"All marriages are mixed marriages." - Chantal Saperstein

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Divorce, A Bigger Threat To The Family Than Gay Marriage: Celebrity Preacher - "When asked why religious conservatives tend to harp on gay marriage rather than divorce as a threat to the family, [Rick] Warren said: "Oh we always love to talk about other sins more than ours. Why do we hear more about drug use than about being overweight? Why do we hear more about anything else than about wasting time or gossip? We want to point that my sins are perfectly acceptable. Your sins are hideous and evil."... he said that although he believes that no American should ever be discriminated against because of their beliefs, he doesn’t consider civil unions (for same-sex couples) to be a civil right... he's opposed to gay marriage the same way he is opposed to "having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage,” “an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage" and "one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.""

Internet or sex, which would you choose? - "While 46 percent of the women surveyed were willing to engage in abstinence verses losing their Internet, only 30 percent of the men surveyed were willing to do likewise... Of course when it comes to TV, perhaps size matters, at least according to a different survey earlier this year of Britons conducted by electronics retailer Comet. Almost half of the men polled said they would give up sex for six months in return for a 50-inch plasma TV, according to Reuters. That compared with just over a third of women who were willing to make the same sacrifice for the big-screen television."

Legal papers served via Facebook

The Dilbert Blog: Career Advice - "I majored in economics, got an MBA, worked at a bank, then a phone company, and became a cartoonist. For every person who studies something specific, such as the law or medicine, and actually ended up in that sort of career, I think there are five who let chance pick their careers... if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things."

Mussel myth an open and shut case (Great Moments in Science) - "He found that some 11.5 per cent of mussels remained closed after a so-called "normal" cooking time. When he forced them open with a knife, every single one was both adequately cooked and safe to eat. So, according to Nick Ruello, even if the adductor muscles refuse to bow to the heat, the meat is still safe to eat. But on the occasions when he cooked them for a further 90 seconds, about one-seventh of them still remained shut... If we use the experimental evidence, and stop throwing out cooked mussels that stubbornly refuse to open, we can stop wasting each year some 370 tonnes of perfectly good seafood worth around $3 million."

FLEMISH LIBERATION ARMY AGAINST FREEDOM - An explanatory comment on Youtube: "is een reclame voor Nederland koop geen illegal vuur werk!"; In English

In Praise of Discomfort - "Life in Singapore is wonderfully comfortable, so much so that Singaporeans have become contemptuous of people who fight for their beliefs. Just ask a randome Singaporean what they think of Tibet or Palestine and chances are they'll tell you that the Tibetans and Palestinians should stop killing themselves for a lost cause accept their assimilation into China and Israel, respectively. - Gene Rodenbery, creator of Star Treck could not have writen a world for the Borg (Resistence is futile) better."

People 'still willing to torture' - "US researchers repeated the famous "Milgram test", with volunteers told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer - played by an actor. Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychology study found. Both may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities."
Milgram is nothing - I want to see Zimbardo again. Or they can just use National Slavery as a Natural Experiment

Fast Food Meals Are Smaller, Have Fewer Calories Than Food Served At Restaurants, Study Finds - "Fast food was found to be more energy dense than food from a table service restaurant. However, Binkley found that fast food meals tend to be smaller. Consequently, the typical fast food meal had fewer calories than the average meal from a table service restaurant, whether the diner is an adult, teenager, or child. But, the study found that table service diners are more likely to reduce their food consumption during the rest of the day"

Does Sex Addiction Have Any Basis in Science? - "Sure enough, both shooting cocaine and having an orgasm stimulate your mesolimbic system by a sudden release of dopamine, but so does scoring a goal in a soccer game, going on a rollercoaster ride, skiing, diving, dancing, or watching a movie. In fact, it may be argued that every single action that we can describe as pleasurable involves the activation of this system. But if we can potentially become addicted to anything (or anything pleasurable, at least), where exactly do we draw the line between healthy pleasure-seeking and addiction? Moreover, it goes without saying that most people regularly engage in some form of sexual activity (or in drinking or TV-watching, for that matter) without it becoming disruptive of their occupational, domestic, or social obligations. Simple stimulation of the pleasure centers in the brain cannot then be the entire explanation. Somehow those who fall victim to an addiction are unable to resist impulses to engage in a specified behavior"

Tarot Card Reading - "if you are sympathetic towards tarot cards and other forms of divination, you might be sitting there scratching your head and asking yourself “What is so wrong with a little instrospection? Tarot is harmless, it doesn’t hurt anybody.” I disagree with you. I have seen someone get hurt very badly by a well-meaning tarot reading. She was told something she was desperate to believe and when it did not come to pass she was devastated. I saw the reading, I watched her over the following few weeks as she got her hopes up and I tried to instill a little rationality in the situation. Her response was “I know it’s all interpretive, but I want to believe“. It made me very angry to see someone I care for get hurt so badly, I can only hope that she is more cautious the next time."
Ditto for pseudoscience, bullshit and mysticism (even if socially-condoned) in general.

snopes.com: Ten Percent of our Brains - "Claim: We use only ten percent of our brains. Status: FALSE. Someone has taken most of your brain away and you probably didn't even know it. Well, not taken your brain away, exactly, but decided that you don't use it. It's the old myth heard time and again about how people use only ten percent of their brains. While for the people who repeat that myth, it's probably true, the rest of us happily use all of our brains."

粤式点心“萨骑马”的传说 - "广州酒楼的美点“萨骑马”（又叫玛仔），是一种深受中外人士喜爱、历久不衰的传统点心。这种由全蛋面条炸熟后，用糖浆混合压成、切成方块的饼食，具有浓郁的蛋香和蛋黄色的卖相，但为什么有一个“萨骑马”的古怪名字呢？原来有几种传说。"
Aha! 萨其马's (alternate rendering) not particularly Malaysian. Another of their lies exposed!

The Madoff Economy - "How different, really, is Mr. Madoff’s tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?... How different is what Wall Street in general did from the Madoff affair? Well, Mr. Madoff allegedly skipped a few steps, simply stealing his clients’ money rather than collecting big fees while exposing investors to risks they didn’t understand. And while Mr. Madoff was apparently a self-conscious fraud, many people on Wall Street b\elieved their own hype. Still, the end result was the same (except for the house arrest): the money managers got rich; the investors saw their money disappear."

Champagne - "Champagne is a toast to optimism, an attempt to bolster defiance, or a companion for consolation. According to Napoleon, "In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it.""

The Christmas Season. - "To cut a long story short, it was absolutely horrifying. They should stop using amateurs in their performances, and actually learn how to coordinate their playing once and for all. The 2 most dramatic seasons (L'Estate and L'Inverno) were butchered so badly. For L'inverno, 'butchered' is not even the word for it. Gabriel helpfully suggested 'hung, drawn and quartered'. How could they do this to my favourite of the four! Ugh. The opening was ABSOLUTELY BAFFLING because I didn't recognise the notes that were coming from the orchestra at all. They sounded like a muddy murky mess of misplayed appoggiaturas. And I doubt the soloist tuned her violin properly before she started. Oh well. I've sworn off SSO, but this concert was going cheap at $5, so you get what you pay for. In the future, the music concerts I go for will only be solo instrumental ones, if the SSO is involved."
I was at this concert with Frigid Girl; someone claimed that SSO had high standards. I wanted to puke

How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage - "Pass an undrinkable, raw red wine between a set of high-voltage electrodes and it becomes pleasantly quaffable. "Using an electric field to accelerate ageing is a feasible way to shorten maturation times and improve the quality of young wine," says Hervé Alexandre, professor of oenology at the University of Burgundy, close to some of France's finest vineyards."