Links - 28th January 2020 (2)

Here's exactly how you should be spending your money - "he recommends only spending between 18-and-23 percent of your income on housing at most. “Housing costs can have an extreme impact on achieving your overall financial goals,” he writes. “Housing costs are extremely dependent on the region in which you live and keep in mind this is a zero sum game; if one category increases, you must decrease in another.”"

Korean lady loses 40kg & divorces husband after he insulted her for postpartum weight gain - "Park Jee Won is a South Korean single mother and former fitness instructor... After 10 months, she lost a whopping 40kg, bringing her total weight down to 46kg. However, her husband remained equally critical as when she had gained the weight and even commented that looking at her gave him goosebumps.Feeling disheartened, Park decided to divorce him and raise their daughter alone."

Why Does India Refuse to Participate in Global Education Rankings? - "India’s refusal to participate in PISA is hard to understand and also defies logic. In the 2009 survey, students from two Indian states, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, participated; India placed 72nd among the 74 participating countries. Since then the Human Resource Development Ministry in India has chosen not to participate in PISA, as they perceived that there was a socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and Indian students, because of India’s peculiar “socio-cultural milieu.” Although India’s concerns have been backed by educational experts, that doesn’t change the fact that the PISA results can help in assessing standards of education in India, especially at the primary level... the former vice chancellor of the Delhi University bemoaned the fact that a large majority of students in the university were unemployable because of their inability to apply their knowledge in real-life situations. This is because of a poor foundation in schools, where the emphasis is more on rote learning, rather than testing a student’s creative skills. According to Pratham’s Annual Status of Education 2013 report, close to 78 percent of Indian children in Standard III and about 50 percent of children in Standard V cannot yet read Standard II texts. Arithmetic is also a cause for concern as only 26 percent students in Standard V can do a division problem... The students’ knowledge of India’s “socio-cultural milieu” was no better. According to the authors, “only a third of these ‘top school’ students in class four knew who was the alive person [sic] in a list of four: Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and Sonia Gandhi (a small number thought, interestingly enough, that it was Mahatma Gandhi who was still alive).” As per UNESCO data, India has one of the lowest public expenditure rates on education per student, especially compared to other Asian countries like China... One crude fact about India’s education sector is that 282 million Indians are illiterate. With a literacy rate of 77 percent, India lags behind other BRICS nations, which have literacy rates above 90 percent."
Yet the Chinese do well in the culturally biased" tests

Music by the numbers: Scientists reveal a secret to great song writing - "What makes some music so enjoyable, and can science help us engineer the perfect pop song?A group of researchers who statistically analysed tens of thousands of chord progressions in classic US Billboard hits say they have found the answer, and it lies in the right combination of uncertainty and surprise... when the test subjects were relatively certain about what chord to expect next, they found it pleasant when they were instead surprised.  Conversely, when individuals were uncertain about what to expect next, they found it pleasurable when subsequent chords weren't surprising."

Cornell Black Students Group Protests The Admission of African and Caribbean Students - "Cornell University’s Black Students United presented the University president with a list of  demands with one particularly surprising addition: a call to reduce the admission of African and Caribbean students in favor of African Americans.  The demand would define true African American students as those who are at least second generation Americans."
Is this anti-racist black solidarity?

Apple exec: students who use Google's cheap laptops won't succeed - "Right now, there are far more Chromebooks being sold to schools than other kinds of computers. In 2018, 60% of all laptops and tablets purchased for U.S. K-12 classrooms were Chromebooks, with Microsoft Windows-powered computers coming in at second at 22%. Apple’s iOS and macOS had 18% of the market... The education market is important to Apple... Aside from cost, Google enjoys a competitive advantage over Apple with its Google Classroom software, according to Boreham. Google Classroom lets students log on to any Chromebook to pull up their profile and saved work. Google’s device management software is also better suited for IT administrators"

Australia bushfires: Domestic violence campaigner Sherele Moody says firefighters will return home, beat their partners - "Australian domestic violence campaigner Sherele Moody has been slammed for her "shameless" comments suggesting firefighters tackling the NSW blazes will "subject women to domestic violence"."

