Got a shock looking for flight prices from Darwin to Alice Springs

Links - 28th June 2011

"As I grow older , I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me." - H. Rider Haggard

***

Language Log » Character Amnesia - "I've seen people stumped by even the simplified form of the character for "shrimp," xiā 虾, never mind the traditional form, 蝦, and Demick tells of "literate" people who cannot write zàijiàn 再見 ("goodbye") or "shampoo" (there are several possibilities). Even before computers, exceedingly few people could write both characters for "sneeze" (pēntì 噴嚏, simplified 噴嚏 [same]); though I've asked scores, I personally have never met any Chinese, including individuals with master's and doctor's degrees, who could do so... Because of their complexity and multiplicity, writing Chinese characters correctly is a highly neuromuscular task. One simply has to practice them hundreds and hundreds of times to master them. And, as with playing a musical instrument like a violin or a piano, one must practice writing them regularly or one's control over them will simply evaporate... is romanization inevitable?"

YouTube - 深圳 妙龄女子一吻救命 无惧危险用爱解危
Young man commiting suicide is saved by a female stranger's kiss

Diamond District sidewalks are paved with gold for Queens man - ""The streets of 47th Street are literally paved with gold"... The freelance diamond setter explained that he was sifting through "very valuable" New York City mud for tiny diamond and ruby chips, bits of platinum, white-gold industrial loops for jewelry assembly, and gold earring backs and loops from broken chains, watches, broaches and necklaces -- all carelessly dropped and now his to mine... Over six days, he says, he collected enough gold for two sales totaling $819"

Fukushima babies and how numbers can lie - "Human beings do not always behave the way some economists think we do. We're not totally rational creatures. And profit motive is not the only factor driving our choices. When you think about what information be skeptical of, that decision can't begin and end with "corporate interests"... we should [not] uncritically accept it when somebody says that radiation from Fukushima is killing babies in the United States. Just because the corporate interests are in the wrong doesn't mean that every claim against them is true"

Dating website for beautiful people dumps 30,000 members - "BeautifulPeople.com was attacked by a computer virus, some claim standards slipped and around 30,000 new members gained admittance... The website triggered anger in Ireland when it said that Irish men were among the ugliest in the world. This was based on the reasoning that only 9% of male Irish applicants to the site were accepted. Only 20% of Irish women are accepted, compared with nearly 70% of Swedish women who sign up. The prospects are even worse for British men, as according to Hodge, they are the most likely be rejected... Norwegian women and Swedish men have the greatest chance of being accepted into the club, while Brazilian and Danish men are also popular – along with women from Sweden and Iceland"

What Darwin's Doubters Get Wrong - "Fodor, Nagel, and Plantinga don't need to turn themselves into biochemists, but some awareness of the issues and advances would not be entirely misplaced. This total lack of interest in the science is surely suggestive. The critics are being driven by other, for them deeper, concerns. And as an evolutionist, I turn to the past for clues"

SHOULD YOU TEACH YOUR KIDS CHINESE? - ""

NHPR.org - Neuroscientists, Brain Injuries and Comic Books...Yeah
Head injuries in comic books mirror real life: They occur when helmets fly off, and they occur mostly to men

Death Star PR: An Open Letter to TIME Magazine re: Darth Vader - "In your article of June 17, you listed Darth Vader as the third worst "fictional" father... So many parents don't even care where their children are, or what they're up to, no matter the time of day or night. Not Darth Vader. When he couldn't find Luke, Vader dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space. This was in spite of the fact that Luke had just become the Galaxy's Most Wanted terrorist, almost killed his dad and blown up 1.3 million of his friends and workmates. Are those the actions of a bad father? He even went to visit Luke on the ice planet Hoth and see how he was going at work, despite how far away it was and the fact that the climate there really plays hell with your cyborg body parts"

"Let's go to Japan" Meeting Tour for Global Singles - "You will be introduced to (and will be able to spend one on one time with) 10 different partners while visiting various tourist spots in Japan"

Just like in anime -- Chinese man gets nosebleed staring at hot chick

The Euphemism Treadmill - "Medical words like "idiot" and "retarded" became "mentally challenged" then "intellectually disabled" then "special" -- and now "special" is going out of favor (isn't that special?!) Yes, people use words to hurt others... Making words like "retarded" and "queer" taboo just give them more power to hurt. Embracing them takes that hurtful power away"

