Links - 21st August 2013

Kosher lube puts oral sex on the menu for Orthodox Jews - "kosher certification is only relevant to Jews who swallow a product. Really, it's only necessary for the God-fearing who intentionally swallow it – but some strict observers go further and buy kosher products if there is a risk of accidentally swallowing them."

Not Jewish but Jew-ish - "I explain that I like being a Jew, but apart from looking as if I'm playing a character role as an accountant, being unable to stop using words such as schlep and plutz and loving chopped liver, I'm so un-Jewish that I've only once in 20 years been to my local synagogue... what I really want to write about is being Jew-ish. This is a term that I wish I'd invented rather than the veteran doctor-slash-theatre-producer, Jonathan Miller, years ago. He also referred to being "an amphibious Jew – half in and half out of the water". We are those cop-out, fair-weather Jews that "real" Jews despise more than they do antisemites: the secular, cultural Jews, the amoral majority, the ones who want to have their bagel and eat it. The ones who, with their marrying out, their going to the pub on Yom Kippur and to the football on Saturdays, and – God forbid – with their ambivalent view of the Middle East, are doing Hitler's work for him and conspiring in the erosion of the already disappearing UK Jewish community – currently about 250,000 and counting, downwards."

Snake in toilet bit man's penis

Human statue punches heckler in face

Moving Around Without Losing Your Roots - ""The trouble with moving around and falling in love with new places," a colleague once shared, "is that you leave a piece of your heart in each of them." That resonated with my experience. In Italy, professionals working abroad are described as "runaway brains." My brain, however, never ran away. My heart just took it elsewhere. This is why I worry when senior executives tell aspiring leaders that membership in global elites requires sacrificing an existence grounded in one place. Framing the struggle for home as a private reckoning with loss is simplistic and dangerous. It makes global elites more isolated and disconnected, less intelligible and trustworthy. It puts them in no position to lead. "

In Taipei, Taiwan, Life in the Slow Lane - WSJ.com - "Welcome to the new Taipei. Other Asian cities might compete on building the flashiest skyscrapers or glitziest shopping center. But the Taiwanese capital, once a typical '80s Asian Tiger boomtown, is forging a different path. Since the late 1990s, the municipal government has focused on improving the quality of life in this city of 2.6 million"


In researching his new book, The East, the West, and Sex, author Richard Bernstein found that the Orientalist illusion continues to influence. "Historically, Asia provided certain sexual opportunities that would be much more difficult for Western men to have at home. But it remains a happy hunting ground for them today"... I suspect there's something else about the East that's seducing business bigwigs at this very moment: globalization. Consider that, stateside, Mandarin classes have spiked 200 percent over the past five years... It's as though these Western men are hungry for a piece of that mystical Eastern formula. As such, Asians (in addition to African orphans) are hot commodities right about now — status symbols as prized as a private Gulfstream jet or a museum wing bearing your name (neither of which goes so well with a frumpy, aging first wife)... Maybe these outsized, world-class moguls are stand-ins for emotionally repressed Asian dads (one cliché that is predominantly true). Or...are these women just glorified opportunists? What's so perverse is that while Asians have always revered their elders, sleeping with a guy old enough to be your grandfather is just creepy — in any culture."

Awkward Stock Photos

Japanese Women Short On Cash Use Smartphone Games to Lure Men Into Paying for Their Food Expenses

French bus drivers to strike over tight trousers

Where Do the Words “Mom” and “Dad” Come From? - "it’s plausible that da originated as baby babble and entered adult vocabulary from there as "dad," but it's not a sure thing."

Xbox players better in bed than Playstation and Wii rivals, study finds - "Of the respondents, 21 per cent wanted ‘more sex, less gaming’ from their partner, whereas an intriguing 11 per cent wanted ‘less sex, more gaming’."

Florida woman arrested for violently yanking ex-boyfriend’s penis

Litter fines 'cash cow' for London councils - ""Perversely, when butts become such a lucrative source of revenue, councils lose interest in persuading people not to drop them in the first place. "Few councils provide cigarette disposal bins, and smokers believe they shouldn't put their butt in an ordinary bin because it would risk fire." In Bromley the BBC twice witnessed XFor litter wardens standing out of sight before issuing fines to smokers. Neither was given a warning."

