Random links

The Disturbing Thing I Learned Studying White Privilege and Liberals
"what we found startling was that white privilege lessons didn’t increase liberals’ sympathy for poor Black people. Instead, these lessons decreased liberals’ sympathy for poor white people, which led them to blame white people more for their own poverty. They seemed to think that if a person is poor despite all the privileges of being white, there must really be something wrong with them."
Why does the CPS report on violence against women include men in the stats?
"Readers might wonder how crimes against women and girls can include men and boys. The answer lies in a curiously bureaucratic definition. Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) doesn’t necessarily mean violence against women and girls. It means a subset of criminal offences that have been categorised as VAWG crimes – rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, human trafficking, forced marriage, etc" ... two examples from a single story: "the murder of six year old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who died after his father’s girlfriend bashed his head against a hard surface multiple times. Arthur had been left in their care after his mother had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her boyfriend Gary Cunningham."
Indian scientists decry ‘infuriating’ scheme to study benefits of cow dung, urine, and milk
"... some petitioners see the research program as another effort by the Indian government, run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to validate faith-based pseudoscience. The call does not appear to be shaped by 'objective scientific inquiry,' but rather 'aimed at confirming existing beliefs,' says Aniket Sule, a reader at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education". If you're opposed to milking the data to extract a pre-determined, desired result and expect such a process to involve large amounts of bullshit both amongst the inputs and outputs of these studies you should probably adopt a similar approach to a lot of ____ Studies departments in places in the West. (None of this necessarily means everything to come out of such programs is false though). This particular funding program just makes for slightly more amusing references where sacred cows are more than just a metaphor.