"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." - Ellen Goodman

***

YouTube - Crazy Korean Christians make children crazy - Jesus Camp in Korea.

Toilets in Japan - Wikipedia - "Before and during the Meiji Era, urinals were commonly used by both men and women. Traditionally, a kimono is worn without underwear, and the females merely pulled up their kimono, and with an upward pull on their vulva, were able to direct the urine forward into the urinal. This practice disappeared in the 20th century, after most women started wearing western-style clothing. Nowadays, even kimono are almost always worn with underwear. The female urinal had a small revival between 1951 and 1968, when TOTO was producing female urinals. This device was shaped like a cone and placed on the floor. However, those were never very popular, and only a few of them are left, including those underneath the Japan National Stadium from the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo."

Position title: Home Economist (m/f) - "- Preparation and examination of performance test on cooking appliances... - Implement and drive basic investigations on food preparation and cooking performance - Development and implement the "new art of cooking""

Footballers banned from sporting Becks' 'weird' hairstyles - "The Times, quoting the official Xinhua news agency, says players have been told: "Dyed hair, long hair and weird hairstyles are all strictly prohibited in the training camp and all players must cut hair short."... "You must learn how to behave as a true man before becoming a soccer star""

ex-porn pictures - SFW... Kinda.

The Invisible Atheists of Singapore? - "According to this article, written by Today, atheists do not even feature in the sectarian landscape. No atheists. No infidels. Period... According to the report, 340,094 Singaporeans have no religious affiliation, out of a population of 2,494,630... Quite contrary to the news article, religion has not been "embedded deeply" into the fabric of society. Considering that there were only 9733 Sikhs reported by the consensus, the non-religious community occupies a sizable chuck across the sectarian board... If this article is to be taken as gospel truth, then atheists are no more than invisible shrews, so to speak, good only for spewing vitriol at our persecuted religious counterparts."

Archives Online - "The National Archives of Singapore (NAS) developed the Access to Archives Online Singapore (a2O), a one-stop portal site on heritage information dating back to 17th century. a2O allows users to seamlessly search information across NHB's various independent databases and view selected photographs, maps and plans, listen to oral history interview samplers and watch snippets of audio-visual recordings, round the clock. In addition, a2o also provides information on recently acquired materials by NAS, Online Exhibitions, how to access our archival collection as well as student programmes."
Unfortunately you can't freely access them online; for example pictures have an ugly watermark. US Federal Government works are public domain - why not these?!

The Rare Fruits Council - "The name of the ensemble, an allusion to the florid, naturalistic titles of many music editions of the baroque period, also suggests an aesthetic purpose: To discover the familiar under an exotic garment, as in the riddle, or as in art, to turn into something different an already known and attractive object. To interpret the never before as if it had always been, and the always as if never ever before."
GAH

Suicide Spurs Web Regulation in South Korea - "Although the rumors were completely fabricated, the chat-room condemnation was more than Choi could take. "I am lonely and I am ostracized," she wrote in her suicide note found on Oct. 2. "I cannot even breathe." Unfortunately, Choi's suicide is not an isolated incident, but rather a symptom of South Korea's growing problem with insidious chat-room activity... Nearly 200,000 cyberviolence cases were reported last year, up almost 50 percent from a year earlier."... "Our Internet culture is more violent and vicious than most other countries," says Yun Young Chul, a communication professor at Seoul's Yonsei University. "People don't respect each other in cyberspace."... Against this backdrop, Korea's ruling Grand National Party is spearheading a move to toughen laws on Internet chat room abuses."
The Human Flesh Search Engine strikes again.

Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and Economic Conditions -- Pettijohn and Jungeberg - "Past research has investigated ideals of beauty and how these ideals have changed across time. In the current study, facial and body characteristics of Playboy Playmates of the Year from 1960-2000 were identified and investigated to explore their relationships with U.S. social and economic factors. Playmate of the Year age, body feature measures, and facial feature measurements were correlated with a general measure of social and economic hard times. Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features."
Happily, data on Playmates' measurements is available here

Creationist Paleontologists Discover Dinosaur Saddle - "A team of creationist paleontologists from the Discovery Institute's main field research arm announced today that they had discovered the remains of a large manmade object confirmed to be an ancient dinosaur saddle. The Discovery Institute's discovery was discovered in the remote Dusty Rivers area of southwestern Arizona. A spokesman for the paleontological team said that the dinosaur saddle provides irrefutable proof that man and dinosaurs lived simultaneously, as predicted by most creationist or "intelligent design" doctrines."
HAHAHAHAHA

Man chews through belly-busting 20-lb. burger - "The 5-foot-11, 180-pound western Pennsylvania chef is the first person to eat a monstrosity called the Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser: a 15-pound burger with toppings and a bun that brought the total weight to 20.2 pounds. The mountain of beef is the product of Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Clearfield."

Man killed wife in Facebook row - "Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to "single" days after he had moved out. The Old Bailey heard Forrester drove to her home in New Addington, south London, and attacked the mother-of-two. He stabbed her with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver on 18 February."
MFS had better never leave me

Gender Difference in Grammar - "Most children make adorable slip-ups in grammar when they're learning to speak. Now scientists say the mistakes could vary by gender. Boys and girls tend to use different parts of their brain to learn some fundamental parts of grammar, according to a new study. "Sex has been virtually ignored in studies of the learning, representation, processing and neural bases of language," said lead author Michael Ullman, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University. "This study shows that differences between males and females may be an important factor in these cognitive processes.""

Demotivators Build Your Own Calendar - "Unlike certain aforementioned calendars featuring shiny heinies, our Desktop Edition is completely discreet- offering buyers 12 months of customized Demotivation in a compact design that is economical in cost AND space utilization. And for those of you worried about getting in trouble for displaying subversive artwork in the workplace, we've added an extra bonus feature to the Desktop Edition- the QuickFlip Disguise. Printed on the back of every calendar page is a painfully corny alternative calendar- mirroring the worst of what the hope shovelling hucksters in the calendar market have to offer. How painfully corny, you wonder?"
One example

LittleBigPlanet Faces Worldwide Recall For Qur'an References - "The European delay of LittleBigPlanet we mentioned earlier has blossomed into a worldwide recall of the game due to passages from the Islamic holy text Qur'an being included in the background music in one of the levels."

More Sex Is Safer Sex: The economic case for promiscuity - "Increased activity by sexual conservatives can slow down the rate of infection and reduce the prevalence of AIDS. In fact, according to Professor Michael Kremer of MIT's economics department, the spread of AIDS in England could plausibly be retarded if everyone with fewer than about 2.25 partners per year were to take additional partners more frequently. That covers three-quarters of British heterosexuals between the ages of 18 and 45... If multiple partnerships save lives, then monogamy can be deadly... To an economist, it's clear why people with limited sexual pasts choose to supply too little sex in the present: Their services are underpriced. The key is to subsidize something that is used in conjunction with sex and that Martin values more than Maxwell. Quite plausibly, that something is condoms"

Precocious Youngster Sells Cookies To Buy Attack Ad - "In this installment of Beyond The Facts, a gifted 8-year-old girl participates in grown-up politics by spreading smears and lies... 'I want to tear down Senator McCain so he can't win'"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA