Keeping Your Appearance Natural Is More Attractive, New Study Finds, Plus 5 Other Things Science Says Is Sexy - "When combined with a beautiful body, a sexy walk was actually less appealing than expected. The underlying principle is the age-old idea of "don't try too hard to be sexy" — a pretty woman who purposely tries to adopt a sexier walk may unwittingly make herself seem less attractive in the process... A 2014 study examined the attractiveness of different kinds of creativity, and found that both men and women were most attracted to "ornamental/aesthetic creativity" — so if you're a musician, poet, or photographer, chances are that people will find you sexy because of your openness to new experiences... If a high-heel-wearing woman drops something in the street, she's 50 percent more likely to have a man help her retrieve it than her flats-wearing counterpart"
Would Chinese-style education work on British kids? - "For the BBC documentary Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, an experiment was carried out at the Bohunt School in Liphook. Fifty children in year nine had to live under a completely different regime - one run by Chinese teachers. For four weeks, they wore a special uniform and started the school day at 07:00. Once a week there was a pledge to the flag. Lessons were focused on note-taking and repetition. Group exercise was undertaken. The pupils had to clean their own classrooms. There were two meal breaks in a 12-hour day... Joe was carrying a heavy bag on his other side, but he didn't request us to help. Joe's mother did not offer to help him carry the bag, nor did Joe ask for help. Even when Joe's brother tried to help him carry his bag, Joe refused. I wonder if this is the result of the British education, that trains the children to become independent. This makes me think a lot."
Love changes: Divorce and annulment reforms under Pope Francis - "A study published in the Chicago Tribune in 2012 concluded that about 6 percent of those who got divorced married each other again. Thousands of people decide to remarry the spouses they divorced, months, years and even decades later. Michele Davis, the founder of the Divorce Busting Center in Colorado, says the number of remarriages to an ex is about 10 percent... Robert Anderson, a London police officer, theologian and writer during the late 1800’s:
“In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.”"
Little boy lost finds his mother using Google Earth
BBC Blogs - Arena Gazette - Notes from the not so former Iron Curtain or Echoes of Eric Hobsbawm - "Eric Hobsbawm told me: "In Europe, the money flows from east to west the people flow from east to west"."
Sorry, Apple. Turns Out Designers Don't Use iPads - "64 percent of designers don’t brainstorm with software. They do it with pen and paper."
Google Mistakenly Tags Black People as ‘Gorillas,’ Showing Limits of Algorithms - Digits - WSJ
Middle school boy arrested for assault after kissing girl on a dare
In Singapore this could be the use of criminal force with the intent to outrage modesty
Christians Walk On Water, Muslim Kids Sink: Charlie Hebdo Mocks Death Of Aylan Kurdi
Comments: "personally speaking, I think the image is funny. It's very neatly skewering a centre-left European vision of itself proudly marching with candlelit vigils (The strapline) and #Ayan placards, while remaining predominantly blind to the American (McDonalds) neocolonial roots of the conflict that put that kid in the water (IMHO more than you could say ISIS did, or people smugglers did, or zealous EU border patrols did). There's a war in Syria. Yanks are bombing ISIS. Russians are arming & supplying Assad. It's all so close to our doorstep that dead kids wash up on the beach. That is the point being made here, and it's a point worth making.
#jesuistoujourscharile"
"Getting angry at charlie hebdo is like getting angry at the onion or south park. It is Satire. It makes no sense that the author states he doesnt understand the cartoons, but immediately assumes the worst? Why?... why would you comment on something you don't understand?"
"What does it say about Australian culture if New matilda cannot decipher what is meant here!!!! I am worried."
"There was a famous literary work by the satirist Jonathan Swift, which suggested that poverty could be solved if the children of the poor were slaughtered and eaten as food. The satire prompted incredible outrage in its day but was also then, and still is, recognized as satire of the highest order, signifying exactly the opposite of what it superficially seems to say."
Parotta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "A parotta, porotta or barotta is a layered flat bread of Sri Lanka and Kerala and some parts of Southern India, notably in Tamil Nadu made from maida flour. The origin lies in the greater Punjab region comprising parts of modern-day North India and Pakistan ( see Paratha). Parottas are usually available as street food and in restaurants across Kerala, Tamil Nadu and parts of Karnataka. At some places it is also served at weddings, religious festivals and feasts. It is prepared by kneading maida, egg (in some recipes), oil or ghee and water. The dough is beaten into thin layers and later forming a round spiralled into a ball using these thin layers. The ball is rolled flat and roasted"
Parotta sounds a lot like Prata
Sarcastic Much? Intelligence, Wit, And Creativity All Linked To Sarcasm, Study Suggests - "those who gave and received sarcastic comments were three times more creative than the control group because the sarcasm forced their brains to think abstractly, boosting creativity... researchers found that noise can be an untapped source of creativity, providing a distraction for the brain to focus on a particular task. In addition, alcohol is believed to make you more creative because it makes you less focused and frees the brain from the thoughts that occupy it — a more relaxed brain is one that is better able to think creatively. In this study, it seems the sarcastic comments primed participants to think abstractly, which in turn stimulated their creativity."
A Magic Number? - "Imagine how useful it would be if someone calculated the minimum population needed to preserve each threatened organism on Earth, especially in this age of accelerated extinctions. A group of Australian researchers say they have nailed the best figure achievable with the available data: 5,000 adults. That’s right, that many, for mammals, amphibians, insects, plants and the rest. Their goal wasn’t a target for temporary survival. Instead they set the bar much higher, aiming for a census that would allow a species to pursue a standard evolutionary lifespan, which can vary from one to 10 million years. That sort of longevity requires abundance sufficient for a species to thrive despite significant obstacles, including random variation in sex ratios or birth and death rates, natural catastrophes and habitat decline. It also requires enough genetic variation to allow adequate amounts of beneficial mutations to emerge and spread within a populace."
Man sues neighbour he had paid to impregnate his wife and failed after 72 different ‘attempts’ - "A 29 year old German man Demetrius Soupolos is suing his neighbour 34 year old Frank Maus for breach of contract after the latter failed to impregnate his wife in 72 different attempts to do so. Soupolos had hired Maus to impregnate his former beauty queen wife Traute as he was sterile and Traute wanted a baby badly. He thought Maus would be a good choice as he resembled him and is a father of two... When Traute did not get pregnant after six months, Soupolos insisted Maus go for a medical examination which revealed he was sterile as well. Mau’s wife was then forced to confess Maus was not the real father of her two kids. In his defence, Maus said he did not ‘guarantee’ conception, but only that he would give a ‘honest’ shot at it."
Mormon church confirms its members are allowed to drink coke and pepsi.. but tea is still banned
Are We Electing Estate Managers or MPs? - "Are we having elections to vote in estate managers? If the duty of your MP is to run your estate, is their a need for MPs in the first place? Why do we have a Ministry of Environment, National Development and stat boards like Parks and Trees and URA? Why were Town Councils introduced? Do you elect a Govt to 'push the buck?' TCs were not introduced for wholesome wonderful idea to make life in your estates better. That would be the secondary effect - TCs were basically introduced to give the PAP another layer of protection just like the GRCs scheme (where it's supposed to be about electing minorities). GRCs - let's not beat about the bush - is primarily to give unknown or weak PAP candidates a back door entry in to Parliament. Former PM Goh Chok Tong admitted to this... you can bet your bottom dollar, that police reports would have been lodged and either the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) or CPIB would be called in. There is a concerted effort by PAP fanboys and apologists on social media to paint the whole affair as something sinister. Some have even suggested that WP members and their MPs are lining their own pockets despite no evidence to proof that... The TCs are just a smokescreen to get voters to focus on the smaller issues and forget the wider national issues"
New study links good looks and high IQ
Why India Is A Hotbed Of Antibiotic Resistance And Sweden Is Not - "A new report by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy shows that antibiotic overuse and resistant bacteria are alarming global problems, even in developing nations like India, Kenya and Vietnam... Some countries, like Denmark and Sweden, stand out with quite low rates of antibiotic use and resistance — hovering near zero. These countries educate their citizens about the dangers of antibiotic overuse. So it has become unheard of for a Swede or a Dane to go into a doctor's office and demand treatment with an antibiotic. "It's a question of social norms," says Laxminarayan."
"I have long pointed out that many Asian countries are guilty of abusing Antibiotics, to which I was immediately called a racist. Even though I was talking about China and Thailand, but I guess South Asian patients are sensitive."
Cosmetic Ads' Science Claims Lack Foundation - "“Clinically Proven.” “Breakthrough Technology.” “Ten Years of Genetic Research.” These are phrases you might expect to find in the pages of Scientific American. But these descriptions also show up in commercials and print ads for cosmetics... Researchers looked at nearly 300 ads in magazines such as Vogue. They analyzed claims in the ads and ranked them on a scale ranging from acceptable to outright lie. And they found that just 18 percent of the boasts that the researchers looked at were true. 23 percent were outright lies. And 42 percent were too vague to even classify"
Terse Titles Cited - "papers with terser titles top the citation count. Even when the researchers took into account the journal in which the publication appeared—some have stricter restrictions on title length than do others—the findings held true."
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
Why I am a Eustonite
Why I am a Eustonite | Quillette
"When I was younger, I was an anti-imperialist leftist who espoused moral relativism. I believed that western values – democracy and freedom, nourished elsewhere, but best embodied by the west – were morally equivalent to non-western values, and so to make moral judgements of non-western cultures was to display undue arrogance. I accepted Noam Chomsky as a high priest, benevolently bequeathing Truths about western states, unmasking their facade, and consequently exposing the sham of liberal democracy.
Then I became a Eustonite, and accepted the principles plainly expressed in the Euston manifesto: pro-democracy; anti-totalitarianism; and support for universal human rights.
Following these principles has enabled me to possess greater moral clarity, and consequently made transparent the problems that befall much of the anti-imperialist left: a willingness to indulge reactionary forces, under the caveat that they’re anti-western; and a willingness to abandon liberals and secularists in reactionary cultures, thereby puncturing the principle of solidarity...
For some, certain principles ought to be subordinate to ‘power relations’. That freedom of speech can’t be defended unequivocally. If it allows an attack on Islam – which, as a set of ideas, deserves scrutiny in an open society – it is attacking an underdog. The value of freedom of speech is then defined solely by whether it attacks oppressive ‘power structures’. The assumption made is that only western cultures are meaningfully oppressive, or, more perniciously, only western power structures deserve our moral scrutiny.
So when some individuals, inspired by a totalitarian ideology, decided to slay blasphemers and Jews (the classical victims of totalitarian forces), the response was not to straightforwardly condemn these fascists. For their non-white identity precludes them from being meaningfully oppressive or deserving of our moral scrutiny. The response, instead, was to equivocate. The response was to qualify the most ennobling principle our civilisation affords – the freedom to satirise, speak, express our moral conscience – with an inelegant ‘but’. I support freedom of speech, ‘but’.
Witnessing this elucidated something important: some are so captivated by the idea of western oppression, they think that when men with guns, enthralled by a fascist ideology, shoot men and women with pens and liberal hearts, the oppressive forces are those subsequently declaring “Je suis Charlie”, rather than the murderers who bellowed “Allahu Akbar”...
When tax-funded, public institutions organise conferences that smear ex-Muslims as native informants, and portray liberal Muslims as imperialist stooges, the concept of solidarity is demeaned beyond recognition.
When the agglomerate of student unions, The NUS, aligns with a pro-jihad group that can’t condemn the chopping of adulterers’ heads, it has completely lost its moral bearing. On top of that, when it supports banning feminists and banning philosophy societies, these progressives have scorched the principles that underpin a progressive society...
The problem of leftists supporting reactionary movements is now pervasive. Jeremy Corbyn, head of the leading left-wing party in Britain, attracts reactionary forces like a foul luminescent lamp: Islamists, Putinists, Khomeinists, you name it – all have been endorsed by Corbyn, and all have reciprocated his support. Appointing Seumas Milne as director of communications could not have been a more exquisite confirmation of the state of Labour party. When your head of communications has a history of offering apologetics for a regime that kills journalists, foments hostility to homosexuals, and violates the territorial integrity of its neighbours, then your movement can scarcely be called progressive. But, for now, Corbyn’s movement has won: 59% of votes is stunning validation...
I believe a significant number of leftists don’t believe we are deserving of equal rights and don’t believe some values are better than others. They are, in effect, paralysed by a racism of lowered expectations. This has disfigured their moral clarity and led them to indulge reactionary forces. It is essential, therefore, that they are exposed and rebutted."
"When I was younger, I was an anti-imperialist leftist who espoused moral relativism. I believed that western values – democracy and freedom, nourished elsewhere, but best embodied by the west – were morally equivalent to non-western values, and so to make moral judgements of non-western cultures was to display undue arrogance. I accepted Noam Chomsky as a high priest, benevolently bequeathing Truths about western states, unmasking their facade, and consequently exposing the sham of liberal democracy.
Then I became a Eustonite, and accepted the principles plainly expressed in the Euston manifesto: pro-democracy; anti-totalitarianism; and support for universal human rights.
Following these principles has enabled me to possess greater moral clarity, and consequently made transparent the problems that befall much of the anti-imperialist left: a willingness to indulge reactionary forces, under the caveat that they’re anti-western; and a willingness to abandon liberals and secularists in reactionary cultures, thereby puncturing the principle of solidarity...
For some, certain principles ought to be subordinate to ‘power relations’. That freedom of speech can’t be defended unequivocally. If it allows an attack on Islam – which, as a set of ideas, deserves scrutiny in an open society – it is attacking an underdog. The value of freedom of speech is then defined solely by whether it attacks oppressive ‘power structures’. The assumption made is that only western cultures are meaningfully oppressive, or, more perniciously, only western power structures deserve our moral scrutiny.
