"I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty." - Nancy Reagan

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Anti-paparazzi device flashes lewd photographers right back - "Adam Harvey's flashy anti-paparazzi purse will return fire at snooping cameras (and blind anyone around you to boot). The device is equipped with a photo cell that — once it detects a bright, sudden flash — will trigger an LED-controlling circuit to let off a burst of light of its own. The result? A good majority of the owner of the purse will be obscured by a flash, and the photo will be useless. Obviously, this works best at night."

Bruno Gets Backlash From the Gay Community - "Peter Paige from Queer As Folk has his doubts. "When you see a Bruno clip in a room full of gay men, everyone laughs and it's fine. When you see a Bruno clip in a room full of straight men, they're all laughing, and it's a different thing. You start to go, 'Hmmm, I don't know how I feel about this.'""
I love heterophobia!

Miniskirts, cleavage upset male SKoreans: survey - "74 percent of men felt upset with the attire of their female co-workers. Some 56 percent of them cited micro-miniskirts as their chief complaint, while 51 percent objected to excessive cleavage. Low-rise trousers that reveal women's underwear, "killer heels" and flashy outfits in general were also cause for complaint. Women meanwhile complained mostly of stains on the shirts and ties of their male colleagues. Both sexes disapproved of colourful underwear under a white top, slippers or sandals and sleeveless clothes."

HEAVYPETTING - "Pets in porn."

Bummed about Bruno? Austrians 'get ueber it' - "Austrians could be forgiven for bristling at Bruno. After all, the film character boasts that his fame is second only to Hitler's and says he just wants 'to achieve zee Austrian dream - find a job, get a dungeon und raise a family in it.' Yet rather than recoil at British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's new spoof about a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista, most Viennese are taking Bruno's own advice: 'Get ueber it!' Judging from a smattering of look-alike contests and websites cheerfully hawking skintight T-shirts and short-shorts, some even seem to be embracing their inner Bruno."
That's how civilised people respond - not by claiming offence at everything and seeking redress, but even - shock gasp horror - deigning to laugh at the joke.

WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW - "I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago... Take the “25 Things About Me” meme that raged around Facebook a few months ago. This time-waster, as many saw it, is precisely the kind of brainstorming exercise I used to assign to my freshman writing students decades ago... True, much of what is written online is quotidian, informational, ephemeral. But writing has always been so: traditional newspapers line bird-cages a day later; lab reports describe methodology in tedious detail; the founding fathers wrote what they ate for lunch. And the quality of many blogs is high, indistinguishable in eloquence and intellect from many traditionally published works."

Why marrying for money isn't a bad idea - "I'm afraid I'm going to get tarred and feathered as a "bad feminist" for admitting this, but yeah, I do want to marry someone who can financially support both me and our kids. I'm not ashamed to "marry for money," if that's what would you can even call it, because I don't fundamentally believe it is the "man's role" to provide for women... our two salaries together just wouldn't be enough to cut it for what I want out of life. But, but, but, "Bank accounts shouldn't matter at all!" And while I agree with that in theory, sorry, a man who can provide for me and our children is just much more attractive to me. Bank accounts -- and debts -- do matter. And acknowledging that doesn't make me a gold digger akin to Anna Nicole Smith -- it makes me smart."
Translation: "It's okay if I go against my professed principles, but if you do it I'll probably slam you, especially if you're a guy"

ENO retests market with Bieito's dirty Don - "They called the Catalan Claixto Bieito's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni a "crude, anti-musical farrago", a "coke-fuelled fellatio fest", a "new nadir in the vulgar abuse of a masterpiece", and a "horrendous evening". It contained lashings of booze, sex and drugs, and some felt that it made a nonsense of Mozart. Audiences booed; open letters to ENO's bosses were published in newspapers, and a full-blown scandal erupted. David Parry, who has also conducted the production in Hanover in Germany, put the extreme reaction down to the fact that "critics are very weird"... The moment when the Don sings his serenade, in Bieito's production into a telephone, is about "the loneliness of anonymous sex" Parry says... The fury associated with the production shows no sign of abating. A few days ago the commentator Oliver Kamm, writing in the Times, said: "I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit though it again.""

'I curse the day I was born a Singaporean' - "Singapore was performing excellently. But at the same time, the ordinary people had the fruits of their labour taken away. We seem rich but yet are in debt. The government apartments are now exorbitantly priced. Cars are a necessity (given the poor performance of the profit-oriented public transport companies) but are also exorbitantly priced. Much of our money is locked in the Provident Fund and it is becoming impossible to get it back while we are still alive. Yes, all races are treated equally - and they are sucked dry equally... Huge losses have been incurred in the current crisis yet the ruling party still baulks at spending a million or two on the poor. Oh, and we spend twice as much on defence as Malaysia despite being at least 400 times smaller... Instead of lowering costs for citizens, and therefore maintaining wage levels, he decided to import foreigners to lower cost... Currently one person in three is a foreigner in Singapore. The press chooses to obfuscate matters by lumping citizens and PRs together in their reporting (as 'resident population') so the huge number of foreigners in Singapore is understated."
It has been said that Singapore is the worst country to live in - except Malaysia; claims that Singapore has atrocious public transport get a red flag

The hidden ugly side of Singapore - "The ensuing eight- month ordeal that I spent in this HDB flat really opened my mind to what Singapore is for those who can't earn... There were times when the daughter was very sick and father had no money to take her to see a doctor. It was a real pain in the heart to hear a small girl suffering through the thin walls of this HDB flat. It was unbelievable for me to see this happening in this ultra-modern city. It took me another two months to realise that what was happening in this flat was not an isolated case of urban poverty in Singapore. It was every where in those HDB flats. There was a Chinese neighbour (an elderly man) and his son had no money to get a taxi to send his father to the clinic for daily diabetic wound-dressing. I soon understood that poverty in Singapore transcends racial boundaries."