"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable." - Fran Lebowitz
***
Search is on for boyfriend for Feng Tianwei - "He must be Singaporean and someone who can speak Mandarin... The task has been entrusted to Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Chan Chun Sing, revealed Singapore Table Tennis Association president Lee Bee Wah"
FAIL!
Where the Minutes Are Longer: The Weird Science of Telling Time on Mars - "Mars actually spins a bit slower than our own planet, and as a result, its whole day is a bit longer -- 24 Earth hours and 39 Earth minutes... "Since I was a young child I've put my heart into making very precise time pieces, now I was being asked to create a watch that was slow on purpose""
Grace Dent: Take the fight to men – we'd give them a good kicking - "the irony of men anonymously slagging off woman who could hospitalise them from behind a keyboard several miles away is simply too delicious"
Comments: "in going through the article line by line, there are 12 negative references to men by the female author, of those 12, 5 advocate or fantasize physical violence against men, 1 reference only could be construed in the context of girl on girl conflict. I think both you and the author have repressed violent issues, and she in particular is using the triumph of female victory at the Games in previously male orientated sports ( weren't they at all at one point) to push her sexist and violently orientated agenda. More tea anyone?"
"Yes I'm now going to encourage the young ladies to smack the teeth out of any other girl who upsets them, kick the head of older men who leer at them, and beat the proverbial cr&p out of anyone who spills their drinks in a bar or eyeballs them wrong in the street. Clearly this is progress and just what the UK needs. "
Samantha Brick on the downsides to looking pretty: 'Why women hate me for being beautiful' - "f you’re a woman reading this, I’d hazard that you’ve already formed your own opinion about me — and it won’t be very flattering. For while many doors have been opened (literally) as a result of my looks, just as many have been metaphorically slammed in my face — and usually by my own sex. I’m not smug and I’m no flirt, yet over the years I’ve been dropped by countless friends who felt threatened if I was merely in the presence of their other halves. If their partners dared to actually talk to me, a sudden chill would descend on the room. And it is not just jealous wives who have frozen me out of their lives. Insecure female bosses have also barred me from promotions at work. And most poignantly of all, not one girlfriend has ever asked me to be her bridesmaid. You’d think we women would applaud each other for taking pride in our appearances."
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate each other
Consciousness and Cognition - Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving - "The current experiment tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on a common creative problem solving task, the Remote Associates Test (RAT). Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of approximately .075, and, after reaching peak intoxication, completed a battery of RAT items. Intoxicated individuals solved more RAT items, in less time, and were more likely to perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight"
How an 18-Year-Old Made $35K for Tweeting Parody Accounts - "In the last four months, King has earned more than $35,000 by tweeting sponsored messages on the microblogging platform. Not too shabby for an 18-year-old high school student"
9GAG - Does McDonald's put less sesame seeds on their buns?
Mr.Smith: Event Blogging Template 101 - "Today I was invited to XXX event by YYY company.
[insert picture of event entrance]
I am so excited about the event! The event was so awesome it's a blast!
[insert camwhore1.jpg]
[insert camwhore2.jpg]
[insert camwhore3.jpg]
Look who i bumped into! The Famous [insert another half pass 6 self proclaimed popular blogger with unique click of around 100 per day] "
Artur Davis: Biden "in chains" comment "insulting to African-Americans" - "Artur Davis, a Democrat-turned-Republican former congressman from Alabama, on Wednesday accused Vice President Joe Biden of using racially divisive rhetoric that is "insulting" to African-Americans. "I know what Joe Biden was doing yesterday," Davis said in an appearance on CNN. "Every black person in that room knew who the 'y'all' was. They knew what the chains were. They knew what the metaphor was about." In remarks at a campaign event in Virginia Tuesday with a number of African-American audience members, the vice president lambasted Romney for allegedly wanting to repeal financial regulations enacted after the Wall Street crash of 2008. "He's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules - unchain Wall Street!" Biden said. He added: "They're going to put you all back in chains." Republicans pounced on the remarks. Biden later clarified his comment, stating that he had meant to say "unshackle" in reference to Republican claims that regulations "shackle" the economy"
Everyone can play the Offence Game!
