Links - 18th May 2014

Must Be Singapore - "PAP Youth Wing: Monotone speaking, inspiring such confidence"

Chris Powell's answer to What am I missing out on in life if I don't have a girlfriend? - Quora - "Hmmmm...
You'll miss out on...
-Used tampons sitting in the trash can every month.
-Hair clogging your sink and shower
-Extra clothes to wash (girls have skid marks, bro)
-Burnt dinners to clean up
-Mood swings that have to be dealt with on a delicate level.
-Constant need of approval
-Constant need of attention
-Constant need of affection
-Constant questioning of your actions
-You miss out on privacy
-Catering to someone else's every need
-Poker night at your favorite bar
Just a few things...
But let's not forget the most important part you'll miss out on...
Other women! ;) (jk)"

Driver Who Fatally Injured Teen Now Suing Dead Teen's Family - "A woman who struck three teens on bikes while driving her SUV, killing one and injuring the others, is now suing the deceased teen, his family, and the other two boys. She is claiming $1.35 million in damages for her psychological suffering... Cameron, the family's lawyer, has filed a lawsuit against Simon for medical and funeral costs on behalf of the boys and their families. He alleges that she was speeding and may have been intoxicated and talking on her cellphone. "They did not apply their brakes properly," Simon's claim states. "They were incompetent bicyclists.""

Playboy Sued for Allegedly Indulging in Painful 'Fore-Play' - "Woman claims she was struck in the buttocks with a golf club during event"

Zombie apocalypse training exercise cancelled by Quebec - "There will be no zombie apocalypse in Quebec next week. The provincial government has stepped in to cancel plans for a zombie-themed emergency training exercise. Participants at an annual symposium on civil security had been planning to use a hypothetical zombie attack to test emergency preparedness. Such a theme has been used elsewhere. The logic behind it is to use something that can never actually occur, as opposed to a flood or an ice storm, because that way emergency-preparedness officials might think of new problems and solutions... Hypothetical zombie attacks are becoming a popular emergency preparedness teaching tool. Even the Centers for Disease Control in the United States has used the tactic."

Anup Sastry's answer to How can I find a decent and expressive guy and make him my friend? - Quora - "A girl asking for tips on "how to friendzone a guy"
Now i have seen everything in life... Can die peacefully"

Chinese man ties gas canister to girlfriend and ignites it - "After rescuing the girl and extinguishing the blaze, police then rescued the man who suffered more severe burns as a result, and who is not expected to survive. The young woman's family said they had warned her against getting involved too quickly with Li Moulian, from Lufeng City located in the southeast of Guangdong Province. Her uncle Wu Chin, 47, said: 'We had warned her that she needed to know more about him before deciding to spend her life with him, it seems sadly the warnings were true as he clearly has mental problems. 'To suddenly accuse her in the middle of the night trying to kill his parents shows he is obviously severely paranoid. 'It is a bad start in life for the child as well with the father having obvious mental problems.'"

Jessica Hui's answer to Do women prefer toilet seats be left up or down? - Quora - "Down. Being that we, you know, generally sit on the toilet, it's not a great prospect to unwittingly (especially in the middle of the night or early in the morning) plop down on a seatless toilet and possibly fall in."
"Why wouldn't you want to check first before you pee? I always check first to make sure the seat is up before I pee. If I didn't I'd probably end up peeing all over the seat cover half the time.
Do women just take a flying butt-first leap at the toilet when they go to pee? Is that why they don't check?"

Infidels go to hell, Isma leader reminds Muslims mourning Karpal’s passing - "In a rebuke aimed at Muslims mourning the death of veteran opposition politician Karpal Singh, a leader of Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) stressed today that infidels go to hell when they die. Isma central committee member Mohd Hazizi Ab Rahman, called on Muslims to be more discerning when they pay their respects. “In the Quran, Allah stated many times that the place for those who die an infidel is hell,” Hazizi was quoted as saying on Isma’s website. “Therefore, for those who refute this, it means they have rejected Allah’s revelation,” he added. Hazizi’s remarks were in response to several Muslims who claimed on social media that Karpal will be rewarded in the afterlife for his good deeds... Hazizi’s comments echoed a statement by the National Fatwa Council in December last year, advising Muslims against using the phrase “rest in peace” in reference to deceased non-Muslims. The council said it was fine for Muslims to mourn the death of non-Muslims but insisted that those who die as infidels will not receive forgiveness and blessings from Allah."

PAP Flip Flop: Singaporeans Skills Not Enough, But Too Much Skills - "On Saturday, I nearly fell off my chair when I read what Tan Chuan-Jin had said. At first, Today reported that Tan Chuan-Jin had said that, “The Government has identified more than 50 firms that have a disproportionately low share of Singaporean professionals, managers and executives compared to others in their industry and that may have scope to improve their hiring and career development practices.” However, Chuan-Jin then added that, “In some cases, the issue may not be a problem with their HR practices per se, but rather, a gap in the skills that are available in the local workforce.” So, according to Chuan-Jin, maybe it’s not that firms were unfair in not hiring Singaporeans. Maybe Singaporeans just didn’t have the skills? So, Singaporeans do not have the skills to be “professionals, managers and executives”? But then, I saw another report in The Business Times which reported that, “Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin yesterday cautioned against Singapore producing too many graduates who can’t find enough good jobs – a predicament South Korea and Taiwan find themselves in today.” He had said that, “Their relentless pursuit of paper qualifications resulted in a glut of graduates… The director-general of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education stated that ‘the abundance of (university) places had undermined the quality of degrees and created a skills mismatch in the job market. People became over-educated and underemployed.”"
Bad comprehension skills = "Flip Flop"

After Prank by Dutch Girl on Twitter, Real Trouble - NYTimes.com - "Youthful pranks in the age of Twitter are no laughing matter, especially if you are a 14-year-old Dutch girl impersonating a terrorist. When the girl, using the Twitter handle @QueenDemetriax_, sent a threat to American Airlines on Sunday, she surely could not have imagined that by Tuesday she would be arrested by the Rotterdam police, attract a global media storm and become the object of both fierce derision and sympathy."

PM defends three core principles of Singapore - "Or you can go by race - 'That person is the right race, so he gets extra marks in the exam, extra advantage for schools admissions and for jobs.' - Is that the Singapore we have fought to build?" he asked."
"Or you can go by race. That person is the right race, he gets extra marks in his PR and naturalisation application. He is the reason why we can keep Singapore at the same racial proportion for decades despite the mathematical impossibility from our natural birth rates. Do we want that? Is that the Singapore we have fought to build?"

US Airways Tweets Out VERY NSFW Photo Of Woman With Toy Plane - "US Airways apologized for an extremely graphic photo that it shared earlier today, depicting a naked woman in a sexual position with a toy plane. On Monday afternoon, the airline tweeted the photo to a customer who was complaining about their service. US Airways said in the tweet, "We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail here for review and follow up.""

Ladies of the Guardian: please stop writing about sex - "It’s a firm rule that, to write on matters sexual, you have to be a young female with a jaunty prose style and a strong belief that (fully consensual) sex is GREAT! It’s good dirty fun – if you’re doing it right! Articles that take a more nuanced line are as rare as non-Etonian cabinet ministers. A visiting Martian might be curious to know why this puffing of sex has to come from female writers – don’t men enjoy the bliss of sex too? Yes they do, but when they express this they are prone to a dodgy excess, to thinking Bad Thoughts that disrespect women, to tainting this magic playground with the sins of our fathers. They must patiently stay on the naughty step a while longer. All sexuality is equal, but some is more in tune with the basic goodness of sex. Only women can fully express this goodness. (Male writers must stick to sober, sad sex topics like erectile dysfunction)... Ladies of the Guardian: please stop writing about sex, because you’re not good enough at it. Serious writing about sex means pondering some difficult truths – for example, that the sexual impulse is something that needs to be reined in, most of the time. It has to be kept within pretty tight confines. This is difficult to reflect on; it means suspecting one’s own impulses, admitting their moral fallibility. Easier to pretend that sex is just a pure, easy, innocent pleasure-source, and that people who doubt it are repressed reactionaries. I recently came across an excellent essay on this issue, by the American writer Mark Greif, called ‘Afternoon of the Sex Children’. Sexual liberation was a good and necessary thing, he says. But, fuelled by commercialism, it developed a downside: it led to a culture of the simplistic promotion of sex, as a badge of being a liberated modern. A true test of liberation, he says, ‘must be whether you have also been freed to be free from sex... There’s a fine line between a healthy frankness about sex and an unhealthy evasion of its complexity. By ignoring this line the whole time, the Guardianmakes itself look lightweight."

Kitten Nearly Dies On Vegan Diet, Gets Healed With Meat - "Veterinarians in Australia who cared for a violently ill vegan kitten are warning pet owners not to "force ideologies" on their pets"

Age at Coresidence, Premarital Cohabitation, and Marriage Dissolution: 1985–2009 - "Does the age at which premarital cohabitors moved in together explain why they have been found to have an increased risk of marital dissolution? Explanations for the increased risk of marriage dissolution among those who marry young center on marital role preparation; for premarital cohabitors, many, if not most, of these roles began at the onset of cohabitation, not marriage. Analyses of the 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (N = 7,037) revealed that age at coresidence explained a substantial portion of the higher marital dissolution risk of premarital cohabitors. In comparisons standardized by age at coresidence, the difference in risk of marital dissolution between premarital cohabitors and those who married without prior cohabitation (“direct marriers”) was much smaller than in comparisons standardized by age at marriage, and in some models this difference was not significant. Selection into direct marriage and premarital cohabitation was also examined."

Seven Reasons Why Gay People Are Better Than Straight People - "EDITOR'S NOTE: We do not think all gay people are better than all straight people. We, in fact, do not think all gay people are anything. (Or all straight people, for that matter.) These are just some general observations. So please, lighten up."
If someone had posted "Seven Reasons Why Straight People Are Better Than Gay People"...