BBC Radio Ulster - Everyday Ethics, The Ethics of the Ashley Madison hacking, the Refugee Crisis, and Van Morrison's Spirituality
Cormac Lucey (on the refugee crisis): It evokes a very emotional response when you raise the issue of the Jews fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany, but when the Polish Home Army sent an officer - Jan Karski, into Auschwitz and got him out of Auschwitz and they got him across to the United States and he met the then-Jewish United States Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1943, even Frankfurter doubted his account of what he had seen.
So I think it's wrong to conflate strict immigration policies in the 1930s with somehow tacitly assisting the Holocaust.
Secondly, Joel [from the IOM] has favourably referenced United States immigration policy and you referenced the quote on the Statue of Liberty at the start of this program.
But the United States could only become a country open for massive immigration because they had wiped out the indigenous population and they operated on a philosophy of manifest destiny, which was actually namechecked by Hitler in his book Mein Kampf.
Hitler's attitude to the Jews and East Europeans was similar to what he thought the Americans had practised against the Indians...
They're seeking, at every stage, to improve their life chances... we have two crises in one. We've got refugees fleeing wars combined with people looking to move from poor countries to well-off countries...
People get from, reach a safe harbour from Syria, say. They get to Turkey. But then they look for a better harbour. So they move to Greece, then to Serbia, then to Hungary, then to Austria, then to Germany. And we've two crises in one here...
These are largely Arab people. Where is the rescue effort from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Why is it that the EU must fix all of the problems of the world?
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Links - 29th September 2015
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Chicken: Too Much of a Good Thing? - "In the United States, the chicken is not even considered to be an animal if it's grown for food"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Germany welcomes migrants - "In some ways, it's the linguistic divide that explains why a country with so much promise has repeatedly let its people down. Simply put, you can divide Pakistanis between those who speak English and those who can't
Why Don’t Feminists Call Kate Upton A Misogynist? - "If we take feminist “logic” to its proper end, Kate Upton is one of the biggest disseminators of institutionalized misogyny in the world... Blaming anorexia on the patriarchy’s obsession with female weight control, feminists? Well, what about Kate Upton? She parades her body incessantly and is the beneficiary of constant digital alteration to make her appear “perfect.” She also wears prodigious amounts of make-up, which gives other women an additional reason to believe the illusion and that they can never meet her standards of beauty. So who’s subtly encouraging these girls to pray in front of the porcelain goddess in a bid to lose an extra pound or two in vomit? The average man who buys the $8 magazine or the woman, like Kate Upton, who makes the image on the front cover possible?.... We need to dispel the notion that feminists are not aware of their profound internal contradictions. They are. But the decision to blame normal male sexual desire and forget the female collaborators, like swimsuit models and pornographic actresses, is a political one. Leaving the women out allows feminists to spin the overarching narrative that whatever they do not like is either solely because of men or helped by women who couldn’t possibly know better and are therefore spectacularly blameless... by abrogating all female responsibility for the selling of the female body, feminists are infantilizing women one hundred times more than what the manosphere has ever been accused of... The only fair way for SJWs to attack male sexual desire is to vilify the females who choose to satisfy it"
How to Live Wisely - The New York Times - "Deciding on a major can be amazingly difficult. One student in our group was having a hard time choosing between government and science. How was she spending her spare time? She described being active in the Institute of Politics, running the Model U.N. and writing regularly for The Political Review. The discussion leader noted that she hadn’t mentioned the word “lab” in her summary. “Labs?” replied the student, looking incredulous. “Why would I mention labs when talking about my spare time?” Half an hour after the session, the group leader got an email thanking him for posing the question."
Ancient cities and the Norman conquest | Podcast | History Extra - "I hate the idea that the past is there to give us lessons. I think the importance of the past is to free us from the tyranny of the present. We think the world we live in is so important and it's the only possible way of doing things. And I think part of the fascination is to look back into the past 2,000 years ago and see people struggling with some really quite similar problems but from a completely different perspective. Maybe there are lessons about immigration, for instance, that you can't just imitate the Athenian way. Should we introduce metics in Britain?"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Should I Stay or Should I Go? - "I hear President Putin respond to the corruption allegations against FIFA. He blames America for what he seems to see as politically motivated arrests aimed at taking the World Cup away from Russia in 2018... that bellicose form of patriotism is everywhere in Russia today... you hear it all the time on the news. Everything is interpreted as being aimed against Russia. It's absurd. Americans don't spend their lives scheming against us but the authorities here think and talk as if they do, and many people believe it. The rhetoric today is like something from another era - the Soviet era. I feel as though we're asked every day to make a choice between being true patriots or leaving Russia"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Photon - "By putting in numbers into the equations, from measurements that had been made of other things, it was possible to work out the speed of these waves. And when you put the numbers in he found the speed was about 300,000km/s which was quite astonishing because that was a number that had been measured for the speed of light. And so at that moment you have a choice. Is it a coincidence or is it something very profound? And in Science we tend not to believe in coincidences and indeed it was profound. This was a theoretical suggestion that light is nothing more or less than an electromagnetic
wave... It's one of the great wonders of the Nobel Prize that J. J. Thomson got the Nobel Prize for discovering the electron as a particle and his son G.P. Thomson got the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that it was a wave"
The story of St. Columba: A modern copyright battle in sixth century Ireland - "I've long been under the impression that copyright began with the Statute of Anne in 1710, as is generally taught. But have you ever heard of Saint Columba (521-597)? If not, the story is going to sound pretty familiar compared to modern copyright battles. But fortunately, mp3 downloads rarely result in 3,000 deaths... After more arguing and Columba's next offense (harboring a fugitive from Diarmait), the result was the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, the death of 3,000 people, and Columba's exile."
How Attempted Suicide Cured a Man’s OCD - "the bullet actually destroyed the left frontal lobe, the region of the brain that controls this obsessive behavior, without causing major damage to any other region"
"Rape By Fraud, Deception, Or Impersonation - An Addition To New York's Penal Law: Rape In The First Degree Statute" by Daniel J. Slomnicki (Law Student Connection) - ""The court did voice its disapproval of the defendant's conducts by calling him "The Abominable Snowman.""
I thought I was marrying the love of my life but he turned out to be a woman - "A SINGLE mum who had sex with her boyfriend for years was stunned to discover the lover she hoped to marry had always been a WOMAN. Still reeling as police revealed the truth, Nicole Lindsay, 24, was then told her “man” was a lesbian sex offender called Samantha – once jailed for preying on a girl of 14... To carry on the lie, Brooks would even go to the toilet standing up, a court heard. Police found in her possession an object made from the wooden centre of a toilet-roll holder padded out with bandages and overlayed with four condoms. Nicole recalled: “There were peculiarities in our relationship. I’m incredibly shy and not comfortable about being naked in front of a partner. Lee pretended to feel the same because he said he’d had testicular cancer. “He also said he had scarring on his torso where a previous lover had struck him with a burning piece of wood. I now know that was an excuse so she could have a tight bandage round the chest to hide her breasts.” Nicole said Lee appeared to have a very strong sexual appetite, often dragging her into parks “for a quickie because I can’t wait” on the way home after a night out... Samantha Brooks had been convicted on October, 5, 2007, of sexual offences against a 14-year-old girl while pretending to be a man... “Lee had pretended to be setting her up with his ‘brother Lewis’ but eventually we discovered it was just Lee using another phone. “Once one of my uncles said, ‘He doesn’t have an Adam’s apple,’ and commented about his handshake not being manly. “My uncle also pulled him up about a bald spot on his head. Lee said it was cancer treatment but my uncle said, ‘I’ve had cancer twice and lost hair from the treatment. All my hair. That’s alopecia and you’re a liar’.... Samantha Brooks, from Uxbridge, North West London, refused to discuss her behaviour or her past conviction. Despite our pictures she claimed she had never even met Nicole."
Keywords: made of toilet paper, thought she was a man
Woman discovers 'boyfriend' of two years is woman when she removes blindfold during sex - Telegraph - "The complainant said she thought she was having sex with a man called Kye Fortune, who was recovering from a brain tumour and did not want her to see his scars. But she claims she eventually discovered it was in fact her 25-year-old friend Gayle Newland, who had persuaded her to wear a blindfold throughout their sexual encounters in which a prosthetic was used... the pair spoke frequently on the phone where the complainant described Kye's voice as "high-pitched"... Describing what she said was their last sexual encounter before she went to the police, she said: "When I was having sex I grabbed for the back of his head and my hand got caught on something. It did not feel right. "I was sat on the bed, he was standing up. Something in my mind said 'pull it (the blindfold) off, pull it off'. I just pulled it off. Gayle was just standing there... I just couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it. Straight away she held her hand down over her face and said 'it's not what you think'.""
There is stupid and there is...
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Ashoka the Great - "The only evidence we really have for Ashoka is his inscriptions. And all the stuff about how he'd been a violent young man and all this, comes from many hundreds of years later. It's of course very typical of hagiography that if you want to say that somebody was a great saint, you say that he was a terrific sinner before that. Take the story of the Buddha. The Buddha renounced everything and had no possessions so it tend to be made out that he was a Prince who had every luxury although there's no historical evidence for that either. None of these things are likely to have been true and they do come from many hundreds of years later. And Ashoka is rather unique because he left these 33 inscriptions, some of them quite long, and you know: those are the first examples of writing in India... [Ashoka] wants people to go to the monasteries and make sure that the monks are not creating dissension and splitting the sangha, which ever since the time of the Buddha is thought to be about the worst thing you can do for Buddhism, to cause it to split. And he tells people to go and have a look that the monks are in agreement and to defrock those who are causing disagreement... He's not a part of Indian history... he was discovered, as it were, by the deciphering of his inscriptions by an Englishman in 1837. And to this day, even now in Indian schools for instance, the schoolbooks make very little of him. He's known as a Hindu King. They never say that he wasn't in favour of the caste system. They never say that he was, he forbade sacrifices. They never say the sort of things that he said because they are - correctly - considered antithetical to Hinduism. And one of the most remarkable things about Ashoka is that although he was certainly one of the greatest kings - and that's not a value judgment, he ruled virtually the whole of India which nobody did till the British in the 19th century, one of the greatest kings ever known in history, the Indians, very cleverly, totally forgot him and totally buried him. And that's because he was effective. He did exactly what they disapproved of and he knew he was doing it"
23 Studies on Low-Carb and Low-Fat Diets - "Keep in mind that all of these studies are randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of science. All are published in respected, peer-reviewed medical journals. These studies are scientific evidence, as good as it gets, that low-carb is much more effective than the low-fat diet that is still being recommended all over the world. It is time to retire the low-fat fad!"
International Preferences in Selecting Mates - "Chastity proved to be the mate characteristic on which cultures varied the most... Consistent sex differences in value attached to eaming potential and physical attractiveness supported evolution-based hypotheses about the importance of resources and reproductive value in mates"
Attractive women want it all: Good genes, economic investment, parenting proclivities, and emotional commitment
Brain electrodes conjure up ghostly visions
Neuroscientists awaken ghosts… hidden in our cortex - "Stories like this have been reported countless times by mountaineers, explorers and survivors, as well as by people who have been widowed, but also by patients suffering from neurological or psychiatric disorders. They commonly describe a presence that is felt but unseen, akin to a guardian angel or a demon, inexplicable, illusory and persistant. Olaf Blanke’s research team at EPFL has now unveiled the ghost. They were able to recreate the illusion of a presence in the laboratory, and provided a simple explanation. They showed that the “feeling of a presence” actually results from an alteration of “sensorimotor” brain signals, which are involved in generating self-awareness by integrating information from our movements and our body’s position in space. In their experiment, Blanke’s team interfered with the sensorimotor input of participants in such a way that their brains no longer identified such signals as belonging to their own body, but instead interpreted them as those of someone else. The work is published in Current Biology."
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Germany welcomes migrants - "In some ways, it's the linguistic divide that explains why a country with so much promise has repeatedly let its people down. Simply put, you can divide Pakistanis between those who speak English and those who can't
Why Don’t Feminists Call Kate Upton A Misogynist? - "If we take feminist “logic” to its proper end, Kate Upton is one of the biggest disseminators of institutionalized misogyny in the world... Blaming anorexia on the patriarchy’s obsession with female weight control, feminists? Well, what about Kate Upton? She parades her body incessantly and is the beneficiary of constant digital alteration to make her appear “perfect.” She also wears prodigious amounts of make-up, which gives other women an additional reason to believe the illusion and that they can never meet her standards of beauty. So who’s subtly encouraging these girls to pray in front of the porcelain goddess in a bid to lose an extra pound or two in vomit? The average man who buys the $8 magazine or the woman, like Kate Upton, who makes the image on the front cover possible?.... We need to dispel the notion that feminists are not aware of their profound internal contradictions. They are. But the decision to blame normal male sexual desire and forget the female collaborators, like swimsuit models and pornographic actresses, is a political one. Leaving the women out allows feminists to spin the overarching narrative that whatever they do not like is either solely because of men or helped by women who couldn’t possibly know better and are therefore spectacularly blameless... by abrogating all female responsibility for the selling of the female body, feminists are infantilizing women one hundred times more than what the manosphere has ever been accused of... The only fair way for SJWs to attack male sexual desire is to vilify the females who choose to satisfy it"
How to Live Wisely - The New York Times - "Deciding on a major can be amazingly difficult. One student in our group was having a hard time choosing between government and science. How was she spending her spare time? She described being active in the Institute of Politics, running the Model U.N. and writing regularly for The Political Review. The discussion leader noted that she hadn’t mentioned the word “lab” in her summary. “Labs?” replied the student, looking incredulous. “Why would I mention labs when talking about my spare time?” Half an hour after the session, the group leader got an email thanking him for posing the question."
Ancient cities and the Norman conquest | Podcast | History Extra - "I hate the idea that the past is there to give us lessons. I think the importance of the past is to free us from the tyranny of the present. We think the world we live in is so important and it's the only possible way of doing things. And I think part of the fascination is to look back into the past 2,000 years ago and see people struggling with some really quite similar problems but from a completely different perspective. Maybe there are lessons about immigration, for instance, that you can't just imitate the Athenian way. Should we introduce metics in Britain?"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Should I Stay or Should I Go? - "I hear President Putin respond to the corruption allegations against FIFA. He blames America for what he seems to see as politically motivated arrests aimed at taking the World Cup away from Russia in 2018... that bellicose form of patriotism is everywhere in Russia today... you hear it all the time on the news. Everything is interpreted as being aimed against Russia. It's absurd. Americans don't spend their lives scheming against us but the authorities here think and talk as if they do, and many people believe it. The rhetoric today is like something from another era - the Soviet era. I feel as though we're asked every day to make a choice between being true patriots or leaving Russia"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Photon - "By putting in numbers into the equations, from measurements that had been made of other things, it was possible to work out the speed of these waves. And when you put the numbers in he found the speed was about 300,000km/s which was quite astonishing because that was a number that had been measured for the speed of light. And so at that moment you have a choice. Is it a coincidence or is it something very profound? And in Science we tend not to believe in coincidences and indeed it was profound. This was a theoretical suggestion that light is nothing more or less than an electromagnetic
wave... It's one of the great wonders of the Nobel Prize that J. J. Thomson got the Nobel Prize for discovering the electron as a particle and his son G.P. Thomson got the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that it was a wave"
The story of St. Columba: A modern copyright battle in sixth century Ireland - "I've long been under the impression that copyright began with the Statute of Anne in 1710, as is generally taught. But have you ever heard of Saint Columba (521-597)? If not, the story is going to sound pretty familiar compared to modern copyright battles. But fortunately, mp3 downloads rarely result in 3,000 deaths... After more arguing and Columba's next offense (harboring a fugitive from Diarmait), the result was the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, the death of 3,000 people, and Columba's exile."
How Attempted Suicide Cured a Man’s OCD - "the bullet actually destroyed the left frontal lobe, the region of the brain that controls this obsessive behavior, without causing major damage to any other region"
"Rape By Fraud, Deception, Or Impersonation - An Addition To New York's Penal Law: Rape In The First Degree Statute" by Daniel J. Slomnicki (Law Student Connection) - ""The court did voice its disapproval of the defendant's conducts by calling him "The Abominable Snowman.""
