Links - 22nd October 2014

Japan porn queens raise thousands of dollars from 'Boob Aid' - "A group of Japanese porn actresses raised tens of thousands of dollars at the weekend by having their breasts squeezed by fans at a "Boob Aid" charity event for AIDS prevention... A man was seen pressing his palms together in the style of a Buddhist prayer before and after he softly touched the breasts of each of the nine. Women were occasionally spotted in the mostly male crowd, prompting one of the girls to say in rapture: "Wow, I'm happy. I want her to touch my breasts!" The event was part of a 24-hour "Stop! AIDS" campaign event in Tokyo, which was also televised live on a Japanese adult cable channel... "I'm really looking forward to lots of people fondling my boobs,"Rina Serina told the Tokyo Sports newspaper before the event. "But I would be very happy if you would please be delicate." The bizarre event was staged after sexist heckling of a Tokyo assemblywoman hit the headlines, highlighting old-fashioned views toward women that still permeate Japanese society. "I never thought my boobs could contribute to society," said the ponytailed Serina, apparently unaware of any contradiction. Fellow porn actress Iku Sakuragi had no qualms about being groped by hundreds of pairs of hands. "It's for charity," said the 21-year-old. "Squeeze them, donate money - let's be happy.""

President Barack Obama and race: It's not my job - "As he has grown weary of Washington, President Barack Obama has shed parts of his presidency, like drying petals falling off a rose. He left the explaining and selling of his signature health care legislation to Bill Clinton. He outsourced Congress to Rahm Emanuel in the first term and now doesn't bother to source it at all. He left schmoozing, as well as a spiraling Iraq, to Joe Biden. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, comes across as more than a message-meister. As the president floats in the empyrean, Rhodes seems to make foreign policy even as he's spinning it. But the one thing it was impossible to imagine, back in the giddy days of the 2009 inauguration, as Americans basked in their open-mindedness and pluralism, was that the first African-American president would outsource race... Obama has muzzled himself on race and made Sharpton his chosen instrument — two men joined in pragmatism at a moment when idealism is needed. We can't expect the president to do everything. But we can expect him to do something."

Austrian brothel owner has last laugh after nine-year planning battle - "Does prostitution count as "heavy physical work"? Will the presence of a brothel next to a through-road increase the accident rate? How many cubic metres of air are needed for two people to have sex safely? Not questions a judge has to consider every day, but these are the conundrums courts in Austria have been mulling over lately in a farcical battle over a planning application from a pimp."

'Sex drive-in' hailed as success after year-long experiment in Zürich - "Swiss authorities are basking in the afterglow of their decision last year to create a sex drive-in in Zürich, with social services hailing it a success on its first anniversary on Tuesday"

Interpol searching for Malaysian sex blogger Alvin Tan
Ahh... priorities!

Student vows to carry mattress everywhere until her alleged rapist is expelled - "Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia University student, has claimed she was raped in her bed last year at university by a fellow student. She is one of three women who complained to the university about that student, but Columbia’s dean found him to be not guilty in each case."
Hopefully Columbia has more of a commitment to due process than feminists

Emma Sulkowicz | Rape Awareness | Due Process - "Sulkowicz plead her case to the university. But why didn’t she go to the police? Why rely upon the school’s justice system to take action? Cases like this highlight what seems to be a growing problem in higher education. Professor Jacobson wrote about a similar case in May, also occurring at Columbia. A male former Columbia student filed a complaint with a federal court in New York alleging he was found guilty of sexual assault by university officials based on weak evidence. He also claimed he was denied proper due process proceedings. Legal Insurrection frequently writes about the death of due process on college campuses. Serious allegations would be better be handled by law enforcement equipped to handle them and by a justice system designed to dispense justice as opposed to whatever is most politically expedient."
"I don’t want to deal with the police any more right now. It’s so disorganized, and it’s really upsetting to work with them at all."
Someone: translation "i feelz bad so please serve me justice on a platter"
or more precisely "i prefer the kangaroo court of public opinion as opposed to a legal system in which i know my chances of getting my desired outcome is relatively low due."
so it actually makes sense
she's just choosing the path that will allow her to achieve her means better.
even with the 50.01% burden of proof, she still failed to prove guilt

Not all feminists: How modern feminism has become complicated, messy and sometimes alienating - "By the dictionary definition, the 22-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, is a feminist — she believes in equality for the sexes. And yet, she rejects feminism with a vengeance, brushing it off as a “rude and nasty” movement that is more interested in trashing views that stray from the party line even if, at day’s end, the cause is common. “If feminism really accepted equality, they would not tell me my views are wrong, they would accept it and let me be”... she found Women Against Feminism, a Tumblr page that collects submitted photos of women holding signs explaining why they don’t “need” feminism. A typical sign: “I don’t need modern “feminism” because I am not a victim and I am not a misandrist”... Sheila Sampath, editor of Shameless, an intersectional feminist magazine for teen girls and trans youth, admits she usually has more arguments with feminists about feminism than she does with men. “People have very legitimate reasons to reject feminism,” Ms. Sampath said. “It doesn’t surprise me that the narrative they’re responding to is the dominant narrative. That narrative itself is pretty racist, pretty capitalist and focused only on gender. To be honest, I reject that too.”"

