Links - 16th October 2011

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all." - Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, Chapter 77

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Woman wants divorce after son's grades dip - "The woman also felt that her husband is a "negative influence" on their son, and wanted to divorce her husband. The woman was very unhappy that her husband often brought their son for outings and she believed that this was affecting her son's studies. She even requested that Dr Hong write a letter stating that her husband was a "negative influence" on her son, so that she could divorce him. Dr Hong refused, as he believed that the woman's husband was bringing their son out to help him relieve stress from the exams. He told the mother that she should change the way she was perceiving the situation, but she did not accept his suggestion. Dr Hong says parents who are excessively concerned about their children's studies are often unhappy with some aspect of their own lives, so they choose to put all their attention on their children instead."

Japan is letting 10,000 tourists visit… for free!! | Ayashii World: Japan's Hidden News Network - "Aiming to recover Japan’s tourism industry, which has suffered badly from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Tourism Ministry has proposed to bring 10,000 tourists from all over the world to visit Japan for free in 2012. Prospective tourists will apply mainly through an Internet application. Those selected will receive a round trip plane ticket. The objective is to have the 10,000 tourists discuss their experiences online, and allow word-of-mouth reports to propagate about safe and hassle-free travel in Japan. Visitors will also fill out a questionnaire about how they feel about visiting Japan after the earthquake and any proposals they might have to renew interest in tourism."

Killer sharks invade golf course in Australia due to flooding - "Local children once jumped in the lake to retrieve lost golf balls for extra pocket money - but it is something they have not done for a while."

Texas Censors Scientists' Work Revealing Impacts of Climate Change

Mitt Romney’s Mormon cult controversy: Anti-Mormonism is the prejudice of our age. - "We’re always fighting the last war. We hammer a politician’s connection to prejudice against blacks, no matter how symbolic the prejudice or how old, distant, and tenuous the connection, because nearly everyone recognizes this bigotry as bigotry. Denouncing it is easy. What’s hard is speaking out against a bias that isn’t so widely recognized. It’s politically difficult because challenging a common prejudice could cost you votes. And it’s morally difficult because the biases of your era are hard to see... If you think liberals are immune to such bias, think again. In the Pew poll, 31 percent of Democrats, compared to 23 percent of Republicans, said they’d be less likely to support a candidate if he were Mormon... 5 percent of adults said they wouldn’t vote for their party’s presidential nominee if he were black. Six percent said they wouldn’t vote for a woman, 7 percent said they wouldn’t vote for a Catholic, 9 percent said they wouldn’t vote for a Jew, and 10 percent said they wouldn’t vote for a Hispanic. But 22 percent said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon... The prejudices you need to work on aren’t the ones you recognize in your grandparents’ generation. They’re the ones you don’t recognize in your own generation, and in yourself"

french teuch - Vulgarité payante - Ma chatte fait "miaou" - "Une robe de pute. Dessinée par une pute, pour toutes les femmes qui ont la chatte qui miaule. Et genre, au cas où tu saurais pas où sont tes seins, on te les as dessinés aussi."

mardecortesbaja.com :: THE DREAM OF THE FISHERMAN'S WIFE - "Most "erotic" works of art aren't erotic at all. They are, at best, vaguely sensual, and at worst merely shocking. The truly erotic is never shocking, but always surprising. The image above by Hokusai strikes me as genuinely erotic. It has a delirious, unreal quality, a sense of suspended boundaries, of otherness becoming familiar and intimate. It doesn't purvey a male fantasy -- more of a female fantasy which no man could actually fulfill. The octopus here is an ideal lover to which men of great industry and imagination might aspire"

Protesters Fail to Occupy Singapore - "Despite planning a demonstration in Singapore’s financial district at 2 p.m. Saturday, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and global protests happening across Asia, the organizers themselves failed to identify themselves. The small crowd at the central square outside Raffles Place MRT station included mostly journalists and photographers, looking listless and bored"
Organisers on Facebook: "#OccupyRafflesPlace is a no show. Typical Singapore."
Someone: "You sound like a bloody sore loser who throws a tantrum when nobody turns up for your event which you don't even dare to attend."
Someone else: "Ermm not sure about the rest, but I don't believe in the 99% crap. The world isn't as simplistic as that."

