Why Disability Rights Movements Do Not Support Euthanasia: Safeguards Broken Beyond Repair - "There is no country where the disability rights movement is supporting euthanasia. Why is that? The example put forward to raise sympathy for the right to die movement is the terminally ill competent adult cancer patient in physical pain. We believe that the agenda of the right to die movement around the world is not just focused on the terminally ill patient, and we even believe that to be fixated on only one scenario within the end-of-life continuum is untenable and illogical. What are the safeguards suggested by the scenario of the case of a terminally ill cancer patient. There are four.
Euthanasia is for a terminal condition, which is defined by most health care systems as 6 months before death.
The purpose of euthanasia is to abolish physical pain.
Euthanasia is for the person who can give informed consent.
Euthanasia is about self-determination...
1. Terminal Condition. This position is by now abandoned by the right to die advocates around the world...
2. Physical Pain. Now, this has also changed. Emotional pain has been included in the debate...
3. Consent and competent adult. This safeguard is taken away in many ways at the moment. The most infamous case in the news at present is, of course, the Latimer case. Latimer murdered his daughter, Tracy, without consent. Now, you would think that the right to die movement would fight Latimer as he has broken one of the most elementary safeguards in the euthanasia debate--consent. But if you read the literature of pro-euthanasia people over the years you are not surprised that Latimer is actually openly supported by many of the right to die movement...
We believe that as long as disabled people are viewed as a suffering entity, as an object of charity, as a life not worth living, we cannot accept the broadening of our access to death. It is not without a reason that studies show that the support for euthanasia is greatest among the healthy and young and lowest among the elderly and frail and the ones with the least control over their lives. We believe that the legalization of euthanasia will force people to be euthanized in a misbegotten effort to do the right thing: save their loved ones from financial ruin, remove family members from the care taker role, cease to be a burden on the state. In a time where the percentage of elderly people is increasing and governments are reducing health care budgets and more and more people are without a circle of friends to support them, people find themselves facing the societal reality that There is a decreased willingness to provide social and economic support. The British Medical Journal reported on 29 October 1994 that, "People in Britain are more likely to request euthanasia to avoid being a burden on their relatives than because they are in pain"... We believe that euthanasia is another technique to free society of unwanted members of society among them disabled people and another expression of the ableism in western societies."
Yet, it is sometimes suggested that only religious people are against euthanasia. Or that the slippery slope is a fallacy (or that there will not be further slippage)
Tellingly this is from 1998
Man accused in death of Kate Steinle admits to Pier 14 shooting - "the man accused of shooting and killing a young woman at San Francisco's Pier 14 admitted to the crime and talked about where he got the gun... Sanchez tells ABC7 News that the shooting was an accident. He says he was wandering on Pier 14 after taking sleeping pills he found in a dumpster.
Barnard: "Where did you get the gun?"
Sanchez: "In the ground. When the... when the... over there in the bench, um, um, I put my leg and I see the one T-shirt and then see over there something like that."
He claims a gun was wrapped in that T-shirt and that it went off when he picked it up. "Then suddenly I heard that boom boom, three times," Sanchez said. He claims he kicked the gun into the San Francisco Bay, lit up a cigarette, and walked off, not knowing he shot someone until he was arrested by police hours later. Sanchez reportedly first told police he was shooting at sea lions."
Trump Tweets ‘Build the Wall’ After Immigrant Is Acquitted in Kathryn Steinle Case - The New York Times - "An undocumented Mexican immigrant was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges on Thursday in the killing of Kathryn Steinle, whose death while out walking on a San Francisco pier became a touchstone in the national debate over immigration fueled by Donald J. Trump. The man, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, who was also found not guilty of assault with a firearm, was convicted only of being a felon in possession of a firearm after a trial that lasted more than five weeks."
Looks like the Brooklyn Bridge has moved to San Francisco
SAS considers watering down tests for women applicants - "The SAS, whose selection process is considered among the toughest in the world, could be planning to permit female applicants to carry lighter rucksacks during gruelling marches... women - who can apply for all military roles from 2019 - might be allowed more time to complete tests and be given lighter loads to carry... analysis has shown that only about 4.5 per cent of women would be able to pass the tests to join even the infantry or tank units, both of which have significantly lower requirements than the SAS."
No wonder many people are against opening all combat roles to women
Actually, since the rhetoric is always that it's just a mental challenge rather than a physical one, this makes sense
Wearing tudungs used to be controversial in Malaysia?! How did things change so much? - "In the 1970s, it was very rare to see Malay Muslim girls cover up as they do now, at least according to Editorial Adviser of Sinar Harian, Datuk Jalil Ali. Tudungs were something that was reserved for special occasions, like during funerals or kenduris. Other than that, most Malay women were comfortable without it. There were even certain places in those days that prohibited women with tudungs"
In-Game Purchases Poison The Well - "Whatever form in-game purchases take, their mere existence damages the trust between people who play games and people who make them. Like Stephen wrote in 2009, the possibility of dirty tricks stinks enough that the tricks themselves are almost beside the point."
9 Arresting Facts About Conjugal Visits - "In 2015, India’s government passed legislation stating that conjugal visits are a right, not a privilege, for married inmates...
In Saudi Arabia, male inmates can have one conjugal visit each month. But that rule applies to each spouse, so men with multiple wives can have multiple visits each month! The Saudi government helps inmates’ families with money each month for housing, food, and education, and the government also pays for the travel (airfare and hotel) expenses that inmates’ family members incur to visit the prison. And, if the prisoner wants to attend a family wedding or funeral, he's given up to $2600 to give as a gift. The Washington Post reported that the Saudi government spent $35 million on these prisoner perks in 2014...
In April 2010, a 50-year-old inmate killed his 46-year-old girlfriend during a conjugal visit in a German prison"
Vegan eating isn't as environmentally friendly or sustainable as you think - "the vegan diet would feed fewer people than two of the vegetarian and two of the four omnivorous diets studied. The bottom line: Going cold turkey on animal-based products may not actually be the most sustainable long choice for humanity in the long term... the vegan diet wastes available land that could otherwise feed more people. That’s because we use different kinds of land to produce different types of food, and not all diets exploit these land types equally."
The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of - "Lead pollution was as old as civilization itself... About 6000 years ago, humans discovered they could extract silver by smelting lead from sulfide ores. Ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, and, later, the Chinese used lead to toughen glass. From the Babylonians onward, people glazed pottery with lead. With its low melting point, the soft and malleable metal was a metallurgy miracle."
Alexa Wainscott's answer to Is Hooters degrading to women? - Quora - "none of the women (including myself) felt degraded by the tasks of our job. At its core, it was a serving job, and while many disagree, it is a family-frequented establishment. And if any customer seemed at risk of going too far in some indecent capacity, it was nipped in the bud immediately. And part of that is credit owed to our management and kitchen staff, who cared for us and felt a sense of protection. The other women and I also largely protected and supported each other. Everyone was close and professional as a staff, as I experienced it. On the floor, it was generally a display of women empowering women, and I truly didn’t experience cattiness among the ladies. I always joke, for such a supposedly anti-feminist establishment, it certainly brought out a robustly supportive female camaraderie. Perhaps it was that most of the women were fairly confident, so less insecurity bred less pettiness. But I don’t know. Either way, it was one of the least pointlessly dramatic serving staffs with which I ever worked. And I respected nearly all of my fellow Hooters girls, most of whom were hardworking students, parents, etc."
Akshat Sinha's answer to Do you believe we are overly sensitive when it comes to race and ethnicity? - Quora - "I think we’re giving too much shit to white people. Their ancestors long, long ago may have done some treacherous things against your people but they are in no way, shape or form responsible for that. There should be no reason for them not to be able to celebrate and endorse other cultures and I find it absurd how many people, especially my age, seem to never take allegations of racial prejudice from white people seriously. I mean never. Here in the UK, where I’ve lived all my life, the incidents of racism I have encountered from white people are very far and few apart. Even then, they are limited to a few stares here and there, maybe a remark and that is ALL. However, if I go into a Muslim part of town, I’m afraid I can’t say the same thing. I am Indian and so being brown I tend to fit in just fine. However, if I am walking with female friends/family, who do not wear the hijab and are thus visibly non Muslim, the amount of racial prejudice that they encounter, as well as myself due to being associated with them, is truly mind boggling...
I’ve been insulted by them in languages I don’t even understand.
“Dirty Indian”
“Smelly infidel”
“Crazy Hindu”
“I’d like to watch you burn in hell fire”
“We will conquer India and blow up your dirty Taj Mahal”
These are a list of some of the more civil insults I’ve received...
I am on a weekly basis harassed and threatened by Muslims (ALMOST ALWAYS Pakistani Muslims) for my ethnicity and personal beliefs. A lot of my white friends will say the same thing. Ah, and don’t get me started on what my black friends have to endure. If I speak up about it, I am accused of being an “Islamophobe” and a “racist” by ironically the very same people who oppress me along with their ethnically British cronies who believe they have the moral highground by standing up for a “marginalised group”...
What we need is equality. And that entails minorities and their cultures being as open to criticism as any other group. That, my friends, is TRUE equality."
DBS Group's David Gledhill: Bitcoin is 'a Ponzi scheme' - "Bitcoin transactions are "incredibly expensive" and "all the fees are hidden through the crypto-mechanisms""
Cherokees hammer Elizabeth Warren on ancestry claim ahead of Mass. party convention - "Warren was listed in the early 1990s as a minority professor at Harvard University, but the only proof Warren has of her claim of 1/32nd Cherokee blood is family stories about high cheek bones that came from an ancestor... By all accounts, Warren didn’t participate in Native American activities in Cambridge, although she did contribute several recipes to a cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow.”"
Warren concedes she told Harvard and Penn about Native American ancestry - "Previously, Warren had said she had been unaware that Harvard Law School touted her as a Native American employee during her tenure there."
Why the Rich Are Never Happy - The Wealth Report - WSJ - "“If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it.”... wealth also breeds a kind of permanent malcontent. Large wealth, he says, “is certain to impose a degree of disharmony and irritation, if not from the stresses and strains involved in obtaining and protecting it, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival.” Poverty is even less fun, of course... the only people the rich can truly trust are the people they knew before they became wealthy... being perpetually discontented is what drives many of the wealthy–like Dennis, perhaps–to keep creating businesses and jobs and reinventing themselves and the economy. A survey of millionaires from U.S. Trust this week found that half said their success came at the expense of their personal lives, relationships and health."
The Modern Epic of Denunciation - WSJ - "It’s a potentially endless circle. Every time someone in public life slips up, out come squads of reporters, not to cover the event, but to ask every other findable famous person whether he or she will condemn it in exactly the prescribed terms within the permitted time frame—and then whether they condemn one another for failing the test... Editors don’t pluck other non-occurrences from the ether and then send people out to cover them. Why is Mr. Trump waiting so long to condemn the Hells Angels rally in Nowheresville? The president hasn’t denounced North Korea in the past six hours: Does that signal a change in policy? What the “Denunciad” demands, rather, is a public performance of self-righteousness—a moral dramatization"
Lee Hsien Loong’s American Exceptionalism - WSJ - "no one in Asia is rooting for an American retreat. To the contrary, Asian leaders are eager to make America great again, however much they might disagree with Mr. Trump about what this means. If you held a “secret poll,” Mr. Lee says, every nation would vote for broader American engagement no matter what they might say in public"
And yet some people think China is all sugar and spice
Heavy Recruitment of Chinese Students Sows Discord on U.S. Campuses - WSJ - "Students such as Mr. Shao are finding themselves separated from their American peers, sometimes through choice. Many are having a tough time fitting in and keeping up with classes. School administrators and teachers bluntly say a significant portion of international students are ill prepared for an American college education, and resent having to amend their lectures as a result... Mr. Shao sat quietly in the back of a large lecture hall, dividing his time between Chinese social media on his smartphone and a lecture by Dave Nicol. He doesn’t remember ever asking a question in class. Mr. Shao says he doesn’t want to expend the energy it would take to bridge the culture and language gaps... Many Chinese students “are woefully underprepared,” she says. “They have very little idea what it means to be analytical about a text. They find it very difficult to fulfill basic requirements of analytical thinking or writing.”... “I didn’t expect to go abroad and take classes with so many Chinese people,” she said during a recent lecture on the U.S. regulatory environment. One of her Chinese roommates, determined to interact more with Americans, recently transferred to a small university in Ohio"
The Other Apple Innovation - WSJ - "Behold the Arctic Apple, developed by Canada’s Okanagan Specialty Fruits. The Arctic golden and granny are engineered to resist browning, meaning you can cut one up in the morning and it won’t be rotting in your kid’s lunch box by noon. Also approved are varieties of Simplot’s Innate spuds, which develop fewer black spots and release much less acrylamide—singled out by the FDA as a potential carcinogen—when cooked at high temperatures... About a third of global food production is wasted every year, according to U.N. estimates, and apples are among the most pitched produce. Less blight also means farmers can use more of what they harvest... it’s ironic that battling against this progress is . . . the green lobby... With such a lengthy and expensive regulatory process, as well as interest-group wailing, it’s a wonder scientists still make breakthroughs like the Arctic apple. The loser is society: For years major leaps like allergen-free peanuts have been in the pipeline, but fearmongers are keeping an agricultural equivalent of the iPhone from the market."
Gardens: the truth about apples | James Wong - "An apple is an apple is an apple. Right? What if I were to tell you that some varieties contain more than twice the antioxidants of others? Or that in the endless quest for sweetness, the sugar content of some has jumped by 80%, making some new varieties almost a fifth pure sugar (roughly twice as sweet as Coca-Cola)... A 2011 trial published in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine illustrates the impact on health of choosing the right cultivar. Following the “apple a day” adage, researchers investigated the effect on heart health of adding one ‘Golden Delicious’ apple to the daily diet of a small group of overweight men. By the end of the eight-week trial, the men exhibited higher levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, putting them at a greater risk of heart disease. The researchers concluded that these counterintuitive findings were due to the variety of apple chosen, reporting the higher sugar and low-phenolic content of ‘Golden Delicious’ apples. They contain up to 75% fewer polyphenols than other commonly tested varieties."
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
The Stifling Uniformity of Literary Theory
The Stifling Uniformity of Literary Theory
"Among classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives alike, Hayek is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century whose The Road to Serfdom represents one of the most powerful arguments against socialism ever written. But those in the academy who have perpetuated socialist ideas since the 1980s have practically ignored it. In this article, I will argue that this unwillingness to engage with the ‘other side’ is not only endemic in the radical intellectual schools that have overtaken literary studies, but also that it is symptomatic of their entire way of thinking which, being hermetically sealed and basically circular in its argumentation, has no language to deal with critics beyond reactive moral condemnation.