So when some individuals, inspired by a totalitarian ideology, decided to slay blasphemers and Jews (the classical victims of totalitarian forces), the response was not to straightforwardly condemn these fascists. For their non-white identity precludes them from being meaningfully oppressive or deserving of our moral scrutiny. The response, instead, was to equivocate. The response was to qualify the most ennobling principle our civilisation affords – the freedom to satirise, speak, express our moral conscience – with an inelegant ‘but’. I support freedom of speech, ‘but’.
Witnessing this elucidated something important: some are so captivated by the idea of western oppression, they think that when men with guns, enthralled by a fascist ideology, shoot men and women with pens and liberal hearts, the oppressive forces are those subsequently declaring “Je suis Charlie”, rather than the murderers who bellowed “Allahu Akbar”...
When tax-funded, public institutions organise conferences that smear ex-Muslims as native informants, and portray liberal Muslims as imperialist stooges, the concept of solidarity is demeaned beyond recognition.
When the agglomerate of student unions, The NUS, aligns with a pro-jihad group that can’t condemn the chopping of adulterers’ heads, it has completely lost its moral bearing. On top of that, when it supports banning feminists and banning philosophy societies, these progressives have scorched the principles that underpin a progressive society...
The problem of leftists supporting reactionary movements is now pervasive. Jeremy Corbyn, head of the leading left-wing party in Britain, attracts reactionary forces like a foul luminescent lamp: Islamists, Putinists, Khomeinists, you name it – all have been endorsed by Corbyn, and all have reciprocated his support. Appointing Seumas Milne as director of communications could not have been a more exquisite confirmation of the state of Labour party. When your head of communications has a history of offering apologetics for a regime that kills journalists, foments hostility to homosexuals, and violates the territorial integrity of its neighbours, then your movement can scarcely be called progressive. But, for now, Corbyn’s movement has won: 59% of votes is stunning validation...
I believe a significant number of leftists don’t believe we are deserving of equal rights and don’t believe some values are better than others. They are, in effect, paralysed by a racism of lowered expectations. This has disfigured their moral clarity and led them to indulge reactionary forces. It is essential, therefore, that they are exposed and rebutted."
Post ID: 7417748995580759891
Monday, November 02, 2015
Links - 2nd November 2015
The Monsters Who Screamed for Dead Cops - "Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is no definitive proof that TMOC led the call for dead cops, but there is a web of circumstantial ties with the group at its center. TMOC’s own social-media posts put them near the scene of the cry for police blood. Some of the slogans used that night—including “arms up, shoot back!”—are the same as the ones used by TMOC. And recently TMOC has been soliciting money for the legal defense of people it calls its “comrades” who were arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers on the Brooklyn Bridge, just hours after the “dead cops” chant was recorded. The bedrock of TMOC’s politics, judged by their social-media output, is hatred for police and endorsement of violence against them... “We know they are the victims here—not the NYPD. We are all victims at the hands of the white supremacist, capitalist state”... out of the people arrested on the bridge, one is a Harvard-educated poet and another was making more than $100,000 a year working for one of the most the most powerful unions in New York City... On message boards and social media, people were cheering and justifying the police murders almost as soon as they happened."
Black Lives Matter: 'Pigs In A Blanket, Fry 'Em Like Bacon' - "The activists sang out the violent chorus chant just hours after a lone gunman shot 47-year-old Harris County sheriff’s deputy Darren Goforth while he was getting gas... During a press conference on Saturday — before protesters in St. Paul called for cops’ deaths — Harris County sheriff Ron Hickman condemned what he characterized as “some of the very dangerous national rhetoric that’s out there today.” “So any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point that calculated, cold-blooded, assassination of police officers happen, this rhetoric has gotten out of control,” he added. “We’ve heard ‘black lives matter,’ ‘all lives matter’ — well, cops’ lives matter too. So why don’t we just drop the qualifier and say ‘lives matter,’ and take that to the bank.”"
Are Peter Singer’s ideas too dangerous to hear? - "Amy Hasbrouck, a Montreal lawyer and chair of Not Dead Yet, a North American disability rights group, agrees completely, but with a twist. “Given the prestige of his position, Singer gives legitimacy not only to eugenicist views, but also to the related and commonly held view that life with a disability is a fate worse than death,” she said in an interview. “This view is what drives the current push toward legalization of assisted suicide.”"
Utilitarians are morally obliged to murder some disabled people
Divine Comedy is 'offensive and discriminatory', says Italian NGO - "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Dante's medieval classic the Divine Comedy has been condemned as racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic by a group calling for it to be removed from classrooms. The epic poem, written in the 14th century, is split into three parts, tracing the poet's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is seen as one of the cornerstones of world literature. But the Italian human rights organisation Gherush92, which advises UN bodies on human rights issues, wants it to be removed from school curriculums, or at least used with more caution, because it is "offensive and discriminatory" and young people lack the "filters" to understand it in context. Gherush92 singled out some particular cantos from Dante's masterwork for criticism: Inferno's 34th, which tells of Judas, endlessly chewed in the teeth of Lucifer, and 28th, in which Mohammed is depicted torn "from the chin down to the part that gives out the foulest sound", as well as Purgatorio's 26th, which shows homosexuals under a rain of fire in purgatory. The work, it says, slanders the Jewish people, depicts Islam as a heresy and is homophobic."
The Folly of Scientism - "When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners... The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects... As utilitarians have for some time, Harris purports to challenge the fact-value distinction, or rather, to sidestep the tricky question of values entirely by just focusing on facts. But, as has also been true of utilitarians for some time, this move ends up being a way to advance certain values over others without arguing for them, and to leave large questions about those values unresolved"
Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places - "the paper provides evidence for a paradox: the happiest places tend to have the highest suicide rates"
Former The Real Singapore editors open ramen stalls at NUS canteens - "Named the Takagi Ramen Shop (TRS), both outlets opened at the end of August and are located in the canteens of Prince George's Park Residences and the university's Bukit Timah Campus, near the Singapore Botanic Gardens... The shop carries the tagline "Ramen for the Average Singaporean""
Taiwanese Guy's Russian Girlfriend Encourages Single Chinese Men - chinaSMACK - "A Taiwan zhainan successfully captured a Russian girl. Owing to a severe gender imbalance in Russia, over 10 million Russian girls can’t find men to marry, so international marriages are extremely trendy amongst Russian girls and furthermore, Russian girls’ demands in a perfect man (shown at the end) aren’t high either. So guys who can’t find girls, what are you waiting for? Go find a Russian girl, both pretty and strong, able to catch thieves and beat up hooligans, no need to fear others bullying you ever again!"
fakehatecrimes.org - "The purpose of this site is to compile a comprehensive database of the false reports of "hate crimes" committed in the USA. It builds on the work of Laird Wilcox, whose 1994 Crying Wolf (PDF) is the only book dedicated to this subject so far."
Fake 'hate crimes' continue to plague campuses - "Earlier this year, a student at the University of Wyoming was charged with reporting to police that she had been threatened with rape online — a threat that police later determined she made herself. Last year, at Montclair State University in New Jersey, two students who reported racist graffiti written on the door of their dorm room were charged with “making false reports, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct” when police determined that they themselves were the perpetrators. And in 2011, a University of Virginia law student admitted to fabricating a story about campus police officers harassing him because of his race. The list goes on and on. One of the weirdest in memory happened in 2004, when a Claremont College professor savagely vandalized her own car with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti. Why does this keep happening? The sad truth is that students (and professors) commit these hoaxes because they know that they can make a political statement or at least get a major reaction out of their college campuses with very little relative effort... since people have a tendency to remember the first reports of alleged crimes, while many fewer are likely remember which ones turned out to be a hoax, these incidents bolster the arguments of would-be censors for greater speech restrictions on campus"
Annuar Musa: ‘I am racist, Islamically’ - "An Umno leader today admitted that he, along with today’s “Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu” was “racist” in nature, but insisted that this was still in line with Islamic teachings. Tan Sri Annuar Musa maintained that acting in defence of Malay honour was permitted in Islam so long as other races were not oppressed in the process. “Being racial is endorsed in Islam as long as you are not cruel towards other people. This rally if you say is racist, yes. What are you scared of? Islam has put in place guidelines, what is not allowed is racism that is cruel towards other races... He added that the Malays have done the other races a great service by sharing the country and its resources them. “And when has the Malays even behaved cruelly towards other races? We share this country, we shared citizenship. We share all our rights. Who was the one who made thus county open to other races? It was the Malays,” he added."
Recall or replace an email message that you sent - "Action:
You send a message to someone. You recall the original message and replace it with a new one.
On the recipient's computer, under Tracking, the Automatically process requests and responses to meeting requests and polls check box is not selected.
Result:
Both the original message and the recall message are received in the recipient's Inbox.
On the recipient's computer, one of the following results occurs:
- If the recipient opens the recall message first, the original message is deleted, and the recipient is informed that you, the sender, have deleted the message from their mailbox.
- If the recipient opens the original message first, the recall fails, and both the original and recall messages are available."
This is how to prevent message recall in Outlook
‘There’s no stigma’: why so many Danish women are opting to become single mothers - "Researchers recently categorised the different family types in Denmark and found that there were 37 – from solomor to lesbian couples and various blended families. Denmark is famously family-friendly, with 52 weeks’ paid parental leave for a new baby and a generous welfare state paying three-quarters of the costs of childcare , enabling 85% of mothers to return to work. “It’s easier to be a solomor in Denmark than elsewhere because society accepts and supports you – we’re pretty liberal about most things,” says Erb... "studies show that children born to elective single mothers perform slightly better in tests than other children – and better than children of mothers who are single through divorce.”"
Feminism: where the State replaces a Man
19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America - "#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.
#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class...
#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.
#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.
#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.
#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.
#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.
#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture...
#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.
#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.
#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.
#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl."
Black Lives Matter: 'Pigs In A Blanket, Fry 'Em Like Bacon' - "The activists sang out the violent chorus chant just hours after a lone gunman shot 47-year-old Harris County sheriff’s deputy Darren Goforth while he was getting gas... During a press conference on Saturday — before protesters in St. Paul called for cops’ deaths — Harris County sheriff Ron Hickman condemned what he characterized as “some of the very dangerous national rhetoric that’s out there today.” “So any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point that calculated, cold-blooded, assassination of police officers happen, this rhetoric has gotten out of control,” he added. “We’ve heard ‘black lives matter,’ ‘all lives matter’ — well, cops’ lives matter too. So why don’t we just drop the qualifier and say ‘lives matter,’ and take that to the bank.”"
Are Peter Singer’s ideas too dangerous to hear? - "Amy Hasbrouck, a Montreal lawyer and chair of Not Dead Yet, a North American disability rights group, agrees completely, but with a twist. “Given the prestige of his position, Singer gives legitimacy not only to eugenicist views, but also to the related and commonly held view that life with a disability is a fate worse than death,” she said in an interview. “This view is what drives the current push toward legalization of assisted suicide.”"
Utilitarians are morally obliged to murder some disabled people
Divine Comedy is 'offensive and discriminatory', says Italian NGO - "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Dante's medieval classic the Divine Comedy has been condemned as racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic by a group calling for it to be removed from classrooms. The epic poem, written in the 14th century, is split into three parts, tracing the poet's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is seen as one of the cornerstones of world literature. But the Italian human rights organisation Gherush92, which advises UN bodies on human rights issues, wants it to be removed from school curriculums, or at least used with more caution, because it is "offensive and discriminatory" and young people lack the "filters" to understand it in context. Gherush92 singled out some particular cantos from Dante's masterwork for criticism: Inferno's 34th, which tells of Judas, endlessly chewed in the teeth of Lucifer, and 28th, in which Mohammed is depicted torn "from the chin down to the part that gives out the foulest sound", as well as Purgatorio's 26th, which shows homosexuals under a rain of fire in purgatory. The work, it says, slanders the Jewish people, depicts Islam as a heresy and is homophobic."
The Folly of Scientism - "When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners... The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects... As utilitarians have for some time, Harris purports to challenge the fact-value distinction, or rather, to sidestep the tricky question of values entirely by just focusing on facts. But, as has also been true of utilitarians for some time, this move ends up being a way to advance certain values over others without arguing for them, and to leave large questions about those values unresolved"
Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places - "the paper provides evidence for a paradox: the happiest places tend to have the highest suicide rates"
Former The Real Singapore editors open ramen stalls at NUS canteens - "Named the Takagi Ramen Shop (TRS), both outlets opened at the end of August and are located in the canteens of Prince George's Park Residences and the university's Bukit Timah Campus, near the Singapore Botanic Gardens... The shop carries the tagline "Ramen for the Average Singaporean""
Taiwanese Guy's Russian Girlfriend Encourages Single Chinese Men - chinaSMACK - "A Taiwan zhainan successfully captured a Russian girl. Owing to a severe gender imbalance in Russia, over 10 million Russian girls can’t find men to marry, so international marriages are extremely trendy amongst Russian girls and furthermore, Russian girls’ demands in a perfect man (shown at the end) aren’t high either. So guys who can’t find girls, what are you waiting for? Go find a Russian girl, both pretty and strong, able to catch thieves and beat up hooligans, no need to fear others bullying you ever again!"
fakehatecrimes.org - "The purpose of this site is to compile a comprehensive database of the false reports of "hate crimes" committed in the USA. It builds on the work of Laird Wilcox, whose 1994 Crying Wolf (PDF) is the only book dedicated to this subject so far."
