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March 2016

The lawyer who sued her law school has a cast iron case now

A jury in San Diego on Thursday rejected claims by a law graduate, Anna Alaburda, that the Thomas Jefferson School of Law enticed her to enroll by using misleading graduate employment figures.

In the first — and perhaps last — such case to reach the courtroom, Ms. Alaburda, 37, argued that the school reported a higher percentage of its graduates landed jobs after graduation than was actually the case, and that she relied on the bogus data to choose to attend the school.

After amassing more than $150,000 in debt to graduate in 2008, she has been unable to find a full-time, salaried job as a lawyer, she says.

A jury voted nine to three to reject her claims.

Sure, she lost, but she’ll obviously win the next round.

Either the school was negligent in not teaching her which cases to pursue, which could be won, or negligent in not teaching her how to win those that could be won.

That’ll be $5 million plus court fees please!

Well, no, not really

But we know that when it comes to sex, breasts aren’t really necessary. As sex therapist Susan Block writes, “Breasts are far more essential to nurturing than to sexual intercourse.”

It’s rather more the other way around. Milk glands, nipples, these are needed for nurturing. Other apes pretty much don’t have breasts. Most mammals, when not actually suckling, don’t.

The purpose of breasts really does seem to be, for whatever reason, “Woo! Titties!”.

Interesting

An independent report into the sexual abuse of young girls in Bristol by Somali men has found that authorities were “slow to recognise” the level of child exploitation.

Health professionals, social workers, police and teachers were criticised for the “considerable delay at times in identifying what was happening and understanding the nature and extent of abuse” the young girls, aged between 13 and 17, were experiencing.

The report highlighted a number of shortcomings by the authorities whose multi-agency working “was not joined up”, the review said.

It also said that national policy was “confused”, making it difficult for the differences between sexual abuse and consensual underage sexual activity to be recognised by the authorities.

I thought that the point about underage was that consent couldn’t be given? Which is why that footballer is just starting a 6 year sentence without ever actually having had sex with the underage?

Microsoft’s Tay and the problem with artifical intelligence

We have rather learnt that intelligence, the capacity for it at least, is at least somewhat innate. But how that is expressed is a matter of the environment that intelligence is trained in. People brought up in a Catholic society tend to be Catholics, people brought up in a fascist one fascists, communist communist and so on. Sure, there are always exceptions and rejections of then received wisdom and so on but it is pretty obvious that the environment matters for how the intelligence is trained.

Which brings us to the, err, idiots, at Microsoft:

Tay, Microsoft Corp’s so-called chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to engage with millennials on Twitter, lasted less than a day before it was hobbled by a barrage of racist and sexist comments by Twitter users that it parroted back to them.

TayTweets (@TayandYou), which began tweeting on Wednesday, was designed to become “smarter” as more users interacted with it, according to its Twitter biography. But it was shut down by Microsoft early on Thursday after it made a series of inappropriate tweets.

A Microsoft representative said on Thursday that the company was “making adjustments” to the chatbot while the account is quiet.

“Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways,” the representative said in a written statement supplied to Reuters, without elaborating.

The Trollerati looked at this, saw that the AI could be trained, saw that this was good and thus trained it to be a racist buffoon.

Who thought it would be any different?

There’s always the drunk Uncle* who teaches the two year old nephew to say “Fuck!” in order to shock the mothers’ friends. The training needs to be done by those who actually care about the outcome, not those looking for a larff.

*Perhaps not Uncle but someone, somewhere,

But why target a nuclear power plant?

The Brussels terrorists may have been plotting to make a radioactive bomb after it emerged 11 nuclear power plant workers have had their site access revoked amid fears of ‘insider help’.
Jihadi brothers Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui had secretly filmed the daily routine of Belgium’s nuclear programme chief, before they blew themselves up at Brussels airport and on a Metro train.
It is thought the brothers’ spying operation was possible preparation for a kidnap plot to force him to let them into one of Belgium’s two atomic facilities. However, it is likely they switched targets to the less well-guarded airport and Maelbeek Metro station after authorities became suspicious.

Yes, yes, yes, dirty bomb and all that. But you wouldn’t get the material for a dirty bomb from a nuclear power plant anyway. Just wouldn’t work.

I’ll not write a guide to where you would get something useful but the power station ain’t it.

Handbags Gentlemen, Handbags

But what we want to know is who won?

They have faced each other in battle many times, but the rivalry between the Royal Navy and French Marine Nationale on Wednesday night erupted in pitched fighting not on the sea, but the rugby field.
A match between the two navies in the southern French city of Toulon was marred by a large punch up which at one time appeared to involve almost all the players on the pitch and several on the touchline.
Video of the fight showed many of the Royal Navy, in grey, and French navy, in blue, trading blows and grappling during the melee in the centre of the field in an annual match nicknamed Le Crunch.

