Via Joshua Chiang - Because she was oppressed by facts. Not sure if... (I do not think the other person's comments are very interesting and anyway you can tell what they are by Joshua's responses):
"I have always, even before she came on the scene, made it clear there is Chinese hegemony which whether intentionally or not makes the system benefit Chinese people more. In fact when I was CE of TOC I felt it was an important angle to write about and had - though unsuccessfully - tried to rope in Malay and Indian writers to write about their experiences. What I had disagreed right from the start is the rhetoric of privilege and the obnoxious white-knighting ways in which Adeline Koh came along and told everyone else to shush - which reflects the very problem of privilege rhetoric in that its proponents find it very easy to deflect any valid crictisms as people speaking from a privileged position. Without realising they are using their scholarly 'privilege' to shut discourse.
Two - just because we are having this conversation, and only because I give a shit, doesn't mean that a lot of people are. What they are discussing however is how obnoxious Sangeetha is. I'm sorry to say that if she had any issues and agenda to champion, she has pretty much derailed it and made it only about her."
""A critical change is whether the issue is being discussed or not at all - and right now, more people are starting to try and understand what the fuss is all about. This, believe it or not, is progress."
Just like how Sept 11 got everyone talking about terrorism and the West's culpability in meddling in the Middle East?"
"My main objection has always been on using 'privilege' theory as a form of advocacy and Sangeetha being a terrible advocate. You think her style has led to some progress even in the discourse, I beg to differ. If anything she is totally unreliable as someone you can trust or work with; the penchant of her judging who should be her 'allies' and then turning against them is the stuff of legend among civil society circles now.
And again, you make the assumptions that we know very little of the 'unknown-knowns', since TOC days, we've already known how thick skulls are with regards to stubborn resistance to change on a whole range of issues. The whole of Singapore is NOT ready to abolish DP. It is NOT ready for LGBTQ rights. It is NOT ready for Migrant Workers' right. Heck it is NOT even ready to consider a day without the PAP.
So how? Scream and shout oppression at every damn thing? Do you see an LGBTQ advocate going around scolding straight people for 'het privilege'?"
"Dude. Don't assume. Because I can get started on your non-colorblind privilege. And then we can compete on who experiences more oppression on a daily level... Do not even assume I am not offended by your constant assumptions of my experiences... The moment u start talkimg about pain, u begin to assume I have never experienced some form of daily "oppression"... Also do not forget your experiences even if they are a result of institutionalized racism is not a universal experience - I've spoken to minorities who don't feel the way you do. So how? It doesn't mean institutionalized racism doesnt exist but we can't take your pain as a yardstick to action. And when u start making your pain the most important thing in this discussion and start going into things like oh go and be academic with people who lost a child, you are being offensive to my experiences of losing someone and knowing what it is to lose someone. I seldom bring these up because we are talking about ideas and whether this and that work. Not our own subjective pain."
"i think u need to a) check ur binary thinking b) stop mansplaining what is privilege as if I never did my research (you on the other hand appear not to know any of the criticisms against privilege theory) and c) find a safe space if you think discussing on an academic level is very triggering."
"You also need to check the microaggression. Don't forget i am technically disabled because of my color blindness."
"the only reason why you can't even address my points on grounds of logic IS because privilege theory and rhetoric has no legs to stand on. At the end the only position you can take is that of righteous outrage based on some assumed 'victim/oppressor' relationship we have and claiming my moral inferiority to yours based on the 'privilege' I have in making statements you claim offence at, claiming some pain in the unique position you know I cannot reasonably say to experience but at best approximate because hey, I am HUMAN and I know what it is like to feel hurt, rejected, insulted etc.
THAT is the shaky ground in which privilege theory has made you stand on. This chasm that I have been trying to build a bridge across but you steadfastly refuse to close because you want to claim the moral high ground that privilege theory offers you.
It's bullshit and I am sick of it.
And I'm OFFENDED. I'm offended because folks like us, we do our best to right the wrongs which we had no part in, but we're never good enough. Boy did we listen, did we listen hard, but fuck. You're just not happy unless you get some bleeding confession of guilt some fucking pound of flesh. And guess what? At the end, we folks will stand up for you - and do not presume there is no personal cost in sticking our necks out, sometimes further than what you do for yourself, and yet you'll still call us oppressors by virtue of the color of our skin, unless we acknowledge to some intellectually bankrupt theory.
But I don't think you know how that feels. This pain. Even though I'm pretty sure you know what being wronged feels like. Because hey, you're a minority. You cannot feel what I feel, right?
And since according to the same theory and reasoning, anger is a legit response, then here's my most legit response. FUCK YOU. FUCKING FUCK YOU."
"my exasperation has nothing to do with my race or yours. When we have a discourse, the only tools we bring to the table are our knowledge and our brains. Whatever class, race, gender advantage you or I have over each other, that exists in the real world, they have an impact on our lives, that's true, I have never denied that. But here, my IQ, yours, my knowledge, yours, it is not coloured by race. It should not even be coloured by experience. A discussion on a theory based in social science, however hard to empirically study compared to physical science, need necessarily be based also on more or less logical principles.
I lay it on the table, why I think privilege theory is a very bad articulation of social facts that we can agree on. You did not address the issue. You did not give me reasons why you think it is a good theory, or better than a lot of existing theories out there that studies the power relationships between groups of people, e.g. Foucault's theory of hegemony.
Instead you keep bringing the privilege card whenever you can. And then you think it's some kind of truimph when I let loose my exasperation and you're like 'hey that is exactly how we feel everyday in a racist world!" Wow. Breaking news. Like none of us have ever done thought experiments before. Like you cannot bloody see the reason why we want to make things better is because we know this anger this injustice and it is unconsciensable. But see where this goes? Nowhere. I keep saying, I see your point, I feel your burn. Do you see mine? Do you recognise the frustration of being judged everyday as some oppressor merely by the color of our skin? Maybe the injury you suffer from is a left hook to the face. The one I get is punch to the stomach. Different places, same hurt.
So we do have things in common. Pain. And the desire to improve things. But all I'm getting from you is - NO HEAR ME ROAR HEAR MY PAIN MY PAIN IS MOST IMPORTANT. Well, then where were you when I was standing alone against the police and MCYS officers taking a real risk of being arrested for getting in the way of police procedures because they want to evict a group of homeless Malays and Indians - OPPRESSED MINORITIES - from the beach?"
"you simply have no end goal, because privilege theory doesn't propose any. It's just this fuzzy thing that you think describes your situation, from your perspective, without consideration of the perspective of those you frame 'oppressors'. And instead of seeing how we can bridge that gap with those who want to, you just stand on your pedestal and shout "you won't understand one!" "
L'origine de Bert
Friday, April 29, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Being Racist by Pointing Out Racism
So-called anti-racism activists like to incredulously complain that pointing out racism is considered racist.
Well, there's a racist way to point out racism, and a non-racist way to point out racism.
Consider the two following examples:
Person A: "I applied for a job requiring you to speak Chinese. I am a Malay who speaks Chinese. I was rejected because I am Malay. Singaporean Chinese are all racist scum. They are all immigrants who should go home anyway. Better yet, they should all be sent to the gas chamber!"
Person B: "I applied for a job requiring you to speak Chinese. I am a Malay who speaks Chinese. I was rejected because I am Malay. I was a victim of racism. I am not the only non-Chinese person to which this has happened"
Person A and Person B are both pointing out racism, but clearly one is racist and the other is not (unless you adopt the whole "racism = power + privilege" doublespeak, but that's another story).
Well, there's a racist way to point out racism, and a non-racist way to point out racism.
Consider the two following examples:
Person A: "I applied for a job requiring you to speak Chinese. I am a Malay who speaks Chinese. I was rejected because I am Malay. Singaporean Chinese are all racist scum. They are all immigrants who should go home anyway. Better yet, they should all be sent to the gas chamber!"
Person B: "I applied for a job requiring you to speak Chinese. I am a Malay who speaks Chinese. I was rejected because I am Malay. I was a victim of racism. I am not the only non-Chinese person to which this has happened"
Person A and Person B are both pointing out racism, but clearly one is racist and the other is not (unless you adopt the whole "racism = power + privilege" doublespeak, but that's another story).
Post ID: 8445203188619001850
Links - 28th April 2016
Belgian intensive care doctors back involuntary euthanasia - "The Society also says that intensive care doctors should inform relatives of a decision to euthanase a patient, but it does not instruct them to ask for the relatives’ permission. The policy applies to both adults and children. Furthermore, patients do not have to be suffering; “Shortening the dying process” can actually enhance death, the statement says. The statement concludes by reassuring intensive care doctors that what they are doing is “not be interpreted as killing but as a humane act to accompany the patient at the end of his/her life... doctors need to be able to give lethal injections to shorten lives which are no longer worth living, even if the patients have not given their consent. “The first purpose of medicine is to restore or maintain health, that is, the well-being of the individual, not life at all costs,” he wrote. ”
The slippery slope has already slipped
Belgian Doctors Are Euthanizing Patients Without Their Consent - "A study published this month in the Journal of Medical Ethics examined the “deliberate” euthanasia of patients in Belgium without their explicit, voluntary consent as required by law. The study’s author, Raphael Cohen-Almagor, a professor of philosophy and ethics at the United Kingdom's Hull University, found that life-ending drugs were used “with the intention to shorten life and without explicit request” in 1.7 percent of all deaths in Belgium in 2013. In 52.7 percent of these cases, the patients were 80 years of age or older. The decision to euthanize was not discussed with the patient in 77.9 percent of the cases because he/she was comatose, had dementia, or “because discussion would have been harmful to the patient’s best interest,” according to the study... A 2010 research study conducted in Flanders revealed that only one out of every two euthanasia cases was reported to Belgium’s Federal Control and Evaluation Committee because most non-reporting physicians did not view the active hastening of their patients’ deaths as euthanasia. Unreported cases were also generally handled less carefully than reported cases and “the lethal drugs were often administered by a nurse alone, not by a physician,” the study noted. “Whether deliberately or not, the physicians were disguising the end-of-life decision as a normal medical practice,” Cohen-Almagor pointed out."
Your Brain on Sugar - "Is sugar worse for you than, say, cocaine? According to a 2012 article in the journal Nature, it's a toxic substance that should be regulated like tobacco and alcohol."
Sugar is 'addictive and the most dangerous drug of the times' - Telegraph - "Paul van der Velpen, the head of Amsterdam's health service, the Dutch capital city where the sale of cannabis is legalised, wants to see sugar tightly regulated. "Just like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is actually a drug. There is an important role for government. The use of sugar should be discouraged. And users should be made aware of the dangers," he wrote on an official public health website. "This may seem exaggerated and far-fetched, but sugar is the most dangerous drug of the times and can still be easily acquired everywhere.""
Sugar Cravings Can Be Treated—Because Sugar Addiction Is Like Any Other Drug Addiction - "If you feel bad because you simply can't help eating that next cookie, don't. Scientists have found that drugs used to treat nicotine addiction could also be used to treat sugar addiction. By treating sugar cravings as we treat other drug addictions, we can reduce sugar consumption significantly. Viewed this way, trying to quit cake and soft drinks unsupported seems as ridiculous as quitting cigarettes or alcohol by going cold turkey. A new study from the Queensland University of Technology used varenicline to treat sugar addiction. Varenicline is usually used to treat nicotine addiction, and is sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix. It does this by stimulating the body's nicotine receptors, but more weakly than nicotine. The Queensland team found that it also works to reduce sugar cravings."
Paris attacks: Visiting Molenbeek, the police no-go zone that was home to two of the gunmen - "Molenbeek has been connected to almost all of Belgium’s terrorism-related incidents in recent years... Brice De Ruyver, who spent eight years as security adviser to then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, said Molenbeek suffers from a cocktail of problems. “Youths are poorly educated, attracted by petty crime, have run-ins with police, and then there is a vicious circle, which leads to recruitment by radical groups,” he said, adding that the problems are now so serious, that it is hard to find police willing to bother tackling them. “We don’t officially have no-go zones in Brussels, but in reality, there are, and they are in Molenbeek.”"
Perhaps no-go zones are myths only in that they don't officially exist
Muslim ‘No-Go Zones’ In Europe? - "A motorcyclist and a truck then zipped ahead of us and boxed us in on a nearby highway. Sitting in the car’s front passenger seat, I was accosted and threatened by four young thugs. The city rep pleaded with them, telling them I was a visiting sociologist. They responded first with threatening comments and then by throwing a piece of concrete the size of a football through the back window. Luckily no on was injured, and they let us leave after the intimidating incident had concluded. I provided the mayor’s office with audio, video, and still photographs of the thugs and their license plates. I have kept quiet about this incident for ten months in the hopes that the French judicial system would function. As of today, however no one has been apprehended, no charges have been filed, and to my knowledge, no real investigation ever took place. This incident was the great exception to my 28 other visits to predominantly Muslim areas in Australia, North America, and Western Europe. In all of these places – call them ZUS (French: Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones): I “went” without problems, traveling sometimes alone, sometimes not, in an anonymousrental car during daylight hours wearing normal Western casual male clothing – not in a police uniform, a priest’s habit, skimpy clothing, or with a kippa... I earlier strolled through Rinkeby, a notorious district of Stockholm, on a November 2014 afternoon without encountering so much as a hostile stare; yet a local policeman has testified in reference to Rinkeby that, “If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow because we’ll get pelted by rocks and even face riots. These are no-go zones. We simply can’t go there.” How to reconcile these experiences? My visits establish that non-Muslim civilians can usually enter majority-Muslim areas without fear. But things look very different from the governmental point of view. On a routine basis, firefighters, ambulance workers, and even social workers meet with hostility and violence. For example, days after I visited the Marseille slum, its residents shot at police preparing for a visit by the prime minister of France. Thus does it and its ilk represent a no-go zone for police, a place which government representatives enter only when heavily armed, in convoys, temporarily, and with a specific mission... Whether or not Molenbeek, Rinkeby, and the Marseilles slum are no-go zones, then, depends on what aspect one choses to emphasize – their acessibility to ordinary visitors at ordinary times or their inaccessibility to government officials in times of tension. There are also no-go gradations, some places where attacks are more frequent and violent, others less so. However one sums up this complex situation – maybe partial-no-go zones? – they represent a great danger."
Why few child prodigies grow up to be geniuses - "Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society. When you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesn't suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast majority are well adjusted - as winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee. What holds them back is that they don't learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new... The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule. Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it's easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to "place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules", Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports. Even then, though, parents didn't shove their values down their children's throats... Top concert pianists didn't have elite teachers from the time they could walk; their first lessons came from instructors who happened to live nearby and made learning fun. Mozart showed interest in music before taking lessons, not the other way around. Mary Lou Williams learnt to play the piano on her own; Itzhak Perlman began teaching himself the violin after being rejected from music school. Even the best athletes didn't start out any better than their peers... Since Malcolm Gladwell popularised the "10,000-hour rule" suggesting that success depends on the time we spend in deliberate practice, debate has raged about how the number of hours necessary to become an expert varies by field and person. In arguing about that, we've overlooked two questions that matter just as much. First, can't practice itself blind us to ways to improve our area of study? Research reveals that the more we practise, the more we become entrenched - trapped in familiar ways of thinking. Expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed; expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. Second, what motivates people to practise a skill for thousands of hours? The most reliable answer is passion - discovered through natural curiosity or nurtured through early enjoyable experiences with an activity or many activities... Relative to typical scientists, Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to perform as actors, dancers or magicians; 12 times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels; seven times more likely to dabble in arts and crafts; and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music... "Love is a better teacher than a sense of duty," [Einstein] said."
Do heads of government age more quickly? Observational study comparing mortality between elected leaders and runners-up in national elections of 17 countries- "Election to head of government is associated with a substantial increase in mortality risk compared with candidates in national elections who never served."