Fake 'hate crimes' continue to plague campuses - "Earlier this year, a student at the University of Wyoming was charged with reporting to police that she had been threatened with rape online — a threat that police later determined she made herself. Last year, at Montclair State University in New Jersey, two students who reported racist graffiti written on the door of their dorm room were charged with “making false reports, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct” when police determined that they themselves were the perpetrators. And in 2011, a University of Virginia law student admitted to fabricating a story about campus police officers harassing him because of his race. The list goes on and on. One of the weirdest in memory happened in 2004, when a Claremont College professor savagely vandalized her own car with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti. Why does this keep happening? The sad truth is that students (and professors) commit these hoaxes because they know that they can make a political statement or at least get a major reaction out of their college campuses with very little relative effort... since people have a tendency to remember the first reports of alleged crimes, while many fewer are likely remember which ones turned out to be a hoax, these incidents bolster the arguments of would-be censors for greater speech restrictions on campus"
Annuar Musa: ‘I am racist, Islamically’ - "An Umno leader today admitted that he, along with today’s “Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu” was “racist” in nature, but insisted that this was still in line with Islamic teachings. Tan Sri Annuar Musa maintained that acting in defence of Malay honour was permitted in Islam so long as other races were not oppressed in the process. “Being racial is endorsed in Islam as long as you are not cruel towards other people. This rally if you say is racist, yes. What are you scared of? Islam has put in place guidelines, what is not allowed is racism that is cruel towards other races... He added that the Malays have done the other races a great service by sharing the country and its resources them. “And when has the Malays even behaved cruelly towards other races? We share this country, we shared citizenship. We share all our rights. Who was the one who made thus county open to other races? It was the Malays,” he added."
Recall or replace an email message that you sent - "Action:
You send a message to someone. You recall the original message and replace it with a new one.
On the recipient's computer, under Tracking, the Automatically process requests and responses to meeting requests and polls check box is not selected.
Result:
Both the original message and the recall message are received in the recipient's Inbox.
On the recipient's computer, one of the following results occurs:
- If the recipient opens the recall message first, the original message is deleted, and the recipient is informed that you, the sender, have deleted the message from their mailbox.
- If the recipient opens the original message first, the recall fails, and both the original and recall messages are available."
This is how to prevent message recall in Outlook
‘There’s no stigma’: why so many Danish women are opting to become single mothers - "Researchers recently categorised the different family types in Denmark and found that there were 37 – from solomor to lesbian couples and various blended families. Denmark is famously family-friendly, with 52 weeks’ paid parental leave for a new baby and a generous welfare state paying three-quarters of the costs of childcare , enabling 85% of mothers to return to work. “It’s easier to be a solomor in Denmark than elsewhere because society accepts and supports you – we’re pretty liberal about most things,” says Erb... "studies show that children born to elective single mothers perform slightly better in tests than other children – and better than children of mothers who are single through divorce.”"
Feminism: where the State replaces a Man
19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America - "#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.
#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class...
#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.
#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.
#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.
#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.
#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.
#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture...
#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.
#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.
#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.
#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl."
Post ID: 2173686750523876958
On Men Interrupting Women
"The by now classic finding that men interrupt women more often than women interrupt men (West & Zimmerman, 1983; Zimmerman & West, 1975) has never been uncontroversial (for recent reviews, see Aries, 1987, and James & Clarke, 1993). Many studies have failed to find significant differences between men’s and women's interruptive behavior in mixed-gender groups (e.g., Beattie, 1981; Woods, 1939), mixed-gender dyads (e.g., Bilous & Krauss, I988; Leet-Pellegrini, 1980; Marche & Peterson, 1993), or same-gender interactions (e.g., Smith-Lovin & Brody, 1989; Marche & Peterson, 1993). Others report more interruptions by women than by men (e.g., Kennedy & Camden, 1983; Murray & Covelli, 1988; for same-gender interactions also Bilous & Krauss, 1988).
As James and Clarke (1993) and others before them have pointed out, there are many possible reasons for the divergence of these results: differences in the definitions of interruptions, the types of interaction studied, the individual characteristics of the participants such as age, social status, and institutional role, and, finally, differences in the size and composition of the groups studied. There are also methodological problems, for instance, inadequate quantitative comparisons. Most of the studies reviewed by James and Clarke (1993) compared raw counts of interruptions without taking speaking time into account. But raw counts can obviously be misleading unless men and women contribute equally to the interaction. The nine studies in the review that did use a measure that corrected for speaking time did not find any gender differences in mixed-gender dyads or groups...
The often-heard stereotype that men tend to use interruptions more often than women, and thus dominate and control discussions, was not confirmed in this study. In mixed-gender discussions, men and women of equal social status, age, and expertise were shown not to differ in interruptive speech behavior. Neither the interrupters’ nor the interruptees’ gender made a difference. This was true both in formal (FLOOR 1) and in informal (FLOOR 1 and FLOOR 2) mixed-gender discussions. In same-gender discussions, by contrast, women were found to interrupt each other less than men, suggesting that there exist separate female and male registers in this type of talk...
An earlier study involving political discussions on Dutch radio and television (Linssen-Maes & Redeker, 1992) suggests that these findings may not be generalizable to public discussions where the speakers’ reputations are at stake. In that study, men took considerably more and longer turns and interrupted at a higher rate than women (women and men, however, both interrupted male speakers more often than female speakers)...
Women and men were interrupted equally often in the mixed-gender discussions; this was true both for male and female interrupters. Yet, what about the finding that the men were more competitive in the all-male than in the mixed-gender discussions? We do not think that this can be interpreted as polite restraint on the part of the men. The interruption categories they used less in the mixed-gender discussions were the successful complex interruptions and interjections, while the percentage of successful and unsuccessful single interruptions and silent interruptions increased. This suggests that they not only gave up more easily than in the all-male discussions and reduced their interrupting comments, but also succeeded more easily in interrupting their (male and female) partners in the mixed-gender discussions. We are reminded here that we are dealing with an inherently interactive phenomenon: It takes two to produce an interruption, especially a successful one.
We can conclude, then, that the observed convergence of the female and male registers in the mixed-gender discussions was in all likelihood not an artifact of our experimental design. In fact, the pattern of men being more competitive than women in the same-gender situation and no gender difference in the mixed-gender situation corresponds to results reported by Aries (1976), Carli (1989), and others. Some of those studies (e.g., Bilous & Krauss, 1988, and Carli, 1989) also agree with the present study in observing that it is mainly the women who show a reduction in gender-specific interactional behavior when talking in a mixed-gender group (note, however, that Bilous and Krauss found more interruptions in all-female than in all-male discussions). The convergence pattern also parallels the findings of Ervin-Tripp and Lampert (1992) on the use of humor by women and by men. They found both women and men to shift their strategies towards a more equal balance in mixed-gender interactions."
--- Gender Differences in Interruptions / Gisela Redeker, Anny Maes, in Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-tripp (ed. Dan Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, Jiansheng Guo)
As James and Clarke (1993) and others before them have pointed out, there are many possible reasons for the divergence of these results: differences in the definitions of interruptions, the types of interaction studied, the individual characteristics of the participants such as age, social status, and institutional role, and, finally, differences in the size and composition of the groups studied. There are also methodological problems, for instance, inadequate quantitative comparisons. Most of the studies reviewed by James and Clarke (1993) compared raw counts of interruptions without taking speaking time into account. But raw counts can obviously be misleading unless men and women contribute equally to the interaction. The nine studies in the review that did use a measure that corrected for speaking time did not find any gender differences in mixed-gender dyads or groups...
The often-heard stereotype that men tend to use interruptions more often than women, and thus dominate and control discussions, was not confirmed in this study. In mixed-gender discussions, men and women of equal social status, age, and expertise were shown not to differ in interruptive speech behavior. Neither the interrupters’ nor the interruptees’ gender made a difference. This was true both in formal (FLOOR 1) and in informal (FLOOR 1 and FLOOR 2) mixed-gender discussions. In same-gender discussions, by contrast, women were found to interrupt each other less than men, suggesting that there exist separate female and male registers in this type of talk...
An earlier study involving political discussions on Dutch radio and television (Linssen-Maes & Redeker, 1992) suggests that these findings may not be generalizable to public discussions where the speakers’ reputations are at stake. In that study, men took considerably more and longer turns and interrupted at a higher rate than women (women and men, however, both interrupted male speakers more often than female speakers)...
Women and men were interrupted equally often in the mixed-gender discussions; this was true both for male and female interrupters. Yet, what about the finding that the men were more competitive in the all-male than in the mixed-gender discussions? We do not think that this can be interpreted as polite restraint on the part of the men. The interruption categories they used less in the mixed-gender discussions were the successful complex interruptions and interjections, while the percentage of successful and unsuccessful single interruptions and silent interruptions increased. This suggests that they not only gave up more easily than in the all-male discussions and reduced their interrupting comments, but also succeeded more easily in interrupting their (male and female) partners in the mixed-gender discussions. We are reminded here that we are dealing with an inherently interactive phenomenon: It takes two to produce an interruption, especially a successful one.
We can conclude, then, that the observed convergence of the female and male registers in the mixed-gender discussions was in all likelihood not an artifact of our experimental design. In fact, the pattern of men being more competitive than women in the same-gender situation and no gender difference in the mixed-gender situation corresponds to results reported by Aries (1976), Carli (1989), and others. Some of those studies (e.g., Bilous & Krauss, 1988, and Carli, 1989) also agree with the present study in observing that it is mainly the women who show a reduction in gender-specific interactional behavior when talking in a mixed-gender group (note, however, that Bilous and Krauss found more interruptions in all-female than in all-male discussions). The convergence pattern also parallels the findings of Ervin-Tripp and Lampert (1992) on the use of humor by women and by men. They found both women and men to shift their strategies towards a more equal balance in mixed-gender interactions."
--- Gender Differences in Interruptions / Gisela Redeker, Anny Maes, in Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-tripp (ed. Dan Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, Jiansheng Guo)
Post ID: 3685787513991654630
Friday, October 30, 2015
Links - 30th October 2015
Islamic State reveals it has smuggled THOUSANDS of extremists into Europe - "The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees. The ISIS smuggler, who is in his thirties and is described as having a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success. "Just wait," he smiled."
Dating in Singapore, as Told by One Female Expat - "single white males are the hottest, rarest item on the menu. Suddenly, the guys who weren’t considered attractive in their home countries have women of all cultures vying for their attention. The white male transplant, a cunning species, plays this truth to his advantage. He doesn’t have to try — he can let the women come to him. One night, I remember standing at a bar with a friend waiting for a drink. I look over my shoulder and spot a relatively attractive man ten feet away from me. He smiles. I suggest to my friend that we go chat with him and his buddy after we get our drinks. No more than three minutes later, I turn around and this man has five girls swarming him. I didn’t even have a chance... While there was a shallow, crowded pool, I jumped in anyway. Dating in Singapore was one of the best and the worst experiences. I learned early on that I either had to woo a guy who had just moved to Asia (and didn’t realize his commodity status) or date a guy who’s been in Asia a while (and just wants some mac and cheese)."
Comment: "given that Singapore places no value on teaching their people things like history, philosophy and literature; it’s difficult to feel any attraction to the Singaporean Chinese men"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Migration Special - "A few lines written by a refugee child she once met, who felt abandoned by the outside world. 'When the war is over, we will all go back home. We will close all borders and all doors and we will write banners that say: 'No entry to all strangers. Let us alone to weep with happiness as you left us alone to weep with pain'. Yes, Nada (sp?) says, we won't be the welcoming nation we used to be. We will close our doors and be together, when the war ends'"
“NAME THE LIBERAL HYPOCRITE” QUIZ - "2. Who says that conservatives are racist because they don’t support affirmative action but has an abysmal record of hiring blacks?
a. Barbra Streisand
b. Michael Moore
c. Al Franken
d. All of the above
Answer D. All of the above. Of the 112 people Franken has hired to work on his books, television projects and radio program, only one was black. Of the 135 individuals Michael Moore hired, only three were black. Barbra Streisand has hired 53 senior people to work on her film projects and only one was black.
4. Who has called the Pentagon “the most hideous institution on the face of the earth” while enriching themselves with millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts?
a. Noam Chomsky
b. Ward Churchill
c. Howard Dean
Answer: A. Noam Chomsky. The self-proclaimed “dissident” and his wife have made millions in military contracts over the years"
Liberal Hypocrisy on Rule of Law - "Working for the government is not an inalienable right. So Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, was wrong to refuse same-sex couples marriage licenses in her office. If you’re unwilling to enforce the law, you shouldn’t be an officer of the state... we have cities across this country that ignore immigration laws they don’t like and create sanctuaries from law. We have cities that ignore federal drug laws because they find them oppressive. Yet no one finds himself in jail. When Californians approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, a number of officials refused to enforce the law. They were celebrated. I may even agree with the impulse. But not one elected official has been hauled off to jail for any of these stands."
Fury as archaeological site ruined and replaced with picnic table - "Builders in a Galician village confused a neolithic tomb with a broken stone picnic table and replaced the 6,000-year-old artefact with a brand spanking new concrete bench"
Studies link mental illness and 'lone wolf' terrorism - "But the new research suggests that solo terrorists are much more likely to have mental health problems than either members of the general public or participants in group terrorism. Spaaij and Mark Hamm of Indiana State University studied 98 lone wolf attackers in the U.S. They found that 40 percent had identifiable mental health problems, compared with 1.5 percent in the general population... A second study by Paul Gill and Emily Corner of University College London looked at 119 lone wolf attackers and a similar number of members of violent extremist groups in the U.S. and Europe. Almost a third of the lone wolves – nearly 32 percent – had been diagnosed with a mental illness, while only 3.4 percent of terrorist group members were mentally ill. “Group-based terrorists are psychologically quite normal,” the researchers said. They said one reason may be that terrorist recruiters are likely to reject candidates who appear erratic or mentally ill."
