Links - 19th June 2011

"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute." - Josh Billings

***

La face cachée des Schtroumpfs dévoilée dans "Le Petit Livre bleu" - "Les Schtroumpfs, charmants lutins bleus ou horribles staliniens, racistes et antisémites ' Pour y schtroumpfer plus clair, Antoine Buéno offre dans "Le Petit Livre bleu" une lecture socio-politique inédite et ludique de la saga de Peyo"

Onion-like Headlines in Real Life

Chinese dog eaters and dog lovers spar over animal rights - "“They were just a group of rich bullies who own pets and have nothing better to do”... many have noted the symbolic nature of the confrontation: a working trucker forced off the road by a black Mercedes-Benz whose driver was on his way to a resort hotel with his girlfriend. The issue comes with historical baggage as well, notes Jiang Jinsong, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. “During the Cultural Revolution, having a pet was seen as a capitalist activity. Only the rich and arrogant had dogs and allowed them to bite poor people,” he said. “So there’s this implication that if you treated pets well, you will treat those who are weaker badly”... Enraged by activists fighting for animals while ignoring the plight of so many rural, impoverished Chinese, a man in Guangzhou posted threats online to kill a dog a day until animal activists donate the money they raised to peasants living in poverty instead of to dogs... “The animal activists claim to have the moral high ground, but look at what they did to me. Can they really say they have love at the front of their heart?”"

Service Rat Licks Woman When It’s Time to Take Meds

47 percent of Facebook walls covered in profanity

Alton attorney accidentally sues himself

Ultimate Asslock - "Sometimes, you want others to know that your ass is off-limits... [This is] Modeled on the medieval torture device known as "The Pear of Anguish""

Tragic end to a fishball noodle supper - "The young couple's late night supper date turned tragic after an argument over chopsticks. As fate would have it, just a year before the accident Miss Chong was told by a fortune teller that she would die young. Her life ended abruptly when she was just 20."

Worst French Mistakes - "At a restaurant I turned to the female colleague sitting beside me, leaned towards her and whispered, "Je n'ai plus femme."
She wanted to say, "Thank you for driving me around." but the sentence became "Merci pour me chauffer"... He turned bright red and laughed and said, "Avec plaisir, mademoiselle."
Asking a nice young male assitant "je voudrais une pipe" only brought on some very peculiar looks! Especially as I am female and was twice his age....
He declared loudly that he wanted some of that "confit de connard"
I once attempted to ask a guy if he was hungry, but ended up asking if he was a woman. Oops.
Talking about feminist issues I said, "je vais bruler la bra"
I was in involved in a frisbee contest - and my team won. I immediately started shouting: "Hurrah, nous sommes les champignons!"
Une Américaine was hired to teach first-year French at an exclusive private school in Dallas. An enthusiastic beginner, she had T-shirts made for the French Club that said “Baisez-moi, je parle français.”
I was visiting my French boyfriend's family for the first time. They had lots of small dogs who were excitedly jumping all over me. I thought it was because I'd been stroking a cat earlier and said in French that it was because my hands must smell of cat - except that I got the gender wrong and referred to 'la chatte' rather than 'le chat'"

German officials see no E coli fault at organic farm
Quackwatch: "Scientific agriculture has provided Americans with the safest and most abundant food supply in the world. Agricultural chemicals are needed to maintain this supply. The risk from pesticide residue, if any, is minuscule, is not worth worrying about, and does not warrant paying higher prices."

Ecstatic self-butchering pig

“Mommy Tummy” Suit Gives Men a Chance to Feel Pregnant

Nobel Prize for economics… not quite. - "There is a saying in Korea that even a monkey can fall from a tree. Yes, we all make mistakes, and one failure – even if it is a gigantic one like LTCM – we can accept as a mistake. But the same mistake twice? Then you know that the first mistake was not really a mistake. Merton and Scholes did not know what they were doing"

Vancouver Riot's Kissing Couple Identified

Kids Watch Lady Gaga Eat Paper, Are Understandably Confused - "10-year-old Sloane does offer his insight into why Lady Gaga adopted her persona. "If she would just be herself, she would just be another singer that sings well""

