"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H. L. Mencken

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Loving Japan Obligatory! #3: Masturbation Devices - "A larger-size "U.S. Tanga" style (red with silver stripes) was the most recent edition (parallel to the recent development of larger-sized condoms in the U.S.)... Finally, there's something called a "flip hole" that sells for about $100. This one looks like some kind of iPod docking station... Tenga has taken off in Japan, reportedly selling over 100,000 units per month. The company's creator, Koichi Matsumoto, even got a profile on Forbes.com... This must be an interesting company to work for, particularly in the product testing department. In fact, Matsumoto claims that he had to take Viagra in order to test out his devices and bring them to market. Business demands such sacrifices... For those so inclined, there's Plasma Sperm -- a microscope designed for viewing sperm. It comes with various levels of magnification, all designed to let you appraise your little guys' numbers and prowess."

Human Mirror at Improv Everywhere - "For our latest mission, we filled a subway car with identical twins, creating a human mirror."

Obama Supports FISA Legislation, Angering Left - "Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign. In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote... This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill"

From inju: YouTube - Woody Allen - Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (1972) - "You took an oath when you entered sperm training school: to fertilise an ovum or die trying"

Age of Riches - Challenges of $600-a-Session Patients - "“It used to be that my patients were the children of the rich: inheritors, people who suffered from the neglect of jet-setting parents or from the fear that no matter what they did, they would never measure up to their father’s accomplishments,” he recalled. “Now I see so many young people — people in their 30s and 40s — who’ve made the money themselves.” Dr. Stone said those two kinds of patients tended to have different problems: “In my experience, there was a high incidence of depression in the people who were born rich. And by contrast, the people today who are making a fortune are so often narcissistic in a way that excludes depression.”... “These people have to win,” Dr. Karasu said. He described another patient, a tennis enthusiast, who was so humiliated when his 16-year-old son began beating him that he gave up playing. “He said: ‘It’s a silly game. You just hit the ball, they hit it back. What is to be gained from this?’ ” Dr. Karasu said. “After that, he tried to discourage his son from playing.”... “All of the philanthropy you see — the buildings named after people for giving $50 million to this museum or to Columbia — is a result of one man after another trying to conquer his mortality.”"

Roaches… Q/A’s - "I have come across several methods of killing cockroaches that are non-toxic to humans:
(1) Boric Acid. The crystals of boric acid are sharp and get between the joints of an insect's exoskeleton. The sharp crystals abrade the cuticle and make the cockroach lose water and die of dehydration. This is a simple and cheap method. Dust the boric acid (which is relatively non-toxic) around the corners of rooms and in hiding places frequented by the roaches...
(2) Live Traps. Take a bowl or wide mouth bottle with steep sides; lightly Vaseline the inside wall up to the lip so that a cockroach can not climb up the slippery surface; place the bowl in a typical hiding place such as under your kitchen sink; place some food (bread, carrots, etc.) in the bowl as well as some toweling dampened with water; build some ramps up to the lip on the outside with paper toweling to encourage the cockroaches to easily enter the bowl. This trap will quickly overnight accumulate a good sample of your household cockroach population. Flush them down the toilet each morning for sanitary disposal. Soon the cockroach population will be quite low and perhaps undetectable by you."

Regional revival tackles community standards - ""It is allowed for Harry Potter to be taught in our schools, but not the Bible," International House of Prayer pastor James Crawford said during the Shreveport Regional Unity of Faith Revival. That is one reason pastors from several denominations and races ripped pages from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Those and pages from a pornographic magazine were put into a burn pit and set afire as praises bellowed from the congregation. "As I tore the pages, I felt a generational curse of immorality and perversion breaking off my family," Adriane Banks said. "I felt it." The book burning was a statement to reach out to people in Shreveport-Bossier City against sin, Crawford said."
Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man bald auch Menschen

Tomgram: Why Cheney Won't Take Down Iran - "On this subject, panic may be everywhere in the world of the political Internet, and even in the mainstream, but it's important not to make the mistake of overestimating these political actors or underestimating the forces arrayed against them. It's a reasonable proposition today -- as it wasn't perhaps a year ago -- that, whatever their desires, they will not, in the end, be able to launch an attack on Iran; that, even where there's a will, there may not be a way. They would have to act, after all, against the unfettered opposition of the American people; against leading military commanders who, even if obliged to follow a direct order from the President, have other ways to make their wills known; against key figures in the administration; and, above all, against reality which bears down on them with a weight that is already staggering -- and still growing. And yet, of course, for the maddest gamblers and dystopian dreamers in our history, never say never."
And Conspiracy Theorists too

YouTube - Lethal Leather Punisher -clip1(JPSF-19) - Damn Japs.