Slavoj Žižek · The Non-Existence of Norway - "The flow of refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Western Europe has provoked a set of reactions strikingly similar to those we display on learning we have a terminal illness, according to the schema described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic study On Death and Dying... It has not escaped notice that the wealthiest countries in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar) have been much less open to refugees than the not so rich (Turkey, Egypt, Iran etc). Saudi Arabia has even returned ‘Muslim’ refugees to Somalia... Tens of thousands of refugees in Balkan countries are desperate to get to Germany. They assert their dreams as their unconditional right, and demand from the European authorities not only proper food and medical care but also transportation to the destination of their choice. There is something enigmatically utopian in this demand: as if it were the duty of Europe to realise their dreams – dreams which, incidentally, are out of reach of most Europeans (surely a good number of Southern and Eastern Europeans would prefer to live in Norway too?). It is precisely when people find themselves in poverty, distress and danger – when we’d expect them to settle for a minimum of safety and wellbeing – that their utopianism becomes most intransigent. But the hard truth to be faced by the refugees is that ‘there is no Norway,’ even in Norway... There was a moment, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when the Japanese authorities were preparing to evacuate the entire Tokyo area – more than twenty million people. If that had happened, where would they have gone? Should they have been given a piece of land to develop in Japan, or been dispersed around the world? What if climate change makes northern Siberia more habitable and appropriate for agriculture, while large parts of sub-Saharan Africa become too dry to support a large population? How will the redistribution of people be organised? When events of this kind happened in the past, the social transformations were wild and spontaneous, accompanied by violence and destruction... Refugees should be assured of their safety, but it should also be made clear to them that they must accept the destination allocated to them by European authorities, and that they will have to respect the laws and social norms of European states: no tolerance of religious, sexist or ethnic violence; no right to impose on others one’s own religion or way of life; respect for every individual’s freedom to abandon his or her communal customs, etc. If a woman chooses to cover her face, her choice must be respected; if she chooses not to cover her face, her freedom not to do so must be guaranteed. Such rules privilege the Western European way of life, but that is the price to be paid for European hospitality. These rules should be clearly stated and enforced, by repressive measures – against foreign fundamentalists as well as against our own racists – where necessary."
The Supreme Court Rules That Christianity Is Not Christian - "The Supreme Court ruling is another giant leap toward theocracy. We are descending to new lows, where non-Christians are openly scorned, made to stand up in public to be identified as outcasts. Our founding fathers are crying in shame and frustration. Welcome to the United States of Iran. Every American should today weep for our country."
The hysteria can fight with the worst of Fox news
Supreme Court Upholds Prayer at Council Meetings in Landmark Ruling - "After their initial complaint, four of the 12 meetings meetings in 2008 included non-Christian prayers; a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and a Baha’i leader were among those invocations, however from Jan. 2009 through June 2010, Christian prayers were reportedly once again the only ones offered. Galloway and Stephens inevitably sued and in 2010 a lower court found that there was not sufficient evidence that Greece intentionally cut out non-Christian invocations... Opportunities for others to pray at the meetings were also not publicized by the town, although there was no ban on outsiders coming to offer invocations and the vast majority of churches in its bounds are Christian in nature... Both sides acknowledge that the Supreme Court has taken up prayer in public venues in the past, however their stances on the merits of the most recent case, Marsh v. Chambers, a 1983 battle over government funding for chaplains, differ wildly. “In that ruling, the Supreme Court upheld legislative prayers in Nebraska but noted that the prayers were generally non-sectarian,” Americans United noted, arguing that the Greece case differs in that its prayers were almost always Christian in nature. The Alliance Defending Freedom disagreed, though, writing, “The last time the Supreme Court ruled on this prayer issue was in 1983. The High Court affirmed America’s long-standing practice of opening public meetings with prayer.” Regardless of how different parties viewed Marsh v. Chambers, as Pew noted, the results are simple to summarize: The Supreme Court found that the Nebraska legislature did not violate the Establishment Clause by allowing sessions to open with prayer, seeing as the U.S. has a unique history of allowing such invocations... The Obama administration surprised some by submitting an amicus curiae (“friend-of-the-court”) written brief on the case last year. Rather than taking sides with Americans United, the federal government is arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit misinterpreted the Marsh decision in striking down Greece’s prayer policy, Pew wrote.
The argument here is that sectarian content is allowed, so long as it doesn’t proselytize or disparage other faiths. The Obama administration does not believe that Greece’s prayer policy does either of these things, thus the federal government posited that the court should uphold it."
Presumably the "giant leap toward theocracy" is supported by Obama
Justices allow public prayers at New York town's council meetings - "Just moments before the opinion was announced from the bench, the high court began its public session as it has for decades: with the marshal invoking a traditional statement that ends, "God save the United States and this honorable court.""
The Supreme Court is already a theocracy
Was America Founded As A Christian Nation? - "As historian John Fea notes, “If the Treaty of Tripoli is correct, and the United States was not ‘founded on the Christian religion,’ then someone forgot to tell the American people… The idea that the United States is a ‘Christian nation,’ has always been central to American identity.” But debate rages over whether the Founders were Deists and why the Constitution bears no mention of God... All thought the Bible essential for just and harmonious society. Washington’s Farewell Address neatly summarized, “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensible supports.” Franklin warned the irreligious Thomas Paine, “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?” In Vindicating the Founders, Thomas G. West relays that Gouverneur Morris, ambassador to France , predicted their revolution would fail because the French were “ridiculing religion.” Morris, a not particularly pious man, foresaw catastrophe since “religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.” The Founders disagreed on much, but were nearly unanimous concerning biblical morality. They understood the relationship between state and society differently than progressive thinkers today: government cannot mold man. Righteous men must mold government which requires the inculcation of virtue through vibrant churches and the transmittal of values generationally via a social structure based on families. Usurping the First Amendment to obstruct public expressions of faith would leave the Founders aghast. Not only did the Constitution leave extant the official religions authorized in most of the states, as historian Thomas Woods explains, prohibiting prayer in public schools “runs exactly contrary to the Framers’ intent … a stupefying departure from traditional American principles and an intolerable encroachment on communities’ rights to self-government.” Jefferson ’s “wall of separation” guarded faith, or lack thereof, against political interference. Far from uprooting our cultural moorings, the Forefathers embraced heritage. Historian Larry Schweikart notes, “The founding documents of every one of the original thirteen colonies reveal them to be awash in the concepts of Christianity and God”... Per Paul Johnson, “The Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and the Revolutionary War has the approbation of divine providence.” The Declaration contains four clear references to God... Franklin rebuked the Constitutional Convention for neglecting prayer. He reminded that the delegates had prayed daily during the war and that God answered."
PolyHero Dice - Warrior Set by PolyHero Dice — Kickstarter - "PolyHero Dice are the result of a creative collaboration between brothers Dann and Greg May. We've worked together in the visual arts for more than 20 years, as graphic designers, artists and 3D animators. We've also played Dungeons and Dragons (and other RPGs) together from an early age, starting with the red boxed Basic Set (oh, and even before that a game Dann made up and tried to make Greg play). This project is a labour of love for us; to create imaginative, 3D-sculpted custom dice for our favourite hobby, and for the pure joy of holding and rolling them"
Dating in Singapore, as Told by One Female Expat - "single white males are the hottest, rarest item on the menu. Suddenly, the guys who weren’t considered attractive in their home countries have women of all cultures vying for their attention. The white male transplant, a cunning species, plays this truth to his advantage. He doesn’t have to try — he can let the women come to him. One night, I remember standing at a bar with a friend waiting for a drink. I look over my shoulder and spot a relatively attractive man ten feet away from me. He smiles. I suggest to my friend that we go chat with him and his buddy after we get our drinks. No more than three minutes later, I turn around and this man has five girls swarming him. I didn’t even have a chance... While there was a shallow, crowded pool, I jumped in anyway. Dating in Singapore was one of the best and the worst experiences. I learned early on that I either had to woo a guy who had just moved to Asia (and didn’t realize his commodity status) or date a guy who’s been in Asia a while (and just wants some mac and cheese)."
Comment: "given that Singapore places no value on teaching their people things like history, philosophy and literature; it’s difficult to feel any attraction to the Singaporean Chinese men"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Migration Special - "A few lines written by a refugee child she once met, who felt abandoned by the outside world. 'When the war is over, we will all go back home. We will close all borders and all doors and we will write banners that say: 'No entry to all strangers. Let us alone to weep with happiness as you left us alone to weep with pain'. Yes, Nada (sp?) says, we won't be the welcoming nation we used to be. We will close our doors and be together, when the war ends'"
“NAME THE LIBERAL HYPOCRITE” QUIZ - "2. Who says that conservatives are racist because they don’t support affirmative action but has an abysmal record of hiring blacks?
a. Barbra Streisand
b. Michael Moore
c. Al Franken
d. All of the above
Answer D. All of the above. Of the 112 people Franken has hired to work on his books, television projects and radio program, only one was black. Of the 135 individuals Michael Moore hired, only three were black. Barbra Streisand has hired 53 senior people to work on her film projects and only one was black.
4. Who has called the Pentagon “the most hideous institution on the face of the earth” while enriching themselves with millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts?
a. Noam Chomsky
b. Ward Churchill
c. Howard Dean
Answer: A. Noam Chomsky. The self-proclaimed “dissident” and his wife have made millions in military contracts over the years"
Liberal Hypocrisy on Rule of Law - "Working for the government is not an inalienable right. So Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, was wrong to refuse same-sex couples marriage licenses in her office. If you’re unwilling to enforce the law, you shouldn’t be an officer of the state... we have cities across this country that ignore immigration laws they don’t like and create sanctuaries from law. We have cities that ignore federal drug laws because they find them oppressive. Yet no one finds himself in jail. When Californians approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, a number of officials refused to enforce the law. They were celebrated. I may even agree with the impulse. But not one elected official has been hauled off to jail for any of these stands."
Fury as archaeological site ruined and replaced with picnic table - "Builders in a Galician village confused a neolithic tomb with a broken stone picnic table and replaced the 6,000-year-old artefact with a brand spanking new concrete bench"
Studies link mental illness and 'lone wolf' terrorism - "But the new research suggests that solo terrorists are much more likely to have mental health problems than either members of the general public or participants in group terrorism. Spaaij and Mark Hamm of Indiana State University studied 98 lone wolf attackers in the U.S. They found that 40 percent had identifiable mental health problems, compared with 1.5 percent in the general population... A second study by Paul Gill and Emily Corner of University College London looked at 119 lone wolf attackers and a similar number of members of violent extremist groups in the U.S. and Europe. Almost a third of the lone wolves – nearly 32 percent – had been diagnosed with a mental illness, while only 3.4 percent of terrorist group members were mentally ill. “Group-based terrorists are psychologically quite normal,” the researchers said. They said one reason may be that terrorist recruiters are likely to reject candidates who appear erratic or mentally ill."
Slavoj Žižek · The Non-Existence of Norway - "The flow of refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Western Europe has provoked a set of reactions strikingly similar to those we display on learning we have a terminal illness, according to the schema described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic study On Death and Dying... It has not escaped notice that the wealthiest countries in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar) have been much less open to refugees than the not so rich (Turkey, Egypt, Iran etc). Saudi Arabia has even returned ‘Muslim’ refugees to Somalia... Tens of thousands of refugees in Balkan countries are desperate to get to Germany. They assert their dreams as their unconditional right, and demand from the European authorities not only proper food and medical care but also transportation to the destination of their choice. There is something enigmatically utopian in this demand: as if it were the duty of Europe to realise their dreams – dreams which, incidentally, are out of reach of most Europeans (surely a good number of Southern and Eastern Europeans would prefer to live in Norway too?). It is precisely when people find themselves in poverty, distress and danger – when we’d expect them to settle for a minimum of safety and wellbeing – that their utopianism becomes most intransigent. But the hard truth to be faced by the refugees is that ‘there is no Norway,’ even in Norway... There was a moment, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when the Japanese authorities were preparing to evacuate the entire Tokyo area – more than twenty million people. If that had happened, where would they have gone? Should they have been given a piece of land to develop in Japan, or been dispersed around the world? What if climate change makes northern Siberia more habitable and appropriate for agriculture, while large parts of sub-Saharan Africa become too dry to support a large population? How will the redistribution of people be organised? When events of this kind happened in the past, the social transformations were wild and spontaneous, accompanied by violence and destruction... Refugees should be assured of their safety, but it should also be made clear to them that they must accept the destination allocated to them by European authorities, and that they will have to respect the laws and social norms of European states: no tolerance of religious, sexist or ethnic violence; no right to impose on others one’s own religion or way of life; respect for every individual’s freedom to abandon his or her communal customs, etc. If a woman chooses to cover her face, her choice must be respected; if she chooses not to cover her face, her freedom not to do so must be guaranteed. Such rules privilege the Western European way of life, but that is the price to be paid for European hospitality. These rules should be clearly stated and enforced, by repressive measures – against foreign fundamentalists as well as against our own racists – where necessary."
The Supreme Court Rules That Christianity Is Not Christian - "The Supreme Court ruling is another giant leap toward theocracy. We are descending to new lows, where non-Christians are openly scorned, made to stand up in public to be identified as outcasts. Our founding fathers are crying in shame and frustration. Welcome to the United States of Iran. Every American should today weep for our country."
The hysteria can fight with the worst of Fox news
Supreme Court Upholds Prayer at Council Meetings in Landmark Ruling - "After their initial complaint, four of the 12 meetings meetings in 2008 included non-Christian prayers; a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and a Baha’i leader were among those invocations, however from Jan. 2009 through June 2010, Christian prayers were reportedly once again the only ones offered. Galloway and Stephens inevitably sued and in 2010 a lower court found that there was not sufficient evidence that Greece intentionally cut out non-Christian invocations... Opportunities for others to pray at the meetings were also not publicized by the town, although there was no ban on outsiders coming to offer invocations and the vast majority of churches in its bounds are Christian in nature... Both sides acknowledge that the Supreme Court has taken up prayer in public venues in the past, however their stances on the merits of the most recent case, Marsh v. Chambers, a 1983 battle over government funding for chaplains, differ wildly. “In that ruling, the Supreme Court upheld legislative prayers in Nebraska but noted that the prayers were generally non-sectarian,” Americans United noted, arguing that the Greece case differs in that its prayers were almost always Christian in nature. The Alliance Defending Freedom disagreed, though, writing, “The last time the Supreme Court ruled on this prayer issue was in 1983. The High Court affirmed America’s long-standing practice of opening public meetings with prayer.” Regardless of how different parties viewed Marsh v. Chambers, as Pew noted, the results are simple to summarize: The Supreme Court found that the Nebraska legislature did not violate the Establishment Clause by allowing sessions to open with prayer, seeing as the U.S. has a unique history of allowing such invocations... The Obama administration surprised some by submitting an amicus curiae (“friend-of-the-court”) written brief on the case last year. Rather than taking sides with Americans United, the federal government is arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit misinterpreted the Marsh decision in striking down Greece’s prayer policy, Pew wrote.
