"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy." - Oscar Wilde
***
For those who think that all Christians in Singapore are homophobes who want to take over the government and impose their will on everyone:
"To break it down for the outsider, Protestant (that is, non-Catholic) Churches in Singapore can be broadly classed into three subtypes in character.
The Traditional
The Fundies
The Richies
The Traditional consist of churches that have a long history here. Some were planted by ang mohs some time back and have carried on since then. These congregations are small to mid-sized and tend to grow via family additions as opposed to converts.
They tend to be more traditional and orthodox, you find the bulk of non-charismatic churches in this part of the venn diagram. Generally it is easier for outsiders to join these kind of churches as they do not make that much demands, but they don't also do all that much to increase their sizes versus the other groups.
The Fundies consist of a group of congregations with rather distinct, separatist and specific beliefs on how the religion ought to be practiced, with relatively little room for individual variance. They generally see themselves as distinct and separate from those other more "worldy" christians. Basically they view themselves as Navy SEALS for Christ. Some are small, exclusive churches while others can be quite large. There is also a lot of variance in one fundie believes is okay and what they other believes is not. Some may think listening to secular music and drinking any sort of alcohol is a sin while another is cool with that.
Oh yeah, dominionism theology, that is that the church ought to influence/dominate garmen and society is quite popular with this bunch, and there are varying degrees to what they think it's okay to do to achieve this.
Also the term "fundie" is not an insult to them and if you are calling them that to them it means they are doing something right.
The Richies are congregations that practice a more modern, lifestyle approach towards the religion. As it is usually why they reap in the moonah as they are extremely attractive to the young, energetic crowd who are starting to step into their economically active prime. The theology is usually lifestyle focused and stuff from the bible is often interpreted in some rather creative ways in order to present a modern message. This is where you find a lot of your megachurches.
These demarcations are not absolute and there is significant overlap between all of them, for example FCBC could be considered both fundie and richie, while others like Cornerstone more fundie than richie. CHC is quite far up the richie scale and they receive a lot of fire from those far up the fundie spectrum for some of their practices.
The Traditional on the other hand, generally think the two groups are young punks who don't know what they are doing. You can see everyone gets along swimmingly."
On churches doing social work:
A: Maybe I am ignorant. But just checking... Buddhist temple i came across quiet a lot offer free food to people during certain timing. 100% free. They also conduct house visits and offer help.
But i had never hear, christian church open up and offer free food to people like Buddhist temple. Or they have? Anyone can tell me?
B: got lei, but not specific to soup kitchens
sauces: ask ani social werkers
i know some of them run this thing where they buy food and deliver straight to old folks living alone in one room flats 24/7/365 i believe. dunch even need to go out of the house to get your three hots
catholics also do a lot of stuff, but usually running in background.
C: Our History | Welcome to Willing Hearts
Churches don't usually advertise what they do but there are soup kitchens like Willing Hearts. Most operate through secular charities.
B: i know for a fact the church that people like to kbkb alot about, fcbc does a lot of stuff via touch community services. that's why garmen like them, save them a lot of trouble.
one does not need to like them, but also need to be objective ya?
I think there are big issues with institutionalised religion.
But criticism that is made also needs to be properly informed.
For example in the latest non-drama Lambertgate, some wise mind probably thought he could troll the fundies by starting a Sun Ho petition.
Problem with that is, most fundies don't really like the Crossover Project, CHC or Sun Ho to begin with. In fact they might even have some schadenfreude in watching CHC squirm in the first place.
So whoever that person is probably failed epically in trying to troll the fundies, and pretty much gave them what they wanted unintentionally.
So in other words, they don't really understand the people they are criticising/trolling.
L'origine de Bert
Friday, December 04, 2015
Thursday, December 03, 2015
Links - 3rd December 2015
To make elite schools ‘fair,’ city will punish poor Asians - "It’s not affluent whites, but rather the city’s burgeoning population of Asian-American immigrants — a group that, despite its successes, remains disproportionately poor and working-class — whose children have aced the exam in overwhelming numbers. And, ironically, the more “holistic” and subjective admissions criteria that de Blasio and the NAACP favor would be much more likely to benefit children of the city’s professional elite than African-American and Latino applicants — while penalizing lower-middle-class Asian-American kids like Ting. The result would not be a specialized high school student body that “looks like New York,” but rather one that looks more like Bill de Blasio’s upscale Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn... Two public high schools that, along with half their students, are officially classified as poor by the federal government rival the most exclusive prep schools in the world... All this once would have been the stuff of liberal dreams: A racial minority group historically victimized by discrimination begins coming to America in greater numbers because of an immigration reform sponsored by Ted Kennedy. Though many in the group remain in poverty, they take advantage of free public schools established by progressive New York City governments. By dint of their own hard work, they earn admission in increasing numbers to merit-based schools that offer smart working-class kids the kind of education once available only at Andover or Choate. To modern “progressive” elites, though, the story is intolerable, starting with the hard work. These liberal elites seem particularly troubled by the Asian-American work ethic and the difficult questions that it raises about the role of culture in group success... The complaint does not allege that the exam intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic students. Instead, citing statistics regarding declining black and Latino enrollment and SHSAT pass rates, the LDF bases its argument entirely on the theory of “disparate impact” — that is, that discrimination should be inferred merely from racial differences in test scores... Ironically, eliminating the SHSAT would magnify the role of what progressives call “unconscious bias” — the idea that we have a preference for those who look like us and share our backgrounds. Subjective evaluation measures like interviews and portfolio reviews are much more susceptible to such bias than is an objective examination... Subjective selection criteria also inevitably favor the affluent and connected — as a comptroller’s audit of the screened-school admissions process revealed. The study found that most of the schools examined did not follow their stated selection criteria and could not explain the criteria that they actually did use."
If courts disproportionately find minorities guilty of crimes, doesn't that mean that there is disparate impact and the standard of proof for criminal guilt should be revised?
The disappearing dishes of Hong Kong - "Speak to anyone who has lived in Hong Kong for more than 30 years and they will tell you about glorious banquets that started with platters of golden strips of deep-fried intestines and nuggets of silky liver or pig's brain wrapped in caul fat - nature's own puff pastry. They may speak of tunnel-boned duck stuffed with lotus seeds and bulbs, glutinous rice, shiitake mushrooms, gingko nuts and salted egg yolk, then deep-fried and braised. Or perhaps they will reminisce about pillowy steamed buns filled with pork belly fat, char siu and chicken liver... Fewer and fewer restaurants are serving them because, for restaurateurs, they can be time-consuming and expensive to prepare, while diners in the modern age are increasingly concerned about health (cue the aforementioned deep-fried intestines)... "Great ingredients and proper technique are givens," says this fishmonger's son, "but people nowadays don't care enough about their food, and that's the main problem.""
Why Do Americans Want Children? - "Children create social capital for parents, an important and previously underappreciated reason for why Americans want children."
Crazy Things That Only Happen In India - "Santosh Kumar Singh fought for nine years to prove that he was alive. His brothers declared him dead and stole his land after he married a woman of a lower caste. False death certificates are frequently issued in land grabs.... A woman named Shaheen Dhada posted a status on Facebook questioning a Mumbai "bandh," or shutdown, after the death of politician Bal Thackeray, known for using various forms of intimidation to achieve political ends. Her friend Renu Srinivasan liked the post. Both were arrested... People put up photos of deities on building walls to prevent public urination... Indian business man Datta Phuge spent $230,888 on a gold shirt. He told the Pune Mirror "I know "I am not the best looking man in the world but surely no woman could fail to be dazzled by this shirt"."
The Decline and Fall of the Book Cover - "the covers of most contemporary books all look disturbingly the same, as if inbred. It seems as if sixty-five per cent of all novels’ jackets feature an item of female apparel and/or part of the female anatomy and the name of some foodstuff in the title—the book-cover equivalent of the generic tough-guy-with-gun movie poster with title like “2 HARD & 2 FAST.” There’s clearly some brutally efficient Darwinian process at work here, because certain images—half-faces, napes, piers stretching into the water—spread like successful evolutionary adaptations and quickly become ubiquitous... The single-object-on-white-background cover has become such a recognizable formula that there is now a Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator... For some reason children’s books, Y.A. literature, and genre fiction still have license to beguile their readers with gorgeous cover illustrations, but mature readers aren’t supposed to require such enticements"
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How the Press Prosecuted Zimmerman While Stoking Racial Tensions - "After the arrest, and as the trial date neared the following year, NBC would allow Al Sharpton to turn his primetime MSNBC show into a platform dedicated to convicting Zimmerman. CNN would continue to refer to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” and broadcast all of Zimmerman’s personal information, including his social security number, address, and telephone number."
Analysis: The race factor in George Zimmerman's trial - "And since people on both sides seemed to have decided the case before the testimony was heard, the verdict was bound to be disturbing no matter how it tilted. Simply put, preconceived notions effectively had people watching two different trials, with every bit of testimony and evidence producing different, and often opposing, reactions in those dueling audiences... "I never could quite understand people, even people with law degrees, who had not read all of the police reports, who had not read all of the witness statements, yet who came up with opinions one way or the other," she said. But that is what happened"
Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification," 1963 - "It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?""
Clergy and trade unions: All out, brothers | The Economist - "WHEN people believe they are ultimately working for God, do they have a right (like any other sort of worker) to organise themselves and demand fairer treatment from their earthly bosses? That is the one of the hardest questions at the interface of law and religion, because it involves a contest between two sorts of entitlement: the right of employees to band together and assert their interests, and the right of religious bodies to enforce their own rules. An important ruling on this subject was handed down today. Not by the 28-member European Union (whose stance on religion I discussed in another recent posting) but by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which holds sway among 47 member nations of the Council of Europe and is supposed to be a guardian of civil liberties of all kinds. The verdict concerns a dispute between Romania's Orthodox Church, to which the great majority of people in that country adhere, and a 35-strong group of priests and other religious employees who tried, in 2008, to form a trade union"
Plucking hair in a specific pattern could encourage five times more growth
Vegetarian hot dogs found to contain traces of meat and human DNA - "Human DNA was found in 2 percent of the samples, which doesn't mean that there were traces of human meat in the sausages, but simply that there was some kind of contamination, so that could be through a stray hair or skin cells, or potentially even saliva. Vegetarian hot dog products surprisingly fared the worst in this regard, with four out of the 21 products tested containing human DNA. And, yep, 10 percent of them contained meat... the scientists found no correlation between price and quality"
Wanting to Preserve Your Way of Life Does Not Make You Racist or Fascist - "People can't develop unless they belong to a culture. Even if they rebel against it and transform it entirely, they still belong to a stream of tradition. New streams can be created -- in the West, by Christianity, or Luther, or the Renaissance, or the Romantic movement -- but in the end they derive from a single river, an underlying central tradition, which, sometimes, in radically altered forms, survives. But if the streams dry up, as for instance, where men and women are not products of a culture, where they don't have kith and kin and feel closer to some people than to others, where there is no native language -- that would lead to a tremendous desiccation of everything that is human."
German nurse shocked after being forced out of flat to make way for refugees
Teenage girl Lisa Borch jailed for murdering her mother after watching Isis beheading videos online - "The fingerprints of Borch’s 29-year-old boyfriend, Bakhtiar Mohammed Abdulla, were also found in Holtegaard’s bedroom, although he was not at the scene when police arrived."
AVA's recycled food product, Okara floss, tasty: Khaw - "CIt is made from the byproduct of soy milk production, and is the vegetarian version of meat floss. Mr Khaw wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the mock meat floss product is "tasty", and invited interested companies to sell this innovation."
Naked Woman Distracts Man While He Is Robbed - "Stephen Amaral agreed to their request, but the woman in her thirties then enquired if it would be okay if she swam naked. He said that was not a problem."
The Lone Ranger Seals It: America's New Favorite Villain Is a Rich Guy - "It is quite a contrast to Die Hard, the 1988 action classic to which White House Down is most often compared. That film employed German thieves as the source of its terrorism, which fit nicely amid the Reagan era's popular support for increased defense spending to fend off a Communist threat. Similar films like Air Force One ("Die Hard in the president's plane") or Toy Soldiers ("Die Hard in a prep school") also address the fight against terrorism, but in their pre-9/11 mindset, the villains are foreigners with clear-cut political goals"
Plane Passenger Ejected for Non-Stop Singing of Whitney Houston Songs
If courts disproportionately find minorities guilty of crimes, doesn't that mean that there is disparate impact and the standard of proof for criminal guilt should be revised?
The disappearing dishes of Hong Kong - "Speak to anyone who has lived in Hong Kong for more than 30 years and they will tell you about glorious banquets that started with platters of golden strips of deep-fried intestines and nuggets of silky liver or pig's brain wrapped in caul fat - nature's own puff pastry. They may speak of tunnel-boned duck stuffed with lotus seeds and bulbs, glutinous rice, shiitake mushrooms, gingko nuts and salted egg yolk, then deep-fried and braised. Or perhaps they will reminisce about pillowy steamed buns filled with pork belly fat, char siu and chicken liver... Fewer and fewer restaurants are serving them because, for restaurateurs, they can be time-consuming and expensive to prepare, while diners in the modern age are increasingly concerned about health (cue the aforementioned deep-fried intestines)... "Great ingredients and proper technique are givens," says this fishmonger's son, "but people nowadays don't care enough about their food, and that's the main problem.""
Why Do Americans Want Children? - "Children create social capital for parents, an important and previously underappreciated reason for why Americans want children."
Crazy Things That Only Happen In India - "Santosh Kumar Singh fought for nine years to prove that he was alive. His brothers declared him dead and stole his land after he married a woman of a lower caste. False death certificates are frequently issued in land grabs.... A woman named Shaheen Dhada posted a status on Facebook questioning a Mumbai "bandh," or shutdown, after the death of politician Bal Thackeray, known for using various forms of intimidation to achieve political ends. Her friend Renu Srinivasan liked the post. Both were arrested... People put up photos of deities on building walls to prevent public urination... Indian business man Datta Phuge spent $230,888 on a gold shirt. He told the Pune Mirror "I know "I am not the best looking man in the world but surely no woman could fail to be dazzled by this shirt"."
