"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions." - Augusten Burroughs

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Apple: Our Ads Don't Lie, But You're a Fool if You Believe Them - "Some parts of Apple's 32-point rebuttal say that the company was being truthful. But one paragraph says, in effect, that anyone who believes what the company says in its ads is a fool. "Plaintiff's claims, and those of the purported class, are barred by the fact that the alleged deceptive statements were such that no reasonable person in Plaintiff's position could have reasonably relied on or misunderstood Apple's statements as claims of fact," Apple said in its answer."

Apple Recommends Antivirus Software For Mac OS X - "Apple has always boasted that "Mac OS X isn't plagued by constant attacks from viruses and malware" because its operating system was "designed with security in mind." But about two weeks ago, Apple updated an old note on its support Web site advising its customers to use more than one antivirus application to make their computers more secure, affirming a longstanding divergence between its marketing and its technical concerns."


Mayo margaritas? Japan indulges its creamy passion - ""Mayogarita", a white drink with a hint of the creamy dressing, is one of several cocktails Nakamura serves in his "Mayonnaise Kitchen" restaurant in suburban Tokyo, which features mayonnaise on everything from toast and spaghetti to fondue... "If you put it on raw tuna fish with red flesh, it tastes like medium-fatty tuna fish. That kind of unpredictability makes it interesting and popular."... Japanese mayonnaise, first produced in 1925, is creamier and tangier than its Western counterpart, and includes only egg yolks, not whites, with varying amounts of oil and vinegar to alter the taste."

Kishore Mahbubani says Deng Xiaoping should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - "If the Singapore story is full of stars - and I have only mentioned a few - why do we keep asking where the Singapore stars are? The simple and brutal answer is that our minds remain colonised... The world will eventually recognise Deng Xiaoping as the greatest man of the 20th century. His reforms lifted 400 million people out of poverty, doing more good than any other leader. Yet he was never considered for a Nobel Peace Prize... The Nobel Prize that truly reveals the absurdity of the process is the award of the latest economics prize to Princeton University's Paul Krugman. Undoubtedly, Professor Krugman did some brilliant work in his younger days, but of late, he has meandered off course... So why did the Nobel Economics Prize Committee award this year's prize to Prof Krugman? Simple! The committee hates United States President George W. Bush. It liked Prof Krugman's weekly rants against Mr Bush in The New York Times. This is why they gave him the prize. Politics trumped objective calculations."
In one thing, at least, he is right: how "politicised the processes of selecting stars have become" and how "our minds remain colonised". He might want to look halfway across the world, though. The best bit is that Singaporeans will read it and agree.

Nuffnang Singapore » Vpost Christmas Party 2008 - "It is super simple! All you have to do is to let us know how you feel good about vPOST, beginning with this blog title… Example: vPOST makes me v(ERY) cosmopolitan ‘cause I can buy anything I want from USA, Europe and Japan! That is just a very short example and you are free to input your own originality! Attractive prizes will be given out to the Top 3 Most Interesting Blog-Post!"
vPOST makes me v(ERY) pissed off because...

Toshio Maeda: hentai pioneer - "He plans on releasing a new anime feature and contributing to the women’s hentai manga magazine Amour. In preparation for the latter, he is being forced to change gears; much to his chagrin, he is poring over scripts for such TV shows as Ally McBeal to “understand women’s feelings.” This is in the hopes of creating a hentai piece that will satisfy the demands of females... 'Women’s hentai is totally different. It is from a woman’s point of view. It looks similar but the concept is totally different. No one in Western countries can imagine that this type of magazine is quite popular among Japanese ladies because Japanese ladies are considered conservative. But actually, they are maniacs sometimes. When they learn that I am a cartoonist for x-rated manga, they openly talk about sex with me. They don’t hesitate to talk about themselves - how they are horny, how they are lonely, or about using a dildo. But I don’t believe it. Well, actually I don’t like to believe it. Personally, I like a conservative lady'"

Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story - "There is little dispute that Wal-Mart’s price reductions have benefited the 120 million American workers employed outside of the retail sector. Plausible estimates of the magnitude of the savings from Wal-Mart are enormous – a total of $263 billion in 2004, or $2,329 per household. Even if you grant that Wal-Mart hurts workers in the retail sector – and the evidence for this is far from clear – the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison. One study, for example, found that the “Wal-Mart effect” lowered retail wages by $4.7 billion in 2000... some progressives have described Medicaid, food stamps, the EITC, and public housing assistance as “corporate welfare.”... Because moderate-income families spend a higher percentage of their incomes on food than upper-income families, these benefits are distributed very progressively... A Harvard applicant has a higher chance of being accepted than a person applying for a job at that Wal-Mart"

