Lazy linking

A few links that I have come across recently which might interest you readers.

India’s angry Dalits rise against age-old caste prejudices

Every day, newspapers are awash with stories of injustices against Dalits and their oppression by upper-caste Hindus. Among the attacks on Dalits in the past month: a 13-year-old girl who was beaten up for drinking from a temple water pump; a Dalit team in the traditional Indian sport of kabaddi attacked by a rival upper-caste squad for winning a match; an impoverished Dalit couple hacked to death following a disagreement with an upper-caste shopkeeper over a debt of 15 rupees (22 cents).

But while Dalits — formerly known as “untouchables” — are still victims of thousands of attacks each year despite laws put in place soon after India’s independence, there has been a slow change in the way they react to the atrocities, say social scientists and Dalit activists.

If you speak with Indians from the higher castes, they often claim that the caste system doesn’t really exist any longer, and that people from the lower castes have the same opportunities as anyone else. Stories like the ones mentioned in the article, however, shows that this is not the case, and that the caste system is still used to repress people from the lower castes, allowing people from higher castes to do whatever they want, with little consequence.

The Disgusting Breitbart Smear Campaign Against the Immigrant Owner of Chobani

Hamdi Ulukaya is the model American immigrant success story.

In 2005, the Turkish-born Kurdish entrepreneur purchased a defunct Kraft foods plant in upstate New York with an $800,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. In just a few years, his Chobani yogurt went from selling a few containers at a Long Island kosher grocery to being the No. 1 selling yogurt brand in the country with annual revenue topping $1.5 billion. In addition to employing more than 2,000 people directly—all of whom earn above minimum wage and enjoy generous benefits—the company purchases 4 million pounds of milk from American farmers every day.

Breibart is wagering a smear campaign against Hamdi Ulukaya and Chobani with no regards to truth or decency.

I’d love for some of the victims of Breibart’s campaigns to be able to sue them for libel, bankrupting them like Gawker was bankrupted.

Kolkata will take a century to recover from Mother Teresa

If Mother Teresa, to be canonised at the Vatican on September 4, is to be named a patron saint of anything it should be for “misinformation”. In the last 20 years of her life, truth became an unknown entity to her. The media aided and abetted her lack of integrity and in a way she cannot be blamed for believing in her own lies.

Intellect was not her strong point and, for someone like her, to be surrounded by hordes of sycophants who were telling her if she said black was white then that had to be true, it became intoxicating. The media did spread the mega-myth about her, but she herself was the source. She repeatedly told the world she went around the city 24×7 “picking up” destitute from its squalid “gutters” (she did not), that she fed up to 9,000 in her soup kitchens (she did not), she never refused a helpless child (she did as a rule), that the dying destitute in her so-called home for the dying Nirmal Hriday died a “beautiful death” (they were treated harshly and often died a miserable, painful death).

Great article by Aroup Chatterjee on the real Mother Teresa and the consequences of her work in Kolkata. Aroup Chatterjee has been fighting Mother Teresa for a long time, and was a major inspiration for Christopher Hitchens.

Student who protested against asylum seeker’s deportation on flight found guilty

Melbourne woman Jasmine Pilbrow found guilty of interfering with an airline crew member for refusing to sit down during protest over the deportation of a Tamil asylum seeker

Pilbrow’s action led to the asylum seeker being taken off the plane.

Pilbrow argued that her actions were “in response to circumstances of sudden or extraordinary emergency”, and thus was legal, even if the actions themselves could be considered illegal in isolation. Unfortunately, the judge didn’t accept this argument, and found her guilty.

American Women in the 1900s Called Street Harassers ‘Mashers’ and Stabbed Them With Hatpins

In recent years, a conversation about catcalling and other forms of street harassment has grown heated online. But those who tire of unsolicited comments in public have been making their displeasure known for a long time, reports Laura Donovan for ATTN:. In the late early 1900s women were stabbing mouthy men with their hatpins. And that wasn’t the worst fate to befall so-called “mashers.”
Maybe hatpins should come into use again?
And finally, I have a couple of new blog posts up at my IT-related blog:

Is microservices the new SOA?

Think smaller

Project managers vs Product owners

I am trying to blog a bit more there, so if you’re interested in IT projects and IT consulting, then follow that blog.