The Decline and Fall of the Book Cover - "the covers of most contemporary books all look disturbingly the same, as if inbred. It seems as if sixty-five per cent of all novels’ jackets feature an item of female apparel and/or part of the female anatomy and the name of some foodstuff in the title—the book-cover equivalent of the generic tough-guy-with-gun movie poster with title like “2 HARD & 2 FAST.” There’s clearly some brutally efficient Darwinian process at work here, because certain images—half-faces, napes, piers stretching into the water—spread like successful evolutionary adaptations and quickly become ubiquitous... The single-object-on-white-background cover has become such a recognizable formula that there is now a Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator... For some reason children’s books, Y.A. literature, and genre fiction still have license to beguile their readers with gorgeous cover illustrations, but mature readers aren’t supposed to require such enticements"
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How the Press Prosecuted Zimmerman While Stoking Racial Tensions - "After the arrest, and as the trial date neared the following year, NBC would allow Al Sharpton to turn his primetime MSNBC show into a platform dedicated to convicting Zimmerman. CNN would continue to refer to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” and broadcast all of Zimmerman’s personal information, including his social security number, address, and telephone number."
Analysis: The race factor in George Zimmerman's trial - "And since people on both sides seemed to have decided the case before the testimony was heard, the verdict was bound to be disturbing no matter how it tilted. Simply put, preconceived notions effectively had people watching two different trials, with every bit of testimony and evidence producing different, and often opposing, reactions in those dueling audiences... "I never could quite understand people, even people with law degrees, who had not read all of the police reports, who had not read all of the witness statements, yet who came up with opinions one way or the other," she said. But that is what happened"
Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification," 1963 - "It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?""
Clergy and trade unions: All out, brothers | The Economist - "WHEN people believe they are ultimately working for God, do they have a right (like any other sort of worker) to organise themselves and demand fairer treatment from their earthly bosses? That is the one of the hardest questions at the interface of law and religion, because it involves a contest between two sorts of entitlement: the right of employees to band together and assert their interests, and the right of religious bodies to enforce their own rules. An important ruling on this subject was handed down today. Not by the 28-member European Union (whose stance on religion I discussed in another recent posting) but by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which holds sway among 47 member nations of the Council of Europe and is supposed to be a guardian of civil liberties of all kinds. The verdict concerns a dispute between Romania's Orthodox Church, to which the great majority of people in that country adhere, and a 35-strong group of priests and other religious employees who tried, in 2008, to form a trade union"
Plucking hair in a specific pattern could encourage five times more growth
Vegetarian hot dogs found to contain traces of meat and human DNA - "Human DNA was found in 2 percent of the samples, which doesn't mean that there were traces of human meat in the sausages, but simply that there was some kind of contamination, so that could be through a stray hair or skin cells, or potentially even saliva. Vegetarian hot dog products surprisingly fared the worst in this regard, with four out of the 21 products tested containing human DNA. And, yep, 10 percent of them contained meat... the scientists found no correlation between price and quality"
Wanting to Preserve Your Way of Life Does Not Make You Racist or Fascist - "People can't develop unless they belong to a culture. Even if they rebel against it and transform it entirely, they still belong to a stream of tradition. New streams can be created -- in the West, by Christianity, or Luther, or the Renaissance, or the Romantic movement -- but in the end they derive from a single river, an underlying central tradition, which, sometimes, in radically altered forms, survives. But if the streams dry up, as for instance, where men and women are not products of a culture, where they don't have kith and kin and feel closer to some people than to others, where there is no native language -- that would lead to a tremendous desiccation of everything that is human."
German nurse shocked after being forced out of flat to make way for refugees
Teenage girl Lisa Borch jailed for murdering her mother after watching Isis beheading videos online - "The fingerprints of Borch’s 29-year-old boyfriend, Bakhtiar Mohammed Abdulla, were also found in Holtegaard’s bedroom, although he was not at the scene when police arrived."
AVA's recycled food product, Okara floss, tasty: Khaw - "CIt is made from the byproduct of soy milk production, and is the vegetarian version of meat floss. Mr Khaw wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the mock meat floss product is "tasty", and invited interested companies to sell this innovation."
Naked Woman Distracts Man While He Is Robbed - "Stephen Amaral agreed to their request, but the woman in her thirties then enquired if it would be okay if she swam naked. He said that was not a problem."
The Lone Ranger Seals It: America's New Favorite Villain Is a Rich Guy - "It is quite a contrast to Die Hard, the 1988 action classic to which White House Down is most often compared. That film employed German thieves as the source of its terrorism, which fit nicely amid the Reagan era's popular support for increased defense spending to fend off a Communist threat. Similar films like Air Force One ("Die Hard in the president's plane") or Toy Soldiers ("Die Hard in a prep school") also address the fight against terrorism, but in their pre-9/11 mindset, the villains are foreigners with clear-cut political goals"
Plane Passenger Ejected for Non-Stop Singing of Whitney Houston Songs
Post ID: 7758297794494850268
Registering Muslims
Riz Rashid - So, Don Trump wants to register Muslims. And many...
"So, Don Trump wants to register Muslims.
And many Singaporeans who fancy themselves globally savvy agree with the US commentators that this is a bad move or that Trump is racist and all the other reasoning.
But the thing is, we register Muslims in Singapore, yet it's largely seen as a "positive thing" as with this person's comment.
"It's a good point... however in Singapore it's done as a positive information, with Trump it would be about condemning and ostracizing Muslims or others.... like the Yellow Star to be worn by Jews during WWII"
Some Singaporeans aren't even aware that only the Muslims get registered, at birth.
" Anyway it's not the Muslim alone who get registered here in Singapore right all other religions are also stated in birth certificates"
And even hits the nail on the head and misses the point entirely.
"That could be a religions procedure to discourage muslims from leaving the faith and protect stricter muslim laws like only marrying another muslim cannot definitely say it is govt way of keeping track of Muslims"
I oppose the registration of Muslims BABIES, like I oppose the registering of babies to a religious denomination period, like my reply to Calvin Cheng, its because children don't always adhere to their parent's religion, Muslim children are not excluded from this "phenomenon" too, this should be obvious yet somehow it's not.
And apostasy becomes a taboo when people expect you be a Muslim when you're not, thanks to the national perception of your ethnicity being tied with religion, as 99% of malays here are registered muslims since they were babies and many can't be bothered to deregister themselves because of the $20 fee, hence the high figures.
Any form of religious registration by the government needs to be done away with, it's not secular at all, yet this myth of Singapore being a secular country persists, even I thought we were secular for a long time until I realized that what we have are state endorsed religions."
(Note: Trump didn't *actually* say he wanted to register Muslims)
"So, Don Trump wants to register Muslims.
And many Singaporeans who fancy themselves globally savvy agree with the US commentators that this is a bad move or that Trump is racist and all the other reasoning.
But the thing is, we register Muslims in Singapore, yet it's largely seen as a "positive thing" as with this person's comment.
"It's a good point... however in Singapore it's done as a positive information, with Trump it would be about condemning and ostracizing Muslims or others.... like the Yellow Star to be worn by Jews during WWII"
Some Singaporeans aren't even aware that only the Muslims get registered, at birth.
" Anyway it's not the Muslim alone who get registered here in Singapore right all other religions are also stated in birth certificates"
And even hits the nail on the head and misses the point entirely.
"That could be a religions procedure to discourage muslims from leaving the faith and protect stricter muslim laws like only marrying another muslim cannot definitely say it is govt way of keeping track of Muslims"
I oppose the registration of Muslims BABIES, like I oppose the registering of babies to a religious denomination period, like my reply to Calvin Cheng, its because children don't always adhere to their parent's religion, Muslim children are not excluded from this "phenomenon" too, this should be obvious yet somehow it's not.
And apostasy becomes a taboo when people expect you be a Muslim when you're not, thanks to the national perception of your ethnicity being tied with religion, as 99% of malays here are registered muslims since they were babies and many can't be bothered to deregister themselves because of the $20 fee, hence the high figures.
Any form of religious registration by the government needs to be done away with, it's not secular at all, yet this myth of Singapore being a secular country persists, even I thought we were secular for a long time until I realized that what we have are state endorsed religions."
(Note: Trump didn't *actually* say he wanted to register Muslims)
Post ID: 753705910962704485
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Links - 2nd December 2015
Is Special Education Racist? - The New York Times - "Critics claim that this high number — blacks are 1.4 times more likely to be placed in special education than other races and ethnicities combined — shows that black children are put into special education because schools are racially biased. But our new research suggests just the opposite... If well-intentioned but misguided advocates succeed in arbitrarily limiting placement in special education based on racial demographics, even more black children with disabilities will miss out on beneficial services. Black children face double jeopardy when it comes to succeeding in school. They are far more likely to be exposed to the gestational, environmental and economic risk factors that often result in disabilities. Yet black children are less likely to be told they have disabilities, and to be treated for them, than otherwise similar white children... The last thing we need is to compound these widespread disparities in disability diagnosis and treatment by making school officials reluctant to refer black children for special-education eligibility evaluations out of fear of being labeled racially biased."
The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity - "A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r = −.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices."
Ivy League Schools Are Overrated. Send Your Kids Elsewhere. - "Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it... Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety, and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history... The irony is that elite students are told that they can be whatever they want, but most of them end up choosing to be one of a few very similar things. As of 2010, about a third of graduates went into financing or consulting at a number of top schools... Kids at schools like Stanford think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan, or if one plays the cello and the other lacrosse. Never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers... the group that is most disadvantaged by our current admissions policies are working-class and rural whites... Kids at less prestigious schools are apt to be more interesting, more curious, more open, and far less entitled and competitive."
Peter Tatchell: The left and the anti-war movement have double standards when it comes to Hamas - "These abuses, which are part of a long-standing pattern of human rights violations, reveal Hamas's totalitarian agenda and are a portent of the Iranian-style theocratic tyranny they would impose on the Palestinian people if they ever secured absolute power. It is an antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-trade union, authoritarian, clericalist movement... while progressive opinion is justifiably quick to condemn Israel, it is oddly silent when Palestinians are being persecuted by fellow Palestinians. Why the double standards? Hamas styles itself as a resistance movement. In fact, it is as much a repression movement and the victims of its repression are fellow Palestinians who don't toe the Hamas line. In the future, Hamas is potentially as much of a threat to Palestinian freedom as Israel is today... Another favourite left and liberal justification of Hamas is that it is less corrupt than its Palestinian rivals in Fatah and that it organises social programmes for the poor. You could say the same about the Nazis, compared to the indulgence and incompetence of some Weimar Republic leaders... Hamas's macho posturing mirrors that of the Israeli extreme right. It has a juvenile tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye war mentality"
Driver Says God Told Her ‘I’ll Take It From Here,’ So She Let Go Of Wheel; Promptly Runs Over Motorcyclist «
Schumann’s Death Linked to His Music - The New York Times - "Though Schumann, who died in 1856 at the age of 46, has received fewer diagnoses than Mozart, his case is messier, and the stakes are higher. Discussions of Mozart’s final illness are confined to the physical: infection, cardiovascular disease, kidney function and poisoning. They do not affect our view of his compositions, except for the Requiem, and then only in terms of the circumstances of its commissioning. For Mozart the medical and the musical remain separate. In Schumann’s case the usual diagnoses have included mental illnesses. Because associations between mental state and creativity are inevitable, stigmas and stereotypes attached to psychiatric illnesses have long influenced the interpretation of Schumann’s music."
Eye-Tracking Heatmaps - "They say the eyes tell all. Now thanks to eye-tracking technology we can tell they're saying, and the results point to fascinating differences between men and women and useful insights into advertising and design"
Romanian Andy Pascali arrived at holiday home to find it had disappeared - "At first they thought it was a joke, but when they turned up at the nearby village of Baldovinesti they found not only that there was no property where there should have been a three-bedroom building, but that a field of ready-to-harvest corn had been planted in its place."
Muslim double standards abound - "It is not the race or religion of the victim that counts, but the identity of their tormentor. As long as it’s an Arab army annihilating fellow Arabs or a Muslim military murdering fellow Muslims, too many Muslims simply shrug away our responsibility and say, “leave it to Allah” as the Qur’an supposedly commands. However, if the Muslim falls victim to the “kuffar” — meaning the Jew, Christian or Hindu — then many of our clerics take to the pulpit and deliver fiery, end-of-times lectures, using the tragedy as a reason to ignite hatred against the other, in most cases “The Jew”."
When Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution, rape decreased sharply - "The statewide incidence of gonorrhea among women declined by 39 percent, and the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by 31 percent, according to the paper. The study by Baylor University's Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah of the University of California, Los Angeles contributes to an impassioned, long-running debate about prostitution among advocates for women's rights. Their work appears to be the first quantitative evidence that removing criminal penalties for prostitutes can reduce violence against women and curtail sexually transmitted infections in society generally -- and dramatically so... The two economists found that more women entered prostitution, particularly white and Asian women, and that the price of their services fell. In addition to the lower rate of gonorrhea infections among women, Shah and Cunningham estimated that decriminalizing prostitution prevented 824 rapes that would have been otherwise reported to police -- and presumably many more that otherwise would not have been reported in any case. The decline in the number of rapes was so large that Cunningham and Shah felt obliged to examine their data with three separate statistical methods, but the effect persisted. The authors were eventually persuaded that their result was not a fluke... In practice, the distinction between criminals and victims is often unclear. Many prostitutes and their advocates dislike both labels. They object strenuously to the view that they are not in the industry through their own choice but through manipulation or coercion. "They have heard that, and they laugh at it," said Mike Kiselica, a Providence attorney who represented massage parlors and their prostitutes during decriminalization. "The frontline workers, the girls, they were free to move around, and would do so if one of the other places offered them a more attractive working environment or a better clientele," he said. He said that even though the law had changed, police continued to conduct extensive raids on his clients, often involving superior officers, social workers and Korean interpreters. Although the police confiscated ledgers, calendars and cell phones, they did not find evidence of involvement by organized crime, Kiselica said. To his knowledge, few if any of the arrests made during the period led to convictions on trafficking charges."
