"He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet." - Benjamin Disraeli

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Men's fantasies don't handle curves like they used to - "Research now shows the magazine's models have been getting thinner since Marilyn Monroe first stretched across its pages in 1953. All but one of those selected as men's fantasy women since 1992 have been medically underweight, an analysis of the women's weight-for-height ratios found. The fact the trend was continuing showed that men's idea of gorgeousness was not an immutable response, but was tied to fashion and culture, researcher Martin Voracek said... The editor of Australian Penthouse, Graham Brown, agreed the trend was towards thinner models, but said Australian men preferred substantial figures in their centrefolds and cover girls. Men's magazines generally pictured fleshier women than those portrayed in women's media. "Guys actually like cleavage. Men like breasts, they like bums. [Catwalk models and Hollywood actors] are literally clothes horses. When you don't have clothes on, it's a different kettle of fish altogether. "Someone like Cameron Diaz is too thin. She hasn't got any breasts or curves and she's obviously hungry. You can't have a hungry woman on the cover. It has to be a happy woman.""

A theory that just won't die - "One of the most common intuitive problems people have with conspiracy theories is that they require positing such complicated webs of secret actions.... how could hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the murder of their own countrymen keep quiet? Usually, Occam's razor intervenes. Another common problem with conspiracy theories is that they tend to impute cartoonish motives to "them" -- the elites who operate in the shadows. The end result often feels like a heavily plotted movie whose characters do not ring true. Then there are other cognitive Do Not Enter signs: When history ceases to resemble a train of conflicts and ambiguities and becomes instead a series of disinformation campaigns, you sense that a basic self-correcting mechanism of thought has been disabled. A bridge is out, and paranoia yawns below... "We have all kinds of weird conferences," said the concierge the next morning. "I mean, not to say this is weird. Last year we had one that was all tall people."... "Let me tell you, for years, I've been waiting for there to be a military coup to depose these traitors," he said from the podium. "Yeah!" shouted some men in the audience. "There actually was one weekend," Mr. Fetzer went on, "where I said to myself, my God, it's going to happen this weekend, and I'm going to wake up and they will have taken these guys off in chains.""

Spluch: A Tourist Tried To Cook Lunch In A Safe! - "A hungry American tourist bit off more than she could chew when she tried to cook lunch in her hotel room. Staff at the Hermitage Hotel in Mount Cook were called to her room after the guest complained she couldn't get her pizza out of the microwave oven. When puzzled housekeepers visited the $300-a-night room to investigate, they discovered she had put the pizza in a personal safe and activated the airtight lock on the vault."

All I Got was this Lousy Che T-Shirt - "Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

'Oldest human being' dies at 116 - "Hryhoriy Nestor, a bachelor who was thought in his lifetime to be the oldest person in the world, has died at the age of 116 in Ukraine... In accordance with his wish that there should be no crying, a hearty meal was served of his favourite dishes: warm potato and herring, and cabbage with home-made sausage... Mr Nestor, a former farm labourer, put his long life down to the fact that he never married."

Vintage Advertising At Its Worst - "Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere... You may think she's just your 'gal' but she may be everyone's pal. Prophylaxis prevents Venereal Disease... More Doctors Smoke CAMELS than any other cigarette!... They're happy because they eat lard"

Marrying for money - "According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average "price" that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million... Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74 percent) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41 percent)... 61 percent of men in their 40s said they would marry for money. Smock says that as men get older, they become more comfortable with women being the breadwinners."
Once again, we find that men are less materialistic than women.

Party drugs a hit with wealthy in Singapore - ""Every couple of years, they (the police) go out and get people so everyone is way too scared to do drugs," said a British lawyer, who declined to be named. "The drugs of choice here (for foreigners) really are women and alcohol."... But tough laws are still not enough to stop some drug users. "It's the same as having unprotected sex. You do it because it feels better. But if you get caught it's the worst high ever," said the wealthy student who declined to be named."
Given how drugs ruin your life, you'd expect them to lose all their riches. And it seems harmless marijuana got crowded out. Oh well.

YouTube - Sexy Chinese 中國國歌 - "Sexy Chinese 中國國歌 symbolizes sexy Chinese Free Traveler girls selling sex in Hong Kong!"
They should do one for Singapore.

Lab Notes : Why Doesn't Evolution Get Rid of Ugly People? - "In a groundbreaking study, biologists at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have figured out why, at least in one species: genes that are good for males are bad for females and, perhaps, vice versa. The scientists studied red deer, 3,559 of them from eight generations, living on Scotland’s Isle of Rum. They carefully noted each animal’s fitness, who mated with whom, how many offspring survived, which offspring mated and with what results. Bottom line: “male red deer with relatively high fitness fathered, on average, daughters with relatively low fitness,” Edinburgh’s Katharina Foerster and her colleagues conclude in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature."