Links - 6th January 2011

"My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost $7.00 in dog money." - Joe Weinstein

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I Love Charts - "By people who love charts for people who love charts"

The Daily Patdown - "Your daily dose of security theater."

Bangable Dudes in History - "Dead man porn for your still-beating heart"

About : English / General Paper / IB TOK Tuition - "I write my own curriculum* that covers basics from stringing a coherent sentence, to eventually writing cogent essays. It comprises the skills I learnt at Harvard, students' learning experiences, and current recommendations from industry players. With some tweaking, it can be applied to all levels of learning... A firm grasp of English is a corollary to critical writing and both are not mutually exclusive...
Work Experience: Taught a Boston inner-city teenager English.
Vetted written, academic work of Harvard roommate.
Nominated for the President of the Republic of Singapore Social Service Award
Referee: Professor Mary C. Brinton"
Ad for this: "Harvard Honors Grad Tutor
Harvard University honors graduate offering English / GP & IB tuition."
This is quite sad.

YouTube - Funny Sexy Japanese Upskirt Game Show
Damn Japs

The World's Best Country for Women - "Swedish men rarely offer to pay, nor do they perform any other conventional courtesies, such as holding a door open or helping a woman visibly struggling under the load of a heavy bag. "Naturally, we can't complain"... With gender equality comes further dating awkwardness: By American standards, Swedish men are painfully slow to make the first romantic move. "Men treat women like friends," Anna-Maria says. "They rarely chat you up, unless they're drunk." Instead, Anna-Maria often does the asking herself. "Sure, I'd like to be chased, but men have grown lazy in Sweden. So I take the initiative. Though I have to say, it detracts from the sexual intrigue"... the world's first "female-friendly car"... is packed with woman-specific features: seats that auto-adjust to a female body shape, a special groove in the headrest for ponytails, and a high-heel rest near the foot pedals... While the [Feminist] party was initially touted as "the way for women's future," its support plummeted after its convention several months ago, during which members sang a rowdy song about "chopping men to bits"... Japanese women live longer, American women earn higher salaries, Greek women have lower rates of breast cancer, and according to one poll, Italian men are better kissers"

Who Gives A Tweet? - "Ever wondered what people think about your tweets? Get feedback from followers and the Internet!"

10 Things You Should Never Say to Your Boyfriend - Love + Sex on Shine - ""Do You Think She's Pretty?"
When you ask a question like this, your boyfriend knows he can’t win."
The advice here is so good, it must've been written by a guy

Audiophile Deathmatch: Monster Cables vs. a Coat Hanger - "Not only "after 5 tests, none [of the audiophiles] could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire," but no one knew a coat hanger was used in the first place"

Woody - Imgur - NSFW disturbing images of Woody from Toy Story

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction | Video on TED.com - "The "representative foreigner." In our classroom, there were children from all nationalities. Yet, this diversity did not necessarily lead to a cosmopolitan, egalitarian classroom democracy. Instead, it generated an atmosphere in which each child was seen, not as an individual on his own, but as the representative of something larger... He wanted to see the manifestation of my identity. He was looking for a Turkish woman in the book because I happened to be one... If you're a woman writer from the Muslim world, like me, then you are expected to write the stories of Muslim women and, preferably, the unhappy stories of unhappy Muslim women... When identity politics tries to put labels on us, it is our freedom of imagination that is in danger... [There is a] tendency to see a story as more than a story... I want to love and celebrate fiction for what it is, not as a means to an end... in creative writing courses today, the very first thing we teach students is write what you know? Perhaps that's not the right way to start at all... We should get out of our cultural ghetto and go visit the next one and the next"

English in Switzerland - "One is tempted to establish a correlation between the relative openness towards English and the minority/majority status of the territorial language: the larger the language territory is and the more speakers of the national Swiss language it has, the more open it is to allow English in. And the smaller the territory is, the less likey it is that English will be used... Swiss people, on the whole, cannot be considered truly multilingual, often they are not even functionally bilingual"

YouTube - The woman language translator - "The Manslater even works with men!... "Hey, mind if I catch a movie with guys?" "You are a lovely, wonderful woman who meets all of my needs, and even though I will miss you, this night I wish to see Death Cop 9 with my bros"
Addendum: Curiously, this was "Created for the Relationship Rehab series at http://centralchristian.com."