The War on Sex Workers - "Not all people who do sex work are women, but women disproportionately suffer the stigma, discrimination, and violence against sex workers. The result is a war on women that is nearly imperceptible, unless you are involved in the sex trade yourself. This war is spearheaded and defended largely by other women: a coalition of feminists, conservatives, and even some human rights activists who subject sex workers to poverty, violence, and imprisonment—all in the name of defending women’s rights... Some activists view calling the cops to “rescue” people from the sex trade as the model of a successful human rights intervention. They don’t count their victories by the number of people they help; they count them by arrests. These tactics are part of a rise in what Elizabeth Bernstein calls “carceral feminism”; Harvard law professor Janet Halley calls it “governance feminism.” Feminists once offered a powerful critique of the criminal justice system, but that argument has faded as they have found power within it. Not surprisingly, they have found conservative allies along the way... These feminist-supported, headline-grabbing stunts subject young women to the humiliation of jail, legal procedures, and tracking through various law enforcement databases, sometimes for the rest of their lives. “It’s fascinating that women who claim to be feminists” are so willing to use the law in this way, says Ann Jordan. Supporting anti-prostitution enforcement requires them to call in the muscle of “all these institutions that have oppressed women forever,” she notes. “But they are willing to use the law to coerce a particular kind of behavior from women”... If we are going to call attacks on reproductive and sexual rights a “war on women,” then let’s talk about a war on women that has actual prisoners and a body count. It’s a war on the women engaged in sex work, waged by women who will not hesitate to use their opponents’ corpses as political props but refuse to listen to them while they are still alive and still here to fight"
23 Trends Guys Hate (But Women Love) - "Peplums
"Fake" Nails
Fold-Over Ankle Boots
Drop-Crotch Pants
Hair Bows"
Let’s Cool It in the Bedroom - NYTimes.com - "Cooler bedrooms could subtly transform a person’s stores of brown fat — what has lately come to be thought of as “good fat” — and consequently alter energy expenditure and metabolic health, even into daylight hours.""
11 Psychological Tricks Restaurants Use To Make You Spend More Money - "7. They use expensive items to draw you to the cheaper items. According to Rapp, restaurants use extremely expensive foods as decoys. “You probably won’t buy it, but you’ll find something a little cheaper and it’ll look more reasonable,” he says."
Satiregram Makes Fun Of Everyone’s Instagram Habits
Predict weather with a cup of coffee
Coconut-based contraption makes your bike sound just like a horse
The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity - "A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r = −.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices."
Ivy League Schools Are Overrated. Send Your Kids Elsewhere. - "Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it... Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety, and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history... The irony is that elite students are told that they can be whatever they want, but most of them end up choosing to be one of a few very similar things. As of 2010, about a third of graduates went into financing or consulting at a number of top schools... Kids at schools like Stanford think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri and another from Pakistan, or if one plays the cello and the other lacrosse. Never mind that all of their parents are doctors or bankers... the group that is most disadvantaged by our current admissions policies are working-class and rural whites... Kids at less prestigious schools are apt to be more interesting, more curious, more open, and far less entitled and competitive."
Peter Tatchell: The left and the anti-war movement have double standards when it comes to Hamas - "These abuses, which are part of a long-standing pattern of human rights violations, reveal Hamas's totalitarian agenda and are a portent of the Iranian-style theocratic tyranny they would impose on the Palestinian people if they ever secured absolute power. It is an antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-trade union, authoritarian, clericalist movement... while progressive opinion is justifiably quick to condemn Israel, it is oddly silent when Palestinians are being persecuted by fellow Palestinians. Why the double standards? Hamas styles itself as a resistance movement. In fact, it is as much a repression movement and the victims of its repression are fellow Palestinians who don't toe the Hamas line. In the future, Hamas is potentially as much of a threat to Palestinian freedom as Israel is today... Another favourite left and liberal justification of Hamas is that it is less corrupt than its Palestinian rivals in Fatah and that it organises social programmes for the poor. You could say the same about the Nazis, compared to the indulgence and incompetence of some Weimar Republic leaders... Hamas's macho posturing mirrors that of the Israeli extreme right. It has a juvenile tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye war mentality"
Driver Says God Told Her ‘I’ll Take It From Here,’ So She Let Go Of Wheel; Promptly Runs Over Motorcyclist «
Schumann’s Death Linked to His Music - The New York Times - "Though Schumann, who died in 1856 at the age of 46, has received fewer diagnoses than Mozart, his case is messier, and the stakes are higher. Discussions of Mozart’s final illness are confined to the physical: infection, cardiovascular disease, kidney function and poisoning. They do not affect our view of his compositions, except for the Requiem, and then only in terms of the circumstances of its commissioning. For Mozart the medical and the musical remain separate. In Schumann’s case the usual diagnoses have included mental illnesses. Because associations between mental state and creativity are inevitable, stigmas and stereotypes attached to psychiatric illnesses have long influenced the interpretation of Schumann’s music."
Eye-Tracking Heatmaps - "They say the eyes tell all. Now thanks to eye-tracking technology we can tell they're saying, and the results point to fascinating differences between men and women and useful insights into advertising and design"
Romanian Andy Pascali arrived at holiday home to find it had disappeared - "At first they thought it was a joke, but when they turned up at the nearby village of Baldovinesti they found not only that there was no property where there should have been a three-bedroom building, but that a field of ready-to-harvest corn had been planted in its place."
Muslim double standards abound - "It is not the race or religion of the victim that counts, but the identity of their tormentor. As long as it’s an Arab army annihilating fellow Arabs or a Muslim military murdering fellow Muslims, too many Muslims simply shrug away our responsibility and say, “leave it to Allah” as the Qur’an supposedly commands. However, if the Muslim falls victim to the “kuffar” — meaning the Jew, Christian or Hindu — then many of our clerics take to the pulpit and deliver fiery, end-of-times lectures, using the tragedy as a reason to ignite hatred against the other, in most cases “The Jew”."
When Rhode Island accidentally legalized prostitution, rape decreased sharply - "The statewide incidence of gonorrhea among women declined by 39 percent, and the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by 31 percent, according to the paper. The study by Baylor University's Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah of the University of California, Los Angeles contributes to an impassioned, long-running debate about prostitution among advocates for women's rights. Their work appears to be the first quantitative evidence that removing criminal penalties for prostitutes can reduce violence against women and curtail sexually transmitted infections in society generally -- and dramatically so... The two economists found that more women entered prostitution, particularly white and Asian women, and that the price of their services fell. In addition to the lower rate of gonorrhea infections among women, Shah and Cunningham estimated that decriminalizing prostitution prevented 824 rapes that would have been otherwise reported to police -- and presumably many more that otherwise would not have been reported in any case. The decline in the number of rapes was so large that Cunningham and Shah felt obliged to examine their data with three separate statistical methods, but the effect persisted. The authors were eventually persuaded that their result was not a fluke... In practice, the distinction between criminals and victims is often unclear. Many prostitutes and their advocates dislike both labels. They object strenuously to the view that they are not in the industry through their own choice but through manipulation or coercion. "They have heard that, and they laugh at it," said Mike Kiselica, a Providence attorney who represented massage parlors and their prostitutes during decriminalization. "The frontline workers, the girls, they were free to move around, and would do so if one of the other places offered them a more attractive working environment or a better clientele," he said. He said that even though the law had changed, police continued to conduct extensive raids on his clients, often involving superior officers, social workers and Korean interpreters. Although the police confiscated ledgers, calendars and cell phones, they did not find evidence of involvement by organized crime, Kiselica said. To his knowledge, few if any of the arrests made during the period led to convictions on trafficking charges."
The War on Sex Workers - "Not all people who do sex work are women, but women disproportionately suffer the stigma, discrimination, and violence against sex workers. The result is a war on women that is nearly imperceptible, unless you are involved in the sex trade yourself. This war is spearheaded and defended largely by other women: a coalition of feminists, conservatives, and even some human rights activists who subject sex workers to poverty, violence, and imprisonment—all in the name of defending women’s rights... Some activists view calling the cops to “rescue” people from the sex trade as the model of a successful human rights intervention. They don’t count their victories by the number of people they help; they count them by arrests. These tactics are part of a rise in what Elizabeth Bernstein calls “carceral feminism”; Harvard law professor Janet Halley calls it “governance feminism.” Feminists once offered a powerful critique of the criminal justice system, but that argument has faded as they have found power within it. Not surprisingly, they have found conservative allies along the way... These feminist-supported, headline-grabbing stunts subject young women to the humiliation of jail, legal procedures, and tracking through various law enforcement databases, sometimes for the rest of their lives. “It’s fascinating that women who claim to be feminists” are so willing to use the law in this way, says Ann Jordan. Supporting anti-prostitution enforcement requires them to call in the muscle of “all these institutions that have oppressed women forever,” she notes. “But they are willing to use the law to coerce a particular kind of behavior from women”... If we are going to call attacks on reproductive and sexual rights a “war on women,” then let’s talk about a war on women that has actual prisoners and a body count. It’s a war on the women engaged in sex work, waged by women who will not hesitate to use their opponents’ corpses as political props but refuse to listen to them while they are still alive and still here to fight"
23 Trends Guys Hate (But Women Love) - "Peplums
"Fake" Nails
Fold-Over Ankle Boots
Drop-Crotch Pants
Hair Bows"
Let’s Cool It in the Bedroom - NYTimes.com - "Cooler bedrooms could subtly transform a person’s stores of brown fat — what has lately come to be thought of as “good fat” — and consequently alter energy expenditure and metabolic health, even into daylight hours.""
11 Psychological Tricks Restaurants Use To Make You Spend More Money - "7. They use expensive items to draw you to the cheaper items. According to Rapp, restaurants use extremely expensive foods as decoys. “You probably won’t buy it, but you’ll find something a little cheaper and it’ll look more reasonable,” he says."
Satiregram Makes Fun Of Everyone’s Instagram Habits
Predict weather with a cup of coffee
Coconut-based contraption makes your bike sound just like a horse
Post ID: 5254158876308109326
Singaporean Chinese - less Racist than Singaporean Malays, Indians and Eurasians
[Addendum: Unfortunately, the 2 slides on which this post are based were not interpreted correctly, as another IPS deck makes clear.
Nonetheless I am leaving this post up instead of deleting it, for archival purposes.]
Amidst all the talk about "Chinese Privilege", it is easy to assume that racism in Singapore is a one-way street, with the Chinese oppressing the Malays, Indians and Others.
Yet, if one looks at actual data (instead of isolated anecdotes), a different story can emerge.
I recently revisited the Institute of Policy Studies' (IPS) 2013 Insights from the IPS Survey on Race, Religion and Language.
Respondents were asked if they were comfortable with someone of another race as a colleague in the same occupation, boss, employee, next-door-neighbour, the majority of people in Singapore, spouse, brother/sister-in-law and close friend.
Across all questions, Local-born Chinese were more comfortable than Local-born Malays, Local-born Indians or Local-born Eurasians with someone of a different race in these positions.
In the public sphere, the differences are especially striking for the boss and majority of people in Singapore - about 10% more of Local-born Chinese are comfortable with a non-Chinese boss than Local-born Malays and Indians, and for the majority of people in Singapore the percentage is about 20% (despite Chinese already being the majority of people in Singapore - and thus presumably something non-Chinese are used to should presumably accept).
Local-born Eurasians are more racist than local-born Chinese, but less so than Malays or Indians. Perhaps this is because of the lack of a Eurasian Politics of Grievance.
Interestingly, for China-born Chinese, India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, the numbers are all pretty similar. So one cannot explain away Singaporean Chinese's lower levels of racism by claiming they are just pretending to be (or mistakenly believe that they are) race-blind because they have Majority Privilege - since Chinese in China, Indians in India and Malays in Malaysia and Indonesia (which I assume are what the "Region" refers to) were likewise in the Majority in their home countries and thus similarly benefited from Majority Privilege.
Furthermore, if Chinese Privilege were really a factor, using the Difference-in-Differences technique, we would expect the figures for China-born Chinese to be different from those for India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, since they are Chinese. Yet we do not see this; China-born Chinese, India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays seem indistinguishable (or at least not too different).
Also notable is that "Region"-born Malays are slightly less racist than China-born Chinese and India-born Indians, which I don't have an explanation for.
As for why the foreign-born are more racist, it's probably because they haven't been indoctrinated by Singapore's spin on "Racial Harmony".
The differences for the local-born are even more striking in the private sphere - almost twice as many Local-born Chinese are comfortable with a spouse of a different race as Local-born Malays and Indians. For a brother/sister-in-law the difference is about 15%. Once again, Local-born Eurasians are more racist than local-born Chinese, but less so than Malays or Indians.
As for the foreign-born, we see that China-born Chinese are a lot more accepting of non-Chinese spouses or brother/sister-in-laws than India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, contrary to the similar results for the public sphere. This might be due to the effects of religion, since for Close Friends the differences between the three are similar to those for the public sphere questions.
So the next time someone starts droning on about how prejudiced Chinese in Singapore are - just remember that minorities can be just as racist (if not more so).
Why, then, is there a perception that Singaporean Chinese are more racist?
Several factors could explain this.
One is that people could be more sensitive to racist actions or remarks (real or imagined) by Chinese people.
Another is that people like to bash the "majority" and assume that it must be oppressive.
Yet another, though, is that there are simply more Chinese in Singapore. This is explained by what Ian Gent calls the Petrie Multiplier (when talking about Sexism in Tech). Basically, even *if* Chinese are equally racist as other races, by dint of their greater numbers, they seem more racist.
Nonetheless I am leaving this post up instead of deleting it, for archival purposes.]
Amidst all the talk about "Chinese Privilege", it is easy to assume that racism in Singapore is a one-way street, with the Chinese oppressing the Malays, Indians and Others.