"Your Mother Would Like Me": Self-Presentation in the Personals Ads of Heterosexual and Homosexual Men and Women - "(a) gay men emphasized physical characteristics most and lesbians least; (b) heterosexual women mentioned attractiveness more than lesbians did; (c) women solicited more expressive traits and offered more instrumental traits than men; (d) gay men mentioned sexuality more than other advertisers; and (e) heterosexuals were more likely than homosexuals to pursue long-term relationships and to mention sincerity and financial security. The advantages of using personals ads as a source of data about self-presentation, societal definitions of attractiveness, and changing social forces are discussed"
No wonder lesbians are ugly
Ira Weissman: 7 Reasons Why Diamonds Are a Waste of Your Money - "1) The most common misconception about engagement rings is that they're some kind of ancient tradition that's deeply embedded in human history in societies around the world. This is completely false
2) Diamonds are not an investment -- they are a retail product like any other
3) The diamond jewelry market is a shark tank
4) Spending a month's (or two!) salary on something so impractical -- at the exact same time you are beginning your new life together as a budding family -- is a very poor financial decision
5) Men, you don't need to waste a ton of money to prove your manhood
6) Women, you don't need your man to waste a ton of money to prove that he loves you.
7) If your man buys you a diamond as a means to keep you quiet for another year about marriage, he probably should be dumped anyway...
Ira Weissman is a diamond industry veteran with a decade of experience at one of the world's largest diamond polishers"
Comment sauver sa vie grâce à un tampon! - "Vous pouvez également l’utiliser comme filtre à eau si vous l’insérez dans le goulot d’une bouteille. L’applicateur peut quant à lui servir de paille pour boire. Si vous laissez le tampon dans son applicateur, vous ferez alors d’une pierre deux coups, en filtrant l’eau que vous buvez!"
Vers une suppression des bordels animaliers en Allemagne ? - "Les bordels animaliers ont le vent en poupe en Allemagne, et cela a le mérite d’en irriter certains. En effet, les services de protection de nos amis les bêtes souhaitent que la zoophilie soit reconnue comme un crime (il convient de noter que si la pornographie à caractère zoophile est prohibée, l’acte lui-même ne l’est pas dans ce pays). Selon les autorités allemandes, avoir des relations sexuelles avec des animaux est de plus en plus perçu comme un choix de vie alternatif, et est relativement mieux toléré qu’auparavant"
WikiWeapons: 3D printed guns for everyone - Boing Boing
Mass. couple dies trying to rescue dog from lake - "A Massachusetts couple boating on a lake drowned after jumping into the water to rescue their dog, who survived. Police say the small dog named Sadie jumped into Hampton Ponds in Westfield on Monday night, prompting 64-year-old Donald Cyr to follow his pet into the lake. Police told The Westfield News that he became distressed and his wife, 61-year-old Patricia Cyr, tried to rescue him. Their daughter, Miranda Landry, told The Boston Globe that her mother jumped into the water despite not being able to swim."
Singapore tau huay too low class for French upscale event Diner en Blanc?! | The Moonberry Blog - "Diner en Blanc will be taking place next Thursday at a secret location and even though there has been a lot of positive buzz and general excitement, I am somewhat disturbed upon finding out that fellow blogger Daniel from DanielFoodDiary.com has been asked to modify remove his blog post in which he has suggested some local food (which are white, to suit the all-white theme of this event) to bring. Specifically, his suggestion of soybean pudding aka tau huay is deemed by Diner en Blanc organizers to be “not up to par” with the event’s upscale nature. Whoa. Are they implying that tau huay is too low class to bring to and be eaten at Diner en Blanc?!... the organizers have decided to uninvite all bloggers from the event. From what I heard, the Diner en Blanc organizers feel that there is little value in inviting bloggers because they do not regard social media influencers to be that influential anyway. Everyone on the social media invitation list, specifically bloggers, has been nixed"
Does roux-en-Y gastric bypass cure diabetes?
