Labor Party MP Diane Abbott will speak out against the degradation of male values in modern Britain in a speech to a UK think tank on Thursday. Warning of a ‘celebration of heartlessness’ among British adolescent men, Abbot will signal that unemployment and economic woes is driving a wave of misogyny and disrespect towards women.”At its worst, it’s a celebration of heartlessness; a lack of respect for women’s autonomy; and the normalization of homophobia. I fear it’s often crude individualism dressed up as modern manhood,” she will say. Likening the phenomenon to the American film ‘Fight Club,’ she will say “the first rule of being a man in modern Britain is that you’re not allowed to talk about it.” Faced with minimal employment prospects, many young British men are forced to return home after finishing their university degrees. This in turn leads to a stagnation of their development, locking them into a family life that they resent. Abbott also mentions the grown men who are working longer hours, dying of curable cancers and taking their own lives. As well as the current economic climate in the UK, Abbott signals that pornography and a culture of ‘hyper-masculinity’ create an ideal of manhood that is impossible to aspire to and fundamentally detrimental.“Normal sex seems boring,” the MP will argue, blaming an overly- ‘pornified’ culture.”Growing numbers of men of all ages [are] turning to the drug by themselves due to performance anxiety, triggered by a host of psychological issues.” In response to this new generation of heartless men, the MP is expected to suggest number of measures to encourage young males to open up and talk about their emotions. Labor policy will call on schools to present their pupils with a broader interpretation of masculinity and urge parents to speak to their sons on the subjects of manhood and fatherhood.Slow progressThe outlook for Britain’s flagging economy is looking dour as the government reported an increase in unemployment for the first quarter of the year on Wednesday. The increase of 15,000 more unemployed has pushed the jobless rate in the UK from 7.7 per cent to 7.8 per cent. The figures were called ‘disappointing’ by Employment Minister Mark Hoban. They contrast recent statistics that show the gradual recovery of the UK economy from the financial crisis. … Read More
A Quantum Computer Aces Its Test
An Amherst computer scientist hired by D-Wave Systems found that one of its computers, said to be using quantum properties, had achieved speeds 3,600 times that of a conventional computer in one test. For sheer performance, it appears to be a triumph, but for theorists, questions remain. … Read More
Hong Kong’s secret street racing world
As night begins to give way to dawn, 40 high-performance cars pull up on an empty Hong Kong backstreet. While the city sleeps, their revving engines fill the air with a heavy smell of petrol. The drivers huddle together to set the route, always at the last possible minute. One of them spots the red…
Texas pastor tried to coerce high school girl into stripping for him
Texas pastor Jeffrey Dale Williams of the Church of Corinth was arrested and jailed Wednesday on charges of “attempted sexual performance of a child” for trying to coerce an underaged girl into taking off her clothes. According to Dallas-Ft. Worth’s WFAA, Williams’ attempted…
Intel Iris: Haswell graphics get a name, 2x-3x performance of HD 4000
Intel has disclosed new information about its up and coming Haswell processors, detailing the graphics specs and potential performance improvements versus today's integrated HD graphics. Intel is giving the new graphics engine a brand name: “Iris”, touting 2x to 3x the performance of HD 4000 graphics. … Read More
AMD’s Kaveri solves age-old issue, promises faster on-die GPUs
AMD has revealed more information regarding Kaveri: its upcoming 28nm Bulldozer-based APU. The company is touting Kaveri's heterogeneous system architecture — a design which aims to greatly increase the performance output of on-die graphics cores. This technological achievement likely mark the future direction of AMD's APUs. … Read More
BP profits triple on deal with Rosneft and new production boost
The completion of the deal at the end of March brought BP $12.4bn from Russian state-run Rosneft for its stake in the venture, leaving BP with about 20 percent of Rosneft. Most of the cash from the deal will be used to buy back $8 billion in shares, Bloomberg reports. “These strong first-quarter results demonstrate the progress BP is making in delivering the performance milestones that support our 10-point plan and underpin our commitment to material operating cash flow growth by 2014,” BP CEO Bob Dudley said in a statement aimed to convince investors that BP is now recovering from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill three years ago.“The early completion of the sale of our interest in TNK-BP has also allowed us to begin a share buy-back program which we expect to return up to $8 billion to our shareholders and reflects the reduction in BP’s asset base following our divestment program over the past three years.”Apart from the income from the deal with the Russian oil major (which has become the world’s biggest oil company after the purchase) BP also reported underlying profits of $4.2 billion, 9 percent lower than in the same period last year. The figures were largely above analysts’ forecast of $3.2 billion. The analysts also mentioned that the company’s profit would be hard to predict accurately as the company has gone through many changes over the past year and also had to sell off assets to repay the $40 billion fine imposed after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP shares leaped their most in six months in London trading, becoming the biggest riser in the FTSE 100 index of leading companies.A BP statement said the company attributes the better-than-expected result to a boost in new production from its most financially successful projects such Angola and the Skarv project in the North Sea, which have compensated for the production BP lost elsewhere, The Daily Telegraph reports. Total production excluding Russia dropped 5 percent to 2.33 million barrels of oil and gas per day due to the asset sales. … Read More