The argument here is that sectarian content is allowed, so long as it doesn’t proselytize or disparage other faiths. The Obama administration does not believe that Greece’s prayer policy does either of these things, thus the federal government posited that the court should uphold it."
Presumably the "giant leap toward theocracy" is supported by Obama
Justices allow public prayers at New York town's council meetings - "Just moments before the opinion was announced from the bench, the high court began its public session as it has for decades: with the marshal invoking a traditional statement that ends, "God save the United States and this honorable court.""
The Supreme Court is already a theocracy
Was America Founded As A Christian Nation? - "As historian John Fea notes, “If the Treaty of Tripoli is correct, and the United States was not ‘founded on the Christian religion,’ then someone forgot to tell the American people… The idea that the United States is a ‘Christian nation,’ has always been central to American identity.” But debate rages over whether the Founders were Deists and why the Constitution bears no mention of God... All thought the Bible essential for just and harmonious society. Washington’s Farewell Address neatly summarized, “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensible supports.” Franklin warned the irreligious Thomas Paine, “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?” In Vindicating the Founders, Thomas G. West relays that Gouverneur Morris, ambassador to France , predicted their revolution would fail because the French were “ridiculing religion.” Morris, a not particularly pious man, foresaw catastrophe since “religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.” The Founders disagreed on much, but were nearly unanimous concerning biblical morality. They understood the relationship between state and society differently than progressive thinkers today: government cannot mold man. Righteous men must mold government which requires the inculcation of virtue through vibrant churches and the transmittal of values generationally via a social structure based on families. Usurping the First Amendment to obstruct public expressions of faith would leave the Founders aghast. Not only did the Constitution leave extant the official religions authorized in most of the states, as historian Thomas Woods explains, prohibiting prayer in public schools “runs exactly contrary to the Framers’ intent … a stupefying departure from traditional American principles and an intolerable encroachment on communities’ rights to self-government.” Jefferson ’s “wall of separation” guarded faith, or lack thereof, against political interference. Far from uprooting our cultural moorings, the Forefathers embraced heritage. Historian Larry Schweikart notes, “The founding documents of every one of the original thirteen colonies reveal them to be awash in the concepts of Christianity and God”... Per Paul Johnson, “The Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and the Revolutionary War has the approbation of divine providence.” The Declaration contains four clear references to God... Franklin rebuked the Constitutional Convention for neglecting prayer. He reminded that the delegates had prayed daily during the war and that God answered."
PolyHero Dice - Warrior Set by PolyHero Dice — Kickstarter - "PolyHero Dice are the result of a creative collaboration between brothers Dann and Greg May. We've worked together in the visual arts for more than 20 years, as graphic designers, artists and 3D animators. We've also played Dungeons and Dragons (and other RPGs) together from an early age, starting with the red boxed Basic Set (oh, and even before that a game Dann made up and tried to make Greg play). This project is a labour of love for us; to create imaginative, 3D-sculpted custom dice for our favourite hobby, and for the pure joy of holding and rolling them"
Post ID: 2992047038954408701
The funkiest video I've seen all week
""If you wanna know what China's gonna do, best pay attention to the 十三五!" Click the music video to see China's Five-Year Plan and why it matters."
Post ID: 4723824207514752934
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Never to wear armour against him
"The news of the defeat at Formigny threw the English into the deepest gloom. ln one short campaign the French had destroyed their only remaining field army in Normandy, and now both John Talbot and Thomas Kyriel, their best captains, were prisoners in French hands. Suffolk set out to raise the men and money for a fresh expeditionary force, to be led by Sir John Fastolf, but the French were now sweeping all before them. The French advanced from Formigny to take Vire, Bayeux and, after a three-week siege, Caen, the old Norman capital, where they again first captured and then released the Duke of Somerset. Somerset fled to Calais and stayed there, rightly suspecting that the axe and block awaited him in England. Ponton de Xaintrailles then reappeared on campaign and besieged Falaise, a fief of John Talbot. The town surrendered in return for Talbot’s release, although Charles VII extracted a promise from the old knight that he would never again wear armour against him, a promise Talbot kept to the letter...
Talbot arrived at Castillon before dawn on 17 July, overrunning a detachment of French archers, whom he pursued with his cavalry towards the main French camp, Here, under advice from Jean Bureau, the French, anticipating an English assault, had entrenched themselves strongly, throwing up walls of earth and tree-trunks and erecting artillery positions containing over 300 guns of various calibre, many of which were hastily switched from the town walls to cover the approach of the English army. A little thought or a brief reconnaissance might have shown Talbot the inadvisability of leading his men against such a strong position, but a huge cloud of dust over the enemy camp, caused by the French bringing their horses into shelter, seemed to indicate fleeing cavalry. Thinking the French were in retreat, Talbot did not hesitate. Keeping to the terms agreed for his release at Falaise, in which he had sworn never again to wear armour against the King of France, he rode into battle unarmed and unarmoured, mounted on a white pony, sending wave after wave of men—at-arms and archers forward against the French lines. As at Formigny, it was a slaughter. French artillery broke up the English advance and, when the advance faltered, the gens d'ordonnance charged out to cut down the scattered knots of dazed archers and men-at-arms. Much had changed since Crécy and artillery had come to dominate the battlefield. In the midst of the battle, Talbot sat his pony, waving his men on to the attack, until a cannonball killed his horse, trapping him under its weight, and a French man-at-arms leapt over the parapet to finish him off with a battle-axe."
--- The Hundred Years War / Robin Neillands
"Talbot was an obvious target with his white hair, purple hat and scarlet gown"
--- The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare / Jim Bradbury
Talbot arrived at Castillon before dawn on 17 July, overrunning a detachment of French archers, whom he pursued with his cavalry towards the main French camp, Here, under advice from Jean Bureau, the French, anticipating an English assault, had entrenched themselves strongly, throwing up walls of earth and tree-trunks and erecting artillery positions containing over 300 guns of various calibre, many of which were hastily switched from the town walls to cover the approach of the English army. A little thought or a brief reconnaissance might have shown Talbot the inadvisability of leading his men against such a strong position, but a huge cloud of dust over the enemy camp, caused by the French bringing their horses into shelter, seemed to indicate fleeing cavalry. Thinking the French were in retreat, Talbot did not hesitate. Keeping to the terms agreed for his release at Falaise, in which he had sworn never again to wear armour against the King of France, he rode into battle unarmed and unarmoured, mounted on a white pony, sending wave after wave of men—at-arms and archers forward against the French lines. As at Formigny, it was a slaughter. French artillery broke up the English advance and, when the advance faltered, the gens d'ordonnance charged out to cut down the scattered knots of dazed archers and men-at-arms. Much had changed since Crécy and artillery had come to dominate the battlefield. In the midst of the battle, Talbot sat his pony, waving his men on to the attack, until a cannonball killed his horse, trapping him under its weight, and a French man-at-arms leapt over the parapet to finish him off with a battle-axe."
--- The Hundred Years War / Robin Neillands
"Talbot was an obvious target with his white hair, purple hat and scarlet gown"
--- The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare / Jim Bradbury
Post ID: 2922651814824376462
Links - 29th October 2015
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, The Devil's Building Site - "Women, Farrah (sp?) says, now outnumber men in their pursuit of graduate degrees. Something that creasted a societal problem. Most Iranian women won't dream of dating men who aren't their intellectual equal."
Equality in the form of equal rights can cause social problems. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between social welfare and rights
London's Big Ben has chimed six seconds fast over the past fortnight
UK teen using Snapchat put on police database after sending naked picture to girl - "Boy, 14, is 'branded a paedophile' by police for texting naked selfie to schoolgirl: Mother's fury as son is put on sex crime database for 100 years... ‘If he was 18 he would have been seen as a victim in the eyes of the law and would have been able to take some action towards the girl who humiliated him’... The schoolboy’s actions will remain on file for a century because police can decide who they prosecute but not what they record, legal experts say. He committed a crime by creating and distributing an indecent image of a child. It does not matter that he was the subject and took the image himself. The girl who circulated the image is not being investigated even though her actions could have fallen under ‘revenge pornography’ laws if she had been an adult. Although police dropped the inquiry, once alerted to the crime they were obliged to record it under rigid procedures brought in following the Soham murders in 2002... The case highlights how thousands of youngsters could be criminalised by exchanging explicit selfies. One study estimated that more than four in ten British girls aged 13 to 17 had sent a pornographic photograph of themselves"
Ex-Straits Times editor reveals gov’t meddling in tell-all book - "Cheong Yip Seng, the former editor-in-chief of the The Straits Times (ST), has bucked this trend with his memoir, OB Markers: My Straits Times Story. ("Out of bounds" markers often refer to the line between which issues are 'sensitive' and which are not.) It is a compelling story that is part personal, part political and part a survival guide to Singapore journalism. Cheong's tales are not new; they have been whispered about at the watercooler and written with great relish in a book called Media Enthralled by political refugee Francis Seow. But this is the first time a Singapore editor has gone to print with an insider's take on how the republic's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew systematically controlled the press with draconian laws and protected it with anti-competition barriers... "I will break your neck," Cheong describes Lee as telling him when the rookie reporter tried to make a case for not imposing an embargo on a speech the Prime Minister had made... One of the bravest episodes was when Peter Lim, Cheong's predecessor, resisted Lee's pressure to print the full O level results of Opposition politician Chiam See Tong during the 1984 election. Lee wanted to show to voters that Chiam did not have the academic credentials to be a capable MP. Lim resisted because he felt it would backfire on the ruling party and the newspaper. The author is a smart survivor, too. He had a ring-side view of how his boss, Peter Lim, tried to run the newsroom with some form of independence and paid the price for it by having to resign. "The board told me my deputy was ready to take over'' -- that was the loaded answer Lim gave when historian Mary Turnbull asked him about his 1987 departure in another book on The Straits Times... The Singapore government's intervention in media is legendary. Cheong describes many episodes -- from appointments of editors to shaping coverage of political and foreign events and even to minor stories like stamp-collecting, carpet-buying and MSG - with the pen of a master story teller."
‘I tied every aspect of my life to my sexual identity – it had to change’ - "I also began to ask myself whether I had at some level defined myself, and the LGBT community, as a separate entity from straight people. This concern came to the fore when a straight woman reacted negatively to my (slightly tipsy) observation that she was “sound for a straight girl.” Her frank response however swiftly put me in my place. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for gay pride and equality, but I don’t get why you need to wear your sexual orientation on your sleeve – or label others by theirs.”... By tying every aspect of my life – music, nights out and fashion sense with the G factor, I was essentially just cementing the divide that can at times already exist between the gay and straight community, not to mention feeding into stereotypes – that gay people have some sort of alternative ‘lifestyle’ for one."
Ahh... identity politics
Are Pakistan’s female medical students to be doctors or wives? - "The government body that regulates the medical profession, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), says more than 70% of medical students are women... government figures suggest most of these bright female undergraduate doctors do not actually go on to practise. Only 23% of registered doctors are female... he accepts that some female students are more keen on catching a husband than on pursuing a career. "It's much easier for girls to get married once they are doctors and many girls don't really intend to work as professional doctors," he says. "I know of hundreds of hundreds of female students who have qualified as a doctor or a dentist but they have never touched a patient"... Privately, many doctors - both male and female - tell me that a medical degree is an extremely hot ticket in the marriage market. To confirm this claim, I visit the Aisha Marriage Bureau run by Kamran Ahmed and his wife. Business is so good they are opening their second branch in Islamabad. Mr Ahmed says his best clients are mothers seeking doctor wives for their sons. "In social gatherings, it's very prestigious to introduce your daughter-in-law or wife as a doctor"... the "doctor wife" is more than a trophy: her absence from hospitals has serious implications on the healthcare system of a poor country like Pakistan. The government spends millions of rupees on subsidies per student - yet there is a serious shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas where women prefer to be examined by female doctors... When news of the "quota" on male-female admissions broke in the local media it quickly drew flak and controversy. But the PMDC insists it is the only solution. "It's not a quota. We want 50% of admissions to be for males and 50% for females"... Human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar strongly disagrees. "The wrong here is that women are being discriminated against here for being too smart." Mr Akbar has filed a petition in court challenging the decision to introduce the "quota". He calls it unconstitutional and says the government should encourage women to stay in the profession instead.
This is something like why there used to be a quota in Singapore
When you have a quota favoring women in a male dominated system, it's equality. When you have a quota favoring men in a female dominated system, it's discrimination. Maybe it's only discrimination when women lose out
Man Buns of Disneyland Instagram Account Features Long-Haired Male Parkgoers
The Sound of a Leader: CEOs With Deep Voices Do Better - "New research shows that a deep voice confers benefits in competition for leadership positions in business. A research team from Duke University and the University of California studied the speeches fof the male CEOs of almots 800 public companies. They found that the CEOs with the deeper voices managed larger companies and thus made more money. A decrease of 25% in voice pitch (22.1 Hz) is associated with an increase of $187.000 in annual salary. Moreover, CEOS with deeper voices also enjoy longer tenures... Deeper voiced male politicans have more electoral success. A research team led by Canadian evolutionary psychologist David Feinberg, shows that we prefer political leaders with low voice pitches... individuals with low voice pitches were thought to be more dominant, masculine, and physically formidable. Just like a muscular body, a low voice pitch is an indication of high levels of testosterone."
