A case that has raised a furore:
Public prosecutor decides not to appeal Joshua Robinson sentence
"The public prosecutor has decided not to appeal against the four-year jail sentence for the MMA instructor who had sex with two 15-year-old girls and filmed them, Singapore's Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) said on Wednesday (Mar 8).
Robinson's sentence last Thursday sparked an online petition, which has garnered nearly 27,000 signatures to date. The person who started the petition called the sentence "unacceptable and absolutely intolerable".
Most of the outraged do not understand the law. Nor do they understand precedent.
There is a claim that Robinson is getting off lightly (some allege that it's because he's white, aka AMDK).
Let us look at 3 other cases where men were sentenced for having sex with 15 year old girls, and we will see that Robinson is not being treated very leniently:
1) Former journalist jailed 18 months for having underage sex with 15-year-old
Teo got 18 months "only" for having sex with a 15 year old girl.
This is even though there was "exploitation" (he was in a mentor position and arguably took advantage of her mental illness) and she was traumatised and tried to kill herself.
In light of that, 4 years for Robinson doesn't seem too far off (depending on how you weight the child porn, having sex with another 15 year old and showing the 6 year old porn).
2) Man sentenced to 12 months' jail for having sex with 15-year-old girl
Riduwan "only" got 12 months for having sex with a 15 year old girl.
Notice the sentence is less than in the first case because he was not in a mentor position and did not take advantage of her, and the victim was not traumatised (presumably).
3) Deliveryman jailed 20 months for having sex with 15-year-old girl
Shamil was jailed for 20 months.
Why?
He didn't care about the girl (he wanted to give her abortion pills and said he only "liked her a bit"), and she got pregnant and thus suffered.
And apparently he did a lot of bad things in a short period of time.
Note that this sentence was given even though she initiated the relationship.
In the case of Robinson, there're some points to consider:
He didn't get sentenced to caning (that's for those under 14).
He had consensual sex with the 15 year old girls.
We don't penalise child porn particularly because normal porn is already illegal.
He had sex with 15 year olds, which is less serious than if they were 14.
We don't know what kind of "child porn" he had. For all we know, most of it was videos put up by 17 year old teens on Tumblr themselves; consider that sexual crimes involving a 15 year old, a 12 year old and a 4 year old would all be lumped together under "pedophilia" or similar categories - even though they are all manifestly differently.
He was a first time offender (which is why he had been featured by Contact Singapore).
Also Robinson seems to have had lots of positive testimonials, which would've mitigated his sentence.
Originally, I thought that we also didn't have the moral panic about "protecting" "children" that they have in, say, the US. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Yet the "disquiet" that has gone up suggests that we may indeed be moving in that direction.
And now it turns out that the laws might be reviewed:
Relook sentences for offenders like Joshua Robinson: K Shanmugam
One thing that should be kept in mind - but unfortunately might not - is that 'Hard cases make bad law'
"'Hard cases make bad law' isn't so much a universal proverb as a legal adage. It came to light in a comment made by Judge Robert Rolf in the case of Winterbottom v Wright in 1842:
This is one of those unfortunate cases...in which, it is, no doubt, a hardship upon the plaintiff to be without a remedy but by that consideration we ought not to be influenced. Hard cases, it has frequently been observed, are apt to introduce bad law.
The case required a judgment on whether third parties are able to sue for injury. The unusual nature of the case caused the judge to realise that, in the true sense of the expression, exceptions prove the rule and that, unfair as it might have appeared in some circumstances, the law was better drafted under the influence of the average case rather than the exceptional one.
The point was made explicitly in 1903 by V. S. Lean, in Collectanea:
Hard cases make bad law. that is, lead to legislation for exceptions."
Addendum: According to the AGC press release possession of obscene films got him 6 months and exhibiting an obscene object to a young person another 6
L'origine de Bert
Thursday, March 09, 2017
Tuesday, March 07, 2017
Links - 7th March 2017
Swap driving licence for cheap noodles, Japan urges older motorists - "Under a scheme launched last week in Aichi prefecture in central Japan, elderly drivers will be given discounts on ramen noodles at 176 outlets of the Sugakiya restaurant chain, but only after they surrender their driver’s licence. The move comes after the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called for more action to address the steep rise in road accidents, some of them fatal, caused by drivers in the over-74 age group."
Truth is Clinton stole Sanders’ nomination & was bad candidate – ex-CIA officer Kiriakou (EXCLUSIVE) - "The reluctance to release proof of alleged Russian hacking aimed at swaying the US election in Donald Trump’s favor indicates it “doesn’t exist,” former CIA analyst John Kiriakou told RT, arguing that the Democratic Party’s defeat should be pinned on Clinton"
Jeremy Corbyn is showing how left populism fails - "Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, is the most authentically left-wing politician currently leading a major party in the industrialized world. He is also presiding over that party’s historic political collapse... Prime Minister Theresa May had higher approval ratings than Corbyn among Labour voters... “It's a totally idiotic, unworkable idea,” Danny Blanchflower, a Dartmouth professor who used to serve on Corbyn’s economic advisory council, tweeted. “Interesting that we haven't heard from any UK Labour MPs or a single economist who think that @jeremycorbyn idea of a pay cap is a good plan.”
The problem with English - "The English language used to be an asset of the US and UK. Now it has become a weakness... Being an English-speaking society is like living in a glass house: it makes you transparent. Conversely, foreign countries are opaque to mostly monolingual Britons and Americans. Foreigners know us much better than we know them... Just as English let down the anglophone powers in Iraq, so did their other traditional weapon of influence: warfare. They have given up on invasions. The US now spends $597bn a year on its military and still can’t stop Russian adventuring."
Board game and luxuries discovered in Crusader castle in the Galilee - "among the things that evidently never change is the European appetite for pork. The archaeologists discovered bones from domestic European-type pigs inside the castle, as well as remains from turtles, deer, sheep and cattle."
This PrEP campaign is urging people to ‘F*ck Without Fear’
This is a great way to combat stereotpes about gay men and prevent moral hazard
Did the Greeks Help Sculpt China's Terra Cotta Warriors? - "prior to the appearance of the terra cotta warriors, Chinese sculptors did not have a tradition of producing life-size statues. The leap from having no experience to creating armies of the artworks indicates they may have had some outside influence or help."
Math Department Releases Classification of Safe Spaces - "The classification, which details over 200 different safe spaces, differentiates them by their properties along different “axes,” a term which the math department recently picked up from activist literature. Such properties include whether a space preserves an identity, respects the limits of its members, or is sufficiently intersectional. A safe space must also have carefully chosen boundaries, limits, and norms. One familiar safe space is the Möbius strip, as it is impossible to impose a preferred orientation upon it."
The right look: Conservative politicians look better and voters reward it - "We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution"
This is additional evidence for feminists being ugly
Was a Norwegian Cartoon Banned from Twitter and Facebook? : snopes.com - "Rumors that a political cartoon featuring Donald Trump was banned from the social media sites were likely started in an attempt to spread the image to a wider audience."
‘Is this what the west is really like?’ How it felt to leave China for Britain | Xiaolu Guo - "I used the first-person plural too much in my everyday speech. In the west, if I said “We like to eat rice”, it would confuse people. They couldn’t understand who this “we” was referring to. Instead, I should have said “We Chinese like to eat rice”. After a few weeks, I swapped to the first-person singular, as in “I like to eat rice”. But it made me uncomfortable. After all, how could someone who had grown up in a collective society get used to using the first-person singular all the time? The habitual use of “I” requires thinking of yourself as a separate entity in a society of separate entities. But in China no one is a separate entity: either you were born to a non-political peasant household or to a Communist party household. But here, in this foreign country, I had to build a world as a first-person singular – urgently."
Hillary Cabinet plans leaked: Sheryl Sandberg at Treasury, Starbucks CEO at Labor. - "the job of running the Environmental Protection Agency was "likely" going to go to "an African American." Which “African American,” apparently, didn't really matter. And that is how United States politics work."
The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Tiny Library - "While Canadians are guaranteed safe passage to the library, it’s a bit of a harrowing journey. To enter they have to walk past a series of security cameras on Church Street and then past the U.S. border guard stationed out front. As long as they collect their books and walk back the way they came, everything is fine. But if they walk out and continue into the U.S. they’ll be picked up for illegal entry. “We pretend that no one left Canada,” Rumery explains."
Nutella maker fights back on palm oil after cancer risk study - "The hazelnut and chocolate spread, one of Italy's best-known food brands and a popular breakfast treat for children, relies on palm oil for its smooth texture and shelf life. Other substitutes, such as sunflower oil, would change its character, according to Ferrero... Any move away from palm oil would also have economic implications as it is the cheapest vegetable oil, costing around US$800 a ton, compared with US$845 for sunflower oil and US$920 for rapeseed oil, another possible substitute... High temperatures are used to remove palm oil's natural red color and neutralize its smell, but Ferrero says it uses an industrial process that combines a temperature of just below 200C and extremely low pressure to minimize contaminants. The process takes longer and costs 20 percent more than high-temperature refining, Ferrero told Reuters. But it said this had allowed it to bring GE levels so low that scientific instruments find it hard to trace the chemical."
Woman has lived at Changi Airport for 8 years: Report - "She is among more than 10 "regulars" at the airport, the Chinese evening daily reported. The woman in her 50s, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the paper that she rented out her three-room flat in Tampines eight years ago and moved to the airport... She eats at the airport food court and finds living there quite convenient as there is a supermarket, showers, air-conditioning and free Wi-Fi, Wanbao said. She has rental income of more than $1,000, and is not in financial difficulty, but hopes to have a roof over her head... Another regular, a man in his 60s, told Wanbao he has a rental flat in Beach Road but fell out with his roommate. To avoid his roommate, he started sleeping at the airport recently, but goes home in the day. He also prefers to sleep in air-con on hot nights"
Singapore’s forgotten age of innovation - "Kallang Airport... was an art deco dream and one of the most advanced airports of its time, built in anticipation that Singapore would become an important global aviation hub... in the 1930s it could boast of a public trolley bus system that was the world’s largest, and which officials came from around Asia to see... In 1879, Singapore became the first city in the East to have a telephone system. It made international headlines in 1937 with the first phone call between Singapore and London - involving a father and his homesick young daughter. And then there was the Causeway, the largest engineering project in Malaya of its time, which took 2,000 men and five years to complete."
Some fishing village
Oymyakon, the coldest village on earth: Temperatures drop to -71.2C, locals can't wear glasses because they freeze to their faces and the school only shuts if it falls below -52C - "Locals are said to leave their cars running all day for fear of not being able to restart them. Even if there was coverage for mobile phone reception the phones themselves would not work in such cold conditions."
Decline of the dentist's drill? Drug helps rotten teeth regenerate, trial shows - "The therapy works by enhancing the natural ability of teeth to repair themselves through the activation of stem cells in the soft pulp at the centre. Normally, this mechanism is limited to repairing small cracks and holes in dentine, the solid bulk of the tooth beneath the surface enamel. Now scientists have shown that the natural process can be enhanced using an Alzheimer’s drug, allowing the tooth’s own cells to rebuild cavities extending from the surface to the root."
Too many chiefs | The Economist - "Not that long ago companies had just two or three “chief” whatnots. Now they have dozens, collectively called the “c-suite”. A few have more than one chief executive officer; CB Richard Ellis, a property-services firm, has four. A growing number have chiefs for almost everything from knowledge to diversity. Southwest Airlines has a chief Twitter officer. Coca-Cola and Marriott have chief blogging officers. Kodak has one of those too, along with a chief listening officer. Even so, chiefs are relatively rare compared with presidents and their various declensions (vice-, assistant-, etc). Almost everybody in banking from the receptionist upwards is a president of some sort. The number of members of LinkedIn, a professional network, with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. The inflation rate for presidents was 312% and for chiefs a mere 275%"
Do French women embrace cheaters? - "Some women accept a cheater “because the qualities they appreciate in him surpass fidelity,” clinical psychologist Maryse Vaillant told the paper. “These are strong women, not victims…. [They are] capable of distinguishing what’s essential from what is secondary. They know their husbands need conquests to feel confident in themselves, and they accept it,” she said. This way of thinking derives from a “maternal attitude” under which certain women “take pleasure in their husbands behaving like little boys who chase skirts and then return, rather than like men who feel responsible for the security and well-being of their families,” added Bernard Voizot, a member of the Societe psychanalytique de paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society). “A Woman who doesn’t forbid her husband from having sex with others can also get an illusion of omnipotence. In authorizing it, she places herself in a position superior to him.” This latter reason appears to play a role in Sinclair’s case. In 2006 when L’Express magazine asked if she suffered from her husband’s reputation as a seducer, she responded that she was “proud” of it. “It’s important for a politician to seduce,” she said. “As long as I seduce him and he seduces me, that’s enough for me." Competition can also play a role. Some women “need the rivalry of another woman to love a man. They want to feel triumphant over a rival, just as young girls fantasize about eliminating their mothers to have their fathers to themselves,” child psychologist Samuel Lepastier told Le Monde. He added that this sentiment also motivates women who have affairs with their friends’ husbands, or with other married men. “Often the day the man divorces, they lose all interest in him,” he said, having achieved their conquest... Others accept the dalliances because they feel that men’s sexual needs are stronger than their own, and they would prefer not to have sex too often"
Cobra's severed head bites, kills chef - "Chef Peng Fan, of Guangdong Province in China, cut off the head of a spitting cobra as he prepared to dice its body for a soup, the Daily Mail reports. But 20 minutes later, as Peng was tossing the head in the trash, the head was still functioning. That's when the venomous creature bit the chef, who died before anti-venom could be provided. "We ... could hear screams coming from the kitchen," says one restaurant guest."
Malaysian women join Middle East jihadists as ‘comfort women’, reveals intelligence report - "Malaysian women are believed to have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) forces to offer Jihad Al-Nikah or sexual jihad"
Thefts of Tide detergent on the rise - "Tide has become a hot commodity among thieves at supermarkets and drugstores in at least some parts of the country. For a variety of reasons, the detergent in the familiar flame-orange bottle is well-suited for resale on the black market: Everybody needs laundry detergent, and Tide is the nation's most popular brand. It's expensive, selling for up to $20 for a large bottle at stores. And it doesn't spoil... Other popular items for thieves include baby formula, razor blades and over-the-counter medication."
