"Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss." - Dick Gregory

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Campaign Against Political Correctness - "I am a muslim who has lived in Scotland all my life, my parents came here in 1980 and I think of myself as Scottish, however the PC brigade are making me feel guilty for being here as it is because of immigrants like my parents that the majority of this insane political correctness has come about. My son is in primary 2 and his class put on a ''winter festival'' show, I was the only non-white in the audience and felt so self conscious I went home and cried for hours, I felt responsible for the lack of traditional nativity and Christian celebrations. I think the PC idiots need to rethink their agendas."

Hate mail for 'racist' Enid Blyton shop owner who started to stock golliwogs - "She said she has sold more than 500 in the last six months to customers of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds... Miss Endecott, who is of Indian origin and suffered racism as a child, added: 'There is plenty of real racism to get worked up about than to argue over the merits of a soft toy. 'I suffered real racism at school so I don't need any lessons on it.'... 'Four people may have complained but 500 people have bought them, so I would err on the side of democracy.'... Two years ago police seized the toys from a gift shop in Bromyard, Herefordshire, under section five of the Public Order Act, which makes it an offence to display material which could be deemed threatening, abusive or insulting."

Sex Sells, But Is Wall Street Buying? - "Is your portfolio in need of a little action? Then you could end up getting lucky. The world's first adult entertainment industry investments firm wants to give investors more...ahem...bang for their buck."

Ads of the weird - These are all quite bizarre. Why can't we have ads like these?!

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are | The Onion - Hahahahahaha.
"Dow Jones plunges on news of Dow Jones plunge" is also great

How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You

ACJC girl gets tied up and tortured… by friends “celebrating” her birthday - "When she started crying… they smashed her face with cakes and poured milk over her head. Quite a few times, her PE shorts was exposed in the struggle as her skirt was tugged upwards. When she said she cannot see because the grue got in her eyes, they poured water over her and threw more icky foodstuff at her face."
Wah, ACJC BDSM. They make a convincing show that it's torture. Maybe it's like BDSM in more ways than one - the 'victims' look unwilling and in pain but are actually enjoying it, so you need a safe word. Or it's Stockholm Syndrome and they have learnt to enjoy their suffering. Either way there's something really wrong with the school

REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY - "This bibliography examines 246 scholarly investigations: 187 empirical studies and 59 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 237,750."

6 Star Escort - "At 6 Star Escort, Malaysia's most innovative and sought after escort agency, we make your dreams come true. That's right it is all about you and your fantasies. We are known for our transparency, creativity and service. We believe in equal treatment and display our prices openly regardless whether the potential client is a local or foreigner. There are no hidden costs and our rates among the lowest in town. Our rates are often used as a benchmark for escort services in Kuala Lumpur. Our product range is second to none whereby we offer packages you won't find elsewhere. With our affordable prices, spectacular range and great service we are undoubtedly a class above the rest hence when you need to pamper yourself or your clients deal ONLY with the best in the industry. Until you've called upon us, you have yet to experience sexual satisfaction."
This sounds very dodgy. And they offer underaged wth

China's farmers cultivate sport at 'peasant olympics' - "With baskets full of fake rice seedlings dangling from either side of the pole, she sprints down a track, then halts to "plant" each one in a simulated paddy field in one of the more bizarre races ever held in a large stadium."

The Food Miles Mistake: Saving the planet by eating New Zealand apples - "Economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and economic consultant Hiroko Shimizu challenge the notion that food miles are a good sustainability indicator... Food miles advocates fail to grasp the simple idea that food should be grown where it is most economically advantageous to do so... Transporting food is just one relatively small cost of providing modern consumers with their daily bread, meat, cheese, and veggies. Desrochers and Shimizu argue that concentrating agricultural production in the most favorable regions is the best way to minimize human impacts on the environment... Local food production does not always produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the 2005 DEFRA study found that British tomato growers emit 2.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of tomatoes grown compared to 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of Spanish tomatoes... A die-hard response to the above studies would be... spend more time and effort finding, growing, and preparing food at the expense of other productive or leisure activities... The food miles campaign is "providing a new set of rhetorical tools to bolster protectionist interests that are fundamentally detrimental to most of humankind.""

Capsaicin consumption, Helicobacter pylori positivity and gastric cancer in Mexico - "Gastric cancer (GC) incidence has not declined in Mexico. We assessed whether the intake of capsaicin (CAP), the pungent compound of chili peppers, increases the risk of GC independently of H. pylori positivity (Hp)... The risk of GC was increased (OR = 1.71; 95% CI = 0.76-3.88) among high-level consumers of CAP (90-250 mg of capsaicin per day, approximately 9-25 jalapeño peppers per day) as compared to low-level consumers (0-29.9 mg of capsaicin per day, approximately 0 to less than 3 jalapeño peppers per day; p for trend p = 0.026); this effect was independent of Hp status and other potential GC determinants... Chili pepper consumption might be an independent determinant of GC in Mexico."

Bob Geldof charged $100k to speak in Melbourne at Diversity@Work awards - "Geldof, 54, spoke about the tragedy of Third World poverty and the failure of governments to combat the crisis, at a Crown casino function on Thursday night. But the Herald Sun can reveal the outspoken human rights activist charged about $100,000 for his trouble - a speaker's fee that included the cost of luxury hotel rooms and first-class airfares. Fellow activist and World Vision CEO the Rev Tim Costello spoke for free."

Carl Sagan: The Dragon In My Garage - "Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head."

Islamic Theologian’s Theory: It’s Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed - "Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life. So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed. Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged... German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises... When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle — and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany’s oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith. Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of Germany’s readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into mainstream society... To him, what matters isn’t whether Muhammad actually lived but the philosophy presented in his name."

Simon Pegg on why the undead should never be allowed to run - "I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run. It's a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits... The fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable."

Sex please! (we're French): Paris's dirty secret - "The erotification, or pornification of the internet was inevitable, one learns. Every previous technological or literary advance in human communication from the printing press, to the novel, to the lithograph, to the photograph, to the cinema has been hijacked by the human (or is it mostly a male?) compulsion to meditate, or drool, over our sexuality. Even established writers or artists also, secretly wrote dirty stories or drew dirty pictures out of the act of lovemaking. The exhibition includes examples from the poet Charles Baudelaire and the surrealist artist, Man Ray... The exhibition reveals some interesting, historical differences in erotic tastes. The earliest, 17th and 18th century, material dwells on the straightforward pleasures of the flesh. The celebration of the pleasures of pain imposed or submitted begins with the Marquis of Sade in the late 18th century. Pornography from the French Revolutionary period is mostly political... 'You find the same images and themes, the same fixation with male and female genitalia, the same interest in unusual ways of performing acts of sex. In the end you become dulled by it all or you just laugh.'"

The Omnivore’s Hundred - "Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all."

Top 5 Windows 7 features Apple should copy - "Many Mac OS X "innovations" are borrowed from the open-source community. Expose windows manager? Borrowed from a long list of Linux UI add-ons. Spaces? Linux has had virtual desktops for years. Windows 7 came out of almost nowhere with some new features we believe Apple not only should take serious, but integrate in OS X as well."