I thought I was marrying the love of my life but he turned out to be a woman - "A SINGLE mum who had sex with her boyfriend for years was stunned to discover the lover she hoped to marry had always been a WOMAN. Still reeling as police revealed the truth, Nicole Lindsay, 24, was then told her “man” was a lesbian sex offender called Samantha – once jailed for preying on a girl of 14... To carry on the lie, Brooks would even go to the toilet standing up, a court heard. Police found in her possession an object made from the wooden centre of a toilet-roll holder padded out with bandages and overlayed with four condoms. Nicole recalled: “There were peculiarities in our relationship. I’m incredibly shy and not comfortable about being naked in front of a partner. Lee pretended to feel the same because he said he’d had testicular cancer. “He also said he had scarring on his torso where a previous lover had struck him with a burning piece of wood. I now know that was an excuse so she could have a tight bandage round the chest to hide her breasts.” Nicole said Lee appeared to have a very strong sexual appetite, often dragging her into parks “for a quickie because I can’t wait” on the way home after a night out... Samantha Brooks had been convicted on October, 5, 2007, of sexual offences against a 14-year-old girl while pretending to be a man... “Lee had pretended to be setting her up with his ‘brother Lewis’ but eventually we discovered it was just Lee using another phone. “Once one of my uncles said, ‘He doesn’t have an Adam’s apple,’ and commented about his handshake not being manly. “My uncle also pulled him up about a bald spot on his head. Lee said it was cancer treatment but my uncle said, ‘I’ve had cancer twice and lost hair from the treatment. All my hair. That’s alopecia and you’re a liar’.... Samantha Brooks, from Uxbridge, North West London, refused to discuss her behaviour or her past conviction. Despite our pictures she claimed she had never even met Nicole."
Keywords: made of toilet paper, thought she was a man
Woman discovers 'boyfriend' of two years is woman when she removes blindfold during sex - Telegraph - "The complainant said she thought she was having sex with a man called Kye Fortune, who was recovering from a brain tumour and did not want her to see his scars. But she claims she eventually discovered it was in fact her 25-year-old friend Gayle Newland, who had persuaded her to wear a blindfold throughout their sexual encounters in which a prosthetic was used... the pair spoke frequently on the phone where the complainant described Kye's voice as "high-pitched"... Describing what she said was their last sexual encounter before she went to the police, she said: "When I was having sex I grabbed for the back of his head and my hand got caught on something. It did not feel right. "I was sat on the bed, he was standing up. Something in my mind said 'pull it (the blindfold) off, pull it off'. I just pulled it off. Gayle was just standing there... I just couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it. Straight away she held her hand down over her face and said 'it's not what you think'.""
There is stupid and there is...
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Ashoka the Great - "The only evidence we really have for Ashoka is his inscriptions. And all the stuff about how he'd been a violent young man and all this, comes from many hundreds of years later. It's of course very typical of hagiography that if you want to say that somebody was a great saint, you say that he was a terrific sinner before that. Take the story of the Buddha. The Buddha renounced everything and had no possessions so it tend to be made out that he was a Prince who had every luxury although there's no historical evidence for that either. None of these things are likely to have been true and they do come from many hundreds of years later. And Ashoka is rather unique because he left these 33 inscriptions, some of them quite long, and you know: those are the first examples of writing in India... [Ashoka] wants people to go to the monasteries and make sure that the monks are not creating dissension and splitting the sangha, which ever since the time of the Buddha is thought to be about the worst thing you can do for Buddhism, to cause it to split. And he tells people to go and have a look that the monks are in agreement and to defrock those who are causing disagreement... He's not a part of Indian history... he was discovered, as it were, by the deciphering of his inscriptions by an Englishman in 1837. And to this day, even now in Indian schools for instance, the schoolbooks make very little of him. He's known as a Hindu King. They never say that he wasn't in favour of the caste system. They never say that he was, he forbade sacrifices. They never say the sort of things that he said because they are - correctly - considered antithetical to Hinduism. And one of the most remarkable things about Ashoka is that although he was certainly one of the greatest kings - and that's not a value judgment, he ruled virtually the whole of India which nobody did till the British in the 19th century, one of the greatest kings ever known in history, the Indians, very cleverly, totally forgot him and totally buried him. And that's because he was effective. He did exactly what they disapproved of and he knew he was doing it"
23 Studies on Low-Carb and Low-Fat Diets - "Keep in mind that all of these studies are randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of science. All are published in respected, peer-reviewed medical journals. These studies are scientific evidence, as good as it gets, that low-carb is much more effective than the low-fat diet that is still being recommended all over the world. It is time to retire the low-fat fad!"
International Preferences in Selecting Mates - "Chastity proved to be the mate characteristic on which cultures varied the most... Consistent sex differences in value attached to eaming potential and physical attractiveness supported evolution-based hypotheses about the importance of resources and reproductive value in mates"
Attractive women want it all: Good genes, economic investment, parenting proclivities, and emotional commitment
Brain electrodes conjure up ghostly visions
Neuroscientists awaken ghosts… hidden in our cortex - "Stories like this have been reported countless times by mountaineers, explorers and survivors, as well as by people who have been widowed, but also by patients suffering from neurological or psychiatric disorders. They commonly describe a presence that is felt but unseen, akin to a guardian angel or a demon, inexplicable, illusory and persistant. Olaf Blanke’s research team at EPFL has now unveiled the ghost. They were able to recreate the illusion of a presence in the laboratory, and provided a simple explanation. They showed that the “feeling of a presence” actually results from an alteration of “sensorimotor” brain signals, which are involved in generating self-awareness by integrating information from our movements and our body’s position in space. In their experiment, Blanke’s team interfered with the sensorimotor input of participants in such a way that their brains no longer identified such signals as belonging to their own body, but instead interpreted them as those of someone else. The work is published in Current Biology."
Post ID: 4324297388318215138
Monday, September 28, 2015
Vegetarian Death Threats
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, India: Faith, Food, and Politics
On a family in Ahmedabad:
"He and his family own a tiny top floor flat in a complex known to be vegetarian.
'Earlier, you know these people they start coming to our house and sake of, "you don't cook this, we get the smell and it's against our religion and you know all and all".
But we made them understand, okay, you follow your religion, we have to follow our religion. How can you say, how can you ask us to stop this? And we won't stop that. After that you know , when they saw that okay we are not stopping cooking non-veg and all, then they started sending us a threatening letter. They were writing that we'll kill, we'll rape your daughter, we'll rape your wife, we'll do this and that'.
Mr Auri (sp?) shows me 35 letters, many post-marked, some with condoms taped to them. He acknowledges he has no proof as to who sent them, but for two years he complained to local police. Finally, he was allowed to install CCTV cameras in the building and the letters and threats ceased."
On a family in Ahmedabad:
"He and his family own a tiny top floor flat in a complex known to be vegetarian.
'Earlier, you know these people they start coming to our house and sake of, "you don't cook this, we get the smell and it's against our religion and you know all and all".
But we made them understand, okay, you follow your religion, we have to follow our religion. How can you say, how can you ask us to stop this? And we won't stop that. After that you know , when they saw that okay we are not stopping cooking non-veg and all, then they started sending us a threatening letter. They were writing that we'll kill, we'll rape your daughter, we'll rape your wife, we'll do this and that'.
Mr Auri (sp?) shows me 35 letters, many post-marked, some with condoms taped to them. He acknowledges he has no proof as to who sent them, but for two years he complained to local police. Finally, he was allowed to install CCTV cameras in the building and the letters and threats ceased."
Post ID: 8922465298351458976
Friday, September 25, 2015
Je fais ce que je peux
"Je fais ce que je peux. Avec mes silences et le reste. Avec mes peurs de bête. Avec mes cris d'enfant qui ne débordent plus. Je fais ce que je peux. Dans ce petit bain de cruauté et de lumière. Dans les éclats de sucre et de mensonge. Dans la délicatesse. Dans la violence du temps qui piétine nos rêves. Dans nos petits pataugements précieux. Un matin après l'autre. Un oubli après l'autre. Un mot sur le suivant. Je fais comme tout le monde. Avec le ciel et sans les dieux"
--- Les mots de Bleu de travail / Thomas Vinau
--- Les mots de Bleu de travail / Thomas Vinau
Post ID: 4502365087533822230
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Links - 22nd September 2015
Reform Party Kenneth Jeyaretnam: ‘What I see are similar margins in North Korea & China’ - "All this is a mandate for authoritarianism and brainwashing, it shows what you do when you control everybody’s housing, you control their savings, you control their jobs because you’re the major employer, you control all the media, and there’s no independent elections department. What I see are similar margins in North Korea and China, it’s just like the Chinese Communist Party. And I guess Singaporeans get the government they deserve, so I don’t want to hear any more complaints."
Insulting the electorate and winning elections only works if your name is Lee Kuan Yew
Hey Liberals, #IStandwithAhmed Isn't Only About Racism. It's About School Zero Tolerance Insanity. - "Irving, Texas, ninth-grader Ahmed Muhamed brought a harmless, homemade clock to school to impress his engineering teacher. But he made more of an impression on the police officers who slapped him in handcuffs, hauled him to the station, and accused him of perpetrating a bomb hoax... Some are suggesting that Ahmed’s race is the only reason he was treated so badly. This is the obvious, inescapable conclusion, according to many left-leaning pundits: school officials identified a kid with an Islamic-sounding name, saw him carting around a device he had built, and cried terrorist!... White kids are disciplined—and yes, arrested—for mild misbehavior in schools all the time. It literally happens every day. It happens to white kids. It happens to black kids. It happens to boys and girls, preschoolers and teenagers, athletes and eggheads, wealthy and poor, gay and straight, religious and atheists; it happens all the time, to young people of all stripes... No child is safe from having his or her rights’ trampled by assertive cops at school as long as paranoia about school safety and petty rules outlawing perfectly safe, normal teen behavior remain in place. Cops arrest kids for bringing harmless toys that vaguely resemble weapons to school. Schools suspend kids for talking, writing, or merely just thinking about said weapons while on school premises, or near school premises, or even just near the bus stop on their own front lawns. If cops made these arrests, and schools decreed these suspensions, in an entirely race-neutral and even-handed way, the arrests and suspensions would still be wrong"
Vandals Spray Paint Santa Barbara News-Press Office - "The Santa Barbara News-Press office in downtown Santa Barbara was vandalized sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning before scheduled protests were set to take place at 6 p.m. on Thursday in response to the allegedly racist front page headline published this past Saturday. The News-Press recently published a front page headline that read “Illegals Line Up for Driver’s Licenses”... According to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood, the spray paint included pro-immigration website references and statements such as “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it,” and “Fight back”... In a statement provided by Santa Barbara News-Press Director of News Operations Donald Katich, the News-Press has used the term “illegal” for 10 years now in regard to describing those living in the U.S. illegally, notwithstanding their country of origin. “This practice is under fire by some immigration groups who believe that this term is demeaning and does not accurately reflect the status of ‘undocumented immigrants,’ one of several terms other media use to describe people in the United States illegally,” the press release stated. “It is an appropriate term in describing someone as ‘illegal’ if they are in this country illegally.” The statement also advocated that protesters shift their frustration toward the legislative immigration process instead of at the News-Press... The recent act of vandalism came in the wake of a call to action by the community representation group People Organizing for the Defense of Santa Barbara Youth (PODER). In a statement, PODER said the use of “illegal” in the recent News-Press headline violates the journalistic standard dictated by AP Style and is an attack on local undocumented residents."
Grievance culture - where "racism" in the form of using a "wrong" word is an "attack" and is worse than vandalism
Santa Barbara News-Press' use of 'illegals' - "How is it racist to describe the legal status of an immigrant? Where is the reference to race? Anyone who crosses sovereign borders illegally is an illegal immigrant — as in, that person broke immigration laws to enter a country. Anyone, any country. And how is that word remotely comparable to "the 'N-word' for blacks," as Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Cathy Murillo alleges?"
When Will China’s Government Collapse? - "It has been fascinating to watch what strikes this observer, at least, as a certain betrayal of anxiety in the efforts of some of those who have rushed to take Shambaugh down, or at least refute and discredit his arguments. The notes have ranged from “how dare he?” to “who does this person think he is?” to, in some of the more breathless reactions, attacks on his motives: he is a pawn — or at least an unwitting agent of this or that occult force. Along the way, Shambaugh’s good faith has been questioned; he becomes an actor on behalf of America, or the West, which is said to be always trying bring China down, or cast its political and economic model in doubt. (This extends, of course, to the limited Chinese responses we have seen so far, such as that of the Global Times, which has responded with vilification, forgetting perhaps that for decades a cherished recurrent theme in Chinese propaganda has been the fundamentally flawed nature of Western democracy or capitalism, and, of course, its inevitable demise.)... The early, and one might say easy, phase of China’s takeoff is over. That period consisted in large measure of stopping doing stupid things and inflicting damage on oneself... China scholar Lucian Pye famously observed that China suffered a “crisis of authority” — a deep craving for the decisive power of effective authority ever since the 19th-century collapse of the Chinese empire. Chinese elite attributed China’s modern decline partially to the weakening of the state authority. The authority crisis called for the creation of an authoritarian state through revolution and nationalism"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Novice on the Front Line - (on the annual session of the Chinese National Parliament) "The objective for most parliamentarians is to say and do nothing newsworthy at all. Only government ministers and provincial leaders are authorised to speak... only old people buy newspapers with political stories on the front page"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, 'We Dazed Them!' - (on protests against illegal immigration) "As John and I speak, a young man with a loudhailer tries to drown out the singing of 'God Bless America' by John's fellow protestors with accusations that they're racist. 'How can he say that?', John asks, shaking his head, 'he doesn't even know me'"
Drips, leaks and blocked drains in chic Paris - "I sort of knew it anecdotally but it's true: most leaks in Paris take place in August. Why? Well, it's because the city is half empty. The pressure from the mains is the same, but there are far fewer people using taps, and thus relieving that pressure. So the chances of a joint popping are all the higher. We also had an interesting chat about sanibroyeurs, which are still surprisingly common. Sanibroyeurs are machines Parisians use when they install lavatories in places where they're not supposed to go - i.e. with an outlet pipe of insufficient gauge, like a couple of centimetres. In order for this to function, the… errr… material has to be rendered as it were less... lumpy. So the sanibroyeur uses a blade and electricity to chop up the deposits so that they can pass down the tube."
Migrants crisis: Slovakia 'will only accept Christians' - "We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?"
The migrants could always demand that mosques be built for them and allege Islamophobia, racism, discrimination and structural violence if none are
Police: Man has pooped on, and in, 19 Akron cars since 2012
10 surprising sex statistics - Health - Sexual health - "The average male loses his virginity at age 16.9; females average slightly older, at 17.4. And a new study shows that genetics may be a factor: inherited traits, such as impulsivity, can make a person more or less willing to have sex at an earlier age... Two-thirds of college students have been in a "friends with benefits" relationship, citing the lack of commitment required as the main advantage to such an arrangement. More than half of those who had sex with a friend said they had engaged in all forms of sex; 22.7 percent said they had intercourse only, while 8 percent said they did everything but have intercourse.