Studies Suggest Men Handle Pain Better - "Study after study has shown that men have a higher tolerance for pain than women... "The gender-sexual-male macho thing is clearly not the only explanation for sex differences in pain," he says, because even motivated women are not better equipped to deal with pain. "If gender is playing a major role it may not be based on motivation (like the need to protect the male image.) There may be another path"... sex hormones like estrogen play a big part in how we react to pain. That finding helps explain how women, the so-called weaker sex, can deal with the excruciating pain of childbirth"
Maternity Leave: How much time off is healthiest for babies and mothers? - "very long leaves have an economic and professional downside for women, and at best a neutral effect on children. So it’s not simply that more time off is better. Rather, certain amounts of leave may give the biggest bang, while longer periods of leave may yield diminishing returns, at best... paid leave of about 40 weeks saved the most lives. (After that point, according to Ruhm, “there may even be some partial reversal of those gains”)... One study tracked Norwegian children who were born after 1977, when that country increased its paid leave from zero to four months and its unpaid leave from three to 12 months, and found that the kids born after the change had lower high school dropout rates. Military draft data, moreover, tied lengthened leaves to increases in male IQ (and height, too)."
‘Game of Thrones’ Creators Explain Why Queen Elizabeth Refused the Iron Throne - "“No, she’s not allowed to,” explained Benioff on Wednesday’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. “Apparently, the Queen of England is not allowed to sit on a foreign throne, so this is an esoteric rule we didn’t know about until that moment. It looks like we’re saying, ‘Don’t touch, Queen’”... the creators also joked about how nervous their cast members are when they call them on the phone—you know, given the show’s penchant for knocking people off willy-nilly. “The call of death is always a mutual thing,” said Weiss. “If it’s David or Dan they might be OK, and if it’s David and Dan, it’s not good.” “Sometimes we’re just calling to say, ‘Hey, do you guys want to come out for dinner?’ but as soon as they get that phone call they think we’re calling to say, ‘You’re dead,’ like it’s the Grim Reaper on the line,” added Benioff."
ST’s decision not to publish Lee Wei Ling’s commentary escalates into family feud - "If “HL” is who we think LWL is referring to, it is probably the first time that someone has criticised Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as a “dishonorable son”."
Stanford research: Political animosity exceeds racial hostility - "Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polar opposites – their political biases spill over into their social lives. Along party lines and ideology, more than even race or religion, Americans are distrustful of those who are not politically similar... "We were particularly surprised at the extent to which party politics has become a litmus test for interpersonal relations. Marriage across party lines is extremely rare"... negative stereotypes of the other party have intensified and that political affiliation is now a relevant cue for non-political decisions. Partisans are much more likely today to express reservations over the prospect of a son or daughter marrying across party lines, the study noted. Evidence from online dating sites demonstrates that even though people are far from transparent about their politics, ideology is nonetheless a powerful predictor of the dating decision... Both Democrats and Republicans selected their in-party scholarship candidate about 80 percent of the time even when the candidate from the other party had stronger academic credentials. In another study, the researchers asked 800 people to play a "trust" game, in which player 1 is given some money and told that she can give some, all, or none of it to player 2. The researchers found that race didn't matter – but party affiliation did. People gave significantly larger amounts when they were playing with someone who shared their party group identity. Iyengar suggested that – unlike race, gender or other social divides where attitudes and behavior are constrained by social norms of civility and tolerance – there are no similar pressures to temper disapproval of political opponents. People feel free to say bad things about their political opponents, he said. "If anything, the rhetoric and actions of political leaders demonstrate that hostility directed at the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate"... He said he believes that increasing political collegiality will require significant social interventions that enhance the political heterogeneity of neighborhoods and friendship groups. "What we need is greater personal contact between Republicans and Democrats""
And yet some people are still so obsessed by racism instead of what truly divides people. And continue to mercilessly and mindlessly bash "bigots", thus showing themselves to be the true bigots
The slippery slope has already slipped
Belgian Doctors Are Euthanizing Patients Without Their Consent - "A study published this month in the Journal of Medical Ethics examined the “deliberate” euthanasia of patients in Belgium without their explicit, voluntary consent as required by law. The study’s author, Raphael Cohen-Almagor, a professor of philosophy and ethics at the United Kingdom's Hull University, found that life-ending drugs were used “with the intention to shorten life and without explicit request” in 1.7 percent of all deaths in Belgium in 2013. In 52.7 percent of these cases, the patients were 80 years of age or older. The decision to euthanize was not discussed with the patient in 77.9 percent of the cases because he/she was comatose, had dementia, or “because discussion would have been harmful to the patient’s best interest,” according to the study... A 2010 research study conducted in Flanders revealed that only one out of every two euthanasia cases was reported to Belgium’s Federal Control and Evaluation Committee because most non-reporting physicians did not view the active hastening of their patients’ deaths as euthanasia. Unreported cases were also generally handled less carefully than reported cases and “the lethal drugs were often administered by a nurse alone, not by a physician,” the study noted. “Whether deliberately or not, the physicians were disguising the end-of-life decision as a normal medical practice,” Cohen-Almagor pointed out."
Your Brain on Sugar - "Is sugar worse for you than, say, cocaine? According to a 2012 article in the journal Nature, it's a toxic substance that should be regulated like tobacco and alcohol."
Sugar is 'addictive and the most dangerous drug of the times' - Telegraph - "Paul van der Velpen, the head of Amsterdam's health service, the Dutch capital city where the sale of cannabis is legalised, wants to see sugar tightly regulated. "Just like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is actually a drug. There is an important role for government. The use of sugar should be discouraged. And users should be made aware of the dangers," he wrote on an official public health website. "This may seem exaggerated and far-fetched, but sugar is the most dangerous drug of the times and can still be easily acquired everywhere.""
Sugar Cravings Can Be Treated—Because Sugar Addiction Is Like Any Other Drug Addiction - "If you feel bad because you simply can't help eating that next cookie, don't. Scientists have found that drugs used to treat nicotine addiction could also be used to treat sugar addiction. By treating sugar cravings as we treat other drug addictions, we can reduce sugar consumption significantly. Viewed this way, trying to quit cake and soft drinks unsupported seems as ridiculous as quitting cigarettes or alcohol by going cold turkey. A new study from the Queensland University of Technology used varenicline to treat sugar addiction. Varenicline is usually used to treat nicotine addiction, and is sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix. It does this by stimulating the body's nicotine receptors, but more weakly than nicotine. The Queensland team found that it also works to reduce sugar cravings."
Paris attacks: Visiting Molenbeek, the police no-go zone that was home to two of the gunmen - "Molenbeek has been connected to almost all of Belgium’s terrorism-related incidents in recent years... Brice De Ruyver, who spent eight years as security adviser to then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, said Molenbeek suffers from a cocktail of problems. “Youths are poorly educated, attracted by petty crime, have run-ins with police, and then there is a vicious circle, which leads to recruitment by radical groups,” he said, adding that the problems are now so serious, that it is hard to find police willing to bother tackling them. “We don’t officially have no-go zones in Brussels, but in reality, there are, and they are in Molenbeek.”"
Perhaps no-go zones are myths only in that they don't officially exist
Muslim ‘No-Go Zones’ In Europe? - "A motorcyclist and a truck then zipped ahead of us and boxed us in on a nearby highway. Sitting in the car’s front passenger seat, I was accosted and threatened by four young thugs. The city rep pleaded with them, telling them I was a visiting sociologist. They responded first with threatening comments and then by throwing a piece of concrete the size of a football through the back window. Luckily no on was injured, and they let us leave after the intimidating incident had concluded. I provided the mayor’s office with audio, video, and still photographs of the thugs and their license plates. I have kept quiet about this incident for ten months in the hopes that the French judicial system would function. As of today, however no one has been apprehended, no charges have been filed, and to my knowledge, no real investigation ever took place. This incident was the great exception to my 28 other visits to predominantly Muslim areas in Australia, North America, and Western Europe. In all of these places – call them ZUS (French: Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones): I “went” without problems, traveling sometimes alone, sometimes not, in an anonymousrental car during daylight hours wearing normal Western casual male clothing – not in a police uniform, a priest’s habit, skimpy clothing, or with a kippa... I earlier strolled through Rinkeby, a notorious district of Stockholm, on a November 2014 afternoon without encountering so much as a hostile stare; yet a local policeman has testified in reference to Rinkeby that, “If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow because we’ll get pelted by rocks and even face riots. These are no-go zones. We simply can’t go there.” How to reconcile these experiences? My visits establish that non-Muslim civilians can usually enter majority-Muslim areas without fear. But things look very different from the governmental point of view. On a routine basis, firefighters, ambulance workers, and even social workers meet with hostility and violence. For example, days after I visited the Marseille slum, its residents shot at police preparing for a visit by the prime minister of France. Thus does it and its ilk represent a no-go zone for police, a place which government representatives enter only when heavily armed, in convoys, temporarily, and with a specific mission... Whether or not Molenbeek, Rinkeby, and the Marseilles slum are no-go zones, then, depends on what aspect one choses to emphasize – their acessibility to ordinary visitors at ordinary times or their inaccessibility to government officials in times of tension. There are also no-go gradations, some places where attacks are more frequent and violent, others less so. However one sums up this complex situation – maybe partial-no-go zones? – they represent a great danger."
Why few child prodigies grow up to be geniuses - "Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society. When you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesn't suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast majority are well adjusted - as winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee. What holds them back is that they don't learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new... The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule. Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it's easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to "place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules", Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports. Even then, though, parents didn't shove their values down their children's throats... Top concert pianists didn't have elite teachers from the time they could walk; their first lessons came from instructors who happened to live nearby and made learning fun. Mozart showed interest in music before taking lessons, not the other way around. Mary Lou Williams learnt to play the piano on her own; Itzhak Perlman began teaching himself the violin after being rejected from music school. Even the best athletes didn't start out any better than their peers... Since Malcolm Gladwell popularised the "10,000-hour rule" suggesting that success depends on the time we spend in deliberate practice, debate has raged about how the number of hours necessary to become an expert varies by field and person. In arguing about that, we've overlooked two questions that matter just as much. First, can't practice itself blind us to ways to improve our area of study? Research reveals that the more we practise, the more we become entrenched - trapped in familiar ways of thinking. Expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed; expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. Second, what motivates people to practise a skill for thousands of hours? The most reliable answer is passion - discovered through natural curiosity or nurtured through early enjoyable experiences with an activity or many activities... Relative to typical scientists, Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to perform as actors, dancers or magicians; 12 times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels; seven times more likely to dabble in arts and crafts; and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music... "Love is a better teacher than a sense of duty," [Einstein] said."
Do heads of government age more quickly? Observational study comparing mortality between elected leaders and runners-up in national elections of 17 countries- "Election to head of government is associated with a substantial increase in mortality risk compared with candidates in national elections who never served."
Studies Suggest Men Handle Pain Better - "Study after study has shown that men have a higher tolerance for pain than women... "The gender-sexual-male macho thing is clearly not the only explanation for sex differences in pain," he says, because even motivated women are not better equipped to deal with pain. "If gender is playing a major role it may not be based on motivation (like the need to protect the male image.) There may be another path"... sex hormones like estrogen play a big part in how we react to pain. That finding helps explain how women, the so-called weaker sex, can deal with the excruciating pain of childbirth"
Maternity Leave: How much time off is healthiest for babies and mothers? - "very long leaves have an economic and professional downside for women, and at best a neutral effect on children. So it’s not simply that more time off is better. Rather, certain amounts of leave may give the biggest bang, while longer periods of leave may yield diminishing returns, at best... paid leave of about 40 weeks saved the most lives. (After that point, according to Ruhm, “there may even be some partial reversal of those gains”)... One study tracked Norwegian children who were born after 1977, when that country increased its paid leave from zero to four months and its unpaid leave from three to 12 months, and found that the kids born after the change had lower high school dropout rates. Military draft data, moreover, tied lengthened leaves to increases in male IQ (and height, too)."
‘Game of Thrones’ Creators Explain Why Queen Elizabeth Refused the Iron Throne - "“No, she’s not allowed to,” explained Benioff on Wednesday’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. “Apparently, the Queen of England is not allowed to sit on a foreign throne, so this is an esoteric rule we didn’t know about until that moment. It looks like we’re saying, ‘Don’t touch, Queen’”... the creators also joked about how nervous their cast members are when they call them on the phone—you know, given the show’s penchant for knocking people off willy-nilly. “The call of death is always a mutual thing,” said Weiss. “If it’s David or Dan they might be OK, and if it’s David and Dan, it’s not good.” “Sometimes we’re just calling to say, ‘Hey, do you guys want to come out for dinner?’ but as soon as they get that phone call they think we’re calling to say, ‘You’re dead,’ like it’s the Grim Reaper on the line,” added Benioff."
ST’s decision not to publish Lee Wei Ling’s commentary escalates into family feud - "If “HL” is who we think LWL is referring to, it is probably the first time that someone has criticised Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as a “dishonorable son”."
Stanford research: Political animosity exceeds racial hostility - "Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polar opposites – their political biases spill over into their social lives. Along party lines and ideology, more than even race or religion, Americans are distrustful of those who are not politically similar... "We were particularly surprised at the extent to which party politics has become a litmus test for interpersonal relations. Marriage across party lines is extremely rare"... negative stereotypes of the other party have intensified and that political affiliation is now a relevant cue for non-political decisions. Partisans are much more likely today to express reservations over the prospect of a son or daughter marrying across party lines, the study noted. Evidence from online dating sites demonstrates that even though people are far from transparent about their politics, ideology is nonetheless a powerful predictor of the dating decision... Both Democrats and Republicans selected their in-party scholarship candidate about 80 percent of the time even when the candidate from the other party had stronger academic credentials. In another study, the researchers asked 800 people to play a "trust" game, in which player 1 is given some money and told that she can give some, all, or none of it to player 2. The researchers found that race didn't matter – but party affiliation did. People gave significantly larger amounts when they were playing with someone who shared their party group identity. Iyengar suggested that – unlike race, gender or other social divides where attitudes and behavior are constrained by social norms of civility and tolerance – there are no similar pressures to temper disapproval of political opponents. People feel free to say bad things about their political opponents, he said. "If anything, the rhetoric and actions of political leaders demonstrate that hostility directed at the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate"... He said he believes that increasing political collegiality will require significant social interventions that enhance the political heterogeneity of neighborhoods and friendship groups. "What we need is greater personal contact between Republicans and Democrats""
And yet some people are still so obsessed by racism instead of what truly divides people. And continue to mercilessly and mindlessly bash "bigots", thus showing themselves to be the true bigots
Post ID: 463246487360165509
Divining Sangeetha Thanapal's Motivations
A post that's been removed from Wake Up, Singapore:
"Dear Sangeetha, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
--------------------------------
As a self-proclaimed 'Anti Racism Social Media Activist', it is truly astounding how you turn away the very people who can remedy the situation you endlessly expound upon.
Sangeetha and her rants have been making their rounds around social media these days quite often. Yes, racism snd does exist to an extent it may even be institutionalised, but that is no excuse for slamming the majority - especially those like the person in the exchange below who is seeking to do their bit to remedy the situation.
Sangeetha, you argue that the majority of Singaporeans are racist. From your actions over the past years, I think you are no less racist then those who you accuse. It's simply ridiculous how you claim to be a 'social media activist' yet you expose your incredibly thin-skin whenever critics arise.
I don't know if what you want to achieve by shutting the conversation is simply some 'safe spaces' and/or circlejerk. If that's the case, you shouldn't be fronting these heated issues in the first place. If anything, you're a radical for not wanting to engage naysayers, not an activist.
Sangeetha, you're the epitome of a paradoxical creature. I thank you for raising some of these issues (although I highly doubt your claims that you were the first to surface them) but I think right now, you're doing way more harm then good for the cause. Ideally, you should be encouraging debates and not building echo chambers.
And, by the way, twisting facts won't get you anywhere too. (http://gssq.blogspot.sg/…/fact-checking-sangeetha-thanapals…)
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And don't forget to take your SJW antics along with you on your way out too."
This was a response to a public thread on Sangeetha's Facebook.
And it is very telling:
Chee Siong Zhixiang: "what can be done about it?"
Sangeetha Thanapal: "Not coming here derailing and expecting minorities to come up with solutions for a problem u and ur ancestors created would be one way.
Like seriously, what kind of a person sees a minority expressing their pain and exhaustion at living here, and thinks THIS is a good time to parrot some bullshit about action. A person lacking in basic decency and compassion, that's who. This isn't a space for Chinese pple to come and mouth off. This is a space for minorities. If you don't know how to support us, shush and leave us alone."
A Chinese asks how he can help, and in return he gets flamed.
