Links - 9th December 2010

"If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system." - Tony Benn.

"Does Assange pass the Tony Benn test?"

***

Boy's toys the new frontier for erotica industry - ""A woman who uses a sex toy is a woman who is exploring her body," Pruvot told AFP. "But a man using a sex toy is seen as someone who can't get a woman"... "A white design will suggest a feminine product. With black and gold, you are moving into more masculine codes," he said. And the same applies to smells: for the scent of his latest massage oil Palix hired a professional perfumer, who chose unisex notes like ginger and rosemary instead of the feminine vanilla or passion fruit"
The ST version of this article was uncharacteristically - but predictably - redacted

41Latitude - Google Maps & Label Readability - "Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem Much More “Readable” Than Those of Its Competitors?"

Power_Rangers - Power Rangers Porn (mostly cartoons)
This is quite disturbing (found through a search related to Facebook picture memes). Though I like the comment "ninja storm boner form "

Islamist Turkey vs. Secular Iran? :: Daniel Pipes - "Iran has a unique potential to lead Muslims out of the dark night of Islamism toward a more modern, moderate, and good neighborly form of Islam. As in 1979, that achievement will likely affect Muslims far and wide. Contrarily, while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism's hideous principles makes it loom large as future threat. Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism."

David Ogilvy's Best Business Advice: Branding Strategy Insider - "4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don't delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You'll find no statues of committees.
5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices -- and punishes you."

Study reveals 'secret ingredient' in religion that makes people happier - "Our study offers compelling evidence that it is the social aspects of religion rather than theology or spirituality that leads to life satisfaction"

Do Elite Private Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Students? - "Espenshade found that when comparing applicants with similar grades, scores, athletic qualifications, and family history for seven elite private colleges and universities:
* Whites were three times as likely to get fat envelopes as Asians.
* Hispanics were twice as likely to win admission as whites.
* African-Americans were at least five times as likely to be accepted as whites.
* Athletes were more than twice as likely to get in as non-athletes with similar qualifications."

Do Creationists make good science students? - "The study found no significance between science achievement and cosmological beliefs, but very strong multiple correlations of socioeconomic status and previous science knowledge to science achievement, as well as evidence that the instruction was effective in raising posttest scores"

Hire a Boston WingWoman - "Women are more likely to respond positively to a woman starting up a conversation with them than a man. We can associate better with the same sex, and will not give the appearance of "hitting on" a woman of interest. Instead of using a dating site, where one tries to judge what a person is really like from pictures and profiles, our clients see their prospective partners in person, a major benefit when meeting for the first time as well"

'Sex by Surprise' at Heart of Julian Assange Criminal Probe - ""Whatever 'sex by surprise' is, it's only a offense in Sweden -- not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza," Stephens said. "I feel as if I'm in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls"... one of Assange's accusers... [is] known for her radical feminist views, once wrote a treatise on how to take revenge against men and was once thrown out of Cuba for subversive activities. But others say Assange, who denies any wrongdoing and says the sex was consensual, may have just run afoul of Sweden's unusual rape laws, which are considered pro-feminist because of the consideration given issues of consent when it comes to sexual activity -- including even the issue of whether a condom was used. In fact, the current prosecutor, Marianne Ny, who re-opened the case against Assange, has been active in the proposed reforms of Swedish rape laws that would, if passed, involve an investigation of whether an imbalance in power between two people could void one person's insistence that the sex was consensual"
The irony is that feminists would applaud this if they didn't hate the US even more

Johnny Depp aime la France des écrivains, moins sa conjugaison - "C'est difficile encore la 'conjugation'. Ça me rend dingue... La France est tout pour moi... "Il doit bien y avoir une raison pour laquelle les artistes et les écrivains ont toujours gravité par ici, il y a quelque chose de magnétique... Juste marcher dans les rues, entrer dans ces restaurants comme la Closerie des lilas, c'est de l'histoire et vous le sentez. Je vois Baudelaire au coin de la rue, je vois James Joyce, je vois Simone de Beauvoir et Hemingway et Fitzgerald. Je les sens là"
Un autre site : "Johnny Depp l'a échappé belle: s'il avait épousé une femme grecque, polonaise, tchèque, allemande ou russe, il aurait eu à apprendre également le datif, l'accusatif, le génitif ou encore le vocatif, cas dont la langue française est exempte."