These ‘rules’ are already broken - "Setting out a cavalcade of rules that standard English does not comply with and never did, and representing them as instruction in how to write today, is dishonest... “Bad English”, lambasts words, phrases, and writers Heffer
dislikes... Unfortunately, we would be wasting our time discussing them with him; he speaks ex cathedra. “As a professional writer, I happen to believe that the ‘evidence’ of how I see English written by others, including some other professional writers, is not something by which I wish to be influenced”, he says (p.xviii). As he said in the Daily Telegraph (20 August), “English grammar shouldn’t be a matter for debate.” No point, then, in observing that they with singular antecedent, which he calls “abominable” (p.xiii), is found (“We can only know an actual person by observing their behaviour...”) in the writings of George Orwell, who Heffer calls “the finest writer of English prose”"

Scientist Makes Poop Burger (VIDEO) - "He combined the synthesized protein with soya and added some steak sauce for taste and dubbed it a burger. According to the video, which explains the process, it even tastes like beef"

5 fake sounds designed to help humans - "The car door clunk
The vroom of electric vehicles
The souped-up sound of stadiums
The secret static on your Skype call
The cashpoint whirr"

Logical punctuation: Should we start placing commas outside quotation marks? - "The British way simply makes more sense"

Doctors are not scientists - "Most readers of medical journals don't read the original articles. They may scan the abstract, but it's the rarest of beasts who reads an article from beginning to end, critically appraising it as he or she goes. Indeed, most doctors are incapable of critically appraising an article. They have never been trained to do so"

Female Infidelity May Violate Goose-gander Parity Principle - "Female cheating may just be a side effect of the enormous benefit males derive from spreading their seed as widely as possible."

Dark corners of the net - "Hackers spend time swapping tips about their favourite books, with choices ranging from Stephen King and a guidebook entitled 'Galactic Rebellion for Dummies' to the handbook of disenchanted youth, Catcher in the Rye. There is also mention of John Milton's 17th century epic poem Paradise Lost"

Scott Adams on feminist rage - "Is this an entire website dedicated to poor reading comprehension? I don’t think one of you understood the writing. You’re all hopping mad about your own misinterpretations... the content of the piece inspires so much emotion in some readers that they literally can’t understand it. The same would be true if the topic were about gun ownership or a dozen other topics. As emotion increases, reading comprehension decreases... You can see that the comments about the piece were little more than name-calling. When confronted with that sort of reaction, would it be wiser to treat the name-callers as you might treat respected professors with opinions worthy of consideration, or should you treat the name-callers as you would angry children, by not debating and not taking it personally?"

It’s Even Less in Your Genes - "Despite the evidence that organisms do not simply use resources present in the environment but, through their life activities, produce such resources and manufacture their environments, the distinction between organisms and their environments remains deeply embedded in our consciousness... The genes for IQ have never been found. Ironically, at the same time that genetics has ceased to be a popular explanation for human intellectual and temperamental differences, genetic theories for the causation of virtually every physical disorder have become the mode... [geneticists'] use of the terms “heritable” and “heritability” is so confusing that an attempt at its clarification occupies the last two chapters of The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture"

What's the connection between sex and happiness? - "Sex appears to have stronger effects on the happiness of highly educated people than those with low levels of education. The happiness- maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is 1. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness, but a strong positive effect on the reported amount of sexual activity. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed, or separated. Money buys more sexual partners but not more sex."

YouTube - Lost In Austen: Trailer - "A thoroughly modern heroine threatens to ruin one of the worlds greatest literary love stories in this ingenious reinvention of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice"

France salutes end of military service - "Military experts have said conscripts are expensive to call up and then feed, clothe, house and train, but are of little use in a modern fighting force"

The Singapore Spirit

"The Singapore Spirit" is about surging GDP, money, numbers and trend lines.

No surprises here.

France/Spain 2011 - Day 2, Part 6 - Hike to Perdition

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood." - H. L. Mencken

***

France/Spain 2011
Day 2 - 18th March - Hike to Perdition (Part 6)

I started hiking towards the Castle of Haut-Kœnigsbourg. Luckily I did it alone so I didn't slow anyone down.