Many universities and colleges currently advertise literary theory courses which purport to introduce students to a range of different approaches to literary texts. On paper, it looks like as many as ten or fifteen different approaches. The labels proliferate: new historicism, cultural materialism, materialist feminism, ecofeminism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, structuralism, poststructuralism, race theory, gender theory, queer theory, postmodernism … the list might go on. This extensive list of labels seems to signal genuine range and diversity; however, in terms of their ideas, these approaches are somewhat narrower in scope and focus than one might expect. Virtually every approach listed here lays claim to be ‘radical’, which is to say politically of the left or even hard left – with roots in Marxist theory – hostile to capitalism, the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, liberal humanism, and even to the West itself. Virtually all are also committed to ‘social justice’. It must be noted that, since about 1980, these labels accurately register the genesis of literary studies as a discipline, but what they do not register is that, as they were rising, dissenting voices were systemically hounded out of the academy.
For example, in 1985, Sir Roger Scruton – now famous as a philosopher and public intellectual – wrote a book called Thinkers of the New Left in which he was strongly critical of continental theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, and others. In stark contrast to the sometimes-wilful obscurantism of those he critiqued, Scruton wrote in plain prose and expressed ideas with clarity. Perhaps precisely because it laid the ideas bare, the book was greeted with howls of derision, and viciously attacked by scholars who had become disciples of Foucault et al. The publisher, Longman, was threatened with boycotts and risked being sent to the academic equivalent of the gulag if they did not stop selling the book, going as far as withdrawing copies from bookshops. As far as I can see, one thing that the episode did not produce is an intelligent response to any of the criticisms Scruton raised or, indeed, a single moment of critical self-reflection from any of those who had reacted so angrily. In effect, he was shut down and chased from academia.
In another infamous case, in 1988, Richard Levin, who was a Professor of English at the State University of New York, published an article in the PMLA – one of the premier journals in literary studies – outlining some of his problems with recent feminist studies of Shakespeare. The gist of Levin’s critique was that feminist readings of Shakespeare all seemed to reach similar conclusions. In his own words, ‘the themes employed in [feminist] interpretations are basically the same. Although the terminology may vary, these criticisms all find that [Shakespeare’s] plays are about the role of gender in the individual and society’. Now, one might expect a firm rebuttal to this charge from the scholars he was critiquing, and rightly so, but this is not what Levin received. Instead, the following year, a letter was published in the PMLA signed by twenty-four literary critics lambasting the journal for having the temerity to publish such an essay. It was not so much an academic response, but the public denunciation of a heretic – made more chilling because so many of the signatories worked on the Reformation, an era in which such burnings at the stake were de rigueur. Professor Levin, they argued, should not even be teaching literature... I was struck by reasoning that seemed based entirely on what Aristotle would have called ‘ethos’, that is, the judgement of the person’s character as opposed to their arguments...
The extensive list which seems like it represents a diverse range of approaches, in fact only promotes different flavours of a single approach. All that changes from one to the next are the specific groups of oppressors and oppressed as well as the structuring principle to which all individuals are invisibly in thrall...
We are all ‘always already’ in ideology, in the patriarchy, under power, which is implicitly white supremacist and heteronormative. And there’s no way out of this except to recognise it and to do our best to mitigate it. This is not a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified or a philosophical argument that can be countered with other philosophical arguments, it is more of a theological proposition. In fact, it functions in a near identical way to John Calvin’s notion of ‘total depravity’ and original sin...
We are each ‘contaminated’ and ‘defiled’ by capitalism, patriarchy, power, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. Once this is understood, it is obvious why Scruton and Levin – as well as countless others – received the treatment they did. Either you are with the oppressed, and therefore on the side of the angels, or you are implicitly supporting the side of the oppressors, and a damnable and unrepentant sinner. It is a straightforward binary moral choice and its missionaries will take no prisoners...
Students seldom, if ever, encounter any of the available counter arguments. And there are many powerful ones, underpinned with empirical data: from evolutionary theory, from economics, from philosophy, from history, and so on. Such studies seldom make it onto recommended reading lists, let alone onto syllabus lists...
It is not simply a matter of which thinkers are taught, but also how they are taught. Whenever I teach literary theory, I always ensure that I stress to students that what they are studying is not Gospel, but rather ‘highly opinionated men and women making very contentious statements about the world’. Critical thinking cannot flourish in conditions in which students cannot question the material they are being taught. We should not expect or even encourage students to inherit our own ideas, least not of all political beliefs. Universities are places to learn how to think not what to think. It seems somewhat ironic that a set of literary approaches so committed to deconstructing and uncovering the supposed processes of social indoctrination should also be so oblivious to their own role in indoctrinating a generation of students."
"Among classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives alike, Hayek is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century whose The Road to Serfdom represents one of the most powerful arguments against socialism ever written. But those in the academy who have perpetuated socialist ideas since the 1980s have practically ignored it. In this article, I will argue that this unwillingness to engage with the ‘other side’ is not only endemic in the radical intellectual schools that have overtaken literary studies, but also that it is symptomatic of their entire way of thinking which, being hermetically sealed and basically circular in its argumentation, has no language to deal with critics beyond reactive moral condemnation.
Many universities and colleges currently advertise literary theory courses which purport to introduce students to a range of different approaches to literary texts. On paper, it looks like as many as ten or fifteen different approaches. The labels proliferate: new historicism, cultural materialism, materialist feminism, ecofeminism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, structuralism, poststructuralism, race theory, gender theory, queer theory, postmodernism … the list might go on. This extensive list of labels seems to signal genuine range and diversity; however, in terms of their ideas, these approaches are somewhat narrower in scope and focus than one might expect. Virtually every approach listed here lays claim to be ‘radical’, which is to say politically of the left or even hard left – with roots in Marxist theory – hostile to capitalism, the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, liberal humanism, and even to the West itself. Virtually all are also committed to ‘social justice’. It must be noted that, since about 1980, these labels accurately register the genesis of literary studies as a discipline, but what they do not register is that, as they were rising, dissenting voices were systemically hounded out of the academy.
For example, in 1985, Sir Roger Scruton – now famous as a philosopher and public intellectual – wrote a book called Thinkers of the New Left in which he was strongly critical of continental theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, and others. In stark contrast to the sometimes-wilful obscurantism of those he critiqued, Scruton wrote in plain prose and expressed ideas with clarity. Perhaps precisely because it laid the ideas bare, the book was greeted with howls of derision, and viciously attacked by scholars who had become disciples of Foucault et al. The publisher, Longman, was threatened with boycotts and risked being sent to the academic equivalent of the gulag if they did not stop selling the book, going as far as withdrawing copies from bookshops. As far as I can see, one thing that the episode did not produce is an intelligent response to any of the criticisms Scruton raised or, indeed, a single moment of critical self-reflection from any of those who had reacted so angrily. In effect, he was shut down and chased from academia.
In another infamous case, in 1988, Richard Levin, who was a Professor of English at the State University of New York, published an article in the PMLA – one of the premier journals in literary studies – outlining some of his problems with recent feminist studies of Shakespeare. The gist of Levin’s critique was that feminist readings of Shakespeare all seemed to reach similar conclusions. In his own words, ‘the themes employed in [feminist] interpretations are basically the same. Although the terminology may vary, these criticisms all find that [Shakespeare’s] plays are about the role of gender in the individual and society’. Now, one might expect a firm rebuttal to this charge from the scholars he was critiquing, and rightly so, but this is not what Levin received. Instead, the following year, a letter was published in the PMLA signed by twenty-four literary critics lambasting the journal for having the temerity to publish such an essay. It was not so much an academic response, but the public denunciation of a heretic – made more chilling because so many of the signatories worked on the Reformation, an era in which such burnings at the stake were de rigueur. Professor Levin, they argued, should not even be teaching literature... I was struck by reasoning that seemed based entirely on what Aristotle would have called ‘ethos’, that is, the judgement of the person’s character as opposed to their arguments...
The extensive list which seems like it represents a diverse range of approaches, in fact only promotes different flavours of a single approach. All that changes from one to the next are the specific groups of oppressors and oppressed as well as the structuring principle to which all individuals are invisibly in thrall...
We are all ‘always already’ in ideology, in the patriarchy, under power, which is implicitly white supremacist and heteronormative. And there’s no way out of this except to recognise it and to do our best to mitigate it. This is not a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified or a philosophical argument that can be countered with other philosophical arguments, it is more of a theological proposition. In fact, it functions in a near identical way to John Calvin’s notion of ‘total depravity’ and original sin...
We are each ‘contaminated’ and ‘defiled’ by capitalism, patriarchy, power, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. Once this is understood, it is obvious why Scruton and Levin – as well as countless others – received the treatment they did. Either you are with the oppressed, and therefore on the side of the angels, or you are implicitly supporting the side of the oppressors, and a damnable and unrepentant sinner. It is a straightforward binary moral choice and its missionaries will take no prisoners...
Students seldom, if ever, encounter any of the available counter arguments. And there are many powerful ones, underpinned with empirical data: from evolutionary theory, from economics, from philosophy, from history, and so on. Such studies seldom make it onto recommended reading lists, let alone onto syllabus lists...
It is not simply a matter of which thinkers are taught, but also how they are taught. Whenever I teach literary theory, I always ensure that I stress to students that what they are studying is not Gospel, but rather ‘highly opinionated men and women making very contentious statements about the world’. Critical thinking cannot flourish in conditions in which students cannot question the material they are being taught. We should not expect or even encourage students to inherit our own ideas, least not of all political beliefs. Universities are places to learn how to think not what to think. It seems somewhat ironic that a set of literary approaches so committed to deconstructing and uncovering the supposed processes of social indoctrination should also be so oblivious to their own role in indoctrinating a generation of students."
Post ID: 4127765226758882908
Links - 2nd May 2018 (1)
The New Yorker on Twitter: "In her series of self-portraits set in the New Mexican desert, Laura Aguilar is at once part of the American land, and the viewer’s eye, and… https://t.co/UqzzZOgqu1" - "In her series of self-portraits set in the New Mexican desert, Laura Aguilar is at once part of the American land, and the viewer’s eye, and apart from them"
"Day 4. The rocks still think im one of them."
"Not my proudest fap"
"The need for 'validation' from others..makes ppl do futile things. This is no art...just a reminder that the universe doesn't give a fuck one way or the other.."
"Looks more like something for Hoof & Plow magazine"
"I can’t believe someone drunk and passed out on a rock is art!"
"If I get my wife to take pics of my flabby body draped around my yard, can I also be in New Yorker magazine for my "art?""
"This is a perfect metaphor for today's progressive culture. Striving for a collective mediocrity in which everyone deserves recognition and validation for literally anything. Anyone else besides me know where this takes us? Anyone? Bueller?"
There're so many shitlords on Twitter!
Fritz Haber: Jewish chemist whose work led to Zyklon B - "Haber personifies too the tragedy of a Jew desperate to be a patriotic German, whose life was destroyed after the Nazis came to power. And in the cruellest of all the ironies, his work was developed under the Nazis to create the gas used to murder millions in the Holocaust - including his relatives... The fertiliser went on to be used on a large scale, bringing about a huge increase in crop yields, and practically banishing the fear of famine in large parts of the world. One observer describes it as "the most important technological invention of the 20th Century". But the process was also highly useful for the military in making explosives. And when World War I broke out soon afterwards, Haber - now working for the Kaiser's research institute in Berlin - was desperate to prove his patriotism. He began experimenting with chlorine gas which, he said, would shorten the war"
Pakistan law minister resigns; blasphemy protests disperse - "Protesters in Pakistan are dispersing Monday after the country's law minister Zahid Hamid resigned under pressure following weekend clashes that killed two people. For weeks, protesters have been demanding Hamid's resignation because they claimed a change in the wording of the oath of office weakened rules requiring lawmakers to reference the Prophet Mohammed.
The government has apologized and denied making the changes, calling them clerical mistakes. The issue came to a head on the weekend, when the government called in Pakistan's armed paramilitary force to remove protesters who've been blocking a key road between Islamabad and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi.
We should be proud of Pakistan for People's Power succeeding and the army declining to quell protests
Stanford University data glitch exposes truth about scholarships - "“All fellowships are need-based,” claims the school’s website, which was updated on Wednesday. Before then, the site included an assurance that the business school “does not offer merit-based scholarships.” But it does discriminate — often favoring female applicants, international students, and those with backgrounds in finance"
Bulletproof glass protecting city store clerks may have to come down — over ‘indignity’ to customers - "A bill headed through Philadelphia City Hall would force businesses to remove bulletproof glass protecting employees inside stores... The owner of Broad Deli said the bulletproof glass in his store was installed after a shooting and that it saved his mother-in-law from a knife attack... Choe told the station that the bill “targets Korean Americans” and will “endanger” them... Bass said stores could install more security cameras and use security guards in place of the bulletproof glass"
Addendum: We must ban bulletproof glass because it's racist to be concerned about your safety
Black privilege - "[Ta-Nehisi] Coates' anti-whiteness centres white people, makes them the adults of the story, gives them all the potential action — to observe themselves, correct themselves, better themselves — while blacks are mere ‘bodies’ for whom history is a violent act upon themselves rather than something they act upon. (Coates continually uses the term ‘black bodies’ to refer to black people.). No, it isn’t his style and certainly not his optimism — there is none — that endears Coates to the liberal establishment, and most passionately to the white sections of it. Rather, this increasingly spiritual and needy celebration of Coates speaks to one of the darker, more socially destructive elements of the latest manifestation of the politics of identity: the use of historic black suffering to justify the self-loathing and fear of the future of the late, decadent bourgeoisie; the privileging, indeed, of the painful black experience as a means not of ensuring historic clarity about past events but as a key prop, the starring role, in fact, in the contemporary political establishment’s turning against its founding values and loss of faith in its project... there has been a further shift in the post-1960s rehabilitation of the politics of identity by those who profess to be left — a move away even from the tangible if limited question of inequality towards more therapeutic notions of pain and recognition; of the right of identity groups not merely to have equal access to public life but to feel validated in their self-professed suffering and to be accorded resources or respect on that basis. As Christopher Lasch argued in his 1985 book, The Minimal Self, ‘the victim has come to enjoy a certain moral superiority in our society’; we have witnessed the ‘moral elevation of the victim’. Competing groups now ‘vie for the privileged status of victims’, as Lasch said. And this creates a situation where they increasingly ‘appeal not to to the universal rights of citizenship but to a special experience of persecution’... This is not reading for intellectual expansion or pleasure — it is reading as self-punishment, the use of black pain to justify white self-loathing and liberal self-doubt. A perversely symbiotic relationship has developed between Coates and his largely white liberal readership, the former dutifully providing horror stories about ‘black bodies’, the latter dutifully lapping them up and feeling disgusted with themselves for their part in it all. This isn’t intellectualism — it’s a public performance of identitarian S&M... Behold the new anti-humanism, in which self-pity or self-hatred are increasingly the only moral games in town"
Mexico: Land of the Japanese Peanut - "other than their packaging and soy sauce coating, they didn’t seem very Japanese at all. They weren’t served in Japanese restaurants. Many of the people I saw eating them did so with lime juice and hot sauce. Some years ago, a writer for the newspaper El Universal addressed this question in a very succinct way: “The Japanese peanut is Mexican.” It was invented in Mexico City by Yoshigei Nakatani in 1945. So, yes, it is Mexican. But it is also Japanese."
