Afghan cleric defends controversial marriage law - ""The law ... which I created I see as correct for both men and women," he said. "We have given rights to both men and women, even better than rights given to women in the West. We give women more in this law." I asked him about reports that if a woman does not comply in having sexual relations with her husband, then the husband can refuse to feed her. "Yes, I said that," Mohseni said looking me in the eye. "When a couple marries, sex is a part of marriage, and they agree to that."... Mohseni added that a wife wearing makeup "prevents a man from thinking about other women on the streets and he can just think of his wife."... According to Mohseni, the West is imposing its beliefs on the Muslim world because they don't understand."
I love it when people claim those who disagree with them don't understand.

Why it can't be more of the same - "She readily concedes that Singapore's economic growth record to date has been impressive but notes a disturbing 'growth fetishism' here. Growth is a means but not an end in itself. Focusing on 'how much' growth does not necessarily tell us 'how good' it is, or 'for whom', she says, pointing to a stagnation in median real wage and a decline in low-income wages, despite rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth here... Ultimately, economic growth, she says, should seek to increase the 'income, welfare, stability and security of all Singaporeans'. 'It should be 'growth for people', not 'people for growth'. 'In the long run, a lower rate of growth which delivers a higher ratio of benefits to Singaporeans may be more desirable than a higher rate of growth which is more unstable and inequitable,' she says."

Philip, your dad just slapped me - "Mr Jeyaretnam’s book also contains good legal advice for a layman like me. Chapter 19, titled “Presumption of innocence - The right of accused persons” supplies many useful tips on what to do when the police pays people a visit. At least I now know that the first thing I need to do is to ask “Friend, what are the charges against me?” followed by “Wait, I need my lawyer, and you better don’t ask me to blindly follow you back to police station, or else my lawyer can tell you and your boss a lot of things later.” I have also learnt that if I ever land myself in court (heaven forbids that, of course), I’d be better off engaging a lawyer to tell the Judge as many stories as possible, and not to assume that if I keep silent, I am presumed innocent. It is particularly scary to read the part on the possibility of how, in Singapore, other people who are being charged can save their own skin by implicating me and getting me in trouble before the law, even when there is no direct proof that I have done anything wrong. Solution: I better make friends with more lawyers in times of peace."

What is a “Jesus Body?” « Quirky Japan Blog - "These are my theories about what a “Jesus body” might be:
1. An emaciated body like Jesus after his 40 day and night “diet” in the wilderness?
2. A body that makes you say “Sweet Jesus!” when you see it?
3. Something about stigmata?
4. A reference to the Eucharist. Maybe the diet pills are in a wafer form, representing the “body of Jesus”?
5. A perfect body."

Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says - "The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common... There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh. Nicknames are liberally bestowed in classrooms and workplaces to tell people apart. Confronting three students named Liu Fang, for example, one middle-school teacher nicknamed them Big, Little and Middle."
This is why you need a language with an alphabet

'Miseducation of Women' Author calls Bridget Jones a syndrome
"A professor of education policy... Mr. Tooley sparked debate by asking why schools treat boys and girls identically when they are clearly different, a practice he says is at odds with the real needs and desires of girls and young women... I'm quite careful to distinguish between different sorts of feminists. There are some feminists who do recognize it, who recognize that there's a problem with the way women are forced, or led, to behave... As soon as they're allowed to make choices, you get boys and girls going the way traditionally you'd expect them to: the majority of boys into engineering and technical subjects, the majority of girls into traditionally called "softer subjects." And that's seen as a big problem by the Equal Opportunities Commission and other feminist lobbies... the injustice, of trying to force men and women into ways in which they don't want to go. Some of those women and men would be moving in ways they wouldn't necessarily want to go, even though the majority are responding to stereotypes... Women seemed to appreciate what I was saying, and supported me, so, yes, there's been considerable support. [Theres been] universal condemnation from the press and the media. [laughs] The contrast could not be more clear."

Why night owls are cleverer and richer than people who get up early

Ready, aim ... fail - "Goals have a dangerous side. Individuals, governments, and companies like GM show ample ability to hurt themselves by setting and blindly following goals, even those that seem to make sense at the time. These skeptics draw on a broad array of large-scale failures - the design of the Ford Pinto, the Enron collapse, the rash lending practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - as evidence of the pernicious effects of goals... Goals, they feared, might actually be taking the place of independent thinking and personal initiative. Goals gave us GE and Southwest, but they also gave us GM and Enron... what people do when they fall just short of their goals [is] lie to make up the difference... In a famous 1999 study by the psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, subjects watching a video clip were told to count the number of times people in a group pass a basketball among themselves. Most concentrate so hard on the goal that they become blind to other information, utterly failing to notice when a woman in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the group. Other work suggests that goals with rewards, if not carefully calibrated, can short-circuit our intrinsic enthusiasm for a task - or even interrupt our learning process... the greatest risk appears to lie in overly simplified goals. Reducing complex activities to a bundle of numbers can end up rewarding the wrong behavior - with engineers concentrating on less promising but more straightforward research, for example, to rack up more patents."

Have you got a Frenemy? The pretend friends who secretly hate you and delight in making you feel bad - "They criticise your loyal boyfriend, turn their nose up at your favourite outfits and induce feelings of paranoia and self-doubt. Most of us have at least one 'frenemy' - slang for an enemy masquerading as friend - and this week actress Gwyneth Paltrow used her website to detail her own experience of this malign breed of acquaintance... Do men have friends like these, too? Or is it just us? When we were writing a book that touched on the subject, we couldn't come up with a single male example. We tried - in the interests of fairness - but men just didn't seem very forthcoming. Or else they were just baffled about the whole concept of having a friend you didn't actually like... bump up against any female conversation public or private and, sure as hell, there'll be analysis, forensic examination, rumination, cogitation and a vast amount of brain space being taken up with trying to work out why she did that on that day in that way to ME! We seem to tie ourselves up in knots."
... women

China to issue new list of simplified Chinese characters

Yahoo Quietly Pulls The Plug On Geocities - Boo, we'll lose a lot of good content.

Let me google that for you - "This is for all those people that find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves."
I think giving people wrong information is still more fun.

YouTube - Parallel Parking Made Easy With Extra Wheel - "There are plenty of people out there who find parallel parking a hard task. Here's one solution. It is an extra wheel used especially for parking up."

A Sarong Party Girl - "The ang mor men are also tempting me, what. It's two-way temptation. I'm tempting them away from their frumpy wives with their water-retaining ankles, while they are tempting me away from typical stoner Singapore men with their boring lifestyles... ang mor men treat their women with so much more respect than Asian men do. Asian men are only interested in having us so that we can have children and form a family. Asian men see us only as wives. In their eyes, we are these boring, quiet, obedient and meek mice. Whereas what the ang mor men see are sexy, long-haired, provocatively-dressed sirens. In other words, unlike Asian men, they see us as individuals and not stereotypes... when I'm at a bar, I can approach an ang mor man, even a stranger, anytime and they will chat with me, buy me drinks. So pleasant! Whereas these Asian men are downright unpleasant - always coming up and trying to chat and buy me drinks. I mean, they're complete strangers! What do they think I am? The sleazeballs!"
"Singaporean men marry foreign women because they are losers.
Singaporean women marry foreign men because Singaporean men are losers."