Links - 2nd February 2013

Better behaviors urged for Chinese tourists - "Living Social, found the Chinese to be the second-worst tourists in the world - next only to the American respondents themselves... Efforts to instill better behaviour among Chinese tourists have been going on for years. In October 2006, spurred by unflattering media reports on mainlanders visiting the newly opened Hong Kong Disneyland, the Ministry of Tourism issued manuals for foreign and domestic travelers. The international version, titled Manual on Proper Behavior for Chinese Citizens Traveling Abroad, also sought to address complaints made online... People who have lived in China know that public order is not the mainlanders' greatest strength. Jaywalking is the rule, rather than the exception. Drivers are prone to speeding and swerving. Cars park in bike lanes, leaving cyclists to pedal alongside cars, buses and tricycles. During rush hour, commuters jostle their way onto buses or subway carriages. Screaming matches between bus drivers and passengers are common. Orderly, single-file lines are a rarity"

'Rent-a-Girlfriend' service offers simulated romance ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion - "to answer the question that’s probably at the forefront of many of your minds, Moe Date makes it clear that it is not an escort service and employees are forbidden from entering hotels or private rooms with clients…unless they ask they take their “relationship” a step further. n fine print, Moe Date explains that, on some occasions, girls may “confess their love” to repeater clients, in which case the client may hire them for another date without having to pay the extra fee. Receiving a confession also gives the client the right to request a special “room delivery course”, which is priced at 10,000 yen per hour and only available with staff aged 18 and above. While the site maintains that sexual acts are forbidden while on dates, we know Japan well enough to see the red light shining through this shade of gray. And wait: “aged 18 and above”…? Does that mean Moe Date lets you “date” underage girls as well?"

Ask me about my T-rex (image)

You Never Marry the Right Person - "In generations past, there was far less talk about “compatibility” and finding the ideal soul-mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for... This will indeed require a woman who is “a novelist/astronaut with a background in fashion modeling,” and the equivalent in a man. A marriage based not on self-denial but on self-fulfillment will require a low- or no-maintenance partner who meets your needs while making almost no claims on you... no two people are compatible... 'We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married'... “Why should neurotic, selfish, immature people suddenly become angels when they fall in love ... ?”"
Christian preaching aside (why do so many Christian marriages fail?) this is pretty good

The incentive effects of higher education subsidies on student effort - "although subsidizing tuition increases enrollment rates, it reduces student effort. This follows from the fact that a high-subsidy, low-tuition policy causes an increase in the percentage of less able and less highly motivated college graduates. Additionally-and potentially more important-all students, even the more highly motivated ones, respond to lower tuition levels by decreasing their effort levels"

Top 10 Scams in Thailand - "We started the website www.BangkokScams.com in order to make people aware of some of the more common scams that take place in the Kingdom of Thailand. But, even we were overwhelmed by the large number of scams and comments that were being posted every day. These are not isolated incidents. Despite the warnings in guidebooks and in websites like ours, these scams are still happening. It is really tragic because some tourists get hurt so much that they will never return to Thailand again. Even worse, they will tell their friends to avoid our adopted country like the plague"

India's 'Telecom Revolution' Turns Ugly - NYTimes.com - "Facing new regulation and retroactive taxation, telecommunication companies in India are revolting – foreign companies are pulling out of the country, local executives who were once cozy with government are publicly condemning official policies, and several operators are suing or threatening to sue the Indian government. “We have probably the most destructive regulatory environment virtually since the inception”

Ticks are turning victims into vegetarians

He had sex with underage girl, then learns she's his daughter - "The judge said: "Make sure you look after your child so that she does not do what you and your mother have done"... The judge told the accused that she had to take public interest into account in passing sentence. "This is the time people your age are performing their Haj, but you are going to jail instead," the judge remarked... In another case, a man forced a 31-year-old woman to pay him RM1 (40 cents) after raping her three times in a hotel room in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday"

Why Doesn't MTV Play Music Videos Anymore? - YouTube

Sir Ian McKellen: there will be no more British acting greats - "“Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you’re in their presence. Film stars don’t know what it is to have an audience,” he said. “You see some at awards ceremonies who can hardly make it to the middle of the stage, they’re so nervous. There’s a microphone so they don’t have to project. And they read their words. “You see a theatre actor come on and it’s, ‘Oh, hold on, there’s a show happening’. Hugh Jackman at the Oscars - that’s a theatre man, who happens to be a film star.”"