Aka cracker nuts
What women want - "Take the Reclaim the Internet campaign, which seeks to combat ‘online abuse’. As one of the movers behind it, MP Jess Phillips, puts it, ‘I want spunky women shouting up and facing honest-to-goodness debate and challenge. Not men with spunky names bullying women into silence.’ Yet, as Whelan points out, if you want to see bullying and abuse online, just look at the viciousness meted out to any woman – especially of the spunky kind – who refuses to recite verbatim the received opinion on sexual harassment. Or take a peek at the vitriol tweeted at older, anti-trans feminists, or ‘Terfs’. It’s enough to make the most rabid alt-right geek blush... It is a short book, but it packs a real punch in its five chapters, covering feminism’s disdain for free speech; its morbid obsession with the body; its war on sexual pleasure; and its corrosive influence on the workplace... Whelan rightly notes that ‘Twitter is a hotbed of knee jerks and troublemakers. Our message to shrinking violets should be: if you don’t like it, stay away from it. There is no social obligation to tweet.’ She also defends the right to get angry: ‘The freedom, that is, to let a few expletives end a boring online argument… Do women really want to take the emotion out of public discussion for the sake of a few hurt feelings?’... she rightly excoriates those who conflate flirtation or regretted sexual entanglements with the serious abuse that does pose a threat to women. Hence she criticises those feminists who ‘encourage women to see every sexual encounter not as a potentially exciting experience, but as something risky and dangerous’. She admits that most women will feel uncomfortable catching late-night transport alone: ‘If I bump into a man on my own late at night on a dark street, my heart will still race a little faster than if I had come across a woman with a baby.’ But she puts these fears into historical perspective, recalling the important struggles for freedom that mean that ‘women have won the right to walk home in tiny skirts without shame or harassment’ – and, indeed, without chaperones. She reminds us that as recently as the 1960s, women were still ‘literally put under curfew to protect them from the imaginary dangers of the opposite sex’. Here she quotes freedom-fighter Camille Paglia’s famous dictum that women fought for the freedom ‘to risk rape’... If feminism was once about the ‘fight for a woman’s right to leave behind the dishcloths, baby bottles and kitchenware of the private sphere, and be as much part of the public world as any man’, it is now about ‘pushing women back into the bathroom with a mirror in hand, encouraging them to find meaning in staring up their own arseholes’."
FUREY: Trudeau labels legit terrorism questions as ‘Islamophobia’ - "There’s an old joke in political circles that says a racist is what you call someone who is winning an argument against a leftist... Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used such a cheap shot earlier this week when faced with questions from Conservative leader Andrew Scheer on the government’s position on reintegrating Islamic State adherents from Canada who’ve since returned home from battle. While a lot of attention was given not just in Canada but around the world to the government’s bonkers notion that at least some extremists who have committed serious offences under Criminal Code terror provisions just need a good hug and an uplifting poetry jam in lieu of prosecution, few picked up on the added low blow that Trudeau snuck in on Tuesday during his back and forth with Scheer... There’s been no public opinion polling release yet on the idea of reintegrating jihadists in Canada. But past numbers showed Canadians of all political stripes were keen to go hard on ISIS, with two thirds opposing Trudeau’s decision from 2015 to stop bombing them."
I thought ISIS had nothing to do with Islam?
Gad Saad: "If only I knew someone who warned that M103 will be used to label any discussion of Islam as Islamophobic."
The difference between robot-generated art and human-generated art is that human art tells stories.
Of kimono and cultural appropriation - "Japan’s kimono industry has long been in decline... A recent “Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan” exhibition in Japan and America, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, incidentally incorporated some promotion of kimono culture... A small group of young protesters, mostly Asian-Americans, came to the first Kimono Wednesday event with placards to protest its “Orientalism,” “racism” and “cultural appropriation” which they claimed was victimizing Asian-Americans. The protesters created a Facebook page, “Stand Against Yellowface,” and posted sophomoric manifestos on Tumblr featuring tone-deaf karaoke of their hero: the Palestinian scholar Edward Said, author of “Orientalism”... Twitter hashtags appeared — or, like #whitesupremacykills — were appropriated, provoking widespread derision, while the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Facebook page was inundated with accusations about the exhibition’s “racism” and “Orientalism”... Japanese-Americans, Japanese residents in the United States and their supporters counter-protested at the museum and on social media in vain. Counter-protesters pointed out that very few of the protesters were Japanese, and that they had no right to dictate what counted as racism or cultural appropriation against Japanese or Japanese-Americans. They complained that the protesters had chosen the wrong event to protest against with their parochial identity politics agenda... Said’s thesis hardly applies to the Japanese or Asian-American cases. When early 20th century French designers “appropriated” kimono styles and transformed European women’s dress lines, Japanese textiles manufacturers happily accommodated these trends. For their part the Japanese reciprocated with their own fascination for, and assimilation of Western fashions. By then Japan was also a colonial power which was turning its own Occidentalist gaze — and naval guns — back on the Western powers... Said would have mocked the ressentiment of alienated middle class Americans wallowing in victim cosplay... Author Manami Okazaki, whose book “Kimono Now” analyses modern kimono fashions, told me that her main worry was “that this (protest) will affect museums/ event organizers wanting to do kimono shows in the future, which is the last thing the industry needs.”... unlike the international media, Japan’s mainstream media barely touched the story. There was also a muted reaction from the fashion and cultural establishment within Japan.Japanese social media briefly lit up in exasperation and bewilderment... Kaori Nakano, a professor of fashion history at Meiji University put it to me this way: “Cultural appropriation is the beginning of new creativity""
How to Call B.S. on Big Data: A Practical Guide
The Future of Work, Robotization, and Capitalism’s Ability to Generate Useless Jobs - "In a 2013 survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, half said they felt their job had no “meaning and significance,” and an equal number were unable to relate to their company’s mission, while another poll among 230,000 employees in 142 countries showed that only 13% of workers actually like their job. A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37% think they have a job that is utterly useless... Anybody who fears mass unemployment underestimates capitalism’s extraordinary ability to generate new bullshit jobs... if basic income sounds Utopian to you, then I’d like to remind you that every milestone of civilization – from the end of slavery to democracy to equal rights for men and women – was once a Utopian fantasy too. Or, as Oscar Wilde wrote long ago: “Progress is the realization of Utopias.”
Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future - "With antibiotics losing usefulness so quickly — and thus not making back the estimated $1 billion per drug it costs to create them — the pharmaceutical industry lost enthusiasm for making more. In 2004, there were only five new antibiotics in development, compared to more than 500 chronic-disease drugs for which resistance is not an issue — and which, unlike antibiotics, are taken for years, not days... Many treatments require suppressing the immune system, to help destroy cancer or to keep a transplanted organ viable. That suppression makes people unusually vulnerable to infection. Antibiotics reduce the threat; without them, chemotherapy or radiation treatment would be as dangerous as the cancers they seek to cure... without antibiotics, one out of every six recipients of new hip joints would die... Out of all the antibiotics sold in the United States each year, 80 percent by weight are used in agriculture... In countries such as as Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, government regulation of medical and agricultural antibiotic use has helped curb bacteria’s rapid evolution toward untreatability. But the U.S. has never been willing to institute such controls, and the free-market alternative of asking physicians and consumers to use antibiotics conservatively has been tried for decades without much success"
In a libertarian world, people are smart and enlightened enough not to use antibiotics, and companies churn out endless lines of antibiotics despite the lack of patents, because government is evil
Phage treatment of human infections - "Phage therapy involves the targeted application of bacteriophages that, upon encounter with specific pathogenic bacteria, can infect and kill them. As typically practiced, phages then lyse those bacteria, releasing virion progeny that can continue the cycle, including migrating to other sites of infection anywhere in the body"
As locals flee, Instagrammers strike poses with erupting volcano - "Instagram is blowing up — with photos of tone-deaf travelers posing in front of Bali’s erupting volcano. These insensitive social media stars mug for the camera as Mount Agung, in the eastern swath of the popular Indonesian vacation destination, spews out plumes of gray smoke in the background."
Will we ever… understand quantum theory? - "no one actually understands quantum theory. The quote popularly attributed to physicist Richard Feynman is probably apocryphal, but still true: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t. That point was proved by a poll among 33 leading thinkers at a conference in Austria in 2011. This group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers was given 16 multiple-choice questions about the meaning of the theory, and their answers displayed little consensus... most scientists who use quantum theory never fret about its meaning – in the words of physicist David Mermin, they “shut up and calculate”, which is what he felt the Copenhagen interpretation was recommending."
Extra 5: The Actress Who Never Takes a Sick Day | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "'Off Broadway would be all theaters for ninety nine seats to one hundred. Once you hit five hundred it's considered a Broadway theater. If you go below one hundred, ninety nine and under, you are off off Broadway'
'And I'm just looking now to see if are there any off Broadway theaters on Broadway'
'Yes, my theater'"
Denied entry for wearing dhoti, says filmmaker; Kolkata mall refutes charge
Lyon (69) : le marché de Noël de la Croix-Rousse annulé pour manque de budget sécurité - Fdesouche - " Près de 20 000 euros auraient été nécessaires cette année. Une somme qui aurait exigé de multiplier les stands ou d’augmenter les prix de location des emplacements."
The hidden history of identity politics - "One of the most momentous developments in the history of identity politics was its convergence during the 1970s with the emerging politics of victimhood. This was not accidental. Both trends expressed the crisis of confidence of the left. During the 1960s and 1970s, liberal and radical politics underwent a major transformation. Radicalism became exhausted and less and less invested in the project of social transformation. During this period, many of the left’s traditional allies came to be characterised as victims of the system. A similar pattern was in evident in the women’s movement. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminists argued vehemently against the representation of women as victims. By the late 1970s, however, this perspective had been fundamentally revised. Campaigns now stressed the woman as victim – battered, violated and raped. The left, too, regarded suffering as an important resource for mobilising a constituency behind its causes. During the 1970s the meaning of victimisation was radically revised. Initially, the victim tended to be portrayed as the victim of a specific experience — for example, a victim of crime. However, during the 1970s, the meaning of victimisation expanded to encompass the experiences of a variety of different groups. This new approach also sought to transform the meaning of victimisation: it was no longer an exceptional form of harm suffered by an individual; it was also a condition integral to an unjust society. Through the redefinition and expansion of the victim experience, different groups claimed that being victims of society was a fundamental feature of their identity... Competitive victimhood quickly led to attempts to create a hierarchy of victims. According to a study by an American sociologist, the different movements joined in an informal way to ‘generate a common mood of victimisation, moral indignation, and a self-righteous hostility against the common enemy – the white male’... A key innovation in the construction of the victim in the 1970s was its representation of the victim as blameless. Indeed, one of the most widely used rhetorical devices of victim advocates was to dismiss any querying of an individual’s or a group’s claims as ‘blaming the victim’... The notion of the ‘blameless victim’ endowed self-proclaimed victims with moral authority. Consequently, over time, the victim identity came to be seen almost as sacred. As one study observed, ‘victim’ was increasingly used as a moral concept... Some proponents of identity politics refer to one another as allies. However, the politics of culture has rarely allowed the forging of strong bonds between different groups, as today’s acrimonious dispute between feminists and trans activists shows. Human solidarity is one of the main casualties of identity politics. Once different groups retreat into their respective safe spaces, there will be little common ground left for those committed to the politics of solidarity and the ideal of universalism."
"Day 4. The rocks still think im one of them."
"Not my proudest fap"
"The need for 'validation' from others..makes ppl do futile things. This is no art...just a reminder that the universe doesn't give a fuck one way or the other.."
"Looks more like something for Hoof & Plow magazine"
"I can’t believe someone drunk and passed out on a rock is art!"
"If I get my wife to take pics of my flabby body draped around my yard, can I also be in New Yorker magazine for my "art?""
"This is a perfect metaphor for today's progressive culture. Striving for a collective mediocrity in which everyone deserves recognition and validation for literally anything. Anyone else besides me know where this takes us? Anyone? Bueller?"
There're so many shitlords on Twitter!
Fritz Haber: Jewish chemist whose work led to Zyklon B - "Haber personifies too the tragedy of a Jew desperate to be a patriotic German, whose life was destroyed after the Nazis came to power. And in the cruellest of all the ironies, his work was developed under the Nazis to create the gas used to murder millions in the Holocaust - including his relatives... The fertiliser went on to be used on a large scale, bringing about a huge increase in crop yields, and practically banishing the fear of famine in large parts of the world. One observer describes it as "the most important technological invention of the 20th Century". But the process was also highly useful for the military in making explosives. And when World War I broke out soon afterwards, Haber - now working for the Kaiser's research institute in Berlin - was desperate to prove his patriotism. He began experimenting with chlorine gas which, he said, would shorten the war"
Pakistan law minister resigns; blasphemy protests disperse - "Protesters in Pakistan are dispersing Monday after the country's law minister Zahid Hamid resigned under pressure following weekend clashes that killed two people. For weeks, protesters have been demanding Hamid's resignation because they claimed a change in the wording of the oath of office weakened rules requiring lawmakers to reference the Prophet Mohammed.
The government has apologized and denied making the changes, calling them clerical mistakes. The issue came to a head on the weekend, when the government called in Pakistan's armed paramilitary force to remove protesters who've been blocking a key road between Islamabad and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi.
We should be proud of Pakistan for People's Power succeeding and the army declining to quell protests
Stanford University data glitch exposes truth about scholarships - "“All fellowships are need-based,” claims the school’s website, which was updated on Wednesday. Before then, the site included an assurance that the business school “does not offer merit-based scholarships.” But it does discriminate — often favoring female applicants, international students, and those with backgrounds in finance"
Bulletproof glass protecting city store clerks may have to come down — over ‘indignity’ to customers - "A bill headed through Philadelphia City Hall would force businesses to remove bulletproof glass protecting employees inside stores... The owner of Broad Deli said the bulletproof glass in his store was installed after a shooting and that it saved his mother-in-law from a knife attack... Choe told the station that the bill “targets Korean Americans” and will “endanger” them... Bass said stores could install more security cameras and use security guards in place of the bulletproof glass"
Addendum: We must ban bulletproof glass because it's racist to be concerned about your safety
Black privilege - "[Ta-Nehisi] Coates' anti-whiteness centres white people, makes them the adults of the story, gives them all the potential action — to observe themselves, correct themselves, better themselves — while blacks are mere ‘bodies’ for whom history is a violent act upon themselves rather than something they act upon. (Coates continually uses the term ‘black bodies’ to refer to black people.). No, it isn’t his style and certainly not his optimism — there is none — that endears Coates to the liberal establishment, and most passionately to the white sections of it. Rather, this increasingly spiritual and needy celebration of Coates speaks to one of the darker, more socially destructive elements of the latest manifestation of the politics of identity: the use of historic black suffering to justify the self-loathing and fear of the future of the late, decadent bourgeoisie; the privileging, indeed, of the painful black experience as a means not of ensuring historic clarity about past events but as a key prop, the starring role, in fact, in the contemporary political establishment’s turning against its founding values and loss of faith in its project... there has been a further shift in the post-1960s rehabilitation of the politics of identity by those who profess to be left — a move away even from the tangible if limited question of inequality towards more therapeutic notions of pain and recognition; of the right of identity groups not merely to have equal access to public life but to feel validated in their self-professed suffering and to be accorded resources or respect on that basis. As Christopher Lasch argued in his 1985 book, The Minimal Self, ‘the victim has come to enjoy a certain moral superiority in our society’; we have witnessed the ‘moral elevation of the victim’. Competing groups now ‘vie for the privileged status of victims’, as Lasch said. And this creates a situation where they increasingly ‘appeal not to to the universal rights of citizenship but to a special experience of persecution’... This is not reading for intellectual expansion or pleasure — it is reading as self-punishment, the use of black pain to justify white self-loathing and liberal self-doubt. A perversely symbiotic relationship has developed between Coates and his largely white liberal readership, the former dutifully providing horror stories about ‘black bodies’, the latter dutifully lapping them up and feeling disgusted with themselves for their part in it all. This isn’t intellectualism — it’s a public performance of identitarian S&M... Behold the new anti-humanism, in which self-pity or self-hatred are increasingly the only moral games in town"
Mexico: Land of the Japanese Peanut - "other than their packaging and soy sauce coating, they didn’t seem very Japanese at all. They weren’t served in Japanese restaurants. Many of the people I saw eating them did so with lime juice and hot sauce. Some years ago, a writer for the newspaper El Universal addressed this question in a very succinct way: “The Japanese peanut is Mexican.” It was invented in Mexico City by Yoshigei Nakatani in 1945. So, yes, it is Mexican. But it is also Japanese."
