Student Dies of Heart Attack Looking at Erotic Magazine at Sperm Bank - "The case came to light after the man's family took the sperm bank to court, saying that they were responsible for his death. The court ruled that Zheng, 23, a former medical student at the hospital, was ultimately responsible for deciding how many times he wanted to visit the sperm bank. The court heard how he signed up to the programme in 2011, and made four visits to donate to the centre's sperm bank in 10 days. His family demanded £500,000 in compensation, saying that they had pressurised him into taking part in the programme, and had failed to treat him properly when he was found unconscious."
50 Things to Eat in Singapore Before You Die 2012 | I-S Magazine Online
Why all atas food ah?
Nude model photo leaks (Part I): S'pore models tricked into stripping for camera - "“At the end of the shoot, he said, ‘Why don’t you just do 10 minutes of nude shoots, and I’ll pay you $200 more’,” she said, opening up about her story for the first time to Yahoo Singapore. “Honestly, $200 for 10 minutes — to a student (like me), that’s really a lot.”
She was desperate for the money at that time, too as two ex-boyfriends had cheated her of her savings, and a former employer had not paid her more than $1,500 from a previous part-time job she did.
It was awkward, she said, but she told herself to endure it, reminding herself that it was just 10 minutes. “It’s like lighting up a cigarette and waiting till it finishes burning — it’s that kind of time frame, 10 minutes. So I just endured it, got it over and done with, and then rushed to the toilet to get my clothes back on,” she added."
Presumably it's not being "tricked" only if you're not paid
Nude model photo leaks in Singapore (Part II): Why they happen, why victims keep quiet - "Seah points out that there are bad eggs on both sides — he has learned of instances where models have manipulated photographers and nearly gotten them into trouble, hence the importance of contracts, which will protect both parties. “There was a girl who went to a friend’s house, and said she wanted to try nude photography… so he took the photos, said they were not nice and deleted the shots in front of her, saying, ok, I’m not going to keep these photos because they didn’t work out,” he shared. “The next day, this girl reported him to the police, saying he forced her into nude photography… and he had no proof that she was the one who wanted to do the shoot.”"
Bloomberg's folly : Columbia Journalism Review - "In a stroke, Bloomberg was becoming an important player in international news—and now, just as suddenly, it has tainted its corporate identity and journalism brand to a degree that could last for years. All because of its China coverage... The defining moment, however, the one that has dealt the deepest shock to Bloomberg and may affect it for years, was a widely reported speech by the company’s chairman, Peter T. Grauer, who in March said, in effect, that Bloomberg had gotten carried away with its investigative journalism in China to the detriment of its true vocation: selling computerized terminals that provide financial information... while Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper had done the first detailed reporting on high-level elite corruption involving Bo Xilai, Bloomberg was the first foreign news agency to touch the Xi Jinping family’s business interests and thus broke completely new ground. “We got exclusive stuff, and that really got people excited,” he added.
Wimbledon pays equal prize money - "Roger Federer, the 2006 men's champion, earned £655,000 while Amelie Mauresmo took home £625,000 for winning the women's title. The All England Club had previously defended the difference by saying that women had best-of-three-set matches while the men had best-of-five contests.
Equal pay for unequal work. Most feminists: silence (an exception)
Women's prisons should close, says justice taskforce - "Women should not be sent to prison and should instead serve community sentences, according to a new report by the Women's Justice Taskforce."
Women's Justice = sending men to prison, but not women
Comment: "I thought this site promoted feminism and equality?
If someone is found guilty of a crime that warrants a custodial sentence their gender should be of no consequence. To suggest otherwise is extraordinarily misogynistic. At best you're validating the notion that women are all delicate little flowers who need to be treated in a special way lest their fragility result in them suffering. At worst you're saying that women who break the law should be held to a lesser standard of responsibility for that than men who do the exact same thing."
Feminists: silence
Downloading Games Might Not Be Better for the Environment After All, Study Finds - "There is an exception to this: games that are less than 1.3 GB in size prove to have a lower footprint when downloaded. Factors like increased Internet speeds will have an effect on the situation as time goes on, but the study also notes the increasing file sizes of games may offset that. Likewise, consumer behavior--like taking the bus or driving to the store to buy a game and nothing else--also plays a role in how much better physical distribution is for larger games."
He knew his vote would sign their death warrant - "Not a day goes by that newly retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell does not think about the two goat herders he and three comrades encountered on a late June day in 2005 while searching Afghanistan's border with Pakistan for an elusive Taliban leader. Stealth is the tradecraft of the elite special forces soldiers, and that element of surprise was compromised when the herders approached the unit, Luttrell said during an exclusive interview Tuesday on TODAY. The team members had to make a quick decision: Kill the herders, or let them go and risk giving away their position to the Taliban. The men of Seal Team 10 made the decision that comported to the rules of engagement, but it ended up costing the lives of Luttrell's best friend, two others and 16 more servicemen who tried to rescue them. They let the herders go... Executing the Afghanis would have been illegal, under U.S. law, and could have exposed the American soldiers to prosecution back at home. The alternative was to let them go, and risk tipping their hand to the enemy. And that's exactly what happened."
The 6 Worst Things About iTunes
Why I Hate iTunes, and You Should Too - "iTunes, and more importantly the iTunes music store, was in its time a marvel. It made music available on demand—and as single tracks, not on costly CDs—at a price lots of people were willing to pay. But the software soon became the biggest pain point in your computer system. Adam Lashinsky at Fortune has the rundown here about how iTunes morphed from a music file manager into a “TV, DVD player, radio, DJ, college class and software store.” And, I’d add, Thing That Makes Me Terrified to Plug My iPhone Into My Computer. Click on that sync button, and there goes your afternoon.
Apple iPhone, Black Friday Deals: Why We Wait for Hours to Buy Stuff - "For the most part, consumers aren’t waiting in line for logical reasons. They aren’t there to get the absolute best prices, nor (limited edition Nikes notwithstanding) to get their hands on a scarce, highly valuable commodity. What is it, then? Consumer analysts and marketing researchers offer this explanation, which is puzzling to those of us who try to avoid queues like the plague: Waiting in line is fun, and makes you feel good about yourself."
Women at their 'most attractive' at 30, men at 34, survey says
Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals - "The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals"
How to set a honey trap - "Despite what you see on James Bond, most femme fatales don’t approach an espionage target and start fluttering their eyelashes wildly. As Professor Wolff says, “You can’t just deliver a flood of very attractive Russian females – somebody will of course notice". Instead, many engineer a chance meeting... The most successful acts of seduction aren’t quick flings but long-term emotional manipulations, where the target often believes that they’ve fallen in love. After World War Two, there were far more women than men in West Germany, and so the East German government sent “Romeo” spies to entrap lonely secretaries. In some instances, the spy married his target and admitted that he was a double agent – but working for a friendly country. “Romeo” would tell his wife that his government was worried that West Germany wasn’t being completely honest – could she provide a few details to keep his boss happy? These marriages could last for decades. In the ‘60s, a communist mole who had infiltrated the CIA gained his colleague’s trust through wife swapping. Free love helped Karl and Hana Koecher get to know important CIA officials, and they then passed information onto the KGB. Meanwhile a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, was seduced by Chinese secret agent Shei Pei Pu – whom Boursciot thought was a woman, but was in fact a man. The pair were together for 18 years, and Shei Pei Pu even convinced Boursciot that he was pregnant and had given birth to their son. Having sex for your country may not sound like the most patriotic act, but spy agencies believe that seductive espionage can be a valuable way of ensuring national security. As Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general, once said: "In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lay down.”"
No wonder Singapore's SIB interview asks if you're into swinging
Lingerie brand Tezenis removes 'Crime Scene' knickers after outrage over 'rape' connotations
Comments: 'So we used to have feminists burning their bras, now we have them removing their knickers. Why didn't Tezenis just tell Radhika to get a life ?'
'Seriously? Rape? What? Am I the only one who gets absolutely no connotation of rape from this whatsoever, the only time I would think it had a connotation of rape is now that several perma-offended harridans on Twitter have said they think it's about rape. My initial reaction was that the connotation was of skid marks. Not rape.'
'If I had read the slogan without first knowing that someone thought it was to do with rape, I would have thought it was to with the general sexual 'naughtiness' associated with that part of the body. It is using sexual fun as a selling point.'
Whatever happened to: 'If you don't like it, don't buy it' (the usual liberal response to censorship)?
Revealed: identity of Fifi the stunning wartime spy - "For decades, the existence of a Second World War secret agent codenamed ‘Fifi’ was dismissed as fiction. Security chiefs laughed off stories of a beautiful blonde employed as an ‘agente provocatrice’ to tempt British trainee spies into giving away secrets. Almost 70 years later, Fifi’s existence has been confirmed and her identity disclosed. She was Marie Christine Chilver, hired at 22 by the wartime Special Operations Executive and employed in a role so covert that it was known to only a handful of people... Posing as a French journalist – she was fluent in several European languages - she was tasked with charming young trainees and engaging them in conversation over drinks or dinner, gaining their confidence and extracting information from them. The reports she wrote decided whether the trainees could be trusted on foreign assignments, and for some she was their downfall"
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The PAP IB is getting even more unruly
The FAP Cafe:
A: How the PAP rewarded themselves with 19-month bonuses in 2008 | The Real Singapore
The powerful do not need to be defended. Instead they need to be accountable for the power they were given by the people..... Strangely, there are many here who think otherwise....
B: You were the one who still refuses to retract your statement even though you admitted you got your facts wrong, right?
A: Retract what? I already said I was mistaken about the time etc..... At the end of the day, it's still harassment....
B: Retract or edit your post, or add an afternote, that the police didn't go down to Han's house at midnight, and that no intimidation took place.
C: Bonus? No such thing.
A: Whether or not there was intimidation, I wouldn't know because I wasn't at the interview. And unless you were there, you wouldn't know either.
B: Then on what basis are you making the allegation? In your post, you said there was intimidation, in case you forgotten.
Please don't think you can come here, anyhow shoot and then get away with it.
A: I said it was shameful..... to put a citizen through the experience..... I said it based on what I read, prima facie..... get away with what?
B: Your exact words,
"Han Hui Hui and company being hauled to the police station at midnight and all that jazz... This is really shameful. The police should spend more time catching real criminals instead of attempting to intimidate citizens who are merely attempting to assert their civil rights."
A: How would you like to attend a long interview at the police station for asserting your civil rights, B?
B: Firstly, it was not midnight. Secondly, no one was hauled even at 9.30pm. Han went to the station the next day, based on the time she chose.
C: Crime is crime. Civil rights? What about the children of special needs, their rights?
A: So much water under the bridge. That has already been clarified. I have already said that I was mistaken in those details. But the substance of the whole affair remains true in my judgment.... a citizen who has not committed a siezeable offence shouldn't have to go through all this....
C: Mental scare in the special needs children is a sizeable offence
A: C.... I do not wish to go over that again..... Visit the thread discussing this very issue if you wish.... I had already stated my view over there.
B: No, you have yet to clarify. You only admitted it was 11pm+, not midnight. But there were other facts you stated which were incorrect and not yet corrected.
A: Really? You know that for sure, C?
C: Try for yourself
B: Anyway, thank you for the exchange, Mr A. I can conclude you are not man enough to retract your statement made based on incorrect facts.
A: Go read the thread, C..... I don't wish to be drawn into all that again....
B..... this is absurd.... but do as you wish..... the powerful really need your support.
B: It's your credibility at stake, not mine.
A: It's all there in black and white....
Me: I note that virtually no comments in this thread are relevant to the originally posted link.
Because A has made a mistake once, he must forever be reminded about it and hounded about it in every unrelated thread, from today until the end of time (or until he leaves this group).
Woe, woe! Such Original Sin is unforgivable and uncleansable. Forever, A shall remain outcast, doomed to ring a bell and shout "Unclean! Unclean!" before posting.
His name shall be cursed forevermore. Infants shall learn to dread it. Grown men shall quake at the mere whisper of it. Women will faint and old men collapse in paroxystic spasms.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master—as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!
Using special needs children as a political pawn is pretty low, even for the PAP IB.
COMMENT: Various accounts of CPF protest ‘heckling’ tell a different story - Yahoo News Singapore
"So now that we know there is more than meets the eye to the heckling story, maybe we can start to look at things from a more rational point of view instead of spewing hate on two figures that are already vilified by Singaporeans for causing trouble.
A: How the PAP rewarded themselves with 19-month bonuses in 2008 | The Real Singapore
The powerful do not need to be defended. Instead they need to be accountable for the power they were given by the people..... Strangely, there are many here who think otherwise....
B: You were the one who still refuses to retract your statement even though you admitted you got your facts wrong, right?
A: Retract what? I already said I was mistaken about the time etc..... At the end of the day, it's still harassment....
B: Retract or edit your post, or add an afternote, that the police didn't go down to Han's house at midnight, and that no intimidation took place.
C: Bonus? No such thing.
A: Whether or not there was intimidation, I wouldn't know because I wasn't at the interview. And unless you were there, you wouldn't know either.
B: Then on what basis are you making the allegation? In your post, you said there was intimidation, in case you forgotten.
Please don't think you can come here, anyhow shoot and then get away with it.
A: I said it was shameful..... to put a citizen through the experience..... I said it based on what I read, prima facie..... get away with what?
B: Your exact words,
"Han Hui Hui and company being hauled to the police station at midnight and all that jazz... This is really shameful. The police should spend more time catching real criminals instead of attempting to intimidate citizens who are merely attempting to assert their civil rights."
A: How would you like to attend a long interview at the police station for asserting your civil rights, B?
B: Firstly, it was not midnight. Secondly, no one was hauled even at 9.30pm. Han went to the station the next day, based on the time she chose.
C: Crime is crime. Civil rights? What about the children of special needs, their rights?
A: So much water under the bridge. That has already been clarified. I have already said that I was mistaken in those details. But the substance of the whole affair remains true in my judgment.... a citizen who has not committed a siezeable offence shouldn't have to go through all this....
C: Mental scare in the special needs children is a sizeable offence
A: C.... I do not wish to go over that again..... Visit the thread discussing this very issue if you wish.... I had already stated my view over there.
B: No, you have yet to clarify. You only admitted it was 11pm+, not midnight. But there were other facts you stated which were incorrect and not yet corrected.
A: Really? You know that for sure, C?
C: Try for yourself
B: Anyway, thank you for the exchange, Mr A. I can conclude you are not man enough to retract your statement made based on incorrect facts.
A: Go read the thread, C..... I don't wish to be drawn into all that again....
B..... this is absurd.... but do as you wish..... the powerful really need your support.
B: It's your credibility at stake, not mine.
A: It's all there in black and white....
Me: I note that virtually no comments in this thread are relevant to the originally posted link.
Because A has made a mistake once, he must forever be reminded about it and hounded about it in every unrelated thread, from today until the end of time (or until he leaves this group).