The allegedly racist state has now somehow become the fault of individual Chinese and their "ancestors". Since Sangeetha presumably doesn't know anything about Chee Siong Zhixiang (much less about his ancestors), it is telling that she is blaming him and his ancestors for everything that is wrong with this world. This certainly qualifies as racism on her part.
And given that Chee seems to be sympathetic to Sangeetha and wants to combat Chinese "racism" in Singapore, yet immediately gets tarred with this marvelously broad brush, this is a good example of the Contempt in which "Allies" are held by "Minorities".
Curiously, we note that for a self-proclaimed "Writer & Anti Racism Social Media Activist-Scholar engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore", she doesn't seem to want to do much activism or scholarship, and proclaims that "action" is "bullshit", instead preferring to wallow in her "pain".
Unsurprisingly, we see in this a perfect mirror of the Yale student who said that "I don't want to debate. I want to talk about my pain".
Sangeetha, like many SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), doesn't really want to change anything.
Instead, she just wants to revel in her victimhood and feel self-righteous and oppressed, with people cheering her along all the way. The dangerous allure of victim politics is an easy way to get into a cycle of self-indulgent emotional masturbation in a vacuum.
The original post also outlines Sangeetha's strategy for minorities:
"I have gotten to the point where I truly believe there is absolutely no point for any minority who isn't rich and desperate to assimilate into Chineseness to remain in Singapore. Minorities should be spending all their time, energy and effort on leaving.
It is the only option left for any of us who want to have any real shot at self-determination."
For a start, this betrays her political illiteracy for as Cornell advises us, self-determination is "the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order".
So unless she sees "minorities" in Singapore as people who deserve their own states, she is (again) talking rubbish.
One possibility is that she is referring to the psychological theory of motivation which is "concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways", but it would take a very charitable (and pro-active) reader to draw that link from her Facebook post which is ranting about political oppression and says little (at best) about healthy personal behavior.
Anyhow, we can see that Sangeetha doesn't believe in the ideal of Singapore as a multiracial state.
Interestingly, she is implicitly conceding that it should be a Chinese supremacist state (or at least that no one should bother trying to work against that).
Ironically, here she has much in common with the (possibly imaginary) Chinese supremacists that she so hates.
Finally, this is good news for other Singaporeans, since it looks like Singapore will be losing one of its most hateful, poisonous people in the near future.
PS: Adeline Koh likes Sangeetha's "bravery"
When an accusatory post on Facebook (and presumably accompanying comments trashing everyone you don't like) qualifies as "bravery", you know that we as a society are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
PPS: Someone approvingly talks about affirmative action in India and recommends it as "a good tool of empowerment of the marginalised people", perhaps not realising how disastrous it has been.
PPPS: "all those times they said we were family, they didn't mean you. They meant the Chinese and the Ang Moh, and even the token Malay, but not you"
I think this is called "inter-sectionality". And I suspect Alfian Sa'at might disagree.
"Dear Sangeetha, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
--------------------------------
As a self-proclaimed 'Anti Racism Social Media Activist', it is truly astounding how you turn away the very people who can remedy the situation you endlessly expound upon.
Sangeetha and her rants have been making their rounds around social media these days quite often. Yes, racism snd does exist to an extent it may even be institutionalised, but that is no excuse for slamming the majority - especially those like the person in the exchange below who is seeking to do their bit to remedy the situation.
Sangeetha, you argue that the majority of Singaporeans are racist. From your actions over the past years, I think you are no less racist then those who you accuse. It's simply ridiculous how you claim to be a 'social media activist' yet you expose your incredibly thin-skin whenever critics arise.
I don't know if what you want to achieve by shutting the conversation is simply some 'safe spaces' and/or circlejerk. If that's the case, you shouldn't be fronting these heated issues in the first place. If anything, you're a radical for not wanting to engage naysayers, not an activist.
Sangeetha, you're the epitome of a paradoxical creature. I thank you for raising some of these issues (although I highly doubt your claims that you were the first to surface them) but I think right now, you're doing way more harm then good for the cause. Ideally, you should be encouraging debates and not building echo chambers.
And, by the way, twisting facts won't get you anywhere too. (http://gssq.blogspot.sg/…/fact-checking-sangeetha-thanapals…)
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And don't forget to take your SJW antics along with you on your way out too."
This was a response to a public thread on Sangeetha's Facebook.
And it is very telling:
Chee Siong Zhixiang: "what can be done about it?"
Sangeetha Thanapal: "Not coming here derailing and expecting minorities to come up with solutions for a problem u and ur ancestors created would be one way.
Like seriously, what kind of a person sees a minority expressing their pain and exhaustion at living here, and thinks THIS is a good time to parrot some bullshit about action. A person lacking in basic decency and compassion, that's who. This isn't a space for Chinese pple to come and mouth off. This is a space for minorities. If you don't know how to support us, shush and leave us alone."
A Chinese asks how he can help, and in return he gets flamed.
The allegedly racist state has now somehow become the fault of individual Chinese and their "ancestors". Since Sangeetha presumably doesn't know anything about Chee Siong Zhixiang (much less about his ancestors), it is telling that she is blaming him and his ancestors for everything that is wrong with this world. This certainly qualifies as racism on her part.
And given that Chee seems to be sympathetic to Sangeetha and wants to combat Chinese "racism" in Singapore, yet immediately gets tarred with this marvelously broad brush, this is a good example of the Contempt in which "Allies" are held by "Minorities".
Curiously, we note that for a self-proclaimed "Writer & Anti Racism Social Media Activist-Scholar engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore", she doesn't seem to want to do much activism or scholarship, and proclaims that "action" is "bullshit", instead preferring to wallow in her "pain".
Unsurprisingly, we see in this a perfect mirror of the Yale student who said that "I don't want to debate. I want to talk about my pain".
Sangeetha, like many SJWs (Social Justice Warriors), doesn't really want to change anything.
Instead, she just wants to revel in her victimhood and feel self-righteous and oppressed, with people cheering her along all the way. The dangerous allure of victim politics is an easy way to get into a cycle of self-indulgent emotional masturbation in a vacuum.
The original post also outlines Sangeetha's strategy for minorities:
"I have gotten to the point where I truly believe there is absolutely no point for any minority who isn't rich and desperate to assimilate into Chineseness to remain in Singapore. Minorities should be spending all their time, energy and effort on leaving.
It is the only option left for any of us who want to have any real shot at self-determination."
For a start, this betrays her political illiteracy for as Cornell advises us, self-determination is "the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order".
So unless she sees "minorities" in Singapore as people who deserve their own states, she is (again) talking rubbish.
One possibility is that she is referring to the psychological theory of motivation which is "concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways", but it would take a very charitable (and pro-active) reader to draw that link from her Facebook post which is ranting about political oppression and says little (at best) about healthy personal behavior.
Anyhow, we can see that Sangeetha doesn't believe in the ideal of Singapore as a multiracial state.
Interestingly, she is implicitly conceding that it should be a Chinese supremacist state (or at least that no one should bother trying to work against that).
Ironically, here she has much in common with the (possibly imaginary) Chinese supremacists that she so hates.
Finally, this is good news for other Singaporeans, since it looks like Singapore will be losing one of its most hateful, poisonous people in the near future.
PS: Adeline Koh likes Sangeetha's "bravery"
When an accusatory post on Facebook (and presumably accompanying comments trashing everyone you don't like) qualifies as "bravery", you know that we as a society are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
PPS: Someone approvingly talks about affirmative action in India and recommends it as "a good tool of empowerment of the marginalised people", perhaps not realising how disastrous it has been.
PPPS: "all those times they said we were family, they didn't mean you. They meant the Chinese and the Ang Moh, and even the token Malay, but not you"
I think this is called "inter-sectionality". And I suspect Alfian Sa'at might disagree.
Post ID: 413136915324475621
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Links - 26th April 2016
The Office Workers Left Behind by the Casual Dress Revolution - "Despite relaxed dress code standards across a variety of fields, the jeans and t-shirt lifestyle never infiltrated such professional industries as accounting and banking. Dress-down days first popped up in the '90s and became an "everyday thing" by the end of the decade—but only for a certain set of office workers. For the last 15 years, the chunk of employers that allow casual dress has hovered steady at around 62 percent, according to yearly surveys by the Society of Human Resources... only 36 percent of employers offer casual dress opportunities more than one day a week. Client-service-heavy fields such as accounting and consulting have held out, in part because of the nature of the work. "The overwhelming majority [of people] that are coming in to get your guidance on taxes—they look at you, and if you're wearing an $800 dollar suit, they think: She must know something,"said Edward Yost, a human relations business partner at SHRM. Like many perks, the freedom to wear jeans is a recruiting play. Crowe boasts that it's the only accounting firm in the top 10 that has gone casual. The firm plans to showcase its video at recruitment fairs on college campuses... Higher-ups were advised to embrace the policy to set an example. "I showed up in blue jeans the first day," said Cama. "If you wear it, they will"... Crowe's employees like having the option to wear jeans more than they like wearing them in actuality. They describe it as liberating... Some senior employees at Crowe still think workers should dress formally every day, said Cama. Messages have gone out to partners emphasizing the importance of accepting the policy. "You can't make people feel bad if they don't wear a suit," said Cama. Some people believe that how workers dress affects their output, and some evidence supports that view. While one study found that those who wore doctor's lab coats performed better on a test than those who didn't, it's not clear that this confers advantages on those working in a suit in front of a computer. Another study found that wearing a suit makes people think more expansively, rather than paying too much attention to detail—not necessarily a good thing for number crunchers"
Small French Town Resistant to Change Name From ‘Death to Jews’ - "A Jewish group has petitioned to change the name of La-mort-aux-Juifs... the deputy mayor of Courtemaux, the village of 289 people that oversees the contested hamlet, is resistant to a name change, arguing that the tradition should be respected. “It’s ridiculous. This name has always existed,” Marie-Elizabeth Secretand told AFP. “No one has anything against the Jews, of course. It doesn’t surprise me that this is coming up again. Why change a name that goes back to the Middle Ages or even further? We should respect these old names.”... a Spanish town called Castrillo Matajudios (Little Hill Fort of Jew Killers) changed its name to Mota de Judios (Hill of the Jews)."
Venezuela is switching to a 3-day weekend in a desperate bid to save electricity - "Friday will be a holiday for all public sector employees for the duration of April and May... critics of the three-day weekend say enforcing a day off work – along with a not-too-subtle implication to raise productivity levels to make up for the 'holiday' shortfall – doesn't make sense"
ADF Celebrity Muslim Mona Shindy wants a PA, media advisor, a diary manager, more "high impact" speaking gigs and much more - "Mona now needs:
extra security,
an investigation to find the people who are saying nasty things about her,
the RAN to give her legal advice about her rights to take action against people she doesn't like,
more public speaking gigs
a Comms Strategy (as discussed with the Chief of Navy)
a Mona-Shindy dedicated media/communications savvy personal assistant (as discussed with the Chief of Navy)
help in selecting high-impact speaking engagements for Mona's Message
assistance with speech writing and effective messaging
help managing her diary to balance work commitments and Mona's personal well-being
protection for Mona's personal and professional interests when it comes to managing Mona as a "commodity"
help addressing the inevitable "vitriol" that comes with being Mona"
Muslim Navy officer Captain Mona Shindy silenced after controversial tweets - "A senior Muslim navy officer has been counselled and her Twitter account shut down after she tweeted controversial views concerning Islamic extremism and then prime minister Tony Abbott."
Sikhism Religion of the Sikh People - "What is Jhatka Meat and Why?
Jhatka meat is meat in which the animal has been killed quickly without suffering or religious ritual.
Sikhism, A Complete Introduction, Dr. H.S.Singha & Satwant Kaur, Hemkunt Press
We must give the rationale behind prescribing jhatka meat as the approved food for the Sikhs. According to the ancient Aryan Hindu tradition, only such meat as is obtained from an animal which is killed with one stroke of the weapon causing instantaneous death is fit for human consumption. However, with the coming of Islam into India and the Muslim political hegemony, it became a state policy not to permit slaughter of animals for food, in any other manner, except as laid down in the Quran - the kosher meat prepared by slowly severing the main blood artery of the throat of the animal while reciting verses from the Quran. It is done to make slaughter a sacrifice to God and to expiate the sins of the slaughter. Guru Gobind Singh took a rather serious view of this aspect of the whole matter. He, therefore, while permitting flesh to be taken as food repudiated the whole theory of this expiatory sacrifice and the right of ruling Muslims to impose iton the non-Muslims. Accordingly, he made jhatka meat obligatory for those Sikhs who may be interested in taking meat as a part of their food.
Sikhs and Sikhism, Dr. I.J.Singh, Manohar Publishers.
And one semitic practice clearly rejected in the Sikh code of conduct is eating flesh of an animal cooked in ritualistic manner; this would mean kosher and halal meat. The reason again does not lie in religious tenet but in the view that killing an animal with a prayer is not going to enoble the flesh. No ritual, whoever conducts it, is going to do any good either to the animal or to the diner. Let man do what he must to assuage his hunger. If what he gets, he puts to good use and shares with the needy, then it is well used and well spent, otherwise not."
Islamophobia!
Mara offers 50% discount on study loans for students who failed - "Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara) announced a 50% discount to Mara Education Loan borrowers who failed to make the grade in their respective fields, said its chairman Tan Sri Annuar Musa. Annuar said the offer was given to students who fail to complete their studies for whatever reason, including those facing legal action in court, regarding the loan."
People respond to incentives. Malaysia Boleh!
Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...) - "Mp3tag v2.75 cannot be used in a military domain or in a similar domain (Weapon creation, armament, etc.)."
Ho Ching’s Korea holiday Facebook posts are veritable poetry
Is Singapore A Racist Country? — Iwani - "Prejudice is when old men think it's appropriate to ask if you're a 'negro like Michelle Obama.'
Prejudice is when you realise that the grumpy and rude auntie serving you is perfectly pleasant to everyone else before and after you.
Prejudice is in the slip of the tongue, when even the friendliest of faces equate blackness to violence, theft, corruption and crude behaviour.
Prejudice is when complete strangers see you as a novelty, and poke you and prod you and pull your hair on the MRT without ever asking.
Prejudice is when 'You're not that type of black ah. You're the good kind of black,' is meant as a compliment."
What if a Singaporean SJW told someone 'You're not that type of Chinese. You're the good kind of Chinese'?
George Orwell, the prophet of political correctness, does not belong to the Left – Telegraph Blogs - "the BBC has blocked a statue of Orwell on the grounds that he was too “Left-wing”... Orwell came to accurately foresee the prevailing mode of thinking, a set of ideas that is generally called “political correctness”. PC, for want of a better expression, describes a set of acceptable beliefs, outside of which it is not permitted to step – and that has been a very significant development. As Orwell wrote in 1984: ‘The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.’ One only has to look at how words such as “elitist” or “discrimination” have been altered since Orwell’s death to see how changing the meaning of a word can make the terrain of debate very difficult for one side... That’s why today Orwell, and in particular his final work, is quoted far more by the Right than the Left, and why you’ll find few objections to a statue from conservatives. Perhaps that's not the real reason, and the Beeb are just saving the spot for Antonio Gramsci."
How my disabled son has changed my mind about political correctness - "I have just tried an experiment. I wondered whether I could write down some of these terms, but I found myself more or less physically incapable of doing so. The thought that the keyboard at my fingers could utter those words made me feel slightly sick."
Freedom is Slavery
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 153 - Dr. Vinay Prasad on "Why so much of what we 'know' about medicine is wrong" - "probably about a third of practices were really based on robust evidence. They found about 15% of what we were doing has really been contradicted, but yet we haven't abandoned it. They found about 50% of what we're doing, there's just no data for... not many people have really looked at the effects of rationality training yet even to the extent that it has been studied. We did one small RCT a couple of years ago where we had 20 people come to our workshop and 20 people, a statistically identical control group, not come to the workshop. Then, we tested them before and then a year later where the treatment group had come to the workshop and the control group didn't. We looked at a bunch of outcomes to see if they were different. You might look at, say, money. Does learning rationality make you more effective at earning money? You might think that should be related. It seems like it should be probably, but we found no effect... even 7, 8 years afterwards, people were citing the original '81 beta carotene paper at very high rates. And he looked through those citations, and it's not cited to say, "Hey, look how we got it wrong." It's cited to say, "Look, beta carotene still remains promising." There is a lag time. It's probably around a decade... Many things that do work also we have very little idea how they even work at all. For instance, inhaled gases for anesthesia. Even to this day, we really don't know why they knock people out, yet many of cancer drugs are very intelligently designed. The more you study medical history, you just keep seeing the role serendipity plays, in terms of a drug that you thought interrupted one protein. It was given randomly to a bunch of patients, and some other people responded. Then later they started to look, like, "Well, what was it about them that responded?" Then, they discovered a different protein that actually worked on."
France declared war on prostitution, but not on prostitutes - "in the wake of Wednesday's decision, there was a protest against the law outside the National Assembly -- a protest by French prostitutes themselves... The protest highlighted something subtle but unavoidable: the quiet but permanent awkwardness -- some would say hypocrisy -- behind the French government's morality crusade against prostitution. If the current administration would like sex workers to disappear, the inconvenient truth for its members is that they will have to legislate and police the entirety of French cultural history, a terrain in which the courtesan is a celebrated, even vaunted, figure. In real life, there was Madam du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV ultimately sent to the guillotine in 1793: today, any objet d'art whose provenance can be traced from her private collection immensely increases its value... These figures are so ubiquitous that the Musée d'Orsay, one of the nation's premier museums a few blocks from the National Assembly, just closed in January 2016 "the first major show on the subject of prostitution." The Musée d'Orsay is a national museum, and thus it would seem that the prostitute is an important piece of French national heritage. Will this new law apply retroactively to Madame du Barry?"
A historical perspective on the word 'Keling' - "none of these examples of the use of the word or references to 'kelings' - from the Sejarah Melayu in the 16th century down to the British travelogues of the 19th century - were in any way used in any derogatory sense or intended as racial slurs. It was simply a word to describe the people of South India or their descendants in the Peninsula. I personally would hate to see a word that has come down to us over the centuries and used in the epics of Malay literature to be suddenly struck out of our vocabulary in classic Orwellian 'new-speak' style - just because some people might think it is a quick-fix solution to address racism towards Malaysians of Indian descent. I realize myself that many people do use the word 'keling' in a derogatory manner and I deplore the use of terms such as 'keling mabuk todi' or 'keling karam' - but I doubt if 'India mabuk todi' or 'India karam' would be deemed less of a racial slur. Banning a word is futile if you don't address the racism - institutional or otherwise - behind its derogatory use. And that is by far a more challenging task than striking a word out of our dictionary."
FRENCH FOOTPRINTS: The Sinister Clog-Makers of Bethmale - "When the Saracens invaded the south of France and the Pyrénées in the 9th century, during their occupation of the village of Bethmale the son of the invaders' chief fell in love with a local maiden named Esclarlys, which means 'luminous white lily'. Despite being engaged to a local boy named Danert, the girl welcomed the attentions of her new suitor. The young men of the village took to the mountains plotting revenge on the invaders. But while they fashioned weapons, Darnert carved clogs with long thin spiky toes. The other men mocked him, but Darnert just kept whittling away. One night the villagers swooped down and attacked the sleeping Saracens. Next morning Darnert was walking around in his strange footwear. Each spike was embellished with something red and shiny wet. On his left clog dripped the heart of the faithless luminous white lily, and on the right the heart of the chief's son. It's been a custom ever since for Bethmale's young men to give their lady loves at Christmas a pair of spiky-toed clogs decorated with a heart made from golden nail-heads"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Memories of Murder - "This was not fighting. This was ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing. was not a term coined by the foreign media. It is the phrase the Bosnian Serbs themselves used to describe what they were doing...
[On a HK private kitchen] There's always an element of competition between tables. As one of Susan friend noted, on any given day, there is only one best crab"
The United States of Cory Booker - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "I’m so proud that I’ve got bills and amendments passed with everybody from Ted Cruz to Chairman Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the EPW committee who famously brought a snowball to the Senate floor. I’ve found friendships in unexpected places, a genuine goodness in folks that I would not have discovered if I labeled them as Tea-Party or Republican, but I found that common ground and it’s resulted in some good things."
The Christian militia fighting IS - "And then the man himself arrives with a small entourage, most of them in suits but one young man with a wispy beard is in military clothing. I'm not sure how seriously to take Kildani. The militias have persuaded the central government to cover their expenses and as a result they are, taken altogether, receiving about $1.4bn (£1bn) a year. For a militia leader like Kildani it's more than $600 (£450) per man per month. Good money. There are stories about people renting a house in Baghdad, gathering a few people together, announcing they have formed a militia and going to the government to apply for the funds"
Yes, the American Economy Is in a Funk — But Not for the Reasons You Think - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "GORDON: We had virtually no progress in human life between the Roman Empire and the late Middle Ages. Studies of England, where they have some of the best data and statistics, show that over 400 years between 1300 and 1700, economic growth was only at a rate of 0.2 percent a year. And to put that into concrete terms, something growing that slowly, at 0.2 percent, requires 350 years to double."
Small French Town Resistant to Change Name From ‘Death to Jews’ - "A Jewish group has petitioned to change the name of La-mort-aux-Juifs... the deputy mayor of Courtemaux, the village of 289 people that oversees the contested hamlet, is resistant to a name change, arguing that the tradition should be respected. “It’s ridiculous. This name has always existed,” Marie-Elizabeth Secretand told AFP. “No one has anything against the Jews, of course. It doesn’t surprise me that this is coming up again. Why change a name that goes back to the Middle Ages or even further? We should respect these old names.”... a Spanish town called Castrillo Matajudios (Little Hill Fort of Jew Killers) changed its name to Mota de Judios (Hill of the Jews)."
Venezuela is switching to a 3-day weekend in a desperate bid to save electricity - "Friday will be a holiday for all public sector employees for the duration of April and May... critics of the three-day weekend say enforcing a day off work – along with a not-too-subtle implication to raise productivity levels to make up for the 'holiday' shortfall – doesn't make sense"
ADF Celebrity Muslim Mona Shindy wants a PA, media advisor, a diary manager, more "high impact" speaking gigs and much more - "Mona now needs:
extra security,
an investigation to find the people who are saying nasty things about her,
the RAN to give her legal advice about her rights to take action against people she doesn't like,
more public speaking gigs
a Comms Strategy (as discussed with the Chief of Navy)
a Mona-Shindy dedicated media/communications savvy personal assistant (as discussed with the Chief of Navy)
help in selecting high-impact speaking engagements for Mona's Message
assistance with speech writing and effective messaging
help managing her diary to balance work commitments and Mona's personal well-being
protection for Mona's personal and professional interests when it comes to managing Mona as a "commodity"
help addressing the inevitable "vitriol" that comes with being Mona"
Muslim Navy officer Captain Mona Shindy silenced after controversial tweets - "A senior Muslim navy officer has been counselled and her Twitter account shut down after she tweeted controversial views concerning Islamic extremism and then prime minister Tony Abbott."
Sikhism Religion of the Sikh People - "What is Jhatka Meat and Why?
Jhatka meat is meat in which the animal has been killed quickly without suffering or religious ritual.
Sikhism, A Complete Introduction, Dr. H.S.Singha & Satwant Kaur, Hemkunt Press
We must give the rationale behind prescribing jhatka meat as the approved food for the Sikhs. According to the ancient Aryan Hindu tradition, only such meat as is obtained from an animal which is killed with one stroke of the weapon causing instantaneous death is fit for human consumption. However, with the coming of Islam into India and the Muslim political hegemony, it became a state policy not to permit slaughter of animals for food, in any other manner, except as laid down in the Quran - the kosher meat prepared by slowly severing the main blood artery of the throat of the animal while reciting verses from the Quran. It is done to make slaughter a sacrifice to God and to expiate the sins of the slaughter. Guru Gobind Singh took a rather serious view of this aspect of the whole matter. He, therefore, while permitting flesh to be taken as food repudiated the whole theory of this expiatory sacrifice and the right of ruling Muslims to impose iton the non-Muslims. Accordingly, he made jhatka meat obligatory for those Sikhs who may be interested in taking meat as a part of their food.
Sikhs and Sikhism, Dr. I.J.Singh, Manohar Publishers.
And one semitic practice clearly rejected in the Sikh code of conduct is eating flesh of an animal cooked in ritualistic manner; this would mean kosher and halal meat. The reason again does not lie in religious tenet but in the view that killing an animal with a prayer is not going to enoble the flesh. No ritual, whoever conducts it, is going to do any good either to the animal or to the diner. Let man do what he must to assuage his hunger. If what he gets, he puts to good use and shares with the needy, then it is well used and well spent, otherwise not."
Islamophobia!
Mara offers 50% discount on study loans for students who failed - "Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara) announced a 50% discount to Mara Education Loan borrowers who failed to make the grade in their respective fields, said its chairman Tan Sri Annuar Musa. Annuar said the offer was given to students who fail to complete their studies for whatever reason, including those facing legal action in court, regarding the loan."
People respond to incentives. Malaysia Boleh!
Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...) - "Mp3tag v2.75 cannot be used in a military domain or in a similar domain (Weapon creation, armament, etc.)."
Ho Ching’s Korea holiday Facebook posts are veritable poetry
Is Singapore A Racist Country? — Iwani - "Prejudice is when old men think it's appropriate to ask if you're a 'negro like Michelle Obama.'
Prejudice is when you realise that the grumpy and rude auntie serving you is perfectly pleasant to everyone else before and after you.
Prejudice is in the slip of the tongue, when even the friendliest of faces equate blackness to violence, theft, corruption and crude behaviour.
Prejudice is when complete strangers see you as a novelty, and poke you and prod you and pull your hair on the MRT without ever asking.
Prejudice is when 'You're not that type of black ah. You're the good kind of black,' is meant as a compliment."
What if a Singaporean SJW told someone 'You're not that type of Chinese. You're the good kind of Chinese'?
George Orwell, the prophet of political correctness, does not belong to the Left – Telegraph Blogs - "the BBC has blocked a statue of Orwell on the grounds that he was too “Left-wing”... Orwell came to accurately foresee the prevailing mode of thinking, a set of ideas that is generally called “political correctness”. PC, for want of a better expression, describes a set of acceptable beliefs, outside of which it is not permitted to step – and that has been a very significant development. As Orwell wrote in 1984: ‘The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.’ One only has to look at how words such as “elitist” or “discrimination” have been altered since Orwell’s death to see how changing the meaning of a word can make the terrain of debate very difficult for one side... That’s why today Orwell, and in particular his final work, is quoted far more by the Right than the Left, and why you’ll find few objections to a statue from conservatives. Perhaps that's not the real reason, and the Beeb are just saving the spot for Antonio Gramsci."
How my disabled son has changed my mind about political correctness - "I have just tried an experiment. I wondered whether I could write down some of these terms, but I found myself more or less physically incapable of doing so. The thought that the keyboard at my fingers could utter those words made me feel slightly sick."
Freedom is Slavery
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 153 - Dr. Vinay Prasad on "Why so much of what we 'know' about medicine is wrong" - "probably about a third of practices were really based on robust evidence. They found about 15% of what we were doing has really been contradicted, but yet we haven't abandoned it. They found about 50% of what we're doing, there's just no data for... not many people have really looked at the effects of rationality training yet even to the extent that it has been studied. We did one small RCT a couple of years ago where we had 20 people come to our workshop and 20 people, a statistically identical control group, not come to the workshop. Then, we tested them before and then a year later where the treatment group had come to the workshop and the control group didn't. We looked at a bunch of outcomes to see if they were different. You might look at, say, money. Does learning rationality make you more effective at earning money? You might think that should be related. It seems like it should be probably, but we found no effect... even 7, 8 years afterwards, people were citing the original '81 beta carotene paper at very high rates. And he looked through those citations, and it's not cited to say, "Hey, look how we got it wrong." It's cited to say, "Look, beta carotene still remains promising." There is a lag time. It's probably around a decade... Many things that do work also we have very little idea how they even work at all. For instance, inhaled gases for anesthesia. Even to this day, we really don't know why they knock people out, yet many of cancer drugs are very intelligently designed. The more you study medical history, you just keep seeing the role serendipity plays, in terms of a drug that you thought interrupted one protein. It was given randomly to a bunch of patients, and some other people responded. Then later they started to look, like, "Well, what was it about them that responded?" Then, they discovered a different protein that actually worked on."
France declared war on prostitution, but not on prostitutes - "in the wake of Wednesday's decision, there was a protest against the law outside the National Assembly -- a protest by French prostitutes themselves... The protest highlighted something subtle but unavoidable: the quiet but permanent awkwardness -- some would say hypocrisy -- behind the French government's morality crusade against prostitution. If the current administration would like sex workers to disappear, the inconvenient truth for its members is that they will have to legislate and police the entirety of French cultural history, a terrain in which the courtesan is a celebrated, even vaunted, figure. In real life, there was Madam du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV ultimately sent to the guillotine in 1793: today, any objet d'art whose provenance can be traced from her private collection immensely increases its value... These figures are so ubiquitous that the Musée d'Orsay, one of the nation's premier museums a few blocks from the National Assembly, just closed in January 2016 "the first major show on the subject of prostitution." The Musée d'Orsay is a national museum, and thus it would seem that the prostitute is an important piece of French national heritage. Will this new law apply retroactively to Madame du Barry?"
A historical perspective on the word 'Keling' - "none of these examples of the use of the word or references to 'kelings' - from the Sejarah Melayu in the 16th century down to the British travelogues of the 19th century - were in any way used in any derogatory sense or intended as racial slurs. It was simply a word to describe the people of South India or their descendants in the Peninsula. I personally would hate to see a word that has come down to us over the centuries and used in the epics of Malay literature to be suddenly struck out of our vocabulary in classic Orwellian 'new-speak' style - just because some people might think it is a quick-fix solution to address racism towards Malaysians of Indian descent. I realize myself that many people do use the word 'keling' in a derogatory manner and I deplore the use of terms such as 'keling mabuk todi' or 'keling karam' - but I doubt if 'India mabuk todi' or 'India karam' would be deemed less of a racial slur. Banning a word is futile if you don't address the racism - institutional or otherwise - behind its derogatory use. And that is by far a more challenging task than striking a word out of our dictionary."
FRENCH FOOTPRINTS: The Sinister Clog-Makers of Bethmale - "When the Saracens invaded the south of France and the Pyrénées in the 9th century, during their occupation of the village of Bethmale the son of the invaders' chief fell in love with a local maiden named Esclarlys, which means 'luminous white lily'. Despite being engaged to a local boy named Danert, the girl welcomed the attentions of her new suitor. The young men of the village took to the mountains plotting revenge on the invaders. But while they fashioned weapons, Darnert carved clogs with long thin spiky toes. The other men mocked him, but Darnert just kept whittling away. One night the villagers swooped down and attacked the sleeping Saracens. Next morning Darnert was walking around in his strange footwear. Each spike was embellished with something red and shiny wet. On his left clog dripped the heart of the faithless luminous white lily, and on the right the heart of the chief's son. It's been a custom ever since for Bethmale's young men to give their lady loves at Christmas a pair of spiky-toed clogs decorated with a heart made from golden nail-heads"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Memories of Murder - "This was not fighting. This was ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing. was not a term coined by the foreign media. It is the phrase the Bosnian Serbs themselves used to describe what they were doing...
[On a HK private kitchen] There's always an element of competition between tables. As one of Susan friend noted, on any given day, there is only one best crab"
The United States of Cory Booker - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "I’m so proud that I’ve got bills and amendments passed with everybody from Ted Cruz to Chairman Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the EPW committee who famously brought a snowball to the Senate floor. I’ve found friendships in unexpected places, a genuine goodness in folks that I would not have discovered if I labeled them as Tea-Party or Republican, but I found that common ground and it’s resulted in some good things."
The Christian militia fighting IS - "And then the man himself arrives with a small entourage, most of them in suits but one young man with a wispy beard is in military clothing. I'm not sure how seriously to take Kildani. The militias have persuaded the central government to cover their expenses and as a result they are, taken altogether, receiving about $1.4bn (£1bn) a year. For a militia leader like Kildani it's more than $600 (£450) per man per month. Good money. There are stories about people renting a house in Baghdad, gathering a few people together, announcing they have formed a militia and going to the government to apply for the funds"
Yes, the American Economy Is in a Funk — But Not for the Reasons You Think - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "GORDON: We had virtually no progress in human life between the Roman Empire and the late Middle Ages. Studies of England, where they have some of the best data and statistics, show that over 400 years between 1300 and 1700, economic growth was only at a rate of 0.2 percent a year. And to put that into concrete terms, something growing that slowly, at 0.2 percent, requires 350 years to double."
