increase was attributable to the newcomers... Research done in the Netherlands, which has a large Moroccan population, has at times shown a connection between the immigrants' home culture and their propensity to violence, although their economic situation has been found to be a much bigger contributing factor... In some 91 percent of murders and three-quarters of cases involving grave bodily damage, the victims are other migrants. Yet in 70 percent of robberies and 58.6 percent of rape and sexual assault cases, the victims are German. The explanations are intuitive. Asylum seekers often share cramped quarters, which frequently leads to conflicts. For months after their arrival, they are forbidden to work, and their language skills and status often prevent employment long after that restriction is lifted -- so robbers are motivated by jealousy of the locals and a lack of legitimate ways to make money. As for the sex crimes, it's disturbing to think that it reflects behavior that would go unpunished, or is even encouraged, at home; it's certainly the case that the refugees are often uncertain how to behave with local women -- and many of them didn't bring their own...
'Groups of young men with a violence-oriented internal dynamic can form among the refugees. Demands for family reunification finds here a criminological justification.'"
At least the prescription isn't to take in even more 'refugees' so they feel happy and don't commit crimes

'The Road Not Taken' Poem By Robert Frost is Widely Misread - "Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is often interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity, seemingly encouraging readers to take the road less traveled. This interpretation has long been propagated through countless song lyrics, newspaper columns, and graduation speeches. But as Frost liked to warn his listeners, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem—very tricky.” In actuality, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood are “really about the same,” according to Frost, and are equally traveled and quite interchangeable. In fact, the critic David Orr deemed Frost’s work “the most misread poem in America,” writing in The Paris Review: “This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices… The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism. It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” In the final stanza, we can’t know whether the speaker is sighing with contentedness or regret as he justifies the choices he’s made and shapes the narrative of his life. Frost wrote the poem to tease his chronically indecisive friend, Edward Thomas, who misinterpreted the meaning and enlisted in the military shortly thereafter, only to be killed two years later in WWI."

Singapore university's plastic straw ban sparks backlash from students: 'I've been greatly inconvenienced' - "One student claimed to be so irritated by the campaign that they purchased 1,000 plastic straws for $10 and dumped them by a rubbish bin. On the university’s anonymous confessions website NUSWhispers, they wrote that plastic pollution is caused by improper collection and disposal of waste, not by people producing and using plastic items.Another “angsty” student suspected that the move was not motived by environmental consciousness, but by companies that want to scrimp on cost. Complaining that they had been “greatly inconvenienced”, the student said they needed straws because they have sensitive teeth. They added that the ban on straws was pointless without also banning the plastic seals used to cover drinking cups.A reaction campaign against iReject, called iAccept, has emerged on ephemeral messaging platform Instagram Stories, with students posting images and videos of themselves enjoying using plastic straws after the ban was introduced. Some students have started bulk-buying straws to use in restaurants and coffee shops that do not serve them. In an anonymous message shared with Eco-Business, one student said that forcing a blanket ban is backfiring, as “unconverted” students are rebelling against the idea... KFC’s initiative prompted complaints from customers, particularly those wearing lipstick or braces, who went to nearby hawker centres to pick up straws to use in KFC"
I'm proud not all of my juniors have fallen to straw hysteria

NYC 'Feminist Bird Club’ Provides a ‘Safe Space’ for Bird-Watching and Fundraises for Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter - "NYC birder Molly Adams, 26, is leading the nation’s first-ever network of Feminist Bird Clubs to provide a “safe opportunity” for womxn, LGBTQ, and gender-nonbinary folks to practice bird-watching free from the constraints of the patriarchal world.Founded in 2016, the first Feminist Bird Club was launched in Manhattan by Molly Adams, who graduated from Stony Brook University with a master’s in marine science and who now works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in NYC."

These guys deal with cannabis in Singapore – and don’t feel paranoid - "Since May, Singapore has hosted the global headquarters of CannAcubed, an industrial cannabis grower whose operations are mostly located in Yunnan, China. CannAcubed specialises in the cultivation of industrial cannabis, or hemp – strains of cannabis with less than 0.3 per cent of the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In China, cannabis is illegal but government permits allow hemp growers to operate in Yunnan."
Somehow they managed to start a company in a country where it's illegal and operate in a place where it's also illegal, while gays in Singapore, we are told, are in fear for their lives every day due to 377A

Discovery of dog leads to case dismissed against Oregon man convicted of sex abuse - "The discovery of a black lab named Lucy led to the unravelling of a criminal case Monday against an Oregon man who had begun serving a 50-year prison sentence.Joshua Horner, a plumber from Redmond, Oregon, was convicted on April 12, 2017, of sexual abuse of a minor.In the trial, the complainant testified Horner had threatened to shoot her animals if she went to the police about the alleged molestation, and said she saw him shoot her dog, killing it, to make his point."

Court says ‘pedophilia does not apply’ — because perpetrator is a woman - "Dr. Pearce testified that the current research suggests that women do not suffer from paraphilic disorders apart from masochism. This fact lends further weight to the conclusion that pedophilia does not apply to you"

Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think - "A strong majority (62 percent) of Americans favor leaving the Confederate statues standing as historical markers
Overwhelming numbers of Republicans (86 percent) favor this, as do 61 percent of Independents
The only group with a majority favoring removal (57 percent) are “Strong Democrats” — as opposed to “Soft Democrats,” who slightly favor keeping them (52 percent)
When defined by political ideology, only Liberal/Very Liberal people muster a majority for taking statues down (57 percent). Among self-described Moderates, 67 percent favor leaving the statues standing. A whopping 81 percent of Conservative/Very Conservative people favor the statues staying in place
Unsurprisingly, the Northeast is the region of the country most in favor of removing the statues — but even there, a majority (53 percent) backs leaving the statues standing
Here’s a stunner: 44 percent of African-Americans polled believe in keeping the statues standing. Of Latinos, 65 percent believe the statues should remain
Comfortable majorities — no less than 60 percent — in each age cohort support the statues...
The news media have been seriously distorting public reaction to Trump’s handling of Charlottesville. Whether this is a matter of only seeing what they want to see, or a matter of the talking heads being concentrated among coastal elites of both parties, is a matter of conjecture...
Continuing to attack Confederate statues is a big loser for Democrats and liberals. A strong majority of Americans favors keeping them standing. Only liberals want to see them go. When even 44 percent of African-Americans favor leaving the statues alone, the take-them-down faction of the Left has a serious echo chamber problem. This is likely to cause them to seriously overreach. If Democrats and liberals only pay attention to the media and to each other on the statue debate, they are going to alienate a lot of people. The hostile media environment has made it very difficult for anybody to speak up for keeping the statues, even though that is a majority opinion in America. So people will keep that opinion to themselves. In turn, they may very well stew on it, angry at the liberal gatekeepers of respectable opinion either not caring about their opinion, or shutting them down as racists... Americans have no trouble condemning white supremacists and the far right, while at the same time supporting the statues. Americans probably do not believe they are racist for wanting the statues to remain in place...
That’s the thing about the Left: the Law Of Merited Impossibility — “It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it” — has infallible predictive powers."

Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives‏ - "Computer generated faces using generative adversarial network / progressive growing technique from Nvidia. Trained on 50,000 images from a photobooth at ZKM Center for Art and Media by @highqualitysh1t"
Someone: "Why is everyone white?"

The far-left: exposed - "To counteract such hate, we would expect politicians and activists on the left to double down on their liberal principles and spend their energies advocating unity.Instead, as I discovered when I went along to the international Stand Up To Racism conference, an event attended by Dianne Abbot John McDonnell, among 1,000 others, they are closing down debate, inciting violence and spewing racist rhetoric. My recordings, described below, prove just how lost our left - now high-jacked by the far-left - has become... I was shocked to hear the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, branded as 'House Muslim': 'We have Sajid Javid – who is, you know, the House Muslim – who just cos he’s supposedly brown… and just because he has a Muslim-sounding name…'To call someone a house Muslim is to say they do not align with a certain view on Islam, a particularly politicised view, and instead align themselves with the non-Muslims and the government, ie. ‘the house.’ It is clearly racist and derogatory to label someone, in a negative slur, as not ‘one of us’ - and to go as far as to contest their ‘browness’... When I said that Prevent has actually saved lives I was met with laughter:
‘I actually am a former Prevent practitioner and I have been in involved in stopping whole families going to ISIS (laughter) it is no laughing matter, a young family were going to join the Islamic state and because of prevent intervention they did not.’... It is clear from their violent language they are politically driven to oppose our British values, our strategies to safeguard people and to promote community cohesion. At the time we need them most, Corbynite leftist activists have turned against peaceful and rational defence of minorities."

How a selfie saved a Texas man from 99 years in prison - "She said he broke into her home in Temple.She said he sliced an "X" into her chest with a box cutter."
Keywords: Christopher Precopi
Addendum: Selfie saves innocent man facing 99 years behind bars - "Her identity is not being made public because she is not being charged with a crime. She would later admit to Temple police that she reported Precopia because she had a rocky relationship with him several years earlier... Precopia had a solid alibi, but authorities charged him anyway, something police experts told KVUE might have been presumptuous. Generally, police interview suspects before charging them with a crime, the station explained."
And he's white too, so you can't blame racism!

Early childhood education yields few academic benefits — but still has lifelong effects - "There’s a bizarre-seeming paradox sitting at the heart of research into early childhood education. On the one hand, there’s a sizable body of research suggesting that kids who go through intensive education at the ages of 3 and 4 don’t really come out ahead in terms of academic abilities. By kindergarten much of their advantage has receded, and by second grade researchers typically can’t detect it at all.On the other hand, there’s an equally substantive body of research suggesting that early childhood education produces a profound, lifelong advantage. Kids who enter intensive preschool programs are less likely to be arrested, more likely to graduate, and less likely to struggle with substance abuse as adults. One study with a followup when the students were in their mid-30s found that they were likelier to have eventually attended and completed college... Here’s an explanation that makes sense of all the research: The benefits of early childhood education aren’t coming from the academic skills they teach students. Early childhood education helps because it’s reliable daycare."

INFOGRAPHIC: Women Control The Money In America - "More women are taking the reins on their finances, holding 60 percent of all personal wealth and 51 percent of all stocks in the U.S."
Male privilege!

Does ethnic diversity increase violent crime? A global analysis of homicide rates, 1995–2013 - "Many scholars argue that diverse preferences and coordination failure stemming from high ethnic diversity results in high social frictions, leading to socio-political failure. Criminological theories suggest that crime is driven by very similar processes. The specialized literature on civil war, however, reports a diversity dividend, arguing that when two large groups (polarization) make up a society, the risk of armed violence is increased. Using data on global homicide rates from the period 1995–2013 for over 140 countries, we find that ethnic heterogeneity is associated with homicide rates in an inverted U-shape relationship. Measures of ethnic polarization confirm these results directly. The results suggests that ethnic polarization and ethnic dominance rather than diversity are what matter for personal security measured as homicide rates. The conditional effect of high diversity and income inequality is associated with lower homicide rates, results that reject the view that societal heterogeneity and income inequality drive social dislocation. Several possible intervening variables, such as unemployment among males and youth, ethnic exclusion and discrimination, good governance and institutional quality, as well as several demographic and political variables, do not affect the basic results."
So basically playing identity politics leads to disaster