Woe, woe! Such Original Sin is unforgivable and uncleansable. Forever, A shall remain outcast, doomed to ring a bell and shout "Unclean! Unclean!" before posting.
His name shall be cursed forevermore. Infants shall learn to dread it. Grown men shall quake at the mere whisper of it. Women will faint and old men collapse in paroxystic spasms.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master—as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!
Using special needs children as a political pawn is pretty low, even for the PAP IB.
COMMENT: Various accounts of CPF protest ‘heckling’ tell a different story - Yahoo News Singapore
"So now that we know there is more than meets the eye to the heckling story, maybe we can start to look at things from a more rational point of view instead of spewing hate on two figures that are already vilified by Singaporeans for causing trouble.
Post ID: 6006056227897004691
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Fulfiling needs
(Dilbert comic strip for 11/30/1995 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.)
Dilbert: We've been dating for a year now, Liz. There's something I'd like to do tonight...
There are some needs that I can't fulfill at work.
Liz: I understand.
Dilbert: YES! YES!
Liz: How long has your internet connection at work been broken?
(Strangely enough, though there are more than twice as many hits for fulfiling as fulfilling, Google asks if I mean the latter)
Post ID: 8821231106261549346
It's only Hate if you're not Left Wing
Southern Poverty Law Center Biased in Labeling Family Research Council a 'Hate Group,' Academic Study Argues
"The Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hatewatch" fails to use objective criteria in determining which organizations should be labeled a "hate group," George Yancey, professor of sociology at the University of North Texas, finds in a new study, "Watching the Watchers: The Neglect of Academic Analysis of Progressive Groups," published in the January issue of the journal Academic Questions.
SPLC's list dubiously lists Family Research Council as a hate group while ignoring anti-Christian groups that use similar rhetoric, which demonstrates that the list is more about mobilizing liberals than providing an objective source for hate groups, Yancey argues. SPLC has escaped critical analysis of its work in academia because of a liberal bias among academicians, the study additionally claims...
FRC's appearance on the list gained national attention in 2012 when a gunman, Floyd Corkins, entered FRC headquarters with the intent of killing everyone there. FRC's building manager, Leo Johnson, subdued Corkins and was shot in the process. Corkins targeted FRC after finding the group on Hatewatch. SPLC has continued to label FRC a hate group even after the shooting.
All the groups listed on Hatewatch, with the exception of black separatists, Yancey notes, are either political or religious conservatives. Yancey believes this is because SPLC is a liberal organization and it is using subjective criteria to choose which groups belong on the list.
"The subjective nature of the criteria for determining a hate group provides a conceptual structure more vulnerable to social bias than an objective criteria applying to groups across a wide political, cultural, and religious spectrum," he wrote.
According to SPLC, a hate group has "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics."
Using this standard, Yancey says, there should be some liberal and anti-Christian groups on the list as well. To illustrate, Yancey compares the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to FRC.
According to SPLC, Yancey explains, FRC is a hate group because it intentionally makes hateful and untrue statements about the LGBT community, which can lead to violence even though FRC does not engage in violent actions. (Yancey noted the irony that while SPLC does not cite any examples of FRC-inspired violence, SPLC's Hatewatch actually did incite violence in the case of Floyd Corkins.) To support this contention, SPLC notes that FRC reports on studies showing that the child molestation rate is higher among gays and same-sex parenting harms children, and quotes FRC President Tony Perkins saying that LGBT activists seek to "persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle."
If this is the standard for labeling an organization a hate group, Yancey says, then the anti-Christian MRFF should also be on the list.
In a Huffington Post blog, Michael Weinstein, founder of MRFF, claimed that Christians will be responsible for ushering in "a blood-drenched, draconian era of persecutions, naturalistic militarism and superstitious theocracy." And Weinstein has written books claiming that Christians are willing to use mass murder to bring about their goals...
Yancey's analysis of SPLC, though, is in service of a larger point. There is not enough critical analysis of liberal groups in academia, he argues, because too many in academia share the viewpoint of liberal groups.
"This is a critique of the social biases within academia that preclude critical analysis of progressive social groups," Yancey wrote. "Such neglect serves academics with progressive, secular perspectives by allowing progressive, secular social groups to make claims of truth and objectivity. Such claims enhance the social power of these progressives. But this neglect damages any real scientific attempt to assess social and political factors in our society. Scrutiny directed at conservative and religious groups – and they should be scrutinized – while progressive organizations are given a pass creates a distorted understanding of reality. In doing this, social science scholars replace an objective examination of our society with a biased approach serving progressive social and political interests.""
Isn't "privilege" about attacking or maligning an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics?
"The Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hatewatch" fails to use objective criteria in determining which organizations should be labeled a "hate group," George Yancey, professor of sociology at the University of North Texas, finds in a new study, "Watching the Watchers: The Neglect of Academic Analysis of Progressive Groups," published in the January issue of the journal Academic Questions.
SPLC's list dubiously lists Family Research Council as a hate group while ignoring anti-Christian groups that use similar rhetoric, which demonstrates that the list is more about mobilizing liberals than providing an objective source for hate groups, Yancey argues. SPLC has escaped critical analysis of its work in academia because of a liberal bias among academicians, the study additionally claims...
FRC's appearance on the list gained national attention in 2012 when a gunman, Floyd Corkins, entered FRC headquarters with the intent of killing everyone there. FRC's building manager, Leo Johnson, subdued Corkins and was shot in the process. Corkins targeted FRC after finding the group on Hatewatch. SPLC has continued to label FRC a hate group even after the shooting.
All the groups listed on Hatewatch, with the exception of black separatists, Yancey notes, are either political or religious conservatives. Yancey believes this is because SPLC is a liberal organization and it is using subjective criteria to choose which groups belong on the list.
"The subjective nature of the criteria for determining a hate group provides a conceptual structure more vulnerable to social bias than an objective criteria applying to groups across a wide political, cultural, and religious spectrum," he wrote.
According to SPLC, a hate group has "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics."
Using this standard, Yancey says, there should be some liberal and anti-Christian groups on the list as well. To illustrate, Yancey compares the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to FRC.
According to SPLC, Yancey explains, FRC is a hate group because it intentionally makes hateful and untrue statements about the LGBT community, which can lead to violence even though FRC does not engage in violent actions. (Yancey noted the irony that while SPLC does not cite any examples of FRC-inspired violence, SPLC's Hatewatch actually did incite violence in the case of Floyd Corkins.) To support this contention, SPLC notes that FRC reports on studies showing that the child molestation rate is higher among gays and same-sex parenting harms children, and quotes FRC President Tony Perkins saying that LGBT activists seek to "persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle."
If this is the standard for labeling an organization a hate group, Yancey says, then the anti-Christian MRFF should also be on the list.
In a Huffington Post blog, Michael Weinstein, founder of MRFF, claimed that Christians will be responsible for ushering in "a blood-drenched, draconian era of persecutions, naturalistic militarism and superstitious theocracy." And Weinstein has written books claiming that Christians are willing to use mass murder to bring about their goals...
Yancey's analysis of SPLC, though, is in service of a larger point. There is not enough critical analysis of liberal groups in academia, he argues, because too many in academia share the viewpoint of liberal groups.
"This is a critique of the social biases within academia that preclude critical analysis of progressive social groups," Yancey wrote. "Such neglect serves academics with progressive, secular perspectives by allowing progressive, secular social groups to make claims of truth and objectivity. Such claims enhance the social power of these progressives. But this neglect damages any real scientific attempt to assess social and political factors in our society. Scrutiny directed at conservative and religious groups – and they should be scrutinized – while progressive organizations are given a pass creates a distorted understanding of reality. In doing this, social science scholars replace an objective examination of our society with a biased approach serving progressive social and political interests.""
Isn't "privilege" about attacking or maligning an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics?
Post ID: 6978417138428106445
Monday, October 13, 2014
Links - 13th October 2014
Watch Former Violinist Naomi Elishuv Play Mozart While Undergoing Brain Surgery At Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center In Israel - "Under a local anesthetic, Elishuv was awake during surgery but felt no pain while surgeons poked and prodded her brain. She was asked to play her instrument while doctors searched for the affected area. When they did locate the site of the tremors, Elishuv’s playing began to improve. Fried’s team inserted an electrode with four leads through a tiny hole drilled into her skull. “When we turned on the electric current, we saw the tremor melt away,” Fried said, “and Naomi continued to play the violin beautifully. This is the first time ever that I have performed brain surgery on a person who played the violin during the operation. We enjoyed the private concert of a talented and noble performer. I hope now she will be able to perform before a larger audience.”"
Sex education in Poland faces legal challenge - "Anybody teaching sex education in Poland could face up to two years behind bars under draft legislation proposed by anti-paedophile campaigners. Backed by a petition boasting some 250,000 signatures, supporters of the proposal argue that sex education in school can promote sexual behaviour in minors and undermine their morality."
Can U.S. border guards turn me away for saying I've smoked pot? - "“If you admit you’ve smoked marijuana or plan to, you can be banned permanently – there’s no due process, no right to a trial and it’s not appealable,” says Mark Belanger, a Vancouver lawyer who works on border issues. “Anything drug-related is typically a crime involving moral turpitude. Those are magic words and you’ll be banned from entering the United States.” So, you don’t need to have a drug conviction to be turned away for drug crimes under Section 212 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. A couple of puffs could be enough. All it takes is an admission that you’ve knowingly used an illegal drug, either because you’ve answered an officer’s question or you’ve been chatty and volunteered the information. You won’t go to jail, but you will get told to turn your car around and head back to Canada."
Nude Jennifer Lawrence photos: why don't naked pictures of men get leaked? - "Today, in what may be the most overblown deployment of intelligence personnel in human history, the FBI has launched a “manhunt” to find the hacker – when presumably its time might be better spent trying to find the perpetrators behind the beheading of American journalist James Foley or other Westerners fighting as IS jihadists. Which begs the question: would the same hysterical response have ensued if the leaked pictures were of men? Interestingly, there appears to be only one bloke on the list: Dave Franco, a hunky American actor who appeared in 21 Jump Street and is popular with teens (Google him, although it might take you a while to find him). Even in the case of these images, Franco appears to be little more than an insignificant co-star. The fact that 100 of the 101 targets are women firstly proves the bleeding obvious: most hackers are bored, hormonal, time-rich young men. Also, plenty of men out there can be tempted to pay hard moolah for celebrity images... Nude male celebrity images just don't carry the same financial clout. It might also be true to say there's a lot less male material to hack and steal in the first place. It would appear to be the case that men are largely less selfie-obsessed than women, and that we mostly don’t take pictures of our appendages, anxious that they are smaller and uglier than we’d perhaps like. And if we do take selifes “down there”, we probably make sure you can’t tell it’s us in the photos... men, you'd have to conclude, have it easier than women in this regard. Dave Franco will probably find that this is the best thing that could have happened to him as far as his film career goes. But that's not to say the effect on Ms Lawrence and co is necessarily as devastating as Lena Dunham would have you believe. Let's be brutally honest: none of this hacking hoo-hah will do her career any real harm whatsoever."
Women, stop moaning about childbirth. Men can deal with pain, too - "“I gave birth. FOUR TIMES!” says my wife whenever she wants to win an argument... It is a trope of all sitcoms, Hollywood films, marital rows and Mr Muscle adverts, that men are wimps, while women are superhuman towers of strength. If men had to go through the agony of giving birth, my wife argues, the human race would die out. But this just isn’t true. A study, undertaken by the University of Malaga, published recently in The Journal of Pain, found there was little or no differences between the sexes when it came to the ability to cope with pain... This is the latest in a long line of studies that suggest women are very much the weaker sex when it comes to pain. Or certainly no more macho than men."
Why I no longer hold doors open for women - "I will remind her of Doris Lessing's despair when she was in a class of nine- and 10-year olds (the same age as our daughter) where the teacher was blaming the incidence of war on the innately violent nature of men. Lessing wrote: "You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives." I don't want this to be the picture of my daughter's schooling. Or any other part of their upbringing."
Do men really think women look better without any make-up? - "I didn’t realise until quite late in life that some women don’t just wear make-up, they wear a full-on disguise – the sort you might adopt if you were evading capture. At university one of new flatmates came downstairs late one night and I thought we were being burgled... half of women admit to doing their make-up at least four times a day and a whopping 67 per cent only go bare-faced twice a month.
Google Chrome is to blame for a massive increase in online ad blocking
Mother who entered Singapore illegally to look for son given 10 weeks' jail - "The 30-year-old woman - whose name and nationality cannot be revealed to protect the identity of the boy - entered the country to take back her two-year-old son, of whom she had custody over as ruled by the English Court in January. However, she entered the country illegally via a vessel from Langkawi because her husband had previously made police reports against her and she was afraid of being arrested on arrival. She pleaded guilty to illegal entry into Singapore last Thursday... The woman had contracted Child Abduction Recovery International in June this year. Whittington then contacted Wilson, and met him five days before the plan to take the boy was carried out. Deputy Public Prosecutor Ailene Chou said Whittington had entered Singapore to conduct reconnaissance, such as the layout of the grandparents' residence and their daily routine. He also researched the vessel route from Langkawi to Singapore, and found out that Raffles Marina Club had an armed guard only during the club's operating hours between 9am and 5pm. He also prepared supplies for the vessel, including a passport and diapers for the boy."
So Child Abduction Recovery International abducts children
xkcd: Citogenesis - "Where Citations Come From: Through a convoluted process, a user's brain generates facts. These are typed into Wikipedia.
A rushed writer checks Wikipedia for a summary of their subject.
Surprised readers check Wikipedia, see the claim, and flag it for review. A passing editor finds the piece and adds it as a citation.
Now that other writers have a real source, they repeat the fact. "
Ten things we have learnt about Africa - "Belief in witchcraft is also common - about 40%; a similar percentage also visit traditional healers to cure sickness. Belief in witchcraft is highest in Tanzania with 93% - this is the country where witchdoctors say that magic potions are more effective if they contain body parts of people with albinism. Ethiopia had the lowest levels of belief in witchcraft - at just 17%. Belief that juju or sacred objects can prevent bad things happening was generally lower - between 20 and 30%. In Senegal, however, 75% thought such things worked - far higher than in Tanzania (49%). It may come as a surprise to learn that South Africa had the highest number of people - 52% - saying they took part in ceremonies of traditional religions, or honoured or celebrated their ancestors."
So much for "stereotypes"
Thomas Heathfield: British banker quits job to become South African WITCH DOCTOR - "Mr Heathfield was given tribal name Gogo Mndawe by villagers near the town of Komatipoort, in Mpumalanga province. The novice was banned from all contact with friends and family before his graduation ceremony on Sunday, attended by his parents Ally and Brian Heathfield who had travelled from the family home in England... Mr Heathfield had to learn enough of the local Swazi language, which is spoken in northern South Africa, to understand orders given to him at his final exam. He learned how to put himself into a spiritual trace through a ritual dance called kuhlehla every day at 2.30am. He had to find a goat bladder and other dissected body parts hidden half a mile from where the villagers were gathered... More than 50 per cent of South Africans use traditional healing – which involves the use of herbs, bones and chants – including many educated professionals. His mother said she had enjoyed her holiday in South Africa."