 

A stunning lack of fact-checking in Denmark

Perhaps surprising to people who consider Denmark either a decadent socialist hell-hole or an enlightened welfare state, there is a robust debate about the welfare state in Denmark, its role, its size, and its effectiveness.

The current government, and most of the parties supporting it, is of the opinion that the welfare state in Denmark is too large and expensive, and that the tax rate is too high, especially for the people with the highest incomes – i.e. those paying the top level tax rate.

I profoundly disagree, even though I am one of those who would benefit from the tax rate being reduced. But that is a subject for another post.

Among the parties supporting the government on this issue, is Liberal Alliance, which is a Libertarian party (or ultra-liberal in the European sense).

One of the members of parliament for that party is also the founder of 180 grader (180 degrees) which is a blogging side for libertarians. 180 grader obviously have a lot of blog posts pushing the party line, and demonizing the welfare state.

One of the people writing at 180 grader is Karina Pedersen, who grew up in a poor neighborhood in a fairly small Danish town (population approximately 50,000 people). Karina Pedersen claimed that the welfare state kept people in poverty and unemployment, drawing on her experiences and referring to her family and old class mates as examples.

Given that Karina Pedersen is a rare case of someone from a poor background criticizing the welfare state, she has been given a lot of space in the public debate though numerous interviews and even a book Helt ude i hampen – mails fra underklassen (hard to translate, but approximately Completely far out – mails from the lower class). The book was published a couple of weeks ago.

The book is supposedly based on some mails that Karina Pedersen has sent to a friend, telling about her experiences, claiming that the “lower class” is lazy and cheating, and shouldn’t be helped by the state. She claimed that there were teen mothers living all over her old neighborhood as a result of the welfare state.

The publications of the book has of course given Karina Pedersen and her views more space in the newspapers, which uncritically published her claims about her experiences from her youth.

Then something interesting happened. A journalist decided to do some fact-checking (link in Danish).

As you might have guessed, it turned out that just about everything that Karina Pedersen had said about her childhood was either impossible to document or outright lies. Her claims about her family and classmates being unemployed were completely wrong, and so where the claims about young teenage mothers (something easily refuted by looking at the birth statistics).

In other words, her book and her claims in numerous interviews, were based upon lies, which a minimum of fact-checking would have uncovered.

Most of the many newspapers that have given Karina Pedersen space have admitted that they haven’t done their work properly, and that they should have done fact-checking and not just trust her claims, even if they had been published in a book.

The publisher of her book, Gyldendal, on the other hand, claims that they haven’t done anything wrong in not fact-checking her book, as it is her impression of her childhood and later life, and not meant to be accurate. This is of course bullshit, as the book contains factual claims about other people, all of which have turned out to be lies. This is not acceptable in a non-fiction book. If Gyldendal thinks this is the case, it is clear that it is not possible to trust the content of any of their non-fiction books.

In other words, one should avoid non-fiction by Gyldendal if you want books that are actually verifiable non-fiction.

RTL apologizes for spreading revenge porn

I recently wrote a blogpost about the media helping spreading revenge porn. In that post I mentioned how the German TV channel RTL had spread revenge porn of Danish feminist Emma Holten in a program about her.

As I mentioned in the blogpost, Emma Holten was taking steps towards legal action against RTL, and now there are more news on the matter.

The magazine of the Danish journalist union brings the news that RTL has settled with Emma Holten (article in Danish). The settlement involves RTL apologizing, acknowledging that they had violated Emma Holten, and giving a sizable compensation.

According to the article, and to Emma Holten’s comments on facebook and instagram (both links in Danish), this is a very satisfactory result, since it saves the trouble of a court case in Germany, and it sends a clear signal that media can’t violate the privacy of people just because somebody already had done so.

Congratulations to Emma Holten on a good result – hopefully she never has to fight this fight ever again.

 

Denmark overhauls its tax department

Outside the country, Denmark is known for its high tax rates. This would probably lead people outside Denmark to believe that the Danish taxation system is a well-oiled machine. If you live in Denmark, you know this is hardly the case however, as the Tax Department has been riddled with scandals.