Yet, if one looks at actual data (instead of isolated anecdotes), a different story can emerge.
I recently revisited the Institute of Policy Studies' (IPS) 2013 Insights from the IPS Survey on Race, Religion and Language.
Respondents were asked if they were comfortable with someone of another race as a colleague in the same occupation, boss, employee, next-door-neighbour, the majority of people in Singapore, spouse, brother/sister-in-law and close friend.
Across all questions, Local-born Chinese were more comfortable than Local-born Malays, Local-born Indians or Local-born Eurasians with someone of a different race in these positions.
In the public sphere, the differences are especially striking for the boss and majority of people in Singapore - about 10% more of Local-born Chinese are comfortable with a non-Chinese boss than Local-born Malays and Indians, and for the majority of people in Singapore the percentage is about 20% (despite Chinese already being the majority of people in Singapore - and thus presumably something non-Chinese are used to should presumably accept).
Local-born Eurasians are more racist than local-born Chinese, but less so than Malays or Indians. Perhaps this is because of the lack of a Eurasian Politics of Grievance.
Interestingly, for China-born Chinese, India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, the numbers are all pretty similar. So one cannot explain away Singaporean Chinese's lower levels of racism by claiming they are just pretending to be (or mistakenly believe that they are) race-blind because they have Majority Privilege - since Chinese in China, Indians in India and Malays in Malaysia and Indonesia (which I assume are what the "Region" refers to) were likewise in the Majority in their home countries and thus similarly benefited from Majority Privilege.
Furthermore, if Chinese Privilege were really a factor, using the Difference-in-Differences technique, we would expect the figures for China-born Chinese to be different from those for India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, since they are Chinese. Yet we do not see this; China-born Chinese, India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays seem indistinguishable (or at least not too different).
Also notable is that "Region"-born Malays are slightly less racist than China-born Chinese and India-born Indians, which I don't have an explanation for.
As for why the foreign-born are more racist, it's probably because they haven't been indoctrinated by Singapore's spin on "Racial Harmony".
The differences for the local-born are even more striking in the private sphere - almost twice as many Local-born Chinese are comfortable with a spouse of a different race as Local-born Malays and Indians. For a brother/sister-in-law the difference is about 15%. Once again, Local-born Eurasians are more racist than local-born Chinese, but less so than Malays or Indians.
As for the foreign-born, we see that China-born Chinese are a lot more accepting of non-Chinese spouses or brother/sister-in-laws than India-born Indians and "Region"-born Malays, contrary to the similar results for the public sphere. This might be due to the effects of religion, since for Close Friends the differences between the three are similar to those for the public sphere questions.
So the next time someone starts droning on about how prejudiced Chinese in Singapore are - just remember that minorities can be just as racist (if not more so).
Why, then, is there a perception that Singaporean Chinese are more racist?
Several factors could explain this.
One is that people could be more sensitive to racist actions or remarks (real or imagined) by Chinese people.
Another is that people like to bash the "majority" and assume that it must be oppressive.
Yet another, though, is that there are simply more Chinese in Singapore. This is explained by what Ian Gent calls the Petrie Multiplier (when talking about Sexism in Tech). Basically, even *if* Chinese are equally racist as other races, by dint of their greater numbers, they seem more racist.
Post ID: 7878556239367919437
Tuesday, December 01, 2015
Links - 1st December 2015
Palestinian Public Opinion | Intifada | - "elites aren’t just instigating the terror — they’re also reacting to deep-seated attitudes popularly held among “ordinary” Palestinians. If that’s the case, lecturing Israel to change its actions or “take more risks for peace” is unlikely to dampen the situation. Instead, as this new study suggests, it’s the Palestinians who need to be confronted. A “vociferous condemnation” of the violence from the U.S. and other Western powers is necessary, and the PA and Hamas need to be penalized until the attacks stop. Over time, “this might exercise an ameliorating effect”... These days in Israel simply walking while Jewish is to put one’s life at risk. Men, women, the elderly, even kids who’re just going about their daily routine and minding their own business have been stoned, shot, stabbed and run over by Palestinians running amok in the streets... Polisar argues that we shouldn’t just be focusing on “how and why the Palestinian political and religious leadership has been engaging in incitement”. Instead, we should be concentrating on the views of “everyday Palestinians”. Omitting their perspective, in Polisar’s opinion, is “both patronizing and likely to lead to significant misunderstandings of what is happening”... When Israel is offered as an option in polling questionnaires, Palestinians view it as responsible for all the myriad of problems that they face, including problems that are largely internal—such as PA corruption; the inability of the PA to pay its employees; the lack of law and order in PA-controlled territories; and the failure of Hamas and Fatah to reconcile... Massive Palestinian majorities deny any responsibility for either the failure of repeated negotiation efforts and peace talks, the breakdown of ceasefires during the second intifada, or the outbreak of the wars in Gaza in 2008, 2012, and 2014. The surveys also indicate that Palestinians are convinced that Israel seeks to deliberately target them. They hold Hamas blameless for positioning its fighters and weapons in populated areas... Palestinians think that Israel is dead set on displacing all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza—and Israel too. That’s a wildly outlandish view. For the last two decades, it doesn’t match up with any policy espoused by even the most hard-line, right-wing Israeli politician, much less any Israeli government... Back in 1995, 65% of Palestinians responded in a JMCC survey that Israel had no right to exist. In a 2014 poll commissioned for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy more than 80% asserted that “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it”. In 2011, 72% of Palestinians told a surveyor that it was “morally right to deny that Jews have a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years”... Palestinians think that it’s morally right and appropriate to use terrorist violence against both Israelis and Westerners more generally—and they overwhelmingly think that terrorism both works and is praiseworthy... far more than other Arab or Muslim publics, the polls show that Palestinians are “always the leaders in seeing suicide bombings and similar attacks as justified”... As Polisar states, Palestinians aren’t “powerless pawns whose fate is decided by their leaders, Israel, or regional and world powers”"
What ordinary Palestinians think about Jews, Israel and violence - "In a December 2001 poll, 98% labeled as terrorism Baruch Goldstein's killing of 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, but only 15% applied that term to Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 21 Israelis at a Tel Aviv nightclub in 2001. This attitude carries over to attacks on Westerners more generally, as 53% of Palestinians declined to call the 9/11 attacks terrorism. And, according to the Arab Barometer, a project of American and Middle Eastern universities and research centers, similar majorities refused to apply that term to the deadly attacks by Islamists a few years later in Madrid and London. Palestinians' readiness to justify attacks on civilians also emerges from surveys of Muslim countries by the Pew Research Center. In six polls during the last decade, an average of 59% of Palestinians backed the view that “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies” — making them the pacesetters on that question in every survey."
Hackers gonna hack, but why? Maybe Freud has the answer - "my favourite explanation for the academic literature is a Freudian psychoanalytic approach to hacking, which actually conceptualises hacking in Freudian terms as a cyber-sexual urge to penetrate. And there are castration complex overtones in terms of being cut off from the network as well"
Google Translate error sees Spanish town advertise clitoris festival - "Local officials in As Pontes – population 11,000 – had written the announcement for the annual festival in Galician, one of the official languages of the northern Spanish region. They used Google Translate for the Spanish-language version of the text. It meant the town’s “Feria do grelo” or rapini festival – held every February with tastings and awards for the best grelos – became “Feria clítoris” in Spanish... She believed the online translation tool mistook the Galician word for the Portuguese version, which refers to the vegetable but also can be used as slang for clitoris. Officials in As Pontes are considering filing a formal complaint with Google. García said: “They should recognise Galician and translate it accurately.”"
The "Science" Behind Today's Plague Doctor Costume - "the distinctive bone-white mask and black clothing was actually the 17th century equivalent of a biocontainment suit"
First 'KFC' to open in Iran shut down after 24 hours for being too American - ""The shutting down of Halal KFC was due to a misunderstanding," the store's manager, Abbas Pazuki, reportedly said. "We are part of a brand known as Halal KFC, which comes from Turkey. It belongs to Muslims and its target market is Muslim nations," he clarified. That KFC, he says, is a "rival of the American KFC." "We are shocked with the news that an illegitimate KFC outlet has opened in Tehran, Iran," Laurie Schalow, a KFC spokesperson, told Mashable. "No franchise rights have been granted to any party in Iran. We are in contact with local authorities and external advisers and will be filing a legal action against any company or individuals claiming to have rights to open KFC.""
Why Britain Has The Best Wall Sockets On Earth - "Any kid with a fork or a screwdriver can light his hair on fire in the United States by jamming it into a wall socket. Not so in England, where it would take at least two screwdrivers to manage the same calamitous trick"
Should it really take so long to become a sushi chef? Japanese entrepreneur calls system a scam - "@michiyotajima: “It’s not enough just to press the rice into shape. The correct way to cook the rice, and how much water to use, varies by the season. That’s something restaurant operators understand, but I want you to be aware of the fact that you don’t know everything.”
Horie: “That’s obvious. But what I’m telling you, you ditz, is that if it takes someone years and years to learn how to do that, he’s an idiot.”"
Mein Kampf: strange tales of the world's most dangerous book - "“I’ve tried the line ‘Do you want to read Mein Kampf with me?’, but I can tell you it doesn’t work,” said Alon Kraus, the son of Holocaust survivors and one of six protagonists in a bold stage version of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto playing to packed houses across the German-speaking world. A re-enactment of the 44-year-old Israeli lawyer’s real-life attempts to seduce a German tourist on the Sinai peninsula by reading extracts from Hitler’s rambling racist discourse raises the loudest – albeit hesitant – laughs... “It’s about time,” said Sven Felix Kellerhoff, author of Mein Kampf: The Story of a German Book. “By putting it off, they’ve only helped contribute to the myth that it is too incendiary a text for the public to deal with. But we are grown up enough now and we have a responsibility not to brush it under the carpet.”"
Where men and women like (and hate) to be touched - "A friend can touch your head, shoulders, hands, and upper back without ruffling your feathers. Your mother can touch you in the same places a friend can touch you, but she is also welcome to touch your lower back. Your uncle better not try to touch you anywhere but your arms and upper back"
If You Really Think Four Republican Senators Are in the KKK, You’re a Fool - "That’s all it takes to go on the Internet and accuse someone of being a Klansman? Well, in that case, Barack Obama must be a very prolific cheater, since his name and whitehouse.gov email appear no less than seven times in the newest Ashley Madison hack. It’s almost as though literally anybody can take someone’s public email address and sign them up for something online. And if I was a zealous Klansman, who would I sign up for email blasts? Why, my Senator, of course."
Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes? - "This is a country that uses people to do the work of traffic lights and where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm... Yoji Otokozawa, president of Tokyo-based IT consultants Interarrows, says Japan Inc. is poor in digital literacy because small businesses, not multinationals, rule the country... These SMEs are often conservative, if not downright Luddite, says Mr Otokozawa. "They usually use postal mail, or fax for their communications. We sometimes receive a fax, written by hand which means such firms don't even use word processing software like Word"... If such alleged behaviour is typical, it could explain Japanese firms' productivity crisis... "Japanese IT departments are remorselessly conservative and hate to connect their computers to the outside world. They fear data theft and hacking, which also makes them fear abroad"... Japan's non-manufacturing productivity, despite the long hours worked, is the worst in the OECD countries and roughly half that of the US."
Calais crisis: Truckers now arming themselves with CS gas and tasers because of migrants
Family escape attack by Calais migrants who launched metal pole at their car - "He reported the incident to French border officials who told him they were surprised as it was 'usually stones' hurtled at cars... 'If they know that this kind of thing happens all the time, why is it allowed to continue,' questioned Marius."
Immigrants 'have attacked and stabbed' British lorry drivers in Calais amid 'catastrophic' scenes at French port
Calais crisis: 6,000 migrants mobilising to storm UK within WEEKS experts warn - "Today the respected Freight Transport Association (FTA) industry body, which represents European hauliers, warned that attacks on lorries have risen sharply in recent weeks. Spokesman Donald Armour told Express.co.uk: "Because this is all serious organised crime - it's not really individuals anymore - you get the feeling the gang masters are organising this. "These criminals they are pretty savvy people, they are businessmen, and they are thinking 'we know this can't last forever'. "Sooner or later the port of Calais will be fenced off better than ever, and the Eurotunnel terminal too, and they are going to be pushing harder than ever and as fast as they can before the fencing is in place."
Oxford English Dictionary admits it used wrong sense for word 'literally' - "In 1876, Mark Twain used the word in this way in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wrote: ‘And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.’ However, the oldest documented incorrect use of the word is in 1769 when the author Frances Brooke wrote, in The History of Emily Montague: ‘He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.’ Miss McPherson said: ‘Our job is to describe the language people are using. The only reason this sense is included is because people are using it in this way. ‘Words have changed their meaning ever since the first word was uttered. Meat used to mean all food but now its sense has narrowed.’"
Who Said It: Batman or Balzac?
When His Project Was Canceled, an Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
What ordinary Palestinians think about Jews, Israel and violence - "In a December 2001 poll, 98% labeled as terrorism Baruch Goldstein's killing of 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, but only 15% applied that term to Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 21 Israelis at a Tel Aviv nightclub in 2001. This attitude carries over to attacks on Westerners more generally, as 53% of Palestinians declined to call the 9/11 attacks terrorism. And, according to the Arab Barometer, a project of American and Middle Eastern universities and research centers, similar majorities refused to apply that term to the deadly attacks by Islamists a few years later in Madrid and London. Palestinians' readiness to justify attacks on civilians also emerges from surveys of Muslim countries by the Pew Research Center. In six polls during the last decade, an average of 59% of Palestinians backed the view that “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies” — making them the pacesetters on that question in every survey."