Top 5 reasons Icebreaker underwear are my favorite pieces of travel gear - "I so enjoyed Icebreaker's boxer briefs that they have become my favorite piece of travel gear. With each passing day of the trip, as temperatures approached 90°F and humidity constantly hovered at around 98%, I was increasingly more thankful that the most intimate parts of my body were enrobed in Icebreaker"
Desk Rage: The Tell-Tale Signs of an Overworked Employee (graphic)
Americans Abroad Renounce U.S. Citizenship Due to Tax and Reporting Reasons
Renouncing citizenship: Did Eduardo Saverin do anything wrong? | The Economist - "Half a billion dollars! That is not scot-free. Did the marauding aliens in "Independence Day" leave behind a half billion American dollars after having successfully invested in Earth? They did not! One wonders how many pounds of flesh Mr Manjoo and Ms Hogue think Mr Saverin owes for the privilege of having Uncle Sam's hooks out once and for all"
Twitter / si_vault: This may be the most entertaining golf photo I've come across
This is what happens when a gamer couple wants to cuddle. We seriously played like this for a good hour 8D (image)
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
On Slavery being more Moral than Capitalism
"We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts." - John Dewey
***
"There is slavery – there are maybe 30 million slaves in the world. But we no longer approve it, regard it as the natural order, or make up stories about how it's better for the slaves. Yet the arguments that were given for slavery – which were not insubstantial – were never answered; they were just rejected as being morally intolerable through a period of growth of moral consciousness. I haven’t heard a sensible answer to the main argument offered by slaveholders in the United States – it was a perfectly sensible argument, and has implications. The basic argument was that slaveholders are more moral than people who live in a market society. To take an anachronistic analogy, if you buy a car and I rent the same car, and we look at those two cars two years from now, yours is going to be in better shape than mine, because you’re going to take care of it; I’m not going to take care of mine. Well, the same is true if you rent people or you buy them. If you buy them, you’re going to take care of them: it’s a capital investment. If you rent people, they’re just tools; you throw them out when you’re done with them — if they can’t survive, who cares, you can throw them out on the dump yard. That’s the difference between a slave society and a market society. In a market society, you rent people; in a slave society, you buy them. So therefore slave societies are more moral than market societies. Well, I’ve never heard an answer to that, and I don’t think that there is an answer. But it’s rejected as morally repugnant — correctly — without following out the implications, that renting people is an atrocity. 1f you follow out that thought, slave owners are right: renting people is indeed a moral atrocity. It’s interesting that 150 years ago, when there was an independent, free, labor-based press, it was just taken for granted — so fully taken for granted, that it was even a slogan for the Republican Party, that wage labor is fundamentally no diffèrent from chattel slavery except that it’s temporary, and has to be overcome."
--- The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray / Noam Chomsky
***
"There is slavery – there are maybe 30 million slaves in the world. But we no longer approve it, regard it as the natural order, or make up stories about how it's better for the slaves. Yet the arguments that were given for slavery – which were not insubstantial – were never answered; they were just rejected as being morally intolerable through a period of growth of moral consciousness. I haven’t heard a sensible answer to the main argument offered by slaveholders in the United States – it was a perfectly sensible argument, and has implications. The basic argument was that slaveholders are more moral than people who live in a market society. To take an anachronistic analogy, if you buy a car and I rent the same car, and we look at those two cars two years from now, yours is going to be in better shape than mine, because you’re going to take care of it; I’m not going to take care of mine. Well, the same is true if you rent people or you buy them. If you buy them, you’re going to take care of them: it’s a capital investment. If you rent people, they’re just tools; you throw them out when you’re done with them — if they can’t survive, who cares, you can throw them out on the dump yard. That’s the difference between a slave society and a market society. In a market society, you rent people; in a slave society, you buy them. So therefore slave societies are more moral than market societies. Well, I’ve never heard an answer to that, and I don’t think that there is an answer. But it’s rejected as morally repugnant — correctly — without following out the implications, that renting people is an atrocity. 1f you follow out that thought, slave owners are right: renting people is indeed a moral atrocity. It’s interesting that 150 years ago, when there was an independent, free, labor-based press, it was just taken for granted — so fully taken for granted, that it was even a slogan for the Republican Party, that wage labor is fundamentally no diffèrent from chattel slavery except that it’s temporary, and has to be overcome."