These scandals have mostly related to IT projects, but in recent times, they have also related to bad controls, which have led to foreign swindlers getting tax returns that they should not have had in the region of $2 billion. On top of that, are problems with collecting back taxes and other money owned the state.

The scandals, and especially the loss of such a huge amount, has led to a major reform of the tax department.

Bloomsberg writes about it in this article: Billions in Losses Trigger Danish Overhaul of Taxation Model

Of course, the headline of the Bloomsberg article is nonsense – the Danish taxation model is going to stay the same. Rather it is the processes for paying out tax returns and collecting past taxes is getting overhauled, with more controls and better IT systems. As part of the overhaul, the department system of the Ministry of Taxation with get overhauled, splitting the Tax Department (which is one of the departments under the Ministry) into several departments. This is done to strengthening the expertise in the problem areas.

As someone who works with IT projects, I am curious of how the new structure and focus will change their way of doing IT. Many of the projects have in the past been huge projects, largely based on the waterfall model,  but in the last couple of years, both the Ministry of Taxation and the Taxation Department have tried to change this. The Ministry of Taxation has tried to change it by doing the development themselves, while the Taxation Department has tried to break projects into smaller bits, and using Agile.

All in all, it seems like a great idea to overhaul the department and ministry, but it comes down to the actual implementation.

Trump has lost the neoconservatives

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is doing pretty bad in a number of demographics, and is pretty much doing well in one demographic: white men. And even in that demographic, Clinton is catching up.

Even among white men, there are sub-demographics where Trump is doing bad. Some of these are unsurprising, e.g. he is doing badly among LGBT, young men and men with college or higher degree, while others are a bit more surprising, e.g. neoconservatives.

In one sense, it makes sense that neoconservatives are against Trump – they are usually highly educated and international in their outlook. In another sense, it is highly surprising – they are extremely partisan on behalf of the Republican party, and they generally dislike the Clintons. In recent months, however, a number of neoconservatives have come out and said that they would not vote for Trump, and probably would vote for Clinton instead.

The most recent is Paul Wolfowitz, joining people like Bill Kristol in explicitly stating that he is preferring Clinton over Trump.

The Atlantic has a good cheat sheet of where the different Republicans are standing on Trump.

Looking down the list, I am not surprised that monsters like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are backing Trump, but I can’t help being amazed by how many GOP politicians and intellectuals have abstained or even directly opposed the official presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

Think of what this would mean, in the highly unlikely case of Trump winning the election. There would be some kind of civil war in the GOP, probably resulting in a lot of prominent people either leaving the party or getting expelled (Trump doesn’t take opposition nicely).

Even if Clinton wins, as everything points towards right now, there will be a deep schism in the party – probably bigger than the one that the Tea Party takeover created. This would probably mean that the Republican party would spend more time and resources on fighting itself. While this sounds great, the Tea Party takeover of the GOP shows that this might actually be harmful, pushing moderates out and giving power to the extremists.

The only way I see avoiding that, is if Clinton and the Democrats win big, showing that the majority of the electorate rejects extremism, giving GOP moderates the leverage.

Podcast recommendation: The Z List Dead List

This post is an attempt to a new series of blogposts, recommending good podcasts I’ve come across.

First on the list, is The Z List Dead List, a podcast by Iszi Lawrence, based on her comedy show of the same name.

The basic concept of the show is that Iszi Lawrence invites comedians (and others) to come and talk about a person who is a) dead, and b) should be more widely known.

This concept allows for a great series of podcasts, where you get introduced to some interesting people from history. There is a British bias in the selection, but even so, we get introduced to a pretty widespread selection of people through the 7 series, that exists so far.

Given that Iszi Lawrence is a feminist and a skeptic, the podcast is great in these areas, and several of the episodes includes people from these areas.

If you have any comments to the podcast, or have any suggestions for podcasts that I should check out please let me know in the comments,

Acknowledging past wrongs

Out of Victoria, Australia comes the story about a moral policeman, Denis Ryan, who did was what was right, even when it destroyed his career.

They destroyed Denis Ryan’s police career. Now they admit he was right all along

He [Denis Ryan] refused to buckle when his bosses wanted him to ignore a paedophile priest and then was hounded from the job in a conspiracy that many believe went all the way to the chief commissioner’s office.