Hackers gonna hack, but why? Maybe Freud has the answer - "my favourite explanation for the academic literature is a Freudian psychoanalytic approach to hacking, which actually conceptualises hacking in Freudian terms as a cyber-sexual urge to penetrate. And there are castration complex overtones in terms of being cut off from the network as well"
Google Translate error sees Spanish town advertise clitoris festival - "Local officials in As Pontes – population 11,000 – had written the announcement for the annual festival in Galician, one of the official languages of the northern Spanish region. They used Google Translate for the Spanish-language version of the text. It meant the town’s “Feria do grelo” or rapini festival – held every February with tastings and awards for the best grelos – became “Feria clítoris” in Spanish... She believed the online translation tool mistook the Galician word for the Portuguese version, which refers to the vegetable but also can be used as slang for clitoris. Officials in As Pontes are considering filing a formal complaint with Google. García said: “They should recognise Galician and translate it accurately.”"
The "Science" Behind Today's Plague Doctor Costume - "the distinctive bone-white mask and black clothing was actually the 17th century equivalent of a biocontainment suit"
First 'KFC' to open in Iran shut down after 24 hours for being too American - ""The shutting down of Halal KFC was due to a misunderstanding," the store's manager, Abbas Pazuki, reportedly said. "We are part of a brand known as Halal KFC, which comes from Turkey. It belongs to Muslims and its target market is Muslim nations," he clarified. That KFC, he says, is a "rival of the American KFC." "We are shocked with the news that an illegitimate KFC outlet has opened in Tehran, Iran," Laurie Schalow, a KFC spokesperson, told Mashable. "No franchise rights have been granted to any party in Iran. We are in contact with local authorities and external advisers and will be filing a legal action against any company or individuals claiming to have rights to open KFC.""
Why Britain Has The Best Wall Sockets On Earth - "Any kid with a fork or a screwdriver can light his hair on fire in the United States by jamming it into a wall socket. Not so in England, where it would take at least two screwdrivers to manage the same calamitous trick"
Should it really take so long to become a sushi chef? Japanese entrepreneur calls system a scam - "@michiyotajima: “It’s not enough just to press the rice into shape. The correct way to cook the rice, and how much water to use, varies by the season. That’s something restaurant operators understand, but I want you to be aware of the fact that you don’t know everything.”
Horie: “That’s obvious. But what I’m telling you, you ditz, is that if it takes someone years and years to learn how to do that, he’s an idiot.”"
Mein Kampf: strange tales of the world's most dangerous book - "“I’ve tried the line ‘Do you want to read Mein Kampf with me?’, but I can tell you it doesn’t work,” said Alon Kraus, the son of Holocaust survivors and one of six protagonists in a bold stage version of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto playing to packed houses across the German-speaking world. A re-enactment of the 44-year-old Israeli lawyer’s real-life attempts to seduce a German tourist on the Sinai peninsula by reading extracts from Hitler’s rambling racist discourse raises the loudest – albeit hesitant – laughs... “It’s about time,” said Sven Felix Kellerhoff, author of Mein Kampf: The Story of a German Book. “By putting it off, they’ve only helped contribute to the myth that it is too incendiary a text for the public to deal with. But we are grown up enough now and we have a responsibility not to brush it under the carpet.”"
Where men and women like (and hate) to be touched - "A friend can touch your head, shoulders, hands, and upper back without ruffling your feathers. Your mother can touch you in the same places a friend can touch you, but she is also welcome to touch your lower back. Your uncle better not try to touch you anywhere but your arms and upper back"
If You Really Think Four Republican Senators Are in the KKK, You’re a Fool - "That’s all it takes to go on the Internet and accuse someone of being a Klansman? Well, in that case, Barack Obama must be a very prolific cheater, since his name and whitehouse.gov email appear no less than seven times in the newest Ashley Madison hack. It’s almost as though literally anybody can take someone’s public email address and sign them up for something online. And if I was a zealous Klansman, who would I sign up for email blasts? Why, my Senator, of course."
Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes? - "This is a country that uses people to do the work of traffic lights and where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm... Yoji Otokozawa, president of Tokyo-based IT consultants Interarrows, says Japan Inc. is poor in digital literacy because small businesses, not multinationals, rule the country... These SMEs are often conservative, if not downright Luddite, says Mr Otokozawa. "They usually use postal mail, or fax for their communications. We sometimes receive a fax, written by hand which means such firms don't even use word processing software like Word"... If such alleged behaviour is typical, it could explain Japanese firms' productivity crisis... "Japanese IT departments are remorselessly conservative and hate to connect their computers to the outside world. They fear data theft and hacking, which also makes them fear abroad"... Japan's non-manufacturing productivity, despite the long hours worked, is the worst in the OECD countries and roughly half that of the US."
Calais crisis: Truckers now arming themselves with CS gas and tasers because of migrants
Family escape attack by Calais migrants who launched metal pole at their car - "He reported the incident to French border officials who told him they were surprised as it was 'usually stones' hurtled at cars... 'If they know that this kind of thing happens all the time, why is it allowed to continue,' questioned Marius."
Immigrants 'have attacked and stabbed' British lorry drivers in Calais amid 'catastrophic' scenes at French port
Calais crisis: 6,000 migrants mobilising to storm UK within WEEKS experts warn - "Today the respected Freight Transport Association (FTA) industry body, which represents European hauliers, warned that attacks on lorries have risen sharply in recent weeks. Spokesman Donald Armour told Express.co.uk: "Because this is all serious organised crime - it's not really individuals anymore - you get the feeling the gang masters are organising this. "These criminals they are pretty savvy people, they are businessmen, and they are thinking 'we know this can't last forever'. "Sooner or later the port of Calais will be fenced off better than ever, and the Eurotunnel terminal too, and they are going to be pushing harder than ever and as fast as they can before the fencing is in place."
Oxford English Dictionary admits it used wrong sense for word 'literally' - "In 1876, Mark Twain used the word in this way in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wrote: ‘And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.’ However, the oldest documented incorrect use of the word is in 1769 when the author Frances Brooke wrote, in The History of Emily Montague: ‘He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.’ Miss McPherson said: ‘Our job is to describe the language people are using. The only reason this sense is included is because people are using it in this way. ‘Words have changed their meaning ever since the first word was uttered. Meat used to mean all food but now its sense has narrowed.’"
Who Said It: Batman or Balzac?
When His Project Was Canceled, an Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
Post ID: 454680096229732613
What evidence is there that the shift in the Singapore government's policy on mother tongue education in the 1980's was promulgated in anticipation of China's later rise as an economic power?
Gabriel Seah's answer to Singapore: What evidence is there that the shift in the Singapore government's policy on mother tongue education in the 1980's was promulgated in anticipation of China's later rise as an economic power? - Quora
Question comments: "There are claims in some of the answers and comments in the question that LKY's mother tongue education policy was promulgated in anticipation of China's economic rise. If my memory serves me right, the debate on language policy was one over identity politics and preserving cultural values, not economic pragmatism.
Acceptable evidence would be official speeches or government statements/reports justifying the shift in mother tongue education policy from the 1980's. Ex post facto policy justifications are not acceptable."
tl;dr - hardly
Long version:
To answer this question, we need to look at documents from the time of the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched on 7 September 1979 (Speak Mandarin Campaign).
According to the Straits Times, in August 1979, Parliamentary Secretary (Culture) Dr Ow Chin Hock gave two reasons for the Speak Mandarin Campaign (Goal tor common language among Chinese):
- So Chinese in Singapore could communicate with Chinese speakers in other countries. There was also this semi-cryptic line in the report: "the change of political and economic situations in Asia will enhance the importance of Mandarin". This probably referred to the rise of China, but the cagey nature of the language is puzzling.
- So students wouldn't be as burdened in "learning the two languages". Presumably this referred to both Mandarin and a student's "dialect" (i.e. non-Mandarin Chinese language). This being Singapore, I doubt that letting students learn less was a priority - especially in the 1970s. So I am inclined to think that this was just an excuse.
Another reason given in this article was Mandarin being "conducive to the soul of the nation and the people". This mystical line baffles me.
Yet another justification given for the Speak Mandarin Campaign was "to preserve the fine cultural tradition of the Chinese" (Panel set up to promote Mandarin).
Oddly enough, there are not many mentions in the Hansard (aka the Official Reports - Parliamentary Debates - Page on parliament.gov.sg). I only got 5 hits for "Speak Mandarin" for the 4th Parliament (1977-1980). So it seems the Speak Mandarin Campaign was not a political measure so much as an administrative one.
Above all, what is evident is that the Speak Mandarin Campaign cannot be looked at in isolation.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign was implemented because of the lukewarm success of the Bilingual Policy, as summarised in 1979's Report on the Ministry of Education 1978 (aka the Goh Report; summary: http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/his... , full report: http://www.nas.gov.sg/archiveson... ).
Young Chinese Singaporeans were not effectively bilingual, because they did not speak either English or Mandarin (the 2 languages they were supposed to be bilingual in) at home. Furthermore, with industrialisation as well as the rise of English-medium schools, "mother tongues" like Mandarin were becoming less prestigious. The solution was to promote the use of Mandarin.
The question we need to answer, then, is if there is evidence that the Bilingual Policy was promulgated in anticipation of China's later rise as an economic power.
According to the Goh Report, the objective of the bilingual policy was, according to MOE at the time, "to build a cohesive multi-racial society" (page 51/112 of the report). Unfortunately there isn't any indication of what this might mean or entail. And the Handard of the first Parliament (during which the Bilingual Policy was promulgated) doesn't talk about its aims.
Fortunately Patrick Ng (http://www.apu.ac.jp/rcaps/uploa... ) elaborates that language policy enables the state's CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Other) classification, as each heterogenous ethnic community can be defined by one single language (i.e. if all ethnic Chinese speak Mandarin they can be treated alike). The policy also reduces the gap between the English- and vernacular-educated. In addition, one's mother tongue is supposed to be a cultural anchor against "excessive Westernization" and "deculturalization".
In short, improving links with China were an afterthought (at best) in the promulgation of the Speak Mandarin Policy.
Question comments: "There are claims in some of the answers and comments in the question
Acceptable evidence would be official speeches or government statements/reports justifying the shift in mother tongue education policy from the 1980's. Ex post facto policy justifications are not acceptable."
tl;dr - hardly
Long version:
To answer this question, we need to look at documents from the time of the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched on 7 September 1979 (Speak Mandarin Campaign).
According to the Straits Times, in August 1979, Parliamentary Secretary (Culture) Dr Ow Chin Hock gave two reasons for the Speak Mandarin Campaign (Goal tor common language among Chinese):
- So Chinese in Singapore could communicate with Chinese speakers in other countries. There was also this semi-cryptic line in the report: "the change of political and economic situations in Asia will enhance the importance of Mandarin". This probably referred to the rise of China, but the cagey nature of the language is puzzling.
- So students wouldn't be as burdened in "learning the two languages". Presumably this referred to both Mandarin and a student's "dialect" (i.e. non-Mandarin Chinese language). This being Singapore, I doubt that letting students learn less was a priority - especially in the 1970s. So I am inclined to think that this was just an excuse.
Another reason given in this article was Mandarin being "conducive to the soul of the nation and the people". This mystical line baffles me.
Yet another justification given for the Speak Mandarin Campaign was "to preserve the fine cultural tradition of the Chinese" (Panel set up to promote Mandarin).
Oddly enough, there are not many mentions in the Hansard (aka the Official Reports - Parliamentary Debates - Page on parliament.gov.sg). I only got 5 hits for "Speak Mandarin" for the 4th Parliament (1977-1980). So it seems the Speak Mandarin Campaign was not a political measure so much as an administrative one.
Above all, what is evident is that the Speak Mandarin Campaign cannot be looked at in isolation.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign was implemented because of the lukewarm success of the Bilingual Policy, as summarised in 1979's Report on the Ministry of Education 1978 (aka the Goh Report; summary: http://eresources.nlb.gov
Young Chinese Singaporeans were not effectively bilingual, because they did not speak either English or Mandarin (the 2 languages they were supposed to be bilingual in) at home. Furthermore, with industrialisation as well as the rise of English-medium schools, "mother tongues" like Mandarin were becoming less prestigious. The solution was to promote the use of Mandarin.
The question we need to answer, then, is if there is evidence that the Bilingual Policy was promulgated in anticipation of China's later rise as an economic power.
According to the Goh Report, the objective of the bilingual policy was, according to MOE at the time, "to build a cohesive multi-racial society" (page 51/112 of the report). Unfortunately there isn't any indication of what this might mean or entail. And the Handard of the first Parliament (during which the Bilingual Policy was promulgated) doesn't talk about its aims.
Fortunately Patrick Ng (http://www.apu.ac.jp/rca
In short, improving links with China were an afterthought (at best) in the promulgation of the Speak Mandarin Policy.