Germany's Got Talent hopeful makes judges ill by shoving sausages up her bum - "Duckie L’Orange, who didn’t speak on her appearance on Das Supertalent, pulled a string of sausages from her apron and dropped them on the floor.Judges then watched in horror as she walked to the back of the stage, lifted up her shirt and dropped her trousers to reveal a face of a dog.She then sat on the floor and scooted over to the sausages, picking them up with her bum and shoving them so it looked like the dog was eating them.Tensing her buttcheeks to make it look like the dog was chewing, the live studio audience recoiled in horror and the judges held their hands over their mouths trying not to be sick... Barking loudly as she ran around the stage, the whole performance descended into chaos with Bruce kicking his leg on the judges desk when he stood up in horror just at seeing her flash the audience. That was before we got to the sausage part!... Something tells us that this may be one of the most bizarre routines to ever grace the Got Talent format.And this is coming from a country where Mr Uekusa stripped naked on live primetime TV, stuck plungers to his stomach and held crockery over his bits to protect his modesty."

Extinct animals: Previously extinct bird species comes back from the dead - "A previously extinct species of bird has re-evolved back into existence, according to a new study. The Aldabra rail first went extinct around 136,000 years ago. Now, it's reclaimed its home island... sediments from the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean show that the island has been completely submerged multiple times, wiping out all species inhabiting it. Every time, every species on the island went extinct — but the Aldabra rail has returned, again and again. The rail is an example of iterative evolution — when the same ancestral lineage leads to repeated evolution of a species at different points in time. The rare phenomenon means that species can re-emerge over and over, despite past iterations going extinct. The flightless bird — a descendant of a species of flying bird known as the white-throated rail — was completely wiped out when the island disappeared below sea level about 136,000 years ago. When sea levels fell again a few thousand years later, fossils show that the species re-colonized it, once again losing the ability to fly due to an absence of predators on the island... While flying was not necessary to avoid predators, it also meant the birds had no way to escape their native island once sea levels began to rise"

Google Assistant will screen spam calls on the Pixel 3 - "The Pixel 3 will be able to screen spam calls and provide real-time transcriptions, Google announced during its Pixel 3 event today. The new feature will allow Google Assistant to answer a suspected spam call and then transcribe the response in real time, letting users decide whether to answer the call, end it early, or block the number entirely and report it as spam."

Nip Allergies in the Bub - A Food Allergy Prevention Project - "Research shows that giving your baby the common allergy causing foods before they are one year of age can greatly reduce the risk of them developing an allergy to that food. When your baby is ready at around 6 months, but not before 4 months, start to introduce first foods including smooth peanut butter/paste and well-cooked egg. Delaying the introduction of the common allergy causing foods does not prevent food allergy."

Singapore Police Force - "SPF STATEMENT ON AWARE’S FACEBOOK POST CRITICISING SPF’S CRIME PREVENTION POSTER
We refer to comments made by AWARE on Police crime prevention posters, warning against outrage of modesty...  These posters are part of crime prevention visuals that the Police have produced in collaboration with the National Crime Prevention Council and Singapore Polytechnic’s Media, Arts & Design School. Other crimes such as shop theft and dishonest misappropriation of property are also featured in these visuals.These visuals target potential perpetrators, and specifically highlight the punishments for committing the criminal acts, in order to send a strong deterrent message.AWARE has criticised the posters, on the basis that they focus on the punishment, and do not refer to the harm suffered by the victim. AWARE does not seem to have understood the purpose of the posters.The posters are designed to warn would-be offenders, who are unable to exercise self discipline or control themselves, regardless of their knowledge of the harm that their act will cause to the victim. The visuals were designed to influence their behaviour, by telling them what punishment they will face. AWARE’s suggestion, on the other hand, is unlikely to have the intended deterrent effect on such offenders... the objective of these visuals is to prevent such harmful actions in the first place, by driving home the point that outrage of modesty is an egregious offence with serious penalties. Hence, our crime prevention messages are carefully curated, based on our understanding of the profile of offenders."
When you have nothing better to do and need to justify your existence. I wonder what sort of ineffectual ads AWARE would come up with