Biblical scholar's date for rapture: May 21, 2011 - "Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012. "That date has not one stitch of biblical authority... It's like a fairy tale." The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011... This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day... "We are now translated into 48 languages and have been transmitting into China on an AM station without getting jammed once," Camping said. "How can that happen without God's mercy?""
Let's see what his new excuse will be in May

Remembering the Boxer Uprising: A righteous fist | The Economist - "Debate still rages over what to make of the Boxer Uprising and how it relates to Chinese nationalism today. In 2006 a liberal weekly newspaper supplement, Freezing Point, was briefly closed down and its editor fired for publishing an article that said the portrayal of Boxer history in Chinese textbooks was poisoning the minds of young people. A journalist for History, a Beijing magazine, compares the empress-dowager Cixi’s manipulation of the Boxers with Hitler’s of German nationalists. China, he says, is in danger of breeding a similar mentality of vengeful nationalism unless it gets its history straight... Because both killers and victims in Zhujiahe were Chinese, communist histories gloss over the massacre. Wei County’s museum offers a rare mention of the event as if it were one of a series of Boxer victories"

YouTube - Pole Art - First pole dance video - pole art practice (Original)
Pachelbel's Canon is a strange song to pole dance to

YouTube - Cami Secret. Custom Cleavage. - "You love that low-cut top for going out at night, but in the office it's just not right. You've tried safety pins, but they leave holes and just look wrong, and with a camisole you end up tugging and adjusting all-day long"
6 of these for $10 is very cheap. But I suspect shipping & handling is steep

The science vs. creationism debate exemplified on a facebook page - "dont ever comment on my status telling me that i am wrong everrrr again. I didnt ask you did i? Answer: NO"

Margaret Thatcher 'death' website condemned as vulgar - "is Thatcher dead yet?, gives a simple progress report on the deteriorating health of the 85-year-old. Guests are currently told 'NOT YET' in large capital letters. A smaller message underneath adds: 'Can't be long though... she's still in hospital'... Visitors are also directed to a playlist on music streaming website Spotify and told to 'enjoy' songs such as Margaret On The Guillotine by Morrissey 'in the meantime'. The playlist features songs such as Stand Down Margaret by The Beat and Thatcher F***** the Kids by Frank Turner. Other songs include Margaret Thatcher, We Still Hate You by Terry Edwards and the Scapegoats and The Day That Thatcher Dies by Hefner... 'The reaction has been mainly positive - there is ten times more negativity towards Margaret Thatcher than towards the website... There are a lot of songs that criticise Thatcher but we couldn't find any for the playlist that praise her'"

The War Against English Language Invasion | - "[France's] Toubon Law... ludicrously wanted any use of the words ‘cheeseburger’ and ‘airbag’ to be punished with a six month prison sentence... the Chinese are also introducing legislation to stem the flow of ‘Chinglish’ across China... A retired school teacher... had gone to catch a train at a station in Bavaria and became incensed at the ‘Kiss&Ride’ zone outside the entrance whereby car drivers could drop off and pick up passengers without having to park... My favourite change is to the bicycle rental facility which has gone from being called ‘Call-A-Bike’ to the much more user-friendly ‘das Mietrad-Angebot der Deutschen Bahn’. Rumour has it that the parliamentarian who took up the complaint (Ernst Hinsken) was very keen to champion the cause because a newspaper had run a recent headline stating ‘Hinsken for Kiss & Ride’. He was apparently concerned that Germans who had only a faint grasp of English might think he was advocating a drive-by red light district... Even in English speaking nations, there are many examples of restrictions being put in place to stop English words creeping into the English language"