Now, 44 years after he was forced to resign because he cared more for children than his professional future, he has been vindicated in the very office where his career was destroyed.

It was only a few words and a handshake but when Ashton formally apologised on behalf of the police force it was the final vindication for a man who refused to be crushed by two powerful institutions.

40 years ago, there was a powerful Catholic fraction of the Victorian police force which covered over the crimes of members of the Catholic Church, allowing them to continue. Denis Ryan didn’t accept this, and fought against not only the Catholic Church but also the Victorian police force, trying to get justice to the victims, and stop any more crimes from happening.

Unfortunately, while he did get some results, the collected power of the two institutions were too powerful, and Ryan was forced out of the police force, thus allowing predatory priests to continue for decades more.

Current Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton has now acknowledged that Ryan was treated wrong. This is not only an important acknowledgement of past wrongs in the police force, but it also means that Ryan will get some sort of compensation for being forced out of the police force (something which cost him his police pension).

For more about Denis Ryan and his investigations, you can listen to more here: Conversations with Richard Fidler – Former police officer Denis Ryan’s devoted quest for justice

Media, don’t spread revenge porn!

I find it amazing that it is necessary for me to write this post, but it appears to be necessary.

When you are a journalist, TV reporter, blogger, or any other type of media person reporting on revenge porn, you shouldn’t help spread the revenge porn!

Again and again, we see news stories reporting on revenge porn, in which examples of said revenge porn (sometimes censored) is included.

This is not OK. This helps spreading the revenge porn, and harm the victims.

A recent example of this is the German TV channel RTL, which in June reported on the story of Emma Holten who had pictures of her leaked on the internet, and as a response created some new pictures of herself, to take back ownership of her body. This has been widely reported on, e.g. in this video at the Guardian: Someone stole naked pictures of me. This is what I did about it.

RTL had made a story about Emma Holten and her experiences last year, where they used the new pictures, after having obtained the right to use them.

This time around, they also showed the new pictures of Emma Holten, but they also showed some of the original leaked photos, uncensored. As a matter of fact, they apparently spent more time on showing the leaked photos than the others.

All this happened without Emma Holten being informed about it, and thus obviously without her consent.

The Guardian has a good article on the incident and the results of it: Revenge porn survivor may take legal action against German TV firm

What the Guardian article doesn’t make clear is that RTL at first was dismissive of Emma Holten’s objections, saying there was a language barrier at play, but since then, the channel has apologized and removed the program from the internet, and promised that it won’t ever be broadcasted again.

Currently I don’t know if Emma Holten will press on with legal action, but if she does, she has my full support, and I hope that it will stop other medias from helping spread revenge porn in the future.

Copenhagen Skeptics in the Pub schedule

The schedule for Copenhagen Skeptics in the Pub has been organized for the rest of the year.

The talks take place at Café Nutid at 19:00. All talks will be in Danish. The links take you to a facebook event for the talk – it is not necessary to sign up and it is free to participate.

12. september: Sidsel Kjems: Hvad ved du om folkekirkens økonomi?

10. oktober: Niels Marthinsen: Musik og naturvidenskab

14. november: Andreas Hoff og Kim Bartholdy: 100 myter om sundhed

12. december: Nanna Rolving: Status på HPV-vaccinen

We are busy trying to create the schedule for the first half of 2017, and always welcome suggestions to subjects and speakers relating to science and skepticism. Talks can be in Danish or English.

Lazy linking

A round up of interesting articles and posts that I have come across the last couple of weeks.

400-year-old Greenland shark is oldest vertebrate animal

The Guardian article is about the newest research into the Greenland shark which indicates that they have a lifespan of centuries, and might be the oldest vertebrate animals around. The scientists did this by looking at the carbon-14 in the eyes of some captured sharks, and used this to estimate the ages of the specimens. This is obviously imprecise, but it does clearly indicate that the sharks have been around for a long time.

As a side note, this article can’t help remind of the old story about the bowhead whale swimming around with a 100-year old harpoon fragment embedded in it.

 

In other marine news, it appears that humpback whales protect potential prey from Orcas, even when the prey is of entirely different species, such as seals.