Nudist group also stripped in durian orchard, police say - "A video clip of the first event, where about 18 people were filmed participating in events like body painting and outdoor activities on a secluded beach in the nude at the Penang National Park, went viral recently leading to a huge uproar. The event is believed to be held on May 31 this year at a secluded beach in Teluk Kampi at the park in Teluk Bahang here. Abdul Rahim said two participants of the event have turned themselves in. "A 40-year-old who's a Malaysian and a 30-year-old Singaporean had given their statements at the Southwest district police headquarters on Wednesday," he said. He said the police is still looking for 11 others who took part in the event. Seven out of 18 who took part in the event were Malaysians. The others were four Singaporeans, two Myanmar nationals and one each from the Philippines and India. The case is being investigated under Section 509 of the Penal Code for gestures intended to insult the modesty of a person which carries a jail sentence of up to five years or fine or both upon conviction."
Malaysia Boleh!
Why interns don’t deserve pay - "They present their campaign as a blast against The Man, but the intern uprising is motored more by a nauseating sense of entitlement and capacity for self-pity than by any of the workplace-improving ideals of yesteryear. It speaks volumes about the parlous state of modern history teaching that these interns so liberally refer to themselves as ‘slaves’. Anyone who had been taught properly about the Roman era, or about black slavery in early America, or about the Holocaust, would know that there’s rather more to being a slave than being asked by a gruff boss to buy him a hazelnut latte... The demand that internships become paid positions is an extension of modern youth’s corrosive belief that everything they do should be instantly rewarded. This is a generation which thinks its every endeavour deserves a pat on the back... Terrifyingly, we’ve nurtured youngsters who measure the value of their every action by how speedily they’re rewarded for it. Like performing seals. The whole point of an internship is that it isn’t a job — it’s an opportunity. So it makes perfect sense that there’s no pay packet at the end of the week."
Sex education in Poland faces legal challenge - "Anybody teaching sex education in Poland could face up to two years behind bars under draft legislation proposed by anti-paedophile campaigners. Backed by a petition boasting some 250,000 signatures, supporters of the proposal argue that sex education in school can promote sexual behaviour in minors and undermine their morality."
Can U.S. border guards turn me away for saying I've smoked pot? - "“If you admit you’ve smoked marijuana or plan to, you can be banned permanently – there’s no due process, no right to a trial and it’s not appealable,” says Mark Belanger, a Vancouver lawyer who works on border issues. “Anything drug-related is typically a crime involving moral turpitude. Those are magic words and you’ll be banned from entering the United States.” So, you don’t need to have a drug conviction to be turned away for drug crimes under Section 212 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. A couple of puffs could be enough. All it takes is an admission that you’ve knowingly used an illegal drug, either because you’ve answered an officer’s question or you’ve been chatty and volunteered the information. You won’t go to jail, but you will get told to turn your car around and head back to Canada."
Nude Jennifer Lawrence photos: why don't naked pictures of men get leaked? - "Today, in what may be the most overblown deployment of intelligence personnel in human history, the FBI has launched a “manhunt” to find the hacker – when presumably its time might be better spent trying to find the perpetrators behind the beheading of American journalist James Foley or other Westerners fighting as IS jihadists. Which begs the question: would the same hysterical response have ensued if the leaked pictures were of men? Interestingly, there appears to be only one bloke on the list: Dave Franco, a hunky American actor who appeared in 21 Jump Street and is popular with teens (Google him, although it might take you a while to find him). Even in the case of these images, Franco appears to be little more than an insignificant co-star. The fact that 100 of the 101 targets are women firstly proves the bleeding obvious: most hackers are bored, hormonal, time-rich young men. Also, plenty of men out there can be tempted to pay hard moolah for celebrity images... Nude male celebrity images just don't carry the same financial clout. It might also be true to say there's a lot less male material to hack and steal in the first place. It would appear to be the case that men are largely less selfie-obsessed than women, and that we mostly don’t take pictures of our appendages, anxious that they are smaller and uglier than we’d perhaps like. And if we do take selifes “down there”, we probably make sure you can’t tell it’s us in the photos... men, you'd have to conclude, have it easier than women in this regard. Dave Franco will probably find that this is the best thing that could have happened to him as far as his film career goes. But that's not to say the effect on Ms Lawrence and co is necessarily as devastating as Lena Dunham would have you believe. Let's be brutally honest: none of this hacking hoo-hah will do her career any real harm whatsoever."
Women, stop moaning about childbirth. Men can deal with pain, too - "“I gave birth. FOUR TIMES!” says my wife whenever she wants to win an argument... It is a trope of all sitcoms, Hollywood films, marital rows and Mr Muscle adverts, that men are wimps, while women are superhuman towers of strength. If men had to go through the agony of giving birth, my wife argues, the human race would die out. But this just isn’t true. A study, undertaken by the University of Malaga, published recently in The Journal of Pain, found there was little or no differences between the sexes when it came to the ability to cope with pain... This is the latest in a long line of studies that suggest women are very much the weaker sex when it comes to pain. Or certainly no more macho than men."
Why I no longer hold doors open for women - "I will remind her of Doris Lessing's despair when she was in a class of nine- and 10-year olds (the same age as our daughter) where the teacher was blaming the incidence of war on the innately violent nature of men. Lessing wrote: "You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives." I don't want this to be the picture of my daughter's schooling. Or any other part of their upbringing."
Do men really think women look better without any make-up? - "I didn’t realise until quite late in life that some women don’t just wear make-up, they wear a full-on disguise – the sort you might adopt if you were evading capture. At university one of new flatmates came downstairs late one night and I thought we were being burgled... half of women admit to doing their make-up at least four times a day and a whopping 67 per cent only go bare-faced twice a month.
Google Chrome is to blame for a massive increase in online ad blocking
Mother who entered Singapore illegally to look for son given 10 weeks' jail - "The 30-year-old woman - whose name and nationality cannot be revealed to protect the identity of the boy - entered the country to take back her two-year-old son, of whom she had custody over as ruled by the English Court in January. However, she entered the country illegally via a vessel from Langkawi because her husband had previously made police reports against her and she was afraid of being arrested on arrival. She pleaded guilty to illegal entry into Singapore last Thursday... The woman had contracted Child Abduction Recovery International in June this year. Whittington then contacted Wilson, and met him five days before the plan to take the boy was carried out. Deputy Public Prosecutor Ailene Chou said Whittington had entered Singapore to conduct reconnaissance, such as the layout of the grandparents' residence and their daily routine. He also researched the vessel route from Langkawi to Singapore, and found out that Raffles Marina Club had an armed guard only during the club's operating hours between 9am and 5pm. He also prepared supplies for the vessel, including a passport and diapers for the boy."
So Child Abduction Recovery International abducts children
xkcd: Citogenesis - "Where Citations Come From: Through a convoluted process, a user's brain generates facts. These are typed into Wikipedia.
A rushed writer checks Wikipedia for a summary of their subject.
Surprised readers check Wikipedia, see the claim, and flag it for review. A passing editor finds the piece and adds it as a citation.
Now that other writers have a real source, they repeat the fact. "
Ten things we have learnt about Africa - "Belief in witchcraft is also common - about 40%; a similar percentage also visit traditional healers to cure sickness. Belief in witchcraft is highest in Tanzania with 93% - this is the country where witchdoctors say that magic potions are more effective if they contain body parts of people with albinism. Ethiopia had the lowest levels of belief in witchcraft - at just 17%. Belief that juju or sacred objects can prevent bad things happening was generally lower - between 20 and 30%. In Senegal, however, 75% thought such things worked - far higher than in Tanzania (49%). It may come as a surprise to learn that South Africa had the highest number of people - 52% - saying they took part in ceremonies of traditional religions, or honoured or celebrated their ancestors."
So much for "stereotypes"
Thomas Heathfield: British banker quits job to become South African WITCH DOCTOR - "Mr Heathfield was given tribal name Gogo Mndawe by villagers near the town of Komatipoort, in Mpumalanga province. The novice was banned from all contact with friends and family before his graduation ceremony on Sunday, attended by his parents Ally and Brian Heathfield who had travelled from the family home in England... Mr Heathfield had to learn enough of the local Swazi language, which is spoken in northern South Africa, to understand orders given to him at his final exam. He learned how to put himself into a spiritual trace through a ritual dance called kuhlehla every day at 2.30am. He had to find a goat bladder and other dissected body parts hidden half a mile from where the villagers were gathered... More than 50 per cent of South Africans use traditional healing – which involves the use of herbs, bones and chants – including many educated professionals. His mother said she had enjoyed her holiday in South Africa."
Nudist group also stripped in durian orchard, police say - "A video clip of the first event, where about 18 people were filmed participating in events like body painting and outdoor activities on a secluded beach in the nude at the Penang National Park, went viral recently leading to a huge uproar. The event is believed to be held on May 31 this year at a secluded beach in Teluk Kampi at the park in Teluk Bahang here. Abdul Rahim said two participants of the event have turned themselves in. "A 40-year-old who's a Malaysian and a 30-year-old Singaporean had given their statements at the Southwest district police headquarters on Wednesday," he said. He said the police is still looking for 11 others who took part in the event. Seven out of 18 who took part in the event were Malaysians. The others were four Singaporeans, two Myanmar nationals and one each from the Philippines and India. The case is being investigated under Section 509 of the Penal Code for gestures intended to insult the modesty of a person which carries a jail sentence of up to five years or fine or both upon conviction."
Malaysia Boleh!
Why interns don’t deserve pay - "They present their campaign as a blast against The Man, but the intern uprising is motored more by a nauseating sense of entitlement and capacity for self-pity than by any of the workplace-improving ideals of yesteryear. It speaks volumes about the parlous state of modern history teaching that these interns so liberally refer to themselves as ‘slaves’. Anyone who had been taught properly about the Roman era, or about black slavery in early America, or about the Holocaust, would know that there’s rather more to being a slave than being asked by a gruff boss to buy him a hazelnut latte... The demand that internships become paid positions is an extension of modern youth’s corrosive belief that everything they do should be instantly rewarded. This is a generation which thinks its every endeavour deserves a pat on the back... Terrifyingly, we’ve nurtured youngsters who measure the value of their every action by how speedily they’re rewarded for it. Like performing seals. The whole point of an internship is that it isn’t a job — it’s an opportunity. So it makes perfect sense that there’s no pay packet at the end of the week."
Post ID: 7996425557772747763
If most liberals seems to believe in the "blank slate" theory where our traits are shaped by nurture instead of nature, why do they at the same time consider homosexuality to be complete innate ie, nature?
Gabriel Seah's answer to If most liberals seems to believe in the "blank slate" theory where our traits are shaped by nurture instead of nature, why do they at the same time consider homosexuality to be complete innate ie, nature? - Quora
It conforms to their ideology.
The underlying liberal premise here is that discrimination (or differential treatment) based on immutable traits is discriminatory and wrong (Page on iit.edu).
Liberals do not want to discriminate against people based on immutable traits, but at the same time they want to retain the ability to discriminate based on certain factors.
For example, it is justifiable to not hire the lazy and the stupid, or to pay them a lower salary (some commentators go even further and point out that we don't choose to be lazy and/or stupid [Do Smart, Hard-Working People Deserve to Make More Money?] and so there is some justification for not paying them less, but I won't go into that, not least since it involves talking about free will).
So, if homosexuality is entirely due to nature and is immutable, then this is reason to accept it and not to discriminate against homosexuals (since homosexuals are supposedly born that way).
At the same time, if other traits are shaped entirely by nurture, then we can discriminate based on them. For example we can not hire the lazy and the stupid, or pay them a lower salary, with the underlying assumption that they could've done otherwise (since these traits are entirely or mostly shaped by nurture and the individual has some control over them); the concept of moral desert (of getting what you morally deserve - Desert (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)) is implied here.
Liberals also believe in the potential for social change through social engineering. So welfare, affirmative action or ending stereotyping can counteract the influence of other social forces (i.e. nurture), leaving us in a situation where outcomes are equal (since they believe that if we correct for social forces such as discrimination, we will all turn out the same way since our traits are only shaped by nurture).
As a concrete example, feminists generally assert that men and women are the same, so the gender wage gap must be due to discrimination, stereotyping, social forces keeping women at home etc. And putting an end to discrimination, stereotyping and social forces keeping women at home will lead to the gender wage gap disappearing.
One notes that there are 2 linked fallacies involved here: the naturalistic fallacy (what is natural is good/right) and the moralistic fallacy (if it's not good/right it can't be true). This is why they are so quick to reject explanations of group differences in traits that point to nature (e.g. that there is a biological basis for the math gender gap)
It conforms to their ideology.
The underlying liberal premise here is that discrimination (or differential treatment) based on immutable traits is discriminatory and wrong (Page on iit.edu).
Liberals do not want to discriminate against people based on immutable traits, but at the same time they want to retain the ability to discriminate based on certain factors.
For example, it is justifiable to not hire the lazy and the stupid, or to pay them a lower salary (some commentators go even further and point out that we don't choose to be lazy and/or stupid [Do Smart, Hard-Working People Deserve to Make More Money?] and so there is some justification for not paying them less, but I won't go into that, not least since it involves talking about free will).
So, if homosexuality is entirely due to nature and is immutable, then this is reason to accept it and not to discriminate against homosexuals (since homosexuals are supposedly born that way).
At the same time, if other traits are shaped entirely by nurture, then we can discriminate based on them. For example we can not hire the lazy and the stupid, or pay them a lower salary, with the underlying assumption that they could've done otherwise (since these traits are entirely or mostly shaped by nurture and the individual has some control over them); the concept of moral desert (of getting what you morally deserve - Desert (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)) is implied here.
Liberals also believe in the potential for social change through social engineering. So welfare, affirmative action or ending stereotyping can counteract the influence of other social forces (i.e. nurture), leaving us in a situation where outcomes are equal (since they believe that if we correct for social forces such as discrimination, we will all turn out the same way since our traits are only shaped by nurture).
As a concrete example, feminists generally assert that men and women are the same, so the gender wage gap must be due to discrimination, stereotyping, social forces keeping women at home etc. And putting an end to discrimination, stereotyping and social forces keeping women at home will lead to the gender wage gap disappearing.