The untold story of how a culture of shame perpetuates abuse. I know, I was a victim - "When I first told my mother about the abuse I’d suffered, she was absolutely devastated. The root of her anger was clear: I was heaping unbound shame on to my family by trying to bring the perpetrator to justice. In trying to stop him from exploiting more children, I was ensuring my parents and my siblings would be ostracised. She begged me not to go to the police station... Although Sohail and I had removed a proven paedophile from the community and helped empower another woman to end her torture, we were not celebrated. On the contrary, we were shunned."
Women Have The Midas Touch, Not Men - "both men and women respond positively to warmth and friendliness from women, but not necessarily from men."
Somebody Kept Driving Over This Trump Supporter’s Sign. The Trump Supporter Got Revenge. It’s Awesome. - "Tallah attached over 30 nails facing upward to the base of one of her three signs so when an unsuspecting "peaceful" Leftist made a bee-line for them, at least one side of their car would need new tires"
Meet China’s Most Famous Single Dad | Foreign Policy - "Li argues that Confucius’s era was more tolerant than people realize and that some mistakenly confuse Confucius’s ideas with those of neo-Confucian conservatives who took his precepts to extremes. He writes that Confucius was compassionate and lacked the "hypocritical moralism of the philosophers in the Song and Ming dynasties." He notes that in ancient China, new brides could chose to leave their marriage within the first three months if they didn’t get along with their spouse. Scholars in Confucius’s time were more hedonistic, he writes, and unabashed about their fondness for food, drink, and sex: "Passion between a man and a woman was considered natural." Li also argues — not terribly convincingly — that Confucius showed something of a feminist side in the Book of Rites when he noted that men should lie with their concubines, even the older ones, once every five days until the woman reaches her 50th year. This showed that Confucius believed the sexual needs of mature women "ought to be met," Li explains"
MH370 and the Secrets of the Deep, Dark Southern Indian Ocean | Foreign Policy - "Not that there are other options besides Perth: There simply isn’t anything closer by — let alone inhabited lands. The closest spit of land is the French archipelago of Kerguelen, uninhabited but for a rotating staff of what must be the world’s most bored meteorologists. In the 19th century, the French government even decided against establishing a penal colony on the Delaware-sized island because it would be too cruel on the inmates"
As Shariah Experiment Becomes a Model, Indonesia’s Secular Face Slips - NYTimes.com - "Indonesia as a whole has drifted in a conservative direction, and Aceh, once an outlier, has become a model for other regions of the country seeking to impose their own Shariah-based ordinances, alarming those who worry about the nation’s drift from secularism. “Whenever Aceh issues a law, saying it’s the highest order of Shariah, it provokes others to do the same thing”... A recent study found that more than 442 Shariah-based ordinances have been passed throughout the nation since 1999, when Jakarta gave provinces and districts substantial powers to make their own laws. These include regulations concerning female attire, the mixing of the sexes and alcohol. But for local officials, the spread of Shariah from Aceh is a point of pride, and delegations from areas with a history of embracing conservative Islam regularly visit to see how it has been carried out here."
Truth is Clinton stole Sanders’ nomination & was bad candidate – ex-CIA officer Kiriakou (EXCLUSIVE) - "The reluctance to release proof of alleged Russian hacking aimed at swaying the US election in Donald Trump’s favor indicates it “doesn’t exist,” former CIA analyst John Kiriakou told RT, arguing that the Democratic Party’s defeat should be pinned on Clinton"
Jeremy Corbyn is showing how left populism fails - "Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, is the most authentically left-wing politician currently leading a major party in the industrialized world. He is also presiding over that party’s historic political collapse... Prime Minister Theresa May had higher approval ratings than Corbyn among Labour voters... “It's a totally idiotic, unworkable idea,” Danny Blanchflower, a Dartmouth professor who used to serve on Corbyn’s economic advisory council, tweeted. “Interesting that we haven't heard from any UK Labour MPs or a single economist who think that @jeremycorbyn idea of a pay cap is a good plan.”
The problem with English - "The English language used to be an asset of the US and UK. Now it has become a weakness... Being an English-speaking society is like living in a glass house: it makes you transparent. Conversely, foreign countries are opaque to mostly monolingual Britons and Americans. Foreigners know us much better than we know them... Just as English let down the anglophone powers in Iraq, so did their other traditional weapon of influence: warfare. They have given up on invasions. The US now spends $597bn a year on its military and still can’t stop Russian adventuring."
Board game and luxuries discovered in Crusader castle in the Galilee - "among the things that evidently never change is the European appetite for pork. The archaeologists discovered bones from domestic European-type pigs inside the castle, as well as remains from turtles, deer, sheep and cattle."
This PrEP campaign is urging people to ‘F*ck Without Fear’
This is a great way to combat stereotpes about gay men and prevent moral hazard
Did the Greeks Help Sculpt China's Terra Cotta Warriors? - "prior to the appearance of the terra cotta warriors, Chinese sculptors did not have a tradition of producing life-size statues. The leap from having no experience to creating armies of the artworks indicates they may have had some outside influence or help."
Math Department Releases Classification of Safe Spaces - "The classification, which details over 200 different safe spaces, differentiates them by their properties along different “axes,” a term which the math department recently picked up from activist literature. Such properties include whether a space preserves an identity, respects the limits of its members, or is sufficiently intersectional. A safe space must also have carefully chosen boundaries, limits, and norms. One familiar safe space is the Möbius strip, as it is impossible to impose a preferred orientation upon it."
The right look: Conservative politicians look better and voters reward it - "We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution"
This is additional evidence for feminists being ugly
Was a Norwegian Cartoon Banned from Twitter and Facebook? : snopes.com - "Rumors that a political cartoon featuring Donald Trump was banned from the social media sites were likely started in an attempt to spread the image to a wider audience."
‘Is this what the west is really like?’ How it felt to leave China for Britain | Xiaolu Guo - "I used the first-person plural too much in my everyday speech. In the west, if I said “We like to eat rice”, it would confuse people. They couldn’t understand who this “we” was referring to. Instead, I should have said “We Chinese like to eat rice”. After a few weeks, I swapped to the first-person singular, as in “I like to eat rice”. But it made me uncomfortable. After all, how could someone who had grown up in a collective society get used to using the first-person singular all the time? The habitual use of “I” requires thinking of yourself as a separate entity in a society of separate entities. But in China no one is a separate entity: either you were born to a non-political peasant household or to a Communist party household. But here, in this foreign country, I had to build a world as a first-person singular – urgently."
Hillary Cabinet plans leaked: Sheryl Sandberg at Treasury, Starbucks CEO at Labor. - "the job of running the Environmental Protection Agency was "likely" going to go to "an African American." Which “African American,” apparently, didn't really matter. And that is how United States politics work."
The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Tiny Library - "While Canadians are guaranteed safe passage to the library, it’s a bit of a harrowing journey. To enter they have to walk past a series of security cameras on Church Street and then past the U.S. border guard stationed out front. As long as they collect their books and walk back the way they came, everything is fine. But if they walk out and continue into the U.S. they’ll be picked up for illegal entry. “We pretend that no one left Canada,” Rumery explains."
Nutella maker fights back on palm oil after cancer risk study - "The hazelnut and chocolate spread, one of Italy's best-known food brands and a popular breakfast treat for children, relies on palm oil for its smooth texture and shelf life. Other substitutes, such as sunflower oil, would change its character, according to Ferrero... Any move away from palm oil would also have economic implications as it is the cheapest vegetable oil, costing around US$800 a ton, compared with US$845 for sunflower oil and US$920 for rapeseed oil, another possible substitute... High temperatures are used to remove palm oil's natural red color and neutralize its smell, but Ferrero says it uses an industrial process that combines a temperature of just below 200C and extremely low pressure to minimize contaminants. The process takes longer and costs 20 percent more than high-temperature refining, Ferrero told Reuters. But it said this had allowed it to bring GE levels so low that scientific instruments find it hard to trace the chemical."
Woman has lived at Changi Airport for 8 years: Report - "She is among more than 10 "regulars" at the airport, the Chinese evening daily reported. The woman in her 50s, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the paper that she rented out her three-room flat in Tampines eight years ago and moved to the airport... She eats at the airport food court and finds living there quite convenient as there is a supermarket, showers, air-conditioning and free Wi-Fi, Wanbao said. She has rental income of more than $1,000, and is not in financial difficulty, but hopes to have a roof over her head... Another regular, a man in his 60s, told Wanbao he has a rental flat in Beach Road but fell out with his roommate. To avoid his roommate, he started sleeping at the airport recently, but goes home in the day. He also prefers to sleep in air-con on hot nights"
Singapore’s forgotten age of innovation - "Kallang Airport... was an art deco dream and one of the most advanced airports of its time, built in anticipation that Singapore would become an important global aviation hub... in the 1930s it could boast of a public trolley bus system that was the world’s largest, and which officials came from around Asia to see... In 1879, Singapore became the first city in the East to have a telephone system. It made international headlines in 1937 with the first phone call between Singapore and London - involving a father and his homesick young daughter. And then there was the Causeway, the largest engineering project in Malaya of its time, which took 2,000 men and five years to complete."
Some fishing village
Oymyakon, the coldest village on earth: Temperatures drop to -71.2C, locals can't wear glasses because they freeze to their faces and the school only shuts if it falls below -52C - "Locals are said to leave their cars running all day for fear of not being able to restart them. Even if there was coverage for mobile phone reception the phones themselves would not work in such cold conditions."
Decline of the dentist's drill? Drug helps rotten teeth regenerate, trial shows - "The therapy works by enhancing the natural ability of teeth to repair themselves through the activation of stem cells in the soft pulp at the centre. Normally, this mechanism is limited to repairing small cracks and holes in dentine, the solid bulk of the tooth beneath the surface enamel. Now scientists have shown that the natural process can be enhanced using an Alzheimer’s drug, allowing the tooth’s own cells to rebuild cavities extending from the surface to the root."
Too many chiefs | The Economist - "Not that long ago companies had just two or three “chief” whatnots. Now they have dozens, collectively called the “c-suite”. A few have more than one chief executive officer; CB Richard Ellis, a property-services firm, has four. A growing number have chiefs for almost everything from knowledge to diversity. Southwest Airlines has a chief Twitter officer. Coca-Cola and Marriott have chief blogging officers. Kodak has one of those too, along with a chief listening officer. Even so, chiefs are relatively rare compared with presidents and their various declensions (vice-, assistant-, etc). Almost everybody in banking from the receptionist upwards is a president of some sort. The number of members of LinkedIn, a professional network, with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. The inflation rate for presidents was 312% and for chiefs a mere 275%"
Do French women embrace cheaters? - "Some women accept a cheater “because the qualities they appreciate in him surpass fidelity,” clinical psychologist Maryse Vaillant told the paper. “These are strong women, not victims…. [They are] capable of distinguishing what’s essential from what is secondary. They know their husbands need conquests to feel confident in themselves, and they accept it,” she said. This way of thinking derives from a “maternal attitude” under which certain women “take pleasure in their husbands behaving like little boys who chase skirts and then return, rather than like men who feel responsible for the security and well-being of their families,” added Bernard Voizot, a member of the Societe psychanalytique de paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society). “A Woman who doesn’t forbid her husband from having sex with others can also get an illusion of omnipotence. In authorizing it, she places herself in a position superior to him.” This latter reason appears to play a role in Sinclair’s case. In 2006 when L’Express magazine asked if she suffered from her husband’s reputation as a seducer, she responded that she was “proud” of it. “It’s important for a politician to seduce,” she said. “As long as I seduce him and he seduces me, that’s enough for me." Competition can also play a role. Some women “need the rivalry of another woman to love a man. They want to feel triumphant over a rival, just as young girls fantasize about eliminating their mothers to have their fathers to themselves,” child psychologist Samuel Lepastier told Le Monde. He added that this sentiment also motivates women who have affairs with their friends’ husbands, or with other married men. “Often the day the man divorces, they lose all interest in him,” he said, having achieved their conquest... Others accept the dalliances because they feel that men’s sexual needs are stronger than their own, and they would prefer not to have sex too often"
Cobra's severed head bites, kills chef - "Chef Peng Fan, of Guangdong Province in China, cut off the head of a spitting cobra as he prepared to dice its body for a soup, the Daily Mail reports. But 20 minutes later, as Peng was tossing the head in the trash, the head was still functioning. That's when the venomous creature bit the chef, who died before anti-venom could be provided. "We ... could hear screams coming from the kitchen," says one restaurant guest."
Malaysian women join Middle East jihadists as ‘comfort women’, reveals intelligence report - "Malaysian women are believed to have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) forces to offer Jihad Al-Nikah or sexual jihad"
Thefts of Tide detergent on the rise - "Tide has become a hot commodity among thieves at supermarkets and drugstores in at least some parts of the country. For a variety of reasons, the detergent in the familiar flame-orange bottle is well-suited for resale on the black market: Everybody needs laundry detergent, and Tide is the nation's most popular brand. It's expensive, selling for up to $20 for a large bottle at stores. And it doesn't spoil... Other popular items for thieves include baby formula, razor blades and over-the-counter medication."
The untold story of how a culture of shame perpetuates abuse. I know, I was a victim - "When I first told my mother about the abuse I’d suffered, she was absolutely devastated. The root of her anger was clear: I was heaping unbound shame on to my family by trying to bring the perpetrator to justice. In trying to stop him from exploiting more children, I was ensuring my parents and my siblings would be ostracised. She begged me not to go to the police station... Although Sohail and I had removed a proven paedophile from the community and helped empower another woman to end her torture, we were not celebrated. On the contrary, we were shunned."
Women Have The Midas Touch, Not Men - "both men and women respond positively to warmth and friendliness from women, but not necessarily from men."
