Links - 5th May 2017 (1)

OQLF Investigates RDP Hospital After Two Workers Speak In Creole - "Two Montreal hospital workers have caught the attention of the Office québécoisde la languefrançaise for speaking to each other in Creole."

Quebec language police try to ban 'pasta' from Italian restaurant menu - "The outcry has forced the Quebec government to rein in its language inspectors, ensure exceptions to the rules are made for ethnic food and restaurant menus and order a review of how it handles public complaints... Lecas's decision to go public with the letter from the language inspector has prompted other restaurateurs to come forward. One told how he was ordered to cover his microwave's on/off switch and the redial button on a telephone with tape because they were in English. The chef's grocery list, which was written on a kitchen chalkboard, was also found to have broken the law: steak frites may be a staple of Parisian bistros but, according to Quebec law, biftek is the only acceptable term... Others have also come forward to describe their encounters with a government department that conducts its business like a spy agency and wields the powers of a top-court judge."

If Beautiful People Have Daughters, Why Do Posh and Becks Have Three Sons? - "two evolutionary psychology megasuperstars, Steven W. Gangestad and Jeffry A. Simpson, have discovered 20 years ago that actresses are more likely to have sons compared to women in other occupations. This is probably because actresses are more likely to be extraverted and sexually promiscuous than women in other occupations."

The Psychology of Liberalism - "the Catholic reactionary Andy Nowicki has published a short book called The Psychology of Liberalism: Character Study of a Movement... One thing that puzzles the writer is how liberals can persist in believing that they are an oppressed minority who speak “truth to power” when they are the status quo in the media, academia, public policy, etc. But as he correctly notes, progressives have to believe this or be faced with the uncomfortable fact that they are not fighting power but exercising it. And that their demands for tolerance are not demands for justice but commands to conform. Nowicki observes that liberals reject the doctrine of “Original Sin,” but only to resuscitate the doctrine in a secular and highly selective manner, where it seeks to induce guilt in people who belong to a certain groups (males, individuals of European descent, etc.) and place other groups beyond all criticism."

Sex and Propaganda - "Both the Axis and the Allies printed aerial propaganda leaflets using sexual themes in an attempt to demoralize enemy soldiers at the front. Did these leaflets work? Did the finders become emotionally crippled and unable to carry on their duties and responsibilities? Just the opposite occurred. The "pin-up" pictures became collectors items sought after by the troops who greedily collected and swapped them. If anything, the leaflets raised morale. There is no doubt that they were the most heartily appreciated propaganda leaflets used in World War 2. We can probably state that they were the most widely read and circulated enemy documents of any war...
One of the more attractive ones disseminated in February 1945 shows a beautiful blond being kissed on the shoulder by a man with slicked-back dark hair. The text is:
Gentlemen prefer blondes.
The back of the leaflet shows a one-legged soldier on crutches and the text:
but blondes don’t like cripples...
This is one of the strangest Japanese sex leaflets that I have seen. It depicts a naked woman looking at a banana and apparently about to use it as a sex toy. The text is:
HERE I AM IN PERSON!
Honey, look in the back for my love call
The back shows two hands holding the leaflet. Notice that on the front there is a blank space around the vaginal area (a white square). On the back the lower hand has placed a finger through that blank space. Apparently the soldier is expected to cut that blank space out and then have sex with the picture with his finger. Oh, those tricky Japanese!...
One of the most intriguing and insidious insults to Adolf Hitler was a propaganda postcard code numbered H.789 produced by Director Sefton Delmer of the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE) that showed the Führer with his penis in his hand. The postcard chosen to caricature was originally a product of Foto Hoffman of Munich. Hitler stands on what appears to be balcony with his left hand on the rail and his right hand on his waist. In the parody, his right hand is depicted holding a circumcised penis. This probably was designed to feed the rumor that Hitler was indeed a self-hating Jew...
along a distant tree line his men saw a group of naked Russian women. His men gathered to look at the women with binoculars and were suddenly hit by a Russian artillery barrage, killing several of them. It sounds like a fake story, but he was an SS Major so I have to think that it could be true."

