Links - 16th May 2017 (2)

Mikelle Krochin's answer to In Star Wars, the Separatists wanted to leave because of deception and neglect by Republic leaders. That ought to make them the good guys. Why not? - Quora - "What Lucas tried to do with the prequels is break the black and white model of good and evil the original trilogy had.Although they weren’t Oscar Winners movies, I find them good and enjoyable to watch. You are forced to accept that Yoda, Obi Wan and the whole Jedi are working for a corrupt republic( that eventually will become the Empire), but also that the Jedi Order itself has become corrupt. They are clouded by a war they are forced to fight, which is destroying them. The Separatists committed atrocities, but the Republic was not acting like Gandhi either."

Nurses grant dying man final wish – a cigarette and glass of wine - "Carsten Flemming Hansen, 75, was found to be terminally ill after he was admitted to hospital with an aortic aneurysm and internal bleeding. Predicting it would be a matter of hours or days before Hansen died, the hospital decided not to operate and instead granted the patient a “dignified” death. The nurses at Aarhus University hospital decided to defy regulations that stipulated no smoking on the hospital’s grounds and wheeled Hansen out on to a balcony where he smoked a Green LA cigarette and drank a glass of cold white wine while watching the sunset with his family"

Why The Liberal Left Is Partly Responsible For The Murder Of Atheist H Farook - "Every illiberal dogma is now put through the prism of "power structures" to see where it fits into the Left's identity politics... In their zeal to fight the Right, Liberals and Leftists have not only abandoned dissenters within minorities, but have started aligning with far-Right Islamists, as was the comical case when Linda Sarsour (pro-Sharia apologist of Saudi male guardianship laws) was made co-chair of a feminist march in Washington. Muslim reformers and apostates are the worst casualties of the Left's apartheid. These folks who are at the greatest peril of being murdered for victimless "crimes" such as blasphemy, are now being abandoned at the altar of Leftist identity politics, to be slaughtered by Islamist thugs who have mysteriously become pseudo-victims of the same majoritarianism that they gleefully perpetuate on dissenters within their own communities"

Is That Skeleton Gay? The Problem With Projecting Modern Ideas Onto The Past - "What's especially strange is that two men who died in the same place at the same time in a catastrophic event are assumed to have been lovers. As classicist David Meadows tells me, "They weren't 'gay' when they were thought to be women." While the archaeologists involved in the new study make it clear in the Telegraph piece that the nature of the relationship is impossible to determine, the media's jumping to a conclusion about sexual attraction and applying the modern label "gay" -- which is quite anachronistic in terms of ancient Roman culture -- reveals much more about our modern culture's obsession with this topic than it tells us about the Romans."

10-Minute Kaya (I) - "Kaya made with whole eggs has to be cooked at a very low temperature. That's why it's heated over a water bath, and it has to be stirred continuously. If the temperature is too high, the egg whites would turn lumpy and ruin the kaya. Meanwhile, the sugar has to caramelize, which starts happening at about 160°C. But it's sitting in a pool of coconut milk that consists of mainly water. H2O's maximum temperature is 100°C, right? That's way too low for browning sugar. So, before any caramelization takes place, most of the H2O has to evaporate. Which is done ever so gently over a water bath so that the princessy egg whites don't get grumpy and lumpy. Even when the caramelization finally happens, along with the thickening as water evaporates, it's very slow because of the minimal heat. Now you see why making traditional kaya takes hours of dedicated stirring? The hard labour may be easily avoided by doing two things: One, omitting the egg whites, thus allowing the kaya to be cooked at a higher temperature without a water bath. Two, replace some of the white sugar with palm sugar, which doesn't need to be caramelized"

Cambridge college closes to the public after students found tourists wandering into their bedrooms - "Clare College can no longer cope with "bus loads" of tourists - who are predominantly from Japan and China - turning up unannounced, according to a source, and has closed its grounds to the public for the first time in its near 700 year history."