Why good athletes are good-looking, too - "Good-looking athletes seem to have it all — fame, money and often plenty of admiring women. And there may be a good reason for it, a new study finds. It seems better-looking men also perform better athletically. In fact, good looks might be a “shortcut” signal so that women can choose the most physically fit mate... “I got lots of emails from men that were almost offended,” Postma said. “They said ‘No way I can judge the attractiveness of other men’,” he added. But he got a few hundred to try, anyway. “It turned out they know very well what women find attractive,” he said. “If you think about it, it is probably not so surprising.” Men, after all, need to know their competition... The top 10 percent of cyclists in terms of performance in the race were rated at 25 percent more attractive than the bottom 10 percent, Postma reports in the journal Biology Letters"
The Downside to Virginity Pledges - "Young people who make pledges of virginity begin having sex later and have fewer sexual partners. But oddly they are infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) just as often, a new study found. One reason is that they are less likely to use condoms when the first enter the world of sex... Among virgins -- those who have not had vaginal intercourse -- male pledgers are four times more likely to have anal sex
Male and female pledgers are six times more likely to have oral sex than non-pledgers"
Small Talk Can Boost Business Deals for Men, Study Says - "Women get fewer bonus points from chatting because it's expected of them, researcher suggests"
Tiny frogs and giant spiders: the best of friends - "Crocraft & Hambler (1989) noted that the frog seemed to benefit from living in proximity to the spider by eating the small invertebrates that were attracted to prey remains left by the spider. The frog presumably also benefits by receiving protection: small frogs like this are preyed on by snakes and large arthropods, yet this frog is protected by a formidable spider bodyguard. Hunt (1980) suggested that the spider might gain benefit from the presence of the frog: microhylids specialise on eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the microhylids might help protect the spider’s eggs"
Accenture: Majority of UK graduates are underemployed - "While 72% of 2015 grads expect to find full time work after graduation, only 58% of those graduating in 2013 and 2014 did so. Furthermore, of those that did find employment, 60% say they are either underemployed or are doing non-graduate work
The True Purpose of Microsoft Solitaire, Minesweeper, and FreeCell - "The intention was that Solitaire would get a generation of computer users still most familiar with a command-line input to teach themselves how to drag and drop, without realizing that's what they were doing. The fact that we're still dragging and dropping today suggests that it worked rather well. Minesweeper, too, has a similar place in technological culture. The numbers-based logic puzzle has roots in the mainframe gaming scene of the 1960s and 1970s, where a version called "Cube" by Jerimac Ratliff became incredibly popular. Decades later, in 1992, the Microsoft version Minesweeper was introduced to Windows 3.1—not to demonstrate that Windows was an adept gaming operating system, but to make the idea of left and right clicking second nature for Windows users, and to foster speed and precision in mouse movement. If you needed any proof that this isn't a coincidence, look at another Microsoft card game: Hearts. It was introduced with 1992's Windows for Workgroups 3.1—the first network-ready version of Windows—and used Microsoft's new NetDDE technology to communicate with other Hearts clients on a local network. Again, this wasn't just a card game. It was a way to get people interested in (and hopefully impressed by) the networking capabilities of their new system. And finally, there's FreeCell. Released for Windows 3.1 as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack Volume 2, FreeCell was bundled with the Win32s package that allowed 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit Windows 3.1. Its purpose was actually to test the 32-bit thunking layer (a data processing subsystem), which had been introduced as part of Win32s. If the thunking layer was improperly installed, FreeCell wouldn't run. So what you thought was a game was actually a stealth test of software systems."
Insulting the electorate and winning elections only works if your name is Lee Kuan Yew
Hey Liberals, #IStandwithAhmed Isn't Only About Racism. It's About School Zero Tolerance Insanity. - "Irving, Texas, ninth-grader Ahmed Muhamed brought a harmless, homemade clock to school to impress his engineering teacher. But he made more of an impression on the police officers who slapped him in handcuffs, hauled him to the station, and accused him of perpetrating a bomb hoax... Some are suggesting that Ahmed’s race is the only reason he was treated so badly. This is the obvious, inescapable conclusion, according to many left-leaning pundits: school officials identified a kid with an Islamic-sounding name, saw him carting around a device he had built, and cried terrorist!... White kids are disciplined—and yes, arrested—for mild misbehavior in schools all the time. It literally happens every day. It happens to white kids. It happens to black kids. It happens to boys and girls, preschoolers and teenagers, athletes and eggheads, wealthy and poor, gay and straight, religious and atheists; it happens all the time, to young people of all stripes... No child is safe from having his or her rights’ trampled by assertive cops at school as long as paranoia about school safety and petty rules outlawing perfectly safe, normal teen behavior remain in place. Cops arrest kids for bringing harmless toys that vaguely resemble weapons to school. Schools suspend kids for talking, writing, or merely just thinking about said weapons while on school premises, or near school premises, or even just near the bus stop on their own front lawns. If cops made these arrests, and schools decreed these suspensions, in an entirely race-neutral and even-handed way, the arrests and suspensions would still be wrong"
Vandals Spray Paint Santa Barbara News-Press Office - "The Santa Barbara News-Press office in downtown Santa Barbara was vandalized sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning before scheduled protests were set to take place at 6 p.m. on Thursday in response to the allegedly racist front page headline published this past Saturday. The News-Press recently published a front page headline that read “Illegals Line Up for Driver’s Licenses”... According to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood, the spray paint included pro-immigration website references and statements such as “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it,” and “Fight back”... In a statement provided by Santa Barbara News-Press Director of News Operations Donald Katich, the News-Press has used the term “illegal” for 10 years now in regard to describing those living in the U.S. illegally, notwithstanding their country of origin. “This practice is under fire by some immigration groups who believe that this term is demeaning and does not accurately reflect the status of ‘undocumented immigrants,’ one of several terms other media use to describe people in the United States illegally,” the press release stated. “It is an appropriate term in describing someone as ‘illegal’ if they are in this country illegally.” The statement also advocated that protesters shift their frustration toward the legislative immigration process instead of at the News-Press... The recent act of vandalism came in the wake of a call to action by the community representation group People Organizing for the Defense of Santa Barbara Youth (PODER). In a statement, PODER said the use of “illegal” in the recent News-Press headline violates the journalistic standard dictated by AP Style and is an attack on local undocumented residents."
Grievance culture - where "racism" in the form of using a "wrong" word is an "attack" and is worse than vandalism
Santa Barbara News-Press' use of 'illegals' - "How is it racist to describe the legal status of an immigrant? Where is the reference to race? Anyone who crosses sovereign borders illegally is an illegal immigrant — as in, that person broke immigration laws to enter a country. Anyone, any country. And how is that word remotely comparable to "the 'N-word' for blacks," as Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Cathy Murillo alleges?"
When Will China’s Government Collapse? - "It has been fascinating to watch what strikes this observer, at least, as a certain betrayal of anxiety in the efforts of some of those who have rushed to take Shambaugh down, or at least refute and discredit his arguments. The notes have ranged from “how dare he?” to “who does this person think he is?” to, in some of the more breathless reactions, attacks on his motives: he is a pawn — or at least an unwitting agent of this or that occult force. Along the way, Shambaugh’s good faith has been questioned; he becomes an actor on behalf of America, or the West, which is said to be always trying bring China down, or cast its political and economic model in doubt. (This extends, of course, to the limited Chinese responses we have seen so far, such as that of the Global Times, which has responded with vilification, forgetting perhaps that for decades a cherished recurrent theme in Chinese propaganda has been the fundamentally flawed nature of Western democracy or capitalism, and, of course, its inevitable demise.)... The early, and one might say easy, phase of China’s takeoff is over. That period consisted in large measure of stopping doing stupid things and inflicting damage on oneself... China scholar Lucian Pye famously observed that China suffered a “crisis of authority” — a deep craving for the decisive power of effective authority ever since the 19th-century collapse of the Chinese empire. Chinese elite attributed China’s modern decline partially to the weakening of the state authority. The authority crisis called for the creation of an authoritarian state through revolution and nationalism"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Novice on the Front Line - (on the annual session of the Chinese National Parliament) "The objective for most parliamentarians is to say and do nothing newsworthy at all. Only government ministers and provincial leaders are authorised to speak... only old people buy newspapers with political stories on the front page"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, 'We Dazed Them!' - (on protests against illegal immigration) "As John and I speak, a young man with a loudhailer tries to drown out the singing of 'God Bless America' by John's fellow protestors with accusations that they're racist. 'How can he say that?', John asks, shaking his head, 'he doesn't even know me'"
Drips, leaks and blocked drains in chic Paris - "I sort of knew it anecdotally but it's true: most leaks in Paris take place in August. Why? Well, it's because the city is half empty. The pressure from the mains is the same, but there are far fewer people using taps, and thus relieving that pressure. So the chances of a joint popping are all the higher. We also had an interesting chat about sanibroyeurs, which are still surprisingly common. Sanibroyeurs are machines Parisians use when they install lavatories in places where they're not supposed to go - i.e. with an outlet pipe of insufficient gauge, like a couple of centimetres. In order for this to function, the… errr… material has to be rendered as it were less... lumpy. So the sanibroyeur uses a blade and electricity to chop up the deposits so that they can pass down the tube."
Migrants crisis: Slovakia 'will only accept Christians' - "We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?"
The migrants could always demand that mosques be built for them and allege Islamophobia, racism, discrimination and structural violence if none are
Police: Man has pooped on, and in, 19 Akron cars since 2012
10 surprising sex statistics - Health - Sexual health - "The average male loses his virginity at age 16.9; females average slightly older, at 17.4. And a new study shows that genetics may be a factor: inherited traits, such as impulsivity, can make a person more or less willing to have sex at an earlier age... Two-thirds of college students have been in a "friends with benefits" relationship, citing the lack of commitment required as the main advantage to such an arrangement. More than half of those who had sex with a friend said they had engaged in all forms of sex; 22.7 percent said they had intercourse only, while 8 percent said they did everything but have intercourse.
Why good athletes are good-looking, too - "Good-looking athletes seem to have it all — fame, money and often plenty of admiring women. And there may be a good reason for it, a new study finds. It seems better-looking men also perform better athletically. In fact, good looks might be a “shortcut” signal so that women can choose the most physically fit mate... “I got lots of emails from men that were almost offended,” Postma said. “They said ‘No way I can judge the attractiveness of other men’,” he added. But he got a few hundred to try, anyway. “It turned out they know very well what women find attractive,” he said. “If you think about it, it is probably not so surprising.” Men, after all, need to know their competition... The top 10 percent of cyclists in terms of performance in the race were rated at 25 percent more attractive than the bottom 10 percent, Postma reports in the journal Biology Letters"
The Downside to Virginity Pledges - "Young people who make pledges of virginity begin having sex later and have fewer sexual partners. But oddly they are infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) just as often, a new study found. One reason is that they are less likely to use condoms when the first enter the world of sex... Among virgins -- those who have not had vaginal intercourse -- male pledgers are four times more likely to have anal sex
Male and female pledgers are six times more likely to have oral sex than non-pledgers"
Small Talk Can Boost Business Deals for Men, Study Says - "Women get fewer bonus points from chatting because it's expected of them, researcher suggests"
Tiny frogs and giant spiders: the best of friends - "Crocraft & Hambler (1989) noted that the frog seemed to benefit from living in proximity to the spider by eating the small invertebrates that were attracted to prey remains left by the spider. The frog presumably also benefits by receiving protection: small frogs like this are preyed on by snakes and large arthropods, yet this frog is protected by a formidable spider bodyguard. Hunt (1980) suggested that the spider might gain benefit from the presence of the frog: microhylids specialise on eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the microhylids might help protect the spider’s eggs"
Accenture: Majority of UK graduates are underemployed - "While 72% of 2015 grads expect to find full time work after graduation, only 58% of those graduating in 2013 and 2014 did so. Furthermore, of those that did find employment, 60% say they are either underemployed or are doing non-graduate work
The True Purpose of Microsoft Solitaire, Minesweeper, and FreeCell - "The intention was that Solitaire would get a generation of computer users still most familiar with a command-line input to teach themselves how to drag and drop, without realizing that's what they were doing. The fact that we're still dragging and dropping today suggests that it worked rather well. Minesweeper, too, has a similar place in technological culture. The numbers-based logic puzzle has roots in the mainframe gaming scene of the 1960s and 1970s, where a version called "Cube" by Jerimac Ratliff became incredibly popular. Decades later, in 1992, the Microsoft version Minesweeper was introduced to Windows 3.1—not to demonstrate that Windows was an adept gaming operating system, but to make the idea of left and right clicking second nature for Windows users, and to foster speed and precision in mouse movement. If you needed any proof that this isn't a coincidence, look at another Microsoft card game: Hearts. It was introduced with 1992's Windows for Workgroups 3.1—the first network-ready version of Windows—and used Microsoft's new NetDDE technology to communicate with other Hearts clients on a local network. Again, this wasn't just a card game. It was a way to get people interested in (and hopefully impressed by) the networking capabilities of their new system. And finally, there's FreeCell. Released for Windows 3.1 as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack Volume 2, FreeCell was bundled with the Win32s package that allowed 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit Windows 3.1. Its purpose was actually to test the 32-bit thunking layer (a data processing subsystem), which had been introduced as part of Win32s. If the thunking layer was improperly installed, FreeCell wouldn't run. So what you thought was a game was actually a stealth test of software systems."
Post ID: 4697754424233817495
Monday, September 21, 2015
Killing Mussolini / Dogs in Paris
Killing Mussolini | Podcast | History Extra
(on the plot to kill Mussolini) "They carry out plastic surgery to his face. Which is quite an extraordinary thing because I've always associated that with, sort of, Hollywood films and things and I didn't know they did it during the war. And this was the first case I found out about that. So he actually goes under the knife and has his face changed to do this...The British Headquarters that have trained him is in Cairo. Another Italian who he'd been training with, just sort of knocks on the door and says one day: actually, hang on a minute, there's something you need to know. And it turns out, to cut a long story short, that The Dejunta (?) the proposed assassin, had become so excited about his, this plan that he was doing that he told people about it...[Roberto] Farinacci... he's actually in bed here after he'd blown off one of his hands fishing with grenades in Ethiopia... he comes across as this kind of, sort of low-rent Bond villain... he was called the castor oil man of fascism, and that's because he and his thugs, in the 1920s used to ambush, sort of opponents of Mussolini in the streets in Rome and force them to drink castor oil which would have sort of laxative effects...he was given a new metal hand, so he's this kind of villainous, metal-handed, rather unpleasant individual... I actually went to Sicily... I went back to a place called Troina, in Eastern Sicily... I went in to the town archives, which was quite a good fun in itself. Because when I arriived, there were four archivists there... 'the town mayor says that you can't have access to these records'. And then they said 'but we don't like the town mayor, so basically... you can see all you like'...
[On dogs in Paris] In the 18th century, merchants, artisans and others were banned from letting their dogs loose on the cities at (?) day or night. This legislation became even more stringent in the 19th century, when stray dogs were widely reviled for undermining the myth that dogs' main role was to serve humans as loyal companions. Strays symbolised disorder. Observers criticised their fondness for public fornication in the supposedly modern city and, like human vagabonds, were treated as a threat to the rest of the population"
(on the plot to kill Mussolini) "They carry out plastic surgery to his face. Which is quite an extraordinary thing because I've always associated that with, sort of, Hollywood films and things and I didn't know they did it during the war. And this was the first case I found out about that. So he actually goes under the knife and has his face changed to do this...The British Headquarters that have trained him is in Cairo. Another Italian who he'd been training with, just sort of knocks on the door and says one day: actually, hang on a minute, there's something you need to know. And it turns out, to cut a long story short, that The Dejunta (?) the proposed assassin, had become so excited about his, this plan that he was doing that he told people about it...[Roberto] Farinacci... he's actually in bed here after he'd blown off one of his hands fishing with grenades in Ethiopia... he comes across as this kind of, sort of low-rent Bond villain... he was called the castor oil man of fascism, and that's because he and his thugs, in the 1920s used to ambush, sort of opponents of Mussolini in the streets in Rome and force them to drink castor oil which would have sort of laxative effects...he was given a new metal hand, so he's this kind of villainous, metal-handed, rather unpleasant individual... I actually went to Sicily... I went back to a place called Troina, in Eastern Sicily... I went in to the town archives, which was quite a good fun in itself. Because when I arriived, there were four archivists there... 'the town mayor says that you can't have access to these records'. And then they said 'but we don't like the town mayor, so basically... you can see all you like'...
[On dogs in Paris] In the 18th century, merchants, artisans and others were banned from letting their dogs loose on the cities at (?) day or night. This legislation became even more stringent in the 19th century, when stray dogs were widely reviled for undermining the myth that dogs' main role was to serve humans as loyal companions. Strays symbolised disorder. Observers criticised their fondness for public fornication in the supposedly modern city and, like human vagabonds, were treated as a threat to the rest of the population"
Post ID: 7083615395419937277
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Links - 16th September 2015
Redefining Success and Celebrating the Unremarkable - The New York Times - "“In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.” And that’s a problem. Because “extraordinary is often what the general public views as success,” said Jeff Snipes, co-founder of PDI Ninth House, a corporate leadership consulting firm. “You make a lot of money or have athletic success. That’s a very, very narrow definition. What about being compassionate or living a life of integrity?”... The problem is that we have such a limited view of what we consider an accomplished life that we devalue many qualities that are critically important.... She didn’t have a great job, she wasn’t married and never had children, so she wasn’t successful in either the traditional male or female sense, Ms. Porter said. But people would keep telling stories about her kindness. “She had a lot of magic in her life, and that’s reassuring,” Ms. Porter said. “That you can live a full, interesting, ordinary life.” How do we go back to the idea that ordinary can be extraordinary? How do we teach our children — and remind ourselves — that life doesn’t have to be all about public recognition and prizes, but can be more about our relationships and special moments?"