--- The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray / Noam Chomsky
Post ID: 5293163043864971530
Observations - 9th October 2012
"I never get my hopes up so I never get let down." – Eeyore
***
Is there a factory which makes blogshop models?
Amused at a DSLR I used with a laser sight for focusing. One could hide a gun in there.
Isn't 22 too young to be using SK II?
The worst thing about being a girl... is interacting with other girls
Tout le monde aime une jolie jeune fille
Does it offend Hindus to talk about slaughtering sacred cows?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. But he still has only one eye
A good sign you are no longer a young adult: getting excited about furniture
Me: "I'll pull it out real fast"
Her: "no, I don't trust you"
#letstakethisoutofcontext (we were talking about my sparkler & her lantern)
RT @kellyoxford As kids we want to be adults who 'can do whatever they want' and as adults we wish we were kids who 'can do whatever they want.'
"Many airline pilots feel horrendously overpaid as they're mostly glorified bus drivers"
RT: @rev_revolver: once a woman in the mall said "isn't everything cuter with babies?!" and jeff replied "not coffins" and just stared at her until she cried
RT @_underjoyed: Sudden realization: the year tt Changi Airport privatised was the year it stopped winning Best Airport (2009). Used to be under CAAS (govt)
RT @Xiaxue Really, there is nothing worse than holier-than-thou mothers. I've been warned by friends, but I didn't know they were THIS bad.
"Aujourd'hui, mon ex que j'aime encore m'a appelée après deux mois de silence radio pour demander à passer chez moi. Il voulait venir "s'entraîner" à dégrafer mon soutien-gorge d'une main pour ne pas paraître incompétent devant sa nouvelle copine. VDM"
RT @mrbrown: Losers gonna lose too. @occupysg: Haters are gonna hate.
That's why we delete them.
RT: @JorgeBaker: “L'ARGENT NE FAIT PAS LE BONHEUR” 1 minute ago via iPhone 5, from London, via Ferrari with Megan Fox.
RT: @9GAG: There is no “u” in awesome... But there is a "me".
RT @astyrred When you use positive self-talk openly it exposes your innermost insecurities. FACT.
RT: @DefineThat: Whore: A woman that sleeps with everyone but you.
MT @food_blogger: "猴不吃蕉，按不得猴头低。"; Cecilia: I felt 'fear' and was 'unwilling'
RT: @CauseWereGuys: Teacher: What's the opposite of laughing? Student: F*cking! Teacher: How's that? Student: Laughing is ha..ha..ha & F*cking is ah.. ah.. ah..
"I don't understand the point of lap-dancing clubs. If I wanted a woman to take all my money and sexually frustrate me, I'd stay at home with the wife"
***
Is there a factory which makes blogshop models?
Amused at a DSLR I used with a laser sight for focusing. One could hide a gun in there.
Isn't 22 too young to be using SK II?
The worst thing about being a girl... is interacting with other girls
Tout le monde aime une jolie jeune fille
Does it offend Hindus to talk about slaughtering sacred cows?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. But he still has only one eye
A good sign you are no longer a young adult: getting excited about furniture
Me: "I'll pull it out real fast"
Her: "no, I don't trust you"
#letstakethisoutofcontext (we were talking about my sparkler & her lantern)
RT @kellyoxford As kids we want to be adults who 'can do whatever they want' and as adults we wish we were kids who 'can do whatever they want.'