Post ID: 6935286274551827258
On Modernity and Subjectivity
"If Hamlet is to be interesting to a really modern reader, it must first be translated into the language of Marx or of Freud, or better still, into a jargon inconsistently compounded of both. I read some years ago a contemptuous review of a book by Santayana, mentioning an essay on Hamlet ‘dated, in every sense, 1908’ – as if what has been discovered since then made any earlier appreciation of Shakespeare irrelevant and comparatively superficial. It did not occur to the reviewer that his review was ‘dated, in every sense, 1936.’ Or perhaps this thought did occur to him, and filled him with satisfaction. He was writing for the moment, not for all time; next year he will have adopted the new fashion in opinions, whatever it may be, and he no doubt hopes to remain up to date as long as he continues to write. Any other ideal for a writer would seem absurd and old-fashioned to the modern-minded man...
The desire to be contemporary is of course new only in degree; it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be progressive. The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the heroic couplet... But in none of these former times was the contempt for the past nearly as complete as it is now. From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages; my mother, for all her belief in nineteenth-century progress, constantly read Shakespeare and Milton. It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has been fashionable to ignore the past en bloc...
Throughout the nineteenth century the True, the Good and the Beautiful preserved their precarious existence in the minds of earnest atheists. But in their very earnestness was their undoing, since it made it impossible for them to stop at a halfway house. Pragmatists explained that Truth is what it pays to believe. Historians of morals reduced the Good to a matter of tribal custom. Beauty was abolished by the artists in a revolt against the sugary insipidities of a philistine epoch and in a mood of fury in which satisfaction is to be derived only from what hurts. And so the world was swept clear not only of God as a person but of God’s essence as an ideal to which man owed an ideal allegiance; while the individual, as a result of a crude and uncritical interpretation of sound doctrines, was left without any inner defence against social pressure.
All movements go too far, and this is certainly true of the movement toward subjectivity, which began with Luther and Descartes as an assertion of the individual and has culminated by an inherent logic in his complete subjection. The subjectivity of truth is a hasty doctrine not validly deducible from the premises which have been thought to imply it; and the habits of centuries have made many things seem dependent on theological belief which are not so. Men lived with one kind of illusion, and when they lost it they fell into another. But it is not by old error that new error can be combated. Detachment and objectivity, both in thought and feeling, have been historically but not logically associated with certain traditional beliefs; to preserve them without these beliefs is both possible and important. A certain degree of isolation both in space and time is essential to generate the independence required for the most important work; there must be something which is felt to be of more importance than the admiration of the contemporary crowd. We are suffering not from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of solitude."
--- On Being Modern-Minded in Unpopular Essays / Bertrand Russell
The desire to be contemporary is of course new only in degree; it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be progressive. The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the heroic couplet... But in none of these former times was the contempt for the past nearly as complete as it is now. From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages; my mother, for all her belief in nineteenth-century progress, constantly read Shakespeare and Milton. It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has been fashionable to ignore the past en bloc...
Throughout the nineteenth century the True, the Good and the Beautiful preserved their precarious existence in the minds of earnest atheists. But in their very earnestness was their undoing, since it made it impossible for them to stop at a halfway house. Pragmatists explained that Truth is what it pays to believe. Historians of morals reduced the Good to a matter of tribal custom. Beauty was abolished by the artists in a revolt against the sugary insipidities of a philistine epoch and in a mood of fury in which satisfaction is to be derived only from what hurts. And so the world was swept clear not only of God as a person but of God’s essence as an ideal to which man owed an ideal allegiance; while the individual, as a result of a crude and uncritical interpretation of sound doctrines, was left without any inner defence against social pressure.
All movements go too far, and this is certainly true of the movement toward subjectivity, which began with Luther and Descartes as an assertion of the individual and has culminated by an inherent logic in his complete subjection. The subjectivity of truth is a hasty doctrine not validly deducible from the premises which have been thought to imply it; and the habits of centuries have made many things seem dependent on theological belief which are not so. Men lived with one kind of illusion, and when they lost it they fell into another. But it is not by old error that new error can be combated. Detachment and objectivity, both in thought and feeling, have been historically but not logically associated with certain traditional beliefs; to preserve them without these beliefs is both possible and important. A certain degree of isolation both in space and time is essential to generate the independence required for the most important work; there must be something which is felt to be of more importance than the admiration of the contemporary crowd. We are suffering not from the decay of theological beliefs but from the loss of solitude."
--- On Being Modern-Minded in Unpopular Essays / Bertrand Russell
Post ID: 2393136035472135302
Monday, April 25, 2016
Links - 28th April 2016
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, The Truth About Diabetes - "Up to 50% of type 2 diabetics actually suffer acute or chronic pain or depression at levels similar to people with terminal cancer"
The Arab world's dirty secret - The New York Times - "I was on my way home on the Cairo Metro, lost in thought as I listened to music when I noticed a young Egyptian taunting a Sudanese girl. She reached out and tried to grab the girl's nose and laughed when the girl tried to brush her hand away... I knew she was Muslim because she wore a scarf. I told her that the way she was treating the Sudanese girl made the scarf on her head meaningless. Her mother asked me why I didn't cover my hair and I replied that I didn't want to be a hypocrite like her and her daughter... The racism I saw on the Cairo Metro has an echo in the Arab world at large, where the suffering in Darfur goes ignored because its victims are black and because those who are creating the misery in Darfur are not Americans or Israelis and we only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly. We love to cry "Islamophobia" when we talk about the way Muslim minorities are treated in the West and yet we never stop to consider how we treat minorities and the most vulnerable among us."
African Refugees Say Arab Muslims More Racist than Europeans - "Arabs hate black people. And that is not from today, it is in their blood"
Pink accused of failing the smell test - "Alfian’s critique may well be spot on. But the implicit assumption behind such a view — that any social movement aimed at objective A must first satisfy the nose test for objective B — is highly problematic. Does one expect an animal rights group to satisfy class-equality standards among all its members, volunteers and supporters? Does one demand that an anti-abortion campaign lean over backwards to ensure gender equality?... To expect a gay-affirmative movement to meet purity standards by other yardsticks — racial views, religious representativeness, age profile, etc — is plain unrealistic. Where an indictment can be made is when a movement applies tests for exclusion unrelated to its key aim. Does a gay movement deliberately exclude people of a certain ethnicity from participation? Does a breast cancer campaign go out of its way to exclude unmarried adults? Does a hamster-lovers’ society turn away atheists? By no stretch of the imagination can such an indictment be made of the Pink Dot movement. But if one says that they were negligent in not making efforts to ensure purity in all other regards, or in purging itself of the various biases that its participants bring in, I would say, that’s just not fair. It’s too tall an order and it’s not what the movement is about. Why should they expend precious energy and resources on that? Don’t forget, people didn’t join to have their minds about ethnicity, religion or vegetarianism changed. They joined to promote the primary cause... Actually, it’s not just Pink Dot. Look around at most civil society, non-profit groups that serve a wider cause (as opposed to clan associations or temple groups) and what you see is the same: Lots of English-speaking middle-class Chinese and Indians... In fact, one group that is way over-represented are the White Singaporeans — who are Permanent Residents if not citizens, but who see Singapore as their second home. The primary denominator is not ethnicity, it’s social class. And for liberal causes, the other chief denominator is the English language and Western acculturisation."
Lauren Campbell's answer to I'm a male feminist of the 'Lean In' persuasion. What is the way forward for feminism - confrontation or collaboration? - Quora - "If feminists want to stop people going down this path then they need to create a space for men within their movement. But people are getting fed up with it and not just men but women as well. Women Against Feminism made waves as a result of the sheer number of women rejecting the feminist label. Karen Straughan is probably one of the most well-known MRAs. Lauren Southern is an aspiring politician and active anti-feminist. There's myself and several other women on Quora who criticize the feminist movement. A lot of us are washing our hands of feminism and trying to create some real progress that can direct men away from the more hate-filled platforms of anti-feminism and trying to discuss and improve issues that affect men. And we are absolutely and completely belittled for our efforts... The feminist movement has the resources, influence and ability to make the changes that men want to see. If feminists got half as worked up about the lack of resources for male domestic violence victims as they do about even something like manspreading then there'd be progress. If feminists cared as much about male rape victims as female rape victims, then there'd be progress"
Roland Mouret: ‘A good dress can do the same job as seeing a shrink’ - "I have a wild temper - I’m French! But the storm cloud passes quickly. I really go for it. I’ll do all the shouting I need to and then it’s over... A good dress can do the same job as seeing a shrink and can often cost less. I reconnect women to their bodies. My clients will often say, “That dress is too good for me,” but it’s just a dress. Have fun with it. Have fun with life. It’s not all meant to be so serious."
Young single people bear the brunt of Generation Y's economic woes - "Single young people are getting poorer compared to the average population even those with dependent children, with stagnating disposable income and onerous living costs pressing down on prosperity... living alone was so important to young people that they were willing to pay a heavy economic price to do so. “The motivation for people to live alone is so strong that people are willing to continue doing it even if it is financially difficult.”
Is "ageism" really the biggest age-related discrimination problem?; should people really bash those who still live with their parents so much?
Japanese firm releases manhole cover collectors' cards - "According to the Japan Visitor website, the covers attract a special kind of tourist - "drainspotters" - who visit from around the world to see their distinctive designs. The covers often feature a symbol specific to an area or town, or a local mascot. Designs are decided upon after asking the public for ideas, or through competitions, GKP spokesperson Hideto Yamada says."
Why Hillary Clinton is struggling to win over America's young women - "Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances are intricately bound up with the political status of middle-aged women... Given the number of issues they face that have nothing to do with being female, some younger women have chafed at older feminists’ apparent insistence that they should vote for Clinton simply because she’s a woman. When Madeleine Albright, a Clinton supporter and the first female Secretary of State, said recently at a Clinton rally that there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women, a phrase she’s used frequently over the years, many younger women supporting Bernie Sanders felt insulted, forcing Albright to clarify what she meant. Second-wave feminist icon Gloria Steinem caused an even bigger stir by suggesting young women supported Sanders, himself a much older man, because “the boys are with Bernie”... Today’s young women construct their identity across a number of categories, and they don’t necessarily prioritise gender over race, class or sexuality... If young women were to cost her the nomination or the presidency, that would set a strange cap on Clinton’s career, which has almost perfectly mirrored women’s shifting place in the American polity"
Burma’s ‘Wild East’ Is a Debauched Land of Drugs and Vice That Reforms Forgot - "On the hotel carpet, in the doorway of Room 286, lay a calling card advertising prostitutes as young as 16. The flat-screen TV shows round-the-clock porn — mostly Japanese housewives punctuated by bronzed American couples — and a sign by the bed lists hotlines serving up yet more sex with teenagers... Carved into a jungle valley on northeastern Shan state’s border with China, Mong La is the biggest town in tiny Special Region 4, a land that Burmese reforms forgot. While much of the former pariah state has witnessed greater freedoms since the election of a quasi-civilian government in 2010, the rebels that run this autonomous fiefdom — slightly smaller than Delaware — have instead pursued freewheeling economic policies based around garish Chinese casinos. After authorities across the border in Yunnan province began to restrict access following stories of gambling excess, rising numbers of Chinese began entering illegally to head to the casinos, to party and to do business... Mong La runs on Beijing time, 90 minutes ahead of Burma proper — the country is now officially called Myanmar. Every word spoken is in Mandarin, and everything paid for in Chinese renminbi"
Ben Nevis Rescue For Woman In Shorts - "A woman wearing shorts and trainers in blizzard conditions and carrying only a selfie stick has been rescued from Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain. Sara Albone, 28, said she had decided to climb the mountain on the spur of the moment while she was taking part in a mountain biking tour through Scotland. But the cross-country runner had only taken the light clothing for her bike trip - not the ice pick, poles and emergency shelter advised by experts for a trip up the snow-capped mountain. She subsequently began to develop hypothermia after becoming disorientated... "Being irresponsible means others have to go out of their way to help""
Flex tampon is designed to be worn during sex - ""We've built a product that allows couples to increase their opportunity to have sex by 23 per cent," she continued. "The great tragedy of people avoiding sex on their period is that this is really the time when women want it most.""
The Case Against Low-Fat Milk Is Stronger Than Ever - "people who had higher levels of three different byproducts of full-fat dairy had, on average, a 46% lower risk of getting diabetes during the study period than those with lower levels... Since full-fat dairy products contain more calories, many experts assumed avoiding it would lower diabetes risk. But studies have found that when people reduce how much fat they eat, they tend to replace it with sugar or carbohydrates, both of which can have worse effects on insulin and diabetes risk... among 18,438 women in the Women’s Health Study, those who consumed the most high-fat dairy products lowered their risk of being overweight of obese by 8%. Together, the body of data is beginning to reveal both that full-fat dairy has a place in a healthy diet, and also how focusing on one nutrient in the diet may backfire... While it’s not entirely clear how whole fat is helping to lower risk of diabetes, it’s possible that it’s working on several different levels to regulate insulin and glucose. At the simplest level, people eating more high fat dairy products will have enough calories so they won’t feel hungry enough to need additional calories from sugary foods. It’s also possible that the fats in dairy may be acting directly on cells, working on the liver and muscle to improve their ability to break down sugar from food. And then there’s the possibility that for certain high fat dairy foods, like cheese, which is fermented, microbes may be working to improve insulin response and lower diabetes risk too."
India's fastest train Gatimaan Express brings the Taj Mahal closer to Delhi - "In a departure from most Indian trains, the Gatimaan Express will have train hostesses greeting passengers with a rose. Passengers will also be able to access free on-board entertainment, and watch videos on their smartphones, tablets and laptops without Wi-Fi. Tourists can also opt for one and two day packages, which include guided tours of the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites in Agra."
Game Of Thrones star Isaac Hempstead Wright grows up on set with decapitated heads - ""Seeing these layers of screaming girls is something I haven't experienced before"... One way in which the show had an impact on their lives was that the family conversation about the facts of life came earlier. She laughs: "I wanted to be the one who told him rather than have him learn from an HBO show.""
Aurora motel owner for decades spied on guests having sex, author says - "And one year he created an annual report "trying to identify significant social trends," Talese writes. "In 1973, he noted that of the 296 sexual acts he'd witnessed, 195 involved white heterosexuals, who favored the missionary position. Over all, he counted 184 male orgasms and 33 female orgasms.""
That North Korean News Twitter Account Is Fake - "You may have seen a strange North Korean news account floating around the Twitters recently. DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) sends out weird messages posing as an official mouthpiece of the authoritarian regime... CNN, Newsweek, and Fox News have all quoted the account as a real voice coming from the North Korean government. And even though these news outlets clearly should have taken a minute to realize that it’s fake, it’s not hard to see why they were fooled. Many of the tweets are only about 10 percent more ludicrous than the real English-language news feed of North Korea."
7 Tranquil Islands To Visit in Singapore To Escape From The City Life
Parliament: Law enforcement to use public transport camera, ERP data to fight terrorism, says ShanmugamTimes - " - "Law enforcement agencies here will begin using data from public transport video cameras and the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system to track travel patterns of suspicious individuals... Stressing again how the threat of terror attack on Singapore is at its highest in recent times, Mr Shanmugam explained that "in this heightened threat environment, we have to use all available resources at our disposal ". And this includes the Government's about-turn to use data provided by public transport video cameras and the ERP system for tracking purposes."
Meanwhile, ERPII...; what happens if one day a rogue government comes to power?