Manfred Clynes - Wikipedia - "According to Clynes’s experimental research these time forms (“sentic forms”), as embodied in the central nervous system, are primary to the varied modes in which they find expression, such as sound, touch, and gesture. Clynes was able to prove this by systematically deriving sounds from subjects’ expressions of emotions through touch, and then playing those sounds to hearers culturally remote from the original subjects. In one trial, for example, Aborigines in Central Australia were able to correctly identify the specific emotional qualities of sounds derived from the touch of white urban Americans. (This experiment was featured on Nova, What Is Music? in 1988). Clynes found in this a confirmation of the existence of biologically fixed, universal, primary dynamic forms that determine expressions of emotion that give rise to much of the experience within human societies"

Evolve Mixed Martial Arts boss takes all employees on Maldives holiday - "Evolve Mixed Martial Arts founder and chairman Chatri Sityodtong decided that his 100 staff members could do with a slice of paradise after his company saw a 30% year-on-year growth"

Bigger penises make female fish evolve larger brains

Universities Without Ideological Diversity - "Universities everywhere are not as balanced as the general population but New England is like another country."

Watch the rapid evolution of the American diet over 40 years, in one GIF

D'ailleurs / Par ailleurs - "À l’origine, « par ailleurs » et « d’ailleurs » ont des significations relatives au lieu. Ainsi, au sens propre, « par ailleurs » signifie « par un autre chemin » alors que « d’ailleurs » signifie « d’un autre endroit, d’autres endroits »"

Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists? - "if poverty and ignorance don't drive people to extremism, what does? One is a desire for meaning and for order... Another is a desire for change... Then throw in a strong sense of victimhood -- we are not responsible for the sorry state of our country; others have brought us down -- and you have a toxic brew that many willingly imbibe. These, of course, are the same easy answers that tyrants and demagogues -- from Lenin to Mussolini to Hitler to bin Laden -- have always offered their followers... So what to do about this extremism? The first step is to get off this false narrative that this is first and foremost a poverty or education issue... the media have to stop treating extremists as freedom fighters, a narrative that is all too common in places like Pakistan... Islamic religious figures have to stop looking the other way, or worse, glorifying so-called "martyrs" -- Muslims who murder innocent people -- almost always other Muslims -- in the name of Islam"

Rejecting Men, Embracing Children - "the researchers concluded that the majority of children born to lone mothers could not correctly be deemed “unplanned.” Rather, many were planned or actively sought. And the majority were somewhere in the middle between planned and unplanned. In other words, many of these very young couples (it was not uncommon for the mothers to be 14 or 15 years old) explicitly or implicitly wanted a baby in their lives... Financially and educationally, the prospects for the women who became lone mothers seemed paltry to nonexistent. Their experiences at the local public schools were described as “chaotic.” Their own single parents did not have the margins of time or money to make up for this serious deficiency. In this setting, the “opportunity costs” of having a baby are very small. And in the girls’ eyes, the advantages of having a baby loomed large: the possession (they spoke often in “ownership” terms) of a person who could be trusted to love them for the long run. There was also the opportunity to achieve a version of success well-accepted in their community: triumphing over terrible odds to raise a child well and to show yourself to be a good mother.
In other words, those who claim that most people are single parents because of accidents (i.e. it's not their fault/they don't choose to be single moms) are wrong

China has its own horrors to atone for - "Mao, who outdid even Hitler and Stalin in mass murder, once contrasted the performance of the Communist Party with that of an emperor infamous in Chinese history for his savagery: “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the Chin Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46,000 scholars!” Burial alive is only one of the countless terrors China’s rulers have visited upon China’s people. “Mutilation was carried out everywhere,” writes historian Frank Dikötter in “Mao’s Great Famine,” his gripping 2010 chronicle of life during the Great Leap Forward. “Hair was ripped out. Ears and noses were lopped off.” He recounts how a man named Wang Ziyou was penalized by party bosses in Hunan Province: “One of his ears chopped off, his legs were tied up with wire, a 10-kilo stone was dropped on his back, and he was branded with a hot iron — as punishment for digging up a potato.”"

First shots of my Lana Beniko photoshoot! I love...

Word of the Day: Jeopardize | Merriam-Webster - "It may be hard to believe that jeopardize was once controversial, but in 1870 a grammarian called it "a foolish and intolerable word," a view shared by many 19th-century critics. The preferred word was jeopard, which first appeared in print in the 14th century. (The upstart jeopardize turned up in 1582.) In 1828, Noah Webster himself declared jeopardize to be "a modern word, used by respectable writers in America, but synonymous with 'jeopard,' and therefore useless." Unfortunately for the champions of jeopard, jeopardize is now much more popular.
One day modern purists will look as silly

The Naked Truth: The Face and Body Sensitive N170 Response Is Enhanced for Nude Bodies - "the early visual processing of human bodies is sensitive to the visibility of the sex-related features of human bodies and that the visual processing of other people's nude bodies is enhanced in the brain. This enhancement is likely to reflect affective arousal elicited by nude bodies. Such facilitated visual processing of other people's nude bodies is possibly beneficial in identifying potential mating partners and competitors, and for triggering sexual behavior."