Roadside Shrine


Châtenois church


Grape vines


Path and vines


In the distance, the Château de Kintzheim


Various destinations, including Santiago de Compostela, 2,259km away.

Having walked to Kintzheim, it was time to attack the path sloping up.


Path


Leaves looking like they belong to autumn


The trail then went off the paved road


And became a dirt track again


Continuing through the forest

Tourist information had said the route was not too hard. The woman was WRONG.


Both sides led to Haut-Kœnigsbourg. I took the shorter, hoping it was not deceptively so.

When I finally got to the castle, I found that it was under renovation.



I also found that I had arrived at about 5:05pm, which was 5 minutes after the castle had closed; the supposedly 1 hour hike had taken 2. I tried telling 2 attendant my sob story, but neither was impressed and I was not let in (I was tempted to try crawling past the ticket booth, but among other things it was hard to do so after a difficult hike).

I was comforted by the knowledge that the most impressive part of a castle, from previous experience, was its exterior - and I could still see that. No, this is not sour grapes. Really. All in all, I rate this as my second most tragic travel story (the most tragic is when I walked what must have been 20km to the wrong lake and back)


Portal of Honour


South facade


On the design of the South Facade




Panorama


Inside the courtyard (before ticket check)


Ticket check (entrance to château)




Site plaque and history


Star Bastion

As I was being driven away from the château by a taxi driver, he suggested to me that a better idea would've been to take a taxi there and hike down. Ah well, hindsight. The taxi driver had come from Yugoslavia 45 years ago, and he confused me by saying that Yugoslavia had sent aid to Japan (he still referred to the group of countries as such). When I pointed out there was no more Yugoslavia, he said Bosnia and Serbia were the same (I doubt people in the Balkans would feel the same way now). Also he still had no local accent.

The taxi driver was tuned to France Musique, which I found a bit surreal because I subscribed to the same show (Histoire de... [la musique]) on podcast.

Adding insult to injury, I just missed 2 trains to Strasbourg, and the next train was supposed to arrive 1/2 hour late (in the end it came only 1 minute late - as opposed to Italy where the delay just keeps increasing). And for the second time in as many days, when I opened Orangina from a dispenser it overflowed on my fingers.

I'm not sure why people pay 2,5€ for a bottled drink from a shop when the vending machine a stone throw's away sells it for 2€.


"A la memorie et en hommage aux français d'Alsace morts, victimes de leur incorporation de force dans l'armée allemande en violation du droit des gens
Ici
a commencé en octobre 1942
Le long cheminement de souffrances et de sacrifices qui les a menés vers leur destin tragique
Notre fidélité à leur souvenir restera garante de leur honneur"

("To the memory of and in homage to the dead French of Alsace, victims of their press ganging into the German army in violation of human rights
Here began in October 1942
The long road of suffering and sacrifice which led them to their tragic destiny
Our faithfulness to their memory guarantees their honour")

Another verbose World War II memorial. Given that conscription lasted in France for almost a century, this seems odd, to say the least.


"Hotel-Wifi"
They're promoting their hotel for its wifi. That's sad. And it was locked anyway, bah.


"Brules ta banque"
("Burn your bank")

An apparently homeless girl was sitting on the sidewalk with a dog on a leash. She was quite young, and usually homeless people are middle-aged and older and male. I had my suspicious. I gave her my pain aux amandes (almond pastry) I had bought with lunch and the dog growled at me, though it looked friendly. I would've petted it but it didn't seem like it would've been happy; homelessness does that to you. I wanted to take a photo but the flash might've made the dog angry (and the girl didn't want herself to be documented in my exposé of the failure of the welfare state [though she was fine with the dog] - maybe she wasn't really homeless), so I demurred.

I then made arrangements to meet locals for dinner and the next day over the phone. International SMS always had problems, so I called. Pay as you roam at $1.80/minute is an expensive way to practise a foreign language (especially given the indistinctness of telephone calls), ugh.


Somehow unaccompanied minors cannot use this lift (they'd repaired the lift, and the wifi too!) And I don't know why there's a button for "appel d'urgence" (emergency call) - for a lift. In any event, 5 hot German teens ran into the elevator so I had no chance to take a proper shot.