Please Stop 'Burning In' Your Earphones - "Shure has tested some thoroughly used pairs of its E1 earphones, which first launched in 1997. And guess what? They measure the same now as when they came off the line. In fact, during the 15 years Shure has been actively selling earphones, its engineers have reached the same conclusion again and again: The sound produced by these tiny transducers during final testing is the same sound you’ll get in a day, in a year, and in five years… unless something goes wrong... all of this variation gets at the real thing people are reacting to when they buy new head- and earphones: mental burn-in. If you’re used to dark-sounding headphones, neutral ones may sound bright at first until you get used to the new sound. That flexible calibration is how many of our senses work"

5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day - "1. A nap restores alertness. The National Sleep Foundation recommends a short nap of 20–30 minutes “for improved alertness and performance without leaving you feeling groggy or interfering with nighttime sleep.”
2. A nap prevents burnout. In our always-on culture, we go, go, go. However, we were not meant to race without rest. Doing so leads to stress, frustration, and burnout. Taking a nap is like a system reboot. It relieves stress and gives you a fresh start.
3. A nap heightens sensory perception. According to Dr. Sandra C. Mednick, author of Take a Nap, Change Your Life, napping can restore the sensitivity of sight, hearing, and taste. Napping also improves your creativity by relaxing your mind and allowing new associations to form in it.
4. A nap reduces the risk of heart disease. Did you know those who take a midday siesta at least three times a week are 37 percent less likely to die of heart disease? Working men are 64 percent less likely! It’s true, according to a 2007 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who led the study said, “Taking a nap could turn out to be an important weapon in the fight against coronary mortality.”
5. A nap makes you more productive. Numerous medical studies have shown workers becoming increasingly unproductive as the day wears on. But a 2002 Harvard University study demonstrated a 30-minute nap boosted the performance of workers, returning their productivity to beginning-of-the-day levels."

Count Only Unique numbers in a pivot table - Excel User Group - "Within the data field of a pivot table, I know we can sum, count, average, etc,...but is there a way to get a count of unique entries/numbers there?"
Addendum: The link is now down. The formula is =IF(COUNTIF($A$1:A1,A1)=1,1,0)

NeuroLogica Blog » Artificial Sweeteners and Diabetes - "A new study published in Nature is getting a lot of press, and it seems making a lot of people worried. The Nature News article discussing the study has the headline: Sugar substitutes linked to obesity. I think this headline is misleading. Here’s a breakdown of what the study does and does not tell us... The scientific community is already starting to pick over the results of this study, and dampen public reaction by putting it into perspective. First, the majority of this work was done in mice, who have a different glucose metabolism, diet, and tolerance than humans. The small study with 7 human subjects is very preliminary, and far from sufficient to conclude that the mice data will be applicable to people. The Science Magazine article points out that the study was published in a basic science journal, and that a clinical science journal would probably have been much more critical of their clinical speculations. Another potentially serious criticism is that the researchers combined saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame data. It seems highly unlikely that three very different molecules would all have the same effect on gut microbiota. It’s possible that what the researchers are seeing is isolated to saccharin alone, which the research focused on. Earlier trials used aspartame, which had a smaller effect so the researchers switched to saccharin... A large European epidemiological trial published last year and involving cohorts with >10,000 subjects found an association between drinking sugary drinks and Type II diabetes. It also found an association with drinking NAS containing drinks, but this association vanished when controlled for energy intake and BMI. In other words, people drink diet soda because they are overweight, not the other way around."

On Death and iPods: A Requiem - "We made playlists that spoke to the lives we lived at the moment. Looking at someone’s iPod was like looking into their soul. In their music you could see who they were. You could tell if they were sophisticated or rough. You could see in their playlists the moments they fell in love and the moments they fell back out again. You could see the filthiest, nastiest hip hop in the little white boxes of the primmest people, and know their inner lives a little better than you did before... Soon there will be no such thing as your music library. There will be no such thing as your music. We had it all wrong! Information doesn’t want to be free, it wants to be a commodity. It wants to be packaged into apps that differ only in terms of interface and pricing models. It wants to be rented. It wants to reveal nothing too personal, because we broadcast it to Facebook and we should probably turn on a private session so our boss doesn’t see that we listen to Anaconda on repeat and think we’re high at work. (Point of information: Why is he on Facebook at work?)... I miss the time when we were still defined by our music. When our music was still our music. I miss being younger, with a head full of subversive ideas; white cables snaking down my neck, stolen songs in my pocket. There will never be an app for that."