"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." - Laurence J. Peter

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China’s 50-cent Twitter Censors - "Many of these censors, who are know as 50-cent-ers, have been recruited from China’s top universities and some government agencies. (One recent recruitment campaign looked for male party members willing to do a job that involved surfing the Internet for p0rngrphie. Imagine they found more than a few young male applicants willing to surf for that. A female friend of Oiwan’s tried to apply for the job, but was rejected because she is a woman.)"

GoThere - "Hi there. Check out our features for public transport commuters and motorists. On the go? Visit our mobile version on your phone at http://gothere.sg/m."
Who needs StreetDirectory.com anymore? Cleaner, lighter, faster, no ads. And does TIBS too! Less clunky than the Transitlink Public Transport Journey Planner, and includes a map too. And does driving as well (with "Avoid ERP" option).

Setiawan Lor Mee for Breakfast ! - It looks like Chop Suey.

Write rhymes. - "As you type, hold the alt key and click on a word to find a rhyme for it..."

Men Talk More Than Women Overall, But Not In All Circumstances - "The authors found a small but statistically reliable tendency for men to be more talkative than women overall -- especially in certain contexts, such as when they were conversing with their wives or with strangers. Women talked more to their children and to their college classmates."

"How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" - "As he reads paper after paper all saying the same thing in almost the same words, all bloodless, five hundred words dripping out of nothing, he wonders how he allowed himself to get trapped into teaching English when he might have had a happy and interesting life as an electrician or a confidence man... Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact, this is precisely what you are expected to do. This is the writer's essential task. All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting... They are intellectual exercises, and it is legitimate to argue now one way and now another, as debaters do in similar circumstances. Always take the that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side... If the subject assigned is "My Pet Peeve," do not begin, "My pet peeve is the English instructor who assigns papers on 'my pet peeve."' This was still funny during the War of 1812, but it has sort of lost its edge since then"

Credit Crunch Puts Stain on Londons Connubial Bliss - "About 80 percent of those surveyed believe that the turmoil — and lower bonus payments — will prompt more women to seek a divorce before their husbands’ wealth evaporates further... “Historically during a financial downturn the divorce rate amongst high earners has increased,” Sandra Davis, the head of Mishcon’s family law practice, told DealBook... Others said they will start by spending less on “the other woman.”"

A dead end in Asian politics - "It has become the common blight of many a postcolonial state that the discrepancy between political idealism and the realities on the ground grow wider by the day... The political elite of these countries talk on and on about development, progress, emancipation (both economic and mental) and yet remain beholden captives to the racialised ideologies of the colonial past. Their feeble attempts at deconstructing the legacy of Empire often dwindles down to little more than a vulgar pastiche of reversed Orientalism at best, (as if the racism of Asians is somehow better than the racism of the European colonialists who came before); and their steadfast refusal to adapt to changes around them is irritating and infuriating to witness at close range... In India and Pakistan I watched as my fellow academic friends who play the role of public intellectuals and who have been calling for peace and reconciliation between the two countries have been systematically denounced as 'race traitors', 'cowards', the fifth column within, etc... apologists for the great Western conspiracy against the motherland... Events over the past two weeks have made a mockery of Malaysia's claim to be a developing country with first world ambitions... the country's politics remains trapped in the swamp of the banal and ridiculous."
Ah, Postcolonialism!

Student Who Took Religious Icon Getting Death Threats - "Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn’t eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it... “We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was,” said Susan Fani a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese. “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”"
Other lovely bits from elsewhere:
""It is hurtful," said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."... Gonzalez said intentionally abusing the Eucharist is classified as a mortal sin in the Catholic church, the most severe possible"
"For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage—regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance—is beyond hate speech."
"Cook said he just wanted to show the Eucharist to a friend he brought with questions about Catholicism before consuming it. But outraged Catholics across the globe didn’t believe him and suspected he intended all along to steal the Eucharist and bloggers sent out e-mail messages damning him to Hell."
Christ is Love indeed.