Nostalgia effect: Do consumers spend more when thinking about the past? - "We wondered why nostalgia is so commonplace in marketing. One reason could be that feeling nostalgic weakens a person's desire for money. In other words, someone might be more likely to buy something when they are feeling nostalgic... when people have higher levels of social connectedness and feel that their wants and needs can be achieved through the help of others, their ability to prioritize and keep control over their money becomes less pressing"
The Arab world's dirty secret - The New York Times - "I was on my way home on the Cairo Metro, lost in thought as I listened to music when I noticed a young Egyptian taunting a Sudanese girl. She reached out and tried to grab the girl's nose and laughed when the girl tried to brush her hand away... I knew she was Muslim because she wore a scarf. I told her that the way she was treating the Sudanese girl made the scarf on her head meaningless. Her mother asked me why I didn't cover my hair and I replied that I didn't want to be a hypocrite like her and her daughter... The racism I saw on the Cairo Metro has an echo in the Arab world at large, where the suffering in Darfur goes ignored because its victims are black and because those who are creating the misery in Darfur are not Americans or Israelis and we only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly. We love to cry "Islamophobia" when we talk about the way Muslim minorities are treated in the West and yet we never stop to consider how we treat minorities and the most vulnerable among us."
African Refugees Say Arab Muslims More Racist than Europeans - "Arabs hate black people. And that is not from today, it is in their blood"
Pink accused of failing the smell test - "Alfian’s critique may well be spot on. But the implicit assumption behind such a view — that any social movement aimed at objective A must first satisfy the nose test for objective B — is highly problematic. Does one expect an animal rights group to satisfy class-equality standards among all its members, volunteers and supporters? Does one demand that an anti-abortion campaign lean over backwards to ensure gender equality?... To expect a gay-affirmative movement to meet purity standards by other yardsticks — racial views, religious representativeness, age profile, etc — is plain unrealistic. Where an indictment can be made is when a movement applies tests for exclusion unrelated to its key aim. Does a gay movement deliberately exclude people of a certain ethnicity from participation? Does a breast cancer campaign go out of its way to exclude unmarried adults? Does a hamster-lovers’ society turn away atheists? By no stretch of the imagination can such an indictment be made of the Pink Dot movement. But if one says that they were negligent in not making efforts to ensure purity in all other regards, or in purging itself of the various biases that its participants bring in, I would say, that’s just not fair. It’s too tall an order and it’s not what the movement is about. Why should they expend precious energy and resources on that? Don’t forget, people didn’t join to have their minds about ethnicity, religion or vegetarianism changed. They joined to promote the primary cause... Actually, it’s not just Pink Dot. Look around at most civil society, non-profit groups that serve a wider cause (as opposed to clan associations or temple groups) and what you see is the same: Lots of English-speaking middle-class Chinese and Indians... In fact, one group that is way over-represented are the White Singaporeans — who are Permanent Residents if not citizens, but who see Singapore as their second home. The primary denominator is not ethnicity, it’s social class. And for liberal causes, the other chief denominator is the English language and Western acculturisation."
Lauren Campbell's answer to I'm a male feminist of the 'Lean In' persuasion. What is the way forward for feminism - confrontation or collaboration? - Quora - "If feminists want to stop people going down this path then they need to create a space for men within their movement. But people are getting fed up with it and not just men but women as well. Women Against Feminism made waves as a result of the sheer number of women rejecting the feminist label. Karen Straughan is probably one of the most well-known MRAs. Lauren Southern is an aspiring politician and active anti-feminist. There's myself and several other women on Quora who criticize the feminist movement. A lot of us are washing our hands of feminism and trying to create some real progress that can direct men away from the more hate-filled platforms of anti-feminism and trying to discuss and improve issues that affect men. And we are absolutely and completely belittled for our efforts... The feminist movement has the resources, influence and ability to make the changes that men want to see. If feminists got half as worked up about the lack of resources for male domestic violence victims as they do about even something like manspreading then there'd be progress. If feminists cared as much about male rape victims as female rape victims, then there'd be progress"
Roland Mouret: ‘A good dress can do the same job as seeing a shrink’ - "I have a wild temper - I’m French! But the storm cloud passes quickly. I really go for it. I’ll do all the shouting I need to and then it’s over... A good dress can do the same job as seeing a shrink and can often cost less. I reconnect women to their bodies. My clients will often say, “That dress is too good for me,” but it’s just a dress. Have fun with it. Have fun with life. It’s not all meant to be so serious."
Young single people bear the brunt of Generation Y's economic woes - "Single young people are getting poorer compared to the average population even those with dependent children, with stagnating disposable income and onerous living costs pressing down on prosperity... living alone was so important to young people that they were willing to pay a heavy economic price to do so. “The motivation for people to live alone is so strong that people are willing to continue doing it even if it is financially difficult.”
Is "ageism" really the biggest age-related discrimination problem?; should people really bash those who still live with their parents so much?
Japanese firm releases manhole cover collectors' cards - "According to the Japan Visitor website, the covers attract a special kind of tourist - "drainspotters" - who visit from around the world to see their distinctive designs. The covers often feature a symbol specific to an area or town, or a local mascot. Designs are decided upon after asking the public for ideas, or through competitions, GKP spokesperson Hideto Yamada says."
Why Hillary Clinton is struggling to win over America's young women - "Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances are intricately bound up with the political status of middle-aged women... Given the number of issues they face that have nothing to do with being female, some younger women have chafed at older feminists’ apparent insistence that they should vote for Clinton simply because she’s a woman. When Madeleine Albright, a Clinton supporter and the first female Secretary of State, said recently at a Clinton rally that there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women, a phrase she’s used frequently over the years, many younger women supporting Bernie Sanders felt insulted, forcing Albright to clarify what she meant. Second-wave feminist icon Gloria Steinem caused an even bigger stir by suggesting young women supported Sanders, himself a much older man, because “the boys are with Bernie”... Today’s young women construct their identity across a number of categories, and they don’t necessarily prioritise gender over race, class or sexuality... If young women were to cost her the nomination or the presidency, that would set a strange cap on Clinton’s career, which has almost perfectly mirrored women’s shifting place in the American polity"
Burma’s ‘Wild East’ Is a Debauched Land of Drugs and Vice That Reforms Forgot - "On the hotel carpet, in the doorway of Room 286, lay a calling card advertising prostitutes as young as 16. The flat-screen TV shows round-the-clock porn — mostly Japanese housewives punctuated by bronzed American couples — and a sign by the bed lists hotlines serving up yet more sex with teenagers... Carved into a jungle valley on northeastern Shan state’s border with China, Mong La is the biggest town in tiny Special Region 4, a land that Burmese reforms forgot. While much of the former pariah state has witnessed greater freedoms since the election of a quasi-civilian government in 2010, the rebels that run this autonomous fiefdom — slightly smaller than Delaware — have instead pursued freewheeling economic policies based around garish Chinese casinos. After authorities across the border in Yunnan province began to restrict access following stories of gambling excess, rising numbers of Chinese began entering illegally to head to the casinos, to party and to do business... Mong La runs on Beijing time, 90 minutes ahead of Burma proper — the country is now officially called Myanmar. Every word spoken is in Mandarin, and everything paid for in Chinese renminbi"
Ben Nevis Rescue For Woman In Shorts - "A woman wearing shorts and trainers in blizzard conditions and carrying only a selfie stick has been rescued from Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain. Sara Albone, 28, said she had decided to climb the mountain on the spur of the moment while she was taking part in a mountain biking tour through Scotland. But the cross-country runner had only taken the light clothing for her bike trip - not the ice pick, poles and emergency shelter advised by experts for a trip up the snow-capped mountain. She subsequently began to develop hypothermia after becoming disorientated... "Being irresponsible means others have to go out of their way to help""
Flex tampon is designed to be worn during sex - ""We've built a product that allows couples to increase their opportunity to have sex by 23 per cent," she continued. "The great tragedy of people avoiding sex on their period is that this is really the time when women want it most.""
The Case Against Low-Fat Milk Is Stronger Than Ever - "people who had higher levels of three different byproducts of full-fat dairy had, on average, a 46% lower risk of getting diabetes during the study period than those with lower levels... Since full-fat dairy products contain more calories, many experts assumed avoiding it would lower diabetes risk. But studies have found that when people reduce how much fat they eat, they tend to replace it with sugar or carbohydrates, both of which can have worse effects on insulin and diabetes risk... among 18,438 women in the Women’s Health Study, those who consumed the most high-fat dairy products lowered their risk of being overweight of obese by 8%. Together, the body of data is beginning to reveal both that full-fat dairy has a place in a healthy diet, and also how focusing on one nutrient in the diet may backfire... While it’s not entirely clear how whole fat is helping to lower risk of diabetes, it’s possible that it’s working on several different levels to regulate insulin and glucose. At the simplest level, people eating more high fat dairy products will have enough calories so they won’t feel hungry enough to need additional calories from sugary foods. It’s also possible that the fats in dairy may be acting directly on cells, working on the liver and muscle to improve their ability to break down sugar from food. And then there’s the possibility that for certain high fat dairy foods, like cheese, which is fermented, microbes may be working to improve insulin response and lower diabetes risk too."
India's fastest train Gatimaan Express brings the Taj Mahal closer to Delhi - "In a departure from most Indian trains, the Gatimaan Express will have train hostesses greeting passengers with a rose. Passengers will also be able to access free on-board entertainment, and watch videos on their smartphones, tablets and laptops without Wi-Fi. Tourists can also opt for one and two day packages, which include guided tours of the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites in Agra."
Game Of Thrones star Isaac Hempstead Wright grows up on set with decapitated heads - ""Seeing these layers of screaming girls is something I haven't experienced before"... One way in which the show had an impact on their lives was that the family conversation about the facts of life came earlier. She laughs: "I wanted to be the one who told him rather than have him learn from an HBO show.""
Aurora motel owner for decades spied on guests having sex, author says - "And one year he created an annual report "trying to identify significant social trends," Talese writes. "In 1973, he noted that of the 296 sexual acts he'd witnessed, 195 involved white heterosexuals, who favored the missionary position. Over all, he counted 184 male orgasms and 33 female orgasms.""
That North Korean News Twitter Account Is Fake - "You may have seen a strange North Korean news account floating around the Twitters recently. DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) sends out weird messages posing as an official mouthpiece of the authoritarian regime... CNN, Newsweek, and Fox News have all quoted the account as a real voice coming from the North Korean government. And even though these news outlets clearly should have taken a minute to realize that it’s fake, it’s not hard to see why they were fooled. Many of the tweets are only about 10 percent more ludicrous than the real English-language news feed of North Korea."
7 Tranquil Islands To Visit in Singapore To Escape From The City Life
Parliament: Law enforcement to use public transport camera, ERP data to fight terrorism, says ShanmugamTimes - " - "Law enforcement agencies here will begin using data from public transport video cameras and the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system to track travel patterns of suspicious individuals... Stressing again how the threat of terror attack on Singapore is at its highest in recent times, Mr Shanmugam explained that "in this heightened threat environment, we have to use all available resources at our disposal ". And this includes the Government's about-turn to use data provided by public transport video cameras and the ERP system for tracking purposes."
Meanwhile, ERPII...; what happens if one day a rogue government comes to power?
Nostalgia effect: Do consumers spend more when thinking about the past? - "We wondered why nostalgia is so commonplace in marketing. One reason could be that feeling nostalgic weakens a person's desire for money. In other words, someone might be more likely to buy something when they are feeling nostalgic... when people have higher levels of social connectedness and feel that their wants and needs can be achieved through the help of others, their ability to prioritize and keep control over their money becomes less pressing"
Post ID: 707076036059409774
On Foodies
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Down with 'Foodies'?
[On the attack on the Cereal Killer Cafe] "The demonstration was organised by a political group called Class War. They said thata place selling a bowl of cereal for up to $7 was pricing locals out of their own area. Alan Keery says it couldn't be further from the truth. 'Nobody was born into an easy life. I was born in a very working class family in Belfast. So to have someone then attack me for working hard my entire life. I never went to university. I couldn't afford to go to university, but I worked hard and I bettered myself. Then I opened my business, I realised my dream of opening my business, so for people to then attack us and go 'There's people here that can't afford them. When you open a business you don't think 'will everybody be able to afford this?' That's not what your God given right is. You cannot afford everything in life. There's things I can't afford. It doesn't mean I go and attack them. It's just, this is the way life works. And when people come and spend money, they don't just spend money with us, they spend money in other places...
Foodie-ism... can sometimes be a marker of inequality.
'We know that food has a long history of serving as a source of status and distinction. And a way to separate the classes from each other. So foodie culture is not completely different from that, but what is different is that there's now a sense that one doesn't want to be a complete snob, that one doesn't want to only identify with high end French food for example, which used to be the food of elite culture. Now if you're to be the ideal foodie you want to know about elite French culture for sure and know who the greatest new French chefs are, but you want to be able to eat the highbrow and lowbrow foods or foods from different parts around the world. But that doesn't mean it's accessible to the average consumer. Not everybody can eat at Jean George one day and then go searching for the most delicious falafel in New York City the next. It requires a tremendous amount of economic and cultural capital, cultural knowledge or sophistication to keep on top of those trends'...
This is a middle class pursuit. It has a association with whiteness but it's not just a white middle class thing... a large percentage of the percentage of the population... within North America and in the UK re just struggling with basic food security issues, so to them a lot of these food trends must seem incredibly narcissistic and self-indulgent... [Foodie culture obscures inequalities in part by] romanticising the food of the poor. And we romanticise the food of the poor. There is a tendency to look away from how horrible it is to actually be poor. And that being poor means a life of monotonous eating and not having enough to eat. And while foodie culture in general has been quite political on environmental issues, it's been relatively mute on issues of food security and food access"
[On the attack on the Cereal Killer Cafe] "The demonstration was organised by a political group called Class War. They said thata place selling a bowl of cereal for up to $7 was pricing locals out of their own area. Alan Keery says it couldn't be further from the truth. 'Nobody was born into an easy life. I was born in a very working class family in Belfast. So to have someone then attack me for working hard my entire life. I never went to university. I couldn't afford to go to university, but I worked hard and I bettered myself. Then I opened my business, I realised my dream of opening my business, so for people to then attack us and go 'There's people here that can't afford them. When you open a business you don't think 'will everybody be able to afford this?' That's not what your God given right is. You cannot afford everything in life. There's things I can't afford. It doesn't mean I go and attack them. It's just, this is the way life works. And when people come and spend money, they don't just spend money with us, they spend money in other places...
Foodie-ism... can sometimes be a marker of inequality.
'We know that food has a long history of serving as a source of status and distinction. And a way to separate the classes from each other. So foodie culture is not completely different from that, but what is different is that there's now a sense that one doesn't want to be a complete snob, that one doesn't want to only identify with high end French food for example, which used to be the food of elite culture. Now if you're to be the ideal foodie you want to know about elite French culture for sure and know who the greatest new French chefs are, but you want to be able to eat the highbrow and lowbrow foods or foods from different parts around the world. But that doesn't mean it's accessible to the average consumer. Not everybody can eat at Jean George one day and then go searching for the most delicious falafel in New York City the next. It requires a tremendous amount of economic and cultural capital, cultural knowledge or sophistication to keep on top of those trends'...
This is a middle class pursuit. It has a association with whiteness but it's not just a white middle class thing... a large percentage of the percentage of the population... within North America and in the UK re just struggling with basic food security issues, so to them a lot of these food trends must seem incredibly narcissistic and self-indulgent... [Foodie culture obscures inequalities in part by] romanticising the food of the poor. And we romanticise the food of the poor. There is a tendency to look away from how horrible it is to actually be poor. And that being poor means a life of monotonous eating and not having enough to eat. And while foodie culture in general has been quite political on environmental issues, it's been relatively mute on issues of food security and food access"
Post ID: 4835207405854048269
Today's Low Bar for Bravery
The Telegraph - This is the moment a brave 20-year-old student...
"This is the moment a brave 20-year-old student revealed to President Barack Obama and the world they identify as non-binary."
Comments (from elsewhere):
"This is the sad mediocrity that has befallen queer activism and identity politics. We used to honour the men and women of Stonewall, the Harvey Milks, Matthew shepherds and Brandon Teenas of the world. People who actually shed blood for LGBT rights.
Now we're told to applaud some person who said something once at a forum? That's BRAVE? Give me a fucking break. This is hysterical hyperbole at its paramount."
Comments (on the FB post):
"I have the same problem, I identify neither as a man or woman but as a loaf of bread.
I've had so much trouble with people mislabelling me as gluten when I'm non gluten and have trouble finding toilets designed for me. Once I was thrown out of a hospital as I refused to let a doctor operate on me with a scalpel and requested a bread knife instead. Other breads don't talk to me as I'm brown bread and there is a huge racism issue in the bread community but of course there crumbs are swept under the bread bin as race is not an important issue and is secondary in the bread community so we get pushed to the side for discussions about loaves of bread that identify as non bakery and some who actually think they're croissants. One day people will understand though."