Five Reasons to Ignore the Advice to Do What You Love - "Author Cal Newport has emerged as one of the more vocal critics of the do-what-you-love movement. In the case of Jobs, Newport points out that the tech legend did not follow his own advice. If he followed his overriding lifelong passion, Jobs would have become a great Zen teacher. Instead he meandered barefooted as a dilettante through early-adulthood, lacked follow-through, and only serendipitously stumbled into technology, management and marketing. In Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he argues that following one’s passions can be a dead end. He argues that it’s better to identify which skills you have that could be rare and valuable in the workplace – and then to hone those skills till you have career capital that you can spend in the way you choose."
‘Do What You Love’ Is Terrible Advice - "Lam: You focus on one big myth, which is “do what you love.”
Tokumitsu: People take it as this absolute, but it’s an idea that’s not even that old. People have told me, “Yeah my grandmother thinks this idea is totally selfish and narcissistic.” So if you go back one or two generations, it’s not an intuitive idea for people... When I found that Craigslist posting [for cleaners who were passionate], I was super depressed. You’re demanding that this person—who is going to do really hard physical work for not a lot of money—do extra work. On top of having to scrub the floors and wash windows, they have to show that they’re passionate too? It’s absurd and it’s become so internalized that people don’t even think about it... The most cynical explanation is that employers demand passion because they don’t want to hear complaints. If you make passion a job requirement, you can’t complain about your workload... I feel like this whole culture of feeling good too is just really kind of hedonistic. And I also feel like it’s a little bit dark. There’s almost something in it to me that speaks of like addiction or something. We can never be at just baseline contentment. We always have to be relentlessly seeking these “good feelings”"
Michael Bloomberg Blasts Ivy League For Liberal 'Censorship' - "“In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama,” he said. “There was more disagreement among the old Soviet politburo than there is among Ivy League donors”... “A liberal arts education must not be an education in the arts of liberalism”"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Beowulf - "Beowful himself particularly says that the greatest thing for a man to do is to gain glory before his death. And the very last last line of the poem, he's described as the man lofgeornost - to the man most eager after fame and glory. But with that glory comes a pervasive sense of futility and loss. Because it is when Beowulf gives these pronouncements about how he want *something* - you want glory before death. He says this, because he says well, every man dies, and everything comes to an end. And all will be lost. And whenever something glorious happens in the poem, we're already told about how it's going to go wrong later. I mean before Beowulf has even saved Heorot from Grendel and Grendel's mother, we've already been told that Heorot will one day be burnt to the ground because of internecine strife. And these patterns come through again and again. So there's this sense of: we must remember this, remember the Gregories (sp?), but we must also see that they are continually falling to destruction...
The plot in lotsa ways. I mean, amusingly when Beowulf was first rediscovered it was accused, it was thought of as a primitive piece of rubbish that couldn't manage a linear plot. And it doesn't have a linear plot but I think we now realise
this is a mark of some sophistication and that it has quite impressive effects. So it has, as we are told the story we also have continual flashes forward and flashes backwards and sometimes the effect is to create this terrible irony about destruction that is to come even now when we have glory"
Decriminalising prostitution would ‘slash HIV rates among sex workers’
Cecil: what’s going on? - "Why such an outpouring of grief in the West over one lion? This is certainly not the first successful lion hunt in Zimbabwe, Africa or the world over, and will not be the last... I find the western outrage over the demise of Cecil, which is only a lion to many of us, suspicious. This was a simple hunt and Zimbabwe wants more of them to generate revenue for our tourism sector. It is not an overstatement that almost 99,99 percent of Zimbabweans didn’t know about this animal until Monday. Now we have just learnt, thanks to the British media, that we had Africa’s most famous lion all along, an icon!"
Other parties unlikely to follow NSP's surprise move - "Observers, like political analyst Derek da Cunha, said the latest fallout reveals a fragmented opposition, adding that the concept of opposition unity is "non-existent". "I have never felt that it was a realistic notion, given the vast difference in capabilities and resources across the various parties," he said. National University of Singapore political scientist Bilveer Singh agrees, adding that the episode shows that "after 50 years, the opposition is more energetic in killing itself than its opponent"."
Don't get so fresh with customers, BreadTalk - "It didn't do anything explicitly unlawful, it seems. Food regulations here only require pre-packaged food sold to be labelled. This refers to food that is packed in a wrapper or container at a place other than at point of sale. When such food is repackaged at the point of sale, as in the case of the Yeo's soya milk, they need not be labelled. It is also not unlawful for the eatery repackaging a food item to rebrand the product as their own. This might seem shocking to consumers, but is actually common in the food industry. Seah's Spices, known for its pre-mixed spices for the preparation of bak kut teh (pork rib soup), says it supplies its concoction to an estimated six in 10 major eateries here selling the dish, said its 59-year-old owner Seah Seow Khiang. Some of his customers, he claims, are famous bak kut teh chains and five-star hotels. All they need to do is to add 1.5 litres of water per sachet, garlic and pork ribs, he said. His customers sell the dish as their own, and Seah's Spices agrees to keep mum that they are in fact using Seah's package spices. It is the same with JR Vending, which prepares frozen meals like hor fun (rice noodles in gravy) and fried rice for vending machines around the island. Their meal boxes from vending machines are priced at up to $5 each, and they also supply them to eateries. Amongst its customers are high-end hotels that reheat the meals for late-night room service. JR Vending's chief executive Jocelyn Chng said that their meals are replated, re-heated, garnished, then sold for about four times the price. She declined to name any of her customers... Take UHT (Ultra High Treatment) milk. This can be "fresh" as long as the letters UHT are also present somewhere on the carton. This is despite the fact that the shelf-life for such milk can be as long as 10 months from its manufacturing date. Sliced canned peaches in syrup are labelled as "fresh cut". Instant udon in plastic packets is also marketed as "fresh" at supermarkets here. That nasi lemak seller round the corner may also be selling his wares as "fresh" even though he may have bought it from a supplier. And that "homemade barley" at the local coffee shop is most likely not."
Queen of the Tiger Moms takes on Singapore - "Seventy percent of parents in the city-state enroll their kids in private tuition lessons, according to a survey of 500 parents published in July by local newspaper The Straits Times and research company Nexus Link"
At Harvard, 58% Came to School Virgins; a Quarter Graduate That Way - "Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they were virgins when they arrived at Harvard, and nearly a quarter said they had not had sex by graduation. Nineteen percent of male students said they had engaged in sex with 10 or more sexual partners at Harvard, while 7 percent of female respondents said the same. Forty-five percent of male students said they watched porn multiple times a week; 56 percent of female students said they had never watched porn at Harvard. Fifteen percent identified as “gay, bisexual, something else, or unsure.” Regarding drinking and drug use, 60 percent of seniors surveyed said they drank alcohol at least once per week, 40 percent said they had tried marijuana, 8 percent had tried psychedelics, and 7 percent had tried Ecstasy or cocaine."
Growing up recluse: The kids who 'never' left their tiny NYC home for 14 years - and learned about the world by watching 5,000 movies - "
Bhagavan, Govinda, Narayana, Mukunda, Krisna, Jagadesh and their sister Visnu Angulo lived with their parents on Manhattan's Lower East Side
Their father kept the only key to the front door which was always locked
The siblings learned about the outside world from watching the films of Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Lloyd and Martin Scorcese
Filmmaker Crystal Moselle first met them by chance on a rare escape into the real world when they were walking down the street in a 'pack'
Their father Oscar, a Peruvian immigrant who suffers from paranoia and alcohol problems, believed New York would 'contaminate' his children
Their mother, Susanne, is a former hippie from the Midwest who met her husband on the trail to Machu Picchu"
How a UN intern was forced to live in a tent in Geneva - "David Hyde, a 22-year-old from New Zealand, was delighted when he was accepted as an intern with a UN agency. He had hoped for a paid position, because, he says: "I think my work does have a value." But he was happy to take the UN offer because of the prestige attached to working for such a renowned organisation... He is, he says, not keen to be seen as a victim, and points out that camping on the shores of Lake Geneva during the summer months is not actually "all that bad"... Mr Fawzi also points out that the policy of not paying interns comes not from the UN agencies themselves, but from the UN General Assembly which, some years ago, passed a resolution allowing the recruitment of interns, but prohibiting their payment."
Five Reasons to Ignore the Advice to Do What You Love - "Author Cal Newport has emerged as one of the more vocal critics of the do-what-you-love movement. In the case of Jobs, Newport points out that the tech legend did not follow his own advice. If he followed his overriding lifelong passion, Jobs would have become a great Zen teacher. Instead he meandered barefooted as a dilettante through early-adulthood, lacked follow-through, and only serendipitously stumbled into technology, management and marketing. In Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he argues that following one’s passions can be a dead end. He argues that it’s better to identify which skills you have that could be rare and valuable in the workplace – and then to hone those skills till you have career capital that you can spend in the way you choose."
‘Do What You Love’ Is Terrible Advice - "Lam: You focus on one big myth, which is “do what you love.”
Tokumitsu: People take it as this absolute, but it’s an idea that’s not even that old. People have told me, “Yeah my grandmother thinks this idea is totally selfish and narcissistic.” So if you go back one or two generations, it’s not an intuitive idea for people... When I found that Craigslist posting [for cleaners who were passionate], I was super depressed. You’re demanding that this person—who is going to do really hard physical work for not a lot of money—do extra work. On top of having to scrub the floors and wash windows, they have to show that they’re passionate too? It’s absurd and it’s become so internalized that people don’t even think about it... The most cynical explanation is that employers demand passion because they don’t want to hear complaints. If you make passion a job requirement, you can’t complain about your workload... I feel like this whole culture of feeling good too is just really kind of hedonistic. And I also feel like it’s a little bit dark. There’s almost something in it to me that speaks of like addiction or something. We can never be at just baseline contentment. We always have to be relentlessly seeking these “good feelings”"
Michael Bloomberg Blasts Ivy League For Liberal 'Censorship' - "“In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama,” he said. “There was more disagreement among the old Soviet politburo than there is among Ivy League donors”... “A liberal arts education must not be an education in the arts of liberalism”"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Beowulf - "Beowful himself particularly says that the greatest thing for a man to do is to gain glory before his death. And the very last last line of the poem, he's described as the man lofgeornost - to the man most eager after fame and glory. But with that glory comes a pervasive sense of futility and loss. Because it is when Beowulf gives these pronouncements about how he want *something* - you want glory before death. He says this, because he says well, every man dies, and everything comes to an end. And all will be lost. And whenever something glorious happens in the poem, we're already told about how it's going to go wrong later. I mean before Beowulf has even saved Heorot from Grendel and Grendel's mother, we've already been told that Heorot will one day be burnt to the ground because of internecine strife. And these patterns come through again and again. So there's this sense of: we must remember this, remember the Gregories (sp?), but we must also see that they are continually falling to destruction...
The plot in lotsa ways. I mean, amusingly when Beowulf was first rediscovered it was accused, it was thought of as a primitive piece of rubbish that couldn't manage a linear plot. And it doesn't have a linear plot but I think we now realise
this is a mark of some sophistication and that it has quite impressive effects. So it has, as we are told the story we also have continual flashes forward and flashes backwards and sometimes the effect is to create this terrible irony about destruction that is to come even now when we have glory"
Decriminalising prostitution would ‘slash HIV rates among sex workers’
Cecil: what’s going on? - "Why such an outpouring of grief in the West over one lion? This is certainly not the first successful lion hunt in Zimbabwe, Africa or the world over, and will not be the last... I find the western outrage over the demise of Cecil, which is only a lion to many of us, suspicious. This was a simple hunt and Zimbabwe wants more of them to generate revenue for our tourism sector. It is not an overstatement that almost 99,99 percent of Zimbabweans didn’t know about this animal until Monday. Now we have just learnt, thanks to the British media, that we had Africa’s most famous lion all along, an icon!"
Other parties unlikely to follow NSP's surprise move - "Observers, like political analyst Derek da Cunha, said the latest fallout reveals a fragmented opposition, adding that the concept of opposition unity is "non-existent". "I have never felt that it was a realistic notion, given the vast difference in capabilities and resources across the various parties," he said. National University of Singapore political scientist Bilveer Singh agrees, adding that the episode shows that "after 50 years, the opposition is more energetic in killing itself than its opponent"."
Don't get so fresh with customers, BreadTalk - "It didn't do anything explicitly unlawful, it seems. Food regulations here only require pre-packaged food sold to be labelled. This refers to food that is packed in a wrapper or container at a place other than at point of sale. When such food is repackaged at the point of sale, as in the case of the Yeo's soya milk, they need not be labelled. It is also not unlawful for the eatery repackaging a food item to rebrand the product as their own. This might seem shocking to consumers, but is actually common in the food industry. Seah's Spices, known for its pre-mixed spices for the preparation of bak kut teh (pork rib soup), says it supplies its concoction to an estimated six in 10 major eateries here selling the dish, said its 59-year-old owner Seah Seow Khiang. Some of his customers, he claims, are famous bak kut teh chains and five-star hotels. All they need to do is to add 1.5 litres of water per sachet, garlic and pork ribs, he said. His customers sell the dish as their own, and Seah's Spices agrees to keep mum that they are in fact using Seah's package spices. It is the same with JR Vending, which prepares frozen meals like hor fun (rice noodles in gravy) and fried rice for vending machines around the island. Their meal boxes from vending machines are priced at up to $5 each, and they also supply them to eateries. Amongst its customers are high-end hotels that reheat the meals for late-night room service. JR Vending's chief executive Jocelyn Chng said that their meals are replated, re-heated, garnished, then sold for about four times the price. She declined to name any of her customers... Take UHT (Ultra High Treatment) milk. This can be "fresh" as long as the letters UHT are also present somewhere on the carton. This is despite the fact that the shelf-life for such milk can be as long as 10 months from its manufacturing date. Sliced canned peaches in syrup are labelled as "fresh cut". Instant udon in plastic packets is also marketed as "fresh" at supermarkets here. That nasi lemak seller round the corner may also be selling his wares as "fresh" even though he may have bought it from a supplier. And that "homemade barley" at the local coffee shop is most likely not."
Queen of the Tiger Moms takes on Singapore - "Seventy percent of parents in the city-state enroll their kids in private tuition lessons, according to a survey of 500 parents published in July by local newspaper The Straits Times and research company Nexus Link"
At Harvard, 58% Came to School Virgins; a Quarter Graduate That Way - "Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they were virgins when they arrived at Harvard, and nearly a quarter said they had not had sex by graduation. Nineteen percent of male students said they had engaged in sex with 10 or more sexual partners at Harvard, while 7 percent of female respondents said the same. Forty-five percent of male students said they watched porn multiple times a week; 56 percent of female students said they had never watched porn at Harvard. Fifteen percent identified as “gay, bisexual, something else, or unsure.” Regarding drinking and drug use, 60 percent of seniors surveyed said they drank alcohol at least once per week, 40 percent said they had tried marijuana, 8 percent had tried psychedelics, and 7 percent had tried Ecstasy or cocaine."
Growing up recluse: The kids who 'never' left their tiny NYC home for 14 years - and learned about the world by watching 5,000 movies - "
Bhagavan, Govinda, Narayana, Mukunda, Krisna, Jagadesh and their sister Visnu Angulo lived with their parents on Manhattan's Lower East Side
Their father kept the only key to the front door which was always locked
The siblings learned about the outside world from watching the films of Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Lloyd and Martin Scorcese
Filmmaker Crystal Moselle first met them by chance on a rare escape into the real world when they were walking down the street in a 'pack'
Their father Oscar, a Peruvian immigrant who suffers from paranoia and alcohol problems, believed New York would 'contaminate' his children
Their mother, Susanne, is a former hippie from the Midwest who met her husband on the trail to Machu Picchu"
How a UN intern was forced to live in a tent in Geneva - "David Hyde, a 22-year-old from New Zealand, was delighted when he was accepted as an intern with a UN agency. He had hoped for a paid position, because, he says: "I think my work does have a value." But he was happy to take the UN offer because of the prestige attached to working for such a renowned organisation... He is, he says, not keen to be seen as a victim, and points out that camping on the shores of Lake Geneva during the summer months is not actually "all that bad"... Mr Fawzi also points out that the policy of not paying interns comes not from the UN agencies themselves, but from the UN General Assembly which, some years ago, passed a resolution allowing the recruitment of interns, but prohibiting their payment."