China to award prize to rival Nobel - "Named after the famed philosopher, the new prize was created to "interpret the viewpoints of peace of (the) Chinese (people)"... The first honoree is Lien Chan, Taiwan's former vice president and the honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, for having "built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan." A staffer in his Taipei office said she could not comment Tuesday because she knew nothing about the prize. Lien was chosen from among eight nominees [including] the Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. While China regularly disparages the Dalai Lama, the religion's spiritual leader, the current Panchen Lama is a 20-year-old who was hand-picked by Beijing. The original boy named by the Dalai Lama has disappeared. China is not the first nation to be rankled by a Nobel Peace Prize. During Nazi Germany era, Adolf Hitler created the German National Prize for Art and Science in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel. He had forbidden German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting his Nobel awarded in 1935. Beijing sharpened its denunciations, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu accusing the Nobel committee of "orchestrating an anti-China farce by themselves." "We are not changing because of interference by a few clowns and we will not change our path""
Maybe Lee Kuan Yew will win next year

OECD Affirms High Quality Of Singapore's Education System - "In reading, Singapore students performed better than those from native English-speaking countries like Australia, the United States and United Kingdom"

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

Электронная библиотека - biblioteka.cc - ebooks, if you can navigate the Russian interface. Pratchett's Discworld: Unseen Academicals was on the site

Loner who superimposed Harry Potter star Emma Watson's face on to child porn images is spared jail - "They also found that he had super-imposed his own head onto images from scenes of the Harry Potter films."

YouTube - Japanese Harry Potter Fan - Description from ranker: "When Rupert Grint dorkily sneaks up on Kana at 4:33, his appearance practically sucks all the breath out of her body. When she regains composure, she does the creepiest thing she does in the whole video: She asks what she also asks of Daniell Radcliffe, which is sheepily ask "Touch Ok?". After she gets confirmation that "touch" is "ok", she touches the celebrities' faces and then smells her fingers."

Lady Boys Threaten Foreigner With Stun Gun | Pattaya Daily News - Pattaya Newspaper, Powerful news at your fingertips
Powerful indeed

Why Chinese scientists are dressing up in Panda suits to fool bear cubs
This looks straight out of The Onion

YouTube - Creating Cleavage and Breasts using Silicone Nude Bras REDUX! - "So before any of you complain, 'oh my eyes, oh my eyes', feel free to leave - now"
I think this is the guy (emsy.chan) behind my most popular YouTube video of all time: YouTube - How a guy (or very flat girl) can get decent cleavage with a few nu bras and a pushup bra

Geylang Checker - "This Singapore Website serves the purpose of checking cheating Singaporean men in Geylang. Pictures will be posted here to monitor who went to geylang daily.
We are a dedicated team of private investigators whom do up this as a FREE service to the ladies out there in singapore.
Hourly patrol of gelyang streets to take down pictures of your boyfriends, hubby, male relatives , friends or even male colleagues whom walk along the secret streets of geylang.
A list of car plate numbers will also be filmed down for you to validate your hubby 's claim of doing overtime.
Information will also be revealed on where are the favourite parking place fir cheating guys"
Apparently the images are from Google Street View; "This is complete waste of time by the blogger. There are website who pimp the gals online. If I want to have fun behind my wife/gf, i'd get gals thru these websites so i don't have to worry about being caught in the act. Go check out www.Sammyboy.com freelancer subforums."

Thor Halvorssen: United Nations: It's Okay to Kill the Gay - "Not a single African nation voted against the amendment. This is not surprising. Homosexuality is illegal in most of Africa... Upon arriving in Norway, she was approached by several members of one of Oslo's gay and lesbian organizations who urged her not to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum because they disagreed with our inclusion of several speakers who were outspoken critics of left-wing dictatorships. Sadly, some people in Oslo believe that only those on the left can call themselves human rights defenders -- their double standard usually will manifest itself when they ignore the crimes of the governments they favor... Here was a man who devotes his life to what he describes as stopping the mass killings of babies chastising an event for including someone in our program who wants to stop the mass killings of gays and lesbians... Thus the left, dear reader, thus the right. They deserve each other"

Why men are nicer once they get hitched - "Among identical twins in which one was married and one wasn't, the married twin had fewer antisocial behaviors after the union than the unmarried twin. Given that identical twins, with their similar genetics and childhood environments, are likely to have the same antisocial tendencies, these findings indicate that marriage helped weed out those bad behaviors"
Another FAIL headline: the article goes on to note that "It's not clear why men's behaviors might improve after marriage"

Raffles Premarital medical checkup

The "traditional retweet" : the key to conversation & visibility - "(5) if someone retweets you, it is difficult for you to learn that they did...
(6) if you retweet someone, they will never learn that you did, if they are using the "new twitter"...
I.e., it takes the "social" out of "social media" by eliminating conversation and interaction, insisting on blind rubber stamping"

VOTE FOR ME: Elections Posters in Singapore (1)

YouTube - iklan sunsilk
A shampoo commercial... which doesn't show you her hair. Malaysia Boleh!

20 Examples of Perfectly Timed Animal Photography

Sudan male models fined for make-up 'indecency' - "Under northern Sudan's indecency laws, they could have faced a jail term or been flogged. The legislation was widely criticised last year when a female journalist was jailed for wearing trousers. She was later freed after a public outcry"