South Korea battles ‘spycam porn’ with 24/7 monitoring by 16-member unit - "In a drab government office in Seoul, a team of broadcast regulators spend their days watching online porn – the frontline troops of South Korea’s attempts to crack down
on spycam videos that mostly expose women... As of last month it operates 24 hours a day... The task force also targets “revenge porn”... “When I went outside, I could not look at women around me because pictures I saw in the office overlapped in my mind’s eye. I had to keep my head down.”  To find the material, they search for Korean-language hashtags on domestic and international platforms – including Twitter and YouTube – that reference sexual acts, although sometimes key terms are disguised with asterisks. They can instruct South Korean sites to take down suspect videos, but the vast majority are hosted on overseas servers beyond their jurisdiction – when they tell domestic internet service providers to block access, but can only ask the foreign operators to remove them voluntarily... The first day after initial upload was the “golden time” to intervene, said Min Kyeong-joong, secretary general of the KCSC, after which repostings are likely to “spiral out of control”... Park Yu-na, 31, said she now routinely avoids using public toilets “as much as possible”."

Taiwanese actress Ili Zheng has ‘fixed partner’ to satisfy her sexual needs twice a month - "Busty Taiwanese actress Ili Zheng Jiazhen is known for her 34D “assets” which earned her praise from social media for baring it all in a recently published calendar. In a recent interview with Taiwanese media, the One Night in Taipei star spoke about her love life that raised eyebrows when she revealed that despite being single, she has a partner whom she sees twice monthly for her “needs”."

Report: Prescriptions Aren't Causing The Opioid Epidemic - "A new study reported in the November 1, 2019 Annals of Emergency Medicine pours more cold water on the false but persistent narrative that the opioid overdose crisis was caused by doctors prescribing opioids to patients in pain... there is no correlation between opioid prescription volume and non-medical use or opioid use disorder among persons age 12 and over. But policymakers and law enforcement continue to pressure health care practitioners into undertreating patients in pain. At a recent international breast cancer conference experts stated the under-prescribing of opioids to breast cancer patients in the U.S. is now comparable to treatment in third world countries."

Recruiters around the world say NUS graduates are among the top 10 most employable in the world - "the global survey asked 7,000 recruiters from 22 countries which universities they thought were the best at preparing graduates for the workplace.NUS, which is ranked 23rd on the World University Ranking, was just one of two universities in Asia which made the top 10, the other being Tokyo University at ninth place... Other notable universities in the top 100 include: University of Oxford at 11th place; Columbia University at 14th; New York University at 15th; Imperial College London at 17th; Tsinghua University at 52nd; Carnegie Mellon University at 61st; UCLA at 62nd; Cornell University at 65th; Nanyang Technological University at 73rd; London School of Economics and Political Science at 83rd and more."

World's first HIV positive sperm bank launched in effort to reduce stigma - "Sperm Positive has begun with three male donors from across New Zealand who are living with HIV but have an undetectable viral load"
Good luck finding people who are willing. If the viral load suddenly rises and someone gets infected...

Private school faces scrutiny after tracking pupils’ periods - "A private girls’ school has been reprimanded after inspectors found teachers were “tracking pupils’ menstrual cycles” against their will.On September 26, Ofsted made an emergency visit to Lady Aisha Academy, a £3,600-a-year Islamic school in Barking, after the Department for Education received a complaint pupils were being questioned about their periods if they did not attend daily prayer services."
If it'd been a Christian school...