Maybe this helps to explains the gender gap in politics and business leadership
Londoner Shows Period Shamers the Finger; Completes Marathon Without Tampon - "
Ahh... feminism
The next time I need to pee or shit, I'll just do it in my pants and anyone who objects is trying to "shame" me
The Glass-Floor Problem - The New York Times - "It is a stubborn mathematical fact that the top fifth of the income distribution can accommodate only 20 percent of the population. If we want more poor kids climbing the ladder of relative mobility, we need more rich kids sliding down the chutes. Even the most liberal parents are unlikely to be comfortable with the idea that their own children should fall down the scale in the name of making room for a smarter kid from a poorer home"
SMS messages show employer in S’pore unhappy new employee has taken 2 days MC because of high fever
Early Academic Training Produces Long-Term Harm - "What might account for such dramatic long-term effects of type of preschool attended? One possibility is that the initial school experience sets the stage for later behavior. Those in classrooms where they learned to plan their own activities, to play with others, and to negotiate differences may have developed lifelong patterns of personal responsibility and pro-social behavior that served them well throughout their childhood and early adulthood. Those in classrooms that emphasized academic performance may have developed lifelong patterns aimed at achievement, and getting ahead, which—especially in the context of poverty—could lead to friction with others and even to crime (as a misguided means of getting ahead)."
List of 4 Roman Catholic Popes who died during sex, 1 actually died while being sodomised
Increased escalator breakdowns allegedly due to “Keep Left” courtesy campaign - "“Overhauls themselves are routine. However, the keep left policy has caused an upsurge in overhauls, including escalators that were just overhauled a few years earlier.” “That’s because LTA has planned the direction of the escalator direction based upon passenger loading. Remember, in the city area, morning peak most are moving up out of the stations to go to work while in the evening, most are moving down. This plan was approved by Ong Teng Cheong himself after careful study, back when the government was still honest and competent”... For subways in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the keep left policy works because the escalator rotates direction to even out the wear and tear and also that the escalators are shorter in length."
Good Taste in Times Square? It’s Illegal - Metropolis - WSJ - "The city, it turns out, has a law against tasteful restraint in Times Square. The area is part of the “Special Midtown District” that has its own distinct zoning code. Part of the mission of these regulations is to preserve and protect the “unique combination of building scale, large illuminated signs and entertainment and entertainment-related uses” that are central to Times Square’s history. The idea was to ensure that Times Square never became another drab steel canyon of conservative office towers... What appears totally haphazard to the untrained tourist’s eye is actually planned down to the last square foot, with copious rules about how much of any surface must be covered in signage.
Does 2-In-1 Shampoo Really Work? Cosmetic Chemists Take On The Beauty Myth - "The biggest con to using 2-in-1 shampoos is product build-up. Wilson explained, "Because you are depositing conditioners onto the hair, a downside is that they tend to build up so then your shampoo is now... I hate to say it because it sounds so dramatic... but your 'hair enemy.' If you use it every day, then your hair starts to look dull and weighed down. You'll need a clarifying shampoo to strip it bare and start all over again. So instead of giving your hair new life, it's doing the opposite." "We now know that shampooing everyday is not good or necessary for most hair types. But for those that feel the need to shampoo their hair more often, brands have been developing specialized 2-in-1 products called co-poos (conditioner-shampoos) aka co-washes," said Robinson. "The difference between these 2-in-1 products versus those from the '80s is that these are closer in nature to true conditioners. Whereas the '80s products were closer to true shampoos. For co-poos, the pro is that they can minimize the damage that daily shampooing can cause. The con is that they might be too heavy for oily hair types"... "To say that a 2-in-1 shampoo replaces your need for two products, unless you have healthy hair and deep condition on a regular basis, that's not the case""
2-in-1 Shampoo: Must-Have Convenience Or Damaging Product To Skip? - "many 2-in-1 shampoos are not called 2-in-1s anymore. Lots of shampoos use this technology in products that are labeled “moisturizing”, “hydrating” and “conditioning.” So, if you are concerned about product buildup, look for shampoos that are called “clarifying” or “volumizing” and check the label to make sure the product does not contain Dimethicone."
Equality in the form of equal rights can cause social problems. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between social welfare and rights
London's Big Ben has chimed six seconds fast over the past fortnight
UK teen using Snapchat put on police database after sending naked picture to girl - "Boy, 14, is 'branded a paedophile' by police for texting naked selfie to schoolgirl: Mother's fury as son is put on sex crime database for 100 years... ‘If he was 18 he would have been seen as a victim in the eyes of the law and would have been able to take some action towards the girl who humiliated him’... The schoolboy’s actions will remain on file for a century because police can decide who they prosecute but not what they record, legal experts say. He committed a crime by creating and distributing an indecent image of a child. It does not matter that he was the subject and took the image himself. The girl who circulated the image is not being investigated even though her actions could have fallen under ‘revenge pornography’ laws if she had been an adult. Although police dropped the inquiry, once alerted to the crime they were obliged to record it under rigid procedures brought in following the Soham murders in 2002... The case highlights how thousands of youngsters could be criminalised by exchanging explicit selfies. One study estimated that more than four in ten British girls aged 13 to 17 had sent a pornographic photograph of themselves"
Ex-Straits Times editor reveals gov’t meddling in tell-all book - "Cheong Yip Seng, the former editor-in-chief of the The Straits Times (ST), has bucked this trend with his memoir, OB Markers: My Straits Times Story. ("Out of bounds" markers often refer to the line between which issues are 'sensitive' and which are not.) It is a compelling story that is part personal, part political and part a survival guide to Singapore journalism. Cheong's tales are not new; they have been whispered about at the watercooler and written with great relish in a book called Media Enthralled by political refugee Francis Seow. But this is the first time a Singapore editor has gone to print with an insider's take on how the republic's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew systematically controlled the press with draconian laws and protected it with anti-competition barriers... "I will break your neck," Cheong describes Lee as telling him when the rookie reporter tried to make a case for not imposing an embargo on a speech the Prime Minister had made... One of the bravest episodes was when Peter Lim, Cheong's predecessor, resisted Lee's pressure to print the full O level results of Opposition politician Chiam See Tong during the 1984 election. Lee wanted to show to voters that Chiam did not have the academic credentials to be a capable MP. Lim resisted because he felt it would backfire on the ruling party and the newspaper. The author is a smart survivor, too. He had a ring-side view of how his boss, Peter Lim, tried to run the newsroom with some form of independence and paid the price for it by having to resign. "The board told me my deputy was ready to take over'' -- that was the loaded answer Lim gave when historian Mary Turnbull asked him about his 1987 departure in another book on The Straits Times... The Singapore government's intervention in media is legendary. Cheong describes many episodes -- from appointments of editors to shaping coverage of political and foreign events and even to minor stories like stamp-collecting, carpet-buying and MSG - with the pen of a master story teller."
‘I tied every aspect of my life to my sexual identity – it had to change’ - "I also began to ask myself whether I had at some level defined myself, and the LGBT community, as a separate entity from straight people. This concern came to the fore when a straight woman reacted negatively to my (slightly tipsy) observation that she was “sound for a straight girl.” Her frank response however swiftly put me in my place. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for gay pride and equality, but I don’t get why you need to wear your sexual orientation on your sleeve – or label others by theirs.”... By tying every aspect of my life – music, nights out and fashion sense with the G factor, I was essentially just cementing the divide that can at times already exist between the gay and straight community, not to mention feeding into stereotypes – that gay people have some sort of alternative ‘lifestyle’ for one."
Ahh... identity politics
Are Pakistan’s female medical students to be doctors or wives? - "The government body that regulates the medical profession, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), says more than 70% of medical students are women... government figures suggest most of these bright female undergraduate doctors do not actually go on to practise. Only 23% of registered doctors are female... he accepts that some female students are more keen on catching a husband than on pursuing a career. "It's much easier for girls to get married once they are doctors and many girls don't really intend to work as professional doctors," he says. "I know of hundreds of hundreds of female students who have qualified as a doctor or a dentist but they have never touched a patient"... Privately, many doctors - both male and female - tell me that a medical degree is an extremely hot ticket in the marriage market. To confirm this claim, I visit the Aisha Marriage Bureau run by Kamran Ahmed and his wife. Business is so good they are opening their second branch in Islamabad. Mr Ahmed says his best clients are mothers seeking doctor wives for their sons. "In social gatherings, it's very prestigious to introduce your daughter-in-law or wife as a doctor"... the "doctor wife" is more than a trophy: her absence from hospitals has serious implications on the healthcare system of a poor country like Pakistan. The government spends millions of rupees on subsidies per student - yet there is a serious shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas where women prefer to be examined by female doctors... When news of the "quota" on male-female admissions broke in the local media it quickly drew flak and controversy. But the PMDC insists it is the only solution. "It's not a quota. We want 50% of admissions to be for males and 50% for females"... Human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar strongly disagrees. "The wrong here is that women are being discriminated against here for being too smart." Mr Akbar has filed a petition in court challenging the decision to introduce the "quota". He calls it unconstitutional and says the government should encourage women to stay in the profession instead.
This is something like why there used to be a quota in Singapore
When you have a quota favoring women in a male dominated system, it's equality. When you have a quota favoring men in a female dominated system, it's discrimination. Maybe it's only discrimination when women lose out
Man Buns of Disneyland Instagram Account Features Long-Haired Male Parkgoers
The Sound of a Leader: CEOs With Deep Voices Do Better - "New research shows that a deep voice confers benefits in competition for leadership positions in business. A research team from Duke University and the University of California studied the speeches fof the male CEOs of almots 800 public companies. They found that the CEOs with the deeper voices managed larger companies and thus made more money. A decrease of 25% in voice pitch (22.1 Hz) is associated with an increase of $187.000 in annual salary. Moreover, CEOS with deeper voices also enjoy longer tenures... Deeper voiced male politicans have more electoral success. A research team led by Canadian evolutionary psychologist David Feinberg, shows that we prefer political leaders with low voice pitches... individuals with low voice pitches were thought to be more dominant, masculine, and physically formidable. Just like a muscular body, a low voice pitch is an indication of high levels of testosterone."
Maybe this helps to explains the gender gap in politics and business leadership
Londoner Shows Period Shamers the Finger; Completes Marathon Without Tampon - "
Ahh... feminism
The next time I need to pee or shit, I'll just do it in my pants and anyone who objects is trying to "shame" me
The Glass-Floor Problem - The New York Times - "It is a stubborn mathematical fact that the top fifth of the income distribution can accommodate only 20 percent of the population. If we want more poor kids climbing the ladder of relative mobility, we need more rich kids sliding down the chutes. Even the most liberal parents are unlikely to be comfortable with the idea that their own children should fall down the scale in the name of making room for a smarter kid from a poorer home"
SMS messages show employer in S’pore unhappy new employee has taken 2 days MC because of high fever
Early Academic Training Produces Long-Term Harm - "What might account for such dramatic long-term effects of type of preschool attended? One possibility is that the initial school experience sets the stage for later behavior. Those in classrooms where they learned to plan their own activities, to play with others, and to negotiate differences may have developed lifelong patterns of personal responsibility and pro-social behavior that served them well throughout their childhood and early adulthood. Those in classrooms that emphasized academic performance may have developed lifelong patterns aimed at achievement, and getting ahead, which—especially in the context of poverty—could lead to friction with others and even to crime (as a misguided means of getting ahead)."
List of 4 Roman Catholic Popes who died during sex, 1 actually died while being sodomised
Increased escalator breakdowns allegedly due to “Keep Left” courtesy campaign - "“Overhauls themselves are routine. However, the keep left policy has caused an upsurge in overhauls, including escalators that were just overhauled a few years earlier.” “That’s because LTA has planned the direction of the escalator direction based upon passenger loading. Remember, in the city area, morning peak most are moving up out of the stations to go to work while in the evening, most are moving down. This plan was approved by Ong Teng Cheong himself after careful study, back when the government was still honest and competent”... For subways in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the keep left policy works because the escalator rotates direction to even out the wear and tear and also that the escalators are shorter in length."
Good Taste in Times Square? It’s Illegal - Metropolis - WSJ - "The city, it turns out, has a law against tasteful restraint in Times Square. The area is part of the “Special Midtown District” that has its own distinct zoning code. Part of the mission of these regulations is to preserve and protect the “unique combination of building scale, large illuminated signs and entertainment and entertainment-related uses” that are central to Times Square’s history. The idea was to ensure that Times Square never became another drab steel canyon of conservative office towers... What appears totally haphazard to the untrained tourist’s eye is actually planned down to the last square foot, with copious rules about how much of any surface must be covered in signage.
Does 2-In-1 Shampoo Really Work? Cosmetic Chemists Take On The Beauty Myth - "The biggest con to using 2-in-1 shampoos is product build-up. Wilson explained, "Because you are depositing conditioners onto the hair, a downside is that they tend to build up so then your shampoo is now... I hate to say it because it sounds so dramatic... but your 'hair enemy.' If you use it every day, then your hair starts to look dull and weighed down. You'll need a clarifying shampoo to strip it bare and start all over again. So instead of giving your hair new life, it's doing the opposite." "We now know that shampooing everyday is not good or necessary for most hair types. But for those that feel the need to shampoo their hair more often, brands have been developing specialized 2-in-1 products called co-poos (conditioner-shampoos) aka co-washes," said Robinson. "The difference between these 2-in-1 products versus those from the '80s is that these are closer in nature to true conditioners. Whereas the '80s products were closer to true shampoos. For co-poos, the pro is that they can minimize the damage that daily shampooing can cause. The con is that they might be too heavy for oily hair types"... "To say that a 2-in-1 shampoo replaces your need for two products, unless you have healthy hair and deep condition on a regular basis, that's not the case""
2-in-1 Shampoo: Must-Have Convenience Or Damaging Product To Skip? - "many 2-in-1 shampoos are not called 2-in-1s anymore. Lots of shampoos use this technology in products that are labeled “moisturizing”, “hydrating” and “conditioning.” So, if you are concerned about product buildup, look for shampoos that are called “clarifying” or “volumizing” and check the label to make sure the product does not contain Dimethicone."