Somebody Kept Driving Over This Trump Supporter’s Sign. The Trump Supporter Got Revenge. It’s Awesome. - "Tallah attached over 30 nails facing upward to the base of one of her three signs so when an unsuspecting "peaceful" Leftist made a bee-line for them, at least one side of their car would need new tires"
Meet China’s Most Famous Single Dad | Foreign Policy - "Li argues that Confucius’s era was more tolerant than people realize and that some mistakenly confuse Confucius’s ideas with those of neo-Confucian conservatives who took his precepts to extremes. He writes that Confucius was compassionate and lacked the "hypocritical moralism of the philosophers in the Song and Ming dynasties." He notes that in ancient China, new brides could chose to leave their marriage within the first three months if they didn’t get along with their spouse. Scholars in Confucius’s time were more hedonistic, he writes, and unabashed about their fondness for food, drink, and sex: "Passion between a man and a woman was considered natural." Li also argues — not terribly convincingly — that Confucius showed something of a feminist side in the Book of Rites when he noted that men should lie with their concubines, even the older ones, once every five days until the woman reaches her 50th year. This showed that Confucius believed the sexual needs of mature women "ought to be met," Li explains"
MH370 and the Secrets of the Deep, Dark Southern Indian Ocean | Foreign Policy - "Not that there are other options besides Perth: There simply isn’t anything closer by — let alone inhabited lands. The closest spit of land is the French archipelago of Kerguelen, uninhabited but for a rotating staff of what must be the world’s most bored meteorologists. In the 19th century, the French government even decided against establishing a penal colony on the Delaware-sized island because it would be too cruel on the inmates"
As Shariah Experiment Becomes a Model, Indonesia’s Secular Face Slips - NYTimes.com - "Indonesia as a whole has drifted in a conservative direction, and Aceh, once an outlier, has become a model for other regions of the country seeking to impose their own Shariah-based ordinances, alarming those who worry about the nation’s drift from secularism. “Whenever Aceh issues a law, saying it’s the highest order of Shariah, it provokes others to do the same thing”... A recent study found that more than 442 Shariah-based ordinances have been passed throughout the nation since 1999, when Jakarta gave provinces and districts substantial powers to make their own laws. These include regulations concerning female attire, the mixing of the sexes and alcohol. But for local officials, the spread of Shariah from Aceh is a point of pride, and delegations from areas with a history of embracing conservative Islam regularly visit to see how it has been carried out here."
Post ID: 2593832805494745956
377A (again)
377A: Majority not always right | TODAYonline
From Martin Piper
In the report “Govt has no plans to repeal section 377A for now” (March 2), the Prime Minister said: “I believe if you have a referendum on the issue today, 377A would stand.”
But I expect that if there had been a referendum on creating the Women’s Charter back when it was discussed, or on the Stop at Two policy, the majority would have voted against those.
If there were a referendum on lowering taxes, I expect the majority to vote for it. The majority are not always right, especially when they do not understand the effects of racism, sexism or taxation.
Leaders should be more learned and realise the ramifications, so it is up to elected governments to do what is logically and morally correct, not what is popular.
Repealing 377A would lead to higher economic productivity and fewer health issues, logically and morally speaking.
It would demonstrate strong leadership and put the population’s needs before notions of what might be popular with other sections of society.
Voodoo economics ("Repealing 377A would lead to higher economic productivity") and imperious rhetoric ("logically... speaking") aside, there're no benefits to repealing 377A - only disadvantages.
Politically, from the PAP's point of view, liberals still won't vote for them (the liberal wishlist is too long), and conservatives will be pissed off.
Furthermore, Singapore already benefits from the gay dollar and de facto tolerance of homosexuality.
So repealing 377A would have only symbolic impact.
Indeed, hand wringing about 377A is a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more activists complain about it, the more they feel victimised by it (actual gay people's feelings about it are another story).
In any event, if we did one day repeal 377A, even this symbolic impact would not be felt, because the activists would then move on to their next shibboleth - gay marriage.
And then the very same arguments that are deployed against 377A today would be mustered to push for gay marriage.
From Martin Piper
In the report “Govt has no plans to repeal section 377A for now” (March 2), the Prime Minister said: “I believe if you have a referendum on the issue today, 377A would stand.”
But I expect that if there had been a referendum on creating the Women’s Charter back when it was discussed, or on the Stop at Two policy, the majority would have voted against those.
If there were a referendum on lowering taxes, I expect the majority to vote for it. The majority are not always right, especially when they do not understand the effects of racism, sexism or taxation.
Leaders should be more learned and realise the ramifications, so it is up to elected governments to do what is logically and morally correct, not what is popular.
Repealing 377A would lead to higher economic productivity and fewer health issues, logically and morally speaking.
It would demonstrate strong leadership and put the population’s needs before notions of what might be popular with other sections of society.
Voodoo economics ("Repealing 377A would lead to higher economic productivity") and imperious rhetoric ("logically... speaking") aside, there're no benefits to repealing 377A - only disadvantages.
Politically, from the PAP's point of view, liberals still won't vote for them (the liberal wishlist is too long), and conservatives will be pissed off.
Furthermore, Singapore already benefits from the gay dollar and de facto tolerance of homosexuality.
So repealing 377A would have only symbolic impact.
Indeed, hand wringing about 377A is a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more activists complain about it, the more they feel victimised by it (actual gay people's feelings about it are another story).
In any event, if we did one day repeal 377A, even this symbolic impact would not be felt, because the activists would then move on to their next shibboleth - gay marriage.
And then the very same arguments that are deployed against 377A today would be mustered to push for gay marriage.
Post ID: 2980164401480968665
Friday, March 03, 2017
Links - 3rd March 2017
Support for EU freedom of movement rules 'eroding' - "One of the most senior Dutch government ministers has said a fundamental EU principle, freedom of movement, needs to be radically reformed. Deputy prime minister Lodewijk Asscher said support was falling across Europe over the way it has been implemented"
Russian Orthodox Church lends weight to Putin patriotism
4 Russian Travel Tips for Visiting America - "2. On Talking to American Women
The short version: American women are a little uptight. They might call the cops if you look at them too long. And don’t be gallant, that creeps them out.
4. On American Optimism
Short Version: These people do not stop smiling. Also, they don’t want to hear your problems because it interrupts their smiling. “Surviving” makes you a hero over there. Here it just means you were unlucky, but not unlucky enough to have died"
Belching smoke through the Channel, Russian aircraft carrier so unreliable it sails with its own breakdown tug
Russian charity 'accidentally advocates beaver genocide' - "instead of asking people to "Do Good", as initially intended, the flyers read "Exterminate Beavers" after intricacies in the Russian language were confused by the printer... the company had cited Russian regulations dating back to the Soviet era specifying that minor typos do not qualify as contract violations. The printing house allegedly told the charity "no one will notice" the error and encouraged them to continue distributing the leaflets"
Russia scorns Boris Johnson's 'hysteria' as bombs hammer Aleppo - "The Russian defence ministry said Boris Johnson’s comments that Russia should be investigated for war crimes in Aleppo were “Russophobic hysteria”."
Identity Politics is for everyone
MP killed in explosion while having sex - "A GLAMOROUS Russian politician and her husband died semi-naked in the back of their 4x4 when he set off a bomb in a jealous rage"
Russia furore over FGM in mainly Muslim Dagestan - "A report on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the North Caucasus has sparked a fierce debate in Russia, with some clerics defending the practice. A civil society group found FGM to be common among Muslims in mountain villages in Dagestan. Girls' genitals were cut in primitive homes. Regional Muslim leader Ismail Berdiyev suggested all women should undergo FGM but later withdrew the remark."
Funny, according to Reza Aslan it's an African problem
Why Do Russians Never Smile? - "There’s even a Russian proverb that translates, roughly, to “laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity”... Smiling is a sign of certainty and confidence, so when people in those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why would you smile when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might, in those “low-UA” countries, even be considered stupid for smiling... In countries such as India, Argentina, and the Maldives, meanwhile, smiling was associated with dishonesty—something Krys found to be correlated to their corruption rankings."
Russia banned a Polish board game that simulates Communist-era shopping
Russia and the Curse of Geography, From Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin - "Two of Russia’s chief preoccupations—its vulnerability on land and its lack of access to warm-water ports—came together in Ukraine in 2014"
Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain Finland’ for Russia, adviser says
Effects of an exercise intervention using Dance Dance Revolution on endothelial function and other risk factors in overweight children. - "Twelve weeks of DDR-use improved FMD, aerobic fitness, and MAP in overweight children. Improvements occurred without changes in inflammatory markers or nitric oxide production"
Who killed the curry house? - "men came to Britain alone, and only later sent for their wives and children, which partly explains why curry house food never bore much resemblance to authentic cookery from the subcontinent. Home cooking in India and Bangladesh was generally done by women... This blastingly hot food was an invented cuisine that no Indian person would fully recognise as their own. Given the choice, even the curry house owners themselves often preferred to go home and eat fresher, more subtle food than the dishes they served in their own restaurants. What they didn’t anticipate was that one day, some of their customers might start to feel the same way... To many British Asian people, whether they had grown up in the UK or arrived as adults, British-Indian food seemed odd, both in form and flavour. The young cookery writer Meera Sodha, author of the 2016 cookbook Fresh India, always felt that curry house food was “misrepresentative” of the Gujarati cuisine she grew up eating at her mother’s table in Lincolnshire. The entire flavour profile of curry house curries, Gulhane told me, is founded on the tang of dried fenugreek leaf, a herb his mother never used, which acts as a flavour enhancer, comparable to MSG. (While talking to Gulhane, I suddenly realised that the spicy aroma at Uddin’s that I had found so distinctive and alluring as a child must have been fenugreek leaf.)"
Korean Cosplayer Pion Kim Attacked For Cosplaying as a Mexican Overwatch Character - "The whole point of cosplaying, or dressing up as fictional characters, is to inhabit a person totally unlike oneself. The community prides itself on being inclusive and accepting, encouraging fat people to dress up as skinny characters or men to dress up as women. But all hell broke lose when a Korean woman donned the costume of a Mexican hacker from the hugely popular Overwatch video game... Some social justice warriors accused Kim of “brownface” for using a subtle bronzer to darken her skin, and conducted what amounted to a witch hunt against her. Many in the Mexican community stood up for Kim, alleging that “gringos” were getting offended on their behalf and saying they didn’t care if people cosplay as a Mexican character. “I’m mexican, i have a ‘dark skin tone,'” a woman wrote on Facebook. “And I think that Sombra cosplay was amazing. She did an amazing job. I mean, if you want to cosplay an ‘Avatar character’ you OBVIOUSLY will paint your skin BLUE, she did the same with Sombra.” Despite the support, Kim apologized for her (non)transgression and vowed to never cosplay as Sombra again. A real loss considering the brilliance of her Sombra rendition."
These People From Japan Don't Care if You Wear Kimonos - "Japanese people couldn’t care less if some whitey wears their clothes — they were actually happy to see an American inspired by Japanese culture... When they were told that Perry’s performance was heavily criticized they were very confused... “Indian curry and Japanese curry are different even though they are both curry,” one man said. “Even if you ate the Japanese version of foreign food, knowing it’s different from the original one, it would make you interested in the original version and want to learn about their culture.”"
Counter-protesters join kimono fray at MFA - "about two dozen protesters and half as many counterprotesters filled the MFA’s Impressionist gallery. On one side, a group of mostly young Asian-American and white women gathered to protest “Kimono Wednesdays,” demanding additional context for the event and questioning views of Asians as “the other” in American culture. They held signs with messages like “Not your Asian fetish” and “I have been assaulted, raped, harassed + stalked, denied my humanity repeatedly & you don’t want to think about me because I am just another Japanese woman”... Stepping into the dispute this week were several counterprotesters wearing kimonos, including some older Japanese women, who advocated for the museum to return to its initial “Kimono Wednesdays” programming. One held a sign saying “I am not offended by people wearing kimono in front of French paintings.” Another sign read, in part, “I welcome museum exhibits that share Japanese culture with the community.” Etsuko Yashiro, 53, of Concord, who helps organize Boston’s Japan Festival, said she was there to share the beauty of kimonos with an American audience. Ikuko Burns, 79, who was born in Tokyo and has lived in Boston for 53 years, explained how she used to bring kimonos to local schools as a consultant for the Children’s Museum to teach introductory lessons on Japan. “I’m a little bit disappointed by the other side,” she said, questioning what the protest had to do with Monet’s painting and chalking it up to the participants’ youth... Wearing a cherry-blossom-patterned kimono, Ara Mahar, 23, of Dorchester, who founded the Boston branch of an international kimono group, held a sign referencing a YouTube video in which a Japanese man is asked when foreigners can wear kimonos. The answer? “Whenever”... “We actually do not quite understand what their point of protest is,” said Jiro Usui, the Deputy Consul General of Japan in Boston. “We tried to listen to those people who are protesting, but we think together with the MFA we should encourage that Japanese culture be appreciated in a positive way.”"
Too bad it got cancelled as they caved to the SJWs
Protesters shut down Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Davis - "protesters blocked access to the venue. Surrounding the lecture hall with signs, they chanted, "Say it loud, say it clear, racists are not welcome here.""
Berkeley cancels Milo Yiannopoulos talk after violent protests - "More than 1,500 protesters had gathered at Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: "No safe space for racists" and "This is war.""
How convenient to blame anarchists who conveniently do what students protest for
German court rules that firebombing a synagogue is not anti-Semitic - "the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis. The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to “call attention to the Gaza conflict” when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences"
Can one attack a mosque to protest ISIS?
Finnair flight 666 to HEL on Friday 13
A day without murder: no one is killed in El Salvador for first time in two years
If you want to earn more, work less - "The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released the government’s first report on karoshi this October, and it found that nearly one in four (23%) companies have some employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month... long-working office martyrs were less likely than their peers to have received a bonus in the last three years... many of us believe we need to be in the office both when our boss shows up and when he or she leaves. However, Vanderkam thinks that’s a big (and often misguided) assumption. “Maybe your boss wants the place to herself in the morning and she’s actually annoyed that you’re getting there early, too.”... employee output declines sharply after 50 hours per week and nosedives after 56 hours to the point where someone who puts in 70 hours doesn’t produce anything more with those additional 14 hours. Similar studies have linked long hours with absenteeism, long-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills."