Post ID: 6551524001253523286
Monday, November 30, 2015
Links - 30th November 2015
How Marcuse made today’s students less tolerant than their parents - "Americans have not, in fact, become more tolerant. Rather, they have shifted their dislike to new groups... people in their 40s are the most tolerant of Muslim clergymen who preach anti-American hatred... Young people are also less tolerant than the middle aged groups toward militarists, communists, and racists. This is not true for tolerance towards homosexuals or atheists, because younger people simply like these groups more. (Political tolerance is not a measure of liking someone, but the willingness to extend political freedoms to those one dislikes)... youthful intolerance is driven by different factors than old fashioned intolerance, and that this change reflects the ideology of the New Left. Herbert Marcuse, considered “The Father of the New Left,” articulates a philosophy that denies political expression to those who would oppose a progressive social agenda... The idea of “liberating tolerance” then is one in which ideas that the left deems to be intolerant are suppressed. It is an Orwellian argument for an “intolerance of intolerance” and it appears to be gaining traction in recent years, reshaping our commitments to free speech, academic freedom, and basic democratic norms. If we look only at people under the age of 40, intolerance is correlated with a “social justice” orientation. That is, I find that people who believe that the government has a responsibility to help poor people and blacks get ahead are also less tolerant. Importantly, this is true even when we look at tolerance towards groups other than blacks. For people over 40, there is no relationship between social justice attitudes and tolerance... intolerance itself is being reclassified as a social good. For six decades, social scientists have almost universally treated intolerance as a negative social disease. Yet, now that liberties are surrendered for equality rather than security, the Left seems less concerned about the harmful effects of intolerance. In fact, they have reframed the concept altogether. For example, political scientist Allison Harell (2010) uses the term “multicultural tolerance,” which she defines as the willingness to “support speech rights for objectionable groups” but not for “groups that promote hatred.” In other words, multicultural tolerance allows individuals to limit the rights of political opponents, so long as they frame their intolerance in terms of protecting others from hate... tolerance for all groups is positively correlated. It is not simply the fact that leftists oppose the expression of right-wing groups. Rather, those who are intolerant of one group tend to be intolerant of others and of political communication in general... the willingness to listen to opposing viewpoints and exercise tolerance is predicted by one’s exposure to counter-attitudinal messages (Mutz, 2006) . In other words, listening to viewpoints that contradict our own makes us more tolerant. In this way, the lack of ideological diversity in higher education contributes to intolerance, especially among leftist students"
Evidence that SJWs are intolerant, and that exposure to ideological diversity makes one more tolerant
The University of Missouri's Tim Tai and the Weaponization of Safe Space - "student activists did not want their tent city or the people in it photographed, and forcibly prevented him from taking pictures. “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American... I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe. It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces”... This behavior is a kind of safe-baiting: using intimidation or initiating physical aggression to violate someone’s rights, then acting like your target is making you unsafe... the mask has fallen.“Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?” an unusually frank protestor yells. “I need some muscle over here!” The woman calling for muscle? An assistant professor of mass media at the University of Missouri ... who had previously asked the campus for help attracting media attention."
Malcolm Gladwell critique: David and Goliath misrepresents the science. - "There were some interesting reactions to my review. Some people tagged me as a jealous hater. One even implied that as a cognitive scientist (rather than a neuroscientist) I somehow lacked the capacity or credibility to criticize anyone's logic or adherence to evidence... 'The world becomes less complicated with a Malcolm Gladwell book in hand. Mr. Gladwell raises questions — should David have won his fight with Goliath? — that are reassuringly clear even before they are answered. His answers are just tricky enough to suggest that the reader has learned something, regardless of whether that’s true'... the main flaw is a lack of logic and proper evidence in the argumentation. But consider what Gladwell's quote means. He is saying that if you understand his topics well enough to see what is erroneous or missing, then you are not the reader he wants. At a stroke he has said that anyone equipped to critically review his work should not be reading it. How convenient! Those who are left are only those who do not think the material is oversimplified... Gladwell sees a conflict between logical argument and what readers want... When someone with the reach and persuasive power of Malcolm Gladwell says that he is a storyteller who just uses research to "augment" the stories—who places the stories in the lead and the science in a supporting role, rather than the other way around—he's essentially placing his work in the category of inspirational books like The Secret"
The Misery of Finding an Apartment in Stockholm - "The apartment queue was started sometime in the 1960s. Anyone with a personal number could get in line for an apartment and obtain a first hand contract apartment at rent controlled prices, thus distorting real market prices. The geniuses that planned this decided to let ANYONE with a swedish social security number be in the queue. This resulted in people popping out kids and putting them in the queue right away before the kid was even 10 days old. As a result, some people have been in this queue for 19 years, even though they were probably not even ABLE to rent an apartment for 17 years (the average wait time is 7 years). When these people are legally allowed to rent, they are obviously at the front of the line and can get an apartment in the city center without problems. Meanwhile, everyone from outside of Stockholm has to wait at least a few years to get an apartment in the queue"
These Amazon Reviews Of "Mr Men" Books Are A Triumph Of Literary Criticism - "We meet Mr Uppity with his top hat and monocle - a clear and overt representation of the bourgeois industrialist. Other arriviste trappings such as his long limousine and imposing townhouse further give the game away. In a thinly-veiled reference to the oppression of the workers by the ruling class, we are told that Mr Uppity is rude to everyone, and the detail that he has no friends in Bigtown explicitly informs us that the masses are on the brink of revolution. Are we about to bear witness to class war, Hargreaves-style? To see Mr Uppity brought to account by the revolutionary power of the proletariat? Vanquished and overthrown by the party of the workers?"
Bumiputera will steal if left unaided, says law minister - "Poor Bumiputera will resort to theft, minister Nancy Shukri said today in her defence of the government’s recent move to reintroduce a race-preferential economic policy that has drawn the ire of Malaysia’s minority Chinese and Indian communities."
Since a Malaysian minister has said it, does that mean everyone can say that Malays are thieves?
Japan its own enemy in push to improve cybersecurity - "Mr Nawa found that five different cybersecurity contractors employed by the agency had discovered the breach — but that not one reported or shared their findings... “In the US, if they find a problem, they have to report,” he said. “The Japanese engineer feels he fails his duty if he escalates a report. They feel ashamed.”
Statistics Show Women Fare Badly in Muslim Countries, but U.N. Official Says Critics Are ‘Stereotyping’ Islam
Avoiding Last Place: Some Things We Don't Outgrow - "People near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder often oppose policies that help those below them, according to a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The phenomenon is called "last-place aversion."
People love to bash the rich for being assholes. But poor people can be assholes too
This man is painting penises on potholes so the council has to take action
These common vegetables are actually all the same plant - "Kale, collard greens, and Chinese broccoli were created by making the leaves of the ancestor plant's leaves bigger, and were the first brassica domesticated, sometime before 300 BCE. Collard greens were developed in Europe, while Chinese broccoli was domesticated in China. Red, green and savoy cabbages were created from a kale cultivar (likely the European collard greens) in the 1200s by selecting for a large terminal bud — the growing end at the top of the plant. The leaves are tightly wound around a short, wide stem (the cabbage's core). Brussels sprouts are like tiny cabbages, except they grow from the buds along the plant’s stem. They first hit the scene in the 1200s as well. Kohlrabi was created by selecting for a thicker stalk in a kale plant around the 1400s. Broccoli was created from a kale predecessor in the 1500s by selecting for the larger flower clusters, which are then harvested before they bloom. Cauliflower was developed from one of hundreds of broccoli varieties. The amazing evolution of Brassica Oleracea just goes to show: Humans have been tinkering with the genetics of our food for much longer than we've been creating what are now known as genetically modified foods, or GMOs. These new lab techniques just let us do it in a more precise and directed way."
Coliving: A Solution for Lonely Millennials? - "Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect."
The U.K. has a serious curry problem - "Immigration restrictions have created a severe shortage of chefs from South Asia. It's become an acute problem in recent years as the first generation of mostly Bangladeshi chefs who opened curry houses (as they are known in the U.K.) in the 1950s and 1960s retire from the kitchen... At least two to three curry houses are closing every week, said Oli Khan, a chef and senior vice president of the Bangladesh Caterers Association UK, which represents more than 12,000 curry houses across Britain. Khan told GlobalPost he feared the industry could "collapse" in four or five years unless the government relaxes its immigration restrictions and reduces the minimum salary requirements. While many of Britain's curry houses are family owned and operated, fewer young people are interested in taking over their parents' business when they retire... Curry houses employ roughly 150,000 people and generate 4.5 billion pounds (nearly $7 billion) in sales every year, according to Khan. In other words, it's a significant part of the British economy. Leaving the EU could be the solution, according to Paul Scully, who heads the all-party parliamentary group on the curry catering industry."
How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained - "If you were to go to southern Italy, you wouldn’t find people saying “gabagool.” But some of the old quirks of the old languages survived into the accents of Standard Italian used there. In Sicily or Calabria, you might indeed find someone ordering “mutzadell.” In their own weird way, Jersey (and New York and Rhode Island and Philadelphia) Italians are keeping the flame of their languages alive even better than Italian-Italians"
Evidence that SJWs are intolerant, and that exposure to ideological diversity makes one more tolerant
The University of Missouri's Tim Tai and the Weaponization of Safe Space - "student activists did not want their tent city or the people in it photographed, and forcibly prevented him from taking pictures. “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American... I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe. It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces”... This behavior is a kind of safe-baiting: using intimidation or initiating physical aggression to violate someone’s rights, then acting like your target is making you unsafe... the mask has fallen.“Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?” an unusually frank protestor yells. “I need some muscle over here!” The woman calling for muscle? An assistant professor of mass media at the University of Missouri ... who had previously asked the campus for help attracting media attention."
Malcolm Gladwell critique: David and Goliath misrepresents the science. - "There were some interesting reactions to my review. Some people tagged me as a jealous hater. One even implied that as a cognitive scientist (rather than a neuroscientist) I somehow lacked the capacity or credibility to criticize anyone's logic or adherence to evidence... 'The world becomes less complicated with a Malcolm Gladwell book in hand. Mr. Gladwell raises questions — should David have won his fight with Goliath? — that are reassuringly clear even before they are answered. His answers are just tricky enough to suggest that the reader has learned something, regardless of whether that’s true'... the main flaw is a lack of logic and proper evidence in the argumentation. But consider what Gladwell's quote means. He is saying that if you understand his topics well enough to see what is erroneous or missing, then you are not the reader he wants. At a stroke he has said that anyone equipped to critically review his work should not be reading it. How convenient! Those who are left are only those who do not think the material is oversimplified... Gladwell sees a conflict between logical argument and what readers want... When someone with the reach and persuasive power of Malcolm Gladwell says that he is a storyteller who just uses research to "augment" the stories—who places the stories in the lead and the science in a supporting role, rather than the other way around—he's essentially placing his work in the category of inspirational books like The Secret"
The Misery of Finding an Apartment in Stockholm - "The apartment queue was started sometime in the 1960s. Anyone with a personal number could get in line for an apartment and obtain a first hand contract apartment at rent controlled prices, thus distorting real market prices. The geniuses that planned this decided to let ANYONE with a swedish social security number be in the queue. This resulted in people popping out kids and putting them in the queue right away before the kid was even 10 days old. As a result, some people have been in this queue for 19 years, even though they were probably not even ABLE to rent an apartment for 17 years (the average wait time is 7 years). When these people are legally allowed to rent, they are obviously at the front of the line and can get an apartment in the city center without problems. Meanwhile, everyone from outside of Stockholm has to wait at least a few years to get an apartment in the queue"
These Amazon Reviews Of "Mr Men" Books Are A Triumph Of Literary Criticism - "We meet Mr Uppity with his top hat and monocle - a clear and overt representation of the bourgeois industrialist. Other arriviste trappings such as his long limousine and imposing townhouse further give the game away. In a thinly-veiled reference to the oppression of the workers by the ruling class, we are told that Mr Uppity is rude to everyone, and the detail that he has no friends in Bigtown explicitly informs us that the masses are on the brink of revolution. Are we about to bear witness to class war, Hargreaves-style? To see Mr Uppity brought to account by the revolutionary power of the proletariat? Vanquished and overthrown by the party of the workers?"
Bumiputera will steal if left unaided, says law minister - "Poor Bumiputera will resort to theft, minister Nancy Shukri said today in her defence of the government’s recent move to reintroduce a race-preferential economic policy that has drawn the ire of Malaysia’s minority Chinese and Indian communities."
Since a Malaysian minister has said it, does that mean everyone can say that Malays are thieves?
Japan its own enemy in push to improve cybersecurity - "Mr Nawa found that five different cybersecurity contractors employed by the agency had discovered the breach — but that not one reported or shared their findings... “In the US, if they find a problem, they have to report,” he said. “The Japanese engineer feels he fails his duty if he escalates a report. They feel ashamed.”
Statistics Show Women Fare Badly in Muslim Countries, but U.N. Official Says Critics Are ‘Stereotyping’ Islam
Avoiding Last Place: Some Things We Don't Outgrow - "People near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder often oppose policies that help those below them, according to a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The phenomenon is called "last-place aversion."
People love to bash the rich for being assholes. But poor people can be assholes too
This man is painting penises on potholes so the council has to take action
These common vegetables are actually all the same plant - "Kale, collard greens, and Chinese broccoli were created by making the leaves of the ancestor plant's leaves bigger, and were the first brassica domesticated, sometime before 300 BCE. Collard greens were developed in Europe, while Chinese broccoli was domesticated in China. Red, green and savoy cabbages were created from a kale cultivar (likely the European collard greens) in the 1200s by selecting for a large terminal bud — the growing end at the top of the plant. The leaves are tightly wound around a short, wide stem (the cabbage's core). Brussels sprouts are like tiny cabbages, except they grow from the buds along the plant’s stem. They first hit the scene in the 1200s as well. Kohlrabi was created by selecting for a thicker stalk in a kale plant around the 1400s. Broccoli was created from a kale predecessor in the 1500s by selecting for the larger flower clusters, which are then harvested before they bloom. Cauliflower was developed from one of hundreds of broccoli varieties. The amazing evolution of Brassica Oleracea just goes to show: Humans have been tinkering with the genetics of our food for much longer than we've been creating what are now known as genetically modified foods, or GMOs. These new lab techniques just let us do it in a more precise and directed way."
Coliving: A Solution for Lonely Millennials? - "Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect."
The U.K. has a serious curry problem - "Immigration restrictions have created a severe shortage of chefs from South Asia. It's become an acute problem in recent years as the first generation of mostly Bangladeshi chefs who opened curry houses (as they are known in the U.K.) in the 1950s and 1960s retire from the kitchen... At least two to three curry houses are closing every week, said Oli Khan, a chef and senior vice president of the Bangladesh Caterers Association UK, which represents more than 12,000 curry houses across Britain. Khan told GlobalPost he feared the industry could "collapse" in four or five years unless the government relaxes its immigration restrictions and reduces the minimum salary requirements. While many of Britain's curry houses are family owned and operated, fewer young people are interested in taking over their parents' business when they retire... Curry houses employ roughly 150,000 people and generate 4.5 billion pounds (nearly $7 billion) in sales every year, according to Khan. In other words, it's a significant part of the British economy. Leaving the EU could be the solution, according to Paul Scully, who heads the all-party parliamentary group on the curry catering industry."
