Links - 23rd December 2010

"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either." - Dick Cavett

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The Pursuit of Thai Coyotes in Singapore - "“Normal Singapore girls are a waste of time”, Elvin says. “They string you along and dump you if you don’t match up to their high expectations or if you fail to impress their group of girlfriends. “But these Thai girls, they’re nice and simple. When you do sweet things for them, they recognize the sincerity and appreciate the gesture. They are kind and friendly. There was even this one girl who ran out to buy me some cough mixture from a nearby 7-11 when she noticed me coughing. I was so touched! Where can you find a girl like that in Singapore?"
For some reason, "self-sufficient, competent and opinionated" are framed as bad qualities for women to have. One commenter suggested "stubborn, self-indulgent, and selfish" (though that was labelled 'reckless')

‘1001 Inventions’ at New York Hall of Science - "[The exhibition is] meant to show that the Western Dark Ages really were a Golden Age of Islam... There are serious problems with this exhibition, but this has had no effect on its international acclaim... It is less a typical science exhibition than a typical “identity” exhibition... to “instill confidence” and provide positive “role models” for young Muslims... Some assertions go well beyond the evidence. Hovering above the show is a glider grasped by a ninth-century inventor from Cordoba, Abbas ibn Firnas, “the first person to have actually tried” to fly. But that notion is based on a source that relied on ibn Firnas’s mention in a ninth-century poem. It also ignores the historian Joseph Needham’s description of Chinese attempts as early as the first century. The model of the flying machine is pure speculation. And some claims are simply incorrect: catgut was used in surgical sutures by Galen in the second century, long before al-Zahrawi (named here as its pioneer)... Religious affiliation actually seems far more important here than is acknowledged... the 15th-century Chinese explorer Zheng He, a Muslim, is celebrated though he has no deep connection to Golden Age cultures"
The Muslim Heritage Foundation has a reply, but the most easily checkable claim - that Galen mentioned catgut centuries before al-Zahrawi - is attested by many sources

Kidney recipient finds out donor is wife's lover - "A BUSINESSMAN with end-stage renal disease was saved from death by a kidney donation from a man who was a friend of his wife. His gratitude turned to anger and depression when he found out about a month after the operation that the good Samaritan was actually his wife's lover. Worse was to come. The donor turned out to be the father of his four-year-old daughter, too... 'Nothing affronts the ego of a man more than being cuckolded and that in his own home and perhaps even in his own bed. The saddest aspect was that the perpetrator was the man who had saved his life'"
This is damn screwed up; by framing it as an 'ego' issue the lawyer just makes his client (and men in general) look bad. But then framing it as "hurt", "trauma", "betrayal", "humiliation" etc (which gets women sympathy) might make his client look feminine.

Luxury hotel rooms in Melbourne filthy, report finds - ""The study's results were stomach-churning - it found dirty toilets, scummy showers, mouldy bathrooms, stained mattresses riddled with pubic hairs and even infectious bacteria," he said. "In one hotel bed I found a dozen pubic hairs and in another I found what appeared to be semen stains"
This is why I don't pay for expensive hotels

No evidence against man in child porn inquiry who 'killed himself' - "There were "no substantive criminal offences" to warrant pressing charges. But the Second Sea Lord, Sir James Burnell-Nugent, feared that the media would report the case and on 7 January removed him from his post anyway... If it was suicide, it would have taken to 34 the total number of people who have killed themselves after being identified as suspects by Operation Ore, Britain's biggest child-sex probe"

Judge Weinstein Takes On Child Pornography Laws - "There is little public sympathy for collectors of child pornography. Yet across the country, an increasing number of federal judges have come to their defense, criticizing changes to sentencing laws that have effectively quadrupled their average prison term over the last decade... the recommended sentences for looking at pictures of children being sexually abused sometimes eclipse those for actually sexually abusing a child... he does not believe that those who view the images, as opposed to producing or selling them, present a threat to children. “We’re destroying lives unnecessarily,” he said. “At the most, they should be receiving treatment and supervision”"

The Secret of Speedy Gonzales: Hispanic Race Consciousness - "The very people leading the protest of the mouse's disappearance from the airways were Hispanics themselves... LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, "the nation's oldest Hispanic-American rights organization," called Speedy "a 'cultural icon' who displayed plenty of admirable pluck." "It's been silly not to have Speedy on the air because people watch him in Latin America, and they love him"... One fan on HispanicOnline wrote that "Speedy is more of a positive symbol. He always brings down that Daffy Duck to the point that the latter finally started respecting Speedy. People like Speedy." Indeed, last April Miss Cueto told the New York Times' Tom Kuntz that "many Hispanics view Speedy as a positive ethnic reflection because he always outsmarts the 'greengo' cat Sylvester""

Getting it on for science - "One researcher found that women say that they prefer female-centered porn... But if you look at their blood volume, they were responding to both of them the same. So, it's just all much more subtle for women... Women are really indiscriminate in what they respond to, which is totally counterintuitive. It doesn't matter who is having sex in the video, women have a physiological response... Women also seem to be more easily distracted during sex. Kinsey had this line in one of his books that said, "Cheese crumbs spread in front of a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, but not the male""

Man pleads guilty to Mr Whippy hijacking - "A DRUNK New Zealander hijacked a Mr Whippy van at knifepoint then hurled ice creams at passers-by during a vanilla and alcohol-fuelled rampage... The unemployed man then used the van's facilities to make soft serve ice creams and throw them at people on the footpath"

Most depressing jobs: working with elderly, food service, accountants, health care - "Nursing home/child care worker
Food service worker
Social worker
Health-care worker
Artists, entertainers, writers
Teachers
Administrative staff support
Maintenance and grounds workers
Financial advisers and accountants
Salespeople"
Perhaps there's self-selection for "Artists, entertainers, writers" - people who like to be emo go into those lines

WHEN PARENTS TEXT™ - "Mom: Come down & get ur Bras off the chair Plz"

Church Protects Manger with GPS Jesus

Miss TSA 2011: Invasive TSA Scanners Inspire Sarcastic Pin-Up Calendar

YouTube - AXE : Tiens-toi prêt !
This video is still hilarious for non-Francophones; AXE, Rise Up Girls ! (http://www.riseupgirls.fr/) is more great stuff

Glenn Connley: Singapore needs to get over its condom phobia - "I’ve got news for the Mums and Dads of Singapore’s youth: YOUR CHILDREN ARE HAVING SEX. Whether you like it or not. And you can’t stop them... there were just 17 HIV positive people living in Singapore in 1990... Last year, Singapore hit a new peak of 463. Should we really be discussing pre-marital sex? Let me end that debate here and now -- everyone’s doing it. It’s time to swing the focus onto the real issue: staying alive."

ieatishootipost blogs Singapore's best food: How to Make Roti Prata aka Roti Canai: Everything you need to know! - "This post is necessarily long because I want to include everything which I have learnt over the course of the last month or so from talking to Prata Men, studying Prata flipping videos and even to the extent of discussing the characteristics of flour with the expert at Prima Flour Mills. I have included a few recipes plus a slideshow on how to make the dough and 2 videos where I demonstrate, step by step, the dynamics of the Prata flip as well as another method to achieve the same Roti Prata which even a 5 year old can do. I hope that by reading this post, you will be making Pratas at home in no time and wowing your friends with your Prata Prowess"