Humpback whales interfering when mammal-eating killer whales attack other species: Mobbing behavior and interspecific altruism?

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are known to interfere with attacking killer whales (Orcinus orca). To investigate why, we reviewed accounts of 115 interactions between them. Humpbacks initiated the majority of interactions (57% vs. 43%; n = 72), although the killer whales were almost exclusively mammal-eating forms (MEKWs, 95%) vs. fish-eaters (5%; n = 108). When MEKWs approached humpbacks (n = 27), they attacked 85% of the time and targeted only calves. When humpbacks approached killer whales (n = 41), 93% were MEKWs, and ≥87% of them were attacking or feeding on prey at the time. When humpbacks interacted with attacking MEKWs, 11% of the prey were humpbacks and 89% comprised 10 other species, including three cetaceans, six pinnipeds, and one teleost fish. Approaching humpbacks often harassed attacking MEKWs (≥55% of 56 interactions), regardless of the prey species, which we argue was mobbing behavior. Humpback mobbing sometimes allowed MEKW prey, including nonhumpbacks, to escape. We suggest that humpbacks initially responded to vocalizations of attacking MEKWs without knowing the prey species targeted. Although reciprocity or kin selection might explain communal defense of conspecific calves, there was no apparent benefit to humpbacks continuing to interfere when other species were being attacked. Interspecific altruism, even if unintentional, could not be ruled out.

Nation Geographic has a good write up about this: Why Humpback Whales Protect Other Animals From Killer Whales

 

In completely unrelated news, it appears that better health coverage makes people more healthy. Hardly a surprising information, but there are now actual data to back this common-sense conclusion up.

Obamacare Appears to Be Making People Healthier

A few recent studies suggest that people have become less likely to have medical debt or to postpone care because of cost. They are also more likely to have a regular doctor and to be getting preventive health services like vaccines and cancer screenings. A new study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, offers another way of looking at the issue. Low-income people in Arkansas and Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid insurance to everyone below a certain income threshold, appear to be healthier than their peers in Texas, which did not expand.

It seems incredible that it is necessary to collect data about this, when it is so obvious that it would be the case. There are, however, many things that appears obvious, which turns out to be wrong, so it is good that the researchers uses this opportunity to find data to expand our knowledge.

 

Jennifer Raff has written a very interesting post about human cannibalism:

Cannibalism and Human Evolution

The post starts out with the following bit of family story:

One of my aunts was once asked during an interview for a position in the criminal justice field “Is there any kind of criminal you don’t feel you could work with?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Have you ever seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs?’ I don’t do cannibals.”

This reminds me of a story I was once told by an elderly lady from New Zealand, who told about back when she went to school, and one of her teachers explained to the class that people used to be cannibals, but that this no longer was the case, and that they of course don’t know what humans taste like, to which a Maori girl in the class put her hand in the air, and said, “excuse me miss, it tastes like chicken”.

The girl, who almost certainly didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of this, didn’t make any friends in the class.

There certainly is a strong taboo surrounding cannibalism. Probably especially so when you are in areas where it has been practiced within the last couple of centuries.

 

ThinkProgress has a good article on John Lott, a pro-gun “scientist” who is actually a fraud:

The NRA’s Favorite Gun “Academic” Is A Fraud

The United States seems to be in a perpetual cycle mourning mass shootings in the country. This year alone, there have already been 233 mass shootings, where four or more victims were shot, leaving 310 dead and 930 injured. But every time another shooting happens, advocates pop up arguing that more guns don’t actually lead to more violence and stall the much-needed conversation about gun control.

John Lott is, if not the most influential, certainly the most prolific “academic” in the gun debate. He has authored weekly columns in local newspapers on the horrors of gun free zones, published widely-distributed books on the ostensible benefits of right-to-carry laws, and his newest book The War on Guns has received rave reviews by prominent conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Newt Gingrich.

I had missed the fact that John Lott had turned up again like a bad penny.

As the ThinkProgress article explains, John Lott lies and distorts gun statistics, makes undocumented claims, lies about his data and research, and has been caught sockpuppeting both book reviews and comments to articles and blogposts.

Tim Lambert at Deltoid has done a lot of work debunking John Lott’s stuff in the past.