What your earwax says about your ancestry - "Smelly earwax is just another of the genetic quirks we inherit as part of one ethnic group or another. In new tests of earwax in Caucasian and East Asian men, yellow earwax from Caucasians gave off stronger odors than the dry, white kind... As for our different ear odors, they came about because of a tiny change, just one little letter in the genetic alphabet that long ago granted an East Asian population a reprieve from both smelly underarms and sticky earwax... most East Asians and nearly all Koreans lack a chemical in their armpits that bacteria munch on to make body odor, because they carry this variant of the ABCC11 gene"
I thought race was supposed to be a myth

Texas student commits suicide after Title IX kangaroo court - "A male student who was accused of sexual harassment committed suicide just days after the University of Texas at Arlington ignored its own policies in order to punish him. The accused student’s father, a lawyer acting as the administrator of his son’s estate, is now suing the school for violating his son’s Title IX rights... Klocke, a straight male, was accused by a gay male student of writing anti-gay slurs on his computer during a class. Klocke vehemently denied the accusation, and administrators who investigated the incident acknowledged there was no evidence to support the accuser’s claims, yet Klocke was still punished."
This is what straight male privilege looks like

How Delta masters the game of overbooking flights - "When passengers on overbooked flights check in online or at the check-in kiosk, they’re asked what the dollar value of the travel voucher they would accept as compensation for volunteering their seats. They give you a hint, too — “Delta accepts lower bids first.” By the time you reach the gate, the gate attendants already have a list of passengers to call up to confirm they’ll fly standby. If your bid is low enough, you’ll be on that list."

Teng apologises for non-Islamic worship houses controversy - "Controversy erupted when it was revealed that the third edition of the Selangor Manual Guideline and Selangor State Planning Standard outlined was extremely prohibitive towards the building of new non-Islamic houses of worship. These include that such places must be at least 50m away from the nearest Muslim-owned homes and the need to obtain permission of residents within a 200m radius. Non-Islamic houses of worship also cannot be constructed in commercial areas and must not be taller than nearby mosques."

Stockholm attack: Hero driver protected Swedish Parliament - "Hundreds of lives were saved by a quick-thinking security van driver who drove his van directly into the path of the rampaging lorry, forcing the terrorist to lose control and crash. Heroic Santiago Cueva, 27, was sitting in his van outside the Åhlens department store in Stockholm on Friday when he saw the hijacked lorry racing down the street, mowing down everything in its path. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, he said that his first thought was to protect the Swedish parliament, which was just 500 metres down the road from the scene of the attack."

Sweden will 'never go back' to mass immigration, PM says - "The Prime Minister of Sweden has vowed his country will 'never go back' to recent levels of mass immigration after it emerged the terrorist who killed four people in a truck attack was a failed asylum seeker."
Alternatively, one could conclude that this shows everyone needs to be granted asylum so they don't kill people

Refugees won’t plug German labor gap - "“Let’s not delude ourselves,” said Ludger Wößmann, director of Munich-based Ifo Center for the Economics of Education. “From everything we know so far, it seems that the majority of refugees would first need extensive training and even then it’s far from certain that it would work out”... Less than 15 percent of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries have completed vocational training or a university degree, according to a September 2015 study by Germany’s Institute for Employment Research. Even those with training often don’t have the skills expected in Germany. On average, an eighth-grader in pre-war Syria had a similar level to a third-grade student in Germany, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)... The government is already preparing for an additional 1 million recipients of its main unemployment benefit, known as Hartz IV, by 2019... The problem is that almost half of all refugees coming to Germany are over 25 and are unlikely to go through a formal three-year training program, simply because they are too old. Instead, they would most likely join the ranks of the 20 percent unemployed among the low- and unqualified workers of the country and compete for low-skilled jobs."

Asylum claims from Christian converts being rejected if they cannot recite the Ten Commandments - "Mass Christian conversions of migrants arriving in Germany from the Middle East and North Africa has prompted fears in Britain that many asylum claimants may be attempting to deceived the authorities by falsely converting."

The Vox Vacation Index: Let economics help plan your next vacation - "finding a great macroeconomic bargain is about more than simply looking up exchange rates. Currency depreciation often leads to inflation — higher prices — in which case your dollars might buy more pesos (or yen or euros or what have you) without actually buying you more steak. That’s why we created the Vox Vacation Index, which combines exchange rate and inflation information to tell you which countries are getting cheaper to visit"

Why people prefer unequal societies - "A further motivation for inequality may come from the idea that inequality is necessary to motivate industriousness and allow for social mobility. For example, Norton argues that people prefer inequality because they see it as a motivating force that leads people to work harder and better, knowing that doing so can improve their station in life, and that of their children... as inequality increases, self-reported happiness diminishes, especially among the bottom 40% of income earners. One reason for this is that relative disadvantage has a larger negative impact on well-being than relative advantage has a positive impact. When people know where they stand in the overall income distribution, those on the lower end of the scale report less job satisfaction, but those on the higher end of the scale do not report any greater satisfaction. This has negative effects for productivity too: workers who know they are on the low side of the distribution decrease their effort, but knowing that one is on the high end does not lead to an increase in effort. Still, as Tyler points out, it is not clear whether the corrosive effects of inequality on happiness are due to inequality per se, or due to the perception of unfair inequality... Nevertheless, inequality in a society also predicts a greater degree of violence, obesity, teenage pregnancy, and interpersonal distrust... in various other societies across the world and across history (for example, when faced with the communist ideals of the former USSR)