One notes that there are 2 linked fallacies involved here: the naturalistic fallacy (what is natural is good/right) and the moralistic fallacy (if it's not good/right it can't be true). This is why they are so quick to reject explanations of group differences in traits that point to nature (e.g. that there is a biological basis for the math gender gap)
Post ID: 3320494144168353062
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Links - 12th October 2014
ISIS Clothing For Sale As Indonesian Retailers Cash In On Iraq Crisis [PHOTOS] - "Mostly based in Indonesia, the retailers have set up shop on Facebook to hawk their wares. Kaos Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, a Bandung, Indonesia-based outlet, sells black T-shirts featuring the phrase “We Are All ISIS” with a gun similar to an AK-47 and Arabic text above. The shirts, along with other variants of ISIS clothing, sell for around $7 on retailer’s Facebook page. Also in Indonesia, Rezji.com, the self-proclaimed “ultimate clothing brand for [the] Islamic movement,” urges Muslims to “support” ISIS by buying polo shirts with an ISIS badge emblazoned on the left side of the chest. The “100% Super Cotton” shirts go for about 80,000 rupiahs ($6.67) plus a “bonus inside” that ships with an order. For 50,000 rupiahs ($4.17), the online retailer sells ISIS figurines clad in all-black clothing and clutching a rifle. Similar figures show figures in traditional Muslim garb wearing a shirt with the Palestinian flag on it. Orders come with a “bonus sticker.” Kavkaz (Caucasian) Struggle Wear, also based in Bandung, publicized its “Jihad Series” of T-shirts, which show keffiyeh-draped men clutching a rifle with the words “Jihad is our choice” written below... Other Hamas hoodies featuring the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Palestinian group’s military arm, are sold out. The website also features "anti-Zionist" T-shirts, including one showing a sword going through the skull of a skeleton wearing a Jewish star headband (also sold out.)"
LIZ JONES: Worry about real crime, not a fantasy Game Of Thrones 'rape' - "The director – conscious of the furore surrounding what female commentators on the blogosphere have been saying is clearly a rape scene, which means they are going to boycott the series – has defended it by describing the act as ‘consensual’. Of course, this means there have been calls for his head. But I’m afraid, in this instance, I have to side with the oppressor. The woman barely screams. There is no weapon. The two have a history (viz, the incestuous, if dead, offspring). Because you know what? Rape with no violence, and little resistance, is in no way comparable to what the Russians did to the inhabitants of Berlin. A little faux resistance does not a crime make. My feeling is that women should stop being so pathetic. We cannot have everything our own way: equal pay, year-long maternity leave, seats given up on the Tube, while on the other hand we get in a stew over a fictional bit of nonsense where a woman struggles, tossing her long blonde hair, before getting down and dirty and sighing with pleasure. I mean, even Carrie Bradshaw does exactly this in the elevator with Mr Big before the two embark on their extramarital affair."
Mike Rowe - Mike Rowe's Photos - "I mean no disrespect to the 500 or so individuals who have publicly challenged me to participate. And God knows, I’m in near constant need of a cold shower. But as a guy who has represented some rather large, profitable companies while running a non-profit foundation, I’ve got some opinions on the subject of persuasion, especially as it applies to fundraising. And I’ve been struggling with how to share those thoughts in a way that will not make me look like a douche-bag... According to the experts, 50% to 70% of all the money collected as a result of the Ice Bucket Challenge will directly impact future contributions to other charities in an equal and opposite way. In other words, if The ALS Association collects a $100 million - as it’s on track to do - other charities competing for the same dollars will collect between $50 and $70 million LESS. Thus, the largest donations do not necessarily go to those charities that serve the most people or do the best research - they go to those that who market themselves in the most effective way... a foundation accustomed to working for decades on a million dollars or so in annual donations, will now have to manage a $75 million jackpot. That worries me, as it should anyone who has ever studied the fate of lottery winners. That’s not their fault, but it doesn’t change the situation, and I’m not inclined to challenge more people to send more money to coffers that are already overflowing... Jill did several difficult things. She vowed to walk, at a time when walking wasn’t so easy. She committed her time, her energy, and her passion to a cause that mattered deeply to her. And most importantly, she made the whole thing personal. That made me want to help her. Not just because she's my friend - but because she was helping herself. The Ice Bucket Challenge is different. Here, people I’ve never met give me 24 hours to either write a check to a charity I’m not familiar with, or dump a bucket of cold water over my head. Tell me honestly - if that precise challenge arrived to you privately, via the US Mail, what would you do with it? You’d throw it in the trash, right? But a public challenge is not so easy to ignore. Online, everyone is watching. Your friends. Your co-workers. Your clients. Maybe even your boss"
Ban for Horlicks and noodle ads - "The Horlicks advert said the malt drink had been tested on pupils at a boarding school, and included a voiceover saying, "Children have become taller, stronger and sharper. The Horlicks challenge - now proven. See for yourself." GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Horlicks, said the version of the product sold in Bangladesh was fortified and its health claims were supported by clinical studies done by the National Institute of Nutrition in India. Horlicks sold in the UK, however, is not fortified and GSK said there was no intention of advertising it as such here. Nestle made a similar point about its Maggi Noodles which in Bangladesh are also fortified. In the advert, a mother explained to her child: "Maggi is the best because it has essential protein and calcium that help to build strong muscles and bones.""
Ahh.. consumer protection laws!
Lebanon official urges punishment for ISIS flag burning - "Lebanon's Minister of Justice [official website] on Saturday called for the "sternest punishments" to the individuals in Beirut who burned the flags of the militant groups the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) and the Al-Nusra Front. It isreported [Asharq Al-Awsat report] that Minister Ashraf Rifi issued a highly criticized statement which has urged the Lebanon state prosecutor to bring justice to the individuals who participated in the flag burning activities at Sassine Square in Beriut. Minister Rifi claims that the flag burner's actions were condemning and insulting to the faith of Islam because inscribed on the ISIS flag is the Muslim Shahada which is a declaration of faith. Rifi stated in regards to the inscriptions on the ISIS flag, “[t]here is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet, which has nothing to do with ISIS and its terrorist approach." Under Lebanese law, it is illegal to defame religious symbols which in turn may incite sectarian conflict. Pictures of the individuals burning the militant groups flags on Saturday were discovered on Facebook and revealed that the actions were a response to the recent beheading of member of the Lebanese armed forces by ISIS."
Priorities!
The Worse the Economy Gets, Longer People Live: Orszag - "These cross-state data are consistent with historical patterns that economists Douglas Miller, Marianne Page, Ann Stevens and Mateusz Filipski have found. Their research shows that a one-percentage-point increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a 0.5 percent reduction in the state’s mortality rate. During the Great Depression, too, life expectancy rose, according to research by Jose Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux of the University of Michigan. As they conclude, “The evolution of population health during the years 1920-1940 confirms the counter-intuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions.” How could this be? In a series of important papers, Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of Virginia, has explored the reasons. It appears that while suicide rates rise during downturns, other types of fatalities, such as from motor-vehicle accidents, fall more. The surprising findings apply even to heart attacks... when there is less economic activity, hazards such as air pollution and traffic congestion are less severe. Smoking and obesity also tend to decline, Ruhm has found."
The Western stars of Chinese adverts - "Steven Weathers isn't a doctor, but he has played one on TV - in China. He has also played an engineer, a pirate and the man who watched a pretty girl go by. China is newly wealthy, and consumers have been on a shopping spree. That means plenty of TV ads and an unexpected opportunity for foreigners in China to become the stars of those commercials. Weathers, an American, was teaching literature and advertising in Shanghai when he answered his first casting call. He thought he might make a little pocket money, but TV work came pouring in. He has a look casting agents in China are hungry for - tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Almost immediately, he noticed a trend: "Early on, most of those roles were for the foreign expert," he says. "So I always had the lab coat, always had glasses on, in the laboratory or on the design floor." Even when Weathers was cast in a long underwear commercial, he was still the foreign expert: "I thought, 'Am I going to be in the underwear?' And they said, 'No, no, you're the scientist who came up with the fabric.'""
Saving Net Neutrality the BitTorrent Way - "Klinker says Internet providers should pay people who, like him, voluntarily renounce bandwidth hogging, just like electricity companies encourage people to use more power in off-peak hours. "This would relieve pressure on the network, yield a better experience for users and would be worth real money to the ISPs," he argues. "Additionally, there would be no unnatural pressure for the ISP to deliberately degrade the base service in order to manufacture demand for the priority service, as some have suggested might happen"... If we truly want a neutral Internet in which all traffic is created equal, we should be happy to pay for our actual usage. That would be fair, and providers would not need to create fast or slow lanes. If, on the other hand, we want the convenience of a fixed payment, net neutrality is no more than a meaningless fetish."
Subscribed speed is a proxy for usage
Editor's note: Our withdrawn review "Blood cotton" | The Economist - "In our review of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist, we said: “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” There has been widespread criticism of this, and rightly so. Slavery was an evil system, in which the great majority of victims were blacks, and the great majority of whites involved in slavery were willing participants and beneficiaries of that evil. We regret having published this and apologise for having done so. We have therefore withdrawn the review, but in the interests of transparency the text remains available only on this special page and appears below."
There're some things you just can't say...
North Korea 'backs Scottish independence' - "North Korea is rich in natural resources and we like the taste of Scotch whisky, so we can be beneficial to each other"
Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Analgesic Overdose Mortality in the United States, 1999-2010. - "Medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates"
Taking public transit to work may keep you fitter: study
Kick Your Smoking Habit With...Magic Mushrooms? - "the rate of nicotine abstinence for the study’s participants stood at 80 percent after six months, a markedly higher rate than typical success rates in smoking cessation trials. Varenicline, typically considered the drug most effective in curbing a smoking habit, has demonstrated only a 35 percent success rate after six months. Nicotine replacement and behavioral therapy alone, by contrast, usually have a success rate of less than 30 percent. Researchers note that the benefits last even after participants came down from the mind-altering drug."
LIZ JONES: Worry about real crime, not a fantasy Game Of Thrones 'rape' - "The director – conscious of the furore surrounding what female commentators on the blogosphere have been saying is clearly a rape scene, which means they are going to boycott the series – has defended it by describing the act as ‘consensual’. Of course, this means there have been calls for his head. But I’m afraid, in this instance, I have to side with the oppressor. The woman barely screams. There is no weapon. The two have a history (viz, the incestuous, if dead, offspring). Because you know what? Rape with no violence, and little resistance, is in no way comparable to what the Russians did to the inhabitants of Berlin. A little faux resistance does not a crime make. My feeling is that women should stop being so pathetic. We cannot have everything our own way: equal pay, year-long maternity leave, seats given up on the Tube, while on the other hand we get in a stew over a fictional bit of nonsense where a woman struggles, tossing her long blonde hair, before getting down and dirty and sighing with pleasure. I mean, even Carrie Bradshaw does exactly this in the elevator with Mr Big before the two embark on their extramarital affair."
Mike Rowe - Mike Rowe's Photos - "I mean no disrespect to the 500 or so individuals who have publicly challenged me to participate. And God knows, I’m in near constant need of a cold shower. But as a guy who has represented some rather large, profitable companies while running a non-profit foundation, I’ve got some opinions on the subject of persuasion, especially as it applies to fundraising. And I’ve been struggling with how to share those thoughts in a way that will not make me look like a douche-bag... According to the experts, 50% to 70% of all the money collected as a result of the Ice Bucket Challenge will directly impact future contributions to other charities in an equal and opposite way. In other words, if The ALS Association collects a $100 million - as it’s on track to do - other charities competing for the same dollars will collect between $50 and $70 million LESS. Thus, the largest donations do not necessarily go to those charities that serve the most people or do the best research - they go to those that who market themselves in the most effective way... a foundation accustomed to working for decades on a million dollars or so in annual donations, will now have to manage a $75 million jackpot. That worries me, as it should anyone who has ever studied the fate of lottery winners. That’s not their fault, but it doesn’t change the situation, and I’m not inclined to challenge more people to send more money to coffers that are already overflowing... Jill did several difficult things. She vowed to walk, at a time when walking wasn’t so easy. She committed her time, her energy, and her passion to a cause that mattered deeply to her. And most importantly, she made the whole thing personal. That made me want to help her. Not just because she's my friend - but because she was helping herself. The Ice Bucket Challenge is different. Here, people I’ve never met give me 24 hours to either write a check to a charity I’m not familiar with, or dump a bucket of cold water over my head. Tell me honestly - if that precise challenge arrived to you privately, via the US Mail, what would you do with it? You’d throw it in the trash, right? But a public challenge is not so easy to ignore. Online, everyone is watching. Your friends. Your co-workers. Your clients. Maybe even your boss"
Ban for Horlicks and noodle ads - "The Horlicks advert said the malt drink had been tested on pupils at a boarding school, and included a voiceover saying, "Children have become taller, stronger and sharper. The Horlicks challenge - now proven. See for yourself." GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Horlicks, said the version of the product sold in Bangladesh was fortified and its health claims were supported by clinical studies done by the National Institute of Nutrition in India. Horlicks sold in the UK, however, is not fortified and GSK said there was no intention of advertising it as such here. Nestle made a similar point about its Maggi Noodles which in Bangladesh are also fortified. In the advert, a mother explained to her child: "Maggi is the best because it has essential protein and calcium that help to build strong muscles and bones.""
Ahh.. consumer protection laws!
Lebanon official urges punishment for ISIS flag burning - "Lebanon's Minister of Justice [official website] on Saturday called for the "sternest punishments" to the individuals in Beirut who burned the flags of the militant groups the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) and the Al-Nusra Front. It isreported [Asharq Al-Awsat report] that Minister Ashraf Rifi issued a highly criticized statement which has urged the Lebanon state prosecutor to bring justice to the individuals who participated in the flag burning activities at Sassine Square in Beriut. Minister Rifi claims that the flag burner's actions were condemning and insulting to the faith of Islam because inscribed on the ISIS flag is the Muslim Shahada which is a declaration of faith. Rifi stated in regards to the inscriptions on the ISIS flag, “[t]here is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet, which has nothing to do with ISIS and its terrorist approach." Under Lebanese law, it is illegal to defame religious symbols which in turn may incite sectarian conflict. Pictures of the individuals burning the militant groups flags on Saturday were discovered on Facebook and revealed that the actions were a response to the recent beheading of member of the Lebanese armed forces by ISIS."
Priorities!
The Worse the Economy Gets, Longer People Live: Orszag - "These cross-state data are consistent with historical patterns that economists Douglas Miller, Marianne Page, Ann Stevens and Mateusz Filipski have found. Their research shows that a one-percentage-point increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a 0.5 percent reduction in the state’s mortality rate. During the Great Depression, too, life expectancy rose, according to research by Jose Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux of the University of Michigan. As they conclude, “The evolution of population health during the years 1920-1940 confirms the counter-intuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions.” How could this be? In a series of important papers, Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of Virginia, has explored the reasons. It appears that while suicide rates rise during downturns, other types of fatalities, such as from motor-vehicle accidents, fall more. The surprising findings apply even to heart attacks... when there is less economic activity, hazards such as air pollution and traffic congestion are less severe. Smoking and obesity also tend to decline, Ruhm has found."