Disney accused by Catholic cleric of corrupting children's minds - "Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth in West Sussex, has accused the corporation of "exploiting spirituality" to sell its products and of turning Disneyland into a modern day pilgrimage site... While he acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues this is part of a ploy to persuade people that they should buy Disney products in order to be "a good and happy family"... "The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children's world needs Disney," he says... "They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland."... "This is basically the commercial exploitation of spirituality," he says, adding that as a result Disney and other corporations "inhabit our imagination"."
Disney had a good teacher

Richard Fuld punched in face in Lehman Brothers gym - "Vicki Ward, a US journalist, said "two very senior sources - one incredibly senior source" had confirmed it to her. "He went to the gym after ... Lehman was announced as going under," she told CNBC. "He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. "And frankly after having watched [Mr Fuld's testimony to the committee], I'd have done the same too." "I thought he was shameless ... I thought it was appalling. He blamed everyone ... He blamed everybody but himself.""
Somehow I missed this, hurr hurr

Fighting The War For Talent Is Harzardous To Your Organization’s Health - "This war for talent imagery overlooks the fact that it is often the case that effective teams often outperform even more talented collections of individuals... Fighting the war for talent itself can cause problems. Companies that adopt a talent war mind set often wind up venerating outsiders and downplaying the talent already inside the company, set up competitive, zero sum dynamics that makes internal learning and knowledge transfer difficult, activate the self-fulfilling prophecy in the wrong direction, and create an attitude of arrogance instead of an attitude of wisdom. For all of these reasons, even fighting the war for talent may be hazardous to an organization’s health and detrimental to doing the things that will make it successful."
Sounds familiar.

Couple on sedition trial - "A CHRISTIAN couple who allegedly distributed seditious publications to three Muslims went on trial on Thursday. Ong Kian Cheong, 49, a technical officer with SingTel, and his wife, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 45, an associate director with Swiss bank UBS, are facing four charges each. They are accused of distributing a comic strip booklet titled The Little Bride to Mr Irwan Ariffin, 32, at Sembawang Drive on Oct 19 last year."
I was wondering what happened to this case.

HowStuffWorks Videos "Art Comes to Life" - "Watch this Reuters video showing South Korea's the "Alive Gallery" which transforms famous art masterpieces from 2-d images into life-like, 3-d characters. Visitors can now interact with Mona Lisa and Jesus and his disciples at the last supper."

Fakemodo: Santa Claus' Gmail Account Exposed - "I love this santaclaus@gmail.com snapshot. Bono, Jesuschrist, Rudolph, and Steve in his contacts; him chatting about how he'll give Xboxes to bad boys instead of coal because of the energy crisis; God wanting a Wii... His inbox is just hilarious."

Taking It Downtown - "For all you SNL lovers, I think it's about time that I introduce (in a Southern accent) "Colonel Angus." Or for all you non-SNL lovers, cunnilingus-the art of "eating out" and "going down" on a woman."
From Cunning Linguist

YouTube - Macy's Thanksgiving parade RickRoll - "Wow. I don't even know how to describe how awesome this is. Rick Astley himself Rick Rolls the entire Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Wow."

Language Log » Burlesque Matinée at the Max Planck Gesellschaft - "To honor the theme of the issue, the editors asked one of the journalists who worked for the magazine to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover... This is a rough translation of what the text says: ... Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure, Young housewives having figures that will turn you on; Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days."

Coping with joblessness: A personal account

EQM - The Erectile Quality Monitor - "Once you obtain an erection via your stimuli of choice, simply place the head of the penis against the pressure sensor of the device and apply pressure towards the body for a count of 5 seconds or until the penis inflects (bends). At this point a reading will flash on one of the LED indicator lights, reflecting the quality of that erection."

Muddy Singapore swallows China workers - "Wanting to press for a resolution of his dispute with his employer, Xue Hanming, a construction worker originally from Jiangsu, China, called the Ministry of Manpower on 3 December 2008... He was asked to sit in the waiting area... He saw his manager and a couple of security guards enter the Manpower Ministry building. It was a near miss... Is deceit in speech and action an ethical way for civil servants to act? Are government offices meant to be places for resolving problems in good faith and according to the law, or locations for entrapment?... This story started with an abusive employer, but what got me interested was the role played by the government departments. From this, you can see that they were not at all interested in helping workers. The police held people for overstaying without a shred of evidence that they were overstayers. The ICA held people in an armlock, getting them to fund their own flight home, with or without being paid their wages. They all just want to get rid of the problem, with no regard for justice, law or rights. The source of the problem is the employer, but by action or inaction, our government is abetting all these abuses, ranging from cheating people of their wages, to robbery of their handphones, to kidnap."
Sue Alex Au for defamation!!!

One giant leap for 'teddy-nauts' - "When the UK government said it was thinking overturning its long-standing ban on astronauts, surely it wasn't thinking of putting teddies in space? But pictures have been released of two British toy bears in spacesuits with the curve of the Earth clearly visible behind them. In fact, the teddies were lofted into the stratosphere by Cambridge school children as part of a science project. The "teddy-nauts" spent two hours in flight before landing near Ipswich."