Aka cracker nuts
What women want - "Take the Reclaim the Internet campaign, which seeks to combat ‘online abuse’. As one of the movers behind it, MP Jess Phillips, puts it, ‘I want spunky women shouting up and facing honest-to-goodness debate and challenge. Not men with spunky names bullying women into silence.’ Yet, as Whelan points out, if you want to see bullying and abuse online, just look at the viciousness meted out to any woman – especially of the spunky kind – who refuses to recite verbatim the received opinion on sexual harassment. Or take a peek at the vitriol tweeted at older, anti-trans feminists, or ‘Terfs’. It’s enough to make the most rabid alt-right geek blush... It is a short book, but it packs a real punch in its five chapters, covering feminism’s disdain for free speech; its morbid obsession with the body; its war on sexual pleasure; and its corrosive influence on the workplace... Whelan rightly notes that ‘Twitter is a hotbed of knee jerks and troublemakers. Our message to shrinking violets should be: if you don’t like it, stay away from it. There is no social obligation to tweet.’ She also defends the right to get angry: ‘The freedom, that is, to let a few expletives end a boring online argument… Do women really want to take the emotion out of public discussion for the sake of a few hurt feelings?’... she rightly excoriates those who conflate flirtation or regretted sexual entanglements with the serious abuse that does pose a threat to women. Hence she criticises those feminists who ‘encourage women to see every sexual encounter not as a potentially exciting experience, but as something risky and dangerous’. She admits that most women will feel uncomfortable catching late-night transport alone: ‘If I bump into a man on my own late at night on a dark street, my heart will still race a little faster than if I had come across a woman with a baby.’ But she puts these fears into historical perspective, recalling the important struggles for freedom that mean that ‘women have won the right to walk home in tiny skirts without shame or harassment’ – and, indeed, without chaperones. She reminds us that as recently as the 1960s, women were still ‘literally put under curfew to protect them from the imaginary dangers of the opposite sex’. Here she quotes freedom-fighter Camille Paglia’s famous dictum that women fought for the freedom ‘to risk rape’... If feminism was once about the ‘fight for a woman’s right to leave behind the dishcloths, baby bottles and kitchenware of the private sphere, and be as much part of the public world as any man’, it is now about ‘pushing women back into the bathroom with a mirror in hand, encouraging them to find meaning in staring up their own arseholes’."
FUREY: Trudeau labels legit terrorism questions as ‘Islamophobia’ - "There’s an old joke in political circles that says a racist is what you call someone who is winning an argument against a leftist... Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used such a cheap shot earlier this week when faced with questions from Conservative leader Andrew Scheer on the government’s position on reintegrating Islamic State adherents from Canada who’ve since returned home from battle. While a lot of attention was given not just in Canada but around the world to the government’s bonkers notion that at least some extremists who have committed serious offences under Criminal Code terror provisions just need a good hug and an uplifting poetry jam in lieu of prosecution, few picked up on the added low blow that Trudeau snuck in on Tuesday during his back and forth with Scheer... There’s been no public opinion polling release yet on the idea of reintegrating jihadists in Canada. But past numbers showed Canadians of all political stripes were keen to go hard on ISIS, with two thirds opposing Trudeau’s decision from 2015 to stop bombing them."
I thought ISIS had nothing to do with Islam?
Gad Saad: "If only I knew someone who warned that M103 will be used to label any discussion of Islam as Islamophobic."
The difference between robot-generated art and human-generated art is that human art tells stories.
Of kimono and cultural appropriation - "Japan’s kimono industry has long been in decline... A recent “Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan” exhibition in Japan and America, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, incidentally incorporated some promotion of kimono culture... A small group of young protesters, mostly Asian-Americans, came to the first Kimono Wednesday event with placards to protest its “Orientalism,” “racism” and “cultural appropriation” which they claimed was victimizing Asian-Americans. The protesters created a Facebook page, “Stand Against Yellowface,” and posted sophomoric manifestos on Tumblr featuring tone-deaf karaoke of their hero: the Palestinian scholar Edward Said, author of “Orientalism”... Twitter hashtags appeared — or, like #whitesupremacykills — were appropriated, provoking widespread derision, while the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Facebook page was inundated with accusations about the exhibition’s “racism” and “Orientalism”... Japanese-Americans, Japanese residents in the United States and their supporters counter-protested at the museum and on social media in vain. Counter-protesters pointed out that very few of the protesters were Japanese, and that they had no right to dictate what counted as racism or cultural appropriation against Japanese or Japanese-Americans. They complained that the protesters had chosen the wrong event to protest against with their parochial identity politics agenda... Said’s thesis hardly applies to the Japanese or Asian-American cases. When early 20th century French designers “appropriated” kimono styles and transformed European women’s dress lines, Japanese textiles manufacturers happily accommodated these trends. For their part the Japanese reciprocated with their own fascination for, and assimilation of Western fashions. By then Japan was also a colonial power which was turning its own Occidentalist gaze — and naval guns — back on the Western powers... Said would have mocked the ressentiment of alienated middle class Americans wallowing in victim cosplay... Author Manami Okazaki, whose book “Kimono Now” analyses modern kimono fashions, told me that her main worry was “that this (protest) will affect museums/ event organizers wanting to do kimono shows in the future, which is the last thing the industry needs.”... unlike the international media, Japan’s mainstream media barely touched the story. There was also a muted reaction from the fashion and cultural establishment within Japan.Japanese social media briefly lit up in exasperation and bewilderment... Kaori Nakano, a professor of fashion history at Meiji University put it to me this way: “Cultural appropriation is the beginning of new creativity""
How to Call B.S. on Big Data: A Practical Guide
The Future of Work, Robotization, and Capitalism’s Ability to Generate Useless Jobs - "In a 2013 survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, half said they felt their job had no “meaning and significance,” and an equal number were unable to relate to their company’s mission, while another poll among 230,000 employees in 142 countries showed that only 13% of workers actually like their job. A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37% think they have a job that is utterly useless... Anybody who fears mass unemployment underestimates capitalism’s extraordinary ability to generate new bullshit jobs... if basic income sounds Utopian to you, then I’d like to remind you that every milestone of civilization – from the end of slavery to democracy to equal rights for men and women – was once a Utopian fantasy too. Or, as Oscar Wilde wrote long ago: “Progress is the realization of Utopias.”
Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future - "With antibiotics losing usefulness so quickly — and thus not making back the estimated $1 billion per drug it costs to create them — the pharmaceutical industry lost enthusiasm for making more. In 2004, there were only five new antibiotics in development, compared to more than 500 chronic-disease drugs for which resistance is not an issue — and which, unlike antibiotics, are taken for years, not days... Many treatments require suppressing the immune system, to help destroy cancer or to keep a transplanted organ viable. That suppression makes people unusually vulnerable to infection. Antibiotics reduce the threat; without them, chemotherapy or radiation treatment would be as dangerous as the cancers they seek to cure... without antibiotics, one out of every six recipients of new hip joints would die... Out of all the antibiotics sold in the United States each year, 80 percent by weight are used in agriculture... In countries such as as Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, government regulation of medical and agricultural antibiotic use has helped curb bacteria’s rapid evolution toward untreatability. But the U.S. has never been willing to institute such controls, and the free-market alternative of asking physicians and consumers to use antibiotics conservatively has been tried for decades without much success"
In a libertarian world, people are smart and enlightened enough not to use antibiotics, and companies churn out endless lines of antibiotics despite the lack of patents, because government is evil
Phage treatment of human infections - "Phage therapy involves the targeted application of bacteriophages that, upon encounter with specific pathogenic bacteria, can infect and kill them. As typically practiced, phages then lyse those bacteria, releasing virion progeny that can continue the cycle, including migrating to other sites of infection anywhere in the body"
As locals flee, Instagrammers strike poses with erupting volcano - "Instagram is blowing up — with photos of tone-deaf travelers posing in front of Bali’s erupting volcano. These insensitive social media stars mug for the camera as Mount Agung, in the eastern swath of the popular Indonesian vacation destination, spews out plumes of gray smoke in the background."
Will we ever… understand quantum theory? - "no one actually understands quantum theory. The quote popularly attributed to physicist Richard Feynman is probably apocryphal, but still true: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t. That point was proved by a poll among 33 leading thinkers at a conference in Austria in 2011. This group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers was given 16 multiple-choice questions about the meaning of the theory, and their answers displayed little consensus... most scientists who use quantum theory never fret about its meaning – in the words of physicist David Mermin, they “shut up and calculate”, which is what he felt the Copenhagen interpretation was recommending."
Extra 5: The Actress Who Never Takes a Sick Day | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "'Off Broadway would be all theaters for ninety nine seats to one hundred. Once you hit five hundred it's considered a Broadway theater. If you go below one hundred, ninety nine and under, you are off off Broadway'
'And I'm just looking now to see if are there any off Broadway theaters on Broadway'
'Yes, my theater'"
Denied entry for wearing dhoti, says filmmaker; Kolkata mall refutes charge
Lyon (69) : le marché de Noël de la Croix-Rousse annulé pour manque de budget sécurité - Fdesouche - " Près de 20 000 euros auraient été nécessaires cette année. Une somme qui aurait exigé de multiplier les stands ou d’augmenter les prix de location des emplacements."
The hidden history of identity politics - "One of the most momentous developments in the history of identity politics was its convergence during the 1970s with the emerging politics of victimhood. This was not accidental. Both trends expressed the crisis of confidence of the left. During the 1960s and 1970s, liberal and radical politics underwent a major transformation. Radicalism became exhausted and less and less invested in the project of social transformation. During this period, many of the left’s traditional allies came to be characterised as victims of the system. A similar pattern was in evident in the women’s movement. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminists argued vehemently against the representation of women as victims. By the late 1970s, however, this perspective had been fundamentally revised. Campaigns now stressed the woman as victim – battered, violated and raped. The left, too, regarded suffering as an important resource for mobilising a constituency behind its causes. During the 1970s the meaning of victimisation was radically revised. Initially, the victim tended to be portrayed as the victim of a specific experience — for example, a victim of crime. However, during the 1970s, the meaning of victimisation expanded to encompass the experiences of a variety of different groups. This new approach also sought to transform the meaning of victimisation: it was no longer an exceptional form of harm suffered by an individual; it was also a condition integral to an unjust society. Through the redefinition and expansion of the victim experience, different groups claimed that being victims of society was a fundamental feature of their identity... Competitive victimhood quickly led to attempts to create a hierarchy of victims. According to a study by an American sociologist, the different movements joined in an informal way to ‘generate a common mood of victimisation, moral indignation, and a self-righteous hostility against the common enemy – the white male’... A key innovation in the construction of the victim in the 1970s was its representation of the victim as blameless. Indeed, one of the most widely used rhetorical devices of victim advocates was to dismiss any querying of an individual’s or a group’s claims as ‘blaming the victim’... The notion of the ‘blameless victim’ endowed self-proclaimed victims with moral authority. Consequently, over time, the victim identity came to be seen almost as sacred. As one study observed, ‘victim’ was increasingly used as a moral concept... Some proponents of identity politics refer to one another as allies. However, the politics of culture has rarely allowed the forging of strong bonds between different groups, as today’s acrimonious dispute between feminists and trans activists shows. Human solidarity is one of the main casualties of identity politics. Once different groups retreat into their respective safe spaces, there will be little common ground left for those committed to the politics of solidarity and the ideal of universalism."
Post ID: 7788261673182796186
Monday, April 30, 2018
Links - 30th April 2018 (3)
Chinese woman charged over fatal breast implant in Australia - "A Chinese national was charged with manslaughter Tuesday (Sep 5) over an alleged botched attempt at breast augmentation surgery at a Sydney beauty clinic, which led to the death of the salon's manager."
How a Lack of Touch is Destroying Men - "We American men have a tragic laundry list of reasons why we are not comfortable with touch:
We fear being labeled as sexually inappropriate by women.
We live in a virulently homophobic culture so all contact between men is suspect.
We don’t want to risk any hint of being sexual toward children.
We don’t want to risk our status as macho or authoritative by being physically gentle.
We don’t ever want to deal with rejection when we reach out."
THIS HITLER NONSENSE … - "The thing my father and I have often discussed, through the years, is the eye-rolling art of comparing American presidents to Hitler. It is such an absurdity we find it amusing …and frustrating. It’s often just a punch line. Like the Soup Nazi wasn’t really a Nazi. He was just mean. The Nazi part made it funny. You know …over-the-top. Like “grammar Nazi” or “spelling Nazi.” Nobody is really a “Nazi.” It’s our representation of something we consider jarring, strident, intractable and inhumane... ironically, the American president who could’ve actually been likened to Hitler (before Hitler) in some of his methods was …wait for it …Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln broke more constitutional law than any other president in U.S history. He imprisoned political opponents without due process. He suspended habeas corpus. He was personally responsible for the deaths of six hundred thousand people. He invaded countries that had declared their own sovereignty and forced them back into a union they didn’t want to be a part of. He unilaterally annexed Nevada, without 60 thousand residents, (a pre-requisite for becoming a state) in order to carry it and win the 1864 election. In other words, he pretty much rigged it."
Your baby is a little bit racist, science says - "Infants between 6 and 9 months looked at faces of their own race for longer after listening to happy music, and faces of other races for longer after listening to sad music... infants between 6 and 8 months watched videos of a woman looking at a corner of the TV screen. In some videos, the woman is gazing at an animal; in others, the animal appears in a different corner of the screen. The infants were more likely to follow the adult’s line of sight if she was of their own race, indicating that infants are more likely to learn from adults of their own race than adults of other races"
Maybe babies learn to be racist in the womb
Baby Racists: At Our Sweetest Age, We're Capable of Nasty Impulses - "15-month-old toddlers watched an experimenter with a collection of four small toys share them either evenly or unevenly with two other adult volunteers. When allowed to choose which experimenters the babies wanted to play with later, 70% of them preferred the ones who had divided the toys evenly. Nice, but there was an exception: when the two adults who were receiving the evenly or unevenly divided toys were of different races and the race of the one who got more toys matched the babies’ own, the 70% preference for the fair distributor dropped and the share of babies wanting to play with the unfair one rose. The implication: unfairness is bad, unless someone from your clan is getting the extra goodies."