Post ID: 6623870336786296376
The Original Rationale for Town Councils in Singapore
In PJ Thum's feature on A Short History of Elections in Singapore, he says that,
This assertion was disputed, so I went to check the Hansard.
GRCs first appear in the record from 1988 onwards, and indeed they are justified as ensuring minority representation.
However, there are these revealing tidbits:
Sitting Date: 30-11-1987
Title: BY-ELECTIONS IN ANSON AND GEYLANG WEST CONSTITUENCIES
Mr Goh Chok Tong: The reason for not holding a by-election in Anson or Geylang West has been explained to the House, and this is a serious reason. It has nothing to do with the fear of a defeat. We can lose two seats in Anson and Geylang West. Actually, it is not two seats. It is only one seat because Anson was not ours. Let us say we lose one more seat. It makes not the slightest difference to Government or to the PAP in this House. But the reason for not going ahead with the by-election this year was given by the Prime Minister in July and that was: we are contemplating introducing a Bill to form Town Councils.
When Town Councils are formed after the Bill has been passed in Parliament, we envisage that certain constituencies will be grouped together so that the Members of Parliament can have a viable Town Council of three or four MPs banding together.
This refers to the following:
Sitting Date: 28-07-1987
Title: (WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS) BY-ELECTIONS IN ANSON AND GEYLANG WEST
Mr Lee Kuan Yew: The Government has decided to establish town councils to take over the responsibility and authority of managing some aspects of public housing. Some constituencies will be grouped together and managed by town councils while others will remain as single constituencies.
Legislation for the establishment of town councils is being prepared. After that, contiguous constituencies will have to be identified for grouping as town council constituencies. This may require a redelineation of electoral boundaries. Anson and Geylang West constituencies may or may not be affected by the grouping of constituencies and changes of electoral boundaries. Until the legislation is ready and the town council constituencies finalised, no by-election will be held in Anson and Geylang West constituencies.
Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs), in which a slate of MPs is elected rather than individuals, were introduced. They were initially justified as enabling the creation of Town Councils, but in practice made things more difficult for small opposition parties already struggling to recruit and support candidates. When the GRCs came under fierce criticism for its obvious punitive implications for the opposition, the government switched tack and argued the GRCs were actually to ensure minority race representation in Parliament
This assertion was disputed, so I went to check the Hansard.
GRCs first appear in the record from 1988 onwards, and indeed they are justified as ensuring minority representation.
However, there are these revealing tidbits:
Sitting Date: 30-11-1987
Title: BY-ELECTIONS IN ANSON AND GEYLANG WEST CONSTITUENCIES
Mr Goh Chok Tong: The reason for not holding a by-election in Anson or Geylang West has been explained to the House, and this is a serious reason. It has nothing to do with the fear of a defeat. We can lose two seats in Anson and Geylang West. Actually, it is not two seats. It is only one seat because Anson was not ours. Let us say we lose one more seat. It makes not the slightest difference to Government or to the PAP in this House. But the reason for not going ahead with the by-election this year was given by the Prime Minister in July and that was: we are contemplating introducing a Bill to form Town Councils.
When Town Councils are formed after the Bill has been passed in Parliament, we envisage that certain constituencies will be grouped together so that the Members of Parliament can have a viable Town Council of three or four MPs banding together.
This refers to the following:
Sitting Date: 28-07-1987
Title: (WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS) BY-ELECTIONS IN ANSON AND GEYLANG WEST
Mr Lee Kuan Yew: The Government has decided to establish town councils to take over the responsibility and authority of managing some aspects of public housing. Some constituencies will be grouped together and managed by town councils while others will remain as single constituencies.
Legislation for the establishment of town councils is being prepared. After that, contiguous constituencies will have to be identified for grouping as town council constituencies. This may require a redelineation of electoral boundaries. Anson and Geylang West constituencies may or may not be affected by the grouping of constituencies and changes of electoral boundaries. Until the legislation is ready and the town council constituencies finalised, no by-election will be held in Anson and Geylang West constituencies.
Post ID: 2523529584115425207
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Links - 15th September 2015
Meet the Unlikely Airbnb Hosts of Japan - The New York Times - "At the same time, he also worked to educate Airbnb guests on the Japanese way of doing things. When new guests checked into a place he managed, he met them personally, showing them how to remove their shoes at the door and explaining that they needed to speak more quietly than maybe they did at home. Sometimes, though, the gulf between cultures felt unbridgeable, the boundaries impossible to translate. Machida described running afoul of a building co-op board, forced to close one of his listings after a visitor from Europe was spotted, to someone’s apparent horror, charging her cellphone in the building’s lobby."
What the Guardian's Maajid Nawaz sting says about their team's journalistic ethics - "For their trouble, Maajid and his ilk are known of as ‘Uncle Toms’, ‘Coconuts’ and ‘Native informants’. All these are highly derogatory labels for ‘darkies’ who dare aspire of ‘white’ ideals for their own communities. As many brown-skinned liberals have pointed out, this attitude arises in fact from the ‘racism of low expectations’ – which imagines progressive ideas and ideals to be only the preserve of white skinned people. Unfortunately, the Guardian has been taking this route for some years now, which it is finding itself hard to bail out of – that of a pseudo-liberal sympathetic approach with cultural and religious minorities, whatever repugnant views they hold or activities they dabble in; along with an associated attacking of all those who dare address those issues, even if they be members of those minority communities themselves... Is heckling only alright if a Guardian journalist does it, either via articles or on Twitter? One of the foremost rules of journalism is that the journalist’s presence and especially his biases should not be visible in his articles – unless it’s a column or opinion piece. This interview of Maajid was supposed to be neither, although it ended up in essence an opinion piece. Yet even as an opinion piece, it breaks way too many bars to come plunging down into mud-singling territory. They didn’t just set the bar low, they plunged it. It’s so incredibly bad, that as a fellow journalist living miles and oceans way, I am embarrassed for the journalism profession which has sunk to this new low. As once colonized countries, I suppose we still look up to British standards in professionalism. Certainly that was very much the case in my own student days at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism. “Don’t look to the Daily Mirror,” we were told. That’s a tabloid. “Look instead to the Guardian. That’s the standard you ought to emulate.” Well, we are looking. Where are the standards?"
UK teacher jailed over teddy row - "She escaped conviction for inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs... Sudan's top clerics had called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam. She could have faced up to 40 lashes if found guilty on all three charges against her. In September, Mrs Gibbons allowed her class of primary school pupils to name the teddy bear Muhammad as part of a study of animals and their habitats. The court heard that she was arrested on Sunday after another member of staff at Unity High School complained to the Ministry of Education."
Islamophobia!
Addendum: This is about Gillian Gibbons
Keywords: Muhammed
Muslim leaders unite in criticising deradicalisation efforts - "Extensive research work by Alan Krueger, Jitka Maleckova, Christine Fair and many others has demonstrated there is no causal link between terrorism, radicalisation and socio-economic conditions. Most of the notorious terrorists including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed come from educated, middle- or upper-class backgrounds. Yet arguing otherwise takes the burden of blame away from issues of religion and identity – the very narrative peddled by Muslim community leaders throughout the world. Moreover, the idea that the "problem lies not with Islam, nor even with some of the Muslims but with the environment Muslims are currently in" has no legs, since Sikhs and numerous other migrant communities are in equal if not lower socio-economic and political conditions than Muslims all over the world but without the radicalisation and terrorism prevalent in their communities. This tendency amongst the Muslim community leaders to remain in denial about the problem with religion is what is driving the identity crisis which is leading to radicalisation among Muslim youth. Why is it so hard to accept that there is in fact a problem with Islam – the way it is being used? Especially, when the trend of abusing and misusing Islam is nothing new, nor is radicalisation. Almost a thousand years back al-Ma'arri (circa 1010), a Muslim poet, criticised what he then saw as hate and radicalisation preached at mosques, arguing that nearer to God are those people that keep a distance from such preaching. Similarly, notable Islamic scholars like al-Afghani, Dr Muhammad Iqbal, Syed Ahmad Khan, Ali Shariati and others have been pointing out since 18th and 19th century that the Muslim world and Islamic thought needs to be reformed. Such voices, however, have mostly been silenced by forces of status quo within the Islamic world."
Half of young women unable to 'locate vagina' - "Half of young women are unable to properly label a vagina on a medical diagram, while 65 per cent have admitted they have a problem simply using the words vagina or vulva.
It's not just men who can't locate the clitoris...
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Al-Ghazali - "He was very keen in his famous work, The Revivification of Islamic Sciences, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, to write a clear exposition of what every Muslim should do at every moment in the day. A proper framework for a Muslim's life... [On the Incoherence of the Philosophers] He picks on 3 [errors] that are so significant that they are, they condemn the philosophers as heretics. And that states his position, if you like, that to an extent, the philosophical tradition should not have a place within the intellectual sciences of Islam"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thucydides - "'Women are excluded - there are 50 references in the entire work to individual women or collectives of women. In Herodotus there're hundreds. He's not interested much in barbarians and that means especially Persia. And so you lose that whole dimension of the Greek world being within a barbarian framework. His own father's name was non-Greek. Thracian. He himself is either descended from non-Greeks or there's a very close family connection. This is rigorously excluded. He's very down on Thracians when he does men-, in an ethnocentric sort of racist way. Whereas Herodotus is a man of broad vision who tolerates the most extraordinary alien customs simply because that's what those people think are the best way to do things and who am I to judge whether they are or are not the best?'
'He's much more a 21st century thinker, Herodotus... the historical context in which you find yourself, was that thing to which you react. The idea of writing about war and saying, you must write a lot about women is, would be anathema?'
'Herodotus is. That's the thing. History. His Story. Thucydides is the progenitor'
'He's not writing about history in the same way. He's writing about culture, isn't he?'
Well, he's writing cultural history, exactly so. He's the father of cultural history, anthropological history if you like. And Thucydides is the father of diplomatic, military and political history'"
Study offers first genetic analysis of people with extremely high intelligence - "Genetic research on intelligence consistently indicates that around half of the differences between people can be explained by genetic factors. This study's unique design, which focused on the positive end of the intelligence distribution and compared genotyping data against more than 3,000 people from the general population, greatly enhanced the study's power to detect genes responsible for the heritability of intelligence... The researchers did not find any individual protein-altering SNPs that met strict criteria for differences between the high-intelligence group and the control group. However, for SNPs that showed some difference between the groups, the rare allele was less frequently observed in the high intelligence group. This observation is consistent with research indicating that rare functional alleles are more often detrimental than beneficial to intelligence... 'Our research shows that there are not genes for genius. However, to have super-high intelligence you need to have many of the positive alleles and importantly few of the negative rare effects, such as the rare functional alleles identified in our study.'"
Few women chefs lead Capital Region restaurants - "The reasons for the scarcity are varied, nuanced and more complicated than a glass ceiling or an old-boys' network or a masculine culture unwilling to let women advance, though those remain in pockets of the industry... According to Brown and seven other women chefs interviewed for this article, the largest factors keeping women from becoming executive restaurant chefs are lifestyle factors... First, advancing in restaurant kitchens means working long hours, usually nights and weekends and often six days a week. Second, a talented young chef's prime years for rapid advancement from line cook to sous chef, executive sous chef and executive chef are from the mid-20s to early 30s, when many women are thinking about starting a family. A 2013 Gallup poll found that 79 percent of Americans believe a woman should have her first child by age 29; federal statistics show that the average age for an American woman to give birth the first time was 25.2 in 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available, and 44 percent of women have had a baby by 25... industry trends show women are more likely to pursue career paths that allow for a better work-life balance. Pastry chefs and bakers generally work early morning until early afternoon; SCCC's baking concentration is 73 percent female, and it's 87 percent in the CIA's baking and pastry program. Also, women looking for predictable hours, regular daytime shifts and otherwise conventional work weeks as well as health coverage and additional benefits not generally offered by independent restaurants are opting for institutional settings such as colleges, retirement communities and similar corporate-food-service environments."
Why Does Neil deGrasse Tyson Hate Philosophy? - "In a controversial interview, Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophy as “distracting.” The host of the television series Cosmos even suggested that philosophy could inhibit scientific progress by encouraging “a little too much question asking.” He thus follows a growing secular trend that cordons Science off from all other forms of inquiry, denigrating whatever falls outside science’s purported boundaries – especially the more “speculative” pursuits such as philosophy. Fortunately for the progress of science, Albert Einstein didn’t take this attitude... Consider the topic of deGrasse Tyson’s T.V. show: how useful is it -- really -- to know that the universe began with the Big Bang, that the Earth orbits the sun, or that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth on its axis? These things may be useful for certain pursuits (astronomy, meteorology). But it’s useful for a student or teacher of philosophy to know the difference between dualism and monism or for a historian of 20th century Europe to know about the Zimmerman telegram. Stellar spectroscopy doesn’t help the layman pay the bills, pick the kids up from school, or lead a moral life... John Locke’s Treatise on Government, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, Rousseau’s Social Contract, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto were hardly idle musings. The revolutions of 1776, 1789, 1848, and 1917 changed the world a whole lot more than the invention of the iPhone"
Israeli bill to consider loud Muslim call to prayer in public as noise pollution - "The call to prayer from muezzins occurs five times daily, including early in the morning before dawn, and has generated a notable amount of complaints from Jewish residents in cities such as Jerusalem over disturbed sleep."
Do those who complain about Seventh Month burning air pollution complain about Muslim Call to Prayer noise pollution?
Phuket Residents Protest at Resort Over Loudspeaker Prayer Calls - "A crowd of more than 300 residents was protesting outside a resort on Phuket's Cape Panwa today in a dispute about loudspeaker announcements. According to the crowd, the management of the recently renamed Phuket Panwa Beachfront Resort had written a letter of complaint about calls to prayer and local news being broadcaster by loudspeaker from a mosque nearby."
Muslim leaders welcome high court order on loudspeakers - "For long many mosques, in violation of the Noise Pollution (Control and Regulation) Rules, 2000 have used loudspeakers much above the permissible decibel levels (50dB during day and 40 dB at night for silence zone and 55 dB during day and 45dB at night for residential area). Now many community leaders and activists demand that mosques should reduce the noise level or face the music... Khan complains that at many Sunni mosques the practice of reciting "salam" (devotional verses in praise of the Prophet) after the fajr (morning) prayer causes "pain" to many people. "I have no problem if the salam is recited by those who are praying inside the mosque. Why should it be amplified to disturb those who are sleeping in the morning?" asks Khan. "If Muslims have the right to give azaan, non-Muslims have the right to sleep peacefully.""
What the Guardian's Maajid Nawaz sting says about their team's journalistic ethics - "For their trouble, Maajid and his ilk are known of as ‘Uncle Toms’, ‘Coconuts’ and ‘Native informants’. All these are highly derogatory labels for ‘darkies’ who dare aspire of ‘white’ ideals for their own communities. As many brown-skinned liberals have pointed out, this attitude arises in fact from the ‘racism of low expectations’ – which imagines progressive ideas and ideals to be only the preserve of white skinned people. Unfortunately, the Guardian has been taking this route for some years now, which it is finding itself hard to bail out of – that of a pseudo-liberal sympathetic approach with cultural and religious minorities, whatever repugnant views they hold or activities they dabble in; along with an associated attacking of all those who dare address those issues, even if they be members of those minority communities themselves... Is heckling only alright if a Guardian journalist does it, either via articles or on Twitter? One of the foremost rules of journalism is that the journalist’s presence and especially his biases should not be visible in his articles – unless it’s a column or opinion piece. This interview of Maajid was supposed to be neither, although it ended up in essence an opinion piece. Yet even as an opinion piece, it breaks way too many bars to come plunging down into mud-singling territory. They didn’t just set the bar low, they plunged it. It’s so incredibly bad, that as a fellow journalist living miles and oceans way, I am embarrassed for the journalism profession which has sunk to this new low. As once colonized countries, I suppose we still look up to British standards in professionalism. Certainly that was very much the case in my own student days at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism. “Don’t look to the Daily Mirror,” we were told. That’s a tabloid. “Look instead to the Guardian. That’s the standard you ought to emulate.” Well, we are looking. Where are the standards?"