The BuzzFeed Fiasco Shows Us Why Trust in Institutions Is Dying - "I don’t know which school of journalism Buzzfeed Ben went to, but in my first Masters degree, there was substantial instruction on the ethics of journalism and its implications. Dumping raw unverified data, especially HUMINT, with glaring inaccuracies that can be quite easily verified (and which make the entire report look flawed) crosses a lot of ethical boundaries. The context is this: the report in question has been in the deepest corners of the web since last year, but there’s a reason why Hillary’s campaign opposition researchers, and other established media organisations didn’t touch it. And that’s not just because of its terrible syntax errors and glaring spelling mistakes. It is, at this stage, too good to be true. A cursory Google search can point out that fake news includes not just hoaxes but deliberately publishing propaganda and disinformation (дезинформация), and using social media to drive web traffic and amplify its effect... Trust is earned through integrity. The reason there is a dying trust in Western institutions and lamentable death of expertise, is because the gatekeepers in press and academia have become partisan... The same people who actively supported Wikileaks and opposed Bush 43, are now reversed. Those who supported a Reset with Russia, now see Putin’s hand in everything. It’s almost like a pole is switched overnight, simply because Hillary lost and Trump won"
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - "Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country. Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers"
The Modern Marriage Trap, and How to Get Out of It - "80 percent of women and 70 percent of men say that they want a relationship with “flexible gender boundaries” and prefer sharing over specialization. That’s nice, but it’s not usually how things turn out. That’s because there are forces external to couples that push them into asymmetrical arrangements, ones that impact same-sex as well as different-sex couples. Three-quarters of gay and lesbian couples with two working parents specialize, and that can’t be explained by gender stereotypes, ideologies, or human nature... there are forces bigger than each of us, bigger than our partnerships, and bigger than marriage itself. They shape how our lives turn out whether we like it or not."
Tattooed women outnumber men in a new poll - "40 percent of women made the tattoo experience a shared one, often getting inked with friends and loved ones, They also took the experience "a little more seriously" than their male counterparts. "Women have a tendency sometimes of getting that little souvenir keepsake tattoo with deeper meaning, whereas men tend to go a little overboard and fill themselves up with larger pieces""
CBS Radio Deceptively Implies Chicago Torturers Were White Trump Supporters, Victim Was Black
Piers Morgan defiant after making mum cry on Good Morning Britain
If a woman cries because of a man, she's won
No, Ryan Gosling Isn’t A Sexist For Thanking Eva Mendes - "Thanking your wife is now a sign of being a sexist. Ryan Gosling won a Golden Globe for his performance in “La La Land” and chose to thank his wife, Eva Mendes, for being a good wife, mother, and support for the rest of the family. Instead of this move making him conscientious, supportive of his wife, or a sweet husband, apparently it instead makes him a sexist and misogynist, someone who is upholding the patriarchy and holding down his wife. The world has truly gone mad when a husband can’t love his wife without being slagged... I’m sure Mendes is thankful for The Independent’s criticism of her personal life choices and reproduction. I guess reproductive choices are above reproach, beyond critique, totally a woman’s purview… until they’re not"
Filter bubbles and Facebook: Why so many people hate "the liberal elite" - "As an opinionated citizen with consistently liberal views, I am used to being attacked and insulted by conservatives for my choices and opinions. But the liberal critiques I read weren’t so much attacking my decision as they were questioning my intelligence and my ability to understand the issue. For the first time in my life, I was on the outside of the so-called liberal bubble, looking in. And what I saw was not pretty. I watched as many of my highly educated friends and contacts addressed those who disagreed with them with contempt and arrogance, and an offensive air of intellectual superiority."
Russian Orthodox Church lends weight to Putin patriotism
4 Russian Travel Tips for Visiting America - "2. On Talking to American Women
The short version: American women are a little uptight. They might call the cops if you look at them too long. And don’t be gallant, that creeps them out.
4. On American Optimism
Short Version: These people do not stop smiling. Also, they don’t want to hear your problems because it interrupts their smiling. “Surviving” makes you a hero over there. Here it just means you were unlucky, but not unlucky enough to have died"
Belching smoke through the Channel, Russian aircraft carrier so unreliable it sails with its own breakdown tug
Russian charity 'accidentally advocates beaver genocide' - "instead of asking people to "Do Good", as initially intended, the flyers read "Exterminate Beavers" after intricacies in the Russian language were confused by the printer... the company had cited Russian regulations dating back to the Soviet era specifying that minor typos do not qualify as contract violations. The printing house allegedly told the charity "no one will notice" the error and encouraged them to continue distributing the leaflets"
Russia scorns Boris Johnson's 'hysteria' as bombs hammer Aleppo - "The Russian defence ministry said Boris Johnson’s comments that Russia should be investigated for war crimes in Aleppo were “Russophobic hysteria”."
Identity Politics is for everyone
MP killed in explosion while having sex - "A GLAMOROUS Russian politician and her husband died semi-naked in the back of their 4x4 when he set off a bomb in a jealous rage"
Russia furore over FGM in mainly Muslim Dagestan - "A report on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the North Caucasus has sparked a fierce debate in Russia, with some clerics defending the practice. A civil society group found FGM to be common among Muslims in mountain villages in Dagestan. Girls' genitals were cut in primitive homes. Regional Muslim leader Ismail Berdiyev suggested all women should undergo FGM but later withdrew the remark."
Funny, according to Reza Aslan it's an African problem
Why Do Russians Never Smile? - "There’s even a Russian proverb that translates, roughly, to “laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity”... Smiling is a sign of certainty and confidence, so when people in those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why would you smile when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might, in those “low-UA” countries, even be considered stupid for smiling... In countries such as India, Argentina, and the Maldives, meanwhile, smiling was associated with dishonesty—something Krys found to be correlated to their corruption rankings."
Russia banned a Polish board game that simulates Communist-era shopping
Russia and the Curse of Geography, From Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin - "Two of Russia’s chief preoccupations—its vulnerability on land and its lack of access to warm-water ports—came together in Ukraine in 2014"
Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain Finland’ for Russia, adviser says
Effects of an exercise intervention using Dance Dance Revolution on endothelial function and other risk factors in overweight children. - "Twelve weeks of DDR-use improved FMD, aerobic fitness, and MAP in overweight children. Improvements occurred without changes in inflammatory markers or nitric oxide production"
Who killed the curry house? - "men came to Britain alone, and only later sent for their wives and children, which partly explains why curry house food never bore much resemblance to authentic cookery from the subcontinent. Home cooking in India and Bangladesh was generally done by women... This blastingly hot food was an invented cuisine that no Indian person would fully recognise as their own. Given the choice, even the curry house owners themselves often preferred to go home and eat fresher, more subtle food than the dishes they served in their own restaurants. What they didn’t anticipate was that one day, some of their customers might start to feel the same way... To many British Asian people, whether they had grown up in the UK or arrived as adults, British-Indian food seemed odd, both in form and flavour. The young cookery writer Meera Sodha, author of the 2016 cookbook Fresh India, always felt that curry house food was “misrepresentative” of the Gujarati cuisine she grew up eating at her mother’s table in Lincolnshire. The entire flavour profile of curry house curries, Gulhane told me, is founded on the tang of dried fenugreek leaf, a herb his mother never used, which acts as a flavour enhancer, comparable to MSG. (While talking to Gulhane, I suddenly realised that the spicy aroma at Uddin’s that I had found so distinctive and alluring as a child must have been fenugreek leaf.)"
Korean Cosplayer Pion Kim Attacked For Cosplaying as a Mexican Overwatch Character - "The whole point of cosplaying, or dressing up as fictional characters, is to inhabit a person totally unlike oneself. The community prides itself on being inclusive and accepting, encouraging fat people to dress up as skinny characters or men to dress up as women. But all hell broke lose when a Korean woman donned the costume of a Mexican hacker from the hugely popular Overwatch video game... Some social justice warriors accused Kim of “brownface” for using a subtle bronzer to darken her skin, and conducted what amounted to a witch hunt against her. Many in the Mexican community stood up for Kim, alleging that “gringos” were getting offended on their behalf and saying they didn’t care if people cosplay as a Mexican character. “I’m mexican, i have a ‘dark skin tone,'” a woman wrote on Facebook. “And I think that Sombra cosplay was amazing. She did an amazing job. I mean, if you want to cosplay an ‘Avatar character’ you OBVIOUSLY will paint your skin BLUE, she did the same with Sombra.” Despite the support, Kim apologized for her (non)transgression and vowed to never cosplay as Sombra again. A real loss considering the brilliance of her Sombra rendition."
These People From Japan Don't Care if You Wear Kimonos - "Japanese people couldn’t care less if some whitey wears their clothes — they were actually happy to see an American inspired by Japanese culture... When they were told that Perry’s performance was heavily criticized they were very confused... “Indian curry and Japanese curry are different even though they are both curry,” one man said. “Even if you ate the Japanese version of foreign food, knowing it’s different from the original one, it would make you interested in the original version and want to learn about their culture.”"
Counter-protesters join kimono fray at MFA - "about two dozen protesters and half as many counterprotesters filled the MFA’s Impressionist gallery. On one side, a group of mostly young Asian-American and white women gathered to protest “Kimono Wednesdays,” demanding additional context for the event and questioning views of Asians as “the other” in American culture. They held signs with messages like “Not your Asian fetish” and “I have been assaulted, raped, harassed + stalked, denied my humanity repeatedly & you don’t want to think about me because I am just another Japanese woman”... Stepping into the dispute this week were several counterprotesters wearing kimonos, including some older Japanese women, who advocated for the museum to return to its initial “Kimono Wednesdays” programming. One held a sign saying “I am not offended by people wearing kimono in front of French paintings.” Another sign read, in part, “I welcome museum exhibits that share Japanese culture with the community.” Etsuko Yashiro, 53, of Concord, who helps organize Boston’s Japan Festival, said she was there to share the beauty of kimonos with an American audience. Ikuko Burns, 79, who was born in Tokyo and has lived in Boston for 53 years, explained how she used to bring kimonos to local schools as a consultant for the Children’s Museum to teach introductory lessons on Japan. “I’m a little bit disappointed by the other side,” she said, questioning what the protest had to do with Monet’s painting and chalking it up to the participants’ youth... Wearing a cherry-blossom-patterned kimono, Ara Mahar, 23, of Dorchester, who founded the Boston branch of an international kimono group, held a sign referencing a YouTube video in which a Japanese man is asked when foreigners can wear kimonos. The answer? “Whenever”... “We actually do not quite understand what their point of protest is,” said Jiro Usui, the Deputy Consul General of Japan in Boston. “We tried to listen to those people who are protesting, but we think together with the MFA we should encourage that Japanese culture be appreciated in a positive way.”"
Too bad it got cancelled as they caved to the SJWs
Protesters shut down Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Davis - "protesters blocked access to the venue. Surrounding the lecture hall with signs, they chanted, "Say it loud, say it clear, racists are not welcome here.""
Berkeley cancels Milo Yiannopoulos talk after violent protests - "More than 1,500 protesters had gathered at Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: "No safe space for racists" and "This is war.""
How convenient to blame anarchists who conveniently do what students protest for
German court rules that firebombing a synagogue is not anti-Semitic - "the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis. The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to “call attention to the Gaza conflict” when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences"
Can one attack a mosque to protest ISIS?
Finnair flight 666 to HEL on Friday 13
A day without murder: no one is killed in El Salvador for first time in two years
If you want to earn more, work less - "The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released the government’s first report on karoshi this October, and it found that nearly one in four (23%) companies have some employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month... long-working office martyrs were less likely than their peers to have received a bonus in the last three years... many of us believe we need to be in the office both when our boss shows up and when he or she leaves. However, Vanderkam thinks that’s a big (and often misguided) assumption. “Maybe your boss wants the place to herself in the morning and she’s actually annoyed that you’re getting there early, too.”... employee output declines sharply after 50 hours per week and nosedives after 56 hours to the point where someone who puts in 70 hours doesn’t produce anything more with those additional 14 hours. Similar studies have linked long hours with absenteeism, long-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills."
The BuzzFeed Fiasco Shows Us Why Trust in Institutions Is Dying - "I don’t know which school of journalism Buzzfeed Ben went to, but in my first Masters degree, there was substantial instruction on the ethics of journalism and its implications. Dumping raw unverified data, especially HUMINT, with glaring inaccuracies that can be quite easily verified (and which make the entire report look flawed) crosses a lot of ethical boundaries. The context is this: the report in question has been in the deepest corners of the web since last year, but there’s a reason why Hillary’s campaign opposition researchers, and other established media organisations didn’t touch it. And that’s not just because of its terrible syntax errors and glaring spelling mistakes. It is, at this stage, too good to be true. A cursory Google search can point out that fake news includes not just hoaxes but deliberately publishing propaganda and disinformation (дезинформация), and using social media to drive web traffic and amplify its effect... Trust is earned through integrity. The reason there is a dying trust in Western institutions and lamentable death of expertise, is because the gatekeepers in press and academia have become partisan... The same people who actively supported Wikileaks and opposed Bush 43, are now reversed. Those who supported a Reset with Russia, now see Putin’s hand in everything. It’s almost like a pole is switched overnight, simply because Hillary lost and Trump won"
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - "Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country. Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers"
The Modern Marriage Trap, and How to Get Out of It - "80 percent of women and 70 percent of men say that they want a relationship with “flexible gender boundaries” and prefer sharing over specialization. That’s nice, but it’s not usually how things turn out. That’s because there are forces external to couples that push them into asymmetrical arrangements, ones that impact same-sex as well as different-sex couples. Three-quarters of gay and lesbian couples with two working parents specialize, and that can’t be explained by gender stereotypes, ideologies, or human nature... there are forces bigger than each of us, bigger than our partnerships, and bigger than marriage itself. They shape how our lives turn out whether we like it or not."
Tattooed women outnumber men in a new poll - "40 percent of women made the tattoo experience a shared one, often getting inked with friends and loved ones, They also took the experience "a little more seriously" than their male counterparts. "Women have a tendency sometimes of getting that little souvenir keepsake tattoo with deeper meaning, whereas men tend to go a little overboard and fill themselves up with larger pieces""
CBS Radio Deceptively Implies Chicago Torturers Were White Trump Supporters, Victim Was Black
Piers Morgan defiant after making mum cry on Good Morning Britain
If a woman cries because of a man, she's won
No, Ryan Gosling Isn’t A Sexist For Thanking Eva Mendes - "Thanking your wife is now a sign of being a sexist. Ryan Gosling won a Golden Globe for his performance in “La La Land” and chose to thank his wife, Eva Mendes, for being a good wife, mother, and support for the rest of the family. Instead of this move making him conscientious, supportive of his wife, or a sweet husband, apparently it instead makes him a sexist and misogynist, someone who is upholding the patriarchy and holding down his wife. The world has truly gone mad when a husband can’t love his wife without being slagged... I’m sure Mendes is thankful for The Independent’s criticism of her personal life choices and reproduction. I guess reproductive choices are above reproach, beyond critique, totally a woman’s purview… until they’re not"
Filter bubbles and Facebook: Why so many people hate "the liberal elite" - "As an opinionated citizen with consistently liberal views, I am used to being attacked and insulted by conservatives for my choices and opinions. But the liberal critiques I read weren’t so much attacking my decision as they were questioning my intelligence and my ability to understand the issue. For the first time in my life, I was on the outside of the so-called liberal bubble, looking in. And what I saw was not pretty. I watched as many of my highly educated friends and contacts addressed those who disagreed with them with contempt and arrogance, and an offensive air of intellectual superiority."