"Many airline pilots feel horrendously overpaid as they're mostly glorified bus drivers"
RT: @rev_revolver: once a woman in the mall said "isn't everything cuter with babies?!" and jeff replied "not coffins" and just stared at her until she cried
RT @_underjoyed: Sudden realization: the year tt Changi Airport privatised was the year it stopped winning Best Airport (2009). Used to be under CAAS (govt)
RT @Xiaxue Really, there is nothing worse than holier-than-thou mothers. I've been warned by friends, but I didn't know they were THIS bad.
"Aujourd'hui, mon ex que j'aime encore m'a appelée après deux mois de silence radio pour demander à passer chez moi. Il voulait venir "s'entraîner" à dégrafer mon soutien-gorge d'une main pour ne pas paraître incompétent devant sa nouvelle copine. VDM"
RT @mrbrown: Losers gonna lose too. @occupysg: Haters are gonna hate.
That's why we delete them.
RT: @JorgeBaker: “L'ARGENT NE FAIT PAS LE BONHEUR” 1 minute ago via iPhone 5, from London, via Ferrari with Megan Fox.
RT: @9GAG: There is no “u” in awesome... But there is a "me".
RT @astyrred When you use positive self-talk openly it exposes your innermost insecurities. FACT.
RT: @DefineThat: Whore: A woman that sleeps with everyone but you.
MT @food_blogger: "猴不吃蕉，按不得猴头低。"; Cecilia: I felt 'fear' and was 'unwilling'
RT: @CauseWereGuys: Teacher: What's the opposite of laughing? Student: F*cking! Teacher: How's that? Student: Laughing is ha..ha..ha & F*cking is ah.. ah.. ah..
"I don't understand the point of lap-dancing clubs. If I wanted a woman to take all my money and sexually frustrate me, I'd stay at home with the wife"
Post ID: 8143770523302110281
Monday, October 08, 2012
"allow the lies to stand unchallenged and the public to believe that the defamations are true"
"The council must issue an edict. Any man heard speaking of incest or calling Joff a bastard should lose his tongue for it."
"A prudent measure," said Grand Maester Pycelle, his chain of office clinking as he nodded.
"A folly," sighed Tyrion. "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
"So what would you have us do?" his sister demanded.
"Very little. Let them whisper, they'll grow bored with the tale soon enough. Any man with a thimble of sense will see it for a clumsy attempt to justify usurping the crown. Does Stannis offer proof? How could he, when it never happened?" Tyrion gave his sister his sweetest smile.
"That's so," she had to say. "Still..."
"Your Grace, your brother has the right of this." Petyr Baelish steepled his fingers. "If we attempt to silence this talk, we only lend it credence. Better to treat it with contempt, like the pathetic lie it is."
--- A Song of Sex and Blood
"A prudent measure," said Grand Maester Pycelle, his chain of office clinking as he nodded.
"A folly," sighed Tyrion. "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
"So what would you have us do?" his sister demanded.
"Very little. Let them whisper, they'll grow bored with the tale soon enough. Any man with a thimble of sense will see it for a clumsy attempt to justify usurping the crown. Does Stannis offer proof? How could he, when it never happened?" Tyrion gave his sister his sweetest smile.
"That's so," she had to say. "Still..."
"Your Grace, your brother has the right of this." Petyr Baelish steepled his fingers. "If we attempt to silence this talk, we only lend it credence. Better to treat it with contempt, like the pathetic lie it is."