Man gets 12 months' jail for having sex with underage girl - "Ray Reuven Roche Carbolido, a healthcare assistant by profession, sent the 15-year-old girl a WeChat chat request... While chatting with the girl, he asked her if she wanted to have sex. She agreed and went to Carbolido's home in Ang Mo Kio, a residential area in northeastern Singapore, that same night. The pair engaged in sexual acts, including intercourse using a condom that had been brought along by the girl. The court learned that the girl had told Carbolido she was only 15 and asked him if he was worried about having sex with a minor. He replied that it should not be a problem as it was consensual, and so she went to his home. Six days later, the girl was taken to KK Women's and Children's Hospital after starting to feel pain in her private parts. She was diagnosed with herpes simplex virus... The girl admitted to the police that she had had sexual encounters with several men, one of whom was Carbolido, between March 19 and 24. Carbolido was sent for a medical examination on April 5 after his arrest, and no sexually transmitted infection was found"
If a victim gets victimised repeatedly and consensually, does that make him more or less of a victim?
Straits Times: "some other sexual acts were also performed between them"
Let’s Talk About Racism and Privilege: White Men Keep Out - "I remember one instance we waited for over 3 hours at one immigration office to turn in one piece of information only to be turned away. The woman at the counter said we only brought half of what she needed, even though the last time we waited hours to talk to her, she told us all we needed to bring was what we had just brought. “You’ll have to come back later,” she sneered. Had either of us been a different color than the other I might have thought she was racist. But instead, I just thought she didn’t like immigrants or didn’t like her job. It’s easy to take things personally and assume people are rude to us because of an outward characteristic than an internal one, whether it’s our weight, our height, our gender, or because of the color of our skin. But there’s usually more to the story if we’d go past our own assumptions about their assumptions... Regardless of ethnicity, women were about twice as likely as men (23 per cent vs 12 per cent), and minorities were twice as likely as whites, to have ever received food stamps... These statistics are from 2013, after the recession, even though more men, including a fair amount of white men, lost jobs in the recession than women. Middle-aged white men are by far the most likely group to commit suicide, especially those with less education and lower incomes. Why would someone with “privilege” rather kill themselves than accept an unemployment check? Could one element be that no one has empathy for them when they fail to live up to society’s expectations – thus keeping their benefit numbers low – reinforcing society’s belief that they are “privileged” (don’t deserve help) and their own belief that they will not get or receive help if they ask for it? Could a sense of being discriminated against drive more women and minorities to seek out and accept benefits because they believe they are entitled to help – thus reinforcing society’s expectation and their own that they are “disadvantaged” and need ongoing services and support from special programs?"
When You Say “I Would Never Date A Trans Person,” It’s Transphobic. Here’s Why.
Lesbians who refuse to date men are sexist
Black women who refuse to date non-black men are racist
Swedish police banned from describing criminals anymore in case they sound racist - "Swedish police will no longer be able to give descriptions of alleged criminals for fear of being seen as racist. According to an internal letter, police in capital city Stockholm are instructed to refrain from describing suspects' race and nationality... “We want to avoid pointing out ethnic groups as criminal”"
Is Complaining About Street Sexual Harassment Racist? - "the Hollaback! app — which tracks and maps users’ reports of street sexual harassment — doesn’t collect data on race, either. (That would be racist, the creators said.) But it does reveal that most of the smartphone-enabled reports come out of gentrifying neighborhoods in lower Manhattan and West Brooklyn. This appears to confirm what the video’s optics suggested: The people most loudly complaining about catcalls are the ones most insulated from more serious problems of racial profiling and economic inequality. After all, getting catcalled in a gentrifying neighborhood isn’t just a reminder that because someone is young and female her body is up for grabs (besides, that happens in subtler ways all the time). It foremost means being forced to acknowledge some of the people who lived there in a time before gut renovations and organic bodegas and speakeasies. A gentrifier like me can always move back to the quiet, catcall-free suburbs; the guy who hangs outside my subway stop all day probably can’t. So when he tells me I look beautiful today, I say “thank you” instead of tattling on an app. It’s never led to an escalation that made me uncomfortable and, as a result, I’ve been hesitant to complain about catcalls as an issue. But that may not be true for all women — especially the victims of street harassment not represented by Hollaback!’s narrow take. If men are “brazen enough to harass white women and their protected femininities on the street,” Cooper wrote, “what won’t they do to cis and trans women of color, whose womanhood is structurally devalued?” For trans women of color, street sexual harassment is often a matter of life and death. It’s their safety and comfort that gets lost when we allow street sexual harassment to be cast as a threat to white gentrifiers"
So apparently collecting data is racist and if a poor man catcalls a white woman, the woman should thank him or she's racist
Feminist Academics Protest 'Racist' Law Against Street Harassment - "“It is well known that racialised young men from the working classes already suffer more than other people from police violence and oppression,” assert the academics, in a letter opposing equality minister Marlène Schiappa’s announcement that MPs are working on legislation to reduce street harassment... A 2015 study conducted in migrant-heavy French districts Seine-Saint-Denis and Essonne, carried out by the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCEfh) – concluded that 100 per cent of women had been subjected at least once in their lives to sexual harassment or sexual assault... some areas of Paris have become virtual “no-go” zones for women, who reported no longer being able to leave their homes without migrants subjecting them to verbal abuse. Local media described how, over the previous 12 months — as immigrants and drug dealers flooded the east Paris district of Chapelle-Pajol — the streets became crowded with dozens of groups of young men harassing and sometimes even assaulting women who walked by."
Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression | Electronic Frontier Foundation - "In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power”... any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with. Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group. In the Civil Rights Era cases that formed the basis of today’s protections of freedom of speech, the NAACP’s voice was the one attacked. Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t... we strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights. Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world. And at EFF we see the consequences first hand: every time a company throws a vile neo-Nazi site off the Net, thousands of less visible decisions are made by companies with little oversight or transparency"
MILO: White Nationalism is Not the Answer - "“The reality is, if you force everyone to play identity politics, if you insist in pitting whites against blacks, women against men, straights against gays, the reality is you guys are gonna win and the left isn’t going to like it very much,” declared MILO. “But there’s a better way. Don’t fight identity politics with identity politics.”“White pride, white nationalism, white supremacy isn’t the way to go,” he continued. “The way to go is reminding them and yourselves that you should be aspiring to values and to ideas.” “You should be focusing on what unites people and not what drives them apart,” MILO concluded. “You shouldn’t give a shit about skin color, a shit about sexuality… You shouldn’t give a shit about gender, and you should be deeply suspicious of the people who do.”"
I thought Milo was supposed to be a racist white nationalist
"BPA-free" plastic alternatives may not be safe - "Your "BPA-free" plastic product may be no safer than the product it replaced, says a new UCLA study that analyzed the impact of a common BPA alternative on zebra fish embryos. The study joins a small but growing group of similar research sounding the alarm about so called "BPA-free" alternatives"
Chinese tofu maker ‘turned to arms dealing’ after business was forced to close down - "The two are said to have downloaded weapon blueprints online and manufactured gun parts in local hardware workshops in Ningbo"
Susanna Viljanen's answer to How come the Japanese Army and Navy was so inefficient against the US in WWII despite having put so much effort into their armed forces? - Quora - "Compared to Olympic fencing and historical European swordsmanship, kendo has no good defences and no good parries, and while kaeshi strikes certainly do exist, the defence relies more or less solely on swiftness, not on taking the enemy’s weapon into control and counter-striking when he is weak. And this was the Japanese main flaw. They were prepared only for a swift, offensive war: for a one-strike battle. They were not prepared for a lengthy war of attrition. They had no contingency plans. Their naval vessels were designed to deliver one single formidable battle-deciding strike - not to survive. The Japanese had an utterly callous attitude towards both human life and their equipment. They wasted their men like chaff. When in a no-win situation, they would rather expend everything in a futile banzai charge than retreat. Likewise, they would rather commit suicide than surrender honourably. They really did not know their enemies. It can be safely claimed that the Japanese had arguably the worst aircraft carriers in WWII, and their cruisers were made of explodium. They did not use their submarines aggressively enough. And, most of all, they never understood the importance of logistics... The Japanese commanders had a bad tendency to lose their nerve when things went pear-shaped. They would rather kill themselves than save what was saveable"
Christians should pray for Prince George to be gay, says minister - "Christians should pray for Prince George to be gay to force support for same-sex marriage in the Church of England, a senior Scottish Episcopal church minister and LGBTQ campaigner has said... The full post by Holdsworth about Prince George is part of a list of nine suggestions to force LGBT inclusion in the Church of England"
We've gone from Pray The Gay Away to Pray The Gay In
A Reverend Requested Prayers For Prince George To Be Gay, & People Are So Pissed - "while some of the criticism did come from those with seemingly anti-LGBTQ views, a fair bit of criticism came from those who simply thought that, just maybe, people shouldn't be praying for a child's sexuality to turn out one way or another. In fact, maybe someone else's sexuality is none of our business in the first place. "To use prayer as a mechanism for wishing this on Prince George is an unkind and destructive thing to do," Gavin Ashenden, a Christian Episcopal Church missionary bishop, told the BBC. "It doesn't have the prince's best interests at heart, but uses him as a gender-political football."
He continued: What is especially odd and incongruous is the fact that it is suddenly OK to pray for someone to be gay, but totally unacceptable to pray for them to be free from being gay. Unfortunately, this is far from the first time that the public has felt like it's necessary to comment on Prince George's potential sexuality. In August, he was labeled a "gay icon" by one website after a picture emerged of the little prince overjoyed to see a helicopter"
Gay marriage plans offer 'quadruple lock' for opposed religious groups - "The consultation, issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the summer, elicited 228,000 responses. Of these, 53% agreed that all couples, regardless of gender, should be able to have a civil marriage ceremony. In addition, mass petitions opposing same sex marriage were received, but to the fury of Tory MPs were excluded since the consultation was about how to introduce same sex marriage, and not whether to do so... Miller promised a quadruple lock, which would:
• Ensure that no religious organisation or individual minister can be compelled to marry same-sex couples or to permit this to happen on their premises.
• Provide an opt-in system for religious organisation who wish to conduct marriages for same-sex couples.
• Amend the Equality Act 2010 to reflect that no discrimination claims can be brought against religious organisations or individual ministers for refusing to marry a same-sex couple.
• Ensure that legislation will not affect the canon law of the Church of England or the Church in Wales. As a result, if either church wanted to conduct a same-sex marriage, it would require a change to primary legislation at a later date and a change to canon law...
"The system of locks will iron-clad the protection in law, adding to the existing protections in European legislation, so that those who do not want to conduct same-sex marriages will never have to"... In response to claims that teachers would be forced to support same sex marriages in the classroom, the government insisted that "… teachers, particularly in faith schools, will be able to continue to describe their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman while acknowledging and acting within the new legislative position which enables same-sex couples to get married"."
You're allowed to have any opinion you want, as long as it's the correct one
Tellingly, the pray the gay in clergyman said just 5 years later: "Every single political party needs to be asked repeatedly whether it will remove the Quadruple Lock on the C of E. Every single one without exception. So who is going to do that and when and how will that be decided?"
Government integration advisor: ‘Catholic schools cannot oppose gay marriage’ - "During a parliamentary hearing, Dame Louise Casey criticised Catholic schools who oppose marriage redefinition... she then went on to single out Catholic schools saying: “When does a teacher running a secular school say, ‘No, it’s fine for you not to do theatre,’ or music or those sorts of thing? When is that OK? I do not really have any view on which religion it is that it is promoting those sorts of views, but they are not OK, in the same way that it is not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. That is not OK either—it is not how we bring children up in this country.”... Edward Leigh MP for Gainsborough tweeted: “Equalities czar says we ‘can’t condemn others for living differently’ then condemns Catholics for living differently.”"
This was 5 years after it was proclaimed that teachers were to be able to continue to disagree with gay marriage. The slippery slope is real
Strangely the Parliamentary transcript does not show up on Google
British equalities czar: ‘It is not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage’ - "Britain’s equalities czar has equated Christian schools with Islamic extremists for teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman"
What’s changed in Britain since same-sex marriage? - "It became clear, during this year’s general election, just how militant the LGBT lobby have become, following marriage redefinition. The primary target was Tim Farron, leader of England’s third largest political party, the Liberal Democrats. High-profile journalists had heard that Farron was a practising Christian. In every single interview thereafter, they demanded to know. Did he personally believe homosexual sex to be a sin? He practically begged the commentariat, to allow him to keep his personal faith and legislative convictions separate. For decades, he pointed out, he had out vocally and legislatively supported the LGBT Lobby. Likewise, he had long backed same-sex marriage, voting for it enthusiastically. This simply was no longer enough. Shortly after the election campaign, Farron resigned. He stated that it was now impossible, for a believing Christian to hold a prominent position in British politics... In the lead-up to the Parliamentary vote, we witnessed almost incomprehensible bullying. David Burrows MP, a mild-mannered supporter of the ‘Coalition for Marriage’, had excrement thrown at his house. His children received death threats and their school address was published online. Similarly, ‘Conservative’ broadcaster Iain Dale promised to, ‘publicly out’ gay MP’s, who did not vote for redefinition. Many hardworking Brits have lost their jobs... Even the National Trust, a British institution with over 4.2 million members, has decided to join the bullying LGBT crusade. A message went out. Each of the Trust’s 62,000 volunteers, would be required to wear a compulsory same-sex rainbow badge. Those who said they’d rather not were told they would be ‘moved out of sight’until they were prepared to publicly demonstrate inclusive tolerance... Across the UK, ‘sex education’ has been transformed and disfigured. TV programmes, aimed at children as young as three, promote ‘gender fluidity’, as an enabler of thoughtfulness and individuality. At the same time, Ministers have denied worried parents the right to withdraw their children from primary school classes"
How a Lack of Touch is Destroying Men - "We American men have a tragic laundry list of reasons why we are not comfortable with touch:
We fear being labeled as sexually inappropriate by women.
We live in a virulently homophobic culture so all contact between men is suspect.
We don’t want to risk any hint of being sexual toward children.
We don’t want to risk our status as macho or authoritative by being physically gentle.
We don’t ever want to deal with rejection when we reach out."