How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained - "If you were to go to southern Italy, you wouldn’t find people saying “gabagool.” But some of the old quirks of the old languages survived into the accents of Standard Italian used there. In Sicily or Calabria, you might indeed find someone ordering “mutzadell.” In their own weird way, Jersey (and New York and Rhode Island and Philadelphia) Italians are keeping the flame of their languages alive even better than Italian-Italians"
Post ID: 1998288169549925589
Halal "Nonsense"
Local halal exports hit wall in Middle East
June 1, 2006
Local halal exports hit wall in Middle East
Food that has been certified in Thailand as halal, for consumption by Muslims, has been banned by some Islamic countries due mainly to a perception by consumers in those countries that Thai halal standards are unreliable.
A food exporter yesterday revealed that Thai halal food exports had been banned in the United Arab Emirates because the halal certification appeared on "nonsense" products.
Dubai suspended some halal food exports from Thailand last month, but now the Commerce Ministry is cooperating with exporters in an attempt to solve the problem, said a source.
"Many goods were certified halal, despite it not being necessary. The problem has led to a misunderstanding by consumers," he said. "For instance, drinking water and salt exported from Thailand has been certified as halal, even though it was not necessary at all."
Somchai Virunhaphol, president of the Thai-Islamic Trade and Industrial Association, accepted that Thai halal exports were not well received by some Islamic countries.
In the Middle East, consumers are confident of Malaysian, Australian, and French halal certification more than that from Thailand, as they have clearer standards to guarantee Muslim food, he said.
He said Thai halal food was not dangerous to the point of being rejected by importing countries, but it has not been popular among consumers.
Somchai suggested the government work with halal producers to increase the food guarantee standard and strongly promote a good image for Thai products in target markets. "The government has no commitment to promoting halal food and the plan to establish Pattani as a halal-food industrial area has gone silent," he said. In addition, Somchai suggested the government launch a halal food festival to create consumer confidence in Thai food exports.
According to the Commerce Ministry, the country's food exports increased by 7 per cent to US$2.7 billion (Bt103 billion) during the first four months of the year. The ministry targets boosting export growth for the sector by 7.4 per cent this year, or a value of $9.65 billion.
Petchanet Pratruangkrai
The Nation
June 1, 2006
Local halal exports hit wall in Middle East
Food that has been certified in Thailand as halal, for consumption by Muslims, has been banned by some Islamic countries due mainly to a perception by consumers in those countries that Thai halal standards are unreliable.
A food exporter yesterday revealed that Thai halal food exports had been banned in the United Arab Emirates because the halal certification appeared on "nonsense" products.
Dubai suspended some halal food exports from Thailand last month, but now the Commerce Ministry is cooperating with exporters in an attempt to solve the problem, said a source.
"Many goods were certified halal, despite it not being necessary. The problem has led to a misunderstanding by consumers," he said. "For instance, drinking water and salt exported from Thailand has been certified as halal, even though it was not necessary at all."
Somchai Virunhaphol, president of the Thai-Islamic Trade and Industrial Association, accepted that Thai halal exports were not well received by some Islamic countries.
In the Middle East, consumers are confident of Malaysian, Australian, and French halal certification more than that from Thailand, as they have clearer standards to guarantee Muslim food, he said.
He said Thai halal food was not dangerous to the point of being rejected by importing countries, but it has not been popular among consumers.
Somchai suggested the government work with halal producers to increase the food guarantee standard and strongly promote a good image for Thai products in target markets. "The government has no commitment to promoting halal food and the plan to establish Pattani as a halal-food industrial area has gone silent," he said. In addition, Somchai suggested the government launch a halal food festival to create consumer confidence in Thai food exports.
According to the Commerce Ministry, the country's food exports increased by 7 per cent to US$2.7 billion (Bt103 billion) during the first four months of the year. The ministry targets boosting export growth for the sector by 7.4 per cent this year, or a value of $9.65 billion.
Petchanet Pratruangkrai
The Nation
Post ID: 5205681587441873504
Thursday, November 26, 2015
William Golding and Sexism
A picture I saw being circulated on Facebook:
"I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been" - William Golding
Many people were reacting approvingly (including the usual SJW, feminist, "equality" crowd). For example the original poster Totally Bound Publishing repeatedly promotes their LGBTQI fiction sister company with the slogan "Love knows no gender!"
Which was no surprise, given what "equality" and "sexism" mean (to non-"True Feminists", at any rate).
What was interesting, though, was the context in which William Golding made this sexist comment:
So perhaps he decided to be sexist against men as a pre-emptive defence against the feminists who he knew would be trying to persecute him (and this was in the 1950s).
Bonus WTF-ness:
"lord of the flies doesnt show the base human condition, it shows the base privileged straight white male condition, incredibly when i point this out people get kind of annoyed"
"I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been" - William Golding
Many people were reacting approvingly (including the usual SJW, feminist, "equality" crowd). For example the original poster Totally Bound Publishing repeatedly promotes their LGBTQI fiction sister company with the slogan "Love knows no gender!"
Which was no surprise, given what "equality" and "sexism" mean (to non-"True Feminists", at any rate).
What was interesting, though, was the context in which William Golding made this sexist comment:
Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilization, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.
So perhaps he decided to be sexist against men as a pre-emptive defence against the feminists who he knew would be trying to persecute him (and this was in the 1950s).
Bonus WTF-ness:
"lord of the flies doesnt show the base human condition, it shows the base privileged straight white male condition, incredibly when i point this out people get kind of annoyed"
Post ID: 5153511366953521049
Links - 26th November 2015
Govt detains without trial S’poreans: No outrage meh activists? - "TOC, Maruah, Vincent Wijeysingha, Rachel Zeng, Kirsten Han etc etc were all up in arms demanding justice for the manual migrant workers detained by the police after the riot. They were upset many of those detsined were then given air-tickets to move on out of S’pore, rather than sent for trial. Some had the charges withdrawn and the court granted them discharges amounting to acquittals and then were deported, while many were never charged, just deported. They demanded “due process” for these FTs, even though as someone posted on Facebook, ” Rightly or wrongly, deportation is more lenient than jail and caning.” A lot more, so is it fair to insist as the kay pohs do that the courts must be involved in “due process”? One could even argue that the govt is being easy on “alleged” rioters... I have never heard any activist say about Dan Tan, Masyhadi or any other alleged Islamic terrorist, or drug dealer... As I wrote last year: The coming deafening silence [referring to Dan Tan’s case] of the usual human rights kay pohs will tell us a lot of their prejudices: they are supportive of FT drug mules, and middle class anti-PAP activists. But not working class criminal suspects (no-one is complaining that Vui Kong’s alleged drug lord is held under ISA CLTPA) or those whom the govt alleges are Islamic radicals. Touch a FT or a middle class anti-PAP activist, and the screams will be deafening, even if it’s juz a policeman paying a home visit."
Ahmed Mohamed demands $15m compensation and written apology for homemade clock arrest
Scummy, but well played.
Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves. - "If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated... He explains that he closed up the box with a piece of cord because he didn’t want it to look suspicious. I’m curious, why would “looking suspicious” have even crossed his mind before this whole event unfolded, if he was truly showing off a hobby project, something so innocuous as an alarm clock. Why did he choose a pencil box, one that looks like a miniature briefcase no less, as an enclosure for a clock? It’s awful hard to see the clock with the case closed. On the other hand, with the case open, it’s awful dangerous to have an exposed power transformer sitting near the snooze button (unless, perhaps his invention was to stop serial-snooze-button pressers by giving them a dangerous electrical shock!)... How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies... We care about the story, but we don’t care about the actual facts. Headlines and click-bait are far more interesting than thinking for ourselves. We like to point out other any bit of perceived injustice or discrimination we can find – it’s practically a new national past-time. We like playing victim, and we like talking about victims – so much so we sometimes find victims where none really existed. We also like to find somebody to blame, even when there’s nobody at fault. We like to play social justice warrior on our Facebooks and Twitters, posting memes and headlines without digging in behind the sensationalism, winning bonus sensitivity points in the forms of likes and re-tweets. Once group-think kicks in, we rally around hash tags and start shouting moral outrage in a deafeningly loud national chorus. The media plays us like a fiddle, and we don’t even notice we’ve all been had."
The Real Story of #IStandWithAhmed - "He didn’t explain that to police, however, according to the authorities... Why was the device in English class in the first place, especially after the engineering teacher told him not to show it around? When confronted by police and his English teacher, why didn’t Mohammed just tell them to talk to the engineering teacher?... 'Officers said Ahmed was being “passive aggressive” in his answers to their questions, and didn’t have a “reasonable answer” as to what he was doing with the case. Investigators said the student told them that it was just a clock that he was messing around with. “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” said James McLellan, Irving Police'... according to the cops, Ahmed was significantly more cooperative with friendly media than with the police who came to ask some simple questions... there’s a long history of detaining science students for experiments administrators don’t understand. Homer Hickam, the subject of the movie October Sky, found himself in handcuffs during the Cold War for starting a forest fire with a rocket he built. And since September 11, such incidents have become more common. As someone who went to a Jewish high school based in Los Angeles and located next to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, police and security regularly evacuated our high school due to bomb threats. If one of the students had brought a device to school in this fashion, the student would have been detained and questioned – again, in an all-Jewish school... we don’t even need weapons to suspend students anymore: wearing an American flag at the wrong time or donning a Confederate flag t-shirt will do it... as of 2012, 62.4 percent of all anti-religious hate crimes targeted Jews; 11.6 percent targeted Muslims; as of 2013, anti-Jewish hate crimes represented 60.3 percent of all hate crimes, as opposed to just 13.7 percent for Muslims. That’s a major decline in anti-Islamic hate crimes since 2001, when 55.7 percent of hate crimes were anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim hate crimes constituted 27.2 percent of all hate crimes. So where, exactly, are all the invitations to Jewish students targeted in hate crime incidents?"
The Surprising Backstory Behind #IStandWithAhmed's 2-Time Sudanese Presidential Candidate Father - "Mohamed, who refers to himself as a sheikh, elaborated on his motivations for getting involved with Jones. “He said he agreed to serve as the defense attorney at Jones’ mock trial because the Quran teaches that Muslims should engage in peaceful dialogue with Christians,” the Seattle Times’ Annie Gowen wrote. “But there was also a more pragmatic reason. It was spring break and he wanted to take his wife and five kids to Disney World: to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ as he put it.” He also claims he didn’t know the trial– in which the Quran was “found guilty” of “crimes against humanity”– would result in the Quran actually being set on fire. According to the Seattle Times, some of Mohamed’s small group of followers asked that he no longer lead prayers, while others refused to drive for his taxi company."
Ahmed’s Dad Pushes 9/11 Conspiracy Posts, Videos on Arabic Facebook Page
Ahmed Mohamed meets Sudanese president with whom father had rivalry - "Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Sudanese-American student who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school in Texas, has met the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, a wanted war criminal who the teen’s father opposed in two presidential elections... The 71-year-old Bashir has ruled Sudan since 1989 and is wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged genocide and war crimes in Darfur."
Jeremy Corbyn backlash over views on shoot-to-kill - "Many Labour MPs were shocked after he told me he would not be happy with the police or security forces shooting to kill on our streets, casting doubt over the legality of the strike on Jihadi John, and appearing to suggest that his MPs would not be allowed to vote with their conscience on any potential military action in Syria... [Stop the War] that organisation with whom Mr Corybn has been linked for many years, suggested that the Paris attacks were vengeance for Western actions in the Middle East."
Instagram's Essena O'Neill who abandoned sponsorships appeals for financial help - "In a teary 17 minute long video posted to her new website, Ms O'Neill - who used to spend more than 50 hours a week strategically constructing an image of a beautiful, happy and carefree teen - explains why she abandoned her 'celebrity' social media status and says that without her online income she is no longer able to support herself. 'I can't afford rent right now,' she said. 'It's like I am embarrassed to admit that I need help... if this [website] is of value to you then please support me because I can't afford my own real life.' "
Malaysia’s ‘Islam’ has negative impact on Singapore, says lecturer - "Dr Nawab Osman, from Nanyang Technology University, said a puritanical mindset and intolerance has begun to seep into Singapore and Malaysia was one of the contributing factors. “Singapore is where Malaysia was about 10 years ago. The impact of Malaysia’s Islam is real. “When (well-known Malaysian preacher) Ustaz Azhar Idrus came to Singapore, 10,000 people went to his talk,” he said at the “Maqasid Shariah in a Constitutional Democracy” forum in Penang organised by G25 and think tank Penang Institute today. Speaking on Islamic revivalism and its socio-political impact, Nawab cited incidents in the island republic such as the issue of Muslim women wearing headscarves, as an indication of the shift of Islam in Singapore... “A group of people advocated for headscarves to be allowed because it is their fundamental right to profess religion. “But a few months later, the same group of people were in a wear white campaign opposing the Pink Dot annual rally by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) group. “The argument was those people should not be allowed to express their sexual orientation. That was the big contradiction. “The same people who argued for their rights to be respected, had no qualms to argue that the rights of others should be denied. That mindset is very entrenched,” he said... those who subscribe to such an ideology would criticise acts of violence and aggression against Muslims, but there would be deafening silence when terrorist acts were committed in the name of Islam."
5 Annoying Situations I Faced When Job Hunting in Singapore - "Some of you may think that expecting the interviewer have basic preparation for interview to is being “entitled and pampered”. I disagree totally. In progressive companies with a more western culture, the interviewer is expected to come prepared too. Robert Half, an American human resource consulting firm, pointed out that one of the major red flags for candidates is that the hiring manager isn’t prepared... Similarly, an article in Forbes titled 5 Ways to Spot a Bad Boss in an Interview asserted that “Regardless of his or her role in the company, the interviewer should be striving to make a good impression.”"