Post ID: 1003180760898753358
Why did Singapore ban pornography but legalize prostitution?
Gabriel Seah's answer to Why did Singapore ban pornography but legalize prostitution? - Quora
In 1999, Wong Kan Seng (the then Minister for Home Affairs) was asked about Singapore’s approach to prostitution in Parliament by J. B. Jeyaretnam (a famous opposition figure)
Wong replied that:
Governments around the world and through the ages have tried to eradicate prostitution, but none had succeeded. Criminalising prostitution will only drive such activities underground, resulting in crime syndicates taking control over such activities.
The Ministry of Home Affairs therefore has taken a pragmatic approach of recognising that the problem cannot be totally suppressed or wished away. Our approach is therefore to contain the situation, particularly through continuing enforcement against prostitutes and pimps who solicit in public.[1]
In practical terms, this takes the form of sanctioned brothels, pimps and prostitutes in designated red light districts (Situation in Singapore) despite brothels and pimping being technically illegal.
Meanwhile, non-sanctioned ones are cracked down on; for example, while prostitution per se is not illegal, “foreign sex workers and pimps are deemed to be “prohibited immigrants” and may be removed from Singapore (s 31 of the Immigration Act” (Poh Boon Kiat v Public Prosecutor); while it's not illegal to be a prostitute, foreigners don't have work permits to work as prostitutes (unless they're one of the licensed ones).
As for pornography, it is targeted by laws such as the Penal Code, the Films Act and the Undesirable Publications Act, where “obscene” materials are those deemed “to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely . to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it”. It is noteworthy that even in 1998, 3 decades after the latter bill was first passed, these were maintained as public policy goals despite it being pointed out that texts like D.H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, formerly targeted by similar laws, are now the subject of school examinations sat by 16 year olds[2]
The distinction between pornography and prostitution, then, was presumably made because those who visit prostitutes are considered to already be depraved and/or corrupt, whereas pornography has the potential to corrupt the hitherto pure, and thus degrade the societal fabric. Given that prostitution is confined to certain designated red light areas, whereas pornography is portable, there is a certain logic to this.
Like with most other facets of life, the internet has disrupted the on-the-ground realities and legal framework around both pornography and prostitution, with everyone potentially being able to carry pornography around with them in their phones and online ads for prostitution (it’s not soliciting in public if a client contacts you after seeing your ad).
With pornography the government seems to given up on what is available online, with a “practical light-touch approach to regulating the Internet”, with only 100 websites[3] (most of which seem to be pornographic - see Gabriel Seah's answer to What are the banned websites in Singapore?) blocked.
Indeed, the most frequently asked question at the government censorship agency’s website (IMDA - FAQs) is “Is accessing pornography on the Internet illegal?”, to which the answer is “The IMDA does not monitor or track users' access to any sites on the Internet and does not interfere with what individuals access in the privacy of their homes. We are primarily concerned with the purveyors and distributors of pornography. Unless you engage in such activities, the mere act of visiting such sites is not an offence.”
Yet, physical pornography is still frowned upon - merely possessing it can get you fined (Monk's ex-aide fined). This is kind of schizophrenic given the IMDA’s stance - the digital-physical distinction is problematic (Is there a big difference between pornography on your computer and that on DVDs, given that both are stored in the form of 1s and 0s? If downloading pornography is obscene what about your browser cache after you visit a pornographic website?)
As for prostitution, despite attempts to amend the laws (e.g. the 2016 Women’s Charter amendment[4] to criminalise "Remote communication service[s] operated or maintained for offering or facilitating provision of sexual services, etc.", i.e. websites which facilitate prostitution), it is simply impossible to stamp out unlicensed prostitution - it is just too lucrative. For example, in 5 years Chew Tiong Wei made recorded almost $2.6 million in revenue and made a profit of about $1 million (Online vice-ring pimp who made $1m in profits over 5 years convicted of vice offences). As an industry insider notes, “You chop off one syndicate head, seven others will appear. It's easy money that nobody would want to miss out on” (Customers believe they won't get caught).
Further reading:
Containing Commercial Sex to Designated Red Light Areas: An idea past its prime?
https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/wp-con...
What is the law on pornography in Singapore? | SingaporeLegalAdvice.com
Footnotes
[1] http://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/t...
Post ID: 6245711587499695374
Thursday, March 02, 2017
Links - 2nd March 2017
Home Based Small Scale Business Scheme | HDB InfoWEB - "Massage services are not allowed in HDB flats."
Poldark and historical TV drama | Podcast | History Extra - "There's a film called Che by Steven Soderbergh... it's an absolutely unwatchable film. It's about 6 hours long, it's in 2 parts. It's about Che Guevara. No one watched it, because it's incredibly boring because it's really sort of carefully accurate and it just doesn't have any of the pizzaz of a story. It doesn't have those Aristotelian poetics. The sort of the 3 act structure: the beginning, the muddle and the end. It doesn't have any of the drama that you require in something that captures your imagination. And if you're bored an hour in, then you're not learning the history, because you're bored... Braveheart is perhaps the most inaccurate film in all of human history. It's a good movie, it's really well made. Historically it's absolute nonsense. And I think some people would argue that it's also had a huge impact on the rising... Scottish nationalism and people re-engaging with their past. But I don't think it had to be accurate. That's not its job. Its job was to be thrilling and inspiring and then the role of historians is to step in and say: I'm really glad you enjoyed that. Here's a very interesting book about how it's not true."
Women in politics and Robinson Crusoe | Podcast | History Extra - "There comes a point in the 1930s where the Conservative Party's actually concerned to attract more men to their ranks, because women have really taken over in many ways the organisation, the kind of the social life and the social kind of energy of the party. Which is of course fundamental for a party that considers itself the party of natural rule...
This exemplary Englishman is in fact reading a lesson to King George I about what it means to English. You live on an island, you improve it, you're tolerant to people of many faiths, but you won't put up with cannibalism. And you leave the island far richer and more prosperous than you found it. This is precisely what men like Defoe wanted George I to be - an improving English king. And they were reading him a lesson in English kingship and Englishness which they felt very necessary for a German-speaking Hannoverian"
Lenin and the Russian revolutions | Podcast | History Extra - "He liked Switzerland. Most revolutionaries were a bit iffy about Switzerland because they thought it was bourgeois. Trotsky hated it. He said the only thing the Swiss ever talk about is the shortage of potatoes. But Lenin liked it because it suited his sense of what's decent and what's proper. The libraries were great, the trains ran on time, the buses were clean. He had a little room in a street in Zurich and he could walk to the library in 5 minutes, I've done the same walk. And there he was, he could just write his stuff. Everything was exactly the way he wanted it. And he was in the Swiss labour movement to try to organise a very very tiny party into another split, because Lenin liked splitting parties, so it's good for him. And he liked mountain walking too...
What he was trying to do was, his view was always 'I would rather lead a party of one than be wrong. I'd rather have 2 people with me than be with this large party of people who are simply going to lead the Revolution down a blind alley'...
Lenin crept back in and then when trouble broke out in June, July, he crept back out again because he was always one to watch his own back and get out to safety. Lenin never was there leading from the barricades. Trotsky was the poster boy"
The Norman Conquest | Podcast | History Extra - "[On the Bayeux Tapestry] It's an artist's depiction of events that happened years before. But it's also an artistic source based on other artistic sources. So you can see at various points the tapestry artist borrows from copies, illuminated manuscripts at Canterbury where the tapestry was manufactured. So you can point to very precise examples. Here is Bishop Odo holding a feast before the Battle of Hastings. Oh look it's copied from this Last Supper scene. A similar thing seems to be going on with Harold's death scene. It seems that the tapestry artist may have been copying a biblical scene of the death of King Zedekiah who was killed by being blinded. So it's a very problematic source. There is another contemporary source... the song of the Battle of Hastings, which says that Harold was hacked to death by a dedicated Norman Death Squad, which would make perfect sense because William's war aim is Harold must die. Either way, we'll never know...
What happens in the years that follow, the months that follow even... is Anglo-Saxon rebellion and insurgency... My take on it is the English don't seriously think they were conquered in 1066. Because they were conquered 50 years earlier by the Vikings and they know what conquest feels like. In particular people have their heads chopped off. And William's attitude in the first instance is more lenient than that. Despite all the killing at Hastings in the course of the battle, what he does with the survivors, the surviving English aristocrats is he spares them and lets them redeem their lands. He lets them hang on to their lands in exchange for payment. Which makes sense if he's saying 'I am the legitimate successor to Edward the Confessor'...
England before 1066 was essentially a land without castles. Well, it's very hard to imprison people and hold them if you don't have strongholds"
Shepherd Gets Attacked by Sheep GIF | Create, Discover and Share on Gfycat
Batteriser is a $2.50 gadget that extends alkaline battery life 800%
Be Careful About "Missing Person" Posts It's one thing to circulate a curren... - ""missing" posts that tell you to call someone other than police, that have no date or location, or are in any other way suspect should not not be shared and possibly should even be reported. This is how stalkers can find their hidden victims. This is how abusive parents reconnect with children that have been taken from them for good reason."
Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent. Here’s why - "There’s another pretty simple reason Germans are less likely to own houses. The government doesn’t encourage it. Unlike high-homeownership countries like Spain, Ireland and the US, Germany doesn’t let homeowners deduct mortgage-interest payments from their taxes. (There’s more on the structure of European tax systems here.) Without that deduction, the benefits of owning and renting are more evenly balanced"
Students at Harvard’s Kennedy School will now be required to check their privilege
Baltimore Professor: “White People Should Deposit Their Unearned Wealth In Black Accounts” - "White people’s wealth is apparently ‘unearned’ because it is based off a white supremacist society that steals from black people. That is why said wealth should be ‘deposited in black accounts’. In activist parlance, ‘white allies’ are the white liberal/leftists that come out at at some of these protests. This standing with black folk is apparently in his words being given too easily, and should not be given without this cost."
Taiwan Voice - Timeline - "Unfortunately for the police, among the 19 people inside were three lawyers, a law professor, and several legal advisors. When asked to show his ID, lawyer Kao Yung-Cheng came forward and asked the police based on what law they were forcing them to show their IDs. None of the police officers could answer the question. Kao showed the police his lawyer certificate and told the police that none of the people inside had their IDs, nor could they remember their ID numbers. He added that all he had with him was his law certificate, and to contact him with any problems."
Carly Fiorina Says the Chinese ‘Don’t Innovate’ - "Fiorina has criticized proponents of Common Core who think the policy will help U.S. students compete with Chinese students in subjects like math and science. The 2016 presidential hopeful told Iowa political video blog Caffeinated Thoughts earlier this year that the U.S. education system should not be modeled after China’s. Chinese students may test well, she said, but they fall short when it comes to innovation."
A lèse majesté law for Singapore’s king, long live Lee Kuan Yew! - "his ministry was looking into treating Mr Lee as a national symbol, equivalent to the national flag, by incorporating him into the Singapore Arms and Flag and National Anthem Act. Mr Lee’s name and image would then have to be accorded the same respect as the national flag, much like a king in a monarchy. The laws which govern the use of the flag will then also govern the use of Mr Lee’s name."
Skyping with the enemy: I went undercover as a jihadi girlfriend - "When a French journalist posed online as a young woman interested in Isis, she was soon contacted by a fighter in Syria. He proposed marriage – but could she maintain a double life?"
Danish DJ bludgeons rabbit to death to prove a point – “live” on air - "Mr Juhl later explained to the media that his intention in killing the rabbit “live” on air was to show up the hypocrisy of our relationship with animals. "Consumers generally do not kill animals themselves, but we buy and eat animals, that have lead sad lives," he said. "You cannot say: 'It's terrible to kill an animal', and then eat meat. These things are connected"... The station claimed that the rabbit had “enjoyed a good life”, unlike many of the animals which end up on the meat counter, and that it was killed in “a humane manner.”"
How to become a swordsmith apprentice in Japan « Soulsmithing - "What is important to understand is that high-level craftsmen in Japan actually feel it is a big responsibility to pass down the tradition for future generations. They cannot let it be perpetuated by luke-warm souls who would let fall the very standards of their trade. Accepting an apprentice is a responsibility both in the face of the tradition and that of the individual thinking to make this life choice."
No wonder their trades are dying
The Clash of Victimizations – How A Babble of Grievances Impedes the Struggle for Real Justice - "A “Gresham’s law” of language takes over, where it is not bad money that drives out the good, but self-serving tropes that end up replacing the genuine coinage of truth and righteousness... In a globalized and culturally hybridized society of competing social values, worldviews, and behavioral patterns, where pluralism is no longer simply taken for granted, but aggressively advanced and in some ways even manufactured by what I would call the “difference industry”, it becomes impossible to establish easily recognizable standards of “rightness” or “wrongness”, from which any consensus about the nature of “justice” arises. Even murder and terrorism can be easily excused. Nuanced and balanced judgments become nearly impossible when every grievance is crying out for recognition. Relative ethical hierarchies are abolished, and every single cause becomes equally its own categorical imperative. In consequence, our own overactive ideological glands that produce the hormones designed to intensify our moral outrage end up generating insoluble controversies. This week’s flap at Princeton University over whether rapper “Big Sean” Anderson should be disinvited from starring in the school’s showcase music festival because of often brutally misogynistic lyrics is a case in point. It has pitted feminists and anti-rape activists against the black student community., who view the outcry over Anderson’s music as one more manifestation of embedded racism."
Keywords: Offence culture, offense culture
New JPEG image enlargening software is actually a bigger deal than it sounds - "thanks to the free and excellently-named software, waifu2x, JPEG images can be enlarged with virtually no noise or pixilation and I can finally get back to completing my epic Fraggle Rock erotic fanfiction saga instead of spending hours a day turning the Internet upside down for appropriately-sized pictures!"
