Links - 4th August 2010

"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name." - Aldous Huxley

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Schneier on Security: Pork-Filled Counter-Islamic Bomb Device

The ups and downs of being a freelancer - "No set routine... Creative and intellectual fulfillment... Being able to work wherever you like... Crowd avoidance...
Idleness... Social isolation... The need to sell yourself... No employee benefits... The financial rollercoaster... Taxes"

Why travel solo when you can trip pool? - "Mr Liow and his male friend, for example, waited four hours to take a shower during their Taiwan trip, as they did not realise that the five women travelling with them would take that long to bathe."

Does Language Influence Culture? - "Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. And Shakespeare, it turns out, was wrong about roses: Roses by many other names (as told to blindfolded subjects) do not smell as sweet."

Male road accidents soar in summer due to women's short skirts

Legal actions against international media - The File Cabinet - "A list of cases of the international media being punished by the Singapore government and/or judicial system... The list is still in progress, so do not take it as a comprehensive listing. If you have more cases to contribute, feel free to email me with the details."

Car Thieves Picky About Color - "The least popular colors in North America are yellow/gold at 2% and beige/brown at 5%. These and other bright colors deter car thieves. Not only do these vehicles have a lower resale value, but they are also like a flashing neon sign"

Britain has no need to make an apology to India for Empire... - "Indians require no apology for Empire and seek none, and nor do Britons need to feel especially guilty for it... All that is best about India - its tolerance, freedom and engagement with the world - has flourished due to the structures and ideas it inherited from British rule"

Hot Chicks with Stormtroopers

delanceyplace: the oil curse - "If you're an oil state, it's far more efficient to ask oil buyers for more money than to collect taxes from your population... When a state develops the ability to collect taxes, the bureaucracy and mechanisms it creates are expensive. They perpetuate their existence by diligently collecting as much money as possible and encouraging the growth of a private economy to collect taxes from. A strong private economy, so the thinking goes, creates a strong civil society... Taxes aren't democracy, but they seem to connect taxpayers and government in a way that has democratizing effects... oil, and mineral-exporting countries have a 23 percent likelihood of civil war within five years, compared to less than 1 percent for nondependent countries"

Second Passport and Second Citizenship for any kind of purpose - "EU Passport $9,900, Guyana $18,700, Suriname $17,400, Nicaragua $16,000"
Interestingly, one field is "Military Duty?"

Old Spice Sales Double With YouTube Campaign

8 Websites You Need to Stop Building - The Oatmeal - "Digg and Reddit Clones: 'I've got it! I'll create a social news website by picking a word, dropping a word from it, and then letting users vote on what's popular! It's genius, I tell you!'"

Work experience at the FO? Not if you¿re a middle class white male - "Under the tightly-drawn rules, only women, people from ethnic ­minorities and the ­disabled are ­entitled to apply for a chance to work at one of the great offices of state"
"Jewish Privilege" was why they introduced the Aryan Paragraphs [Addendum: or the Nuremberg Laws, and was a contributor factor to the Holocaust]

YouTube - Un perro muy jugueton - "An old lady getting humped by a horney dog, dont know if thats the funniest or most disgusting thing I have ever seen LOL"

Justin Bieber's Failed Segway Getaway - "Justin Bieber's physical well-being was endangered this week when his Segway failed to outrun a gawping throng of twelve year old girls. I've never been more thankful for the existence of video cameras."

Federal judge says you can break DRM if you're not doing so to infringe copyright - "This is a complete reversal of earlier rulings across the country (and completely opposite to the approach that the US Trade Representative has demanded from America's trading partners)"

The Longest Photographic Exposures in History

The power of speech - "The idea that we can be enlightened or destroyed by living with exotic people has transfixed western societies since before Joseph Conrad's rogue trader Kurtz was corrupted in the Congo. Yet Everett's life could be a more dramatic example of enlightenment and destruction than any fictional encounter with a drastically different culture. Thirty years living with the Pirah? destroyed his evangelical faith in God, wrecked his marriage and estranged him from two of his three children. It also dismantled his intellectual framework... he is continuing his fight with Noam Chomsky in a debate that could transform our understanding of human language... "What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirah?. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell"... "One of the saddest things I've seen in Amazonian cultures is people who were self-sufficient and happy that now think of themselves as poor and become dissatisfied with their lives""

Are Too Many Students Going to College? - "All high-school students should receive a cost-benefit analysis of the various options suitable to their situations: four-year college, two-year degree program, short-term career-prep program, apprenticeship program, on-the-job training, self-employment, the military. Students with weak academic records should be informed that, of freshmen at "four year" colleges who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high-school class, two-thirds won't graduate even if given eight and a half years. And that even if such students defy the odds, they will likely graduate with a low GPA and a major in low demand by employers. A college should not admit a student it believes would more wisely attend another institution or pursue a noncollege postsecondary option. Students' lives are at stake, not just enrollment targets."

Aussie horse butcher 'faces death threats'
Now for whale, dog and cat meat

Woman 'wakes up' with foreign accent - " Fewer than 100 people in the world have been officially documented as suffering from the syndrome, which leaves them speaking with an alien accent. In the case of Mrs Fox, it is a mixture of Welsh, Scottish and North London accents"

Terror arrest threat for rail passenger who took photos on train to prove overcrowding
Of course, he got an apology

A liturgical occurrence - "The priest was at the altar with the doors open when suddenly a small boy, not more than four or five years old, broke loose from his parents and ran up towards the altar and… charged right through the doors and started tugging on the priests vestments"

Nasi KangKang - "Nasi KangKang, literally means Squatting Rice. It's some sort of love potion made for men. It was believed that after eating the rice, the man was bound to abide entirely by the woman's wishes. His mind will be reset and zombified. Any of the woman's wishes such as, "buy me a diamond" would be fulfilled immediately"

YouTube - Dai Mahou Touge - Vegetable Suicide
Damn Japs

Je suis mariée et je me masturbe - "Arrêtez de nier la réalité et de dire que la taille n'a aucune importance, c'est pire que de l'hypocrisie de dire cela, Au risque d'être vulgaire : enfoncez vous un cure-dent ou un coton-tige dans le vagin et si vous jouissez prévenez moi ? Car un penis petit et fin fait à peu de choses le même effet...."

Beware the office feeder: They tempt with sweets and treats, but never tuck in themselves - what are they up to? - "They like to see others eating, because it reinforces their own sense of mastery and self-will, and they feel good about avoiding calories when someone else is consuming them in front of their eyes"

Shoppers on a ‘Diet’ Tame the Urge to Buy - "The premise was to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in your closet (not counting shoes, underwear or accessories)... women, on average, own seven pairs of jeans but wear only four regularly"