"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all." - Oscar Wilde

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Apple loses students to netbooks and Windows - "When US students return to their classrooms this fall, few of them will be lugging along new Apple notebooks... "The majority of student laptop shoppers will not consider buying a Mac," says Renevo's press release... The low-price, good-enough laptop boat has sailed, and Apple's not on it. Apple spokesfolks have repeatedly dissed the netbook market. In October last year, Steve Jobs said: "There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.""
That's because netbooks have no space for the Apple Tax

The 5 Most Embarrassing Failures in the History of Terrorism - "If we can't laugh at terrorists, who can we laugh at?"

French women 'are the sexual predators now' - "French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives... Despite the changes in female behaviour observed in the study, some things have not altered in 40 years. Men found it easier than women to disassociate sex from love... abstinence rates for men under 35 was twice as high as for women"
They cite socialisation for what hasn't changed in 40 years - but somehow it's also to blame for what has

The squirrel photo crasher: How cheeky rodent became star of couple's holiday snap

2nd most expensive city - "SINGAPORE is the No.2 most expensive Asian city to live in, with only famously pricey Tokyo ahead in the rankings, according to a study by Swiss bank UBS... The study also found that people worked an average of 1,902 hours a year in the cities surveyed. Workers in Asian and Middle Eastern cities slogged for the longest hours, averaging 2,119 and 2,063 hours each year respectively. The lucky people in the French cities of Lyon and Paris spend the least amount of time at work a year: just 1,582 and 1,594 hours respectively."
Le travail rend libre

A Conservative’s Road to Same-Sex Marriage Advocacy - "Mr. Olson is preparing for what he believes could be the most important case of his career, the binders stuffed with briefs, case law and notes offer a different take on a man many liberals love to hate... “For conservatives who don’t like what I’m doing, it’s, ‘If he just had someone in his family we’d forgive him,’ ” Mr. Olson said. “For liberals it’s such a freakish thing that it’s, ‘He must have someone in his family, otherwise a conservative couldn’t possibly have these views.’ It’s frustrating that people won’t take it on face value.”... The same antipathy toward government discrimination, he said, inspired him to take up another cause that many on the right applauded — a lengthy campaign to dismantle affirmative action programs."... In the gay community, though, conspiracy theories initially abounded that Mr. Olson had taken the case to sabotage it... Lady Booth Olson, a lawyer whom Mr. Olson married in 2006, said he still tears up when telling how a black teammate was turned away from a restaurant in Amarillo"
Somehow I don't see them doing "A Liberal's Road to Opposing Affirmative Action"

Coping with a sexual revolution - "Some 46% of Singaporean youths, for example, think it is okay to have sex before marriage. The biggest impact is felt among school and college students where 24% have admitted in a survey that they were sexually active. Some are as young as 13 or 14 years old, with a handful of pre-teens... [On being filmed naked] For others, it is considered an attractive pickup line to get a date. “I think this is very cool”, replied a 22 years old local student when interviewed. A new graduate from an Australian university explained to me why she loved to pose in G-strings: “What is the point of having a great body if you can’t flaunt it. When you grow old, no one would even want to look at you.”... It was found in a lifestyle survey that 60 out of 1,000 students aged between 13 and 15 years were having sex... A woman says she is hoping to breed “beautiful mixed blood children” with a Caucasian man, saying: “I can bring the child up by myself if necessary.”... A retired teacher in his 70s is optimism about the future generation: “... Every generation worries about its ‘misbehaving’ but they almost always grow into fine parents.” What are evolving are cultural values. What is bad today may well be tomorrow’s norm. “Look at casino gambling or compensating to organ donors, once punishable by law, are now perfectly acceptable,” he added."

pandagon.net: The Whole Foods Healthcare Plan: Now With 80% More Conspicuously Consuming White People - "That’s sweet, look at this guy. Wants to have a national health insurance system that can be used wherever he lives, and carry it with him at all times. Through the private market. Look at the balls on this guy, big as grapefruits. Gonna start calling him Ruby Red, this guy."
Besides the usual rudeness, name-calling, argument from emotion and dragging of race in for no apparent reason (other than to poison the well), some commenters are proclaiming that they're going to boycott Whole Foods. When someone has opinions you disagree with, you boycott them. Well done (unsurprisingly, it's from a feminist blog I've fisked before)

Greek Gods Family Tree

Taken for Granted: The Man Who Wasn't There - "The 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry honors Osamu Shimomura... Martin Chalfie... and Roger Tsien... The Nobel Committee never picks more than three winners for any discovery. Prasher, the biochemist who first cloned the GFP gene, published it in the journal Gene in 1992 and freely shared it with Tsien and Chalfie when they asked for it; however, he was not on the list when the laureates were announced. He also differs in another way from the winners, who occupy prestigious academic chairs. These days, Prasher spends his working hours in a different kind of seat, behind the wheel of courtesy shuttle, a minivan with "Bill Penney Toyota" written on the side in big letters. He took the $8.50-an-hour job with the Huntsville, Alabama, auto dealer after a year of unemployment following the loss of a research position"
If Prasher had been female, people would've been complaining about sexism