Post ID: 3547781098303020537
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The Straw Stereotype, Redux
(A followup from The Straw Stereotype)
Some people (e.g. on Quora) imagine that "Siberia is colder than Greece" means that at every second of every minute of every hour of every day from the start to the end of time, the temperature will always be lower in Siberia than in Greece.
Let us examine how English is used in the real world.
Firstly, by the New York Times:
The Anxious Americans
"AMERICANS are a pretty anxious people"
Does this mean that ALL Americans are anxious?
Americans Are Finally Eating Less
"Americans’ eating habits have begun changing for the better"
Does this mean that ALL Americans are eating better?
The Asian Advantage
"Why are Asian-Americans so successful in America?"
Does this mean that ALL Asian-Americans are successful in America?
Across the pond, the Economist is equally guilty of this:
The model minority is losing patience
"Americans are spending most of the oil-price windfall after all"
Does this mean that ALL Ameicans are spending most of the money saved from lower oil prices?
The case against tipping
"Americans are caught in a nasty cycle of low pay justifying tips and tips justifying low pay"
Do ALL Americans use low pay to justify tips and tips to justify low pay?
Those who denounce unqualified general statements should feel free to write angry letters to the Editors of both of these publications, generally considered houses of good writing, denouncing their patently false generalisations and/or their abuse of the English language.
Yet, we need not stop here. We can look at more appalling generalisations from atrocious writers:
"The English are, so far as I know, the hardest-worked people on whom the sun shines" - Letter of Charles Darwin to Charles Knight, 1854
"What a degenerate people the English are" - Letter of Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 1940
"The English are always degrading truths into facts" - Oscar Wilde, A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-educated
"We Americans are tainted with this insanity" - Society and Solitude, Ralph Waldo Emerson
"[The British] are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst" - Speech in the House of Commons, 10 June 1941, Winston Churchill
It seems, then, that all of these so-called writers are guilty of preposterous generalisations and sweeping statements.
In reality, it is pretty obvious that this sort of mindless quibbling is a particularly pathetic form of motivated reasoning; it is easier to "rebut" someone who points out a trend or tendency you disagree with, using The Straw Stereotype ("A are B" means "All A are B") than to actually show how he is wrong.
Some people (e.g. on Quora) imagine that "Siberia is colder than Greece" means that at every second of every minute of every hour of every day from the start to the end of time, the temperature will always be lower in Siberia than in Greece.
Let us examine how English is used in the real world.
Firstly, by the New York Times:
The Anxious Americans
"AMERICANS are a pretty anxious people"
Does this mean that ALL Americans are anxious?
Americans Are Finally Eating Less
"Americans’ eating habits have begun changing for the better"
Does this mean that ALL Americans are eating better?
The Asian Advantage
"Why are Asian-Americans so successful in America?"
Does this mean that ALL Asian-Americans are successful in America?
Across the pond, the Economist is equally guilty of this:
The model minority is losing patience
"Americans are spending most of the oil-price windfall after all"
Does this mean that ALL Ameicans are spending most of the money saved from lower oil prices?
The case against tipping
"Americans are caught in a nasty cycle of low pay justifying tips and tips justifying low pay"
Do ALL Americans use low pay to justify tips and tips to justify low pay?
Those who denounce unqualified general statements should feel free to write angry letters to the Editors of both of these publications, generally considered houses of good writing, denouncing their patently false generalisations and/or their abuse of the English language.
Yet, we need not stop here. We can look at more appalling generalisations from atrocious writers:
"The English are, so far as I know, the hardest-worked people on whom the sun shines" - Letter of Charles Darwin to Charles Knight, 1854
"What a degenerate people the English are" - Letter of Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 1940
"The English are always degrading truths into facts" - Oscar Wilde, A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-educated
"We Americans are tainted with this insanity" - Society and Solitude, Ralph Waldo Emerson
"[The British] are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst" - Speech in the House of Commons, 10 June 1941, Winston Churchill
It seems, then, that all of these so-called writers are guilty of preposterous generalisations and sweeping statements.
In reality, it is pretty obvious that this sort of mindless quibbling is a particularly pathetic form of motivated reasoning; it is easier to "rebut" someone who points out a trend or tendency you disagree with, using The Straw Stereotype ("A are B" means "All A are B") than to actually show how he is wrong.
Post ID: 7542344428312239779
Links - 28th October 2015
Episode 2: Government of the People and by the People - "[Farquhar] provided only a minimum of security. His government barely touched people's lives. And this is a theme that you'll actually see for most of Singapore history, that our government has been barely there... Raffles wasn't just an idealist - he saw something deeper, something more fundamental. Raffles realised that free trade cannot exist without freedom. So he formally banned slavery... [Raffles] would... be really disappointed in the social aspects of [modern] Singapore. The authoritarianism, the materialism, the lack of human respect that characterises much of Singapore's social and labour policy. And he would almost certainly argue that without personal freedom it is impossible to have economic freedom... In Singapore, the governor with the approval of leading Chinese, actually enacts a tax on pork to pay for a sanitorium for sick paupers... in 1837, Calcutta prohibits taxing pork... So the laissez-faire policies of Farquhar, of Crawford and their successors set the stage for another important aspect of Singapore politics: independent organisation and self-help. To be fair this is, of course, forced upon - dictated by circumstance because Singapore simply didn't have the revenue to pay for more activist government, but to give them no role would be to understate how tough it was to run a settlement with no money and no staff. So lacking formal institutions, the government relied upon community leaders to control their own communities... it is from this that Singapore's long tradition of self-help, autonomous political organisation and independent political action would grow into an autonomous political sphere that would turn into modern Singapore's model of associational democracy"
Episode 3: The 99% - "If it could be bought or sold, Singapore was the place to buy or sell it. Not for nothing did Singapore earn the name, "Sin Galore". Singapore was in many ways the archetypal pirate port and frontier town, where life was cheap but anything was possible. They joined the people engaged in the more traditional occupations of fishing, jungle products like fruit and wood, and of course, the primary lifeblood in the decades before the British arrived: piracy. Because, really, in this period, trade and piracy are two sides of the same coin. They are the same fleets, the same people: really, the only difference is your circumstances. Times are good, trade. Times are bad, piracy... Those [Pirates of the Caribbean] movies are more accurate than we give them credit for... Captain Sparrow replies: clearly, you've never been to Singapore. Actually, he was only off by about 100 years. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are set in the early to mid 1700s, which we know because of the presence of George II who reigned 1727-1760, but 100 years later, people in Singapore would have been happily engaged in all the corset-ripping debauchery that we associate with pirate towns from the heyday of piracy. We were the Port Royale of the East Indies. Actually in the movie the depiction of Port Royale in the movie is closer to what Singapore was like in real life a hundred years later than the depiction of Singapore in the movie... It was 3 products in particular which made Singapore rich: alcohol, drugs and slaves... the goal of local administration was to maintain free trade as cheaply as possible. Formal state institutions simply did not exist. The mass of the population was left to regulate its own affairs under their own leaders. Officials did not become acquainted with local languages and custom, with few speaking Malay and none speaking Chinese. Actually official documents and laws had to be sent to Hong Kong for translation... Under official sanction, the secret societies grew rapidly. By 1881, nearly half of the male Singapore Chinese population: 33,103 out of 72,571 were secret society members. The leading members of the Chinese community, men such as Hoo Ah Kay, better known as Whampoa, were almost certainly secret society chiefs"
Hey, grievance-mongers, lighten up on the 'cultural appropriation' complaints - "Bet you didn’t know that white people eating tacos falls into the category of “cultural appropriation”... As the ethnic grievance industry grows ever more shrill and its spokespeople more thin-skinned, the list of ethnic practices forbidden to whites grows ever longer. In a March 4 article in Salon titled “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers,” enraged Arab American author Randa Jarrar hurled the cultural appropriation card at white women who take up belly dancing and its exotic costumes for exercise or fun. “Arab women are not vessels for white women to pour themselves and lose themselves in,” Jarrar fumed. She fumed some more after critics of her article asked such legitimate questions as: Why is it cultural appropriation for white women to belly dance but not for black ballerina Misty Copeland to dance to the music of white composer Stravinsky? In a follow-up article on March 18 titled “I still can’t stand white belly dancers,” Jarrar accused her critics of “whitesplaining” and ignoring “the systematic racism by the dominant culture.” Then, last month, Gloss writer Elizabeth Licata leveled the cultural appropriation charge at some of the celebrities attending the Coachella music festival, in which people dress up like ’60s hippies... It’s amazing that no old hippies were on the scene to complain that Coachella itself is a cultural appropriation from their culture."
Is it cultural appropriation if I eat with my hands?
Mashiko’s open letter to bigots: White sushi chefs, discrimination, and racism. - "One of Mashiko’s chefs is a white woman, and several of its other employees are non-Japanese. Having received comments in person and on Yelp about its staff’s race, Mashiko’s owners decided to make one thing clear: “this discrimination nonsense has got to stop”... Mashiko, which has a Japanese owner, should not be accused of cultural appropriation. But if, hypothetically speaking, a group of white Americans opened a sushi restaurant and hired an all or mostly white staff, would race still “not matter”? In that instance, race would matter, and quite a bit, because the owners would be capitalizing off of others’ culinary traditions and their own white privilege at the same time. It sounds great to say that everybody is equal or that you don’t see race, but it minimizes the persistent systemic racism that favors white people over everyone else. Which is why it seems unfair to accuse consumers who are wary of a white sushi chef of bigotry and discrimination. Sure, they might be attached to some exotic fantasy of a sushi chef, in which case they deserve Mashiko’s owners’ public shaming. But they might just be trying to look at race in a historical context rather than a vacuum."
The only way this logic makes sense is that if you assume white people are evil
Cultural Appropriation: I’m Drawing the Line… ALL the Way Back. - "I often think that the loudest people who claim to be offended by “cultural appropriation” are suburban white liberal do-gooders with too much time on their hands, too little relevance in the world, and very little connection to the cultures they leap to defend... I am HIGHLY OFFENDED to see Chinese, Japanese, and African foreign dignitaries wearing Western-style business suits. Who do they think they are? They should be strictly locked into their native attire from several hundred years ago. Baseball, basketball, and football must be confined ONLY to the United States; everyone else is appropriating those sports from us and should not be allowed to play... Cultural appropriation is normal, it is the way civilizations grow and flourish, and it began long before Columbus opened up communication between the New World and the Old. Some 250 years before that, Marco Polo brought silk, gunpowder, tea, and pasta from China to Europe. The Silk Road that Polo traveled dated back at least a couple of millennia before that."
oCam Supercharges Screen Capture in Windows - "oCam overlays a green box on your screen that you can resize and move as you see fit. The capture button below the box will take a screenshot of the selected area and place it in an oCam folder inside of My Documents. If you need to do some tech support for relatives, the record button will start recording a screencast within the green box, and you can even choose from a variety of video codecs... oCam is free, so it's really a no brainer"
(Free) Video capture for Windows!
Guy's Attempt To Take Rattlesnake Selfie Ends With $153,000 Bill
Burden Shifts to Single Workers As Pro-Family Policies Expand - WSJ - "Since we began writing this column, we've been surprised by the level of resentment single and childless workers feel about picking up the slack for the rest of us. One reader, a systems analyst in St. Louis, told us that she doesn't think companies should make assumptions about people's personal time. Being single and childless, she says, doesn't mean you should be automatically more available for overtime and business travel."
HR Magazine - Family-friendly working practices can cause resentment among child-free team members - "The results of Grazia’s Women and Work survey in July – which found that nine in 10 women said that "child-free workers resented the flexi-hours and time off mothers can have" – serves to highlight the unconscious biases that can permeate at all levels of a company, creating friction between the population of working mothers and other team members."
Childless staff 'resent family-friendly policies at work' - "A study of 2,000 managers has found that 55 per cent said family-friendly policies had created resentment. The findings show that employees who have chosen not to have children also want the benefits of flexible working to balance home and work lives. Many had commitments such as caring for elderly parents, or wanted to spend more time on hobbies and voluntary work... The increasing resentment has eroded loyalty within many organisations. Four out of 10 people said they did not expect to be working for their present employer in two years' time... In the study, 46 per cent said they would not hesitate to change jobs for a better quality of life. Women managerswere far more willing than men to trade money for quality of life."
Women putting more emphasis than men on quality of life than money naturally explains part of the gender pay gap
Magazine apologizes over poll saying Czechs would vote for Hitler - "Some 53 percent of people who responded to an unscientific online poll by Czech magazine Týden would currently vote for a resurrected Adolf Hitler if he promised to rid Europe of refugees. According to the original article, the result had been as high as 60 percent in favor of the Nazi leader... The exact question was: "In recent weeks, many Czechs have exhibited xenophobia in connection with the refugee crisis. If Hitler rose from the dead and promised to rid Europe of refugees, would you vote for him?"... One rally in Prague even featured a gallows to hang “traitors” who supported allowing refugees into the country."
Is reporting on ugly phenomena a sin? Why shoot the messenger?