British women paying for sex with male escorts more than ever - "record numbers of women who pay for sex come from all backgrounds and ages, although there are a high number of women in their thirties and forties. Escorts said that while some of the women didn't want or have time for relationships, others were already in a relationship but wanted to spice things up. While busy career women are increasingly using their phones and the internet to access sexual services... "It is also evident that women purchase sexual services as part of a couple. The majority of the escorts interviewed see couples, stating they are booked for regular excitement and fun, or simply for a relationship treat. "In couples, some men appeared more nervous than their female partner." The study also revealed that in the past five years the number of male escorts has tripled from 5,246 in 2010 to 15,732 in 2015. While the number of female profiles has increased from 11,056 in 2010, compared to 28,614 now."
Singaporean dies in Bali trying to take a selfie - "According to Indonesian media reports, Mr Mohamed Aslam tried to take a selfie on a cliff at Sandi Bay Beach on Nusa Lembongan Island on Thursday (May 21). He lost his footing after he was hit by a wave"
Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu - "At approximately 2 a.m., Rosenblatt was finishing a particularly difficult course-pack reading on the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases—cultural, racial, economic, and political—that infect all ethnographic and commercial "histories.""
Morrissey: eating meat is the same as paedophilia - ""I see no difference between eating animals and paedophilia," he said. "They are both rape, violence, murder. If I'm introduced to anyone who eats beings, I walk away"... If you believe in the abattoir then you would support Auschwitz. There's no difference."
Poor work-life balance makes life in Singapore more expensive - "Saving money takes time. It often means doing your own cooking instead of eating out again, having the perseverance to take public transport instead of hailing a cab and having the patience to comparison shop...
one of my friends is really into photography and has a ton of gear. But he finds that the less time he spends on actually going out and taking pictures, the more he ends up amassing equipment procured online."
Hard to bear: pandas poorly adapted for digesting bamboo, scientists find - "two million years after shifting to a herbivore lifestyle, the giant panda still has carnivore-like gut bacteria, which is better at breaking down protein. The discovery could explain some of the animal’s more baffling traits, including spending almost every waking hour eating and its apparent indifference towards attempts at reproduction."
World’s First ‘Phodographer’ Dog Uses Heart Rate Monitor That Snaps Pics When He Gets Excited - "The heart rate monitor can be worn on a strap around the dog’s neck. The camera is worn on the dog’s chest with the help of a harness, and the two communicate with Bluetooth. When the dog’s heartrate goes up – which can be when he’s excited or afraid – the camera snaps a picture!"
The Muslim Call Girl Who’ll Marry You First - "To Kamillah, a London escort with 80,000 Twitter followers, nikah mut’ah is merely an optional extra available for less than $100... the $450-an-hour escort wears a veil or hijab in most of the photographs on her booking site, even when a nipple is squarely in the center of the frame. Thus, civilizations collide in 21st-century London. Among the reviews on the Trip Advisor-style site, a satisfied customer concludes: “Allahu Akbar! Had the best mutah experience everr”... The biggest concern for Kamillah, who says she is half-Iraqi, half-Iranian, was apparently the fear that Romanian and Eastern European call girls were muscling in on her turf by pretending to be Middle Eastern and offering the same ceremony. While there is a debate among Shia clerics about the permissibility of mut’ah, it is completely outlawed for Sunnis. Kamillah told The Sun: “I did it with one Saudi who converted to Shia Islam only so he could do mut’ah. He did it just for that reason."
Cambridge students urge university to stop making their exam results public - "Students who signed the petition are concerned that the public distribution of results ignores students’ welfare and right to privacy. They say the current practice “promotes a culture of grade shaming”, that those with mental health issues may not want to be included, and that it could “trigger an episode” in vulnerable individuals. The campaigners also say the system may harm “those who do not wish to be identified by the name the university has on record, particularly within the trans community”.
Poldark and historical TV drama | Podcast | History Extra - "There's a film called Che by Steven Soderbergh... it's an absolutely unwatchable film. It's about 6 hours long, it's in 2 parts. It's about Che Guevara. No one watched it, because it's incredibly boring because it's really sort of carefully accurate and it just doesn't have any of the pizzaz of a story. It doesn't have those Aristotelian poetics. The sort of the 3 act structure: the beginning, the muddle and the end. It doesn't have any of the drama that you require in something that captures your imagination. And if you're bored an hour in, then you're not learning the history, because you're bored... Braveheart is perhaps the most inaccurate film in all of human history. It's a good movie, it's really well made. Historically it's absolute nonsense. And I think some people would argue that it's also had a huge impact on the rising... Scottish nationalism and people re-engaging with their past. But I don't think it had to be accurate. That's not its job. Its job was to be thrilling and inspiring and then the role of historians is to step in and say: I'm really glad you enjoyed that. Here's a very interesting book about how it's not true."
Women in politics and Robinson Crusoe | Podcast | History Extra - "There comes a point in the 1930s where the Conservative Party's actually concerned to attract more men to their ranks, because women have really taken over in many ways the organisation, the kind of the social life and the social kind of energy of the party. Which is of course fundamental for a party that considers itself the party of natural rule...
This exemplary Englishman is in fact reading a lesson to King George I about what it means to English. You live on an island, you improve it, you're tolerant to people of many faiths, but you won't put up with cannibalism. And you leave the island far richer and more prosperous than you found it. This is precisely what men like Defoe wanted George I to be - an improving English king. And they were reading him a lesson in English kingship and Englishness which they felt very necessary for a German-speaking Hannoverian"
Lenin and the Russian revolutions | Podcast | History Extra - "He liked Switzerland. Most revolutionaries were a bit iffy about Switzerland because they thought it was bourgeois. Trotsky hated it. He said the only thing the Swiss ever talk about is the shortage of potatoes. But Lenin liked it because it suited his sense of what's decent and what's proper. The libraries were great, the trains ran on time, the buses were clean. He had a little room in a street in Zurich and he could walk to the library in 5 minutes, I've done the same walk. And there he was, he could just write his stuff. Everything was exactly the way he wanted it. And he was in the Swiss labour movement to try to organise a very very tiny party into another split, because Lenin liked splitting parties, so it's good for him. And he liked mountain walking too...
What he was trying to do was, his view was always 'I would rather lead a party of one than be wrong. I'd rather have 2 people with me than be with this large party of people who are simply going to lead the Revolution down a blind alley'...
Lenin crept back in and then when trouble broke out in June, July, he crept back out again because he was always one to watch his own back and get out to safety. Lenin never was there leading from the barricades. Trotsky was the poster boy"
The Norman Conquest | Podcast | History Extra - "[On the Bayeux Tapestry] It's an artist's depiction of events that happened years before. But it's also an artistic source based on other artistic sources. So you can see at various points the tapestry artist borrows from copies, illuminated manuscripts at Canterbury where the tapestry was manufactured. So you can point to very precise examples. Here is Bishop Odo holding a feast before the Battle of Hastings. Oh look it's copied from this Last Supper scene. A similar thing seems to be going on with Harold's death scene. It seems that the tapestry artist may have been copying a biblical scene of the death of King Zedekiah who was killed by being blinded. So it's a very problematic source. There is another contemporary source... the song of the Battle of Hastings, which says that Harold was hacked to death by a dedicated Norman Death Squad, which would make perfect sense because William's war aim is Harold must die. Either way, we'll never know...
What happens in the years that follow, the months that follow even... is Anglo-Saxon rebellion and insurgency... My take on it is the English don't seriously think they were conquered in 1066. Because they were conquered 50 years earlier by the Vikings and they know what conquest feels like. In particular people have their heads chopped off. And William's attitude in the first instance is more lenient than that. Despite all the killing at Hastings in the course of the battle, what he does with the survivors, the surviving English aristocrats is he spares them and lets them redeem their lands. He lets them hang on to their lands in exchange for payment. Which makes sense if he's saying 'I am the legitimate successor to Edward the Confessor'...
England before 1066 was essentially a land without castles. Well, it's very hard to imprison people and hold them if you don't have strongholds"
Shepherd Gets Attacked by Sheep GIF | Create, Discover and Share on Gfycat
Batteriser is a $2.50 gadget that extends alkaline battery life 800%
Be Careful About "Missing Person" Posts It's one thing to circulate a curren... - ""missing" posts that tell you to call someone other than police, that have no date or location, or are in any other way suspect should not not be shared and possibly should even be reported. This is how stalkers can find their hidden victims. This is how abusive parents reconnect with children that have been taken from them for good reason."
Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent. Here’s why - "There’s another pretty simple reason Germans are less likely to own houses. The government doesn’t encourage it. Unlike high-homeownership countries like Spain, Ireland and the US, Germany doesn’t let homeowners deduct mortgage-interest payments from their taxes. (There’s more on the structure of European tax systems here.) Without that deduction, the benefits of owning and renting are more evenly balanced"
Students at Harvard’s Kennedy School will now be required to check their privilege
Baltimore Professor: “White People Should Deposit Their Unearned Wealth In Black Accounts” - "White people’s wealth is apparently ‘unearned’ because it is based off a white supremacist society that steals from black people. That is why said wealth should be ‘deposited in black accounts’. In activist parlance, ‘white allies’ are the white liberal/leftists that come out at at some of these protests. This standing with black folk is apparently in his words being given too easily, and should not be given without this cost."
Taiwan Voice - Timeline - "Unfortunately for the police, among the 19 people inside were three lawyers, a law professor, and several legal advisors. When asked to show his ID, lawyer Kao Yung-Cheng came forward and asked the police based on what law they were forcing them to show their IDs. None of the police officers could answer the question. Kao showed the police his lawyer certificate and told the police that none of the people inside had their IDs, nor could they remember their ID numbers. He added that all he had with him was his law certificate, and to contact him with any problems."
Carly Fiorina Says the Chinese ‘Don’t Innovate’ - "Fiorina has criticized proponents of Common Core who think the policy will help U.S. students compete with Chinese students in subjects like math and science. The 2016 presidential hopeful told Iowa political video blog Caffeinated Thoughts earlier this year that the U.S. education system should not be modeled after China’s. Chinese students may test well, she said, but they fall short when it comes to innovation."
A lèse majesté law for Singapore’s king, long live Lee Kuan Yew! - "his ministry was looking into treating Mr Lee as a national symbol, equivalent to the national flag, by incorporating him into the Singapore Arms and Flag and National Anthem Act. Mr Lee’s name and image would then have to be accorded the same respect as the national flag, much like a king in a monarchy. The laws which govern the use of the flag will then also govern the use of Mr Lee’s name."
Skyping with the enemy: I went undercover as a jihadi girlfriend - "When a French journalist posed online as a young woman interested in Isis, she was soon contacted by a fighter in Syria. He proposed marriage – but could she maintain a double life?"
Danish DJ bludgeons rabbit to death to prove a point – “live” on air - "Mr Juhl later explained to the media that his intention in killing the rabbit “live” on air was to show up the hypocrisy of our relationship with animals. "Consumers generally do not kill animals themselves, but we buy and eat animals, that have lead sad lives," he said. "You cannot say: 'It's terrible to kill an animal', and then eat meat. These things are connected"... The station claimed that the rabbit had “enjoyed a good life”, unlike many of the animals which end up on the meat counter, and that it was killed in “a humane manner.”"
How to become a swordsmith apprentice in Japan « Soulsmithing - "What is important to understand is that high-level craftsmen in Japan actually feel it is a big responsibility to pass down the tradition for future generations. They cannot let it be perpetuated by luke-warm souls who would let fall the very standards of their trade. Accepting an apprentice is a responsibility both in the face of the tradition and that of the individual thinking to make this life choice."
No wonder their trades are dying
The Clash of Victimizations – How A Babble of Grievances Impedes the Struggle for Real Justice - "A “Gresham’s law” of language takes over, where it is not bad money that drives out the good, but self-serving tropes that end up replacing the genuine coinage of truth and righteousness... In a globalized and culturally hybridized society of competing social values, worldviews, and behavioral patterns, where pluralism is no longer simply taken for granted, but aggressively advanced and in some ways even manufactured by what I would call the “difference industry”, it becomes impossible to establish easily recognizable standards of “rightness” or “wrongness”, from which any consensus about the nature of “justice” arises. Even murder and terrorism can be easily excused. Nuanced and balanced judgments become nearly impossible when every grievance is crying out for recognition. Relative ethical hierarchies are abolished, and every single cause becomes equally its own categorical imperative. In consequence, our own overactive ideological glands that produce the hormones designed to intensify our moral outrage end up generating insoluble controversies. This week’s flap at Princeton University over whether rapper “Big Sean” Anderson should be disinvited from starring in the school’s showcase music festival because of often brutally misogynistic lyrics is a case in point. It has pitted feminists and anti-rape activists against the black student community., who view the outcry over Anderson’s music as one more manifestation of embedded racism."
Keywords: Offence culture, offense culture
New JPEG image enlargening software is actually a bigger deal than it sounds - "thanks to the free and excellently-named software, waifu2x, JPEG images can be enlarged with virtually no noise or pixilation and I can finally get back to completing my epic Fraggle Rock erotic fanfiction saga instead of spending hours a day turning the Internet upside down for appropriately-sized pictures!"
British women paying for sex with male escorts more than ever - "record numbers of women who pay for sex come from all backgrounds and ages, although there are a high number of women in their thirties and forties. Escorts said that while some of the women didn't want or have time for relationships, others were already in a relationship but wanted to spice things up. While busy career women are increasingly using their phones and the internet to access sexual services... "It is also evident that women purchase sexual services as part of a couple. The majority of the escorts interviewed see couples, stating they are booked for regular excitement and fun, or simply for a relationship treat. "In couples, some men appeared more nervous than their female partner." The study also revealed that in the past five years the number of male escorts has tripled from 5,246 in 2010 to 15,732 in 2015. While the number of female profiles has increased from 11,056 in 2010, compared to 28,614 now."
Singaporean dies in Bali trying to take a selfie - "According to Indonesian media reports, Mr Mohamed Aslam tried to take a selfie on a cliff at Sandi Bay Beach on Nusa Lembongan Island on Thursday (May 21). He lost his footing after he was hit by a wave"
Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu - "At approximately 2 a.m., Rosenblatt was finishing a particularly difficult course-pack reading on the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases—cultural, racial, economic, and political—that infect all ethnographic and commercial "histories.""