THIS HITLER NONSENSE … - "The thing my father and I have often discussed, through the years, is the eye-rolling art of comparing American presidents to Hitler. It is such an absurdity we find it amusing …and frustrating. It’s often just a punch line. Like the Soup Nazi wasn’t really a Nazi. He was just mean. The Nazi part made it funny. You know …over-the-top. Like “grammar Nazi” or “spelling Nazi.” Nobody is really a “Nazi.” It’s our representation of something we consider jarring, strident, intractable and inhumane... ironically, the American president who could’ve actually been likened to Hitler (before Hitler) in some of his methods was …wait for it …Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln broke more constitutional law than any other president in U.S history. He imprisoned political opponents without due process. He suspended habeas corpus. He was personally responsible for the deaths of six hundred thousand people. He invaded countries that had declared their own sovereignty and forced them back into a union they didn’t want to be a part of. He unilaterally annexed Nevada, without 60 thousand residents, (a pre-requisite for becoming a state) in order to carry it and win the 1864 election. In other words, he pretty much rigged it."
Your baby is a little bit racist, science says - "Infants between 6 and 9 months looked at faces of their own race for longer after listening to happy music, and faces of other races for longer after listening to sad music... infants between 6 and 8 months watched videos of a woman looking at a corner of the TV screen. In some videos, the woman is gazing at an animal; in others, the animal appears in a different corner of the screen. The infants were more likely to follow the adult’s line of sight if she was of their own race, indicating that infants are more likely to learn from adults of their own race than adults of other races"
Maybe babies learn to be racist in the womb
Baby Racists: At Our Sweetest Age, We're Capable of Nasty Impulses - "15-month-old toddlers watched an experimenter with a collection of four small toys share them either evenly or unevenly with two other adult volunteers. When allowed to choose which experimenters the babies wanted to play with later, 70% of them preferred the ones who had divided the toys evenly. Nice, but there was an exception: when the two adults who were receiving the evenly or unevenly divided toys were of different races and the race of the one who got more toys matched the babies’ own, the 70% preference for the fair distributor dropped and the share of babies wanting to play with the unfair one rose. The implication: unfairness is bad, unless someone from your clan is getting the extra goodies."
Man gets 12 months' jail for having sex with underage girl - "Ray Reuven Roche Carbolido, a healthcare assistant by profession, sent the 15-year-old girl a WeChat chat request... While chatting with the girl, he asked her if she wanted to have sex. She agreed and went to Carbolido's home in Ang Mo Kio, a residential area in northeastern Singapore, that same night. The pair engaged in sexual acts, including intercourse using a condom that had been brought along by the girl. The court learned that the girl had told Carbolido she was only 15 and asked him if he was worried about having sex with a minor. He replied that it should not be a problem as it was consensual, and so she went to his home. Six days later, the girl was taken to KK Women's and Children's Hospital after starting to feel pain in her private parts. She was diagnosed with herpes simplex virus... The girl admitted to the police that she had had sexual encounters with several men, one of whom was Carbolido, between March 19 and 24. Carbolido was sent for a medical examination on April 5 after his arrest, and no sexually transmitted infection was found"
If a victim gets victimised repeatedly and consensually, does that make him more or less of a victim?
Straits Times: "some other sexual acts were also performed between them"
Let’s Talk About Racism and Privilege: White Men Keep Out - "I remember one instance we waited for over 3 hours at one immigration office to turn in one piece of information only to be turned away. The woman at the counter said we only brought half of what she needed, even though the last time we waited hours to talk to her, she told us all we needed to bring was what we had just brought. “You’ll have to come back later,” she sneered. Had either of us been a different color than the other I might have thought she was racist. But instead, I just thought she didn’t like immigrants or didn’t like her job. It’s easy to take things personally and assume people are rude to us because of an outward characteristic than an internal one, whether it’s our weight, our height, our gender, or because of the color of our skin. But there’s usually more to the story if we’d go past our own assumptions about their assumptions... Regardless of ethnicity, women were about twice as likely as men (23 per cent vs 12 per cent), and minorities were twice as likely as whites, to have ever received food stamps... These statistics are from 2013, after the recession, even though more men, including a fair amount of white men, lost jobs in the recession than women. Middle-aged white men are by far the most likely group to commit suicide, especially those with less education and lower incomes. Why would someone with “privilege” rather kill themselves than accept an unemployment check? Could one element be that no one has empathy for them when they fail to live up to society’s expectations – thus keeping their benefit numbers low – reinforcing society’s belief that they are “privileged” (don’t deserve help) and their own belief that they will not get or receive help if they ask for it? Could a sense of being discriminated against drive more women and minorities to seek out and accept benefits because they believe they are entitled to help – thus reinforcing society’s expectation and their own that they are “disadvantaged” and need ongoing services and support from special programs?"
When You Say “I Would Never Date A Trans Person,” It’s Transphobic. Here’s Why.
Lesbians who refuse to date men are sexist
Black women who refuse to date non-black men are racist
Swedish police banned from describing criminals anymore in case they sound racist - "Swedish police will no longer be able to give descriptions of alleged criminals for fear of being seen as racist. According to an internal letter, police in capital city Stockholm are instructed to refrain from describing suspects' race and nationality... “We want to avoid pointing out ethnic groups as criminal”"
Is Complaining About Street Sexual Harassment Racist? - "the Hollaback! app — which tracks and maps users’ reports of street sexual harassment — doesn’t collect data on race, either. (That would be racist, the creators said.) But it does reveal that most of the smartphone-enabled reports come out of gentrifying neighborhoods in lower Manhattan and West Brooklyn. This appears to confirm what the video’s optics suggested: The people most loudly complaining about catcalls are the ones most insulated from more serious problems of racial profiling and economic inequality. After all, getting catcalled in a gentrifying neighborhood isn’t just a reminder that because someone is young and female her body is up for grabs (besides, that happens in subtler ways all the time). It foremost means being forced to acknowledge some of the people who lived there in a time before gut renovations and organic bodegas and speakeasies. A gentrifier like me can always move back to the quiet, catcall-free suburbs; the guy who hangs outside my subway stop all day probably can’t. So when he tells me I look beautiful today, I say “thank you” instead of tattling on an app. It’s never led to an escalation that made me uncomfortable and, as a result, I’ve been hesitant to complain about catcalls as an issue. But that may not be true for all women — especially the victims of street harassment not represented by Hollaback!’s narrow take. If men are “brazen enough to harass white women and their protected femininities on the street,” Cooper wrote, “what won’t they do to cis and trans women of color, whose womanhood is structurally devalued?” For trans women of color, street sexual harassment is often a matter of life and death. It’s their safety and comfort that gets lost when we allow street sexual harassment to be cast as a threat to white gentrifiers"
So apparently collecting data is racist and if a poor man catcalls a white woman, the woman should thank him or she's racist
Feminist Academics Protest 'Racist' Law Against Street Harassment - "“It is well known that racialised young men from the working classes already suffer more than other people from police violence and oppression,” assert the academics, in a letter opposing equality minister Marlène Schiappa’s announcement that MPs are working on legislation to reduce street harassment... A 2015 study conducted in migrant-heavy French districts Seine-Saint-Denis and Essonne, carried out by the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCEfh) – concluded that 100 per cent of women had been subjected at least once in their lives to sexual harassment or sexual assault... some areas of Paris have become virtual “no-go” zones for women, who reported no longer being able to leave their homes without migrants subjecting them to verbal abuse. Local media described how, over the previous 12 months — as immigrants and drug dealers flooded the east Paris district of Chapelle-Pajol — the streets became crowded with dozens of groups of young men harassing and sometimes even assaulting women who walked by."
Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression | Electronic Frontier Foundation - "In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power”... any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with. Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group. In the Civil Rights Era cases that formed the basis of today’s protections of freedom of speech, the NAACP’s voice was the one attacked. Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t... we strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights. Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world. And at EFF we see the consequences first hand: every time a company throws a vile neo-Nazi site off the Net, thousands of less visible decisions are made by companies with little oversight or transparency"
MILO: White Nationalism is Not the Answer - "“The reality is, if you force everyone to play identity politics, if you insist in pitting whites against blacks, women against men, straights against gays, the reality is you guys are gonna win and the left isn’t going to like it very much,” declared MILO. “But there’s a better way. Don’t fight identity politics with identity politics.”“White pride, white nationalism, white supremacy isn’t the way to go,” he continued. “The way to go is reminding them and yourselves that you should be aspiring to values and to ideas.” “You should be focusing on what unites people and not what drives them apart,” MILO concluded. “You shouldn’t give a shit about skin color, a shit about sexuality… You shouldn’t give a shit about gender, and you should be deeply suspicious of the people who do.”"
I thought Milo was supposed to be a racist white nationalist
"BPA-free" plastic alternatives may not be safe - "Your "BPA-free" plastic product may be no safer than the product it replaced, says a new UCLA study that analyzed the impact of a common BPA alternative on zebra fish embryos. The study joins a small but growing group of similar research sounding the alarm about so called "BPA-free" alternatives"
Chinese tofu maker ‘turned to arms dealing’ after business was forced to close down - "The two are said to have downloaded weapon blueprints online and manufactured gun parts in local hardware workshops in Ningbo"
Susanna Viljanen's answer to How come the Japanese Army and Navy was so inefficient against the US in WWII despite having put so much effort into their armed forces? - Quora - "Compared to Olympic fencing and historical European swordsmanship, kendo has no good defences and no good parries, and while kaeshi strikes certainly do exist, the defence relies more or less solely on swiftness, not on taking the enemy’s weapon into control and counter-striking when he is weak. And this was the Japanese main flaw. They were prepared only for a swift, offensive war: for a one-strike battle. They were not prepared for a lengthy war of attrition. They had no contingency plans. Their naval vessels were designed to deliver one single formidable battle-deciding strike - not to survive. The Japanese had an utterly callous attitude towards both human life and their equipment. They wasted their men like chaff. When in a no-win situation, they would rather expend everything in a futile banzai charge than retreat. Likewise, they would rather commit suicide than surrender honourably. They really did not know their enemies. It can be safely claimed that the Japanese had arguably the worst aircraft carriers in WWII, and their cruisers were made of explodium. They did not use their submarines aggressively enough. And, most of all, they never understood the importance of logistics... The Japanese commanders had a bad tendency to lose their nerve when things went pear-shaped. They would rather kill themselves than save what was saveable"
Christians should pray for Prince George to be gay, says minister - "Christians should pray for Prince George to be gay to force support for same-sex marriage in the Church of England, a senior Scottish Episcopal church minister and LGBTQ campaigner has said... The full post by Holdsworth about Prince George is part of a list of nine suggestions to force LGBT inclusion in the Church of England"
We've gone from Pray The Gay Away to Pray The Gay In
A Reverend Requested Prayers For Prince George To Be Gay, & People Are So Pissed - "while some of the criticism did come from those with seemingly anti-LGBTQ views, a fair bit of criticism came from those who simply thought that, just maybe, people shouldn't be praying for a child's sexuality to turn out one way or another. In fact, maybe someone else's sexuality is none of our business in the first place. "To use prayer as a mechanism for wishing this on Prince George is an unkind and destructive thing to do," Gavin Ashenden, a Christian Episcopal Church missionary bishop, told the BBC. "It doesn't have the prince's best interests at heart, but uses him as a gender-political football."
He continued: What is especially odd and incongruous is the fact that it is suddenly OK to pray for someone to be gay, but totally unacceptable to pray for them to be free from being gay. Unfortunately, this is far from the first time that the public has felt like it's necessary to comment on Prince George's potential sexuality. In August, he was labeled a "gay icon" by one website after a picture emerged of the little prince overjoyed to see a helicopter"
Gay marriage plans offer 'quadruple lock' for opposed religious groups - "The consultation, issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the summer, elicited 228,000 responses. Of these, 53% agreed that all couples, regardless of gender, should be able to have a civil marriage ceremony. In addition, mass petitions opposing same sex marriage were received, but to the fury of Tory MPs were excluded since the consultation was about how to introduce same sex marriage, and not whether to do so... Miller promised a quadruple lock, which would:
• Ensure that no religious organisation or individual minister can be compelled to marry same-sex couples or to permit this to happen on their premises.
• Provide an opt-in system for religious organisation who wish to conduct marriages for same-sex couples.
• Amend the Equality Act 2010 to reflect that no discrimination claims can be brought against religious organisations or individual ministers for refusing to marry a same-sex couple.
• Ensure that legislation will not affect the canon law of the Church of England or the Church in Wales. As a result, if either church wanted to conduct a same-sex marriage, it would require a change to primary legislation at a later date and a change to canon law...
"The system of locks will iron-clad the protection in law, adding to the existing protections in European legislation, so that those who do not want to conduct same-sex marriages will never have to"... In response to claims that teachers would be forced to support same sex marriages in the classroom, the government insisted that "… teachers, particularly in faith schools, will be able to continue to describe their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman while acknowledging and acting within the new legislative position which enables same-sex couples to get married"."
You're allowed to have any opinion you want, as long as it's the correct one
Tellingly, the pray the gay in clergyman said just 5 years later: "Every single political party needs to be asked repeatedly whether it will remove the Quadruple Lock on the C of E. Every single one without exception. So who is going to do that and when and how will that be decided?"
Government integration advisor: ‘Catholic schools cannot oppose gay marriage’ - "During a parliamentary hearing, Dame Louise Casey criticised Catholic schools who oppose marriage redefinition... she then went on to single out Catholic schools saying: “When does a teacher running a secular school say, ‘No, it’s fine for you not to do theatre,’ or music or those sorts of thing? When is that OK? I do not really have any view on which religion it is that it is promoting those sorts of views, but they are not OK, in the same way that it is not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. That is not OK either—it is not how we bring children up in this country.”... Edward Leigh MP for Gainsborough tweeted: “Equalities czar says we ‘can’t condemn others for living differently’ then condemns Catholics for living differently.”"
This was 5 years after it was proclaimed that teachers were to be able to continue to disagree with gay marriage. The slippery slope is real
Strangely the Parliamentary transcript does not show up on Google
British equalities czar: ‘It is not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage’ - "Britain’s equalities czar has equated Christian schools with Islamic extremists for teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman"
What’s changed in Britain since same-sex marriage? - "It became clear, during this year’s general election, just how militant the LGBT lobby have become, following marriage redefinition. The primary target was Tim Farron, leader of England’s third largest political party, the Liberal Democrats. High-profile journalists had heard that Farron was a practising Christian. In every single interview thereafter, they demanded to know. Did he personally believe homosexual sex to be a sin? He practically begged the commentariat, to allow him to keep his personal faith and legislative convictions separate. For decades, he pointed out, he had out vocally and legislatively supported the LGBT Lobby. Likewise, he had long backed same-sex marriage, voting for it enthusiastically. This simply was no longer enough. Shortly after the election campaign, Farron resigned. He stated that it was now impossible, for a believing Christian to hold a prominent position in British politics... In the lead-up to the Parliamentary vote, we witnessed almost incomprehensible bullying. David Burrows MP, a mild-mannered supporter of the ‘Coalition for Marriage’, had excrement thrown at his house. His children received death threats and their school address was published online. Similarly, ‘Conservative’ broadcaster Iain Dale promised to, ‘publicly out’ gay MP’s, who did not vote for redefinition. Many hardworking Brits have lost their jobs... Even the National Trust, a British institution with over 4.2 million members, has decided to join the bullying LGBT crusade. A message went out. Each of the Trust’s 62,000 volunteers, would be required to wear a compulsory same-sex rainbow badge. Those who said they’d rather not were told they would be ‘moved out of sight’until they were prepared to publicly demonstrate inclusive tolerance... Across the UK, ‘sex education’ has been transformed and disfigured. TV programmes, aimed at children as young as three, promote ‘gender fluidity’, as an enabler of thoughtfulness and individuality. At the same time, Ministers have denied worried parents the right to withdraw their children from primary school classes"
Post ID: 3363383197026388904
Sangeetha's Silencing of Minorities
Following up on Sangeetha's anti-Crazy Rich Asians spiel, Surya Kumar reports that she is not open to fact-checking from other Indians:
"Just like several other Singaporean "activists" she has deleted my factual comment and blocked me. It was fun whilst it lasted.