Low Triglycerides But High LDL - "The LDL measurement is typically considered the most important aspect of your cholesterol profile when it comes to assessing risk. Before you panic about your results, it's crucial to know that the traditional cholesterol test does not directly measure LDL. The fasting cholesterol test calculates your LDL using a formula called the Friedewald equation. It takes into account your total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein and triglycerides to make an estimate. Because of this limitation, results can be misleading under certain circumstances. The Friedewald equation is not always accurate at estimating LDL, according to a study in the May 2008 issue of the journal "Archives of Iranian Medicine." Researchers found that when triglyceride is less than 100 milligrams per deciliter, the Friedewald equation "significantly" overestimates LDL. When triglyceride is 150 to 300 milligrams per deciliter, however, the Friedewald equation accurately estimates LDL measurement. This data suggests having low triglyceride may have skewed your LDL results."

How Manspreading Arrests Highlight What's 'F**ked Up' About Broken Windows Policing - "And now, the practice is enough get you cuffed by New York City Police Department officers hungry to make low-level arrests, according to a new report from the Police Reform Organizing Project. The New York-focused advocacy group’s report, titled “That’s How They Get You,” is a series of 117 vignettes highlighting how primarily black and Latino people get swept up in the criminal justice system for committing minor infractions — like manspreading
Apparently feminism is racist

SSU Singapore School Uniforms - "SSU is here to index, showcase the different school uniforms in Singapore"

Britain’s Democratic Failure by Kenneth Rogoff - "The idea that somehow any decision reached anytime by majority rule is necessarily “democratic” is a perversion of the term. Modern democracies have evolved systems of checks and balances to protect the interests of minorities and to avoid making uninformed decisions with catastrophic consequences. The greater and more lasting the decision, the higher the hurdles. That’s why enacting, say, a constitutional amendment generally requires clearing far higher hurdles than passing a spending bill. Yet the current international standard for breaking up a country is arguably less demanding than a vote for lowering the drinking age."

The Buddhist Soldier - "the Buddha in a past life killed a man who was going to kill 500 people on his ship. This clearly violated the first precept of not killing, yet the Buddha cited this as an example of compassion and skill in means. How so? Much like a soldier, the Buddha as Captain Great Compassionate killed the man who would murder to not only save the lives of the merchants on the ship, but also to spare them from the unwholesome karma of having to kill this man. While it is “ideal” not to kill, to be extreme with “not killing” can also lead to catastrophic unwholesome karma. The Buddha in this story accepted the unwholesome karma his action would have upon him out of pure compassion for others. How many of us would sacrifice in that way?"

Pokemon and the dangers of mob justice - ""Stop the witch-hunts," said former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng. "The more you give in to witch-hunters the more you embolden them to go after their next victim because they feel empowered. Draw a line"... "Today, Singapore forced (Cheung) to make a good call for 99.co, but a bad call for society," said IT professional Eric Tachibana in a widely shared LinkedIn blog post. "I'm uncomfortable every time we allow free, albeit stupid, speech on social media to have such dire ramifications in real life, where people have real-world families, financial obligations and lifelong careers," he said... Witch-hunts might also lead to an Internet where self-censorship is the norm, for fear of losing your job. "If that happens, we end up with a watered-down Internet, and we empower politically correct 'mobs' of (sometimes) unreasonable trolls who are mean-spirited and shallow in their own hearts and minds, to run the show""

4 things Mark Zuckerberg created before Facebook. - "11 year old Zuckerberg came up with the idea of an intranet that allowed anyone to login from any computer in the house and send a message. This served as an instant chat system, that was exclusive just to the Zuckerberg family."

Is There A Link Between Job Interview Performance And Job Performance? - "I would suspect 90% of hired candidates have between a 3.1 to 3.3 average. Thus, when you say there's no correlation between interview performance and job performance, we're really saying that a 3.1 candidate doesn't do much worse in their job than a 3.3 candidate. That's a tiny range."

Controversy surrounds hijab during Swedish visit to Iran - "The Iranian government was not alone in coming under attack over the wearing of the hijab. The Swedish government also took fire at home, but conversely, because officials did wear hijabs during the visit. Eleven of the 15 members of the Swedish delegation were women. Jan Bjorklund, the leader of the opposition Liberals, called the hijab a “symbol of oppression for women in Iran,” and alongside other critical voices, said that the Swedish delegation should have demanded exemptions from Iranian law."
This is what a feminist (foreign policy) looks like