UK teacher jailed over teddy row - "She escaped conviction for inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs... Sudan's top clerics had called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam. She could have faced up to 40 lashes if found guilty on all three charges against her. In September, Mrs Gibbons allowed her class of primary school pupils to name the teddy bear Muhammad as part of a study of animals and their habitats. The court heard that she was arrested on Sunday after another member of staff at Unity High School complained to the Ministry of Education."
Islamophobia!
Addendum: This is about Gillian Gibbons
Keywords: Muhammed
Muslim leaders unite in criticising deradicalisation efforts - "Extensive research work by Alan Krueger, Jitka Maleckova, Christine Fair and many others has demonstrated there is no causal link between terrorism, radicalisation and socio-economic conditions. Most of the notorious terrorists including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed come from educated, middle- or upper-class backgrounds. Yet arguing otherwise takes the burden of blame away from issues of religion and identity – the very narrative peddled by Muslim community leaders throughout the world. Moreover, the idea that the "problem lies not with Islam, nor even with some of the Muslims but with the environment Muslims are currently in" has no legs, since Sikhs and numerous other migrant communities are in equal if not lower socio-economic and political conditions than Muslims all over the world but without the radicalisation and terrorism prevalent in their communities. This tendency amongst the Muslim community leaders to remain in denial about the problem with religion is what is driving the identity crisis which is leading to radicalisation among Muslim youth. Why is it so hard to accept that there is in fact a problem with Islam – the way it is being used? Especially, when the trend of abusing and misusing Islam is nothing new, nor is radicalisation. Almost a thousand years back al-Ma'arri (circa 1010), a Muslim poet, criticised what he then saw as hate and radicalisation preached at mosques, arguing that nearer to God are those people that keep a distance from such preaching. Similarly, notable Islamic scholars like al-Afghani, Dr Muhammad Iqbal, Syed Ahmad Khan, Ali Shariati and others have been pointing out since 18th and 19th century that the Muslim world and Islamic thought needs to be reformed. Such voices, however, have mostly been silenced by forces of status quo within the Islamic world."
Half of young women unable to 'locate vagina' - "Half of young women are unable to properly label a vagina on a medical diagram, while 65 per cent have admitted they have a problem simply using the words vagina or vulva.
It's not just men who can't locate the clitoris...
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Al-Ghazali - "He was very keen in his famous work, The Revivification of Islamic Sciences, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, to write a clear exposition of what every Muslim should do at every moment in the day. A proper framework for a Muslim's life... [On the Incoherence of the Philosophers] He picks on 3 [errors] that are so significant that they are, they condemn the philosophers as heretics. And that states his position, if you like, that to an extent, the philosophical tradition should not have a place within the intellectual sciences of Islam"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thucydides - "'Women are excluded - there are 50 references in the entire work to individual women or collectives of women. In Herodotus there're hundreds. He's not interested much in barbarians and that means especially Persia. And so you lose that whole dimension of the Greek world being within a barbarian framework. His own father's name was non-Greek. Thracian. He himself is either descended from non-Greeks or there's a very close family connection. This is rigorously excluded. He's very down on Thracians when he does men-, in an ethnocentric sort of racist way. Whereas Herodotus is a man of broad vision who tolerates the most extraordinary alien customs simply because that's what those people think are the best way to do things and who am I to judge whether they are or are not the best?'
'He's much more a 21st century thinker, Herodotus... the historical context in which you find yourself, was that thing to which you react. The idea of writing about war and saying, you must write a lot about women is, would be anathema?'
'Herodotus is. That's the thing. History. His Story. Thucydides is the progenitor'
'He's not writing about history in the same way. He's writing about culture, isn't he?'
Well, he's writing cultural history, exactly so. He's the father of cultural history, anthropological history if you like. And Thucydides is the father of diplomatic, military and political history'"
Study offers first genetic analysis of people with extremely high intelligence - "Genetic research on intelligence consistently indicates that around half of the differences between people can be explained by genetic factors. This study's unique design, which focused on the positive end of the intelligence distribution and compared genotyping data against more than 3,000 people from the general population, greatly enhanced the study's power to detect genes responsible for the heritability of intelligence... The researchers did not find any individual protein-altering SNPs that met strict criteria for differences between the high-intelligence group and the control group. However, for SNPs that showed some difference between the groups, the rare allele was less frequently observed in the high intelligence group. This observation is consistent with research indicating that rare functional alleles are more often detrimental than beneficial to intelligence... 'Our research shows that there are not genes for genius. However, to have super-high intelligence you need to have many of the positive alleles and importantly few of the negative rare effects, such as the rare functional alleles identified in our study.'"
Few women chefs lead Capital Region restaurants - "The reasons for the scarcity are varied, nuanced and more complicated than a glass ceiling or an old-boys' network or a masculine culture unwilling to let women advance, though those remain in pockets of the industry... According to Brown and seven other women chefs interviewed for this article, the largest factors keeping women from becoming executive restaurant chefs are lifestyle factors... First, advancing in restaurant kitchens means working long hours, usually nights and weekends and often six days a week. Second, a talented young chef's prime years for rapid advancement from line cook to sous chef, executive sous chef and executive chef are from the mid-20s to early 30s, when many women are thinking about starting a family. A 2013 Gallup poll found that 79 percent of Americans believe a woman should have her first child by age 29; federal statistics show that the average age for an American woman to give birth the first time was 25.2 in 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available, and 44 percent of women have had a baby by 25... industry trends show women are more likely to pursue career paths that allow for a better work-life balance. Pastry chefs and bakers generally work early morning until early afternoon; SCCC's baking concentration is 73 percent female, and it's 87 percent in the CIA's baking and pastry program. Also, women looking for predictable hours, regular daytime shifts and otherwise conventional work weeks as well as health coverage and additional benefits not generally offered by independent restaurants are opting for institutional settings such as colleges, retirement communities and similar corporate-food-service environments."
Why Does Neil deGrasse Tyson Hate Philosophy? - "In a controversial interview, Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophy as “distracting.” The host of the television series Cosmos even suggested that philosophy could inhibit scientific progress by encouraging “a little too much question asking.” He thus follows a growing secular trend that cordons Science off from all other forms of inquiry, denigrating whatever falls outside science’s purported boundaries – especially the more “speculative” pursuits such as philosophy. Fortunately for the progress of science, Albert Einstein didn’t take this attitude... Consider the topic of deGrasse Tyson’s T.V. show: how useful is it -- really -- to know that the universe began with the Big Bang, that the Earth orbits the sun, or that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth on its axis? These things may be useful for certain pursuits (astronomy, meteorology). But it’s useful for a student or teacher of philosophy to know the difference between dualism and monism or for a historian of 20th century Europe to know about the Zimmerman telegram. Stellar spectroscopy doesn’t help the layman pay the bills, pick the kids up from school, or lead a moral life... John Locke’s Treatise on Government, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, Rousseau’s Social Contract, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto were hardly idle musings. The revolutions of 1776, 1789, 1848, and 1917 changed the world a whole lot more than the invention of the iPhone"
Israeli bill to consider loud Muslim call to prayer in public as noise pollution - "The call to prayer from muezzins occurs five times daily, including early in the morning before dawn, and has generated a notable amount of complaints from Jewish residents in cities such as Jerusalem over disturbed sleep."
Do those who complain about Seventh Month burning air pollution complain about Muslim Call to Prayer noise pollution?
Phuket Residents Protest at Resort Over Loudspeaker Prayer Calls - "A crowd of more than 300 residents was protesting outside a resort on Phuket's Cape Panwa today in a dispute about loudspeaker announcements. According to the crowd, the management of the recently renamed Phuket Panwa Beachfront Resort had written a letter of complaint about calls to prayer and local news being broadcaster by loudspeaker from a mosque nearby."
Muslim leaders welcome high court order on loudspeakers - "For long many mosques, in violation of the Noise Pollution (Control and Regulation) Rules, 2000 have used loudspeakers much above the permissible decibel levels (50dB during day and 40 dB at night for silence zone and 55 dB during day and 45dB at night for residential area). Now many community leaders and activists demand that mosques should reduce the noise level or face the music... Khan complains that at many Sunni mosques the practice of reciting "salam" (devotional verses in praise of the Prophet) after the fajr (morning) prayer causes "pain" to many people. "I have no problem if the salam is recited by those who are praying inside the mosque. Why should it be amplified to disturb those who are sleeping in the morning?" asks Khan. "If Muslims have the right to give azaan, non-Muslims have the right to sleep peacefully.""
Post ID: 8743641633501820462
Funeral
A cardiologist died and was given an elaborate funeral. A huge heart covered in flowers stood behind the casket during the service. Following the eulogy, the heart opened and the casket rolled inside. The beautiful heart then closed, sealing the doctor inside for eternity.
At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter. When everyone turned and stared at him, he apologized "I am sorry, I was just thinking of my own funeral... I am a gynecologist!"
At that point, the proctologist sitting next to him fainted.
At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter. When everyone turned and stared at him, he apologized "I am sorry, I was just thinking of my own funeral... I am a gynecologist!"
At that point, the proctologist sitting next to him fainted.
Post ID: 996778306922156573
Rich Man's Burden
"Army service was, as stated, a right reserved for citizens, but only to those who were owners of property and other possessions. This was for two reasons: first, the recruits had to purchase their own equipment, and not all citizens could afford that. The second was that a property owner risked the chance of losing his property in the event of a defeat, and so this was considered a good incentive for him to fight more fiercely than a person who had nothing to lose. The citizens with no capite censi (property) were recruited in times of emergency and equipped by the State. In the second century, the minimal property required for approval to serve in the Roman army was worth 400 Greek drachmas."
--- The Roman Wars in Spain: The Military Confrontation with Guerrilla Warfare / Daniel Varga
--- The Roman Wars in Spain: The Military Confrontation with Guerrilla Warfare / Daniel Varga
Post ID: 928603252241548467
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Links - 12th September 2015
The Chinese Lingerie Venders of Egypt - "Egyptian women need two separate wardrobes, for their public and their private lives. Usually, they also acquire a third line of clothing, which is designed to be sexy. The two women in niqabs quickly found two items that the sheikh approved of: matching sets of thongs and skimpy, transparent nightgowns, one in red and the other in blue... Chinese dealers rarely speculate about their Egyptian customers, even the ones they see frequently. Kiki told me that some local women visit two or three times a month, and they acquire more than a hundred sets of the nightgowns and panties, so China Star changes its stock every two months. When I pressed the Chinese to analyze the demand, they often said that it’s because Egyptian men like sex, and because there are so many restrictions on public attire... I was certain that even the most self-confident American woman would be mortified by the idea of shopping for lingerie with her fiancé, her mother, and her teen-age brother, not to mention doing this in the presence of two Chinese shop owners, their assistant, and a foreign journalist. But I had witnessed similar scenes at other shops in Upper Egypt, where an arusa is almost always accompanied by family members or friends, and the ritual seems largely disconnected from sex in people’s minds... when I asked casually what he considered to be the biggest problem in Egypt, the forcefulness of his response surprised me. “Inequality between men and women,” he said immediately. “Here the women just stay home and sleep. If they want to develop, the first thing they need to do is solve this problem""
Is new China the old Japan? - "Pointedly, at the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit in Shanghai, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a new “Asian Security concept,” which in essence called for Asian security to be left to Asians. China has indeed “stood up,” and a century of “humiliation” at the hands of Western powers is long over, as China, the second-largest economy in the world, resumes its “rightful” place in the world order. Flash back to the 1930s and 1940s as Imperial Japan’s propaganda machine exhorted Asians to control their own destinies and throw aside the yoke of Western colonial rule. Asia for Asians was the mantra. And better yet, Japan’s leaders argued, come join Japan in a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” where all would benefit as Japan took its rightful leadership role in the region. Well, we all know how well that played out"
As a former extremist who knew Anjem Choudary, I fear for the mentality of British Muslims - "Despite the fact that up to 1000 British citizens have travelled to join Isis’ medieval theocratic nightmare, and in some cases entire families have up and left, it is true that only a tiny minority of Muslims worldwide support ISIS. But I fear that too many Muslims disagree with Isis’ caliphate, not because it is a caliphate, but because it is not their caliphate. The very idea of resurrecting a theocracy in this day and age has worrying levels of support. According to one survey, 33% of British Muslims supported the notion of creating a worldwide caliphate based on a version of sharia, as law. And if our only criticism of Isis is that its theocracy is not utopian enough, this doesn’t bode well. The cumulative effect of our Islamist preaching in the UK since the early 90s has resulted in polarised communities and unhealthy theocratic aspirations forming a normalised part of life among too many British Muslims... when wider society adopts this trope of liberal Muslims being the ‘other extreme’, it shows how low expectations of Muslims have become in the mainstream"
Did defenders of castles really pour boiling oil down on attackers? - "oil was a valuable resource and it was probably too scarce to be anything other than an occasional weapon... the prize for ingenuity has to go to the defenders of Chester who, in 905, are said to have inflicted a stinging defeat on the Vikings by dropping the town’s beehives on them."
How MH370 Changed Malaysia - "Malaysia’s independent media and political opposition were energized by the government’s sudden responsiveness. MH370 was proof that enough pressure (combined with international shaming) could bring at least some transparency to Malaysian politics and governance. In the year since the disappearance, independent media and Malaysia’s opposition have been much more aggressive in their questioning of the government. And they've produced real results, including a long-sought audit of a Malaysian government development fund plagued by allegations of financial mismanagement... Not long after the disappearance, a former Malaysian ambassador to Beijing told the Malaysian Insider that he believed that China’s reaction revealed a “bullying tendency,” and added: “China has bullied the Philippines and Vietnam. So Malaysia has to be careful.” He also said that Malaysia should review ties between the two countries.Over the last year, the Malaysian government has also made an effort to build closer ties with the United States. It even invited U.S. spy planes to use bases on Malaysian territory -- an invitation that likely infuriated China"
British journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown given police protection after being followed and photographed in Hyde Park - "Clare Rewcastle Brown, the sister-in-law of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been accused of “activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy” after publishing documents on her blog Sarawak Report detailing how nearly $700m was paid into the personal bank accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Officials in Kuala Lumpur have said the money came from an unnamed Arab donor and was for political not personal purposes."
Two Mac viruses strike at the heart of the platform's secure image - "So proud has Apple been of its security that it even ran several spots in its Mac vs PC ad campaign dedicated to the idea that Macs don’t get viruses... “Apple was informed about said bug months ago and as usual did the irresponsible to fix it for some beta half a year in the future only.""
Breaking: Colorado Anti-Gay Cake Baker Loses Appeal, Again - The New Civil Rights Movement - "A Colorado Court of Appeals finds there is no difference between discriminating against someone because they are gay and discriminating against someone because they are marrying someone of the same gender."
If I refuse to sell a wedding cake to a Muslim man marrying his second wife am I guilty of discrimination?
Raising minimum wage a 'completely hopeless' way of reducing poverty, says OBR - Telegraph - "The Chancellor's new "national living wage" is a "completely hopeless" way of trying to reduce poverty that could leave the economy with higher unemployment if another crisis hits, economists have warned. Stephen Nickell, one of the leaders of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Government’s fiscal watchdog, claimed that the number of people in “poor” households who were likely to benefit from a higher minimum wage was “very small”. “In other words, minimum wages as a method of relieving poverty is completely hopeless because most people on the minimum wage don’t live in poor households,” he told the Treasury select committee... the OBR expects half of the cash gains in household income to be accrued to to the richest 50pc of households. This is because many workers on the minimum wage are second earners living in higher income households"
'Abortion drone' to fly pills across border into Poland
What happened when an anti-Semite found he was Jewish? - "As his old personality collapsed, Szegedi performed radical surgery on himself. He even set fire to copies of his own biography, I Believe in the Resurrection of the Hungarian Nation... Budapest is a great place to be a Jew in, he beams - with its kosher restaurants, synagogues, and Jewish shops. You can practise your culture, and practise your faith here. You might get funny looks if you wear a kippah - a traditional Jewish skullcap - but you won't be spat on, or physically threatened as you might be in France or Belgium. "The paradox of Hungarian nationalism," says the man who used to fly its banner, "is that we are proud of our own achievements, but we're not willing to look at those of other peoples. We're afraid their cultures might be as valuable as ours.""
