"Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true." - Niels Bohr, to a young physicist

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The story of O - "One of the themes of the book is that when women have skillful partners, they get a much better deal out of sex. From what I can tell -- nobody's ever experienced both -- the female orgasm seems to be a hell of a lot better than ours... More than 50 percent of the people in Western, urban cultures divorce at some stage, and you don't have to be a marriage counselor to know that practically all the problems stem from sex. Sex is the battleground on which marriages are fought... Incidentally, Jesus had no stated views that we know of about sex. He must have presumably liked it quite a lot, hence Mary Magdalene... I think Jesus would have probably taken a dim view of these excesses in his name, the most appalling of which is celibacy... Just look at the mess [with sexual abuse] in countries like Ireland, where you have Catholic priests who are maintaining this absurd celibacy, which was only imposed on them as a method to avoid priests having children, because the church was terrified that the church property would end up in the hands of priests' children... Men deprived of orgasm in their normal way seek them in other ways. So you have whole families destroyed, you have communities destroyed, purely based on an 11th century edict originally promulgated as a property-protecting measure... You talk about the !Kung bushmen, who, as you write, believe "if a girl grows up without regular sex, she will lose her mind and end up eating grass and dying." Then there are the Muria of India and the Mangaia in the South Pacific, who teach children how to give sexual pleasure."

Commentary: Putting the heat on Hong Kong 'traitors' - "In Lee's article, he appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush and other international leaders "to take a broader vision of the possibilities for the Beijing Games," saying they "should press for a significant improvement of basic human rights in my country, including press, assembly and religious freedoms." Lee voiced disagreement with those who would boycott the Beijing Olympic Games, however... Many pro-Beijing political figures and media in Hong Kong responded to the article with furious attacks on Lee, calling him a traitor, while he was still out of the city... In the past, when Emily Lau said that the Taiwanese people's freedom of choice should be respected with regard to their own future, she was also branded a "traitor" for a few months. This is to say that the so-called "traitors" are Hong Kong's determined group of democrats, whereas the "patriots" are supporters of dictatorship and opportunists who unreasonably oppose democracy with nationalism."

Délifrance - Home - "7th Délifrance Sandwich French Cup. Wednesday 19th march 2008, 9:15 AM to 14:00 PM. EUROPEAN SANDWICH & SNACK SHOW. Espace Délifrance, Palais des Congrès, Place de la Porte Maillot, Paris XVIIème arrondissement"
Shit, they've invaded France.

Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail - "James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone. Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10. On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter. The message only had one word. "Arrested." Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt -- the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier -- were alerted that he was being held."

I'm Dangerous <3 - A 15 year old girl's blog, with a URL http://www.underage-girl.blogspot.com/. She's also running for Singtel Grid Girl. GAH.

Possibly the most misogynistic and sexist lyrics ever - This thread is hilarious.

Anna Melville-James listens to terrifying tales of sibling rivalry - "I was six weeks old when my brother buried me in the back garden. I can't remember it, of course, but the story is often told in my family. He dug a hole, lifted me carefully out of my pram and put me in it. Then he heaped earth on top. He was three and a half at the time and, fortunately for me, didn't realise that live burial works best if you stamp the earth down, so although I was completely covered I could still breathe. My mother was in the kitchen, chatting to a friend. The first she knew of what he had done was when my brother started tugging at her skirt, trying to get her attention: 'Mummy. Mummeeeeee ... I've buried the baby!' It was some time before she stopped fobbing him off with 'Yes, darling, very nice ... ' and actually listened to what he was saying. You can imagine how she felt when she went outside and saw an empty pram alongside a newly dug grave."

Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba - "Yoani Sanchez writes the "Generacion Y" blog and gets more than a million hits a month, mostly from abroad — though she has begun to strike a chord in Cuba. On her site and others, anonymous Cubans offer stinging criticisms of their government... "Cuba is the only country in the world whose principal newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party and the official voice of the government, has the ridiculous name 'granny,'" she wrote. Piling on the heat, she added that the name "perpetuates the memory of that yacht that brought us so much that is bad.""
Obviously the enemies of the Revolution have mislead them.

A Different Kind of Homework for Singapore Students: Get a Date - "It was like a college mixer, a classroom full of young men and women seeking a recipe for romance. The relationship classes are an extension of the government’s aim to help boost the birthrate, one of the lowest in the world. They had assembled for the first class of “Love Relations for Life: A Journey of Romance, Love and Sexuality.” There was giggling and banter among the students, but that was all part of the course as their teacher, Suki Tong, led them into the basics of dating, falling in love and staying together. The course, in its second year at two polytechnic institutes, is the latest of many, mostly futile, campaigns by Singapore’s government to get its citizens to mate and multiply. Its popularity last year has led to talk of its expansion through the higher education system."
Why NUS don't have ah

Chinese Students in U.S. Fight View of Their Home - "A plastic bottle of water hit the wall behind the monk... At Duke, pro-China students surrounded and drowned out a pro-Tibet vigil; a Chinese freshman who tried to mediate received death threats, and her family was forced into hiding. And last Saturday, students from as far as Florida and Tennessee traveled to Atlanta to picket CNN after a commentator, Jack Cafferty, referred to the Chinese as 'goons and thugs.'... By and large, they do not acknowledge the cultural and religious crackdown in Tibet, insisting that ordinary Tibetans have prospered under China's economic development, and that only a small minority are unhappy... Rather than blend in to the prevailing campus ethos of free debate, the more strident Chinese students seem to replicate the authoritarian framework of their homeland, photographing demonstration participants and sometimes drowning out dissent... Students argue that China has spent billions on Tibet, building schools, roads and other infrastructure. Asked if the Tibetans wanted such development, they looked blankly incredulous. “They don’t ask that question,” said Lionel Jensen, a China scholar at Notre Dame. “They’ve accepted the basic premise of aggressive modernization.”"

The demise of Turkey's pork butchers - ""We're going filming at a pork butcher's and a pig farm," I told my Turkish cameraman in a text message. Slightly anxious, I added: "Is that OK with you?" A moment later a message from Gokhan flashed back. "Yes," he wrote. "I like a good pork steak!" He is not the only one. Another Turkish friend told me that eating pork, which is forbidden by Islam, is increasingly popular in secular high society here. She described this as an act of defiance by some Turks who fear religious dictates have begun creeping into their lives since a government led by devout Muslims took power. But those people could soon be looking for a new way to rebel because Turkey's pork industry is on the brink of extinction... In a typical "Istanbul" twist, the customer himself was Jewish. Behind him I spotted my Muslim colleagues - munching contentedly on ham sandwiches."

Video: Best Ad ever for a Slurpee (NSFW)