Universities trying to attract more women into engineering - "At the outreach programme, women engineers shared how their inherent traits can be an advantage. Dr Guo Huaqun, who is the chairperson of IEEE Section Women in Engineering said: "First, ladies are more careful. They pay attention on the detail about specifications and design. Second, ladies can be a good listener. They can listen carefully about the requirements from customers. Third, ladies can be well-organised. They can document all files properly. Finally, ladies can be a good team player. If a whole team have a lady engineer, then the whole team will become more excited and more energy."" Somehow I think an excited team of engineers may not be a good idea; Good luck to men who try to argue that they are less emotional than women and this helps them in nursing

German lawyer claims 38DD girlfriend tried to smother him to death with her breasts

Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop

When Islamic atheism thrived - "Al-Razi directed his most vehement attack against the holy books in general, including the Qur'an, because he saw them as illogical and self-contradictory. He also believed that all human beings were equal in their intellectual capacities as they were in all other things. It made no sense therefore that God should single out one individual from among them in order to reveal to him his divine wisdom and assign him the task of guiding other human beings. Furthermore, he found that prophets' pronouncements and stories often contradicted those of other prophets. If their source was divine revelation as is claimed, their views would have been identical. The idea of a divinely-appointed mediator was therefore a myth"
Her idea of "Islamic atheism" somehow has room for gods

Mark Kennedy: Undercover PC to sue Scotland Yard for £100k - "A former undercover police officer is suing Scotland Yard for failing to ‘protect’ him against falling in love with a woman in the group of eco-warriors he was sent to infiltrate. In a landmark case due to be heard at the High Court next year, Mark Kennedy says his superiors at the Metropolitan Police knew he was sleeping with women he had been sent to spy on, but turned a blind eye because of the quality of intelligence he was providing. In a writ filed last month, Kennedy, 43, is claiming damages of between £50,000 and £100,000 for ‘personal injury’ and ‘consequential loss and damage’ due to police ‘negligence’... Ten women and one man are also suing the Met for emotional trauma saying they were duped into having sex with undercover officers. Three of the women are ex-lovers of Kennedy... ‘The world of eco-activists is rife with promiscuity. Everyone sleeps with everyone else. If I hadn’t had sex they would have rumbled me as an informant’"

Sex-linked lexical budgets - "the eight words "most characteristic of male speech" (by χ2 value) in the BNC conversational corpus were fucking, er, the, yeah, aye, right, hundred, fuck, while the corresponding list for the women was she, her, said, n't, I, and, to, cos"

India’s Jewish community condemn 'Hitler’ clothes shop - "An Indian romantic comedy film Hero Hitler in Love was watched by large audiences in Punjab last year, while a politician in Meghalaya state named 'Adolf Hitler’ was re-elected to the state assembly in 2008 and is a member of one of India’s ruling coalition parties. "

Rihanna: Unapologetic – review | Music - "it's hard to think of another perky disco-house number featuring a victim of domestic abuse duetting with her abuser about how perfect their relationship is. "Could we become love's persona?" they coo, prompting the answer: no you probably can't, because three years ago, one of you beat the other one up... You get a lot of stuff about how exciting dangerous men are, the appeal of affairs that are wrong but feel right, how no one else can match up to him"
Hit me once, shame on you. Hit me twice, shame on...

9 in 10 employees working overtime: survey - "Work-life balance does not yet exist in Singapore, according to an overwhelming majority of employees who took part in a survey on the subject in Singapore...
(a) 45 per cent indicated that the company pays lip service to work-life balance with policies in place just for show
(b) 42 per cent indicated that they chose not to use the company’s initiatives for work-life balance with majority citing the concerns of receiving an inferior performance review as the main reason"