Inequality isn't immoral - LA Times - " economic egalitarianism engenders another conflict, one of more fundamental significance: It encourages people to care about how much money other people have, which distracts them from calculating their monetary requirements in the light of their personal circumstances. But, surely, the amount of money available to others has nothing directly to do with what is needed for the kind of life a person would most sensibly and appropriately seek for himself. In this way, the doctrine of equality contributes to the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time."

Cieslak who admitted raping 12-year-old girl walks FREE - "Lady Scott said: 'You understood from chat in the taxi that the victim was 16 years old and her friend was 17 years old. The taxi driver had the impression that the victim was about 20 years old. 'Once at the flat, after some time, you paired off and you and the victim engaged in sexual intercourse. 'She left the next morning. She had no concerns and there was no suggestion of her being distressed.' Police officers who had spoken to the victim earlier in the night in relation to another matter also had no concerns over her age, Lady Scott said in her order. The judge said Cieslak was culpable under 'strict liability', where victims under 13 are deemed by law to be incapable of consent. But the judge said there were 'a number of exceptional circumstances' which applied... 'The statutory offence for girls aged over 13 to 16 years provides for a defence based on reasonable grounds of belief by the accused that the victim was above the age of consent... Taking into account that all witnesses on the night thought the victim was over 16, that Cieslak was told she was 16 and with no signs of distress, Lady Scott said: 'Your criminal culpability here is wholly restricted to the application of strict liability within this offence."
At least in the UK reasonable grounds of belief is a defence for having sex with those aged 13-16
Keywords: UK, judge, 12 years old, refuse to convict, sex

Top female judge Lindsey Kushner begs women to protect themselves from predatory men when they are drunk in her final ever case - "Lindsey Kushner QC, one of Britain’s most senior judges, said that while she believed women had every right to “drink themselves into the ground”, they should be careful as potential rapists “gravitate” towards drunk females... “That’s my final line, in my final criminal trial, and my final sentence.”
Don't tell me to check for traffic before going across a pedestrian crossing: tell drivers to look out for pedestrians at them
If this hadn't been her final case she probably wouldn't have dared going up against the feminists

In 'special message', Taliban leader urges Afghans to plant more trees

Kellyanne Conway White House Couch Controversy Highlights ‘Double Standard’ [Video] - "“I was being asked to take a picture in a crowded room with the press behind us. I was asked to take a certain angle and was doing exactly that. I certainly meant no disrespect, I didn’t mean to have my feet on the couch.” Many jumped to Conway’s defense, pointing out that President Barack Obama was often photographed with his feet on his desk in the Oval Office... Image consultant Sylvie di Giusto tells Yahoo Style that before hitting “retweet,” it’s important to remember that sometimes, a picture is just a picture. “In general, I recommend not to ‘read’ too much from a single snapshot, an instant moment that a smart photographer has captured, because pictures are very one-dimensional”... " from a practical point of view, dresses are not very easy to wear as a professional woman, in particular when you are in the public eye""

Mass Effect Designer Manveer Heir Hates White People and Wants the World To Know - "Not content with simply mocking gamers over online disagreements and shaming fellow game developers for refusing to fall in line with his politics, BioWare gameplay designer Manveer Heir’s Twitter timeline exposes a far more disturbing reality, with tweet after racist tweet disparaging white people"
Unsurprisingly, in 2014 he made an "emotional plea to eliminate social injustice in games" (to which: So much for Art for Art's Sake); what does so many people who talk about social justice being hateful suggest?

Unfortunately ims framework has stopped - "1. Open 'Messages' (SMS app)
2. Go to 'Settings' in the top right (you need to scroll down to see 'Settings' from the options, as the defaul pop-up window isn't big enough to show all of them)
3. Select 'Default messaging app'
4. Select 'Rich Communications'
5. Uncheck the 'Rich Communications' box
This has stopped the 'Unfortunately IMS...' message appearing every few seconds on my S5."