Sunday, July 05, 2009

"Mustard's no good without roast beef." - Chico Marx

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Fancy Fast Food - "BK Quiche (Fancy Croissan’wich & Biscuit)
Ingredients (for two mini quiches):
* 1 Burger King Croissan’wich (with ham) meal, with hash browns and a coffee
* 1 Burger King Ham, Egg & Cheese biscuit meal, with hash browns and an orange juice
* 1 bottle of water"

US analyst shows class divisions between Facebook, MySpace users - "Danah Boyd, who works with Microsoft Research New England, reckons that most Facebook users are white and wealthy, while MySpace users are uneducated and obnoxious... “We might as well face an uncomfortable reality … what happened was modern day ‘white flight’,” she added. According to Boyd, MySpace has become a digital “ghetto”. “The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society,” she said."

Retro Comedy: The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time - "One most effective way to safegyard her dainty feminine allure is by practicing complete feminine hygiene as provided by vaginal douches with a scientifically correct prepartion... You, too, can rely on "Lysol" to help protect your married happiness... keep you desirable!"

Man Injured After Using Nail Clippers to Circumcise Himself

Think Again: Asia's Rise - "It is meaningless to talk about Asia as a single entity of power, now or in the future. Far more likely is that the fast ascent of one regional player will be greeted with alarm by its closest neighbors. Asian history is replete with examples of competition for power and even military conflict among its big players... Already, China's recent rise has pushed Japan and India closer together... Pax Americana was made possible not only by the overwhelming economic and military might of the United States but also by a set of visionary ideas: free trade, Wilsonian liberalism, and multilateral institutions. Although Asia today may have the world's most dynamic economies, it does not seem to play an equally inspiring role as a thought leader... A much-cited 2005 McKinsey Global Institute study reports that human resource managers in multinational companies consider only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers as even "employable," compared with 81 percent of American engineers... when you look at autocracies credited with economic success, you find two interesting facts. First, their economic performance improved when they became less brutal and allowed greater personal and economic freedoms"

The Voting Rights Act: Sacred, or outdated - "Abigail Thernstrom, the author of “Voting Rights—and Wrongs”... argues, counterintuitively, that racial gerrymandering reduces black political influence. Majority-black districts tend to elect politicians who appeal to black solidarity but do not need to woo whites. Moderates do less well: Mr Obama was thrashed by 30 percentage points when he ran for Congress in a majority-black district. The net effect of cramming blacks into racially homogenous districts is that the congressional black caucus, with some exceptions, clusters at the fringe of American politics, rather than at the centre, where decisions are made. Segregated voting districts thus impede political integration, says Ms Thernstrom."

Elephants Drunk in the Wild? Scientists Put the Myth to Rest - "Almost anyone who has read a travel brochure about Africa has heard of elephants getting drunk from the fruit of the marula tree. The lore holds that elephants can get drunk by eating the fermented fruit rotting on the ground... But there is nothing in the biology of either the African elephant or the marula fruit to support the stories, he asserts. "People just want to believe in drunken elephants," Morris said... it would take about a half gallon (1.9 liters) of ethanol to make an elephant tipsy... an elephant would have to ingest more than 1,400 well-fermented fruits to start to get drunk."

Man beaten after teens misinterpret woman's sex screams - "A group of teenagers misunderstood a woman's screams during sex and, thinking they were stopping an assault, beat a 25-year-old man in her bedroom"
I love power relations!

Game leaves nothing to chance for cute extremists - "If any child picks up a card which says Kafir! ("Heathen!") they immediately lose their faith and go straight to hell, without having to die first. The last player in the game wins, so the heathen cards encourage children to pray that friends and family members go to hell soon... the next card one of the kids picks up has a picture of a boy and girl sitting shyly next to each other on a bench with pink love hearts hovering over them. This looks like a positive card, but it isn't - oh no-no-no-no-no. The game makers reckon pecaran ("courting") is an extremely grave sin. At minus 500 points per occasion, this card teaches children that experiencing two momentary crushes is equivalent to committing one murder. But keep going and they may get a menikah card, which means "marriage." This card also shows a boy and girl sitting next to each other on a bench, but without any love hearts. This teaches children that it is crucial that they do not love the person they marry."
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