10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew - "In the film he dons a kippah - the traditional Jewish skullcap - in front of the Eiffel Tower, and wanders the streets of the city. He appears to face significant abuse as he walks around. Residents are seen staring and spitting at him, while others apparently shout "Jew" and "Viva Palestine"... The clips featured appear to be shot in poorer and predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods. Could he be accused of deliberately seeking out negative comments? He doesn't see it that way. "If I was walking around with an Israeli flag, I understand it might create negative feelings. But I don't think [wearing a kippah] should generate that kind of thing." So are Jewish people confronted with this kind of abuse throughout the city? No, not everywhere, Klein tells BBC Trending. In its more famous neighbourhoods - around the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower - he saw "a little bit, but nothing worth putting in the video". "As we went to the suburbs, or certain neighbourhoods in the city, the remarks became more violent," he says"
If you show evidence that Muslims are racist, you're racist!
Why Jianbing is China's Most Popular Street Breakfast - "After word of Grandy's success at cooking jianbing reached China, it led some to accuse her of "stealing" jianbing, leading to a storm of internet controversy. A sense of cultural ownership may go some way to explaining why everyday Chinese people felt the need to vent their rage when they learned foreigners were cooking "their" jianbing. Over the next week, every jianbing vendor in China seems to be discussing how an American has stolen the Chinese secret of jianbing and is now getting rich on the knowledge. "She learned how to make jianbing in Ningbo," one vendor tells me, confidentially. "It took two years." Another tells me she studied in Beijing. Everyone, it seems, can't believe an American can charge six dollars for something that costs them about 80 cents. "Those Americans," says one vendor. "They're so good at business.""
Two women referred to ‘terror’ court for driving in Saudi Arabia
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS140 - Kenny Easwaran on, "Newcomb's Paradox and the tragedy of rationality" - "in the 1950s, the statistician R.A. Fisher, in his early life developed a lot of the important groundwork of statistics and biology that shaped much of the 20th century. But later in life he was actually working for the cigarette companies. He was arguing that the evidence we have, so far, at least in the 1950s, doesn't prove that smoking causes cancer. What he said is, "For all we know, there's just certain people that tend to like smoking and this is caused by some sort of biological feature, and it's just a coincidence that the people who tend to like smoking, the same trait that causes them to like smoking also tends to cause lung cancer," he said... some hospitals have higher death rates, and people often assume that this means that the hospitals are worse, but in fact they're better hospitals and they're just taking on riskier cases of people who are more likely to die anyway, and the hospitals are increasing their chance of surviving. Still, the base rate of death is just higher, because those are tougher cases."
29 baller castles you can rent on Airbnb
Here is the New Indonesian Passport DesignIndonesian Perspective to Global Audience - "The new passport, which comes with 48 blank pages, has a variation of background images. These images are sampled from the Indonesian flora, fauna, scenery and other natural resources. Among the background images are those of a turtle, cendrawasih (bird-of-paradise), tropical forest, Samosir Island, and raflesia flower. These background images are significantly more enriched as compared to the old passport, which only contained one kind of background image in all its pages, a flower."
Third World country, First World passport
Canadian passport reveals its design secrets - "each fairly standard-looking page of the passport (historical figures, well-known monuments etc) is brought to life in a blaze of pattern and colour when view under a 'black light' or ultra-violet light source. The design feature acts as an additional security feature that many Canadian's are just unaware of but presumably is viewable at passport desks around the world."
Is new China the old Japan? - "Pointedly, at the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit in Shanghai, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a new “Asian Security concept,” which in essence called for Asian security to be left to Asians. China has indeed “stood up,” and a century of “humiliation” at the hands of Western powers is long over, as China, the second-largest economy in the world, resumes its “rightful” place in the world order. Flash back to the 1930s and 1940s as Imperial Japan’s propaganda machine exhorted Asians to control their own destinies and throw aside the yoke of Western colonial rule. Asia for Asians was the mantra. And better yet, Japan’s leaders argued, come join Japan in a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” where all would benefit as Japan took its rightful leadership role in the region. Well, we all know how well that played out"
As a former extremist who knew Anjem Choudary, I fear for the mentality of British Muslims - "Despite the fact that up to 1000 British citizens have travelled to join Isis’ medieval theocratic nightmare, and in some cases entire families have up and left, it is true that only a tiny minority of Muslims worldwide support ISIS. But I fear that too many Muslims disagree with Isis’ caliphate, not because it is a caliphate, but because it is not their caliphate. The very idea of resurrecting a theocracy in this day and age has worrying levels of support. According to one survey, 33% of British Muslims supported the notion of creating a worldwide caliphate based on a version of sharia, as law. And if our only criticism of Isis is that its theocracy is not utopian enough, this doesn’t bode well. The cumulative effect of our Islamist preaching in the UK since the early 90s has resulted in polarised communities and unhealthy theocratic aspirations forming a normalised part of life among too many British Muslims... when wider society adopts this trope of liberal Muslims being the ‘other extreme’, it shows how low expectations of Muslims have become in the mainstream"
Did defenders of castles really pour boiling oil down on attackers? - "oil was a valuable resource and it was probably too scarce to be anything other than an occasional weapon... the prize for ingenuity has to go to the defenders of Chester who, in 905, are said to have inflicted a stinging defeat on the Vikings by dropping the town’s beehives on them."
How MH370 Changed Malaysia - "Malaysia’s independent media and political opposition were energized by the government’s sudden responsiveness. MH370 was proof that enough pressure (combined with international shaming) could bring at least some transparency to Malaysian politics and governance. In the year since the disappearance, independent media and Malaysia’s opposition have been much more aggressive in their questioning of the government. And they've produced real results, including a long-sought audit of a Malaysian government development fund plagued by allegations of financial mismanagement... Not long after the disappearance, a former Malaysian ambassador to Beijing told the Malaysian Insider that he believed that China’s reaction revealed a “bullying tendency,” and added: “China has bullied the Philippines and Vietnam. So Malaysia has to be careful.” He also said that Malaysia should review ties between the two countries.Over the last year, the Malaysian government has also made an effort to build closer ties with the United States. It even invited U.S. spy planes to use bases on Malaysian territory -- an invitation that likely infuriated China"
British journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown given police protection after being followed and photographed in Hyde Park - "Clare Rewcastle Brown, the sister-in-law of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been accused of “activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy” after publishing documents on her blog Sarawak Report detailing how nearly $700m was paid into the personal bank accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Officials in Kuala Lumpur have said the money came from an unnamed Arab donor and was for political not personal purposes."
Two Mac viruses strike at the heart of the platform's secure image - "So proud has Apple been of its security that it even ran several spots in its Mac vs PC ad campaign dedicated to the idea that Macs don’t get viruses... “Apple was informed about said bug months ago and as usual did the irresponsible to fix it for some beta half a year in the future only.""
Breaking: Colorado Anti-Gay Cake Baker Loses Appeal, Again - The New Civil Rights Movement - "A Colorado Court of Appeals finds there is no difference between discriminating against someone because they are gay and discriminating against someone because they are marrying someone of the same gender."
If I refuse to sell a wedding cake to a Muslim man marrying his second wife am I guilty of discrimination?
Raising minimum wage a 'completely hopeless' way of reducing poverty, says OBR - Telegraph - "The Chancellor's new "national living wage" is a "completely hopeless" way of trying to reduce poverty that could leave the economy with higher unemployment if another crisis hits, economists have warned. Stephen Nickell, one of the leaders of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Government’s fiscal watchdog, claimed that the number of people in “poor” households who were likely to benefit from a higher minimum wage was “very small”. “In other words, minimum wages as a method of relieving poverty is completely hopeless because most people on the minimum wage don’t live in poor households,” he told the Treasury select committee... the OBR expects half of the cash gains in household income to be accrued to to the richest 50pc of households. This is because many workers on the minimum wage are second earners living in higher income households"
'Abortion drone' to fly pills across border into Poland
What happened when an anti-Semite found he was Jewish? - "As his old personality collapsed, Szegedi performed radical surgery on himself. He even set fire to copies of his own biography, I Believe in the Resurrection of the Hungarian Nation... Budapest is a great place to be a Jew in, he beams - with its kosher restaurants, synagogues, and Jewish shops. You can practise your culture, and practise your faith here. You might get funny looks if you wear a kippah - a traditional Jewish skullcap - but you won't be spat on, or physically threatened as you might be in France or Belgium. "The paradox of Hungarian nationalism," says the man who used to fly its banner, "is that we are proud of our own achievements, but we're not willing to look at those of other peoples. We're afraid their cultures might be as valuable as ours.""
10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew - "In the film he dons a kippah - the traditional Jewish skullcap - in front of the Eiffel Tower, and wanders the streets of the city. He appears to face significant abuse as he walks around. Residents are seen staring and spitting at him, while others apparently shout "Jew" and "Viva Palestine"... The clips featured appear to be shot in poorer and predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods. Could he be accused of deliberately seeking out negative comments? He doesn't see it that way. "If I was walking around with an Israeli flag, I understand it might create negative feelings. But I don't think [wearing a kippah] should generate that kind of thing." So are Jewish people confronted with this kind of abuse throughout the city? No, not everywhere, Klein tells BBC Trending. In its more famous neighbourhoods - around the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower - he saw "a little bit, but nothing worth putting in the video". "As we went to the suburbs, or certain neighbourhoods in the city, the remarks became more violent," he says"
If you show evidence that Muslims are racist, you're racist!
Why Jianbing is China's Most Popular Street Breakfast - "After word of Grandy's success at cooking jianbing reached China, it led some to accuse her of "stealing" jianbing, leading to a storm of internet controversy. A sense of cultural ownership may go some way to explaining why everyday Chinese people felt the need to vent their rage when they learned foreigners were cooking "their" jianbing. Over the next week, every jianbing vendor in China seems to be discussing how an American has stolen the Chinese secret of jianbing and is now getting rich on the knowledge. "She learned how to make jianbing in Ningbo," one vendor tells me, confidentially. "It took two years." Another tells me she studied in Beijing. Everyone, it seems, can't believe an American can charge six dollars for something that costs them about 80 cents. "Those Americans," says one vendor. "They're so good at business.""
Two women referred to ‘terror’ court for driving in Saudi Arabia
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS140 - Kenny Easwaran on, "Newcomb's Paradox and the tragedy of rationality" - "in the 1950s, the statistician R.A. Fisher, in his early life developed a lot of the important groundwork of statistics and biology that shaped much of the 20th century. But later in life he was actually working for the cigarette companies. He was arguing that the evidence we have, so far, at least in the 1950s, doesn't prove that smoking causes cancer. What he said is, "For all we know, there's just certain people that tend to like smoking and this is caused by some sort of biological feature, and it's just a coincidence that the people who tend to like smoking, the same trait that causes them to like smoking also tends to cause lung cancer," he said... some hospitals have higher death rates, and people often assume that this means that the hospitals are worse, but in fact they're better hospitals and they're just taking on riskier cases of people who are more likely to die anyway, and the hospitals are increasing their chance of surviving. Still, the base rate of death is just higher, because those are tougher cases."
29 baller castles you can rent on Airbnb
Here is the New Indonesian Passport DesignIndonesian Perspective to Global Audience - "The new passport, which comes with 48 blank pages, has a variation of background images. These images are sampled from the Indonesian flora, fauna, scenery and other natural resources. Among the background images are those of a turtle, cendrawasih (bird-of-paradise), tropical forest, Samosir Island, and raflesia flower. These background images are significantly more enriched as compared to the old passport, which only contained one kind of background image in all its pages, a flower."
Third World country, First World passport
Canadian passport reveals its design secrets - "each fairly standard-looking page of the passport (historical figures, well-known monuments etc) is brought to life in a blaze of pattern and colour when view under a 'black light' or ultra-violet light source. The design feature acts as an additional security feature that many Canadian's are just unaware of but presumably is viewable at passport desks around the world."
Post ID: 1659048206221022456
"I don't like chocolate so I'm going to make sure that nobody eats it because I KNOW BETTER"
Buying Sex Should Not Be Legal - The New York Times
Comments:
"Ms. Moran's description of the sex market is no different from any labor market susceptible to exploiting girls and young women, yet perfectly legal and accepted in society: the garment industry, the fashion industry, the nail salon industry, etc. All these industries too suffer from increased black market activity and human trafficking. Yet would it be the solution to criminalize all these industries?
Suppose we applied the "Nordic model" to the garment industry, where child labor and human trafficking are particularly notorious, in order to protect workers who make, say Nike sneakers, but we'd criminalize the "pimp" Nike and all "johns" who purchase Nike sneakers. Sure, consumption of sneakers would fall, the number of sweatshop sneaker factories would fall, the exploitation of factory workers would fall, and child labor and human trafficking would fall.
But under which model are workers more protected, earn better wages, work in better conditions, have greater pride in their work, when it is legal and visible with a panoply of regulatory protection or when it is illegal and underground?"
"For those of us who have worked in the legal system, we have seen first hand that prostitutes are not as they are portrayed by the media. And we also know that even in marriages, there is bargaining about sex and money and power. We cannot legislate morality."
"The surest way for government to abdicate control of any commodity is to prohibit it."
"The difference with your article is that Amnesty International has done its homework to develop a policy, and in that process interviewed a large number of sex workers to get their viewpoints too... To develop a policy which is based only on personal experience without the inclusion of others experience, as well as what is good for society at large, is to develop a flawed policy."
"My heart goes out to Rachel Moran for the harm she experienced as an underage prostitute. But she is not exactly an impartial observer in this debate and I don't mean because she is a former sex worker. I mean that she and her organization are getting paid to express these views... the Swedish approach -- criminalizing buyers -- that she espouses has not worked. It has not decreased the number of sex workers in Sweden or sex trafficking in that region; all it's done is make sex work more dangerous for the people who do it by choice. As I discovered in researching my book, Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law, research shows that decriminalizing sex work -- in places like New Zealand and the Netherlands -- has made sex work much safer"
""I don't like chocolate so I'm going to make sure that nobody eats it because I KNOW BETTER". Recently I read some news in a British paper regarding the police freeing some Rumanian labor workers in the British country side, they were forced into picking fruit. In your eyes here's the solution: Let's ban fruit picking."
Comments:
"Ms. Moran's description of the sex market is no different from any labor market susceptible to exploiting girls and young women, yet perfectly legal and accepted in society: the garment industry, the fashion industry, the nail salon industry, etc. All these industries too suffer from increased black market activity and human trafficking. Yet would it be the solution to criminalize all these industries?
Suppose we applied the "Nordic model" to the garment industry, where child labor and human trafficking are particularly notorious, in order to protect workers who make, say Nike sneakers, but we'd criminalize the "pimp" Nike and all "johns" who purchase Nike sneakers. Sure, consumption of sneakers would fall, the number of sweatshop sneaker factories would fall, the exploitation of factory workers would fall, and child labor and human trafficking would fall.
But under which model are workers more protected, earn better wages, work in better conditions, have greater pride in their work, when it is legal and visible with a panoply of regulatory protection or when it is illegal and underground?"
"For those of us who have worked in the legal system, we have seen first hand that prostitutes are not as they are portrayed by the media. And we also know that even in marriages, there is bargaining about sex and money and power. We cannot legislate morality."
"The surest way for government to abdicate control of any commodity is to prohibit it."
"The difference with your article is that Amnesty International has done its homework to develop a policy, and in that process interviewed a large number of sex workers to get their viewpoints too... To develop a policy which is based only on personal experience without the inclusion of others experience, as well as what is good for society at large, is to develop a flawed policy."
"My heart goes out to Rachel Moran for the harm she experienced as an underage prostitute. But she is not exactly an impartial observer in this debate and I don't mean because she is a former sex worker. I mean that she and her organization are getting paid to express these views... the Swedish approach -- criminalizing buyers -- that she espouses has not worked. It has not decreased the number of sex workers in Sweden or sex trafficking in that region; all it's done is make sex work more dangerous for the people who do it by choice. As I discovered in researching my book, Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law, research shows that decriminalizing sex work -- in places like New Zealand and the Netherlands -- has made sex work much safer"
""I don't like chocolate so I'm going to make sure that nobody eats it because I KNOW BETTER". Recently I read some news in a British paper regarding the police freeing some Rumanian labor workers in the British country side, they were forced into picking fruit. In your eyes here's the solution: Let's ban fruit picking."