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, A Dramatic Turnaround - "'Oh, you've been in Havana. Lucky you. I'd love to see Cuba before it changes. You know, before all the Americans get there'. I've never liked comments like that. Partly because they reflect a rather patronising view of the country as some sort of geopolitical theme park. A 1950s time capsule. An ideological lost world. Partly because they seem to ignore what Cubans themselves might prefer. But also, because they're just so wrong. For a start, Cuba has been changing for a long time now. It's never really stopped. But most especially since its leadership decided more than 20 years ago to rescue its wrecked economy by turning back to that old, once reviled sugardaddy of international tourism. Cuba never was entirely cut off from the rest of the world"
A Short History of Elections in Singapore – Part II - "The 1955 election is, arguably, the closest we have ever come to a truly free and fair election. And it worked. This election produced our two greatest leaders: our first Chief Minister, the legendary David Marshall, the lion of Singapore; and the first Leader of the Opposition, later first Prime Minister, the great Lee Kuan Yew... elections continued to be run along the same colonial model of using legal measures to limit the participation of opposition politicians. 1963 elections were conducted in the wake of Operation Coldstore, which arrested all the important members of the opposition. Between 1963 and 1979, at least one round of detentions were conducted every year. None of the detainees were ever brought to trial on the charges they were detained under."
A Short History of Elections in Singapore – Part III | The Online Citizen - "From the 1970s, the PAP imposed a series of policies that, while at first glance seemed sensible, were implemented without the external review and oversight that a vibrant democracy and vigorous dissent would have provided. Many of the policies failed and had to be retracted eventually. For instance, the “Second Industrial Revolution” from 1979 to 1985 mandated wage increases and provided incentives for high-technology industrial capital. But it failed. By 1985, there was hardly any technological upgrading, a 40% decline in investment, and a fall in demand for manufactured products. From 1984 to 1985, real GDP growth fell 10%, from 8.2 per cent in 1984 to -1.8 per cent in 1985... To overcome this crisis of legitimacy, in the sense that 2 seats lost out of 79 is a crisis, from the mid-1980s the PAP introduced policies that undermined the fairness of elections... So, the history of elections in Singapore can be summed up in two questions. Does every citizen have the right to vote? Yes, since 1957. This is not something to dismiss – remember, the USA did not get its Voting Rights Act until 1965. There was a time when we were more democratic than America. Can every citizen freely vote for the candidate of their choice? Well, no, not really, perhaps only once, in 1955."
Some things people forget about the failures of the PAP under Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister
Episode 3: The 99% - "If it could be bought or sold, Singapore was the place to buy or sell it. Not for nothing did Singapore earn the name, "Sin Galore". Singapore was in many ways the archetypal pirate port and frontier town, where life was cheap but anything was possible. They joined the people engaged in the more traditional occupations of fishing, jungle products like fruit and wood, and of course, the primary lifeblood in the decades before the British arrived: piracy. Because, really, in this period, trade and piracy are two sides of the same coin. They are the same fleets, the same people: really, the only difference is your circumstances. Times are good, trade. Times are bad, piracy... Those [Pirates of the Caribbean] movies are more accurate than we give them credit for... Captain Sparrow replies: clearly, you've never been to Singapore. Actually, he was only off by about 100 years. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are set in the early to mid 1700s, which we know because of the presence of George II who reigned 1727-1760, but 100 years later, people in Singapore would have been happily engaged in all the corset-ripping debauchery that we associate with pirate towns from the heyday of piracy. We were the Port Royale of the East Indies. Actually in the movie the depiction of Port Royale in the movie is closer to what Singapore was like in real life a hundred years later than the depiction of Singapore in the movie... It was 3 products in particular which made Singapore rich: alcohol, drugs and slaves... the goal of local administration was to maintain free trade as cheaply as possible. Formal state institutions simply did not exist. The mass of the population was left to regulate its own affairs under their own leaders. Officials did not become acquainted with local languages and custom, with few speaking Malay and none speaking Chinese. Actually official documents and laws had to be sent to Hong Kong for translation... Under official sanction, the secret societies grew rapidly. By 1881, nearly half of the male Singapore Chinese population: 33,103 out of 72,571 were secret society members. The leading members of the Chinese community, men such as Hoo Ah Kay, better known as Whampoa, were almost certainly secret society chiefs"
Hey, grievance-mongers, lighten up on the 'cultural appropriation' complaints - "Bet you didn’t know that white people eating tacos falls into the category of “cultural appropriation”... As the ethnic grievance industry grows ever more shrill and its spokespeople more thin-skinned, the list of ethnic practices forbidden to whites grows ever longer. In a March 4 article in Salon titled “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers,” enraged Arab American author Randa Jarrar hurled the cultural appropriation card at white women who take up belly dancing and its exotic costumes for exercise or fun. “Arab women are not vessels for white women to pour themselves and lose themselves in,” Jarrar fumed. She fumed some more after critics of her article asked such legitimate questions as: Why is it cultural appropriation for white women to belly dance but not for black ballerina Misty Copeland to dance to the music of white composer Stravinsky? In a follow-up article on March 18 titled “I still can’t stand white belly dancers,” Jarrar accused her critics of “whitesplaining” and ignoring “the systematic racism by the dominant culture.” Then, last month, Gloss writer Elizabeth Licata leveled the cultural appropriation charge at some of the celebrities attending the Coachella music festival, in which people dress up like ’60s hippies... It’s amazing that no old hippies were on the scene to complain that Coachella itself is a cultural appropriation from their culture."
Is it cultural appropriation if I eat with my hands?
Mashiko’s open letter to bigots: White sushi chefs, discrimination, and racism. - "One of Mashiko’s chefs is a white woman, and several of its other employees are non-Japanese. Having received comments in person and on Yelp about its staff’s race, Mashiko’s owners decided to make one thing clear: “this discrimination nonsense has got to stop”... Mashiko, which has a Japanese owner, should not be accused of cultural appropriation. But if, hypothetically speaking, a group of white Americans opened a sushi restaurant and hired an all or mostly white staff, would race still “not matter”? In that instance, race would matter, and quite a bit, because the owners would be capitalizing off of others’ culinary traditions and their own white privilege at the same time. It sounds great to say that everybody is equal or that you don’t see race, but it minimizes the persistent systemic racism that favors white people over everyone else. Which is why it seems unfair to accuse consumers who are wary of a white sushi chef of bigotry and discrimination. Sure, they might be attached to some exotic fantasy of a sushi chef, in which case they deserve Mashiko’s owners’ public shaming. But they might just be trying to look at race in a historical context rather than a vacuum."
The only way this logic makes sense is that if you assume white people are evil
Cultural Appropriation: I’m Drawing the Line… ALL the Way Back. - "I often think that the loudest people who claim to be offended by “cultural appropriation” are suburban white liberal do-gooders with too much time on their hands, too little relevance in the world, and very little connection to the cultures they leap to defend... I am HIGHLY OFFENDED to see Chinese, Japanese, and African foreign dignitaries wearing Western-style business suits. Who do they think they are? They should be strictly locked into their native attire from several hundred years ago. Baseball, basketball, and football must be confined ONLY to the United States; everyone else is appropriating those sports from us and should not be allowed to play... Cultural appropriation is normal, it is the way civilizations grow and flourish, and it began long before Columbus opened up communication between the New World and the Old. Some 250 years before that, Marco Polo brought silk, gunpowder, tea, and pasta from China to Europe. The Silk Road that Polo traveled dated back at least a couple of millennia before that."
oCam Supercharges Screen Capture in Windows - "oCam overlays a green box on your screen that you can resize and move as you see fit. The capture button below the box will take a screenshot of the selected area and place it in an oCam folder inside of My Documents. If you need to do some tech support for relatives, the record button will start recording a screencast within the green box, and you can even choose from a variety of video codecs... oCam is free, so it's really a no brainer"
(Free) Video capture for Windows!
Guy's Attempt To Take Rattlesnake Selfie Ends With $153,000 Bill
Burden Shifts to Single Workers As Pro-Family Policies Expand - WSJ - "Since we began writing this column, we've been surprised by the level of resentment single and childless workers feel about picking up the slack for the rest of us. One reader, a systems analyst in St. Louis, told us that she doesn't think companies should make assumptions about people's personal time. Being single and childless, she says, doesn't mean you should be automatically more available for overtime and business travel."
HR Magazine - Family-friendly working practices can cause resentment among child-free team members - "The results of Grazia’s Women and Work survey in July – which found that nine in 10 women said that "child-free workers resented the flexi-hours and time off mothers can have" – serves to highlight the unconscious biases that can permeate at all levels of a company, creating friction between the population of working mothers and other team members."
Childless staff 'resent family-friendly policies at work' - "A study of 2,000 managers has found that 55 per cent said family-friendly policies had created resentment. The findings show that employees who have chosen not to have children also want the benefits of flexible working to balance home and work lives. Many had commitments such as caring for elderly parents, or wanted to spend more time on hobbies and voluntary work... The increasing resentment has eroded loyalty within many organisations. Four out of 10 people said they did not expect to be working for their present employer in two years' time... In the study, 46 per cent said they would not hesitate to change jobs for a better quality of life. Women managerswere far more willing than men to trade money for quality of life."
Women putting more emphasis than men on quality of life than money naturally explains part of the gender pay gap
Magazine apologizes over poll saying Czechs would vote for Hitler - "Some 53 percent of people who responded to an unscientific online poll by Czech magazine Týden would currently vote for a resurrected Adolf Hitler if he promised to rid Europe of refugees. According to the original article, the result had been as high as 60 percent in favor of the Nazi leader... The exact question was: "In recent weeks, many Czechs have exhibited xenophobia in connection with the refugee crisis. If Hitler rose from the dead and promised to rid Europe of refugees, would you vote for him?"... One rally in Prague even featured a gallows to hang “traitors” who supported allowing refugees into the country."
Is reporting on ugly phenomena a sin? Why shoot the messenger?
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, A Dramatic Turnaround - "'Oh, you've been in Havana. Lucky you. I'd love to see Cuba before it changes. You know, before all the Americans get there'. I've never liked comments like that. Partly because they reflect a rather patronising view of the country as some sort of geopolitical theme park. A 1950s time capsule. An ideological lost world. Partly because they seem to ignore what Cubans themselves might prefer. But also, because they're just so wrong. For a start, Cuba has been changing for a long time now. It's never really stopped. But most especially since its leadership decided more than 20 years ago to rescue its wrecked economy by turning back to that old, once reviled sugardaddy of international tourism. Cuba never was entirely cut off from the rest of the world"
A Short History of Elections in Singapore – Part II - "The 1955 election is, arguably, the closest we have ever come to a truly free and fair election. And it worked. This election produced our two greatest leaders: our first Chief Minister, the legendary David Marshall, the lion of Singapore; and the first Leader of the Opposition, later first Prime Minister, the great Lee Kuan Yew... elections continued to be run along the same colonial model of using legal measures to limit the participation of opposition politicians. 1963 elections were conducted in the wake of Operation Coldstore, which arrested all the important members of the opposition. Between 1963 and 1979, at least one round of detentions were conducted every year. None of the detainees were ever brought to trial on the charges they were detained under."
A Short History of Elections in Singapore – Part III | The Online Citizen - "From the 1970s, the PAP imposed a series of policies that, while at first glance seemed sensible, were implemented without the external review and oversight that a vibrant democracy and vigorous dissent would have provided. Many of the policies failed and had to be retracted eventually. For instance, the “Second Industrial Revolution” from 1979 to 1985 mandated wage increases and provided incentives for high-technology industrial capital. But it failed. By 1985, there was hardly any technological upgrading, a 40% decline in investment, and a fall in demand for manufactured products. From 1984 to 1985, real GDP growth fell 10%, from 8.2 per cent in 1984 to -1.8 per cent in 1985... To overcome this crisis of legitimacy, in the sense that 2 seats lost out of 79 is a crisis, from the mid-1980s the PAP introduced policies that undermined the fairness of elections... So, the history of elections in Singapore can be summed up in two questions. Does every citizen have the right to vote? Yes, since 1957. This is not something to dismiss – remember, the USA did not get its Voting Rights Act until 1965. There was a time when we were more democratic than America. Can every citizen freely vote for the candidate of their choice? Well, no, not really, perhaps only once, in 1955."
Some things people forget about the failures of the PAP under Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister
Post ID: 8808585535056475102
South Park - Safe Space - "In My Safe Space"
Everyone likes me and thinks I’m great in my safe space (My Safe Space)
People don’t judge me and haters don’t hate in my safe space (Your Safe Space)
Bully proof windows, troll safe doors, nothing but kindness in here.
You might call me a pussy, but I won’t hear you in my safe space. (My Safe Space)
Bully proof windows.
If you do not like me, you are not allowed in my safe space. (My Safe Space)
Look and you will see there is a very select crowd in your safe space. (My Safe Space)
People that support me, mixed in with more people that support me, and say nice things!
Rainbows all around me. There is no shame in my safe space. (My Safe Space)
Bully proof windows.
I am going to tear down your safe space, brick by brick I shall smash it with glee…
What? WHO IS THAT?
You cannot stop me from getting inside. I am cold, and I am hard, and my name… is REALITY
Oh, no. Not reality. Somebody stop him!
I’ll take care of him Jenny
You can’t ruin our lives, Reality
Our safe space will keep you out.
Rat!
We can face almost anything.
But reality we can do without.
No…
Bully proof windows, Troll safe doors…
My Safe Space
Who’s Next?
Post ID: 5814032505763234014
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Links - 27th October 2015
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Post ID: 5691055123111582235
The Deeper Meaning of Li Bai
Q： 解释李白这首诗的意义井分析作者的心理：
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。
举头望明月，低头思故乡。
A： 答： 一个叫明月的姑娘在李白面前脱了个精光，她的皮肤就像地上的雪一样白，李白抬头看着明月姑娘，低头却又想起了远在故乡的老婆，这首诗充分的表现诗人李白在他乡嫖妓时的矛盾心理
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Q: Explain the meaning of this poem of Li Bai's and analyse well the thoughts of the author
A: Answer： A maiden called Ming Yue stripped naked in front of Li Bai, her skin was as fair as the snow which lay on the ground, Li Bai lifted his head to gaze upon the maiden Ming Yue, but lowered his head and thought of his faraway wife back home, this poem amply expresses the poet Li Bai's conflicted feelings when visiting a prostitute in a faraway land.
Post ID: 629682057303657153
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