Two props were sent off after the clash, one from each side, and the match continued, but the combat failed to inspire the British side captained by Ben Priddey and the match ended in a heavy 28-6 defeat.
Match officials said last night (Thurs) they were compiling a report into the brawl. Naval sources said it was a yet unclear who threw the first punch, but players could face disciplinary action.
One Naval source said: “It kicked off a bit during the match, but they calmed down and the match was finished. They all went for a drink afterwards and there were no hard feelings.”

Ah, the game of rugby won then.

Emory students frightened by word “Trump” in chalk on sidewalk

This is a spoof, right? They’re not seriously saying this are they?

Emory University students say they are “in pain” and “afraid” after someone left pro-Donald Trump chalk messages on their Atlanta campus, according to the student newspaper. “I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe” here,” The Emory Wheel quoted one unnamed student as saying. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well. … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”

The chalkings appeared overnight, saying “Trump 2016,” according to the newspaper. About 40 students held a protest demanding action from the administration, chanting “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!”

At least the Vietnam era lot had chants that rhymed.

“I legitimately feared for my life,” Paula Camila Alarcon, a freshman at Emory who identifies as Latino, told The Daily Beast. “I thought we were having a KKK rally on campus.”

“It was deliberate intimidation. Some of us were expecting shootings. We feared walking alone,” freshman Jonathan Peraza added.

Is Emory a special school for the short bus kids?

Seriously, the name of a candidate you don’t like very much, OK, but still a legitimate candidate in a legitimate election and no one is allowed to write his name on your campus? H
ow about someone setting up a Students for Trump society? That allowed? Or not?

College president Jim Wagner met with the students, who expressed anxiety that the writings were threats to their safety rather than political speech, considering Georgia’s Republican primary was held earlier this month.

“The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity,” Wagner wrote in a university-wide email Tuesday. “During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.”

And you sir are a disgrace. Your job is to educate these children. Including telling them not to be so damn stupid.

Jeebus, fire the fucker on the Admiral Byng precedent.

Snigger

Mitt Romney Mocks Trump’s ‘Foreign’ Wives: ‘There Really Are Jobs Americans Won’t Do’

Nice line, even if not actually true. Number two, Marla Maples, was from the US version of Georgia, no?

Apples don’t fall far from trees, do they?

Saskia Sassen:

Here is one local version of this fighting back. It needs to be expanded and recognized as significant. It is the work of re-localising components of “the” economy. Re-localising in this case becomes a fight against the corporatising of everything: do we really have to depend on corporations to have a cup of coffee, to buy vegetables, to get bookshelves? Any neighbourhood is likely to have local talent that could handle this. We must re-localise whatever we can re-localise. This will inevitably be a partial project as many of our more complex needs can only be met via complex knowledge systems (e.g. a hospital). But we must maximise the replacement of franchises by work done in our or other neighbourhoods in our cities and towns. A franchise by definition takes out part of the consumption capacity of a neighbourhood out of that neighbourhood and onto central headquarters. We must maximise the recirculation of our spending in our localities, and that means a collective effort to meet as much of our needs locally. I see in this type of effort a first step that can lead to other efforts, notably a new kind of politics.

Wikipedia:

In most cases, fascists discouraged or banned foreign trade; fascists believed that too much international trade would make the national economy dependent on international capital, and therefore vulnerable to international economic sanctions. Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.

About Saskia Sassen:

Sassen was born in The Hague, Netherlands in 1947. In 1948 Sassen’s parents, Willem Sassen and Miep van der Voort, escaped to Argentina and the family lived in Buenos Aires.[1] Her father was a Dutch collaborator with the Nazis, a Nazi journalist and a member of the Waffen-SS. In the 1950s Willem Sassen was close to Adolf Eichmann when both were living in Argentina and she recalls him visiting her childhood home.

The sins of the father do not descend to the daughter of course but her economic ideas don’t seem to have gone far from that tree, do they?

We should subsidise pornography

Abstract
According to radical feminist theory, pornography serves to further the subordination of women by training its users, males and females alike, to view women as little more than sex objects over whom men should have complete control. Composite variables from the General Social Survey were used to test the hypothesis that pornography users would hold attitudes that were more supportive of gender nonegalitarianism than nonusers of pornography. Results did not support hypotheses derived from radical feminist theory. Pornography users held more egalitarian attitudes—toward women in positions of power, toward women working outside the home, and toward abortion—than nonusers of pornography. Further, pornography users and pornography nonusers did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward the traditional family and in their self-identification as feminist. The results of this study suggest that pornography use may not be associated with gender nonegalitarian attitudes in a manner that is consistent with radical feminist theory.