On persecution paranoia and press freedom - "For over 15 minutes during an hour-long dialogue yesterday, Secondary 3 student Jarret Huang went toe-to-toe with Dr Vivian Balakrishnan on press freedom and freedom of expression... The minister said there was a serious point he was getting at: 'There is a certain almost paranoia which I'm trying to overcome here... Nobody in Singapore has been persecuted for saying the truth. Nobody is going to be persecuted for saying what he believes in and standing up for it.' He added: 'But if what you say is false, if what you say is motivated by malice, if your intention is to inflame religious and racial tensions, if you are a threat to the country, don't you think something should be done?'"
Play that again, Sam!
Someone also points out that prosecution is not the same as persecution.

Sun, sea and sex? Sexual behaviour of people on holiday in Tenerife - "Finney found that 32% of a sample of 100 second-year medical students had had sexual intercourse with a new partner whilst on holiday. We recently conducted a
similar study in a group of people returning from holiday in Tenerife... Thirty-five percent of respondents (48/136) had had sexual intercourse with someone other than their regular partner on the holiday. There was no difference in sexual behaviour between males and females... Interestingly, nine of the 12 who cheated on their partners took condoms with them on the holiday, indicating a certain amount of premeditation in their actions!... The holiday atmosphere is geared towards sexual promiscuity, with excesses of alcohol, a perceived lack of consequences and holiday package companies positively encouraging sex. For example, on this holiday, a bottle of champagne was given to the first new couple to have sex."

Mugabe's animal farm - "Although it is politically incorrect to say so in a public medium such as this, many concerned Africans (particularly among the older generation) often lament that we were better-off under colonial rule. Mugabe's Zimbabwe gruesomely epitomizes this sordid disturbing ignominy of post-colonial Africa - in the murderous league of Idi Amin's Uganda, Bokassa's Central African Republic, Macias Nguema's Equatorial Guinea and Mobutu's Zaire. Less vicious, sit-tight African oppressors also abound namely Cameroun's Paul Biya, Gabon's Omar Bongo, Kenya's Mwai Kibaki and of course Nigeria's despotic kleptocrats like Abacha. Not to forget the Omar el-Bashir led quasi-Arab cabal in Khartoum, who are intent on exterminating our Black African brothers & sisters from Darfur... Even after presiding over independent Zimbabwe for 28 years, our washed-up "Black Nationalist" who has run out of ideas about salvaging his country's wrecked economy continues to mouth nonsensical inanities of "White colonialism". For him, like several pea-brained black quasi-intellectuals, White people are the bogeymen of Black mal-development... "Regime change" - that infamous phrase made popular by Bush and his neo cons for the invasion of Iraq is what Zimbabwe needs now"
RACIST!!!

Icwdb.com ~ The Largest Free Collection of Jailbait Videos & Galleries - Encyclopedia Dramatica has the strangest stuff (the domain stands for 'Internet CamWhore DataBase').

Japanese cartoon offends Muslims - "What exactly is so insulting and offensive about the idea of a bad guy in the Middle East using the Koran to justify a killing? Those filled with rage about the offensiveness of such a scene might want to focus more of their attention on what’s going on in the real world, because it’s not exactly rare to see groups using the Koran to call for violence, war, and killing. If, by some chance, the author of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure had actually intended for the book in question to be the Koran, he may have gotten the idea from some of the many individuals who have made international news in recent years by using the Koran to justify terrible acts of violence. It’s those individuals, not the creators of this manga/anime, who are making people around the world associate Islam with terrorism."

Discrimination | Japan Probe - They actually have a whole category dedicated to discrimination (mostly racial, against gaijin).