The Western stars of Chinese adverts - "Steven Weathers isn't a doctor, but he has played one on TV - in China. He has also played an engineer, a pirate and the man who watched a pretty girl go by. China is newly wealthy, and consumers have been on a shopping spree. That means plenty of TV ads and an unexpected opportunity for foreigners in China to become the stars of those commercials. Weathers, an American, was teaching literature and advertising in Shanghai when he answered his first casting call. He thought he might make a little pocket money, but TV work came pouring in. He has a look casting agents in China are hungry for - tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Almost immediately, he noticed a trend: "Early on, most of those roles were for the foreign expert," he says. "So I always had the lab coat, always had glasses on, in the laboratory or on the design floor." Even when Weathers was cast in a long underwear commercial, he was still the foreign expert: "I thought, 'Am I going to be in the underwear?' And they said, 'No, no, you're the scientist who came up with the fabric.'""
Saving Net Neutrality the BitTorrent Way - "Klinker says Internet providers should pay people who, like him, voluntarily renounce bandwidth hogging, just like electricity companies encourage people to use more power in off-peak hours. "This would relieve pressure on the network, yield a better experience for users and would be worth real money to the ISPs," he argues. "Additionally, there would be no unnatural pressure for the ISP to deliberately degrade the base service in order to manufacture demand for the priority service, as some have suggested might happen"... If we truly want a neutral Internet in which all traffic is created equal, we should be happy to pay for our actual usage. That would be fair, and providers would not need to create fast or slow lanes. If, on the other hand, we want the convenience of a fixed payment, net neutrality is no more than a meaningless fetish."
Subscribed speed is a proxy for usage
Editor's note: Our withdrawn review "Blood cotton" | The Economist - "In our review of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist, we said: “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” There has been widespread criticism of this, and rightly so. Slavery was an evil system, in which the great majority of victims were blacks, and the great majority of whites involved in slavery were willing participants and beneficiaries of that evil. We regret having published this and apologise for having done so. We have therefore withdrawn the review, but in the interests of transparency the text remains available only on this special page and appears below."
There're some things you just can't say...
North Korea 'backs Scottish independence' - "North Korea is rich in natural resources and we like the taste of Scotch whisky, so we can be beneficial to each other"
Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Analgesic Overdose Mortality in the United States, 1999-2010. - "Medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates"
Taking public transit to work may keep you fitter: study
Kick Your Smoking Habit With...Magic Mushrooms? - "the rate of nicotine abstinence for the study’s participants stood at 80 percent after six months, a markedly higher rate than typical success rates in smoking cessation trials. Varenicline, typically considered the drug most effective in curbing a smoking habit, has demonstrated only a 35 percent success rate after six months. Nicotine replacement and behavioral therapy alone, by contrast, usually have a success rate of less than 30 percent. Researchers note that the benefits last even after participants came down from the mind-altering drug."
Post ID: 1467145895610138184
The Left and the Family
Renewal | Tony Blair | Power for a purpose
"During the 1960s and 1970s the left developed almost in substitution for its economic prescriptions —which by then were failing — a type of social individualism that sometimes confused liberation from prejudice with a disregard for moral structures. It fought for racial and sexual equality, which was entirely right, but it appeared indifferent to the family and individual responsibility, which was wrong. Moreover, as the influence of some of the traditional supporters of the left in Labour and working-class organisation waned there was a real danger, occasionally realised, that single issue pressure groups moved into the vacuum. I believe that this was an abberation. Look back to the first heyday of the left in the 1930s and 1940s and you will find heavy emphasis on responsibility, self-improvement and the family...
The only way to rebuild social order and stability is though strong values, socially shared, inculcated through individual and family. This is not some lurch into authoritarianism or an attempt to impose a regressive personal morality. It is, in fact, about justice and fairness. The strong and powerful can protect themselves. Those who lose most through the absence of rules are the weak and the vulnerable. The first casualties of social breakdown are often the poor and disadvantaged. That is why the left should treat it seriously.
Why is it the left that is best able to tackle the problems of social disorder? Because a society based on strong values has at its heart respect for others and mutual responsibilities. Obligation to more than oneself. Crude individualism of left or right won't work. The family is important because it is in the family that self-respect and respect for others are learned. It is in the family that the limits of freedom are first experienced and the roots of responsibility put down. The family is the antithesis of narrow selfishness."
"During the 1960s and 1970s the left developed almost in substitution for its economic prescriptions —which by then were failing — a type of social individualism that sometimes confused liberation from prejudice with a disregard for moral structures. It fought for racial and sexual equality, which was entirely right, but it appeared indifferent to the family and individual responsibility, which was wrong. Moreover, as the influence of some of the traditional supporters of the left in Labour and working-class organisation waned there was a real danger, occasionally realised, that single issue pressure groups moved into the vacuum. I believe that this was an abberation. Look back to the first heyday of the left in the 1930s and 1940s and you will find heavy emphasis on responsibility, self-improvement and the family...
The only way to rebuild social order and stability is though strong values, socially shared, inculcated through individual and family. This is not some lurch into authoritarianism or an attempt to impose a regressive personal morality. It is, in fact, about justice and fairness. The strong and powerful can protect themselves. Those who lose most through the absence of rules are the weak and the vulnerable. The first casualties of social breakdown are often the poor and disadvantaged. That is why the left should treat it seriously.
Why is it the left that is best able to tackle the problems of social disorder? Because a society based on strong values has at its heart respect for others and mutual responsibilities. Obligation to more than oneself. Crude individualism of left or right won't work. The family is important because it is in the family that self-respect and respect for others are learned. It is in the family that the limits of freedom are first experienced and the roots of responsibility put down. The family is the antithesis of narrow selfishness."
Post ID: 5198772696996967443
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Links - 27th September 2014
Newly Uncovered "Super Henge" Dwarfed Stonehenge - "The digital map — made from high-resolution radar and magnetic and laser scans that accumulated several terabytes of data — shatters the picture of Stonehenge as a desolate and exclusive site that was visited by few"
Strange but True: Less Sleep Means More Dreams - "losing 30 minutes of REM one night can lead to a 35 percent REM increase the next night—subjects jumped from 74 minutes of REM to a rebound of 100 minutes. Nielsen also found that dream intensity increased with REM deprivation"
Women prefer fun over fit! - "Almost all British women have said that a date with a gym obsessed bloke is not in any way fun. If he watches his carb intake the same as you do when ordering- there is something seriously wrong. Sharing a dessert is a much more appealing way to end a meal than tapping the calories from his starter and mains into his fitness app to see if he can spare the room... This extends to the bedroom too with many women worrying about stripping in front of a man with a six pack as it makes them feel self-conscious if they don’t match up... 82% of women who currently have an Average Joe in their bed are not looking to persuade them to get more toned or to diet"
Sex therapist Tracey Cox explains why 75% of women prefer FLAB to abs - "Three in four British women would choose a man with love handles over one sporting a six-pack. That's 23 million of us who find muscular men a turn off; 96% predict a date with an abs-obsessed bloke to be positively dreary... I'd love to meet a female whose sex life isn't affected by a 'fat day'. I've yet to meet one man who has let feeling fat stop them having sex."
▶ the Cast of Avenue Q performs "Call me Maybe" - YouTube
New Northern Ireland Violence May Be About More Than the British Flag - NYTimes.com - "Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland’s two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province. But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain’s red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical City Council building in central Belfast... Under Britain’s strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland"
Some Things You Can Do In Your Sleep, Literally - "People who are fast asleep can correctly respond to simple verbal instructions, according to a study by researchers in France. They think this may help explain why you might wake if someone calls your name or why your alarm clock is more likely to rouse you than any other noise."
Scientists uncover most potent carcinogen - "Aristolochic acid (AA), a natural compound in Aristolochia plants that grow all over the world, is used in herbal remedies for weight loss and to treat ailments ranging from arthritis to menstrual cramps. It causes 10 times more genetic mutations than smoking, they found, leading to kidney failure and cancers... AA is a natural compound found in Aristolochia plants, many of which are commonly known as birthwort, Dutchman’s pipe or “Guan mu tong”. It is commonly used in traditional herbal preparations, particularly in China and Taiwan, and sold as capsules. But the acid, known as “ma dou ling suan” in Mandarin, has been found to be highly toxic. In the early 1990s, about 100 people in Belgium developed kidney failure from a slimming mixture that contained AA. Some needed kidney transplants and others later developed bladder cancers. AA has been banned in many countries, including Singapore. But it has long been used as a traditional medicine and studies show that it continues to be used, particularly in Asia. In Taiwan and China, AA has been sold under names such as “chuan xi ling jiao nang”, “fei an pian”, “fu fang she dan chuan bei san” and “ji ming wan”, among many others. Earlier this year, scientists from King’s College London warned that millions of people may be exposed to the risk of kidney failure and cancer by taking such herbal medicines, because they are widely available in Asia and over the Internet... It is not known how many people here have used AA products, said Prof Teh, but in Taiwan, where it was commonly used until it was banned in 2003, patients with associated kidney failure and cancer are still being diagnosed... “Through this study, we would like to highlight the importance of raising public awareness when consuming ‘natural herbal remedies’,” she said."
100% natural! Proven safe through hundreds/thousands of years of Chinese medicine!
Keywords: Singapore General Hospital, SGH, liver
Nigeria police hold 'robber' goat - "Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape."
Calls for Slavery Restitution Getting Louder - New York Times - "Some blacks still dismiss the reparations movement as a digression from the issues that matter. ''If the government got the money from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, that'd be great,'' said Walter E. Williams, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. ''But the government has to take the money from citizens, and there are no citizens alive today who were responsible for slavery. The problems that black people face are not going to be solved by white people, and they're not going to be solved by money. The resources that are going into the fight for reparations would be far more valuably spent making sure that black kids have a credible education"... Stuart E. Eizenstat, who as a senior official in the Clinton administration negotiated settlements under which Holocaust victims would receive $8 billion in reparations from the governments of Germany, France and Austria and from Swiss banks, said that he viewed those cases as different from the African-American claims, because Holocaust reparations are going largely to surviving victims, while slavery reparations would go to descendants generations removed... Part of the new momentum in the reparations movement comes from efforts to win restitution not just from the federal government, but also from companies that profited from slavery... Historians say that slavery was so central to the economy in the early days of America that almost every business benefited from it... it is a long stretch from a 19th-century slave trader to a 21st-century Dutch company that makes copying machines, and Océ officials seemed baffled by any possible connection to the slave trade. ''This is the first I've heard of it,'' said Karen Fitt, a company spokeswoman.
Maybe they should sue Africans whose ancestors profited from slavery too - but then, they don't have any money
Casey Martin discrimination, USGA - "In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court cited the Americans With Disabilities Act in a 7-2 ruling that the PGA Tour must allow Martin to ride in a golf cart between shots at Tour events. That use “is not a modification that would fundamentally alter the nature” of the PGA Tour, said Justice John Paul Stevens, who delivered the majority opinion."
United States v. Starrett City Associates - "Brief Fact Summary. Starrett City Associates has a policy to maintain a desired racial balance upon tenants in its apartment to promote racial integration. People are selected for the units based on income race and ethnicity. The United States brought action against Starrett for violating the Fair Housing Act of Title VIII.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. A race-conscious affirmative action plan does not violate Title VIII of the constitution as long as it is only temporary and has a defined goal and is based on a history of racial imbalance"
"Forever minus one day" is still temporary
Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds - "Could the microbes that inhabit our guts help explain that old idea of "gut feelings?" There's growing evidence that gut bacteria really might influence our minds... Mayer thinks the bacteria in our digestive systems may help mold brain structure as we're growing up, and possibly influence our moods, behavior and feelings when we're adults. "It opens up a completely new way of looking at brain function and health and disease," he says... bold mice became timid when they got the microbes of anxious ones. And aggressive mice calmed down when the scientists altered their microbes by changing their diet, feeding them probiotics or dosing them with antibiotics... In the mice, many of their autism behaviors were no longer present or strongly ameliorated with probiotics... Mayer also has been studying the effects of probiotics on the brain in humans. Along with his colleague Kirsten Tillisch, Mayer gave healthy women yogurt containing a probiotic and then scanned their brains. He found subtle signs that the brain circuits involved in anxiety were less reactive"
Woman Testifies On $50,000 Leak - "Police were alerted to the scam by two bank employees, who testified that they tried to tell Rolek that $50,000 was too much to repair a leaky toilet."
Willing buyer, willing seller doesn't mean the contract is just
This conductor's got a cat's tongue - ""Tama is the only stationmaster as we have to reduce personnel costs. You say you could ask for the cat's help, but she is actually bringing luck to us," Wakayama Electric spokesperson Keiko Yamaki said. The company feeds her in lieu of salary... She rose to national stardom in January 2007 as the railway company formally appointed her as "stationmaster". Her appointment had an immediately positive effect, boosting the number of passengers using the line in January by 17 percent from a year earlier... Happy with her successful job as stationmaster, the company promoted Tama to "super-stationmaster" in January this year, making her "the only female in a managerial position" in the company's 36-strong workforce."
Any diet will do, say researchers, if you stick to it - "The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analysed data from 48 separate trials. The Canadian team concluded that sticking to a diet was more important than the diet itself. Obesity experts said all diets cut calories to a similar level, which may explain the results... The range of diets covered included, Atkins, South Beach, Zone, Biggest Loser, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Volumetrics, Weight Watchers, Ornish and Rosemary Conley. It showed that after 12 months, people on low carbohydrate and low fat diets both lost an average of 7.3kg (16lb). Those on low carb meal plans had lost slightly more at the six-month marker. The report said: "The differences [between diets] were small and unlikely to be important to those seeking weight loss"... However, the study did not look at wider health issues, such as levels of cholesterol, which may vary according to diet. Prof Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford and a government advisor on obesity, said diets were more similar than they appeared, advocating cutting calories to 1,500 a day, sticking to strict meal times and avoiding biscuits, cakes and chocolate."
Strange but True: Less Sleep Means More Dreams - "losing 30 minutes of REM one night can lead to a 35 percent REM increase the next night—subjects jumped from 74 minutes of REM to a rebound of 100 minutes. Nielsen also found that dream intensity increased with REM deprivation"
Women prefer fun over fit! - "Almost all British women have said that a date with a gym obsessed bloke is not in any way fun. If he watches his carb intake the same as you do when ordering- there is something seriously wrong. Sharing a dessert is a much more appealing way to end a meal than tapping the calories from his starter and mains into his fitness app to see if he can spare the room... This extends to the bedroom too with many women worrying about stripping in front of a man with a six pack as it makes them feel self-conscious if they don’t match up... 82% of women who currently have an Average Joe in their bed are not looking to persuade them to get more toned or to diet"
Sex therapist Tracey Cox explains why 75% of women prefer FLAB to abs - "Three in four British women would choose a man with love handles over one sporting a six-pack. That's 23 million of us who find muscular men a turn off; 96% predict a date with an abs-obsessed bloke to be positively dreary... I'd love to meet a female whose sex life isn't affected by a 'fat day'. I've yet to meet one man who has let feeling fat stop them having sex."