Further, given that the spread of it reduces the rate of rape and sexual assault we really should be subsidising it.

Baggsie me to be on the grant approval board.

The varieties of English

Reading around the web, as we do these days, we’re rather more exposed to those other variations of English out there. Where words don’t quite mean what we might think they mean. Possibly.

Take this from India:

Bengaluru: Police book Uber driver misbehaving with techie

That the techie was female is interesting but not necessary to the story. In our English English a possible meaning of “misbehaving” would be getting a freebie and consensual legover instead of being paid a fare. Unlikely perhaps, but certainly a possible meaning of the wording.

Hmm:

Bengaluru: Uber has done it again. The cab aggregator is this time in the dock over a lewd driver, who allegedly masturbated at a traffic signal while ferrying a woman passenger from HSR Layout to SG Palya late Tuesday evening at around 8 pm.

Ah, no, they mean the other possible meaning, don’t they?

There’s so many stereotypes in this story

A celebrity barrister has admitted supplying party drugs that killed his teenage boyfriend during a gay sex and drugs orgy.
Henry Hendron, 35, bought £1,000 of designer drugs from BBC producer Alexander Parkin, 41, to sell on to revellers for a ‘chemsex’ party at his flat at his legal chambers.
The drugs killed Hendron’s waiter boyfriend Miguel Jimenez, 18.

Two day poppers and drugs sex party, gay couple, successful bloke with twink (who, for completeness, was a waiter).

If you put that in a film script these days you’d be accused of homophobia.

We need scientists to tell us this?

If you’ve ever found yourself excluded from a clique, it may be you’re just not good looking enough – according to science.
A study has found that people rated as attractive tend to seek out equally attractive people in social situations.
And attractive women were most likely of all to be found at the centre of a group, the researchers said.

Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand, Oxford University and others carried out a giant experiment using hidden cameras on the roof of a sports stadium in Dunedin, New Zealand.

We can probably close down large chunks of our universities if this is what they are reduced to studying. Because absolutely anyone even vaguely observant, doesn’t have to be blokes out on the pull, would tell you this in an instant. Just look at the birds in a pub or nightclub. There will be some slight variance of hotness and shaggability among groups of of them, said variability being very much less than that variance between groups.

Everyone knows this already: why are we paying tax money to get people to “study” it?

At least we’ve a definition now

Some days Daniela Esquivel Asturias, 21, wakes up feeling feminine and puts on a dress or lipstick. But on others Asturias feels much more masculine and the thought of wearing a skirt induces an overwhelming sense of dysmorphia.

Gender dysmorphia apparently means that some days she prefers to wear a skirt and make up, other days trousers and not. Isn’t this something that can just be left to chacun a son gout?

No, no, of course the slippery slope argument is not valid logic

The average fruit juices and smoothies contains at least twice as much sugar as drinks which will be subject to new Government taxes, a BMJ study reveals.
The research on 158 drinks led by the University of Liverpool found that the average juice drink contains 5.6 g of sugar per 100ml – meaning it would just cross the threshold to be affected by new planned taxes.
But pure fruit juices – which will be exempt from George Osborne’s tax – contained twice this amount, while smoothies, also not covered, had even more sugar in them, the major study found.
Researchers called on manufacturers to cut their sugar content, or covered by the new taxes.
They said fruit juices and smoothies should no longer be included as part of “five a day” consumption.

Sigh.

Towards a centralised Eurolanguage

A European human rights commissioner has told British ministers to stop referring to “illegal immigrants”, claiming they should use the term “irregular migrants” for foreigners who enter this country without permission.

Actually matey it’s our language to define and use as we please. A language which we will use and define as we wish without any permission, allowance or direction from the likes of you.

The latest from James Hansen is just fascinating

Southern Ocean
surface cooling, while lower latitudes are warming, increases
precipitation on the Southern Ocean, increasing ocean stratification,
slowing deepwater formation, and increasing ice
sheet mass loss.

Increased precipitation on the Southern Ocean is also known as the snow/ice pack on Antarctica getting deeper/higher.

And no, the paper does not consider this.

The dumb blonde jokes never were about natural blondes

They’re not ‘dumb blondes’ after all: Women with the natural hair colour are MORE intelligent than brunettes and redheads
The study showed that blonde-haired women had an average IQ of 103.2
This was compared to 102.7 for brunettes and 101.2 for those with red hair

That does pose a puzzle since the average IQ of any population is, by definition, 100, thus who are the dumb birds?

But the point about dumb blondes was never about natural hair colours. It was always about those who dyed their hair that colour to play (or be) the bimbo.