"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose." - Darrin Weinberg

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The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners - "A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered."

Malaysia Sucks - "The head or political leader of the Malaysian Government is known as the Prime Minister or PM. The former reigning so called elected democratic government was ruled by the infamous:
Prime Minister Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohammed Most would agree that the world has many assholes, but this guy really really sucks! This guy is a real pip. He is a certified 'ASSHOLE.'"
Even I find this ridiculous.

YouTube - NikeCosplay (Sentai)- "It happens in Akiba, electronics city and mecca of cosplay. The man happens to meet them.. ... (more)"

Japanese Teriyaki - "The key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients when it's cooked and adds nice aroma. Since it is effective in masking the smell of fish, using mirin for teriyaki seafood dishes is a good idea. The sweetness of mirin is different from that of sugar. It's a perfect seasoning to add a mild sweetness to Japanese cooking."
Teriyaki is haram!

HITMAN - Professional Killings - "Our firm consists of a small team of highly-skilled, and experienced, specialists. We are the industry leader in innovative killing approaches and have built a lasting reputation over decades of outstanding services for clients on five continents. Instead of fiddling around with amateur killing techniques and messing up crime scenes just pick up the phone and give us a call. After reviewing your case, our team will develop a customized package that is best-suited for your particular situation. You provide us with the name of your mark, along with a photo and personal details, and take a vacation; we'll make sure one of our specialists sends flowers to the grieving widow while you enjoy your margaritas on the beach... HITMAN is a cruelty-free organization. None of our services have been tested on animals."

Facebook | Melvin Tay appreciation society - "melvin tay is a pwc and birmingham legend!"
Maybe someone can set up a fanclub for me too. Hurr hurr.

Blogging 'un-Christian' - shock - "Blathering on blogs is un-Christian, an Evangelical church has warned. "Blogging has become a socially accepted practice - just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving," notes the monthly of the Reformed Church of God, Ambassador Youth."

Ten Reasons Why China Sucks - "Horrible Mandarin. A properly educated mainland Chinese person speaks beautiful Mandarin, I have to admit. Unfortunately, most Chinese people aren't well educated and they speak horrendous Mandarin."

Are you a bleeding-heart conservative? - "Bleeding-heart conservatives are folks who get just as emotional about injustice and unfairness as bleeding-heart liberals do. Like their liberal counterparts, bleeding-heart conservatives want the government to address what they see as pressing national injustices... the child-friendly bleeding-heart conservative is more likely to say, "I can't stand thinking about the children of the Carnegie and Heinz families being forced to pay taxes on their multi-million dollar inheritances! The government should help them!" See how the difference isn't the bleeding-heart? The difference is the target of our affections."

Facebook | Better A Bleeding Heart Than None At All - "No longer will the liberals of this world sit back and be the object of insult, scorn, and slander at the hands of the right wing. We speak with many voices, for many things; for the impoverished, the hungry, the persecuted, the oppressed, for the right to personal liberty, safety from the threat of violence, understanding in the face of ignorance, compassion and respect to our global neighbors, faithful stewardship of the Earth, and the spread of common decency and peace in our war-ravaged world. We stand together, and light a candle in the dark."
This is a good retort to those who think having a heart is a sin.

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Why Aspiring Economists Need Math - "Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart."

A fat world? Now wouldn't that be blubberly... - "More good news: those teenage pregnancy rates are going to plummet. Once you get over 20 stone, physical conjoinment is near impossible, and so for the 21st-century teenager, a really heavy petting session will consist of texting each other apt emotions, and sighing. Similarly, crime rates should drop through the floor. A great deal of the skill in burglary involves slipping through small basement windows, shimmying over fences or tiptoeing around people’s drawing rooms."

Pagan virtues can counter the vice of narrow world view - ""A hundred years ago his English history plays were exploited as propaganda for the British throne and Empire. Today most critics see them as ironic, satirical and deeply subversive." More recently, King Lear had been simultaneously banned in some London schools because it was seen as "glorifying the patriachy" and in some US states because it didn't offer a Christian message of hope and redemption. And in South Africa, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello had been banished from the syllabus because they offered negative views of life, endorsed suicide and contained characters and situations that were absurd and unbelievable."

I thought about creating a drinking game, but I can’t very well go to class hung over - "And so, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present - precalculus bingo... 'bubbly girlish handwriting pleasing "please be nice!"'"

