"The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection." - Bertrand Russell

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www.peopleofwalmart.com - "Let’s face it; we all have seen the people who obviously don’t have mirrors and/or family and friends to lock them in a basement, and they all seem to congregate at Walmart. It’s not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels. Where else can one go to pick up underwear at 3 O’clock in the afternoon and spot the greatest mullet of all time paired with a mustard stained wife beater (which only accents the extreme amount of body hair) and camo pants that were actually used in Vietnam. And if you haven’t run into the 6’2” bull-dyke with a shaved head, rockin a wonder bra, flannel cutoff shirt, and jean shorts at 2 a.m. when you’re there to pick up frozen pizza, chips, and cookies, then you can get the fuck out right now."

History and the battle for hearts and minds - "At a New York dinner party in 1945, the young journalist Marietta Fitzgerald was tickled to find herself seated beside a celebrated Englishman... She had a big article to write about Britain and decided to pick his brains. Could he explain the genealogy that had brought George I and the Hanoverian dynasty to the throne?... There was painful silence. 'I think my mother would know that, too,' at length replied the Duke of Windsor who, not a decade before, had reigned over Britain and her Empire as King Edward VIII... History is dangerous stuff. For one, it requires extraordinary discipline to study the events of the past without allowing your own attitudes to cloud your judgment. In one historian's neat aphorism, present perceptions of past people are not at all the same as past people's perceptions of their present. For another, history can be, and routinely is, analysed and written through a conscious, ideological filter. 'Marxist' history, for instance, focused on class struggle and the lot of ordinary people... [there is a] belief, in every age, that one's own generation is the most important and wise and most enlightened ever. So we happily demolish the nonsense of past historians, only to impose some nonsense of our own. And there is the great difficulty of attaining perspective on events in the near past. When asked what he felt had been the abiding consequences of the French Revolution, the late Chou En-lai - henchman of Mao - replied shrewdly: 'It is too early to tell.'"

Researchers to perform sex change operation on papaya

How to Seduce Difficult Women - "“I ran into a former client who I remembered was a really difficult woman. And I said I was going to do a film about her. She said, ‘And what would that be?’ I said, ‘How to seduce difficult women.’ And she said, ‘Me? I’m not difficult.’ I said, ‘So, what are you, easy?’ and she said, ‘Oh no.’ And I thought, now this is interesting. Here’s a woman who does not want to be labeled difficult…and doesn’t want to be labeled easy. So I said there’s something there. What is the definition of that woman? And I realized that the word that women are really happy to adopt is complex.”"

Singapore Aspirations: On medical leave and the employee - "The approach typically taken in Western countries, with regard to an employee taking medical leave, displays compassion and understanding... There is no need for the employee to produce a medical certificate issued by a doctor... The attitude adopted by the majority of companies in Singapore is markedly different. The employee is required to go to a doctor to obtain a medical certificate... What Singapore employers may have failed to realise, is that there is actually a cost-saving benefit if an employer allows its employees to call in sick without obtaining medical certification, i.e., medical expenses will not be incurred"
One comment: "Its the culture of Singapore, we do not trust one another in general. It is the same reason why US allows return for goods purchased for cash refund, no questions asked, and we do not."

Fugly Bali - Why you might want to avoid this Indonesian Island! - ""Bali the island paradise" is mostly a contradiction in terms, with one of the world's most corrupt governments, police forces and business community... This site is dedicated to making people aware of the problem, the often disgusting facts about Bali which are seldom made public"
Funny, I thought it was the whole archipelago.

Are date rape spiked drinks an urban myth? - "Could it be that women instinctively feel that if they admit to themselves how much they had drunk they would also be admitting they were somehow to blame for putting themselves at risk? Believing your drink was spiked transfers the blame to a malevolent, external force, something which women have no control over. It shifts responsibility. Alcohol expert Robin Touquet, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Imperial College, London, points out: 'Women are demonising so- called drink spiking rather than facing up to the fact that drinking too much alcohol can put them in a highly dangerous situation... Graham Rhodes, who set up The Roofie Foundation... [claims that] there were 627 victims of drug rape and sexual abuse reported during 2007... Mr Rhodes decides who among callers to his Foundation is a victim of drug rape... this unorthodox method of compiling data ignores the fact that most people underestimate the amount of alcohol they consume on a night out. Not surprisingly, any discussion of the relationship between fear of drink spiking and alcohol consumption in women is controversial. Claims that alcohol - not spiked drinks - is women's true enemy are seen as politically incorrect by those who say they foster an attitude that women who are sexually assaulted are somehow 'asking for it'."

Guy dances like Michael Jackson everytime he waits for a bus

Sweeping the Clouds Away - "Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only... What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist... a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole... none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now”... People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much"