Morrissey: eating meat is the same as paedophilia - ""I see no difference between eating animals and paedophilia," he said. "They are both rape, violence, murder. If I'm introduced to anyone who eats beings, I walk away"... If you believe in the abattoir then you would support Auschwitz. There's no difference."
Poor work-life balance makes life in Singapore more expensive - "Saving money takes time. It often means doing your own cooking instead of eating out again, having the perseverance to take public transport instead of hailing a cab and having the patience to comparison shop...
one of my friends is really into photography and has a ton of gear. But he finds that the less time he spends on actually going out and taking pictures, the more he ends up amassing equipment procured online."
Hard to bear: pandas poorly adapted for digesting bamboo, scientists find - "two million years after shifting to a herbivore lifestyle, the giant panda still has carnivore-like gut bacteria, which is better at breaking down protein. The discovery could explain some of the animal’s more baffling traits, including spending almost every waking hour eating and its apparent indifference towards attempts at reproduction."
World’s First ‘Phodographer’ Dog Uses Heart Rate Monitor That Snaps Pics When He Gets Excited - "The heart rate monitor can be worn on a strap around the dog’s neck. The camera is worn on the dog’s chest with the help of a harness, and the two communicate with Bluetooth. When the dog’s heartrate goes up – which can be when he’s excited or afraid – the camera snaps a picture!"
The Muslim Call Girl Who’ll Marry You First - "To Kamillah, a London escort with 80,000 Twitter followers, nikah mut’ah is merely an optional extra available for less than $100... the $450-an-hour escort wears a veil or hijab in most of the photographs on her booking site, even when a nipple is squarely in the center of the frame. Thus, civilizations collide in 21st-century London. Among the reviews on the Trip Advisor-style site, a satisfied customer concludes: “Allahu Akbar! Had the best mutah experience everr”... The biggest concern for Kamillah, who says she is half-Iraqi, half-Iranian, was apparently the fear that Romanian and Eastern European call girls were muscling in on her turf by pretending to be Middle Eastern and offering the same ceremony. While there is a debate among Shia clerics about the permissibility of mut’ah, it is completely outlawed for Sunnis. Kamillah told The Sun: “I did it with one Saudi who converted to Shia Islam only so he could do mut’ah. He did it just for that reason."
Cambridge students urge university to stop making their exam results public - "Students who signed the petition are concerned that the public distribution of results ignores students’ welfare and right to privacy. They say the current practice “promotes a culture of grade shaming”, that those with mental health issues may not want to be included, and that it could “trigger an episode” in vulnerable individuals. The campaigners also say the system may harm “those who do not wish to be identified by the name the university has on record, particularly within the trans community”.
Post ID: 7265987360072894534
The Joys of Hiring in Singapore
""If you can confirm me the job, I will come down for interview. If not I don't wanna waste my time."
This is what I deal with. Daily.
And then they scratch their heads and wonder why "Foreigners are stealing our jerbs!"...
Ok to be fair not daily. But pretty much whenever a position opens. Every time I place an ad in the paper."
This is what I deal with. Daily.
And then they scratch their heads and wonder why "Foreigners are stealing our jerbs!"...
Ok to be fair not daily. But pretty much whenever a position opens. Every time I place an ad in the paper."
Post ID: 7594886835708234354
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
Links - 1st March 2017
'Feminist' Snow-Plowing System Brings Stockholm to a Standstill - "A new system, suggested by progressive politicians in the Swedish city, tore up tried and tested snow plow routes and diverted them to areas said to be used more by women. But the inevitable consequence was that other spaces – like main roads – were clogged up for longer, and it became impossible to get around. Public transport failed, traffic piled up and injuries requiring a hospital visit reportedly spiked. The disaster struck despite a $270,000 increase in this year’s snow removal budget meant to help the new system succeed. The “gender equal” strategy came in last year after politicians in the Swedish Green Party argued that the old way of clearing major roads in central areas favours men, who are more likely to work in the city, and get there by car... Indeed, almost a week later buses are still struggling to run, and some 1,700 public transport passengers are planning to sue. Progressive politicians have gone on the defensive, with the MP who suggested it claiming that the snow plows hadn’t executed the “gender-equal” plan properly. Despite efforts to defend it, the plan has become a laughing stock. Even liberal publications like Stockholm’s Dagens Nyheter published this mocking listicle of “9 alternatives to feminist snow removal”, including Satanic snow removal (“melt the snow with burning crosses”) and Neoliberal snow removal (“the invisible hand of the market will move it”)."
ChangeDetection - Know when any web page changes - "ChangeDetection.com provides page change monitoring and notification services to internet users worldwide. Anyone can use our service to monitor any website page for changes. Just fill in the form below, we will create a change log for the page and alert you by email when we detect a change in the page text. We've been doing it since 1999. It's free"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Harriet Martineau - "[On Malthus] Sexual restraint and delayed marriage is the answer to that problem... he certainly does not support birth control and neither does Martineau... the attraction for Martineau is it's another one fo those fixed laws governing the universe that has been revealed by Malthus's enquiry. And she seizes on it with alacrity, really. But the problem with it of course is that it appears to punish the poor for their poverty. Where Malthus sees himself as benevolent and Martineau sees herself as benevolent, to her critics, this is denying the poor man the blessing of a family life and it flies in the face of Biblical injunction, you know God's message to Noah to go forth and multiply and replenish the earth, so it flies in the face of that...
This idea of slavery as deforming... not just the character but deforming the character of the person tyranising over the slave"
Tataouine, town in Tunisia that inspired Star Wars, becomes Isis waypoint – reports - "The town’s name inspired George Lucas for the name of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, and die-hard fans often make pilgrimages to the sets elsewhere in the country. But the town has reportedly become increasingly unsafe, as it is a waypoint for Isis fighters travelling to and from training bases in Libya, 60 miles to the east"
Tataouine is not a planet on the Outer Rim
Germany's Phantom Serial Killer: A DNA Blunder - TIME - "The murderer dubbed the Phantom of Heilbronn had been baffling German investigators for two years. The criminal was a rarity, a female serial killer, and a very busy one: police had linked DNA evidence from 40 crimes — including the infamous homicide of a policewoman in the southern German town of Heilbronn — to the same woman... This raised suspicions that the DNA found at all the Phantom's crime scenes might be traced to a single innocent factory worker, probably employed to package the swabs...Stefan König of the Berlin Association of Lawyers says the case of the phantom Phantom illustrates the risks of basing an investigation solely on DNA evidence. "DNA analysis is a perfect tool for identifying traces," he says. "What we need to avoid is the assumption that the producer of the traces is automatically the culprit. Judges tend to be so blinded by the shiny, seemingly perfect evidence of DNA traces that they sometimes ignore the whole picture. DNA evidence on a crime scene says nothing about how it got there. There is good reason for not permitting convictions on the basis of DNA circumstantial evidence alone.""
The Independent - Man convicted of rape for taking off condom during sex - "The landmark decision by the Criminal Court in Lausanne, Switzerland, determined that having sex without a condom constituted rape if the use of one was expected."
Comments: "Every time a woman says she's on the pill but not, every time a woman says she's on a safe day, every time she says she's "clean" should be met with the same treatment if it can be proven."
"the guy told the girl that his .. is big and she agreed . They went on and started having sex, the she realised he has a micro ... is this a rape too?"
The Difference Between Bluetooth 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, & 4.2 Explained
Doctors admonish us to leave earwax alone. Why won’t anyone listen? - “When you put it on the inside of your ear and move it around, it feels nice, it becomes a sensual thing. You become like a drug addict, a cigarette smoker”
Swiss town denies passport to vegan anti-cowbell campaigner 'for being annoying' - "In Switzerland, local residents have a say in a person’s passport application. Ms Holten’s first attempt at naturalisation was made in 2015, when she was approved by local authorities but rejected by 144 out of 206 residents in a vote... Tanja Suter, the president of the local Swiss People’s Party, claimed Ms Holten has a “big mouth” and residents had not wanted to give her the gift of citizenship “if she annoys us and doesn’t respect our traditions”."
Muslim girls must swim with boys in Switzerland, European court rules after parents refuse classes - "A panel of seven judges found that freedom of religion had been “interfered with” but that the move was legitimised by the aim of “social integration”... the move was legitimate as it was “seeking to protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion”. “The Court observed that school played a special role in the process of social integration, and one that was all the more decisive where pupils of foreign origin were concerned,” a statement said. “The children’s interest in a full education, thus facilitating their successful social integration according to local customs and mores, prevailed over the parents’ wish to have their children exempted from mixed swimming lessons”... the claimants had refused offers by local authorities for their daughters to wear “burkinis” for the lessons and ensure they changed with no boys present... Germany's highest court made a similar ruling in December"
Switzerland: Muslim students must shake teacher's hand - "A controversial exemption from the tradition had been granted for two teenage brothers whose interpretation of the Koran meant they were unwilling to touch a member of the opposite sex... Some Swiss Muslim groups said there was no religious justification for refusing to shake a female teacher's hand and urged the Swiss not to give in to extremist demands. But one Islamic organisation said a handshake between men and women was prohibited. The family's citizenship process was halted and the migration office in Basel said it was seeking more information about the circumstances under which the boys' father's asylum request was approved... The boys told Swiss media (in German) that "nobody could make them" shake hands with a woman, and that they "could not just delete their culture as if it were a hard drive"."
The Battle Of Marignano: The Reason For (Almost) 500 Years Of Swiss Neutrality - "[There was] an immediate peace with the French with long-term implications. The treaty had an “Eternal Peace” clause saying that neither France nor Switzerland would ever fight the other, and they would never ally with the other’s enemies"
Why I decided to give up my life in London and become a goat in Switzerland - "'Also the goats didn't seem to like me very much, sometimes I thought they were really going to try and attack me. And they have particularly dangerous horns. 'But I later realised that they were just letting me know there was a hierarchy, and I should know my place.' Thwaites said: 'The best moment was when one of the goats suddenly decided she was going to be my friend, and she just followed me everywhere... as he was not keen on meat he decided against becoming a dog. Thwaites said the idea of 'being an elephant had appealed' but then he realised they 'seem to have the same problems we do - they get sad, they get upset and they can even suffer from post-traumatic stress. That was exactly the sort of thing I was trying to get away from'... He applied for a university grant to study goat psychology... 'I could then strap this bag to my torso and spit chewed up grass into one opening and suck the cultured microbes and volatile fatty acids out another opening like a milkshake, so I can digest them in my true stomach and live off grass in the Alps like a goat,' he said. 'I learned something important, and that is that even goats have a hard life and need to fight for their existence. Every day was tough, and that is something that just is part of being alive."
People having sex with horses is on the rise in Switzerland
Swiss makes Muslims cross over billboard ads - "Alluding to its logo, taken from Switzerland’s national flag, the slogan says in German, “Kreuz ist Trumpf”, literally, the “cross is trumps”, or the “cross is a plus”. The words are used in a billboard campaign, launched within the country last month, that highlights the white cross on the back of one of its planes. Muslims in Switzerland have responded negatively to the advertising, which they believe promotes Christianity over other religions."
Hong Kong outrage over Chinese subtitle switch - "Hong Kong officials received more than 10,000 complaints in three days after a popular TV programme began subtitling output in the Chinese characters associated with mainland China. Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese script as opposed to the mainland's simplified characters. The broadcaster, TVB, defended the move, saying Hong Kong is an international city... violence erupted in the city's working-class neighbourhood of Mong Kok when authorities tried to clear illegal food hawkers, who are seen as an integral part of local culture."
Swiss railway launches special trains for Chinese tourists following complaints of rude behavior - "Inside these special trains, the toilets will reportedly be cleaned more often and signs will be posted "showing how to use them correctly.""
Sexual assistants - the stigma of helping disabled Swiss - "Arnould has been giving disabled people in Switzerland the right to a little tenderness and sexual attention. But for many, his work as a professional "sexual assistant" treads a thin line between a caring profession and prostitution... Sexual assistants can also be found in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark but in other countries, such as France, the job does not yet have a proper legal status. French disabled rights groups have repeatedly raised the issue in the last year, urging official recognition for sex assistants and, significantly, state funding for their services... Although prostitutes do receive disabled clients, sexual assistants are better viewed by "parents and heads of institutions", according to Diserens at the charity SEHP. The reason, she said, is that handicapped clients may need "more time and contact" than they get with prostitutes who can be rather "troubled" by certain disabilities. Using a recognised sexual assistant removes the awkwardness of the situation for both parties, and often for the family too, noted Arnould. "Is it acceptable that the mother of a young man with Downs syndrome has to help him masturbate every week?" he asked."
Why are female CEOs and senators disproportionately blond? Blame sexism. - "people are better able to stomach a female leader if they perceive her to be gentler, less demanding, and weaker-willed than her dark- or gray-haired peers—aligns with earlier research on black men in positions of power. A study published in 2009 found that black male Fortune 500 CEOs were more likely to have baby-faced traits (a round face, large forehead, and smaller nose) than their peer CEOs, while a previous study showed that white men are less likely to make it to top spots in business if they had those traits. Researchers posited that people felt more comfortable with a black man in charge if he had a “disarming,” “nonthreatening” appearance. White men seem to be the only ones who can’t look or act too threatening for their positions of power, probably because we’re used to seeing them there"
Blondes might actually be smarter than those with other hair colors - "Researchers looked at the IQs of 10,878 Americans and found that white women who claim that their natural hair color is blonde have an average IQ score that is slightly above the average IQ of brunettes, redheads and those with black hair"
Dying Hair Blonde Makes Women Feel Sexier, More Confident, Study Finds - "A Tresemmé survey of 3,000 women has found that three-quarters of women who dyed their hair blonde felt sexier and more glamorous afterward, the Daily Mail reports. The bottle blondes also enjoyed a boost in confidence and a "better outlook" on life, suggesting that it wasn't just their locks that were lightened. Going back to brown, however, appears to be less joyous. Four out of 10 natural brunettes confessed to regretting going back to their roots after dabbling with the light side."