5 small, authentic restaurants in Singapore - "These are simple eateries, often casual and homey, that pride themselves on making food just like it's prepared "back home." Pizza dough made by hand with proper flour, just as it is done in Italy; squid is sizzled on the grill as it is in Greece; wasabi is freshly grated as it is in Japan. People who know their food are flocking to these restaurants, for a meal that is as good if not in some ways more satisfying than a posh one. They're also spreading the word."

Eric Holder's Justice Department - "In the litany of criticisms leveled at President George W. Bush none was repeated more often than the accusation that he had "politicized the administration of justice"... in the first seven months of the Obama administration, a series of hyper-partisan decisions, questionable appointments, and the inexplicable dismissal of a high-profile voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther party have once again fanned suspicions that the Justice Department is a pawn in partisan political battles. Both in Congress and among a number of current and former Justice Department employees is a growing concern that the Obama administration is politicizing the department in ways the Bush team never imagined... On Election Day 2008, members of the New Black Panther organization, dubbed by the Justice Department a "black-super-racist organization" were captured on videotape at a Philadelphia polling place. One wielded a nightstick. All wore the uniform and insignia of the organization. They made racial threats and hurled insults at voters... the Justice Department in May dismissed the case against all defendants, save the single nightstick-wielding individual"

American Cancer Society refuses $500,000 from atheists

A question for libertarians | Pharyngula
Telling comments from the liberal commenters: "I.E. You’re an asshole."
"Feel free to fuck off at any time now."
"Stupid ideas get a hostile reception around here. That you espouse stupid ideas is your fault. You can either stop being stupid, or learn to live with having your ideas treated with hostility. Your choice. Or you could fuck off."
"And as for me being rude, has it not crossed your mind that you inflicting your ignorance and stupidity on us is rude ? So who the fuck are you to call me rude ? What a fucking hypocrit you are!"

In-Game - Network investigated for claiming video game footage was terrorism

Japanese company offers disturbingly-lifelike masks of clients' own faces
Damn Japs

Feast Your Eyes – Discover Wasdale | VisitBritain Super Blog

The Great Traveling Money Bleed (and how to stop it before you’re broke)

Forgiving debts in the ancient world – excerpt - "in ancient city-states such as Babylon, Sumeria and Judaea, rulers found it necessary to cancel all consumer debt from time to time to keep peasants from becoming permanent debt-peons and thus to keep society from being torn apart – a phenomenon all the more interesting from the perspective of our debt-laden 21st century"

Postcolonial Food Fight by Laurel Fantauzzo - "In 1860, a Spaniard in the Philippines described local cuisine in the magazine Ilustracion Filipino. “The condiments, the preparation, and the cooking are horrible,” he concluded. Eat Filipino entrees, he wrote, “as tasteless as they are lacking in nutritional value, and you have, in summary, the art of cooking as practiced by the native cook”... It’s not surprising that a colonizer might denigrate the native cuisine of its subjects. As Filipina food historian Doreen Fernandez wrote, “the food of the colonizer was deemed superior, urbane, ‘civilizing,’ greatly to be desired.” What still surprises me is how contempt for Filipino food exists today... She’s weary of discussing the cuisine’s low profile. “The question is no longer relevant, because the food is out there. Bringing that up again is really an insult to all who’ve been working so hard to put it on the landscape”... In order to gain popularity in the U.S. culinary landscape, Besa says chefs of Filipino food must first establish the cuisine’s defining flavor and entrée. The flavor is pre-colonial: sourness... chefs of Filipino food are quick to name their most formidable obstacle in America: Filipinos in America"
How come people don't slam those who criticise Dutch or British food? Maybe people don't like sour food. The word "postcolonial" explains it all

Ryanair declares war on bodily fluids, vows to remove toilets - "Discount airline Ryanair continues to wage war on dignity and comfort with a plan to remove all but one of the toilets from its aircraft, leaving 200+ people to share one bog... I'm not surprised -- after all, this is the airline that once threatened to have me arrested for getting up for a pee after we'd been sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes and were still 20 minutes away from takeoff. Clearly this is an airline that wants to master the process of elimination, by eliminating it"

Kraken sea monster found? Researcher is mocked for theory - "He posits that a kraken-like sea monster -- basically a giant octopus -- attacked these whale-like creatures and dragged them to its watery lair millions of years ago, during the Triassic Era. But that's not the most intriguing part of his theory"