When I got back to my room, I discovered a Taiwanese student on a Grand Tour of Europe. However he was eating what looked like Madeleines. He said he didn't like baguettes as they were too hard. I suggested he take advantage of 10€ lunch sets, and he said even 5€ for lunch was too much. Go figure.

For dinner I got driven to a restaurant in a ruined castle near Saverne - Haut Barr.


The thinnest Tarte Flambée ever

I don't know how people just drink an apéritif during a meal - and no water. Alcohol just makes one more thirsty, no?


Choucroute
I didn't like this, despite it being assorted pork products, as it was too bland (the mustard and horseradish didn't really help)

Talking to my host(s) I found that Alsatians still seemed upset at the Germans, not just for the annexation but also for conscription during the war. So they had to fight relatives in the French army.


Crème brûlée


Restaurant interior

Getting back to the hostel, I found that Haut-Kœnigsbourg used to have a shuttle in winter, but last winter there was snow and there had been a bus accident, so they changed the shuttle's availability. The guy added that the shuttle's details kept changing.


Hostel restaurant menu. It's actually very interesting, and not just for the translations (their German seems better than their English).

Observations - 27th June 2011

"I have not lost my mind - it's backed up on disk somewhere." - Unknown

***

One of my fantasies: will $1 to lots of people so they will come to my will reading and be pissed off.

It takes two hands to clap but only one to slap.

At a wedding I was at recently I swear one of the women doing the readings mentioned St Paul's letter to the Philippines.



News stories that reference stories readily available online but which don't provide links are very irritating.

Trying to find the origin of something on tumblr is like looking for Prestor John


I suspect a main reason people hate Windows is enterprise software. So it's not really Windows's fault.

A centralised system also means a centralised point of failure


It is ironic that Singaporeans despise PRCs for reasons similar to why Singaporeans are disliked in developed countries

I wonder why we need screen doors on all our MRT lines, but they don't in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and many other cities.

Entrepreneurship in Singapore is about taxi driving and private education.


Seen: "In terms of appearance: I do love long hair. The longer the better, in fact. This is not mandatory, I’m just sayin' (Wow, this bitch is even ranting about the hard-hitting issue of male hair length, but...) If you did have long hair and you think cutting it somehow made you more of a 'grown-up' or as part of some ridiculous pressure from this sexist double-standard, please proceed to stick head in meat grinder. I have seen the most horrific bleached, dyed, split end straw mess on female heads, but if it's anything less than perfect on a guy one often hears inanely horrified commentary that somehow maturity and hygiene levels are inversely proportional to how long your hair is if you are in possession of a penis."

Just because I think you would look better with a boob job doesn't mean you should be forced to get one, or you should be happy if some mad plastic surgeon drugs you and you wake up with one.


I am annoyed by false dichotomies. No one advocates expulsing ALL foreigners from Singapore, or ratcheting up government spending to 200% of GDP.

From a seditious article: "There is no defamation suit because in court the correct details of the incident will come out" I wonder if the author(s) will be sued for defamation...

The office of MP is not a lifetime achievement award (@struthious yeah I would vote for [my sweeper] over LKY)


I swear Pearl necklaces are as popular an accessory now as hoop earrings were in 2004.

"Round, warm, silky smooth, soft, bouncy" - Sounds like good fishballs.


Seen on anti-smoking material: "Be inspired by the brave stories of those who have quit smoking". This is the feebleness of 21st century "Bravery".

An inspirational quote I saw: "Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows." (Helen Keller) How can she be credible saying that? Do people even undertand the drivel that they repeat?!


RT @MrAniki: #Singapore, you have to step up your game. There is a long way to go http://t.co/fWKqDhW #fail

RT: @leraine: Don't complain about how guys just look at you as a pair of tits and a vagina if you're like "I've got tits and a cunt, where's my Gucci?"

RT @sebastien_mc: On ne dit pas « Sodomiser ses copains » mais « Elargir le cercle de ses amis » !

RT @joshlim If you take out all the vowels from female, you get FML.

RT: @markleggett: Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger but more likely it will make us much weaker and horribly disfigured and bitter and fearful.

On Free Will

"As you journey along the path you meet an old man.

He tells you that modern neuroscience has proven that all our actions and decisions are merely the machinations of a predetermined universe and that our concept of ‘free will’ is nothing but a comforting illusion.

If you agree with his hypothesis, turn to page 72

If you disagree, turn to page 72"

Ture Love

I don't know what my Ture Love is, but (s)he looks like a transsexual

Update: When I published this post, Google served up the following ad:


"Pretty Ladyboys
Ladyboys from Asia are looking for friendship and love with men
www.LadyboyKisses.com"

Links - 26th June 2011

"Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle." - Darby Conley

***

Inspired by 'Sex and the City,' Woman Beds 1,000 Men - "She slept with at least one stranger a week, travelled the world hunting for men to bed, and took part in threesomes."

Under 1 Percent of Web Visits Comes from Social Media

Aware 'disappointed' with all-male Cabinet - "SINGAPORE'S women advocacy group Aware said yesterday it is heartened to see an increase in the number of women office-holders in Parliament. But the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) also registered its disappointment at the lack of a woman minister in the new Cabinet... Noting that several male newcomers have been appointed to political office, she said: 'I find it impossible to believe that, despite the track record the women MPs have, the Government cannot take an equal risk with the women.'"
Presumably AWARE would be OVERJOYED if Tin Pei Ling were made a minister. Maybe they should scold the Workers' Party for toppling Singapore's first woman minister

Cheating and God: Study ties willingness to cheat, viewpoint on what God is like - "In line with many previous studies, it found no difference between the ethical behavior of believers and nonbelievers. But those who believed in a loving, compassionate God were more likely to cheat than those who believed in an angry, punitive God"
It seems those who believed in a loving, compassionate God were more likely to cheat than nonbelievers

German salesmen rewarded with meticulously organised orgy - "The company's Ergo division decided it would be a nice gesture to whisk 100 "particularly successful salesmen" to a Budapest thermal baths and offer them the services of 20 prostitutes... A spokesman for the company admitted the event had indeed taken place, but stressed "it was not the usual way of rewarding their employees""

Messages From Match - "how to fail miserably at online dating. we couldn't make these up if we tried."
Perhaps they should also ponder why it isn't the girls who are proactively messaging the guys

How "Soul Calibur" Keeps Its Boobs Breast in Show - "It's not just "Soul Calibur," either. Breast physics are a THING in the fighting game category, for some odd reason. Just look at Tecmo's "Dead or Alive" games.) Maybe the ability to focus past the breast acrobatics separates men from the boys. Or, it's a way to show off how programmers implement the processing power of a particular platform. Shiny textures and dynamic lighting are one thing, but boobs that move like they're on a perpetual trampoline?! That's technical know-how!"

Eight million gallons of water drained from reservoir after man urinates in it

Some men swapping pants for dresses - "Yamamoto believes that in Japan, where men used to wear kimono in everyday life, the difference between men and women has been blurred and men nowadays are relatively free from dress standards based on gender stereotypes... Prejudice against long-haired men and those with pierced ears disappeared after more men adopted those styles and people became used to them, he added... many readers ask questions about how to treat leg hair when they wear a skirt"
Amusingly, even in Japan the men who wear skirts get strange looks

A gruesome experiment with ants proves they have built-in odometers - "Sometimes the scientists added tiny stilts to the ant legs, which had to have been a very fun assignment for an engineer and a frustrating task for a lab assistant. At other times, the scientists partially amputated the legs of the ant... If the ants' legs were lengthened, they overshot the nest. If the legs were, to put it euphemistically, shortened, they undershot it. However, if the ants were, to once again put it euphemistically, 'modified' before they set out on their journey, they made their way to the object and back with no trouble. To get around, ants literally count their steps"

soldiers are reluctant to kill - "Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. ... The question is why. ... [The answer] is the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it"

Who says domestic helpers are overworked? - "My maid has more than enough time to rest daily, when the kids are napping or when my older one is in kindergarten. My maid is the one who goes to bed by nine every night and my husband and I are the ones who are still up way beyond nine to tuck in our children and catch up with school work. Are maids really that overworked? The many maids congregating and chatting away happily at my condominium on weekdays present a different picture... The slew of social problems that will result from a weekly day off is unthinkable"
People only think it's slack being a maid because they forget that working hours for a maid are essentially 24/6. So as a *proportion* of their working hours their job is slack.
Comment: "Why Singaporean woman like that? Teacher some more...what a disgrace. I gave up on this species a long time ago and am now happily married to a foreigner, from a nearby country; Home schooling for my child then."