Minimum Wage Increase Would Help Sluggish Economy, Say Experts

Racist who filled Muslims' shoes with ham as they prayed in a mosque walks free from court - "[He] also draped slices of the meat - which Muslims are banned from eating - on railings outside the mosque as his victims prayed inside... Mubarak Mohamud, one of the three imams at the Al-Baseera mosque, claimed the inflammatory act had upset the Muslim community. He said: 'There wasn't anger, people were more upset and shocked... We don't hate the man - we just suppose he doesn't know us'"

New research an eye opener on cause of myopia - "While the belief that prolonged close-up activities like reading and playing computer games cause short sightedness (myopia) is popularly held, new research indicates that a deficiency of sunlight is the true culprit"

awesome people hanging out together - "Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Cuba, 1960)"

How drug companies' PR tactics skew the presentation of medical research

Chess Grand Masters Have Average Cognitive Skills - "Contrary to all the old wisdom that chess is an intellectual activity based on analysis, many of the chess master's important decisions about which moves to make happen in the immediate act of perceiving the board"

Disappointed by disrespectful Gen Y - "Our education policy has helped them get good-paying jobs and a head start in life, but it has also led to a rebellious and ungracious Generation Y... We invite foreigners to our house to work and contribute to our growth. Foreign visitors contribute by paying indirect taxes. Some people are calling for the abolishment of GST on basic necessities, health care and education, thinking it will benefit our poorer siblings more. By doing so, we will lose a bigger bulk of contributions from our richer siblings and foreigners. Moreover, by removing GST on selected goods, it will adversely lead to suppliers increasing their base prices... We agree that high pay to attract the top brains as ministers is in the best interest of our family, as they shoulder the most important responsibilities"
Yes! Another ST Forum letter...

Pig Pig's Corner | Pinching Pintxos in San Sebastian
Tapas porn

Watermelons explode like landmines - "Fields of watermelons have been exploding like landmines in China after farmers gave them overdoses of growth chemicals during wet weather"

Terence Chang's Long Exposure Photos Of SFO Airport (PHOTOS)

Police began investigations into PRC deliveryman’s racist remarks, but no arrests made - "It remains to be seen if the pro-foreigner Singapore police is willing to pursue the case with the same rigor as they did for a similar case last year involving three students from Singapore Polytechnic. The trio were arrested ONE DAY after a police report was filed against them for cracking mild jokes about Indians on Facebook which paled in comparison to the ’strong’ language used by Mr Zhou. In the meantime, there are still no updates from the police on the reports lodged against inflammatory comments made by PAP supporters on Ms Tin Pei Ling’s Facebook two weeks ago."

Sex and 5 O'clock Shadow - "The rate of growth of the male's beard seems to be related to his sexual activity"

JB supper trip turns into nightmare for 2 women - "TWO Singaporean women who drove to Johor Baru for supper found themselves questioned by Malaysian immigration officers, handcuffed, thrown behind bars and made to do squats while naked... Ms Lim said they drove for another five minutes before they realised there would not be another counter. The women realised that they had proceeded through Malaysian Customs without getting their passports stamped, and immediately did a U-turn... Now back in Singapore, both women say they will never go back to Malaysia. 'I don't think I will ever want to step into Malaysia any
more. I am worried this thing will happen again'"
Malaysia Boleh!

How the West makes the East look like a MESS - "IT'S HARD to imagine that anyone in the world would ever want to go to Bangkok after watching The Hangover Part II... unless you fancy getting shot by a Russian gangster, being sexually assaulted by a transsexual prostitute, dying in a car crash, losing your finger, losing your hair, getting stuck in an elevator for two days or being beaten with a stick by monks - yes, monks - then the Land of Smiles is best avoided... 'much of The Hangover Part II plays like an anti-travelogue paid for by a rival tourist destination - Singapore, maybe'... "I feel that the film actually is quite honest about the way Western people 'see' Thailand"... [with] the elephant-infested streets to the toothless extras to icky go-go bars to the grimy tattoo parlours, the city is like something from a Hieronymous Bosch painting... It's actually to the Thais' credit that they aren't up in arms over The Hangover Part II, that they are able to see it for what it is - just another dumb Hollywood comedy that doesn't amount to a hill of beans"
Funny, no one complained about Eurotrip. Bah, racism. Interestingly the Thais come out looking the most sensible of the lot