Post ID: 5901715277163766298
Friday, September 11, 2015
Links - 11th September 2015
Publishers have themselves to blame for the ad-blocking apocalypse - "many publishers both large and small are caught in a Catch-22 kind of situation: They rely on advertising for their financial well-being, but in order to cater to advertisers who want to see large numbers, many feel they have to pump out as much shallow click-bait as they possibly can. That in turn makes their sites even more reliant on advertising, because no one in their right mind would actually pay to subscribe to a site that publishes that kind of content. Meanwhile, the continuing decline in rates for most forms of digital advertising causes these publishers to make even more Faustian deals with sketchy ad networks, click farms, popup manufacturers and recommendation engines like Taboola and Outbrain. And that in turn causes reader churn, low engagement and poor clickthrough rates, and probably increases the growth of ad blockers. One tangible result of all this sturm und drang is that it is increasing the demand for “native advertising,” which looks like normal content and thus is theoretically impervious to ad blocking... the benefit of good native advertising is that readers don’t see it as advertising, they simply see it as useful or interesting content (if it’s done properly, that is). And therefore they don’t want to block it."
Chinese TV host to be punished for insulting Mao in private
How to save lions in Africa? Hunt them, conservationists say - "most conservation groups, wildlife management experts and African governments support the practice as a way to maintain wildlife. Hunting, they contend, is part of a complex economy that has so far proven to be the most effective method of conservation, not only in Africa but around the world as well. While hunting is banned in government parks here in South Africa, animals inside their boundaries are routinely sold to game ranches when their populations are considered excessive, generating money to maintain habitats and fight poachers. And because trophy hunting is legal in private game reserves, the animals end up fetching higher prices than they would in being killed for food or other reasons, conservationists contend... "There's only two places on the Earth where wildlife at a large scale has actually increased in the 20th century, and those are North America and southern Africa," said Dr Rosie Cooney, a zoologist who is the chairwoman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. "Both of those models of conservation were built around hunting"... The reality in Africa, they say, is that most animals, including elephants, rhinos and lions, are not killed by trophy hunters.Instead, they are killed by local residents for meat or in clashes as wild habitats shrink... lions were now protected because of the high value attached to them as trophies. Locals tolerate them because of the income that trickles down. Without the trophy hunt money, locals would increasingly poison lions, which are considered dangerous to people and livestock"
This World Rocks 17 Bucket List Items RUINED by Real Images - "Here is a good rule of thumb: If bottomless-pockets Oprah isn’t able to visit somewhere without avoiding herds of tourists, then you won’t be able to either."
Wah, the Over Exposed Model visited Rome!
In Liberal Europe, Abortion Laws Come With Their Own Restrictions - "I assumed that Western Europe would be the land of abortion on demand, likely government-subsidized, and possibly with a free bag of condoms afterward. But as it turns out, abortion laws in Europe are both more restrictive and more complicated than that. Waiting periods, decried by American pro-choicers as infantilizing and unreasonably burdensome, are common in Western Europe... in America, abortion laws are about morality, while in Europe, they reflect national ideas of what constitutes the common good"
Eye Shapes Of The Animal World Hint At Differences In Our Lifestyles - "The shape of the animal's pupil, it "turns out, is closely related to the animal's size and whether it's a predator or prey."
You want hypotheticals? Here’s one. - "The fact is that by the end of Bush’s tenure the war had been won. You can argue that the price of that victory was too high. Fine. We can debate that until the end of time. But what is not debatable is that it was a victory. Bush bequeathed to Obama a success. By whose measure? By Obama’s. As he told the troops at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14, 2011, “We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” This was, said the president, a “moment of success.” Which Obama proceeded to fully squander. With the 2012 election approaching, he chose to liquidate our military presence in Iraq. We didn’t just withdraw our forces. We abandoned, destroyed or turned over our equipment, stores, installations and bases. We surrendered our most valuable strategic assets, such as control of Iraqi airspace, soon to become the indispensable conduit for Iran to supply and sustain the Assad regime in Syria and cement its influence all the way to the Mediterranean. And, most relevant to the fall of Ramadi, we abandoned the vast intelligence network we had so painstakingly constructed in Anbar province, without which our current patchwork operations there are largely blind and correspondingly feeble. The current collapse was not predetermined in 2003 but in 2011. Isn’t that what should be asked of Hillary Clinton? We know you think the invasion of 2003 was a mistake. But what about the abandonment of 2011? Was that not a mistake?... the damage was self-inflicted. The current situation in Iraq, says David Petraeus, “is tragic foremost because it didn’t have to turn out this way. The hard-earned progress of the surge was sustained for over three years.”"
Black Lives Matter activists push Sanders off stage at Seattle event - "Sanders was just about to address several thousand people who gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers couldn’t persuade the two to wait and greed to give them a few minutes. The women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown. They also held a four minute moment of silence. When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd "white supremacist liberals," according to event participants."
50 hospitals charge uninsured more than 10 times cost of care, study finds
Who Farts? And Who Cares? - "Non-heterosexual men were an interesting conundrum. They were as likely as heterosexual men to think that the hearer would think it was funny, but the least likely to engage in intentional flatulence and the most likely to make sure that when they poop, they do so alone. Non-heterosexual women were also a conundrum. They were the least likely to think the hearer would laugh at a fart, but second only to heterosexual men in the practice of farting on purpose to get a reaction."
How nonsense papers ended up in respected scientific journals. - "Cyril Labbé, a French computer scientist, recently informed Springer and the IEEE, two major scientific publishers, that between them, they had published more than 120 algorithmically-generated articles. In 2012, Labbé had told the IEEE of another batch of 85 fake articles. He's been playing with SCIgen for a few years—in 2010 a fake researcher he created, Ike Antkare, briefly became the 21st most highly cited scientist in Google Scholar's database... quantitative measures of citation have acquired an importance that is distorting the practice of science... As Peter Higgs said after he won last year's Nobel Prize in physics, "Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough." Jens Skou, a 1997 Nobel Laureate, put it this way in his Nobel biographical statement: today's system puts pressure on scientists for, "too fast publication, and to publish too short papers, and the evaluation process use[s] a lot of manpower. It does not give time to become absorbed in a problem as the previous system [did]." Today, the most critical measure of an academic article's importance is the “impact factor” of the journal it is published in. The impact factor, which was created by a librarian named Eugene Garfield in the early 1950s, measures how often articles published in a journal are cited. Creating the impact factor helped make Garfield a multimillionaire—not a normal occurrence for librarians... The gibberish papers (“TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce”) are only the absurdist culmination of an academic evaluation and publication process set up to encourage them."
New study shows that people stop listening to new music at 33
Study Finds That The More Beautiful Your Home Is, The Less Likely You Are To Be Religious - "One of most cited studies in the sociology of religion is Bronislaw Malinowski's work in the Trobriand Islands. Malinowski found that fishermen venturing onto the perilous open ocean applied “magical thinking” through rituals that were skipped by those catching food in the calm (and very beautiful) waters of the lagoon."
Physically-attractive males increase men's financial risk-taking - "Prior research has examined how sexual opposite-sex stimuli impact people's choices and behaviors. However, it is largely unknown whether sexual same-sex stimuli also do so. This research reports an intriguing phenomenon: men who see attractive males take greater financial risks than those who do not. An evolution-based account is proffered and tested across four experiments"
Why you shouldn’t tell children they can be whatever they want - "I am drawn towards this subject by two personal factors – my father telling me, as I was growing up, that ambition is a curse. In defiance of this, I became hugely ambitious – thus defying my father’s edict and, at the same time, in a strange way, confirming it. Because although I have achieved way beyond my father’s – and even my own – expectations, it has not brought the happiness I imagined was guaranteed with the package. In fact, most of the joy I have got out of my life has been through the commonplace activities of home, family and hobbies, rather than being that most sought-after occupation, a novelist, which pushes me constantly to the frontiers of my limited abilities. Yes, I have won a few laurels – but the price I have paid in terms of effort and struggle and disappointment is high... “By implying that the only options are superstardom or mediocrity, we ignore where most of us ultimately land – that huge middle ground between anything and nothing much at all”... is it so shameful to want to be a nurse rather than a doctor, a schoolteacher rather than a university lecturer?... The idea that your success in work represents your success as a person is useful for capitalism, but it can extract an exacting personal cost... Instead of teaching “you’re special, you’re great”, we should emphasise self-control and hard work, which are positively correlated with success. And we should define for our children some alternative life goals to reaching for the stars – because for the overwhelming majority of us, they will always sparkle, coldly, out of reach."
There are too many studies, new study finds - "In a paper entitled 'Attention decay in science', professors from universities in Finland and California conclude that "the exponential growth in the number of scientific papers makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to keep track of all the publications relevant to their work."
Chinese TV host to be punished for insulting Mao in private
How to save lions in Africa? Hunt them, conservationists say - "most conservation groups, wildlife management experts and African governments support the practice as a way to maintain wildlife. Hunting, they contend, is part of a complex economy that has so far proven to be the most effective method of conservation, not only in Africa but around the world as well. While hunting is banned in government parks here in South Africa, animals inside their boundaries are routinely sold to game ranches when their populations are considered excessive, generating money to maintain habitats and fight poachers. And because trophy hunting is legal in private game reserves, the animals end up fetching higher prices than they would in being killed for food or other reasons, conservationists contend... "There's only two places on the Earth where wildlife at a large scale has actually increased in the 20th century, and those are North America and southern Africa," said Dr Rosie Cooney, a zoologist who is the chairwoman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. "Both of those models of conservation were built around hunting"... The reality in Africa, they say, is that most animals, including elephants, rhinos and lions, are not killed by trophy hunters.Instead, they are killed by local residents for meat or in clashes as wild habitats shrink... lions were now protected because of the high value attached to them as trophies. Locals tolerate them because of the income that trickles down. Without the trophy hunt money, locals would increasingly poison lions, which are considered dangerous to people and livestock"
This World Rocks 17 Bucket List Items RUINED by Real Images - "Here is a good rule of thumb: If bottomless-pockets Oprah isn’t able to visit somewhere without avoiding herds of tourists, then you won’t be able to either."
Wah, the Over Exposed Model visited Rome!
In Liberal Europe, Abortion Laws Come With Their Own Restrictions - "I assumed that Western Europe would be the land of abortion on demand, likely government-subsidized, and possibly with a free bag of condoms afterward. But as it turns out, abortion laws in Europe are both more restrictive and more complicated than that. Waiting periods, decried by American pro-choicers as infantilizing and unreasonably burdensome, are common in Western Europe... in America, abortion laws are about morality, while in Europe, they reflect national ideas of what constitutes the common good"
Eye Shapes Of The Animal World Hint At Differences In Our Lifestyles - "The shape of the animal's pupil, it "turns out, is closely related to the animal's size and whether it's a predator or prey."
You want hypotheticals? Here’s one. - "The fact is that by the end of Bush’s tenure the war had been won. You can argue that the price of that victory was too high. Fine. We can debate that until the end of time. But what is not debatable is that it was a victory. Bush bequeathed to Obama a success. By whose measure? By Obama’s. As he told the troops at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14, 2011, “We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” This was, said the president, a “moment of success.” Which Obama proceeded to fully squander. With the 2012 election approaching, he chose to liquidate our military presence in Iraq. We didn’t just withdraw our forces. We abandoned, destroyed or turned over our equipment, stores, installations and bases. We surrendered our most valuable strategic assets, such as control of Iraqi airspace, soon to become the indispensable conduit for Iran to supply and sustain the Assad regime in Syria and cement its influence all the way to the Mediterranean. And, most relevant to the fall of Ramadi, we abandoned the vast intelligence network we had so painstakingly constructed in Anbar province, without which our current patchwork operations there are largely blind and correspondingly feeble. The current collapse was not predetermined in 2003 but in 2011. Isn’t that what should be asked of Hillary Clinton? We know you think the invasion of 2003 was a mistake. But what about the abandonment of 2011? Was that not a mistake?... the damage was self-inflicted. The current situation in Iraq, says David Petraeus, “is tragic foremost because it didn’t have to turn out this way. The hard-earned progress of the surge was sustained for over three years.”"
Black Lives Matter activists push Sanders off stage at Seattle event - "Sanders was just about to address several thousand people who gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers couldn’t persuade the two to wait and greed to give them a few minutes. The women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown. They also held a four minute moment of silence. When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd "white supremacist liberals," according to event participants."
50 hospitals charge uninsured more than 10 times cost of care, study finds
Who Farts? And Who Cares? - "Non-heterosexual men were an interesting conundrum. They were as likely as heterosexual men to think that the hearer would think it was funny, but the least likely to engage in intentional flatulence and the most likely to make sure that when they poop, they do so alone. Non-heterosexual women were also a conundrum. They were the least likely to think the hearer would laugh at a fart, but second only to heterosexual men in the practice of farting on purpose to get a reaction."
How nonsense papers ended up in respected scientific journals. - "Cyril Labbé, a French computer scientist, recently informed Springer and the IEEE, two major scientific publishers, that between them, they had published more than 120 algorithmically-generated articles. In 2012, Labbé had told the IEEE of another batch of 85 fake articles. He's been playing with SCIgen for a few years—in 2010 a fake researcher he created, Ike Antkare, briefly became the 21st most highly cited scientist in Google Scholar's database... quantitative measures of citation have acquired an importance that is distorting the practice of science... As Peter Higgs said after he won last year's Nobel Prize in physics, "Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough." Jens Skou, a 1997 Nobel Laureate, put it this way in his Nobel biographical statement: today's system puts pressure on scientists for, "too fast publication, and to publish too short papers, and the evaluation process use[s] a lot of manpower. It does not give time to become absorbed in a problem as the previous system [did]." Today, the most critical measure of an academic article's importance is the “impact factor” of the journal it is published in. The impact factor, which was created by a librarian named Eugene Garfield in the early 1950s, measures how often articles published in a journal are cited. Creating the impact factor helped make Garfield a multimillionaire—not a normal occurrence for librarians... The gibberish papers (“TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce”) are only the absurdist culmination of an academic evaluation and publication process set up to encourage them."
New study shows that people stop listening to new music at 33
Study Finds That The More Beautiful Your Home Is, The Less Likely You Are To Be Religious - "One of most cited studies in the sociology of religion is Bronislaw Malinowski's work in the Trobriand Islands. Malinowski found that fishermen venturing onto the perilous open ocean applied “magical thinking” through rituals that were skipped by those catching food in the calm (and very beautiful) waters of the lagoon."
Physically-attractive males increase men's financial risk-taking - "Prior research has examined how sexual opposite-sex stimuli impact people's choices and behaviors. However, it is largely unknown whether sexual same-sex stimuli also do so. This research reports an intriguing phenomenon: men who see attractive males take greater financial risks than those who do not. An evolution-based account is proffered and tested across four experiments"
Why you shouldn’t tell children they can be whatever they want - "I am drawn towards this subject by two personal factors – my father telling me, as I was growing up, that ambition is a curse. In defiance of this, I became hugely ambitious – thus defying my father’s edict and, at the same time, in a strange way, confirming it. Because although I have achieved way beyond my father’s – and even my own – expectations, it has not brought the happiness I imagined was guaranteed with the package. In fact, most of the joy I have got out of my life has been through the commonplace activities of home, family and hobbies, rather than being that most sought-after occupation, a novelist, which pushes me constantly to the frontiers of my limited abilities. Yes, I have won a few laurels – but the price I have paid in terms of effort and struggle and disappointment is high... “By implying that the only options are superstardom or mediocrity, we ignore where most of us ultimately land – that huge middle ground between anything and nothing much at all”... is it so shameful to want to be a nurse rather than a doctor, a schoolteacher rather than a university lecturer?... The idea that your success in work represents your success as a person is useful for capitalism, but it can extract an exacting personal cost... Instead of teaching “you’re special, you’re great”, we should emphasise self-control and hard work, which are positively correlated with success. And we should define for our children some alternative life goals to reaching for the stars – because for the overwhelming majority of us, they will always sparkle, coldly, out of reach."
There are too many studies, new study finds - "In a paper entitled 'Attention decay in science', professors from universities in Finland and California conclude that "the exponential growth in the number of scientific papers makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to keep track of all the publications relevant to their work."
Post ID: 1383872142005495016
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