A theorem, a crank, and a duel to the death - "A debate over mathematics took a sinister turn earlier this month when philosopher Li Ming, working out of his field, challenged science activist Fang Zhouzi to a deadly wager over the results of his purported proof of the four color problem. The loser, should Fang accept the terms, would be bound to commit suicide. So is this the most significant scientific result derived from Chinese philosophy since Phuntsok Wanggyal proved dialectically that liquid water exists on all celestial bodies in the universe in his seminal treatise Liquid Water Does Exist on the Moon"

Lies, damn lies and Chinese science - "The peer-reviewed international journal Acta Crystallographica Section E announced the retraction of more than 70 papers by Chinese scientists who had falsified data. Three months later, the same publication announced the removal of another 39 articles “as a result of problems with the data sets or incorrect atom assignments”, 37 of which were entirely produced in Chinese universities. The New Jersey-based Centenary College closed its affiliated Chinese business school programme in July after a review “revealed evidence of widespread plagiarism, among other issues, at a level that ordinarily would have resulted in students’ immediate dismissal from the college.” A government study, cited by Nature, found that about one-third of over 6,000 scientists surveyed at six top Chinese institutions had practised “plagiarism, falsification or fabrication”... One systematic review of acupuncture studies from 1998, published in Controlled Clinical Trials, found that every single clinical trial originating in China was positive – in other words, no trial published in China had found a treatment to be ineffective. Moreover, a nationalistic and defensive approach to discredited methods keeps superstition alive in the academies and government"
Cultural Imperialism!

Ristorante: Italy's most popular pizza manufactured in Lancashire by Dr. Oetker - "Its next nearest rival in Italy is Buitoni Bella Napoli pizza, owned by the Swiss conglomerate Nestle"
This is why I pooh-pooh people who claim that you can only get the best/most-authentic food in its supposed place of origin

What to Say to Someone Who’s Sick - "WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP? Most patients I know grow to hate this ubiquitous, if heartfelt question because it puts the burden back on them. As Doug Ulman, the chief executive of Livestrong and a three-time cancer survivor, explained: “The patient is never going to tell you. They don’t want to feel vulnerable.” Instead, just do something for the patient. And the more mundane the better, because those are the tasks that add up. Want to be really helpful? Clean out my fridge, replace my light bulbs, unpot my dead plants, change my oil"

The Live Action trailer for Mass Effect 3. An unsuspecting Earth is attacked by sentient spaceships from beyond the stars. News reports cannot believe what is happening. Husks attack

Zhou’s cryptic caution lost in translation - "The impact of the French Revolution? “Too early to say”... The trouble is that Zhou was not referring to the 1789 storming of the Bastille [but] the 1968 students’ riots in Paris, according to Nixon’s interpreter at the time... Zhou’s quote fitted with the widespread western view of an “oriental obliquity” that thought far into the future and was “somehow profound”. “Whereas, in China, you mostly hear that the leadership is short-sighted, radically pragmatic and anything but subtle”... Deng Xiaoping, who launched the country’s market reforms, is credited with saying, “To get rich is glorious”, although there is no record that he said it. The oft-quoted Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, does not exist in China itself, scholars say"

Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong - "LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign"

Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

WASTED SG - "do u like making out to the sound of ‘wfhaaaaauughhh!!’?? (that’s a puking sound)"
Photos of wasted people outside Singaporean clubs. I hope this person is female so she doesn't get in trouble
Addendum: New Subtitle - "Not all singaporean girls like to post pictures of cupcakes. ;-P"

YouTube - How to avoid getting hit by a train

Blogger jailed over critical restaurant review - "The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander. However, the judge also ruled that Liu should not have criticized all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit. Health officials who inspected the restaurant did not find conditions to be as unsanitary as Liu had described, so the High Court also ruled that Liu must pay NT$200,000 to the owner for revenues lost as a result of her blog post... Huang Cheng-lee (黃呈利), a lawyer in Taichung, said that bloggers who post food reviews should... supplement their comments with photographs to protect themselves"

Russell on Aquinas

"There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times."

--- A History of Western Philosophy / Bertrand Russell