▶ the Cast of Avenue Q performs "Call me Maybe" - YouTube
New Northern Ireland Violence May Be About More Than the British Flag - NYTimes.com - "Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland’s two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province. But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain’s red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical City Council building in central Belfast... Under Britain’s strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland"
Some Things You Can Do In Your Sleep, Literally - "People who are fast asleep can correctly respond to simple verbal instructions, according to a study by researchers in France. They think this may help explain why you might wake if someone calls your name or why your alarm clock is more likely to rouse you than any other noise."
Scientists uncover most potent carcinogen - "Aristolochic acid (AA), a natural compound in Aristolochia plants that grow all over the world, is used in herbal remedies for weight loss and to treat ailments ranging from arthritis to menstrual cramps. It causes 10 times more genetic mutations than smoking, they found, leading to kidney failure and cancers... AA is a natural compound found in Aristolochia plants, many of which are commonly known as birthwort, Dutchman’s pipe or “Guan mu tong”. It is commonly used in traditional herbal preparations, particularly in China and Taiwan, and sold as capsules. But the acid, known as “ma dou ling suan” in Mandarin, has been found to be highly toxic. In the early 1990s, about 100 people in Belgium developed kidney failure from a slimming mixture that contained AA. Some needed kidney transplants and others later developed bladder cancers. AA has been banned in many countries, including Singapore. But it has long been used as a traditional medicine and studies show that it continues to be used, particularly in Asia. In Taiwan and China, AA has been sold under names such as “chuan xi ling jiao nang”, “fei an pian”, “fu fang she dan chuan bei san” and “ji ming wan”, among many others. Earlier this year, scientists from King’s College London warned that millions of people may be exposed to the risk of kidney failure and cancer by taking such herbal medicines, because they are widely available in Asia and over the Internet... It is not known how many people here have used AA products, said Prof Teh, but in Taiwan, where it was commonly used until it was banned in 2003, patients with associated kidney failure and cancer are still being diagnosed... “Through this study, we would like to highlight the importance of raising public awareness when consuming ‘natural herbal remedies’,” she said."
100% natural! Proven safe through hundreds/thousands of years of Chinese medicine!
Keywords: Singapore General Hospital, SGH, liver
Nigeria police hold 'robber' goat - "Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape."
Calls for Slavery Restitution Getting Louder - New York Times - "Some blacks still dismiss the reparations movement as a digression from the issues that matter. ''If the government got the money from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, that'd be great,'' said Walter E. Williams, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. ''But the government has to take the money from citizens, and there are no citizens alive today who were responsible for slavery. The problems that black people face are not going to be solved by white people, and they're not going to be solved by money. The resources that are going into the fight for reparations would be far more valuably spent making sure that black kids have a credible education"... Stuart E. Eizenstat, who as a senior official in the Clinton administration negotiated settlements under which Holocaust victims would receive $8 billion in reparations from the governments of Germany, France and Austria and from Swiss banks, said that he viewed those cases as different from the African-American claims, because Holocaust reparations are going largely to surviving victims, while slavery reparations would go to descendants generations removed... Part of the new momentum in the reparations movement comes from efforts to win restitution not just from the federal government, but also from companies that profited from slavery... Historians say that slavery was so central to the economy in the early days of America that almost every business benefited from it... it is a long stretch from a 19th-century slave trader to a 21st-century Dutch company that makes copying machines, and Océ officials seemed baffled by any possible connection to the slave trade. ''This is the first I've heard of it,'' said Karen Fitt, a company spokeswoman.
Maybe they should sue Africans whose ancestors profited from slavery too - but then, they don't have any money
Casey Martin discrimination, USGA - "In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court cited the Americans With Disabilities Act in a 7-2 ruling that the PGA Tour must allow Martin to ride in a golf cart between shots at Tour events. That use “is not a modification that would fundamentally alter the nature” of the PGA Tour, said Justice John Paul Stevens, who delivered the majority opinion."
United States v. Starrett City Associates - "Brief Fact Summary. Starrett City Associates has a policy to maintain a desired racial balance upon tenants in its apartment to promote racial integration. People are selected for the units based on income race and ethnicity. The United States brought action against Starrett for violating the Fair Housing Act of Title VIII.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. A race-conscious affirmative action plan does not violate Title VIII of the constitution as long as it is only temporary and has a defined goal and is based on a history of racial imbalance"
"Forever minus one day" is still temporary
Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds - "Could the microbes that inhabit our guts help explain that old idea of "gut feelings?" There's growing evidence that gut bacteria really might influence our minds... Mayer thinks the bacteria in our digestive systems may help mold brain structure as we're growing up, and possibly influence our moods, behavior and feelings when we're adults. "It opens up a completely new way of looking at brain function and health and disease," he says... bold mice became timid when they got the microbes of anxious ones. And aggressive mice calmed down when the scientists altered their microbes by changing their diet, feeding them probiotics or dosing them with antibiotics... In the mice, many of their autism behaviors were no longer present or strongly ameliorated with probiotics... Mayer also has been studying the effects of probiotics on the brain in humans. Along with his colleague Kirsten Tillisch, Mayer gave healthy women yogurt containing a probiotic and then scanned their brains. He found subtle signs that the brain circuits involved in anxiety were less reactive"
Woman Testifies On $50,000 Leak - "Police were alerted to the scam by two bank employees, who testified that they tried to tell Rolek that $50,000 was too much to repair a leaky toilet."
Willing buyer, willing seller doesn't mean the contract is just
This conductor's got a cat's tongue - ""Tama is the only stationmaster as we have to reduce personnel costs. You say you could ask for the cat's help, but she is actually bringing luck to us," Wakayama Electric spokesperson Keiko Yamaki said. The company feeds her in lieu of salary... She rose to national stardom in January 2007 as the railway company formally appointed her as "stationmaster". Her appointment had an immediately positive effect, boosting the number of passengers using the line in January by 17 percent from a year earlier... Happy with her successful job as stationmaster, the company promoted Tama to "super-stationmaster" in January this year, making her "the only female in a managerial position" in the company's 36-strong workforce."
Any diet will do, say researchers, if you stick to it - "The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analysed data from 48 separate trials. The Canadian team concluded that sticking to a diet was more important than the diet itself. Obesity experts said all diets cut calories to a similar level, which may explain the results... The range of diets covered included, Atkins, South Beach, Zone, Biggest Loser, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Volumetrics, Weight Watchers, Ornish and Rosemary Conley. It showed that after 12 months, people on low carbohydrate and low fat diets both lost an average of 7.3kg (16lb). Those on low carb meal plans had lost slightly more at the six-month marker. The report said: "The differences [between diets] were small and unlikely to be important to those seeking weight loss"... However, the study did not look at wider health issues, such as levels of cholesterol, which may vary according to diet. Prof Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford and a government advisor on obesity, said diets were more similar than they appeared, advocating cutting calories to 1,500 a day, sticking to strict meal times and avoiding biscuits, cakes and chocolate."
Post ID: 1235443774870364408
Friday, September 26, 2014
Woman stabs ex-lover twice after sex in Geylang hotel
Woman stabs ex-lover twice after sex in Geylang hotel, AsiaOne Singapore News
"The lesbian lovers had a tempestuous relationship that was littered with quarrels and violent fights.
In July 2012, after a year together, one of them, Giselle Shi Jia Wei, decided to break up after yet another fight.
A week later, Shi met her former lover, Miss Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman, for supper. They ended up in a Geylang hotel, where they had sex.
Afterwards, as they lay naked in bed watching TV, Shi tried in vain to reconcile with Miss Ummul.
Shi then straddled Miss Ummul's left thigh, raised both arms, which were holding an object, before bringing them down suddenly.
Miss Ummul felt a piercing pain in her chest and realised she had just been stabbed with a knife.
Shi then stabbed her former lover again.
These horrific details emerged yesterday as the trial of Shi, now 25, for the attempted murder of Miss Ummul, now 22, began in the High Court.
The alleged attack happened in the Golden Star Hotel at Geylang Lorong 8 on July 22, 2012.
The two had met in 2010 and begun their tumultuous relationship in July 2011.
At the start of the hearing, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sellakumaran applied for a gag order to protect the victim's identity, given the "rather unusual circumstances of the case".
After considering the application, Justice Choo Han Teck said he was "not satisfied" that the gag order was necessary.
Miss Ummul, who took the stand, said in her statement that they had broken up on July 14, 2012, after a fight.
Although Shi had initiated the break-up, she later wanted to patch up. Miss Ummul was against it but agreed to meet Shi "for closure".
On July 21, they met at Sembawang MRT station for supper but decided to take a taxi to Geylang Lorong 8 to eat at a dim sum stall.
PULLED AWAY
Miss Ummul said Shi kept trying to hold her hand, but she pulled her hand away.
After supper, they checked into the hotel, watched TV and fell asleep. At about 1pm the next day, they woke up and had sex.
Miss Ummul was lying in bed watching TV when Shi asked her if there was any chance of them reconciling.
Miss Ummul said no.
Shi "was becoming more desperate and looked like she was going to cry," Miss Ummul said.
She moved her handbag from the bedside table and put it on the bed before straddling Miss Ummul's thigh. She asked again if they were really not getting back together.
Miss Ummul told the court that when she said no, she saw Shi holding something with both hands and bringing it down on her chest.
Feeling a sharp pain, Miss Ummul saw a knife sticking out of her chest. She struggled with Shi and pulled the 10cm blade out, but Shi stabbed her a second time.
Miss Ummul passed out for what felt like a few minutes. When she came to, she said she saw Shi slitting her wrists. She also saw blood on her own chest and body.
After a while, Shi covered her with a blanket and said: "Now we can be together".
Fearing for her life, Miss Ummul begged Shi to let her go to the bathroom. Shi told her to relieve herself where she was. Miss Ummul said it was her "last wish" to go to the bathroom. Relenting, Shi agreed but followed her into the bathroom. She sat in front of Miss Ummul, who was sitting on the toilet, and held her hand. Miss Ummul felt Shi's grip weaken gradually and managed to run out of the room.
Bleeding from her stab wounds, she saw "a vision of two people" and shouted to them: "Help, somebody is trying to kill me."
They helped her to the lobby where a hotel employee called for an ambulance.
Miss Ummul told the court: "I remember being carried... being transferred and being in an ambulance. I asked (the paramedics) several times if I was going to die.
"I told them that it was very painful."
The trial continues today.
Pair had violent history
When cross-examined by defence lawyer Jayakumar Naidu yesterday, Miss Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman admitted to hitting Giselle Shi Jia Wei three times during their relationship.
ARAB STREET BAR
When the couple went to a bar in the Arab Street area, it happened to be Miss Ummul's birthday.
An ex-girlfriend went over to wish her "Happy Birthday". Miss Ummul said Shi got jealous and went to talk to her own ex-girlfriend.
When Miss Ummul approached them, Shi gave her the cold shoulder.
Miss Ummul was upset and left the bar. Shi ran after her to ask her to stay by pulling her arm.
Agitated, she slapped Shi.
IN SHI'S HOME
They were arguing in Shi's bedroom when the confrontation turned violent and Miss Ummul hit her.
MINK CLUB
On July 14, 2012, the pair went to Mink, a club at the Pan Pacific Hotel.
While giving her friend a hug, Miss Ummul spilled some of her drink on Shi's shoes.
Shi left in a huff to clean herself. Miss Ummul went after her and followed her into a toilet cubicle.
Inside, Shi became hysterical and stripped, throwing her clothes and accessories on the floor.
She told Miss Ummul: "What's the point of dressing up for you when all you want to do is spend time with your friends?"
She also tried to hit Miss Ummul, who managed to duck the blow.
While trying to calm Shi down, Miss Ummul hit her a few times.
During the commotion, she said someone threw an ice bucket into the cubicle, hitting Shi on the head.
A club bouncer and hostess then escorted the pair out of the club.
Cracks started appearing 3 months into relationship
Freelance musician Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman and Giselle Shi Jia Wei became a couple in July 2011.
Testifying in court yesterday, Miss Ummul said they were happy for about three months before cracks started appearing.
They had their first major argument after friends of Miss Ummul's ex-girlfriend bad-mouthed her to Shi.
But they worked things out.
Later, after Miss Ummul moved into Shi's family home, she tried to see her family once a week.
But every time she told Shi that she was going home, the accused would kick up a fuss, Miss Ummul told the court.
She also had to remain inside Shi's room whenever the latter's parents were around.
Things came to a head in May 2012 when Shi's mother discovered Miss Ummul was staying there and asked her to leave.
The couple packed their things and stayed in a number of Geylang hotels before going to Johor Baru, Malaysia, where they stayed for about a month.
During this time, they commuted to Singapore for work.
As the relationship wore on, Miss Ummul said Shi got increasingly calculating and they started fighting over minor things like toiletries.
While cross-examining Miss Ummul, defence lawyer Jayakumar Naidu asked who the more dominant one was in the relationship.
When she said she did not understand his question, Mr Naidu said: "Who is the 'male' and who is the 'female'?"
In response, Miss Ummul said: "From my outlook, you can guess I'm the male. But I didn't (decide on everything)."
"The lesbian lovers had a tempestuous relationship that was littered with quarrels and violent fights.
In July 2012, after a year together, one of them, Giselle Shi Jia Wei, decided to break up after yet another fight.
A week later, Shi met her former lover, Miss Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman, for supper. They ended up in a Geylang hotel, where they had sex.
Afterwards, as they lay naked in bed watching TV, Shi tried in vain to reconcile with Miss Ummul.
Shi then straddled Miss Ummul's left thigh, raised both arms, which were holding an object, before bringing them down suddenly.
Miss Ummul felt a piercing pain in her chest and realised she had just been stabbed with a knife.
Shi then stabbed her former lover again.
These horrific details emerged yesterday as the trial of Shi, now 25, for the attempted murder of Miss Ummul, now 22, began in the High Court.
The alleged attack happened in the Golden Star Hotel at Geylang Lorong 8 on July 22, 2012.
The two had met in 2010 and begun their tumultuous relationship in July 2011.
At the start of the hearing, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sellakumaran applied for a gag order to protect the victim's identity, given the "rather unusual circumstances of the case".
After considering the application, Justice Choo Han Teck said he was "not satisfied" that the gag order was necessary.
Miss Ummul, who took the stand, said in her statement that they had broken up on July 14, 2012, after a fight.
Although Shi had initiated the break-up, she later wanted to patch up. Miss Ummul was against it but agreed to meet Shi "for closure".