Asian and Western Management Styles: Which one do you prefer? - "We should definitely be careful when we encounter interviewers who have an arrogant attitude like “You are the one begging me for a job”. If someone behaves like this in a first meeting, can you imagine having to work under this person in the long run? An interview is after all a two way discussion to see if both sides are a fit for each other. People who accept such behavior as a norm often end up in companies with a toxic work culture and with bad bosses. Then again, perhaps employees with a meek and submissive personality and bosses who consider themselves as superior to others may be a good fit afterall."
Beware the assisted-suicide bomber - "it’s no longer a struggle fought out in the democratic arena; it’s now a guerrilla war. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rise of assisted-suicide bombers. These are the individuals who kill themselves in a blaze of publicity, blasting out emotional shrapnel in an effort to inflict maximum damage on those opposed to legalising assisted dying... both suicide bombers and assisted-suicide bombers are groomed. Those who doubt this should read the chilling account by Binner’s wife, Debbie, of how, having had initial qualms about her husband’s planned suicide, she was convinced that his assisted death was for the best by the director of the Eternal Spirit clinic. According to Debbie, the director asked ‘Do you want Simon to stay alive so you can have a human pet?’ She says: ‘That put me in a very difficult position. Because did I want Simon to stay alive just for me?’ Human pet? Is this really how we should view disabled people?"
SourceFed - Japan Just Issued It's First Same Sex Partnership...
Ahh... the ideology of "tolerance"
Comment: ""But don't worry, he won't be around much longer"
HAHA THIS OLD MAN STATED HIS OPINION THANK GOD HE'S GOING TO DIE
If anyone needs to die it's "Open minded" fucks like you
Stop preaching love and equality when all you do is bash and harass those that disagree with you, you sick fucks"
Students don't perform better with tech use in school: OECD - "In fact, the frequent use of computers in school is more likely to be associated with lower marks, OECD officials said."
Japan demands UN envoy retract remarks that 13% of schoolgirls involved in paid dates
Ahmed Mohamed demands $15m compensation and written apology for homemade clock arrest
Scummy, but well played.
Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves. - "If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated... He explains that he closed up the box with a piece of cord because he didn’t want it to look suspicious. I’m curious, why would “looking suspicious” have even crossed his mind before this whole event unfolded, if he was truly showing off a hobby project, something so innocuous as an alarm clock. Why did he choose a pencil box, one that looks like a miniature briefcase no less, as an enclosure for a clock? It’s awful hard to see the clock with the case closed. On the other hand, with the case open, it’s awful dangerous to have an exposed power transformer sitting near the snooze button (unless, perhaps his invention was to stop serial-snooze-button pressers by giving them a dangerous electrical shock!)... How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies... We care about the story, but we don’t care about the actual facts. Headlines and click-bait are far more interesting than thinking for ourselves. We like to point out other any bit of perceived injustice or discrimination we can find – it’s practically a new national past-time. We like playing victim, and we like talking about victims – so much so we sometimes find victims where none really existed. We also like to find somebody to blame, even when there’s nobody at fault. We like to play social justice warrior on our Facebooks and Twitters, posting memes and headlines without digging in behind the sensationalism, winning bonus sensitivity points in the forms of likes and re-tweets. Once group-think kicks in, we rally around hash tags and start shouting moral outrage in a deafeningly loud national chorus. The media plays us like a fiddle, and we don’t even notice we’ve all been had."
The Real Story of #IStandWithAhmed - "He didn’t explain that to police, however, according to the authorities... Why was the device in English class in the first place, especially after the engineering teacher told him not to show it around? When confronted by police and his English teacher, why didn’t Mohammed just tell them to talk to the engineering teacher?... 'Officers said Ahmed was being “passive aggressive” in his answers to their questions, and didn’t have a “reasonable answer” as to what he was doing with the case. Investigators said the student told them that it was just a clock that he was messing around with. “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” said James McLellan, Irving Police'... according to the cops, Ahmed was significantly more cooperative with friendly media than with the police who came to ask some simple questions... there’s a long history of detaining science students for experiments administrators don’t understand. Homer Hickam, the subject of the movie October Sky, found himself in handcuffs during the Cold War for starting a forest fire with a rocket he built. And since September 11, such incidents have become more common. As someone who went to a Jewish high school based in Los Angeles and located next to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, police and security regularly evacuated our high school due to bomb threats. If one of the students had brought a device to school in this fashion, the student would have been detained and questioned – again, in an all-Jewish school... we don’t even need weapons to suspend students anymore: wearing an American flag at the wrong time or donning a Confederate flag t-shirt will do it... as of 2012, 62.4 percent of all anti-religious hate crimes targeted Jews; 11.6 percent targeted Muslims; as of 2013, anti-Jewish hate crimes represented 60.3 percent of all hate crimes, as opposed to just 13.7 percent for Muslims. That’s a major decline in anti-Islamic hate crimes since 2001, when 55.7 percent of hate crimes were anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim hate crimes constituted 27.2 percent of all hate crimes. So where, exactly, are all the invitations to Jewish students targeted in hate crime incidents?"
The Surprising Backstory Behind #IStandWithAhmed's 2-Time Sudanese Presidential Candidate Father - "Mohamed, who refers to himself as a sheikh, elaborated on his motivations for getting involved with Jones. “He said he agreed to serve as the defense attorney at Jones’ mock trial because the Quran teaches that Muslims should engage in peaceful dialogue with Christians,” the Seattle Times’ Annie Gowen wrote. “But there was also a more pragmatic reason. It was spring break and he wanted to take his wife and five kids to Disney World: to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ as he put it.” He also claims he didn’t know the trial– in which the Quran was “found guilty” of “crimes against humanity”– would result in the Quran actually being set on fire. According to the Seattle Times, some of Mohamed’s small group of followers asked that he no longer lead prayers, while others refused to drive for his taxi company."
Ahmed’s Dad Pushes 9/11 Conspiracy Posts, Videos on Arabic Facebook Page
Ahmed Mohamed meets Sudanese president with whom father had rivalry - "Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Sudanese-American student who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school in Texas, has met the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, a wanted war criminal who the teen’s father opposed in two presidential elections... The 71-year-old Bashir has ruled Sudan since 1989 and is wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged genocide and war crimes in Darfur."
Jeremy Corbyn backlash over views on shoot-to-kill - "Many Labour MPs were shocked after he told me he would not be happy with the police or security forces shooting to kill on our streets, casting doubt over the legality of the strike on Jihadi John, and appearing to suggest that his MPs would not be allowed to vote with their conscience on any potential military action in Syria... [Stop the War] that organisation with whom Mr Corybn has been linked for many years, suggested that the Paris attacks were vengeance for Western actions in the Middle East."
Instagram's Essena O'Neill who abandoned sponsorships appeals for financial help - "In a teary 17 minute long video posted to her new website, Ms O'Neill - who used to spend more than 50 hours a week strategically constructing an image of a beautiful, happy and carefree teen - explains why she abandoned her 'celebrity' social media status and says that without her online income she is no longer able to support herself. 'I can't afford rent right now,' she said. 'It's like I am embarrassed to admit that I need help... if this [website] is of value to you then please support me because I can't afford my own real life.' "
Malaysia’s ‘Islam’ has negative impact on Singapore, says lecturer - "Dr Nawab Osman, from Nanyang Technology University, said a puritanical mindset and intolerance has begun to seep into Singapore and Malaysia was one of the contributing factors. “Singapore is where Malaysia was about 10 years ago. The impact of Malaysia’s Islam is real. “When (well-known Malaysian preacher) Ustaz Azhar Idrus came to Singapore, 10,000 people went to his talk,” he said at the “Maqasid Shariah in a Constitutional Democracy” forum in Penang organised by G25 and think tank Penang Institute today. Speaking on Islamic revivalism and its socio-political impact, Nawab cited incidents in the island republic such as the issue of Muslim women wearing headscarves, as an indication of the shift of Islam in Singapore... “A group of people advocated for headscarves to be allowed because it is their fundamental right to profess religion. “But a few months later, the same group of people were in a wear white campaign opposing the Pink Dot annual rally by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) group. “The argument was those people should not be allowed to express their sexual orientation. That was the big contradiction. “The same people who argued for their rights to be respected, had no qualms to argue that the rights of others should be denied. That mindset is very entrenched,” he said... those who subscribe to such an ideology would criticise acts of violence and aggression against Muslims, but there would be deafening silence when terrorist acts were committed in the name of Islam."
5 Annoying Situations I Faced When Job Hunting in Singapore - "Some of you may think that expecting the interviewer have basic preparation for interview to is being “entitled and pampered”. I disagree totally. In progressive companies with a more western culture, the interviewer is expected to come prepared too. Robert Half, an American human resource consulting firm, pointed out that one of the major red flags for candidates is that the hiring manager isn’t prepared... Similarly, an article in Forbes titled 5 Ways to Spot a Bad Boss in an Interview asserted that “Regardless of his or her role in the company, the interviewer should be striving to make a good impression.”"
Asian and Western Management Styles: Which one do you prefer? - "We should definitely be careful when we encounter interviewers who have an arrogant attitude like “You are the one begging me for a job”. If someone behaves like this in a first meeting, can you imagine having to work under this person in the long run? An interview is after all a two way discussion to see if both sides are a fit for each other. People who accept such behavior as a norm often end up in companies with a toxic work culture and with bad bosses. Then again, perhaps employees with a meek and submissive personality and bosses who consider themselves as superior to others may be a good fit afterall."
Beware the assisted-suicide bomber - "it’s no longer a struggle fought out in the democratic arena; it’s now a guerrilla war. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rise of assisted-suicide bombers. These are the individuals who kill themselves in a blaze of publicity, blasting out emotional shrapnel in an effort to inflict maximum damage on those opposed to legalising assisted dying... both suicide bombers and assisted-suicide bombers are groomed. Those who doubt this should read the chilling account by Binner’s wife, Debbie, of how, having had initial qualms about her husband’s planned suicide, she was convinced that his assisted death was for the best by the director of the Eternal Spirit clinic. According to Debbie, the director asked ‘Do you want Simon to stay alive so you can have a human pet?’ She says: ‘That put me in a very difficult position. Because did I want Simon to stay alive just for me?’ Human pet? Is this really how we should view disabled people?"
SourceFed - Japan Just Issued It's First Same Sex Partnership...
Ahh... the ideology of "tolerance"
Comment: ""But don't worry, he won't be around much longer"
HAHA THIS OLD MAN STATED HIS OPINION THANK GOD HE'S GOING TO DIE
If anyone needs to die it's "Open minded" fucks like you
Stop preaching love and equality when all you do is bash and harass those that disagree with you, you sick fucks"
Students don't perform better with tech use in school: OECD - "In fact, the frequent use of computers in school is more likely to be associated with lower marks, OECD officials said."
Japan demands UN envoy retract remarks that 13% of schoolgirls involved in paid dates
Post ID: 2134206056780350214
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Stan Lee on Iceman being Gay
BBC Radio 4 - Today, 18/11/2015, Stan Lee: Publisher branded Spider-Man 'the worst idea'
Stan Lee: When we started these new books, we started getting fan mail written in crayon. A little bit later the fan letters were written in pencil. Then they started coming written in ink. Then they were typed.
And we knew we were reaching older and older readers, and that made us so happy.
When I go to a comic book convention, men with beards come over to me and they have their grandchildren with em and they say, "Gee, I loved reading those stories and now my little grandson loves em." That's a very satisfying thing to hear
Host: They also of course keep up with the times. And this year we had, I think it was this year, that we had the news that Iceman had come out as gay, is that right?
Stan Lee: *pauses* *laughs* I wasn't involved in that. That may have been after I stopped writing the books.
I didn't really have any gay characters, or if they were gay, I didn't play up the fact that they were gay.
I wasn't aware of it.
I wasn't aware of my, err, characters' sexual proclivities.
In fact, your telling me that is the first that I had heard that Iceman, is Iceman really gay?
Host: Had you not heard that? It was in the New York Times last week but I think-
Stan Lee: I don't read the magazines anymore because my eyesight isn't that good and the print is so small. So people just tell me what's happening and as I say this is the first time that I learnt that Iceman is gay.
Wow. I never knew that.
I don't care what happens as long as they tell good stories.
Why is it important to know comic book characters' sexualities?
As Emma Frost tells him, "What does that have to do with this?" Perhaps this is a nod to the irony of this even coming up as an issue.
As Kirby's biographer evaluates the situation,
Stan Lee: When we started these new books, we started getting fan mail written in crayon. A little bit later the fan letters were written in pencil. Then they started coming written in ink. Then they were typed.
And we knew we were reaching older and older readers, and that made us so happy.
When I go to a comic book convention, men with beards come over to me and they have their grandchildren with em and they say, "Gee, I loved reading those stories and now my little grandson loves em." That's a very satisfying thing to hear
Host: They also of course keep up with the times. And this year we had, I think it was this year, that we had the news that Iceman had come out as gay, is that right?
Stan Lee: *pauses* *laughs* I wasn't involved in that. That may have been after I stopped writing the books.
I didn't really have any gay characters, or if they were gay, I didn't play up the fact that they were gay.
I wasn't aware of it.
I wasn't aware of my, err, characters' sexual proclivities.
In fact, your telling me that is the first that I had heard that Iceman, is Iceman really gay?
Host: Had you not heard that? It was in the New York Times last week but I think-
Stan Lee: I don't read the magazines anymore because my eyesight isn't that good and the print is so small. So people just tell me what's happening and as I say this is the first time that I learnt that Iceman is gay.
Wow. I never knew that.
I don't care what happens as long as they tell good stories.
Why is it important to know comic book characters' sexualities?
As Emma Frost tells him, "What does that have to do with this?" Perhaps this is a nod to the irony of this even coming up as an issue.
As Kirby's biographer evaluates the situation,
he saw the decision as more cynical. “The problem is when you have a character who’s been handled by so many different writers and editors over the years, people find little nuances and seize upon them, and editors say, ‘We need an event this month. Who can we maim, or kill, or out, or marry in order to create an event?’” Evanier said. “And that doesn’t always result in a bad comic book. But it’s arbitrary.”
Post ID: 4368128953194436658
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