Woman Grabs Lost iPad, Takes Silly Selfies Which Then Autoload to Owner’s iPhone

Poll: Most women believe they should not be forced into combat - "Seventy-seven percent of female voters indicated that they favor the combat policy change, the poll showed. When asked about the reinstatement of the draft, only 28 percent of American voters were in support. Despite widespread favor toward women in combat, only 48 percent of females supported women being drafted, while 59 percent of men supported the idea."
This is called "male privilege"

Car bombs kill scores across Iraq - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - "At least 91 people have been killed and hundreds injured in a series of car bombs that rocked Baghdad and other Iraqi cities amid Eid al-Fitr celebrations, an interior ministry official said. The attacks were the latest in spiralling violence which authorities have failed to stem, with the worst bloodshed in five years raising worries of a return to the all-out Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict that killed tens of thousands in past years. The latest violence comes just weeks after brazen assaults, claimed by an al-Qaeda front group, on prisons near Baghdad that freed hundreds of fighters and which analysts warn could boost armed groups... The Interior Ministry has said the country faces an "open war" fuelled by Iraq's sectarian divisions and has attempted to boost security in Baghdad, closing roads and sending out frequent helicopter patrols. Our correspondent said the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq 18 months ago has hit security efforts and emboldened Sunni fighters to step up attacks. "People in the Iraqi security services will tell you ... that the Iraqi army is now on its own. They do not have the intelligence from the Americans that they had before. That has caused Sunni groups to go on the offensive. "Then you have Shia groups taking revenge against them, in a classic tit-for-tat situation.""
Al Jazeera must be in the pay of the US for them to make such an outrageous claim, that the withdrawal of US troops was bad for security!

Why the U.S. should get out of Iraq - "our occupation is worsening the situation in Iraq. The CIA acknowledges that our presence in Iraq is the major cause of increasing violence... The mere acknowledgement of eventual withdrawal would allow the over 40 groups of insurgents to engage with the Iraqi government and be included in building the new government Research done by Israel and Saudi Arabia has shown clearly that the occupation is fueling the insurgency. If Israel and Saudi Arabia can agree, isn't it time for us to agree as well!"

5 Reasons to Kill Christian Music - "1. Writing a “Christian” song reduces Christianity to a modifying adjective.
2. Music is already Christian.
3. “If you label me you negate me.”
4. As a label, Christianity becomes an excuse for mediocrity.
5. “Christian” music isn’t Christian."

Flippy Doodle • Agnostic Atheist, But Not Interested In White Supremacist Atheism - "women of colour don’t need arrogant and ahistorical White male spokespersons, ones who ignore their own misogyny and the impact of White male misogyny globally... The White men who claim to be our “heroes” are ALSO oppressors in this case. Most of all, it is hypocritical when these White men with abysmal misogyny towards White women claim to be “less” misogynist than men of colour. Whether they were burning witches in the past, engaging in scientific and medical exploration via racist, sexist, abusive and unethical practices and dehumanization of brown bodies, or responsible for the majority of rapes of women in the U.S. today... Men are NOT in the position to determine what is “worse” misogyny, misogynoir or transmisogyny. Only the women who experience it can discuss it in this context and even then must do so without xenophobia, racism and cultural imperialism shaping that conversation... I want to add one more thing: an assumption that privileged, white, male atheists make is that Women of Colour are powerless and brainwashed theists"
We need to send these feminists to Saudi Arabia. The misogyny there is "the same" as in the West, but at least they're not hypocrites about it there
If men cannot say anything about misogyny, female feminists cannot say anything about misandry
It is unproblematic to assume that non-feminist women are powerless and brainwashed

Open letter to South Africa from foreign media | Daily Maverick - "We very much like the idea that your ex-president was “one of a kind”, and that despite his best efforts, the current batch of idiots prove that he was an exceptional presence, sui generis, and we don’t have to worry about someone else like him coming along in Africa ever again. We enjoy your leaders’ bumbling ways, their daft non-sequiturs, the glint of their Beijing-bought Breitlings. That “Vote ANC” truck parked outside the hospital? If that doesn’t speak to moral degeneration of the first order, what does? In other words, this story would lack a tragic arc without Jacob Zuma. May he keep on keeping on... Indeed, you need to brace yourselves. We’re about to engage in the single greatest orgy of industrial-grade mourning porn the world has ever known. Your little country will forever be honoured as the site that made the Princess Diana thing look like a restrained wake for a loathed spinster who perished alone on a desert island. Oh man, this is going to be big."
"Reading [this] was like my mom walking in on me having sex - funny but uncomfortable"
"I live in South-Africa, ad I'm right in the middle of this "orgy of industrial-grade mourning porn" every day of my life. And as someone with many years ground level experience in this country all I can say to Mr. Poplak is: you have no idea how right you are LoL. They do say good comedy is usually pointing out the truth in a humorist manner, needless to say I found the article funny, yet with no contest from me at all. I'll be watching you watching the mourning porn. Carry on .. LOL"