""Brave" is not how you spell attention whore."
"This is the moment when a student identified herself as having a mental illness to a world leader.
I'm fairly sure Obama has visited mental health institutions in the past."
"There is a lot of cynicism in most of the comments. I get why. However, this person does not hurt anyone and has zero impact on your lives. Just live and let live."
"If that was the case why do I need to a) know about her b) Know about what she identifies as and c) should care or honor her personal beliefs about herself?
It doesn't hurt anybody if I continue to refer to her as a girl (which she is) and treat her in a manner that meets those expectations (which I will?).
That's the logical fallacy in these arguments... it predisposes that she's somehow unique and/or special and You nor I are.. and that we MUST accept this because SHE says we must."
"People like this lady need compassion and help with their problem, but they are not helped by being told that they're normal and being indulged with nonsensical legislation as has been argued over in Nth. Carolina recently.
She needs to get help in consultation with a doctor, not indulgence on TV with the president."
Mohammed Al-Muhanna: "I have the se issue. I see myself as William Shakespeare. But no one calls me the best writer ever.. People are jerks I see myself as a writer but I never hold a pen. Its a tragedy. They call me Mohamad I want to be called William i do not look like Willam but i feel like I'm a great writer deep inside."
"The people cannot even differentiate the difference between mental illness and bravery any more. Indeed The world became a big psychiatric hospital."
Benjamin Rodkin: "I'm a 500lb African-American woman. No one else sees me as that though. Rather they "view" me as a 158lb white man. F'ckin racist transgenderphobes."
"Who gives a s*it? What ever she is, it's not news....
Telegraph, please stop with this agenda driven bulls*it & try reporting some REAL news.... Also, you may want to look up the definition of Brave, because announcing your preferences to the world isn't brave, it's just conversation!"
"You can't invent a word to describe yourself as being (which defies your own biological nature) and then claim that the rest of the world is discriminative and bigoted for not recognizing you as being that word you invented to describe yourself, perhaps I'm just being an anti non - binarist cyber bully and if so I apologize"
"would like to be a ruminant, eating grass and straw. An unexpensive way of live, healthy and convenient. But no, I can't I only have one stomach."
"So brave, what an inspiration. What do sovereignty, trade, freedom or democracy mean next to epic struggle of this British hero!"
"most of us are sick and tired of reading this incessant agenda driven drivel..... It's not brave to choose or have a particular preference it's just life.... I don't need reassurance for all the things I do or choices I make and I'm tired of being told how brave these people are for talking.... They're just talking, that's it... Move on...."
"I identify as an attack helicopter."
"Lucky for you I'm a surgeon and can perform an operation to attach rotary blades and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles onto your body"
"'Naive' is the word, not brave."
"Of all the questions, she could have asked !!!! what a waste."
"If I think I am a Klingon?"
"Caitlin /Bruce Jenner has a lot to answer for with this lot ."
"So is she hexadecimal?"
"This is the moment a brave 20-year-old student revealed to President Barack Obama and the world they identify as non-binary."
Comments (from elsewhere):
"This is the sad mediocrity that has befallen queer activism and identity politics. We used to honour the men and women of Stonewall, the Harvey Milks, Matthew shepherds and Brandon Teenas of the world. People who actually shed blood for LGBT rights.
Now we're told to applaud some person who said something once at a forum? That's BRAVE? Give me a fucking break. This is hysterical hyperbole at its paramount."
Comments (on the FB post):
"I have the same problem, I identify neither as a man or woman but as a loaf of bread.
I've had so much trouble with people mislabelling me as gluten when I'm non gluten and have trouble finding toilets designed for me. Once I was thrown out of a hospital as I refused to let a doctor operate on me with a scalpel and requested a bread knife instead. Other breads don't talk to me as I'm brown bread and there is a huge racism issue in the bread community but of course there crumbs are swept under the bread bin as race is not an important issue and is secondary in the bread community so we get pushed to the side for discussions about loaves of bread that identify as non bakery and some who actually think they're croissants. One day people will understand though."
""Brave" is not how you spell attention whore."
"This is the moment when a student identified herself as having a mental illness to a world leader.
I'm fairly sure Obama has visited mental health institutions in the past."
"There is a lot of cynicism in most of the comments. I get why. However, this person does not hurt anyone and has zero impact on your lives. Just live and let live."
"If that was the case why do I need to a) know about her b) Know about what she identifies as and c) should care or honor her personal beliefs about herself?
It doesn't hurt anybody if I continue to refer to her as a girl (which she is) and treat her in a manner that meets those expectations (which I will?).
That's the logical fallacy in these arguments... it predisposes that she's somehow unique and/or special and You nor I are.. and that we MUST accept this because SHE says we must."
"People like this lady need compassion and help with their problem, but they are not helped by being told that they're normal and being indulged with nonsensical legislation as has been argued over in Nth. Carolina recently.
She needs to get help in consultation with a doctor, not indulgence on TV with the president."
Mohammed Al-Muhanna: "I have the se issue. I see myself as William Shakespeare. But no one calls me the best writer ever.. People are jerks I see myself as a writer but I never hold a pen. Its a tragedy. They call me Mohamad I want to be called William i do not look like Willam but i feel like I'm a great writer deep inside."
"The people cannot even differentiate the difference between mental illness and bravery any more. Indeed The world became a big psychiatric hospital."
Benjamin Rodkin: "I'm a 500lb African-American woman. No one else sees me as that though. Rather they "view" me as a 158lb white man. F'ckin racist transgenderphobes."
"Who gives a s*it? What ever she is, it's not news....
Telegraph, please stop with this agenda driven bulls*it & try reporting some REAL news.... Also, you may want to look up the definition of Brave, because announcing your preferences to the world isn't brave, it's just conversation!"
"You can't invent a word to describe yourself as being (which defies your own biological nature) and then claim that the rest of the world is discriminative and bigoted for not recognizing you as being that word you invented to describe yourself, perhaps I'm just being an anti non - binarist cyber bully and if so I apologize"
"would like to be a ruminant, eating grass and straw. An unexpensive way of live, healthy and convenient. But no, I can't I only have one stomach."
"So brave, what an inspiration. What do sovereignty, trade, freedom or democracy mean next to epic struggle of this British hero!"
"most of us are sick and tired of reading this incessant agenda driven drivel..... It's not brave to choose or have a particular preference it's just life.... I don't need reassurance for all the things I do or choices I make and I'm tired of being told how brave these people are for talking.... They're just talking, that's it... Move on...."
"I identify as an attack helicopter."
"Lucky for you I'm a surgeon and can perform an operation to attach rotary blades and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles onto your body"
"'Naive' is the word, not brave."
"Of all the questions, she could have asked !!!! what a waste."
"If I think I am a Klingon?"
"Caitlin /Bruce Jenner has a lot to answer for with this lot ."
"So is she hexadecimal?"
Post ID: 7533463112361005155
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Links - 24th April 2016
Bernie Sanders' Superdelegate-Flipping Strategy Is Doomed - "my pro-math record is well-established, even though diehard Sanders supporters don’t care. Back in ‘08, it was Clintonistas sending me hate mail over it. This year, Clinton wised up and hired many of Obama’s nerds to help her navigate the process. Personally, I respect politicians who learn from their mistakes instead whine about life being unfair. If Team Sanders goes all in with the superdelegate strategy, it will almost certainly flop. Elections are, after all, popularity contests"
Is Hillary Clinton more dangerous than Donald Trump? - "On many issues, particularly trade and foreign policy, Clinton is to the right of Trump, with an inclination toward militaristic belligerence that more closely resembles a neoconservative war hawk than the progressive she claims to be. For evidence, look no further than the neoconservatives themselves, who are so petrified of Trump’s noninterventionist approach to foreign policy, they are ready to line up behind Clinton... After Gaddafi’s especially gruesome public lynching by US-backed Libyan rebels in 2011, Clinton could barely contain her excitement, gleefully telling CBS News, “We came, we saw, he died.” Libya predictably descended into a lawless haven for extremist groups from across the region, including the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS."
Scarlett Johansson in 'Ghost in the Shell': Japanese Industry, Fans Surprised by "Whitewashing" Outrage - "in the home of the manga and anime cult classic, the reaction to the media firestorm was mostly surprise, as many Japanese had already assumed that the lead role in a Hollywood version of the story would go to a white actress... the reaction has been somewhat muted and distinctly lacking in the vitriol spewing forth elsewhere... The original manga, written by Masamune Shirow, was published in 1989 by Kodansha, which licensed it for Mamoru Oshii's seminal 1995 anime feature, a number of Japanese spinoff films and anime series, and most recently for the Hollywood live-action version. "Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well cast," Sam Yoshiba, director of the international business division at Kodansha's Tokyo headquarters, tells The Hollywood Reporter. "She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place." He added: "This is a chance for a Japanese property to be seen around the world." Yoshiba recently returned from a visit to the New Zealand set of the movie, where he says he was impressed by the respect being shown for the source material. Many ordinary Japanese manga fans are also nonplussed by the outrage over the casting. "If you want a Japanese cast, then a Japanese company should make the film in Japan," said longtime manga fan Tetsuya Kataoka... "at least they didn't cast a Chinese actress, like they did in Memoirs of a Geisha," said Ai Ries Collazo, another manga fan... Japanese manga and anime fans pointed out that similar "racebending" casting takes place in reverse for domestic productions. Two live-action movies based on the Attack on Titan manga, also originally published by Kodansha, were released last year. The characters in the manga by Hajime Isayama were Western, but the cast for the movies was all Japanese. Meanwhile, some Japanese commentators on Twitter suggested that not too much attention should be paid to the physical appearance of the actress, because the dominant themes in Ghost in the Shell are the nature of identity and cyborgs used to host cyber-brains... some said the casting could draw people to cinemas"
The Japs are too stupid to know they're being oppressed!
Do consumers from Međimurje region recognize their autochthonous Turoš cheese? - "The aim of this study was to determine whether consumers from the Međimurje region recognise and distinguish the autochthonous cheese called Turoš from similar cheeses like Prgica and Kvargl originating from regions neighbouring to Međimurje. Chemical, textural and microbiological properties of all three cheeses were given. Preference tests with 200 consumers using a face-to-face survey and a two-step procedure were performed. The blind taste test showed that 97 % of the respondents recognised differences between the tasted samples, and almost half of them preferred the Turoš cheese. Similarly, the informed test showed that a significantly higher number of the respondents preferred the Turoš cheese in comparison to Kvargl and Prgica. Statistical analyses showed no significant differences between respondents’ preferences in the blind and the informed tests"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Whose Food is it Anyway?:
Authenticity itself is an imaginary construct. People talk about authentic Thai food and you'd assume that authentic Thai food involves chilis but chilis didn't get to Thailand till the 16th century so for thousands of years people in Thailand were cooking without chillis... recipes aren't set in stone and dishes aren't set in stone... No one can agree on any of these things, even within those cultures. So if you go to Genoa and you ask 10 people how you make pesto, you'll get 10 different answers...
Geographical indication schemes are legally binding within Europe. But the EU is also negotiating with its trade partners to expand the schemes outside its own borders. This is a complicated process. For one thing, many people in other parts of the world come from European backgrounds and say the heritage represented by the geographical indication schemes belongs to them, too... 'you cannot go beyond reason in protecting whatwas made hundreds of years ago'"
‘Halal’ elevators at four-star hotel - "PETALING JAYA: The Crystal Crown hotel here has signboards erected next to three elevators which state that only “halal” goods can be transported in the lifts and the hotel management has not commented."
Phileas Fog - "question de point de vue"
Effects of chicken essence on recovery from mental fatigue in healthy males - "We showed that daily intake of essence of chicken could be effective for the recovery from mental fatigue and is a promising candidate for use as an anti-fatigue food"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Food Technophobes v Technophiles - "If progress is going to be halted with every scintilla of doubt, then it's going to be a different world, I think. That hasn't been the arc of human history over the last several hundreds of years with respect to progress... GM technology was actually discovered from something that was observed in nature. And it was a case of a scientist who noticed something on a plant and they went in to the gall, which is a sort of tumour on the root of a plant, and when they extracted it they realised oh what do we have here. It's not even the DNA of a plant. And by doing this extraction in the aftermath of learning more about DNA, they said we have a plant here that when that plant then is resown from its own seed, it grows this thing again. And so the discovery moment was that bacteria from the soil had actually uplifted their own DNA into the DNA of a plant"
Watch People Try Nutraloaf, The Controversial Prison Food That's Been Called 'Cruel' - "In many American prisons, punishment can come in the form of a bland mashed up block of food known as a “Nutraloaf” — a controversial “food product” that’s fed to inmates who have been cited for bad behavior. Prisoners often have to eat the punitive loaves for days or even weeks at a time... There’s a rice, oatmeal and mashed garbanzo bean version, a non-dairy cheese and raisin combo and one that includes applesauce, garlic powder and spinach. Regardless of the combination, Nutraloaf is universally reviled. Prisoners in several states, including Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New York and Washington, have even sued over Nutraloaf or its equivalent, claiming that the punitive food is so awful that it’s unconstitutional. Following a 2008 lawsuit in Vermont, the state’s supreme court ruled that inmates have to be given a hearing before Nutraloaf is doled out as punishment."
As Obesity Rises, Chinese Kids Are Almost as Fat as Americans - China Real Time Report - WSJ - "Even the country’s armed forces have been getting fatter, with the People’s Liberation Army facing challenges as its soldiers have begun to have trouble fitting into traditionally-sized tanks."
Amused that more US girls are overweight than US boys
Parts Of 'Knights Of The Old Republic' Just Became Canon In The 'Star Wars Rebels' Season Two Finale
39 Photos That Show Why Everyone Misses George W. Bush
Gender Differences in Personality Are Larger than Previously Thought - "Italian cognitive psychologist Marco Del Giudice and his collaborators compared the personality traits of men and women in a sample of over 10,000 people and found huge differences. Women scored much higher than in men in Sensitivity, Warmth, and Apprehension, while men scored higher than women in Emotional Stability, Dominance, Rule-Consciousness, and Vigilance. When many personality traits were considered simultaneously, there was only a 10% overlap between the distributions of these traits in men and women. Essentially, the study suggests that when it comes to personality men and women belong to two different species... This is an extremely large effect by any psychological standard, which suggests that the sex differences in personality are of the same magnitude as the sex differences in aggression or vocational interests."
Bowdoin Students in Therapy After 'Culturally Appropriating' Tequila Party - "Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Maine, has offered counseling to students who felt “injured and affected” by a group of classmates who attended a Tequila-themed birthday party on campus wearing miniature sombreros"
Francis' Friends May Be Numbered in the Vatican -- And the 'Vatileaks' Scandal Is a Testament to That
Yet, to some nonreligious people what he's doing is still not good enough and he's bad as all his predecessors because he's still Catholic
Why the federal government spent $3 million to study lesbian obesity - "nearly three-quarters of lesbians are overweight or obese. The rate is 25 percent higher than heterosexual females and almost “double the obesity risk of gay men,” the summary said... lower athletic self-esteem among lesbians may lead to higher rates of obesity and that lesbians are more likely to see themselves at a healthy weight when they are not... gay and bisexual males had a “greater desire for toned muscles” than straight men. This apparently helps explain why gay men are generally more fit than lesbians."
"Stereotypes" are true after all
The unfriendliest city in the world is... - "While only 3 percent of people considered Rome unfriendly, most of those who replied in the negative were men"
Italian men love women
The History Behind Britain’s Debate Over Immigrants Learning English - "This is not just about tolerance or intolerance of minorities; it also touches on questions of individual freedom and citizenship raised during the French Revolution. Cameron insists that teaching English to immigrants is also about individual freedom, that without knowledge of the common language, individuals are denied access to the choices enjoyed by the majority. The abbé Grégoire’s opposition to linguistic diversity in France had similar roots. Grégoire feared that the interests and rights of ordinary people would never be recognized unless they could read and write enough French to participate in politics. As Grégoire argued in his speech before the Convention in 1794, the collective rights of minorities to have their culture respected conflicted with the rights of individuals to participate fully in society. These individual rights could be secured only through the intervention of the state."
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Breast Practice - [On Indonesia] "Why so many children were getting sick in rural areas is because women were spending their hard earned money on formula milk and then mixing it with dirty water and actually hurting their children when they had a very ready supply of breast milk... culturally in some parts of Indonesia you feed your children bananas when they're very little, as early as sort of a week old... there was a nursing room there, because the government stipulates that you must do this. And the nursing room had been converted into a smoking room because you're not allowed to smoke in government offices. I was outraged and I said to the attendant, a female attendant, I said: 'This is the law'... 'There's nowhere for them to smoke. So they've got to do it somewhere'...
[In Ivory Coast] boobs are very celebrated. They're out a lot, they're not taboo in any way - legs are taboo here. So whenever I'm out and about feeding, the reaction I get from people, straight off, is bon appetit...
It's often touted as something's that free. It's only free if women's time is worth nothing. It's only free if women don't have to lose their jobs over it"
Sugar In Diet Linked To Type 2 Diabetes Rates, Study Finds - "Lustig points to research that shows that as many as 40 percent of people who are at a healthy weight, as defined by their BMI score, have some aspect of metabolic dysfunction, such as hypertension, high cholesterol or Type 2 diabetes. On the flip side, 20 percent of obese people do not have any associated metabolic condition. He holds diets with an excess of sugar, or lack thereof, responsible for this discrepancies. His study tried to isolate the direct effect of sugar in the diet on countries’ rates of Type 2 diabetes. It found that every 150-calorie increase from a sugar source — cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners— correlated with a 1.1 percent increase in the Type 2 diabetes rate over a 10-year period, from 2000 to 2010. In other words, the more sugar in the food supply, the more cases of Type 2 diabetes were diagnosed"
Fighting Crime with Nutrition - "They studied the behavior of 231 inmates at a maximum-security prison in the U.K. Half of the group received daily capsules containing vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, while the other half took dummy pills. Antisocial behavior among inmates was recorded before and during the trial. The supplement group broke prison rules 25 percent less than those on the placebo. The greatest reduction was for serious offenses—instances of fighting, assaulting guards or taking hostages dropped 37 percent. There was, however, no significant change in the control group."
Is Hillary Clinton more dangerous than Donald Trump? - "On many issues, particularly trade and foreign policy, Clinton is to the right of Trump, with an inclination toward militaristic belligerence that more closely resembles a neoconservative war hawk than the progressive she claims to be. For evidence, look no further than the neoconservatives themselves, who are so petrified of Trump’s noninterventionist approach to foreign policy, they are ready to line up behind Clinton... After Gaddafi’s especially gruesome public lynching by US-backed Libyan rebels in 2011, Clinton could barely contain her excitement, gleefully telling CBS News, “We came, we saw, he died.” Libya predictably descended into a lawless haven for extremist groups from across the region, including the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS."
Scarlett Johansson in 'Ghost in the Shell': Japanese Industry, Fans Surprised by "Whitewashing" Outrage - "in the home of the manga and anime cult classic, the reaction to the media firestorm was mostly surprise, as many Japanese had already assumed that the lead role in a Hollywood version of the story would go to a white actress... the reaction has been somewhat muted and distinctly lacking in the vitriol spewing forth elsewhere... The original manga, written by Masamune Shirow, was published in 1989 by Kodansha, which licensed it for Mamoru Oshii's seminal 1995 anime feature, a number of Japanese spinoff films and anime series, and most recently for the Hollywood live-action version. "Looking at her career so far, I think Scarlett Johansson is well cast," Sam Yoshiba, director of the international business division at Kodansha's Tokyo headquarters, tells The Hollywood Reporter. "She has the cyberpunk feel. And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first place." He added: "This is a chance for a Japanese property to be seen around the world." Yoshiba recently returned from a visit to the New Zealand set of the movie, where he says he was impressed by the respect being shown for the source material. Many ordinary Japanese manga fans are also nonplussed by the outrage over the casting. "If you want a Japanese cast, then a Japanese company should make the film in Japan," said longtime manga fan Tetsuya Kataoka... "at least they didn't cast a Chinese actress, like they did in Memoirs of a Geisha," said Ai Ries Collazo, another manga fan... Japanese manga and anime fans pointed out that similar "racebending" casting takes place in reverse for domestic productions. Two live-action movies based on the Attack on Titan manga, also originally published by Kodansha, were released last year. The characters in the manga by Hajime Isayama were Western, but the cast for the movies was all Japanese. Meanwhile, some Japanese commentators on Twitter suggested that not too much attention should be paid to the physical appearance of the actress, because the dominant themes in Ghost in the Shell are the nature of identity and cyborgs used to host cyber-brains... some said the casting could draw people to cinemas"
The Japs are too stupid to know they're being oppressed!
Do consumers from Međimurje region recognize their autochthonous Turoš cheese? - "The aim of this study was to determine whether consumers from the Međimurje region recognise and distinguish the autochthonous cheese called Turoš from similar cheeses like Prgica and Kvargl originating from regions neighbouring to Međimurje. Chemical, textural and microbiological properties of all three cheeses were given. Preference tests with 200 consumers using a face-to-face survey and a two-step procedure were performed. The blind taste test showed that 97 % of the respondents recognised differences between the tasted samples, and almost half of them preferred the Turoš cheese. Similarly, the informed test showed that a significantly higher number of the respondents preferred the Turoš cheese in comparison to Kvargl and Prgica. Statistical analyses showed no significant differences between respondents’ preferences in the blind and the informed tests"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Whose Food is it Anyway?:
Authenticity itself is an imaginary construct. People talk about authentic Thai food and you'd assume that authentic Thai food involves chilis but chilis didn't get to Thailand till the 16th century so for thousands of years people in Thailand were cooking without chillis... recipes aren't set in stone and dishes aren't set in stone... No one can agree on any of these things, even within those cultures. So if you go to Genoa and you ask 10 people how you make pesto, you'll get 10 different answers...
Geographical indication schemes are legally binding within Europe. But the EU is also negotiating with its trade partners to expand the schemes outside its own borders. This is a complicated process. For one thing, many people in other parts of the world come from European backgrounds and say the heritage represented by the geographical indication schemes belongs to them, too... 'you cannot go beyond reason in protecting whatwas made hundreds of years ago'"
‘Halal’ elevators at four-star hotel - "PETALING JAYA: The Crystal Crown hotel here has signboards erected next to three elevators which state that only “halal” goods can be transported in the lifts and the hotel management has not commented."
Phileas Fog - "question de point de vue"
Effects of chicken essence on recovery from mental fatigue in healthy males - "We showed that daily intake of essence of chicken could be effective for the recovery from mental fatigue and is a promising candidate for use as an anti-fatigue food"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Food Technophobes v Technophiles - "If progress is going to be halted with every scintilla of doubt, then it's going to be a different world, I think. That hasn't been the arc of human history over the last several hundreds of years with respect to progress... GM technology was actually discovered from something that was observed in nature. And it was a case of a scientist who noticed something on a plant and they went in to the gall, which is a sort of tumour on the root of a plant, and when they extracted it they realised oh what do we have here. It's not even the DNA of a plant. And by doing this extraction in the aftermath of learning more about DNA, they said we have a plant here that when that plant then is resown from its own seed, it grows this thing again. And so the discovery moment was that bacteria from the soil had actually uplifted their own DNA into the DNA of a plant"
Watch People Try Nutraloaf, The Controversial Prison Food That's Been Called 'Cruel' - "In many American prisons, punishment can come in the form of a bland mashed up block of food known as a “Nutraloaf” — a controversial “food product” that’s fed to inmates who have been cited for bad behavior. Prisoners often have to eat the punitive loaves for days or even weeks at a time... There’s a rice, oatmeal and mashed garbanzo bean version, a non-dairy cheese and raisin combo and one that includes applesauce, garlic powder and spinach. Regardless of the combination, Nutraloaf is universally reviled. Prisoners in several states, including Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New York and Washington, have even sued over Nutraloaf or its equivalent, claiming that the punitive food is so awful that it’s unconstitutional. Following a 2008 lawsuit in Vermont, the state’s supreme court ruled that inmates have to be given a hearing before Nutraloaf is doled out as punishment."
As Obesity Rises, Chinese Kids Are Almost as Fat as Americans - China Real Time Report - WSJ - "Even the country’s armed forces have been getting fatter, with the People’s Liberation Army facing challenges as its soldiers have begun to have trouble fitting into traditionally-sized tanks."
Amused that more US girls are overweight than US boys
Parts Of 'Knights Of The Old Republic' Just Became Canon In The 'Star Wars Rebels' Season Two Finale
39 Photos That Show Why Everyone Misses George W. Bush
Gender Differences in Personality Are Larger than Previously Thought - "Italian cognitive psychologist Marco Del Giudice and his collaborators compared the personality traits of men and women in a sample of over 10,000 people and found huge differences. Women scored much higher than in men in Sensitivity, Warmth, and Apprehension, while men scored higher than women in Emotional Stability, Dominance, Rule-Consciousness, and Vigilance. When many personality traits were considered simultaneously, there was only a 10% overlap between the distributions of these traits in men and women. Essentially, the study suggests that when it comes to personality men and women belong to two different species... This is an extremely large effect by any psychological standard, which suggests that the sex differences in personality are of the same magnitude as the sex differences in aggression or vocational interests."
Bowdoin Students in Therapy After 'Culturally Appropriating' Tequila Party - "Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Maine, has offered counseling to students who felt “injured and affected” by a group of classmates who attended a Tequila-themed birthday party on campus wearing miniature sombreros"
Francis' Friends May Be Numbered in the Vatican -- And the 'Vatileaks' Scandal Is a Testament to That
Yet, to some nonreligious people what he's doing is still not good enough and he's bad as all his predecessors because he's still Catholic
Why the federal government spent $3 million to study lesbian obesity - "nearly three-quarters of lesbians are overweight or obese. The rate is 25 percent higher than heterosexual females and almost “double the obesity risk of gay men,” the summary said... lower athletic self-esteem among lesbians may lead to higher rates of obesity and that lesbians are more likely to see themselves at a healthy weight when they are not... gay and bisexual males had a “greater desire for toned muscles” than straight men. This apparently helps explain why gay men are generally more fit than lesbians."
"Stereotypes" are true after all
The unfriendliest city in the world is... - "While only 3 percent of people considered Rome unfriendly, most of those who replied in the negative were men"
Italian men love women
The History Behind Britain’s Debate Over Immigrants Learning English - "This is not just about tolerance or intolerance of minorities; it also touches on questions of individual freedom and citizenship raised during the French Revolution. Cameron insists that teaching English to immigrants is also about individual freedom, that without knowledge of the common language, individuals are denied access to the choices enjoyed by the majority. The abbé Grégoire’s opposition to linguistic diversity in France had similar roots. Grégoire feared that the interests and rights of ordinary people would never be recognized unless they could read and write enough French to participate in politics. As Grégoire argued in his speech before the Convention in 1794, the collective rights of minorities to have their culture respected conflicted with the rights of individuals to participate fully in society. These individual rights could be secured only through the intervention of the state."
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Breast Practice - [On Indonesia] "Why so many children were getting sick in rural areas is because women were spending their hard earned money on formula milk and then mixing it with dirty water and actually hurting their children when they had a very ready supply of breast milk... culturally in some parts of Indonesia you feed your children bananas when they're very little, as early as sort of a week old... there was a nursing room there, because the government stipulates that you must do this. And the nursing room had been converted into a smoking room because you're not allowed to smoke in government offices. I was outraged and I said to the attendant, a female attendant, I said: 'This is the law'... 'There's nowhere for them to smoke. So they've got to do it somewhere'...
[In Ivory Coast] boobs are very celebrated. They're out a lot, they're not taboo in any way - legs are taboo here. So whenever I'm out and about feeding, the reaction I get from people, straight off, is bon appetit...
It's often touted as something's that free. It's only free if women's time is worth nothing. It's only free if women don't have to lose their jobs over it"
Sugar In Diet Linked To Type 2 Diabetes Rates, Study Finds - "Lustig points to research that shows that as many as 40 percent of people who are at a healthy weight, as defined by their BMI score, have some aspect of metabolic dysfunction, such as hypertension, high cholesterol or Type 2 diabetes. On the flip side, 20 percent of obese people do not have any associated metabolic condition. He holds diets with an excess of sugar, or lack thereof, responsible for this discrepancies. His study tried to isolate the direct effect of sugar in the diet on countries’ rates of Type 2 diabetes. It found that every 150-calorie increase from a sugar source — cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners— correlated with a 1.1 percent increase in the Type 2 diabetes rate over a 10-year period, from 2000 to 2010. In other words, the more sugar in the food supply, the more cases of Type 2 diabetes were diagnosed"
Fighting Crime with Nutrition - "They studied the behavior of 231 inmates at a maximum-security prison in the U.K. Half of the group received daily capsules containing vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, while the other half took dummy pills. Antisocial behavior among inmates was recorded before and during the trial. The supplement group broke prison rules 25 percent less than those on the placebo. The greatest reduction was for serious offenses—instances of fighting, assaulting guards or taking hostages dropped 37 percent. There was, however, no significant change in the control group."
Post ID: 290876972896179505
Fact Checking Sangeetha Thanapal's Lies (Again)
(HT PPBI)
On Hassan Sunny being named one of the world's Top 20 goalkeepers:
Sangeetha's claim: "It just barely gets a mention in Today.
If it was a Chinese guy, it'll be all over the news and he would be named Sportsperson of the Year."
Fortunately, Augustin Chiam did a fact check and pointed out that:
- The Straits Times put a teaser on its front page and had a story on page C12
- Today put it on page 4 (if that is "barely" mentioning it, I wonder what it being in the middle of the paper counts as)
- The New Paper had it on page 12
- CNA featured it
- Yahoo Singapore also had a story on it
His conclusion: "Just need to google it."
Unsurprisingly, these helpful comments pointing out that she was incontrovertibly wrong have now disappeared, leaving only her discredited lies, aimed at stirring racial tensions.
And her frothing fans are none the wiser (even assuming they care about facts).
At least now no one can pretend she is only an innocent "Writer & Anti Racism Social Media Activist-Scholar engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore."
Addendum:
Augustin informs me that he has been, unsurprisingly, blocked by Sangeetha. Even better, a Joshua Chiang reports that he was blocked just for *liking* Augustin's comment.
A non-Chinese Singaporean sports commentator: Lol if anything the Hassan Sunny story was blown up far too big. I was gonna comment on how the media here were heralding some throwaway random slideshow as a major accolade. And here she is saying it wasnt enough
If it makes her feel any better, the Singapore football scene is the one place where being non-Chinese works in your favour
Someone: Wow
Would be somewhat acceptable if she deleted the post
That would be she is a coward, but keeping post and deleting comments means she's a liar
On Hassan Sunny being named one of the world's Top 20 goalkeepers:
Sangeetha's claim: "It just barely gets a mention in Today.
If it was a Chinese guy, it'll be all over the news and he would be named Sportsperson of the Year."
Fortunately, Augustin Chiam did a fact check and pointed out that:
- The Straits Times put a teaser on its front page and had a story on page C12
- Today put it on page 4 (if that is "barely" mentioning it, I wonder what it being in the middle of the paper counts as)
- The New Paper had it on page 12
- CNA featured it
- Yahoo Singapore also had a story on it
His conclusion: "Just need to google it."
Unsurprisingly, these helpful comments pointing out that she was incontrovertibly wrong have now disappeared, leaving only her discredited lies, aimed at stirring racial tensions.
And her frothing fans are none the wiser (even assuming they care about facts).
At least now no one can pretend she is only an innocent "Writer & Anti Racism Social Media Activist-Scholar engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore."
Addendum:
Augustin informs me that he has been, unsurprisingly, blocked by Sangeetha. Even better, a Joshua Chiang reports that he was blocked just for *liking* Augustin's comment.
A non-Chinese Singaporean sports commentator: Lol if anything the Hassan Sunny story was blown up far too big. I was gonna comment on how the media here were heralding some throwaway random slideshow as a major accolade. And here she is saying it wasnt enough
If it makes her feel any better, the Singapore football scene is the one place where being non-Chinese works in your favour
Someone: Wow
Would be somewhat acceptable if she deleted the post
That would be she is a coward, but keeping post and deleting comments means she's a liar
Post ID: 2409382366202756445
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