She needs professional help...
I provided a long list of non-Chinese in positions of power in Singapore (goverment, civil service, stat boards and private sector).
Separately, I also asked for proof on some of the wild allegations .... especially South Indian workers being killed and buried in concrete."
Curiously, I was unable to see Surya's comments on Sangeetha's post - nor could I (at the time of writing this post) see the screenshots of Surya's comments that someone had posted earlier (presumably in response to her deleting comments).
Luckily, I'd saved them then:
"Currently in Singapore:
... and I will speak for Indians
Deputy Prime Minister... Indian
Minister for Home Affairs as well as Law ...
Indian
Minister for Trade and Industry ... Indian
Minister for Foreign Affairs ... Indian
One out of 3 female Ministers ... Indian
Chief Justice ... Indian
Chairman of the Monetary Authority of
Singapore ... Indian
CEOs of several major banks ... Indian
... the list goes on."
"But, but that doesn't fit in with her narrative that all positions of authority are priviliged Chinese people!"
"of course it wouldn't. This woman is clearly too busy vilifying the Chinese and justifying her BS in her PhD."
"Yeh where the malays that is 5 times bigger population than the indians. So something is wrong."
"15 % Malays vs 7.4 % Indians is 5 times more?
Our President is a Malay female who wears a headscarf.
We do have several Malays in the Cabinet / political office.
We do have many .. many Malays who are very successful professionals (doctors, lawyers etc)
We do have many Malays who are successful entrepreneurs and in the private sector.
The capable Malays appear to have selected the non—po|itical or non-civil service path.
Nothing wrong as far as I can see.
The government has put in schemes to support the rise and success of Malays as well as Indians aka
minorities."
One might ask why Sangeetha Thanapal, champion of minorities in Singapore, would be silencing a fellow minority who disagreed with her. One might also ask why she had left some other critical comments there.
Presumably, she cannot abide being criticised by other Indians because then she can't claim to be the voice of the Oppressed Singaporean Indian.
With the only dissenting voices being Chinese, she and her fanclub can label all those who disagree with her as racist because they're Chinese (i.e. having animosity towards someone else because of his race, which is the definition of racism).
People like Surya deprive her of her standing (I've an Indian friend Shane Gill who also got blocked for calling out her nonsense).
We can see parallels in how feminists hated Margaret Thatcher, and anti-racists and the black establishment hate Thomas Sowell.
Bonus:
Her cheerleaders (who refute claims that she is racist against Chinese people) should note that she has openly proclaimed that she looks down on Chinese people:
"Singaporean Chinese people are so terrible at basic critical thinking, that this is really what we can generally expect from them"
"Just like several other Singaporean "activists" she has deleted my factual comment and blocked me. It was fun whilst it lasted.
She needs professional help...
I provided a long list of non-Chinese in positions of power in Singapore (goverment, civil service, stat boards and private sector).
Separately, I also asked for proof on some of the wild allegations .... especially South Indian workers being killed and buried in concrete."
Curiously, I was unable to see Surya's comments on Sangeetha's post - nor could I (at the time of writing this post) see the screenshots of Surya's comments that someone had posted earlier (presumably in response to her deleting comments).
Luckily, I'd saved them then:
"Currently in Singapore:
... and I will speak for Indians
Deputy Prime Minister... Indian
Minister for Home Affairs as well as Law ...
Indian
Minister for Trade and Industry ... Indian
Minister for Foreign Affairs ... Indian
One out of 3 female Ministers ... Indian
Chief Justice ... Indian
Chairman of the Monetary Authority of
Singapore ... Indian
CEOs of several major banks ... Indian
... the list goes on."
"But, but that doesn't fit in with her narrative that all positions of authority are priviliged Chinese people!"
"of course it wouldn't. This woman is clearly too busy vilifying the Chinese and justifying her BS in her PhD."
"Yeh where the malays that is 5 times bigger population than the indians. So something is wrong."
"15 % Malays vs 7.4 % Indians is 5 times more?
Our President is a Malay female who wears a headscarf.
We do have several Malays in the Cabinet / political office.
We do have many .. many Malays who are very successful professionals (doctors, lawyers etc)
We do have many Malays who are successful entrepreneurs and in the private sector.
The capable Malays appear to have selected the non—po|itical or non-civil service path.
Nothing wrong as far as I can see.
The government has put in schemes to support the rise and success of Malays as well as Indians aka
minorities."
One might ask why Sangeetha Thanapal, champion of minorities in Singapore, would be silencing a fellow minority who disagreed with her. One might also ask why she had left some other critical comments there.
Presumably, she cannot abide being criticised by other Indians because then she can't claim to be the voice of the Oppressed Singaporean Indian.
With the only dissenting voices being Chinese, she and her fanclub can label all those who disagree with her as racist because they're Chinese (i.e. having animosity towards someone else because of his race, which is the definition of racism).
People like Surya deprive her of her standing (I've an Indian friend Shane Gill who also got blocked for calling out her nonsense).
We can see parallels in how feminists hated Margaret Thatcher, and anti-racists and the black establishment hate Thomas Sowell.
Bonus:
Her cheerleaders (who refute claims that she is racist against Chinese people) should note that she has openly proclaimed that she looks down on Chinese people:
"Singaporean Chinese people are so terrible at basic critical thinking, that this is really what we can generally expect from them"
Post ID: 1233509597298047181
Links - 30th April 2018 (2)
Dalhousie University makes ‘Emergency Hijab Kits’ available on campus - "Dalhousie University has made ‘Emergency Hijab Kits’ available to female Muslim students at multiple locations across the Halifax campus. The fear is that female Dalhousie Muslim students are being targeted by individuals on and off campus and are having their hijabs forcibly removed. However, no such incidents have been reported to authorities... Organizers have offered to make them available to departments and offices throughout Dalhousie in addition to the DSU Info Desk, the NSPIRG office and Dal Security for 24/7 access... Masuma Khan, a Dalhousie Student executive member who was recently embroiled in a controversy of her own, disagrees and believes such incidents are common. Comments made by Khan were placed under investigation by the university after she posted with the hashtag “#whitefragilitycankissmya–” in response to backlash over a motion to abstain from Canada 150 celebrations for “over 400 years of genocide.”"
Why is it no surprise that a racist is delusional?
How Lemonade Helped Paris Fend Off Plague And Other Surprising 'Food Fights' - "Where these limonadiers went, piles of spent lemon peels followed. Rats, being omnivorous eaters, likely were just as happy as the Parisians to sample the newly popular lemon. As they nibbled, he argues, they killed off plague-infected fleas."
Elena Ferrante and the Power of Appropriation - The New York Times - "Claudio Gatti wrote that Elena Ferrante — the pen name for an Italian novelist whose true identity was a closely guarded secret — is actually a Rome-based translator named Anita Raja... In a larger sense, too, the exposure of Ms. Ferrante feels like an attack on the idea of literature. On Twitter and Facebook, a number of writers immediately denounced the idea that to know a novelist means knowing the biographical truth about her. Surely what matters, they argue, is not Ms. Ferrante’s background but her imagination. A novel is supposed to be a self-sufficient world, something the writer creates and then sets free; it is not meant to be tethered to its creator, but to transcend her... the literary world has been at war over the idea of cultural appropriation — whether a writer has the right to tell stories about people unlike herself. Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival said yes; many critics of that speech said no. But now it appears that one of the world’s best-loved writers is actually a sterling example of the power of appropriation... This is the paradox of literature, which is also the glory of humanism: the idea that nothing human is alien to any of us, that we all have the power to imagine our way into one another’s lives. If the exposure of Elena Ferrante reminds us of that truth, which today we are too inclined to forget, perhaps it will turn out to be justified."
No One Wants to Admit They're Ugly, Which Makes It Hard to Fight Beauty Bias - "beauty is a lot more objective than perhaps we would like it to be. Studies have shown that what people consider “beautiful” is pretty consistent, even across cultures. So if it’s possible to establish who is and who isn’t benefitting from so-called “lookism,” what’s keeping us from creating legislation to protect people who are discrimated against? One issue is that laws don’t necessarily solve the problem. Some states have laws that address discrimination against people based on weight and height. But nobody really uses them. But the biggest problem, Graham argues, is that ugly people aren’t united like other lobbies. “There are no ‘unattractive’ lobbies,” Connor Principe, a research at Pacific University, told Graham. “For that to really work, you have to have people who are willing to be recognized as unattractive.” And nobody wants to join the ugly club"
So much for beauty being culturally constructed
Pit bulls, immigrants, & the alleged Islamic jihad against dogs - "It is true that as more and more North African Muslims take up cab driving (an issue tied up with deregulation), it is increasingly difficult to find a cab that will take a dog. If you arrive at a big city train station with a dog, the row of self-employed North African Muslim drivers will often refuse to carry you. These are mostly first generation immigrants using their privately owned automobiles to earn a living. Their problem with carrying dogs may be as much cultural as religious, since these drivers come from places where goats and chickens commonly travel in public busses, but where it is not common to keep dogs as pets people have close contact with. European law regarding guide dogs for the blind and other certified service dogs varies. In some countries, no one can refuse to allow a service dog on the premises or in the taxi. In other countries, this is up to the owner of the premises or the cab. A 2004 survey among Dutch users of blind guide dogs showed that 70% have been turned away with their dogs at least once. At the time, Chinese restaurants were the most common places that refused access to blind guide dogs. Taxi drivers stated various reasons for refusing a guide dog, including fear or allergy, dog hairs in the cab and sometimes indeed religious belief"
Lizards Slow Lyme Disease in West / Ticks bite them -- and leave with purified blood - "It may sound like witchcraft, but Berkeley scientists have found that ticks who feast on the blood of the common western fence lizard are purged of any Lyme disease bacteria hiding in their gut."
Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy - Wikipedia - "the majority of the total genetic variation between humans (i.e., of the 0.1% of DNA that varies between individuals), 85.4%, is found within populations, 8.3% of the variation is found between populations within a "race", and only 6.3% was found to account for the racial classification. Numerous later studies have confirmed his findings. Based on this analysis, Lewontin concluded, "Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance." This argument has been cited as evidence that racial categories are biologically meaningless, and that behavioral differences between groups cannot have any genetic underpinnings... Edwards argued that while Lewontin's statements on variability are correct when examining the frequency of different alleles (variants of a particular gene) at an individual locus (the location of a particular gene) between individuals, it is nonetheless possible to classify individuals into different racial groups with an accuracy that approaches 100 percent when one takes into account the frequency of the alleles at several loci at the same time. This happens because differences in the frequency of alleles at different loci are correlated across populations—the alleles that are more frequent in a population at two or more loci are correlated when we consider the two populations simultaneously. Or in other words, the frequency of the alleles tends to cluster differently for different populations"
In other words, since humans and chimpanzees share 96% of their DNA, species don't exist
Diet and stomach cancer in Korea. - "An increased risk of stomach cancer was noted among people who frequently consume broiled meats and fishes, salted side dishes (salted/fermented fish products) and salty stewed foods, such as soybean paste thick stew. Frequent consumption of mung bean pancake, tofu, cabbage, spinach and sesame oil decreased the risk. Analysis by cooking method showed that risk of stomach cancer from the same foods varied with preparation. For meat and fish, pan frying was associated with decreased risk, whereas stewing or broiling was associated with increased risk. Pickled vegetables increased the risk, whereas fresh vegetables did not. In a recent cohort study in Seoul, green vegetables and soybean foods were associated with a decreased risk of stomach cancer. Case-control and cohort studies have reported that ginseng intake decreased the risk of gastric cancer"
Across Asia, liver cancer is linked to herbal remedies: Study - "Researchers have uncovered widespread evidence of a link between traditional Chinese herbal remedies and liver cancer across Asia"
And yet many people still instinctively trust Traditional Chinese Medicine over Western Medicine
How Much Are We Over-Diagnosing Cancer? - "an overdiagnosis is the detection of a cancer that, if it had remained undetected, would not have affected a person’s life"
How did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance? - "In Biblical times, the typical loan was more like the second case – it wasn’t an arms-length transaction, but a charitable loan from a wealthy man to a neighbour who’d experienced misfortune or had nowhere else to turn. Throughout early Medieval Europe, the local church or a wealthy family was often the only source of capital, especially outside the major commercial centres. Many peasants bought their land by getting mortgages from a monastery. In a world without credit markets and insurance, then, charging interest felt like extorting a friend or family member."
Why is the language of transhumanists and religion so similar? - "The odd thing about the anti-clericalism in the AI community is that religious language runs wild in its ranks, and in how the media reports on it. There are AI ‘oracles’ and technology ‘evangelists’ of a future that’s yet to come, plus plenty of loose talk about angels, gods and the apocalypse... The transhuman disdain for the flesh is similar to the way certain forms of religious gnosticism reject all things embodied and material. This is a strand of Judeo-Christian thought that perceives an unbridgeable dualism between God on the one hand, and the partial and corrupted manifestations of what is ‘in’ the world on the other"
The Realistic Response to China’s Prostitution Problem - "Between 2000 and 2015, and in particular since 2006, the number of Chinese men aged 18 to 61 who have solicited the services of a prostitute generally rose. Current estimates suggest that by the year 2020, approximately 17 percent of all Chinese men in this age group will have solicited a prostitute at some point in their lives."
New Law Could Let French Workers Ignore After-Hours Email - "A new law, which took effect January 1, requires businesses with 50 or more employees to negotiate after-hours email rules with their employees, potentially giving them the right to ignore that late-night missive... According to European Union statistics, a high proportion of French companies report employing only 49 people, because French workplace laws kick in at 50 or more employees. In 2015, exempt businesses (49 or fewer workers) employed 48.6 percent of the French workforce"
Cycle helmets are useless, says brain surgeon - "Henry Marsh, who works at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, said that many of his patients who have been involved in bike accidents have been wearing helmets that were ‘too flimsy’ to be beneficial... He cited evidence from the University of Bath that suggests that wearing a helmet may even put cyclists at greater risk. The research showed that drivers get around 3 inches closer to cyclists who wear helmets because they perceive them as safer."
The solution to flimsy helmets is not better helmets - but no helmets. Brilliant.
Bicycle helmets reduce risk of serious head injury by nearly 70%, study finds - "A major study of bike helmet use around the world from more than 64,000 cyclists has found helmets reduce the risks of a serious head injury by nearly 70%... The compulsory wearing of bike helmets in Australia has long been a source of frustration for some cyclists, who argue it reduces participation rates. Previous studies have indicated helmet use encourages risk-taking behaviour or does not reduce serious injury to the brain."
