Links - 9th June 2011

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." - Henry David Thoreau

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Got Camel Toe - Welcome to Cuchini.com - "Hey Girls. Camel Toe might be hot... if you are a Guy!! But who wants to be the one sporting it? Some secrets are meant to be kept... The Cuchini is a comfortable, light-weight material that adheres to any undergarment (panties, bikini, sports attire, etc). It smoothes the ridges of a woman’s mons pubis area providing a smooth and camouflaged appearance. This eliminates what is commonly known as "Camel Toe." The Cuchini products are designed by women to provide comfort and convenience."

YouTube - DSK - the missing link - "I've figured out what's really going on with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and why he hasn't been able to get the sexual healing. It's just one big cultural misunderstanding...."
If she were male and/or if DSK were a member of a minority race, there'd be hell to pay

Whistleblower officer says Russian troops served dog food

'Granny' mugger strikes S.African shopping centre - ""I went back to the mall and reported the incident to the security guards, who advised me to go to a police station and open a case," he said. "Before I could leave another man came into the security control room to report that he had also been robbed by two men and a granny.""

How Britain fell in love with Krispy Kreme doughnuts

Report: Teen sells kidney to buy iPad 2

VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match – not even Jane Austen - "He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said. He added: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way"... In the past Naipaul has criticised India's top female authors for their "banality" on the topic he is best known for writing about, the legacy of British colonialism"
Luckily he's not white

Gays and God: German Catholic Doctors Offer Homeopathic 'Gay Treatment'

If You Want to Know if Spot Loves You So, It's in His Tail - "When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left."

PAP’s Sitoh SACKS all 16 staff of Potong Pasir Town Council - "PAP MP for Potong Pasir Sitoh Yih Pin has reneged on his promise to retain all the staff at Potong Pasir Town Council by sacking all of them before referring them to reapply to be hired under EM Services, the new estate managing company."
After his refusal to repair the solar lamps in 2006, this comes as no surprise

FoodPornDaily

The Drug Metyrapone to Erase Bad Memories?

Cycling in Singapore: When on footpaths, cyclists should not be ringing bells at pedestrians - ""I became a victim of bicycle rage on Monday"...
"so a guy on a footpath got bumped by a douchebag on a bike and had a whinge to the paper about it. so what? what about the 3 cyclists every 2 weeks who are killed or seriously injured by motorists. and how many of those motorists serve any significant jail time?"
"I know personally of at least two friends who were injured by cyclists on a footpath""
It's heartening to see from the comments, that there're douchebag cyclists as well as douchebag motorists

21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue

Japanese seniors volunteer for Fukushima 'suicide corps' - "The group, consisting only of retirees age 60 and up, says it is uniquely poised to work at the radiation-contaminated plant, as the cells of an older person's body divide more slowly than a younger individual."

Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug

“War on Drugs Has Not, and Cannot, be Won”: New Report - "The report, compiled by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, top Republican ex-cabinet members in the US, high-profile economists like Paul Volcker and many others, is blunt: “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won”... The industrialized world is already seeing a slow trend towards decriminalization"

Epidemiology and prognosis of coma in daytime television dramas - "Objective To determine how soap operas portray, and possibly misrepresent, the likelihood of recovery for patients in coma.
Conclusions The portrayal of coma in soap operas is overly optimistic. Although these programmes are presented as fiction, they may contribute to unrealistic expectations of recovery."

Maureen Dowd's misguided new book. - "Like the crude, sexist men she lampoons, Dowd is extremely fond of clever stereotyping... "Deep down all men want the same thing: a virgin in a gingham dress," or "if there's one thing men fear it's a woman who uses her critical faculties." To support these generalizations, Dowd relies on the faux journalism of women's magazines. She cobbles together anecdotal evidence from people she encounters... The problem with this approach is that one could go out and find a 29-year-old publicist who would say the opposite... it is especially important not to neglect nuance. One of the failures of the feminist movement in the first place was a reliance on easy aphorisms, and the schematic worldview that such aphorisms implied. The famous line, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" did not prove to be a constructive or realistic contribution to the feminist cause. Replacing one set of rigid gender stereotypes with another did not allow women the full range of their desires and ended up sabotaging the movement"

YouTube - BBC misandry: Do we need men? - "A particularly unpleasent example of misandry from the BBC programme This Week - a debate on whether men are still needed, now that sperm has been created in a test tube."
"Can any defence be made of men these days? I guess not"
"Men just need to kind of sit on the noddy step for a while and let women take over"

What is wrong with American English? - "Why do we dislike American spelling and grammar?... I far prefer their slightly more consistent use of grammar. I love it. When I read the Guardian website, I get a headache and switch to the New Yorker or The New York Times to counterbalance the effect. See, these guys have clear distinctions. They insist on using which only in non-restrictive clauses; that is used in restrictive clauses. Most of their publications still use whom to refer to the object in a sentence.  And something I rarely see in publications influenced by the British is the American use of that for inanimate objects and who is reserved for the rest of us. Oh, give me an American writer any day... What many people might not know is that the Americans kept many of the old British spellings when they became independent. There is also nothing wrong with -ize endings; the British have been using such endings for a couple of centuries I (it is also the preferred spelling of the OED)"

Managing Your Career as an Economist after Tenure - "Potomac fever is contagious and incurable. I know one economist who deliberately hired an undocumented nanny as a commitment device to avoid the temptation of government"

Conflicting Reports Over Death Of Katya Koren, 19-Year-Old 'Muslim' Beauty Queen, Emerge - "Ukrainian officials have slammed media claims that a teenage beauty queen was stoned to death by three Muslim suspects who alleged the 19-year-old violated Sharia law by participating in pageants"

Man ordered to pay £100,000 for children after ex-wife tricks clinic into using his frozen sperm - "His ex-wife, now 51, said: ‘I don’t believe I have done anything wrong. It was getting later and later for me and I wanted to have a child. If I had not done it then I would not be blessed with my children. I have no regrets.’"

About A Boy - "[I changed my handle] as a response to some of the most hateful misandrist bile I have seen in a long time, from, yes, you guessed it, feminist bloggers. Not just misandrist but also transphobic, nasty, nasty stuff. That in my mind boils down to the ‘eugenics’ element in ‘radical feminism’."
"My reaction to always having male privilege thrown in my face at every turn…has been to refute its unilaterality, and thus it’s power. If female privilege exists, then male privilege isn’t a damning thing that can make you evil. It just happens to be stuff people take advantage of."

For Microsoft Customers, It's About Perspective Not Religion - "I came to the Microsoft side of the fence for the same reason that most did, not out of any particular love of the company or its products but rather from pragmatism... Windows users—even Windows fans—tend to be a lot less religious and a lot more pragmatic about the technologies they choose... The biggest difference between those who advocate non-Microsoft solutions and those who simply use Microsoft's products and services is that the former are obsessed about their choice and the choices that other people make. On the PC side, we're simply not obsessed about either. Obviously, we use PCs. And we understand that some other people do not. We're just not interested in pushing our worldview on others. This sounds very general, and it is, but it's also very true."