On July 21, they met at Sembawang MRT station for supper but decided to take a taxi to Geylang Lorong 8 to eat at a dim sum stall.
PULLED AWAY
Miss Ummul said Shi kept trying to hold her hand, but she pulled her hand away.
After supper, they checked into the hotel, watched TV and fell asleep. At about 1pm the next day, they woke up and had sex.
Miss Ummul was lying in bed watching TV when Shi asked her if there was any chance of them reconciling.
Miss Ummul said no.
Shi "was becoming more desperate and looked like she was going to cry," Miss Ummul said.
She moved her handbag from the bedside table and put it on the bed before straddling Miss Ummul's thigh. She asked again if they were really not getting back together.
Miss Ummul told the court that when she said no, she saw Shi holding something with both hands and bringing it down on her chest.
Feeling a sharp pain, Miss Ummul saw a knife sticking out of her chest. She struggled with Shi and pulled the 10cm blade out, but Shi stabbed her a second time.
Miss Ummul passed out for what felt like a few minutes. When she came to, she said she saw Shi slitting her wrists. She also saw blood on her own chest and body.
After a while, Shi covered her with a blanket and said: "Now we can be together".
Fearing for her life, Miss Ummul begged Shi to let her go to the bathroom. Shi told her to relieve herself where she was. Miss Ummul said it was her "last wish" to go to the bathroom. Relenting, Shi agreed but followed her into the bathroom. She sat in front of Miss Ummul, who was sitting on the toilet, and held her hand. Miss Ummul felt Shi's grip weaken gradually and managed to run out of the room.
Bleeding from her stab wounds, she saw "a vision of two people" and shouted to them: "Help, somebody is trying to kill me."
They helped her to the lobby where a hotel employee called for an ambulance.
Miss Ummul told the court: "I remember being carried... being transferred and being in an ambulance. I asked (the paramedics) several times if I was going to die.
"I told them that it was very painful."
The trial continues today.
Pair had violent history
When cross-examined by defence lawyer Jayakumar Naidu yesterday, Miss Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman admitted to hitting Giselle Shi Jia Wei three times during their relationship.
ARAB STREET BAR
When the couple went to a bar in the Arab Street area, it happened to be Miss Ummul's birthday.
An ex-girlfriend went over to wish her "Happy Birthday". Miss Ummul said Shi got jealous and went to talk to her own ex-girlfriend.
When Miss Ummul approached them, Shi gave her the cold shoulder.
Miss Ummul was upset and left the bar. Shi ran after her to ask her to stay by pulling her arm.
Agitated, she slapped Shi.
IN SHI'S HOME
They were arguing in Shi's bedroom when the confrontation turned violent and Miss Ummul hit her.
MINK CLUB
On July 14, 2012, the pair went to Mink, a club at the Pan Pacific Hotel.
While giving her friend a hug, Miss Ummul spilled some of her drink on Shi's shoes.
Shi left in a huff to clean herself. Miss Ummul went after her and followed her into a toilet cubicle.
Inside, Shi became hysterical and stripped, throwing her clothes and accessories on the floor.
She told Miss Ummul: "What's the point of dressing up for you when all you want to do is spend time with your friends?"
She also tried to hit Miss Ummul, who managed to duck the blow.
While trying to calm Shi down, Miss Ummul hit her a few times.
During the commotion, she said someone threw an ice bucket into the cubicle, hitting Shi on the head.
A club bouncer and hostess then escorted the pair out of the club.
Cracks started appearing 3 months into relationship
Freelance musician Ummul Qurratu 'Ain Abdul Rahman and Giselle Shi Jia Wei became a couple in July 2011.
Testifying in court yesterday, Miss Ummul said they were happy for about three months before cracks started appearing.
They had their first major argument after friends of Miss Ummul's ex-girlfriend bad-mouthed her to Shi.
But they worked things out.
Later, after Miss Ummul moved into Shi's family home, she tried to see her family once a week.
But every time she told Shi that she was going home, the accused would kick up a fuss, Miss Ummul told the court.
She also had to remain inside Shi's room whenever the latter's parents were around.
Things came to a head in May 2012 when Shi's mother discovered Miss Ummul was staying there and asked her to leave.
The couple packed their things and stayed in a number of Geylang hotels before going to Johor Baru, Malaysia, where they stayed for about a month.
During this time, they commuted to Singapore for work.
As the relationship wore on, Miss Ummul said Shi got increasingly calculating and they started fighting over minor things like toiletries.
While cross-examining Miss Ummul, defence lawyer Jayakumar Naidu asked who the more dominant one was in the relationship.
When she said she did not understand his question, Mr Naidu said: "Who is the 'male' and who is the 'female'?"
In response, Miss Ummul said: "From my outlook, you can guess I'm the male. But I didn't (decide on everything)."
Post ID: 6254615415624701840
Stop Fem-Splaining: What ‘Women Against Feminism’ Gets Right
Stop Fem-Splaining: What ‘Women Against Feminism’ Gets Right | TIME
The charge that feminism stereotypes men as predators while reducing women to helpless victims certainly doesn’t apply to all feminists — but it’s a reasonably fair description of a large, influential, highly visible segment of modern feminism
The charge that feminism stereotypes men as predators while reducing women to helpless victims certainly doesn’t apply to all feminists — but it’s a reasonably fair description of a large, influential, highly visible segment of modern feminism
The latest skirmish on the gender battlefield is “Women Against Feminism”: women and girls taking to social media to declare that they don’t need or want feminism, usually via photos of themselves with handwritten placards. The feminist reaction has ranged from mockery to dismay to somewhat patronizing (or should that be “matronizing”?) lectures on why these dissidents are wrong. But, while the anti-feminist rebellion has its eye-rolling moments, it raises valid questions about the state of Western feminism in the 21st century — questions that must be addressed if we are to continue making progress toward real gender equality.
Female anti-feminism is nothing new. In the 19th century, plenty of women were hostile to the women’s movement and to women who pursued nontraditional paths. In the 1970s, Marabel Morgan’s regressive manifesto The Total Woman was a top best seller, and Phyllis Schlafly led opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. But such anti-feminism was invariably about defending women’s traditional roles. Some of today’s “women against feminism” fit that mold: they feel that feminism demeans stay-at-home mothers, or that being a “true woman” means loving to cook and clean for your man. Many others, however, say they repudiate feminism even though — indeed, because — they support equality and female empowerment:
“I don’t need feminism because I believe in equality, not entitlements and supremacy.”
“I don’t need feminism because it reinforces the men as agents/women as victims dichotomy.”
“I do not need modern feminism because it has become confused with misandry which is as bad as misogyny, and whatever I want to do or be in life, I will become through my own hard work.”
Or, more than once: “I don’t need feminism because egalitarianism is better!”
Again and again, the dissenters say that feminism belittles and demonizes men, treating them as presumptive rapists while encouraging women to see themselves as victims. “I am not a victim” and “I can take responsibility for my actions” are recurring themes. Many also challenge the notion that American women in the 21st century are “oppressed,” defiantly asserting that “the patriarchy doesn’t exist” and “there is no rape culture.”
One common response from feminists is to say that Women Against Feminism “don’t understand what feminism is” and to invoke its dictionary definition: “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.” The new anti-feminists have a rejoinder for that, too: they’re judging modern feminism by its actions, not by the book. And here, they have a point.
Consider the #YesAllWomen Twitter hashtag, dubbed by one blogger “the Arab Spring of 21st century feminism.” Created in response to Elliot Rodger’s deadly shooting spree in Isla Vista, Calif. — and to reminders that “not all men” are violent misogynists — the tag was a relentless catalog of female victimization by male terrorism and abuse. Some of its most popular tweets seemed to literally dehumanize men, comparing them to sharks or M&M candies of which 10% are poisoned.
Consider assertions that men as a group must be taught “not to rape,” or that to accord the presumption of innocence to a man accused of sexual violence against a woman or girl is to be complicit in “rape culture.” Consider that last year, when an Ohio University student made a rape complaint after getting caught on video engaging in a drunken public sex act, she was championed by campus activists and at least one prominent feminist blogger — but a grand jury declined to hand down charges after reviewing the video of the incident and evidence that both students were inebriated.
Consider that a prominent British feminist writer, Laurie Penny, decries the notion that feminists should avoid such generalizations as “men oppress women”; in her view, all men are steeped in a woman-hating culture and “even the sweetest, gentlest man” benefits from women’s oppression. Consider, too, that an extended quote from Penny’s column was reposted by a mainstream reproductive-rights group and shared by nearly 84,000 Tumblr users in six months.
Sure, some Women Against Feminism claims are caricatures based on fringe views — for instance, that feminism mandates hairy armpits, or that feminists regard all heterosexual intercourse as rape. On the other hand, the charge that feminism stereotypes men as predators while reducing women to helpless victims certainly doesn’t apply to all feminists — but it’s a reasonably fair description of a large, influential, highly visible segment of modern feminism.
Are Women Against Feminism ignorant and naive to insist they are not oppressed? Perhaps some are too giddy with youthful optimism. But they make a strong argument that a “patriarchy” that lets women vote, work, attend college, get divorced, run for political office and own businesses on the same terms as men isn’t quite living up to its label. They also raise valid questions about politicizing personal violence along gender lines; research shows that surprisingly high numbers of men may have been raped, sometimes by women.
For the most part, Women Against Feminism are quite willing to acknowledge and credit feminism’s past battles for women’s rights in the West, as well as the severe oppression women still suffer in many parts of the world. But they also say that modern Western feminism has become a divisive and sometimes hateful force, a movement that dramatically exaggerates female woes while ignoring men’s problems, stifles dissenting views, and dwells obsessively on men’s misbehavior and women’s personal wrongs. These are trends about which feminists have voiced alarm in the past — including the movement’s founding mother Betty Friedan, who tried in the 1970s to steer feminism from the path of what she called “sex/class warfare.” Friedan would have been aghast had she known that, 50 years after she began her battle, feminist energies were being spent on bashing men who commit the heinous crime of taking too much space on the subway.
Is there still a place in modern-day America for a gender-equality movement? I think so. Work-family balance remains a real and complicated challenge. And there are gender-based cultural biases and pressures that still exist — though, in 21st century Western countries, they almost certainly affect men as much as women. A true equality movement would be concerned with the needs and interests of both sexes. It would, for instance, advocate for all victims of domestic and sexual violence regardless of gender — and for fairness to those accused of these offenses. It would support both women and men as workers and as parents.
Should such a movement take back feminism — or, as the new egalitarians suggest, give up on the label altogether because of its inherent connotations of advocating for women only? I’m not sure what the answer is. But Women Against Feminism are asking the right questions. And they deserve to be heard, not harangued. As one of the group’s graphics says, “I have my own mind. Please stop fem-splaining it to me.”
Post ID: 1357963259827750209
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Links - 25th September 2014
Reference letters can invite lawsuits from former employees
ISIS Tweets Call for Assassination of Twitter Employees - "Twitter has been engaged in a prolonged game of whack-a-mole with ISIS, closing its accounts and those of similar organizations as they come to prominence, in an attempt to stifle their extremist propaganda and exhortations to violence. ISIS and other groups have consistently thwarted these efforts, now they’re going one step further, urging “lone wolf” actors to target Twitter employees."
No More Ambulances for Terror - "In March 2002, Israeli Defense Forces discovered a bomb in a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance near Jerusalem. The bomb, packed in a suicide belt, was hidden under a gurney carrying a Palestinian child. The driver confessed that it was not the first time ambulances had been used to ferry explosives... Palestinian gunmen used the UN emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers. Senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official UN vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he, too, had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists... According to the Lebanon Red Cross, two of its ambulances were deliberately struck by weapons in Qana, Lebanon, while performing rescue missions. The international press, which has stubbornly ignored the prolonged exploitation of emergency vehicles by terrorists, immediately accused Israel of committing "war crimes." Photos and accounts of the alleged ambulance targeting were disseminated widely by newswires, the BBC, ITV, The New York Times, the Boston Globe and countless others. It should be noted that Western journalists were not allowed onto the scene, but received video and pictures from locals. Bloggers have again raised pointed doubts about what those photos really show (see zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/ and my Internet video report at hotair.com/archives/2006/08/29/ambulances-for-jihad/). The roof of one Red Cross ambulance said to have been hit by a missile had a neat hole punched dead center — in the same location that ventilation holes of other ambulances are positioned. Massive rust and corrosion around the hole suggest the damage may have occurred before the alleged strike. Moreover, a missile explosion inside an ambulance would not leave the rest of the vehicle as intact as the supposedly targeted ambulance remained. A paramedic quoted by several media organizations claimed a "big fire" engulfed the inside of the vehicle. But photos of the ambulance allegedly consumed by the fire showed gurneys and seats intact and minimal damage to the interior."
Report Details Hamas’ Responsibility for Destruction of Gaza Strip - "New evidence is presented that Hamas used several United Nations schools run by the Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) as a base from which to fire rockets and mortars. The revelation is likely to prompt further scrutiny of UNRWA’s activities during the most recent conflict, including the discovery of multiple rocket stashes that were later returned by UNRWA to Hamas. At least 1,600 of the 3,600 rockets fired since July 8 at Israel by Hamas originated from civilian strongholds, according to the declassified report. This included: Three rockets fired from churches, four from Red Cross stations, 10 from amusement parks, 20 from first aid stations, 30 from U.N. facilities, 41 from hospitals, 50 from children’s playgrounds, 85 from medial clinics, 248 from schools, 331 from mosques, and 818 from areas such as graveyards and power plants."
Speed Kills Racial Profiling Study - "Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops. There actually is a study for that. Throughout the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike just because they were black!... The story never made sense. How could the troopers tell the race of drivers in speeding cars? Did they wait until the driver rolled down his window and, if he was white, say, “Oh, sorry — have a nice day!” But the Clinton administration was slapping consent decrees for racial profiling on police departments across the country, and the N.J. highway patrol was its prime evidence, based on a study that a child wouldn’t believe. As is usually the case with bogus race studies, the pivotal 1993 survey compared speed stops on the New Jersey turnpike to the population of all drivers on the turnpike – not with the population of all speeders on the turnpike. Such meaningless studies are popular on the left, where it is assumed that people of different races, genders and ethnicities will always behave identically in all respects... based on the assumption that blacks speed just as much as whites — because to believe otherwise would be racist! — Temple University’s John Lamberth announced that while only 13.5 percent of drivers along a particular stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike were black, 46 percent of those stopped for speeding were black. Racial profiling, Q.E.D... Confident that any new study would merely serve to confirm the troopers’ racism, the DOJ and the New Jersey attorney general commissioned a statistical investigation from the Public Services Research Institute in Maryland. The institute’s study was a spectacular thing. Using expensive monitors with high-speed cameras and radar detectors, they clocked the speeds of nearly 40,000 drivers on the relevant section of the turnpike. Three researchers then examined the photos to determine the race of the driver — without knowing whether the driver was speeding, which was defined as going more than 80 mph in 65 mph zones. The result: No racial profiling. Blacks constituted 25 percent of all speeders and they were 23 percent of drivers stopped for speeding. Controlling for age and gender, blacks sped at about twice the rate of whites. The racial disparity was even greater for drivers exceeding 90 mph."
Buckley Program pushes expansion | Yale Daily News - "After establishing its presence on Yale’s campus, the three-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr. Program is now looking to expand. The program was the brainchild of Lauren Noble ’11, who envisioned the program after taking a residential college seminar on William F. Buckley, Jr. and the rise of modern conservatism in 2010. According to Sterling Professor of Classics Donald Kagan, who sits on the program’s Board of Directors, the program emerged from concerns among students that politically conservative perspectives were insufficiently represented among Yale’s faculty and on campus as a whole... According to Vice President Mark DiPlacido ’15, one way the program tries to promote intellectual diversity is by bringing in speakers with unusual points of view that might not be “within what is politically correct.” DiPlacido pointed to Harvey Mansfield’s talk last year about “the importance of manliness,” which DiPlacido said broadened the scope of what students on campus were willing to discuss. In that same vein, this year the program plans to sponsor a talk by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born victim of genital mutilation who has faced public criticism for her condemnation of certain Muslim practices. DiPlacido said the program decided to bring in Ali to speak because her story represents a diverse opinion... Helen Price ’18 said that although she appreciates the effort the program makes to promote intellectual diversity, in practice such an effort can be problematic. “When you invite very conservative speakers here who perhaps have controversial views on Islam or homosexuality, you essentially make Yale a very uncomfortable place for a large percentage of the people here on campus, and everyone should feel at home at college,” Price said."
So much for College challenging you with new ideas and views
Another site: "It’s not clear if Price understands how such casual mentions of Marxism might make someone — from, say, Cambodia, or North Korea, or Ukraine — “very uncomfortable.”"
'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct - "When I was attending graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, political correctness reigned supreme. Lassoing the powers of language, literature, and the law, the movement dubbed “PC” initially worked toward the good goal of greater inclusiveness for marginalized communities. Eventually, however, bloated by the riches of the ivory tower of academia and provoked by the excesses and exclusivity of the good-ol’-boy culture of Wall Street, political correctness morphed into a tyranny of speech codes, sensitivity training, and book banning. Its reach lingers still, most recently exemplified in the decision by a state panel in Nevada not to name a cove after Mark Twain because of the author’s racist 19th-century views toward Native Americans. But it seems political correctness is being replaced by a new trend—one that might be called “empathetic correctness.” While political correctness seeks to cultivate sensitivity outwardly on behalf of those historically marginalized and oppressed groups, empathetic correctness focuses inwardly toward the protection of individual sensitivities. Now, instead of challenging the status quo by demanding texts that question the comfort of the Western canon, students are demanding the status quo by refusing to read texts that challenge their own personal comfort... some of the literary works advocates claim need warning labels for adult college students are often read by high school students, such as The Great Gatsby and The Merchant of Venice... a person traumatized by reading a Victorian novel is a person in need of help, and the entire episode brought about the small crisis which resulted in a more important outcome: getting her connected with a college counselor... How can empathy even be cultivated apart from a willingness to have our preconceptions and our very comfort challenged? The sort of citizenry that demands warning labels on the best gifts of civilization is a citizenry ill-equipped to maintain such rights. Of course, empathy is a virtue. Ironically, it is a virtue cultivated, recent studies have shown, by reading great literature—the very works some want accompanied by warning labels.
The Baby in the Well - "Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it... The key to engaging empathy is what has been called “the identifiable victim effect”... Imagine reading that two thousand people just died in an earthquake in a remote country, and then discovering that the actual number of deaths was twenty thousand. Do you now feel ten times worse? To the extent that we can recognize the numbers as significant, it’s because of reason, not empathy. In the broader context of humanitarianism, as critics like Linda Polman have pointed out, the empathetic reflex can lead us astray. When the perpetrators of violence profit from aid—as in the “taxes” that warlords often demand from international relief agencies—they are actually given an incentive to commit further atrocities. It is similar to the practice of some parents in India who mutilate their children at birth in order to make them more effective beggars... A “politics of empathy” doesn’t provide much clarity in the public sphere, either. Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with. Liberals argue for gun control, for example, by focussing on the victims of gun violence; conservatives point to the unarmed victims of crime, defenseless against the savagery of others... On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Caylee’s Law.) But the appetite for retribution is typically indifferent to long-term consequences. In one study, conducted by Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov, people were asked how best to punish a company for producing a vaccine that caused the death of a child. Some were told that a higher fine would make the company work harder to manufacture a safer product; others were told that a higher fine would discourage the company from making the vaccine, and since there were no acceptable alternatives on the market the punishment would lead to more deaths. Most people didn’t care; they wanted the company fined heavily, whatever the consequence... The government’s failure to enact prudent long-term policies is often attributed to the incentive system of democratic politics (which favors short-term fixes), and to the powerful influence of money. But the politics of empathy is also to blame. Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future... A reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than the gut wrench of empathy... Putting aside the extremes of psychopathy, there is no evidence to suggest that the less empathetic are morally worse than the rest of us. Simon Baron-Cohen observes that some people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral, owing to a strong desire to follow rules and insure that they are applied fairly. Where empathy really does matter is in our personal relationships... Our hearts will always go out to the baby in the well; it’s a measure of our humanity. But empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future"
ISIS Tweets Call for Assassination of Twitter Employees - "Twitter has been engaged in a prolonged game of whack-a-mole with ISIS, closing its accounts and those of similar organizations as they come to prominence, in an attempt to stifle their extremist propaganda and exhortations to violence. ISIS and other groups have consistently thwarted these efforts, now they’re going one step further, urging “lone wolf” actors to target Twitter employees."
No More Ambulances for Terror - "In March 2002, Israeli Defense Forces discovered a bomb in a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance near Jerusalem. The bomb, packed in a suicide belt, was hidden under a gurney carrying a Palestinian child. The driver confessed that it was not the first time ambulances had been used to ferry explosives... Palestinian gunmen used the UN emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers. Senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official UN vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he, too, had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists... According to the Lebanon Red Cross, two of its ambulances were deliberately struck by weapons in Qana, Lebanon, while performing rescue missions. The international press, which has stubbornly ignored the prolonged exploitation of emergency vehicles by terrorists, immediately accused Israel of committing "war crimes." Photos and accounts of the alleged ambulance targeting were disseminated widely by newswires, the BBC, ITV, The New York Times, the Boston Globe and countless others. It should be noted that Western journalists were not allowed onto the scene, but received video and pictures from locals. Bloggers have again raised pointed doubts about what those photos really show (see zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/ and my Internet video report at hotair.com/archives/2006/08/29/ambulances-for-jihad/). The roof of one Red Cross ambulance said to have been hit by a missile had a neat hole punched dead center — in the same location that ventilation holes of other ambulances are positioned. Massive rust and corrosion around the hole suggest the damage may have occurred before the alleged strike. Moreover, a missile explosion inside an ambulance would not leave the rest of the vehicle as intact as the supposedly targeted ambulance remained. A paramedic quoted by several media organizations claimed a "big fire" engulfed the inside of the vehicle. But photos of the ambulance allegedly consumed by the fire showed gurneys and seats intact and minimal damage to the interior."
Report Details Hamas’ Responsibility for Destruction of Gaza Strip - "New evidence is presented that Hamas used several United Nations schools run by the Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) as a base from which to fire rockets and mortars. The revelation is likely to prompt further scrutiny of UNRWA’s activities during the most recent conflict, including the discovery of multiple rocket stashes that were later returned by UNRWA to Hamas. At least 1,600 of the 3,600 rockets fired since July 8 at Israel by Hamas originated from civilian strongholds, according to the declassified report. This included: Three rockets fired from churches, four from Red Cross stations, 10 from amusement parks, 20 from first aid stations, 30 from U.N. facilities, 41 from hospitals, 50 from children’s playgrounds, 85 from medial clinics, 248 from schools, 331 from mosques, and 818 from areas such as graveyards and power plants."
Speed Kills Racial Profiling Study - "Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops. There actually is a study for that. Throughout the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike just because they were black!... The story never made sense. How could the troopers tell the race of drivers in speeding cars? Did they wait until the driver rolled down his window and, if he was white, say, “Oh, sorry — have a nice day!” But the Clinton administration was slapping consent decrees for racial profiling on police departments across the country, and the N.J. highway patrol was its prime evidence, based on a study that a child wouldn’t believe. As is usually the case with bogus race studies, the pivotal 1993 survey compared speed stops on the New Jersey turnpike to the population of all drivers on the turnpike – not with the population of all speeders on the turnpike. Such meaningless studies are popular on the left, where it is assumed that people of different races, genders and ethnicities will always behave identically in all respects... based on the assumption that blacks speed just as much as whites — because to believe otherwise would be racist! — Temple University’s John Lamberth announced that while only 13.5 percent of drivers along a particular stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike were black, 46 percent of those stopped for speeding were black. Racial profiling, Q.E.D... Confident that any new study would merely serve to confirm the troopers’ racism, the DOJ and the New Jersey attorney general commissioned a statistical investigation from the Public Services Research Institute in Maryland. The institute’s study was a spectacular thing. Using expensive monitors with high-speed cameras and radar detectors, they clocked the speeds of nearly 40,000 drivers on the relevant section of the turnpike. Three researchers then examined the photos to determine the race of the driver — without knowing whether the driver was speeding, which was defined as going more than 80 mph in 65 mph zones. The result: No racial profiling. Blacks constituted 25 percent of all speeders and they were 23 percent of drivers stopped for speeding. Controlling for age and gender, blacks sped at about twice the rate of whites. The racial disparity was even greater for drivers exceeding 90 mph."
Buckley Program pushes expansion | Yale Daily News - "After establishing its presence on Yale’s campus, the three-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr. Program is now looking to expand. The program was the brainchild of Lauren Noble ’11, who envisioned the program after taking a residential college seminar on William F. Buckley, Jr. and the rise of modern conservatism in 2010. According to Sterling Professor of Classics Donald Kagan, who sits on the program’s Board of Directors, the program emerged from concerns among students that politically conservative perspectives were insufficiently represented among Yale’s faculty and on campus as a whole... According to Vice President Mark DiPlacido ’15, one way the program tries to promote intellectual diversity is by bringing in speakers with unusual points of view that might not be “within what is politically correct.” DiPlacido pointed to Harvey Mansfield’s talk last year about “the importance of manliness,” which DiPlacido said broadened the scope of what students on campus were willing to discuss. In that same vein, this year the program plans to sponsor a talk by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born victim of genital mutilation who has faced public criticism for her condemnation of certain Muslim practices. DiPlacido said the program decided to bring in Ali to speak because her story represents a diverse opinion... Helen Price ’18 said that although she appreciates the effort the program makes to promote intellectual diversity, in practice such an effort can be problematic. “When you invite very conservative speakers here who perhaps have controversial views on Islam or homosexuality, you essentially make Yale a very uncomfortable place for a large percentage of the people here on campus, and everyone should feel at home at college,” Price said."
So much for College challenging you with new ideas and views
Another site: "It’s not clear if Price understands how such casual mentions of Marxism might make someone — from, say, Cambodia, or North Korea, or Ukraine — “very uncomfortable.”"
'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct - "When I was attending graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, political correctness reigned supreme. Lassoing the powers of language, literature, and the law, the movement dubbed “PC” initially worked toward the good goal of greater inclusiveness for marginalized communities. Eventually, however, bloated by the riches of the ivory tower of academia and provoked by the excesses and exclusivity of the good-ol’-boy culture of Wall Street, political correctness morphed into a tyranny of speech codes, sensitivity training, and book banning. Its reach lingers still, most recently exemplified in the decision by a state panel in Nevada not to name a cove after Mark Twain because of the author’s racist 19th-century views toward Native Americans. But it seems political correctness is being replaced by a new trend—one that might be called “empathetic correctness.” While political correctness seeks to cultivate sensitivity outwardly on behalf of those historically marginalized and oppressed groups, empathetic correctness focuses inwardly toward the protection of individual sensitivities. Now, instead of challenging the status quo by demanding texts that question the comfort of the Western canon, students are demanding the status quo by refusing to read texts that challenge their own personal comfort... some of the literary works advocates claim need warning labels for adult college students are often read by high school students, such as The Great Gatsby and The Merchant of Venice... a person traumatized by reading a Victorian novel is a person in need of help, and the entire episode brought about the small crisis which resulted in a more important outcome: getting her connected with a college counselor... How can empathy even be cultivated apart from a willingness to have our preconceptions and our very comfort challenged? The sort of citizenry that demands warning labels on the best gifts of civilization is a citizenry ill-equipped to maintain such rights. Of course, empathy is a virtue. Ironically, it is a virtue cultivated, recent studies have shown, by reading great literature—the very works some want accompanied by warning labels.
The Baby in the Well - "Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it... The key to engaging empathy is what has been called “the identifiable victim effect”... Imagine reading that two thousand people just died in an earthquake in a remote country, and then discovering that the actual number of deaths was twenty thousand. Do you now feel ten times worse? To the extent that we can recognize the numbers as significant, it’s because of reason, not empathy. In the broader context of humanitarianism, as critics like Linda Polman have pointed out, the empathetic reflex can lead us astray. When the perpetrators of violence profit from aid—as in the “taxes” that warlords often demand from international relief agencies—they are actually given an incentive to commit further atrocities. It is similar to the practice of some parents in India who mutilate their children at birth in order to make them more effective beggars... A “politics of empathy” doesn’t provide much clarity in the public sphere, either. Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with. Liberals argue for gun control, for example, by focussing on the victims of gun violence; conservatives point to the unarmed victims of crime, defenseless against the savagery of others... On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Caylee’s Law.) But the appetite for retribution is typically indifferent to long-term consequences. In one study, conducted by Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov, people were asked how best to punish a company for producing a vaccine that caused the death of a child. Some were told that a higher fine would make the company work harder to manufacture a safer product; others were told that a higher fine would discourage the company from making the vaccine, and since there were no acceptable alternatives on the market the punishment would lead to more deaths. Most people didn’t care; they wanted the company fined heavily, whatever the consequence... The government’s failure to enact prudent long-term policies is often attributed to the incentive system of democratic politics (which favors short-term fixes), and to the powerful influence of money. But the politics of empathy is also to blame. Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future... A reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than the gut wrench of empathy... Putting aside the extremes of psychopathy, there is no evidence to suggest that the less empathetic are morally worse than the rest of us. Simon Baron-Cohen observes that some people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral, owing to a strong desire to follow rules and insure that they are applied fairly. Where empathy really does matter is in our personal relationships... Our hearts will always go out to the baby in the well; it’s a measure of our humanity. But empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future"
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