"Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy." - Nora Ephron

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Minutes into marriage, bride dies in first dance - "Kim Sjostrom and Teddy Efkarpides had been married for less than an hour on January 19 when the bride crumpled in her husband's arms during a rendition of a Greek song that means simply, "Love Me". At 36, Sjostrom was dead from heart disease."

Horse for dinner? Nay - "Because of a goof at The Saginaw News, a classified ad for her 3-year-old mare, Foxy, ran under the header "Good Things to Eat" instead of the one for horses and stables. DeGroat has fielded dozens of calls over the past two days from unhappy animal lovers... "I had a lady call whose friend was just in tears over this thing," DeGroat said. "It doesn't help that my cell phone number starts with 666.""
This is ridiculous. I bet they all eat meat.

Big City Envy - "The still-unsolved killing of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was the city’s only murder of 1996. But that high-profile case was just the first of several killings to shake up the relatively small town a half-hour outside Denver... “We’re a vital, growing metropolitan area, and nobody can argue with our violent crime statistics.”"

Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe - "A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes... One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned... Meanwhile a Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin."
Zero tolerance works!

Robot Prostitutes as Alternatives to Human Sex Workers - "Recent discussions on roboethics have introduced the subject of sex with robots. The first sexbots are
likely to be operational around the end of the current decade, their development being based on technologies that already exist in different types of commercially available artifact. The very high cost of the early generations of sexually functioning robots will cause the hire of robots for sex, rather than their purchase, to become commonplace. The most often stated motivations for hiring human sex workers are discussed in relation to how these motivations could be satisfied by robots. Five ethical aspects of robot prostitution are introduced and discussed."

Guide to the best euromyths - "Back in the 1980s, the European Commission hatched a plan to re-name the British sausage an "emulsified high-fat offal tube". A government minister successfully repelled the threat and became prime minister thanks to a wave of support for the Great British Banger. His name was Jim Hacker, and this was not the real world, but the television comedy Yes Minister."

Pharyngula: The Courtier's Reply - "There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all... I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots... Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity... Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics."
A pithier summary: You don't need to be an expert at fabrics and clothing to tell that the Emperor is wearing no clothes.

Don’t Ogle the Booble - "Women are paying up to $100 for a bra (I am not even going to go into the added price of the matching panties) to make “the girls” look and feel absolutely perfect. Like they were hand crafted by some Old Italian guy in a leather apron... But you, being a man, are not supposed to look. Looking is fraught with all sorts of perils. She could go all “sexual harassment” on you, go stalker, call you a pervert, give you a nice slap, etc. All for looking at what she has hanging 5” in front of the rest of her body as she walks around... Why do women do this? Are they flat out evil? I think I have seen horns on a couple of them. Somebody hit me with a shovel. Honestly I have no idea... I think my head is going to explode. Who makes this crap up in the Femworld? This makes no flippin sense."
This hews to the 'u r wt u wr' principle.

Which way do you look at Shanghai? - "Western tourists, this person said, when taking photographs instinctively stand with their backs to the river and look at the Bund's colonial buildings. Chinese tourists stand facing the river and look at Pudong's skyscrapers on the other side. The Chinese look to the future, was one message of this, while Westerners look to the past."
Why would anyone want to look at the butt plug?!

Why is fundamental physics so messy? - "It’s as though some software engineer crafted a beautiful, bugless operating system - the laws of physics - and then fed it with random data, the output from a lava lamp, or moths bashing at a window screen. Garbage in, garbage out, generating the weird, starry heap of a universe we call home."
Ah, surely this is proof of God's existence!

Absolute Anime • Princess Princess - "At Fujimori high, they have something known as the "Hime (Princess) System", which they use to enrich the dull lives of the boys at the school. Only beautiful first years may become a princess because their bodies are not fully developed and are easier to dress as girls."
Sounds like a model for Raffles Guys School.

The Music Chamber - "Welcome to the Music Chamber! This site was created so that people could gain an understanding and appreciation for chamber music. You don't have to be able to play an instrument or have a degree in music to enjoy this wonderful art. Inside this site, you will find information on instruments and music theory. We have also compiled material on every major period, composer, and piece--all presented in a relaxed and accessible manner."
Good page.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection - "[The restrictions] will serve to make the illegal product the most full featured and least restrictive, and thus the most attractive to the consumer. Add in the expense of buying new equipment to view the legal content (when existing equipment
is perfectly capable) and the performance drain imposed by inline encryption/decryption and they’ve put out the biggest incentive to piracy yet"

Kurogane’s Anime Blog » A cat is fine too… - "Recently, I just discovered a fine cache of Type-Moon doujins and among them were the original “A cat is fine too..” doujin. I must say, it’s one of the funniest doujin I’ve read and I just wanted to share it with those who haven’t seen or read it before. Shiki is awesome!"
I can't summarise this beyond: 'Damn Japs'