"If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going, 'you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.'" - Jeff Foxworthy

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Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question - "In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.” The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not"

Russian cannibal who ate his mother given lighter sentence by judge who says 'he was starving, he needed to eat'

Hitler was ‘German football coach’ - "One in 20 schoolchildren think the Fuhrer was a sportsman, while one in six youngsters said they thought Auschwitz was a Second World War theme park... One in 20, meanwhile, said the Holocaust was a celebration at the end of the war."

Hi, I'm Marty, and I'm a recovering Republican - "Very few people in their late teens and early twenties seek justice in moderation. The hormone-soaked college years are a time of extremes, our changing identities often defined by dissent-quashing affiliations, leaving us to later cringe at our frenzied "Goldfish Liberation phase," "Castrate the Phallusocracy phase," "Noam Chomsky phase" or "Ayn Rand phase."... I should have seen the danger of sealing myself in an echo chamber to prevent contamination from outside viewpoints... Outrage became my drug of choice... One Salon reader even threatened my physical safety. But middle-aged liberal psychologist Steve Edgell took another approach: calmly and gently talking me back to earth... It doesn't matter whether you are liberal or conservative, but it's dangerous to always think with exclamation points instead of question marks. Your stance on any particular issue is far less important than whether your worldview is a product of inquiry or incuriosity, whether you feel more comfortable questioning the crowd or blindly marching with it. No ideology has a monopoly on reality -- including my rediscovered left-wing politics."
Again, this shows that the moment you become too extreme about anything, you go cuckoo. And that to truly convince people, you don't shout at them - you talk to them. Interestingly, there're twice the hits for "recovering Democrat" on Google as for "recovering Republican"

Lu Xun on the difficulties of Chinese characters - "He made bitterly honest comments on virtually all aspects of Chinese institutions, culture, and customs. Among the subjects that attracted Lu Xun's attention was the Chinese script. So deep were his feelings about the Chinese writing system that he was reported to have proclaimed shortly before his death, "Hanzi bu mie, Zhongguo bi wang" (If Chinese characters do not fade away, China will perish!) [Ed: “汉字不灭，中国必亡” - 鲁迅]. While this is admittedly a radical formulation of the problem posed by China's archaic script in the context of efforts to modernize the nation, Lu Xun was by no means the first Chinese scholar to blame the writing system for his nation's backwardness. Indeed, Lu Xun had been preceded by dozens of individuals from the late-Qing period onward who had devised simple and more efficient writing systems, including alphabets, for the various Chinese languages. And, as early as the Song dynasty, the renowned and erudite polymath Zheng Qiao (1104–1162) had noted some of the deficiencies of the Chinese script.
This would've come in very useful during Mandarin class: "如果要写字，就非永远画画不成"

Why Hollywood marriages don’t last - "Few occupations and professions afford men with greater opportunities to come in contact with women in their teenage years than teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools. These teachers experience the cumulative effect of exposure, day after day, year after year, to young, attractive women who are at the peak of their reproductive value and fertility more acutely than men in most other occupations... Our analysis of the General Social Survey data showed that male secondary and postsecondary school teachers were significantly more likely to be currently divorced and significantly less likely to remarry than men in other occupations. This effect is not observable among male kindergarten and elementary school teachers. Nor are female teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools more likely to be currently divorced or less likely to remarry. So it's not about being a teacher per se."

6 Reasons Bacon is Better Than True Love - "True love only happens once in a lifetime. Bacon can happen seven times a day, if you want it to"

How To Write Badly Well - "She manipulated the garment in a cogitative mode.
‘Hmm,’ she vocalised. ‘This attire is verifiably marvellous. What is it constituted from?’
‘From the most meritorious velveteen,’ defined her interlocutor, simpering coincidentally.
‘Is it?’ iterated the party of the first part. ‘That’s felicitous.’"

Help me to get Sony Vaio VGN-Z51MRG/B - "You have to:
* Register at http://vk.com/reg15831920. That is a largest social network in Russia....
What you get:
* A huge amount of mp3 for free
* Lot of video like youtube
* Lot of friends from Russia (remember, Russian girls are the most beautiful)...
What I get:
* Lot of new friends
* Hope to have Sony Vaio VGN-Z51MRG/B"

Curvy women may be a clever bet - "Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests - as did their children."
How does this apply in Singapore?

Orgy puts stop to degree courses in sex - "Social science faculty heads took action after student Jessica McMahon said that at the end of the trip to the gay strip club the class instructor stripped on stage and started to engage in sexual activity with one of the club's male performers."

Framed for child porn — by a PC virus - "Their situations are complicated by the fact that actual pedophiles often blame viruses — a defense rightfully viewed with skepticism by law enforcement... Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, which carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, his car tires were slashed and he was shunned by friends... "It ruined my life, my wife's life and my family's life"... However, forensic examiners say it would be hard for a pedophile to get away with his crime by using a bogus virus defense... Even careful child porn collectors tend to leave incriminating e-mails, DVDs or other clues. Virus defenses are no match for such evidence"

Bathing doggies are cute hehe.

When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't) - "Women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted... far from condemning the male impulse for retribution, Dr. Singer said it had an important social function: "This type of behavior has probably been crucial in the evolution of society as the majority of people in a group are motivated to punish those who cheat on the rest."... "This investigation would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment.""
I wonder what the result will be if it's people who have personally hurt the women.

The decade of Steve - "Key to the Jobs approach is careful consideration of what he and Apple say -- and don't say. Harvard professor David Yoffie estimated that in the months between announcing and selling the first iPhone in 2007, Apple received $400 million in free advertising by not making any public statements, thereby whipping the media into a frenzy... The secrecy has rankled corporate governance experts, who insist the health of such an indispensable CEO warrants greater disclosure... Steve Jobs is mortal. When he's gone, how long will his company thrive without him?"

Pigs don't fly: Air Zimbabwe plane crashes into bushpig on runway - "The airport emergency rescue service took five minutes to reach the plane. They were beaten by a contingent of secret police, whose first act was to arrest two passengers for taking photographs. There was no medical care and it took an hour for an Air Zimbabwe manager to have water distributed. He tried to reassure them by saying that the airline’s chief executive was on his way to the airport. “The passengers retorted that they did not eat CEOs”"