Germans must ban ALCOHOL to prevent further sex attacks and help migrants integrate - "Germany needs to ban alcohol if it wants to prevent further sexual violence and to help North African migrants integrate into society, a Muslim pressure group has claimed. Commenting on the Cologne sex-attack controversy, MuslimStern, which has 20,000 followers on Facebook, said its mission was to 'highlight the way the media was using the incidents to promote racism against minorities'. The group complained that the female victims had brought the unwanted attention to themselves by dressing in a manner that North African men were not accustomed to... Cologne's Muslim preacher Imam Sami Abu-Yusuf, who blamed women wearing perfume for the fact they were assaulted over the New Year, went on to justify it by saying that alcohol had taken away the restrictions of 'men from North Africa'. He also added that the sex attackers were 'from North Africa', unlike Salafists like himself who are mostly from India and the Middle East"
Rapes By Migrants in German Swimming Pools are Surging, Police Quietly Admit - "German police have quietly conceded that the influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants into the country has led to a spike in grisly rapes at public swimming pools. Officers in the nation – under strain from some 1 million new arrivals welcomed in by Chancellor Angela Merkel – warned of the surge in a private briefing. But the message was leaked to German tabloid Bild"
Mocked for its laughable definition of 'sexual coercion,' university yanks policy from website - "If you told someone at Clark University last month that you’d have sex with someone else if they didn’t have sex with you, that person could initiate a sexual assault proceeding against you... The “sexual offenses policy,” last updated Oct. 3, still appears to allow students to bring complaints if their sex-deprived partners say they will get sex from someone else... The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says Clark’s allegedly outdated policy is far from alone among universities"
At the University of Oregon, no more free speech for professors on subjects such as race, religion, sexual orientation - "Now when you hear “harassment,” you might think of, say, targeted insults, or perhaps sexual extortion. But “harassment” has become a vastly broader term than that: Simply wearing a costume that offends people based on race is, according to the university, “harassment”... the university’s position makes clear that even isolated statements are punishable. Here, after all, there was one professor wearing one costume. Yet because that led other people to criticize (or defend) the costume, the professor’s one-time speech was labeled “harassment” and treated as being punishable."
You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use - "So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie... We can’t be required to even display a license plate that says “Live Free or Die” on our car, if we object to the message; that’s what the court held in Wooley v. Maynard (1978). But New York is requiring people to actually say words that convey a message of approval of the view that gender is a matter of self-perception rather than anatomy, and that, as to “ze,” were deliberately created to convey that a message... what if some people insist that their title is “Milord,” or “Your Holiness”?"
Breitbart covered this story and lots of people were dismissing it. But Eugene Volokh is not so easily ignored
ChangeDetection - Know when any web page changes - "ChangeDetection.com provides page change monitoring and notification services to internet users worldwide. Anyone can use our service to monitor any website page for changes. Just fill in the form below, we will create a change log for the page and alert you by email when we detect a change in the page text. We've been doing it since 1999. It's free"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Harriet Martineau - "[On Malthus] Sexual restraint and delayed marriage is the answer to that problem... he certainly does not support birth control and neither does Martineau... the attraction for Martineau is it's another one fo those fixed laws governing the universe that has been revealed by Malthus's enquiry. And she seizes on it with alacrity, really. But the problem with it of course is that it appears to punish the poor for their poverty. Where Malthus sees himself as benevolent and Martineau sees herself as benevolent, to her critics, this is denying the poor man the blessing of a family life and it flies in the face of Biblical injunction, you know God's message to Noah to go forth and multiply and replenish the earth, so it flies in the face of that...
This idea of slavery as deforming... not just the character but deforming the character of the person tyranising over the slave"
Tataouine, town in Tunisia that inspired Star Wars, becomes Isis waypoint – reports - "The town’s name inspired George Lucas for the name of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, and die-hard fans often make pilgrimages to the sets elsewhere in the country. But the town has reportedly become increasingly unsafe, as it is a waypoint for Isis fighters travelling to and from training bases in Libya, 60 miles to the east"
Tataouine is not a planet on the Outer Rim
Germany's Phantom Serial Killer: A DNA Blunder - TIME - "The murderer dubbed the Phantom of Heilbronn had been baffling German investigators for two years. The criminal was a rarity, a female serial killer, and a very busy one: police had linked DNA evidence from 40 crimes — including the infamous homicide of a policewoman in the southern German town of Heilbronn — to the same woman... This raised suspicions that the DNA found at all the Phantom's crime scenes might be traced to a single innocent factory worker, probably employed to package the swabs...Stefan König of the Berlin Association of Lawyers says the case of the phantom Phantom illustrates the risks of basing an investigation solely on DNA evidence. "DNA analysis is a perfect tool for identifying traces," he says. "What we need to avoid is the assumption that the producer of the traces is automatically the culprit. Judges tend to be so blinded by the shiny, seemingly perfect evidence of DNA traces that they sometimes ignore the whole picture. DNA evidence on a crime scene says nothing about how it got there. There is good reason for not permitting convictions on the basis of DNA circumstantial evidence alone.""
The Independent - Man convicted of rape for taking off condom during sex - "The landmark decision by the Criminal Court in Lausanne, Switzerland, determined that having sex without a condom constituted rape if the use of one was expected."
Comments: "Every time a woman says she's on the pill but not, every time a woman says she's on a safe day, every time she says she's "clean" should be met with the same treatment if it can be proven."
"the guy told the girl that his .. is big and she agreed . They went on and started having sex, the she realised he has a micro ... is this a rape too?"
The Difference Between Bluetooth 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, & 4.2 Explained
Doctors admonish us to leave earwax alone. Why won’t anyone listen? - “When you put it on the inside of your ear and move it around, it feels nice, it becomes a sensual thing. You become like a drug addict, a cigarette smoker”
Swiss town denies passport to vegan anti-cowbell campaigner 'for being annoying' - "In Switzerland, local residents have a say in a person’s passport application. Ms Holten’s first attempt at naturalisation was made in 2015, when she was approved by local authorities but rejected by 144 out of 206 residents in a vote... Tanja Suter, the president of the local Swiss People’s Party, claimed Ms Holten has a “big mouth” and residents had not wanted to give her the gift of citizenship “if she annoys us and doesn’t respect our traditions”."
Muslim girls must swim with boys in Switzerland, European court rules after parents refuse classes - "A panel of seven judges found that freedom of religion had been “interfered with” but that the move was legitimised by the aim of “social integration”... the move was legitimate as it was “seeking to protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion”. “The Court observed that school played a special role in the process of social integration, and one that was all the more decisive where pupils of foreign origin were concerned,” a statement said. “The children’s interest in a full education, thus facilitating their successful social integration according to local customs and mores, prevailed over the parents’ wish to have their children exempted from mixed swimming lessons”... the claimants had refused offers by local authorities for their daughters to wear “burkinis” for the lessons and ensure they changed with no boys present... Germany's highest court made a similar ruling in December"
Switzerland: Muslim students must shake teacher's hand - "A controversial exemption from the tradition had been granted for two teenage brothers whose interpretation of the Koran meant they were unwilling to touch a member of the opposite sex... Some Swiss Muslim groups said there was no religious justification for refusing to shake a female teacher's hand and urged the Swiss not to give in to extremist demands. But one Islamic organisation said a handshake between men and women was prohibited. The family's citizenship process was halted and the migration office in Basel said it was seeking more information about the circumstances under which the boys' father's asylum request was approved... The boys told Swiss media (in German) that "nobody could make them" shake hands with a woman, and that they "could not just delete their culture as if it were a hard drive"."
The Battle Of Marignano: The Reason For (Almost) 500 Years Of Swiss Neutrality - "[There was] an immediate peace with the French with long-term implications. The treaty had an “Eternal Peace” clause saying that neither France nor Switzerland would ever fight the other, and they would never ally with the other’s enemies"
Why I decided to give up my life in London and become a goat in Switzerland - "'Also the goats didn't seem to like me very much, sometimes I thought they were really going to try and attack me. And they have particularly dangerous horns. 'But I later realised that they were just letting me know there was a hierarchy, and I should know my place.' Thwaites said: 'The best moment was when one of the goats suddenly decided she was going to be my friend, and she just followed me everywhere... as he was not keen on meat he decided against becoming a dog. Thwaites said the idea of 'being an elephant had appealed' but then he realised they 'seem to have the same problems we do - they get sad, they get upset and they can even suffer from post-traumatic stress. That was exactly the sort of thing I was trying to get away from'... He applied for a university grant to study goat psychology... 'I could then strap this bag to my torso and spit chewed up grass into one opening and suck the cultured microbes and volatile fatty acids out another opening like a milkshake, so I can digest them in my true stomach and live off grass in the Alps like a goat,' he said. 'I learned something important, and that is that even goats have a hard life and need to fight for their existence. Every day was tough, and that is something that just is part of being alive."
People having sex with horses is on the rise in Switzerland
Swiss makes Muslims cross over billboard ads - "Alluding to its logo, taken from Switzerland’s national flag, the slogan says in German, “Kreuz ist Trumpf”, literally, the “cross is trumps”, or the “cross is a plus”. The words are used in a billboard campaign, launched within the country last month, that highlights the white cross on the back of one of its planes. Muslims in Switzerland have responded negatively to the advertising, which they believe promotes Christianity over other religions."
Hong Kong outrage over Chinese subtitle switch - "Hong Kong officials received more than 10,000 complaints in three days after a popular TV programme began subtitling output in the Chinese characters associated with mainland China. Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese script as opposed to the mainland's simplified characters. The broadcaster, TVB, defended the move, saying Hong Kong is an international city... violence erupted in the city's working-class neighbourhood of Mong Kok when authorities tried to clear illegal food hawkers, who are seen as an integral part of local culture."
Swiss railway launches special trains for Chinese tourists following complaints of rude behavior - "Inside these special trains, the toilets will reportedly be cleaned more often and signs will be posted "showing how to use them correctly.""
Sexual assistants - the stigma of helping disabled Swiss - "Arnould has been giving disabled people in Switzerland the right to a little tenderness and sexual attention. But for many, his work as a professional "sexual assistant" treads a thin line between a caring profession and prostitution... Sexual assistants can also be found in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark but in other countries, such as France, the job does not yet have a proper legal status. French disabled rights groups have repeatedly raised the issue in the last year, urging official recognition for sex assistants and, significantly, state funding for their services... Although prostitutes do receive disabled clients, sexual assistants are better viewed by "parents and heads of institutions", according to Diserens at the charity SEHP. The reason, she said, is that handicapped clients may need "more time and contact" than they get with prostitutes who can be rather "troubled" by certain disabilities. Using a recognised sexual assistant removes the awkwardness of the situation for both parties, and often for the family too, noted Arnould. "Is it acceptable that the mother of a young man with Downs syndrome has to help him masturbate every week?" he asked."
Why are female CEOs and senators disproportionately blond? Blame sexism. - "people are better able to stomach a female leader if they perceive her to be gentler, less demanding, and weaker-willed than her dark- or gray-haired peers—aligns with earlier research on black men in positions of power. A study published in 2009 found that black male Fortune 500 CEOs were more likely to have baby-faced traits (a round face, large forehead, and smaller nose) than their peer CEOs, while a previous study showed that white men are less likely to make it to top spots in business if they had those traits. Researchers posited that people felt more comfortable with a black man in charge if he had a “disarming,” “nonthreatening” appearance. White men seem to be the only ones who can’t look or act too threatening for their positions of power, probably because we’re used to seeing them there"
Blondes might actually be smarter than those with other hair colors - "Researchers looked at the IQs of 10,878 Americans and found that white women who claim that their natural hair color is blonde have an average IQ score that is slightly above the average IQ of brunettes, redheads and those with black hair"
Dying Hair Blonde Makes Women Feel Sexier, More Confident, Study Finds - "A Tresemmé survey of 3,000 women has found that three-quarters of women who dyed their hair blonde felt sexier and more glamorous afterward, the Daily Mail reports. The bottle blondes also enjoyed a boost in confidence and a "better outlook" on life, suggesting that it wasn't just their locks that were lightened. Going back to brown, however, appears to be less joyous. Four out of 10 natural brunettes confessed to regretting going back to their roots after dabbling with the light side."
Germans must ban ALCOHOL to prevent further sex attacks and help migrants integrate - "Germany needs to ban alcohol if it wants to prevent further sexual violence and to help North African migrants integrate into society, a Muslim pressure group has claimed. Commenting on the Cologne sex-attack controversy, MuslimStern, which has 20,000 followers on Facebook, said its mission was to 'highlight the way the media was using the incidents to promote racism against minorities'. The group complained that the female victims had brought the unwanted attention to themselves by dressing in a manner that North African men were not accustomed to... Cologne's Muslim preacher Imam Sami Abu-Yusuf, who blamed women wearing perfume for the fact they were assaulted over the New Year, went on to justify it by saying that alcohol had taken away the restrictions of 'men from North Africa'. He also added that the sex attackers were 'from North Africa', unlike Salafists like himself who are mostly from India and the Middle East"
Rapes By Migrants in German Swimming Pools are Surging, Police Quietly Admit - "German police have quietly conceded that the influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants into the country has led to a spike in grisly rapes at public swimming pools. Officers in the nation – under strain from some 1 million new arrivals welcomed in by Chancellor Angela Merkel – warned of the surge in a private briefing. But the message was leaked to German tabloid Bild"
Mocked for its laughable definition of 'sexual coercion,' university yanks policy from website - "If you told someone at Clark University last month that you’d have sex with someone else if they didn’t have sex with you, that person could initiate a sexual assault proceeding against you... The “sexual offenses policy,” last updated Oct. 3, still appears to allow students to bring complaints if their sex-deprived partners say they will get sex from someone else... The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says Clark’s allegedly outdated policy is far from alone among universities"
At the University of Oregon, no more free speech for professors on subjects such as race, religion, sexual orientation - "Now when you hear “harassment,” you might think of, say, targeted insults, or perhaps sexual extortion. But “harassment” has become a vastly broader term than that: Simply wearing a costume that offends people based on race is, according to the university, “harassment”... the university’s position makes clear that even isolated statements are punishable. Here, after all, there was one professor wearing one costume. Yet because that led other people to criticize (or defend) the costume, the professor’s one-time speech was labeled “harassment” and treated as being punishable."
You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use - "So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie... We can’t be required to even display a license plate that says “Live Free or Die” on our car, if we object to the message; that’s what the court held in Wooley v. Maynard (1978). But New York is requiring people to actually say words that convey a message of approval of the view that gender is a matter of self-perception rather than anatomy, and that, as to “ze,” were deliberately created to convey that a message... what if some people insist that their title is “Milord,” or “Your Holiness”?"
Breitbart covered this story and lots of people were dismissing it. But Eugene Volokh is not so easily ignored
Post ID: 3912931631777383616
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