Sex, Consent, and the Dangers of “Misplaced Scale” - "we are living with the possibility of unthinkable destruction, but we seem to be spending significantly more time discussing the sexual misbehavior of a growing number of prominent men than talking about North Korea or climate change. Rubin did not expect good things to come from the renegotiation of the sexual sphere. The problem, she wrote, was “the fallacy of misplaced scale”: sex loomed so large that any sexual transgression, or imagined transgression, might bring extreme punishment... The conversation we are having about sex began with incidents that involved clear coercion, intimidation, and violence. Paradoxically, it seems to have produced the sense that meaningful consent is elusive or perhaps even impossible... women, at least when faced with a famous man, cannot make adult choices... In the past, sexual laws and regulations have most often been strengthened in the name of protecting children... In the current American conversation, women are increasingly treated as children: defenseless, incapable of consent, always on the verge of being victimized. This should give us pause. Being infantilized has never worked out well for women."
The Postmodern Misuse of Tolerance - "people increasingly rely upon tolerance because other Enlightenment values such as reason, equality, and liberty have lost the power to inspire... The celebration of tolerance as an end in itself is a symptom of the shift from self-confident modern liberal democracies to the self-doubting postmodern ones... Postmodern tolerance is used as an instrument of confusion, in order to impose the recognition of difference on social agents using state power. The assumption behind this move is that society isn’t a realm of individual freedom, but a pyramid of domination which benefits an elite. In such a situation, equality of rights is threatening. To protect the oppressed it is not sufficient to grant them the right to express difference – the State needs to silence those deemed to be oppressors... Catholics and Protestants didn’t need to be told by academics that they were oppressed by one another. And the subsequent creation of the modern State didn’t require them to stop thinking of one another as heretics. Rather, it compelled them to put an end to sectarian violence as a means of punishing heresy. What Butler is asking of the alleged oppressor isn’t simply to refrain from violence, but to see in his opinions the cause of the another’s suffering. In this way, speech and opinion are redescribed as a kind of violence... by promoting a ‘performative’ conception of individual identity, ‘critical theorists’ and postmodern academics intend to blur that important distinction. If who I am cannot be distinguished from who I say I am (e.g. the gender or the religion with which I identify) then people who disagree with me are a threat to my very existence. Worse, this asks – or, ideally, compels – the State to either accept all such claims, or to assess their sincerity or insincerity (for example regarding access to public bathrooms). Not only is this an impossible task, it is precisely the kind of task the modern State was designed to avoid."
Small restaurants could win from Deliveroo Editions central kitchen - "Deliveroo builds its own kitchen facilities, and then it invites local restaurants to operate a station on those premises, food can then be delivered quickly from that location."
12 things you might not know you could be punished for in Singapore - "1. Annoying someone by behaving badly in public while drunk
2. Annoying someone in a public place through an act, or by reciting or uttering a song with lyrics that are obscene
3. Sale, distribution, rental of all things "obscene", including paintings, books, figures
4. Purposely obstructing a person, so as to prevent him from proceeding in any direction that he is allowed to walk in
7. Bathing or washing yourself in on a public road, in a public tank, reservoir, or any water body
8. Flying a kite that obstructs traffic on a public road
9. Annoying someone by making noise in any way, including by an instrument
10. Taking alcohol into a public hospital
11. Making business deals at MRT stations"
Clearly 377A is problematic
Why is it no surprise that a racist is delusional?
How Lemonade Helped Paris Fend Off Plague And Other Surprising 'Food Fights' - "Where these limonadiers went, piles of spent lemon peels followed. Rats, being omnivorous eaters, likely were just as happy as the Parisians to sample the newly popular lemon. As they nibbled, he argues, they killed off plague-infected fleas."
Elena Ferrante and the Power of Appropriation - The New York Times - "Claudio Gatti wrote that Elena Ferrante — the pen name for an Italian novelist whose true identity was a closely guarded secret — is actually a Rome-based translator named Anita Raja... In a larger sense, too, the exposure of Ms. Ferrante feels like an attack on the idea of literature. On Twitter and Facebook, a number of writers immediately denounced the idea that to know a novelist means knowing the biographical truth about her. Surely what matters, they argue, is not Ms. Ferrante’s background but her imagination. A novel is supposed to be a self-sufficient world, something the writer creates and then sets free; it is not meant to be tethered to its creator, but to transcend her... the literary world has been at war over the idea of cultural appropriation — whether a writer has the right to tell stories about people unlike herself. Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival said yes; many critics of that speech said no. But now it appears that one of the world’s best-loved writers is actually a sterling example of the power of appropriation... This is the paradox of literature, which is also the glory of humanism: the idea that nothing human is alien to any of us, that we all have the power to imagine our way into one another’s lives. If the exposure of Elena Ferrante reminds us of that truth, which today we are too inclined to forget, perhaps it will turn out to be justified."
No One Wants to Admit They're Ugly, Which Makes It Hard to Fight Beauty Bias - "beauty is a lot more objective than perhaps we would like it to be. Studies have shown that what people consider “beautiful” is pretty consistent, even across cultures. So if it’s possible to establish who is and who isn’t benefitting from so-called “lookism,” what’s keeping us from creating legislation to protect people who are discrimated against? One issue is that laws don’t necessarily solve the problem. Some states have laws that address discrimination against people based on weight and height. But nobody really uses them. But the biggest problem, Graham argues, is that ugly people aren’t united like other lobbies. “There are no ‘unattractive’ lobbies,” Connor Principe, a research at Pacific University, told Graham. “For that to really work, you have to have people who are willing to be recognized as unattractive.” And nobody wants to join the ugly club"
So much for beauty being culturally constructed
Pit bulls, immigrants, & the alleged Islamic jihad against dogs - "It is true that as more and more North African Muslims take up cab driving (an issue tied up with deregulation), it is increasingly difficult to find a cab that will take a dog. If you arrive at a big city train station with a dog, the row of self-employed North African Muslim drivers will often refuse to carry you. These are mostly first generation immigrants using their privately owned automobiles to earn a living. Their problem with carrying dogs may be as much cultural as religious, since these drivers come from places where goats and chickens commonly travel in public busses, but where it is not common to keep dogs as pets people have close contact with. European law regarding guide dogs for the blind and other certified service dogs varies. In some countries, no one can refuse to allow a service dog on the premises or in the taxi. In other countries, this is up to the owner of the premises or the cab. A 2004 survey among Dutch users of blind guide dogs showed that 70% have been turned away with their dogs at least once. At the time, Chinese restaurants were the most common places that refused access to blind guide dogs. Taxi drivers stated various reasons for refusing a guide dog, including fear or allergy, dog hairs in the cab and sometimes indeed religious belief"
Lizards Slow Lyme Disease in West / Ticks bite them -- and leave with purified blood - "It may sound like witchcraft, but Berkeley scientists have found that ticks who feast on the blood of the common western fence lizard are purged of any Lyme disease bacteria hiding in their gut."
Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy - Wikipedia - "the majority of the total genetic variation between humans (i.e., of the 0.1% of DNA that varies between individuals), 85.4%, is found within populations, 8.3% of the variation is found between populations within a "race", and only 6.3% was found to account for the racial classification. Numerous later studies have confirmed his findings. Based on this analysis, Lewontin concluded, "Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance." This argument has been cited as evidence that racial categories are biologically meaningless, and that behavioral differences between groups cannot have any genetic underpinnings... Edwards argued that while Lewontin's statements on variability are correct when examining the frequency of different alleles (variants of a particular gene) at an individual locus (the location of a particular gene) between individuals, it is nonetheless possible to classify individuals into different racial groups with an accuracy that approaches 100 percent when one takes into account the frequency of the alleles at several loci at the same time. This happens because differences in the frequency of alleles at different loci are correlated across populations—the alleles that are more frequent in a population at two or more loci are correlated when we consider the two populations simultaneously. Or in other words, the frequency of the alleles tends to cluster differently for different populations"
In other words, since humans and chimpanzees share 96% of their DNA, species don't exist
Diet and stomach cancer in Korea. - "An increased risk of stomach cancer was noted among people who frequently consume broiled meats and fishes, salted side dishes (salted/fermented fish products) and salty stewed foods, such as soybean paste thick stew. Frequent consumption of mung bean pancake, tofu, cabbage, spinach and sesame oil decreased the risk. Analysis by cooking method showed that risk of stomach cancer from the same foods varied with preparation. For meat and fish, pan frying was associated with decreased risk, whereas stewing or broiling was associated with increased risk. Pickled vegetables increased the risk, whereas fresh vegetables did not. In a recent cohort study in Seoul, green vegetables and soybean foods were associated with a decreased risk of stomach cancer. Case-control and cohort studies have reported that ginseng intake decreased the risk of gastric cancer"
Across Asia, liver cancer is linked to herbal remedies: Study - "Researchers have uncovered widespread evidence of a link between traditional Chinese herbal remedies and liver cancer across Asia"
And yet many people still instinctively trust Traditional Chinese Medicine over Western Medicine
How Much Are We Over-Diagnosing Cancer? - "an overdiagnosis is the detection of a cancer that, if it had remained undetected, would not have affected a person’s life"
How did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance? - "In Biblical times, the typical loan was more like the second case – it wasn’t an arms-length transaction, but a charitable loan from a wealthy man to a neighbour who’d experienced misfortune or had nowhere else to turn. Throughout early Medieval Europe, the local church or a wealthy family was often the only source of capital, especially outside the major commercial centres. Many peasants bought their land by getting mortgages from a monastery. In a world without credit markets and insurance, then, charging interest felt like extorting a friend or family member."
Why is the language of transhumanists and religion so similar? - "The odd thing about the anti-clericalism in the AI community is that religious language runs wild in its ranks, and in how the media reports on it. There are AI ‘oracles’ and technology ‘evangelists’ of a future that’s yet to come, plus plenty of loose talk about angels, gods and the apocalypse... The transhuman disdain for the flesh is similar to the way certain forms of religious gnosticism reject all things embodied and material. This is a strand of Judeo-Christian thought that perceives an unbridgeable dualism between God on the one hand, and the partial and corrupted manifestations of what is ‘in’ the world on the other"
The Realistic Response to China’s Prostitution Problem - "Between 2000 and 2015, and in particular since 2006, the number of Chinese men aged 18 to 61 who have solicited the services of a prostitute generally rose. Current estimates suggest that by the year 2020, approximately 17 percent of all Chinese men in this age group will have solicited a prostitute at some point in their lives."
New Law Could Let French Workers Ignore After-Hours Email - "A new law, which took effect January 1, requires businesses with 50 or more employees to negotiate after-hours email rules with their employees, potentially giving them the right to ignore that late-night missive... According to European Union statistics, a high proportion of French companies report employing only 49 people, because French workplace laws kick in at 50 or more employees. In 2015, exempt businesses (49 or fewer workers) employed 48.6 percent of the French workforce"
Cycle helmets are useless, says brain surgeon - "Henry Marsh, who works at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, said that many of his patients who have been involved in bike accidents have been wearing helmets that were ‘too flimsy’ to be beneficial... He cited evidence from the University of Bath that suggests that wearing a helmet may even put cyclists at greater risk. The research showed that drivers get around 3 inches closer to cyclists who wear helmets because they perceive them as safer."
The solution to flimsy helmets is not better helmets - but no helmets. Brilliant.
Bicycle helmets reduce risk of serious head injury by nearly 70%, study finds - "A major study of bike helmet use around the world from more than 64,000 cyclists has found helmets reduce the risks of a serious head injury by nearly 70%... The compulsory wearing of bike helmets in Australia has long been a source of frustration for some cyclists, who argue it reduces participation rates. Previous studies have indicated helmet use encourages risk-taking behaviour or does not reduce serious injury to the brain."
Sex, Consent, and the Dangers of “Misplaced Scale” - "we are living with the possibility of unthinkable destruction, but we seem to be spending significantly more time discussing the sexual misbehavior of a growing number of prominent men than talking about North Korea or climate change. Rubin did not expect good things to come from the renegotiation of the sexual sphere. The problem, she wrote, was “the fallacy of misplaced scale”: sex loomed so large that any sexual transgression, or imagined transgression, might bring extreme punishment... The conversation we are having about sex began with incidents that involved clear coercion, intimidation, and violence. Paradoxically, it seems to have produced the sense that meaningful consent is elusive or perhaps even impossible... women, at least when faced with a famous man, cannot make adult choices... In the past, sexual laws and regulations have most often been strengthened in the name of protecting children... In the current American conversation, women are increasingly treated as children: defenseless, incapable of consent, always on the verge of being victimized. This should give us pause. Being infantilized has never worked out well for women."
The Postmodern Misuse of Tolerance - "people increasingly rely upon tolerance because other Enlightenment values such as reason, equality, and liberty have lost the power to inspire... The celebration of tolerance as an end in itself is a symptom of the shift from self-confident modern liberal democracies to the self-doubting postmodern ones... Postmodern tolerance is used as an instrument of confusion, in order to impose the recognition of difference on social agents using state power. The assumption behind this move is that society isn’t a realm of individual freedom, but a pyramid of domination which benefits an elite. In such a situation, equality of rights is threatening. To protect the oppressed it is not sufficient to grant them the right to express difference – the State needs to silence those deemed to be oppressors... Catholics and Protestants didn’t need to be told by academics that they were oppressed by one another. And the subsequent creation of the modern State didn’t require them to stop thinking of one another as heretics. Rather, it compelled them to put an end to sectarian violence as a means of punishing heresy. What Butler is asking of the alleged oppressor isn’t simply to refrain from violence, but to see in his opinions the cause of the another’s suffering. In this way, speech and opinion are redescribed as a kind of violence... by promoting a ‘performative’ conception of individual identity, ‘critical theorists’ and postmodern academics intend to blur that important distinction. If who I am cannot be distinguished from who I say I am (e.g. the gender or the religion with which I identify) then people who disagree with me are a threat to my very existence. Worse, this asks – or, ideally, compels – the State to either accept all such claims, or to assess their sincerity or insincerity (for example regarding access to public bathrooms). Not only is this an impossible task, it is precisely the kind of task the modern State was designed to avoid."
Small restaurants could win from Deliveroo Editions central kitchen - "Deliveroo builds its own kitchen facilities, and then it invites local restaurants to operate a station on those premises, food can then be delivered quickly from that location."
12 things you might not know you could be punished for in Singapore - "1. Annoying someone by behaving badly in public while drunk
2. Annoying someone in a public place through an act, or by reciting or uttering a song with lyrics that are obscene
3. Sale, distribution, rental of all things "obscene", including paintings, books, figures
4. Purposely obstructing a person, so as to prevent him from proceeding in any direction that he is allowed to walk in
7. Bathing or washing yourself in on a public road, in a public tank, reservoir, or any water body
8. Flying a kite that obstructs traffic on a public road
9. Annoying someone by making noise in any way, including by an instrument
10. Taking alcohol into a public hospital
11. Making business deals at MRT stations"
Clearly 377A is problematic
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