Cute Overload: Cats 'n' Racks™ - Uhh. Somehow "cute" isn't the word that comes to find when I see cats on racks.

Galbadia Hotel - Video Game Music & Anime Soundtracks List - I wonder where he finds all that space. And it's not just Jap games - there're English ones too!

Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist: A Bloggasm case study - "I was surfing through the job listings at Craigslist, and inevitably wandered my way into the personals section, and became instantly fascinated with all the posts. I eventually made my way into the “Sex with no strings attached” section, and immediately wondered: Could this be real? Is it really this easy to get laid by simply logging in and making a post, when so many other people out there have to struggle to get laid the normal way? It didn’t take long to realize that for every female who posted, there were anywhere from ten to twenty males posting, and several of the posts mentioned that half the girls who posted were just spammers, which led me to believe that the ratio was even greater than that. So with this curiosity in mind, I set out to find out how hard it was to get laid using Craigslist, or rather, how many people actually responded to the “No strings attached” ads."

On the teenage brain - "Teenagers have a much harder time than adults at even simple tasks that involve controlling one's impulses, but with a twist. For example, when told to ignore a light visible through their peripheral vision, teenagers do as well as adults, but much larger portions of their frontal regions light up during the task. These are the regions involved in rational decisions, and apparently teenagers need to use them in overdrive to keep themselves from yielding to even very simple impulses. Imagine the extra work that teenage frontal regions have to do if the task is to keep away from sex, drugs or alcohol..."

The World According to Eco - "Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with "sumptuous icons" and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven ("or at least the moment when your document is printed") by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: "it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions ... and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation.""

YouTube - MIT sketching - Objects drawn on a whiteboard come to life as the computer recognises them.

My quandary in an all-boys school - "As a product of hunting ancestry, a man’s brain falls into a complete resting state if he sits still too long (which explains men’s ability to zone out of awkward conversations). No wonder boys fail when education is ever more about quietly listening and less about cutting up frogs. And while boys — particularly those who have no father at home — thrive under good male teachers, men have all but left primary education, a terrible by-product of a society that obscenely questions their motives for working with small children."

Ban for boy with two snacks - "A boy aged 10 has been banned from his school dining hall because his packed lunch broke the government's healthy eating guidelines."

Democracy? Must we? Oh all right, but we'd really rather stay serfs - "You would never think that this Crown dependency has just been rocked by revolution, but it has. Last week it agreed to abolish 450 years of feudal rule and introduce universal suffrage. Mr Beaumont will be stripped progressively of his ancient powers and privileges. Eventually, he could lose even his right to keep the island’s only pigeons and unspayed female dogs, and anything washed up on its shores."

This year's top Christmas gift - a book that rejects God - "A book that rejects religion and argues for the non- existence of God is heading to be the No 1 bestseller for Christmas. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is at the top of the bestseller chart of the online bookseller Amazon, and is climbing up The Times bestseller chart... In the book he writes: “Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that ‘God is the ultimate’ or ‘God is our better nature’ or ‘God is the universe’. “Of course, like any other word, the word ‘God’ can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that ‘God is energy’, then you can find God in a lump of coal.”"

Who says Chinese vs. Malays? - ""I hope for the leaders to say something smarter," said Muhammad Hafez, as he walked along Arab Street. "How would ageing politicians who are not on the streets know what's going on?""
This is probably the best response so far.

Seeing the world's Disney parks - "The group was in Hong Kong on the second leg of their Disney-themed round-the-world tour, realizing months of planning for a 32-day trip that takes them to every Disney park in the world -- from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris, to the U.S. flagships, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. It was a dream come true for the "Down Under Disneyana" fan club members, who have all been to one or more Disney parks before but have never done them all at one go. The idea of a world tour was especially appealing for Australian fans because they live so far away from all the Disney parks, Simpson said."

The physics of goo - "Back when he was writing the Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton argued with his pal Chistiaan Hyugens about an interesting question: Would someone swim faster through water or through a thick, viscous goo? Newton bet you'd go slower; Hyugens argued the opposite. Newton decided to put both viewpoints in the Principia, since he couldn't resolve it. There seemed to be no way to test it: Who was going to go to the trouble of constructing a massive tank and filling it with goo? A professor at the University of Minnesota, as it turns out. Edward Cussler took 300 kilograms of guar gum, a thickening agent found in salad dressing, and dumped it into a 25-meter swimming pool on campus."