--- A Song of Sex and Blood
Post ID: 4686624470134447616
Links - 8th October 2012
"You have to love what you do. If you want to make money, sell weapons
or become a mafia boss." - Amir Kassaei
***
Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings - "Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures... self-reported gender differences are more pronounced in Western, individualistic countries. These countries tend to have more progressive sex role ideologies, endorsing such items as "A women should have exactly the same freedom of action as a man" and "Swearing by a woman is no more objectionable than swearing by a man"... Williams and Best (1990) also found that gender stereotypes were most differentiated in Western, individualistic culture"
This extension to the Five Factor model shows that besides being crazy, women are emotional and closed-minded; contrary to feminist theory, gender stereotypes are not responsible for all gender differences
Keywords: five factor model gender, psychological disparities societies greater gender equality, larger equity society
Lawyer: Is it right to jail Shaw for 'honest' mistake? - "He said the underage prostitute was neither trafficked nor coerced into prostitution and worked hand-in-glove with the agency to actively misrepresent herself as above 18... "Is it right to send anyone to jail who makes an honest and reasonable mistake as a result of a fraud or deceit perpetrated upon him? Is it even right to convict such a person in the first place?" He added: "It is no exaggeration to describe this case as falling at or very near the extreme outer edge ofculpability. "It is so very far removed from the type of predatory, conscious and exploitative conduct which this offence is really aimed at. "In my respectful submission, it would be an 'absurdly draconian result' and abhorrent on these facts to send Mr Shaw (and others in like position) to jail, let alone convict him.""
24 testimonials couldn't save Howard Shaw - "the common law has long recognised that a person who commits an act under an honest and reasonable mistaken belief is treated, in the eyes of the law, as morally blameless because he lacks criminal intent. "The question to be asked in this case is: What possible public policy objective is served in sending to jail someone who has no criminal intent, who makes an honest and reasonable mistake and genuinely believes he is engaging in perfectly lawful conduct? Why won't a fine do?" he added. Mr Singh said it was the underage prostitute who had engaged in predatory conduct, entrapping men who were entirely unaware of her deception. But Judge See said the fact that Shaw did not ask the girl about her age or make any effort to verify her age, showed it was not an "honest and reasonable mistake". "It may have been a genuine mistake, but not an honest and reasonable one. He made no enquiries about her age and went ahead to have sex with her. He could have been guarded against an offence, but he took the risk," the judge added. "Perception is subjective and prone to errors and lies. Our senses are not always reliable and prone to mistakes." Shaw must have realised the risk that he was putting himself into, should she not be 18, added Judge See""
Perhaps the silver lining in this case is that more men will be aware that they need to ask for ages (and preferably ID too) if they are not psychic (though that won't save them if the ID is fake). I don't think many people realise that this also applies to non-commercial sex with girls under the age of 16 - a "reasonable mistake" is no defence their either.
Man hailed as hero for saving wife over mother - "Xiao Guo told reporters he had heard of people asking married couples the question, "If your mother and your wife were drowning, who would you save?" But he never imagined it would happen to him."
Goodbye Hotmail, hello Outlook.com - "Microsoft tells me its new email header contains 60 per cent fewer pixels and 30 per cent more messages are viewable in a user’s inbox"
Star Wars: The Old MMO Problem - "there's a problem with what we've come to accept as conventional MMO design. It's that that design rests on ideas which are explicitly manipulative of players, having been cynically created to trap them in a system that will never reward them enough to make them feel they can stop playing. This is the dirty little secret of most MMOs. They are not designed to be fun, interesting or even social experiences. They are designed purely so that you keep playing. They are not entertainment; they are traps. "
F2P vs subs - "F2P players never end up paying $60 for a game they then find they dislike, as happens in the packaged goods world. In packaged goods, there are a lot of marketing practices designed to make you pick up and pay for something you do not want, often in large lump sums. (In grocery stores, it’s making you move more slowly on the expensive aisles, by doing things like having smaller, bumpy tiles on the floor; in games, it is things like touched-up screenshots). As a consequence, free to play is more democratic... people playing for free are subsidized by those who pay — often quite a lot... Whales exist independently of the business model, and what free-to-play does is allow them to spend more on their hobby. Thus the free to play business model ends up monetizing core fans better while actually giving access to more players at the free-to-cheap end... If you’re freaked out by seeing business practices nakedly, realize that what’s changed is that you can see them. And to my mind, that’s actually better for you than blissful ignorance"
Email Attachments in Body instead of in Attachment Line - McCombs Wiki - "When I attach a file to my email, why does it sometimes go in the body instead of the header? Usually this has to do with the format of the email. When you send new email messages through Outlook, by default they are set to be HTML emails. However, some mail programs use Rich Text or Plain Text messaging. If you are replying to a Rich Text email, you’ll notice that the attachment goes in the body of the email. If you are replying to an HTML or Plain Text email, it will go in the Attachment line."
Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory
In Olympics weightlifting, you need every drop of power to win. on Twitpic
mashapotato: littleyoshiie: the fuck is going... - Tell what? - "Choi was checking why the sensor reacted even though the foil touched his butt(in fleuret, only upper body is valid target area), by POKING HIS BUTT WITH THE OPPONENT’S FOIL."
Is India ready for ‘Jism 2′? - "It stars a hard-core adult film actress and has a title that would appear to leave little to the imagination. But it’s not a porn movie — Bollywood is certainly not ready for that. Jism 2— the word means “body” in Hindi language — will be released across India on Friday, promising to be one of the most graphic films in Bollywood history... ”Pretending to police the moral values of a society is the easiest way for politicians to earn brownie points”"
What Pericles would say about Obamacare - "The mess in and around Obamacare is a good illustration of what’s wrong with democracy in the United States. Notice I do not say “what’s wrong with democracy”... Pericles’ democracy was designed to reduce the power of wealth to a minimum and it did so. We know that, because for the almost two hundred years of democracy in Greece, the rich often tried to bring it down and replace it with oligarchy. A second cause Pericles would point out is our dependence on elections. “Elections!” you exclaim. “But aren’t they the essence of democracy?” Not at all. Pericles’ democracy cut way back on the use of elections for two reasons: elections give money an opportunity to exercise power, and elections make cliquish infighting the norm in politics. What ought to be the norm (Pericles would say) is serious discussion of what is best for the people... powerful representative bodies in Athens, such as the Council (like our senate), the courts, and the lawmakers, were composed of representatives selected by a lottery to represent equally the divisions of the city, somewhat like an American jury. These representatives didn’t have to run for election, so they didn’t need to listen to special interests, build up a war chest, or do stupid things to embarrass a political party"
Why Most Manufactured Pet Foods Should Not Be Fed To DOGS & CATS - "Scientifically formulated, manufactured pet foods are packed with chemical supplements used to ‘fortify’, i.e. make up for deficiencies in the basic ingredients that are slaughter house and food and beverage industry waste byproducts, and other chemical additives to flavor/taste-enhance, stabilize, preserve, color and ‘texturize’ ( appear like meat and gravy rather than a grey mush)"
India’s first Playboy bunny, under siege - "Hefner is a sexist pig that lives off the objectification of women’s bodies and posits nudity as faux-empowerment... I am now forced into an awkward position where I have to defend Chopra’s decision to pose nude for Playboy in the face of misogynist ideas about women’s purity and modesty as it relates to Indian nationalism. Critique the retrograde and sexist ideas about sexuality that give a magazine like Playboy so much capital, fine. But not the women that choose to do it. Conflating a woman’s sexual expression with the purity or modesty of her culture is one of the roots of sexism and patriarchy."
Translation: like children, women have no moral agency and can do no wrong. Vive le féminisme !
Fighting Fantasy is back! Try your skill in Blood of the Zombies - "I shall satisfy my nostalgic yearnings with this, one of the best things you will see all week. It's a collection of "you chose wrong" endings from the Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure books, and it couldn't be more brilliant. Here's a couple to whet your appetite. From Fighting Fantasy #12: "When you offer the fruit to the chief he takes a piece, bites it and promptly falls over dead. The rest of the aliens are appalled, and leap at you with needle-sharp spears; the ferocity of the attack breaches your armour. You collapse under the wave of bodies, never to rise. You have failed." Disaster! And from Fighting Fantasy #11: "She strikes you down, before helping you to your feet. You walk together into the Valley of Death, where your spirit will wander alone until the end of time." Bleak for a children's book, no?"
YOU CHOSE WRONG - "Your adventure ends here. Badly"
or become a mafia boss." - Amir Kassaei
***
Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings - "Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures... self-reported gender differences are more pronounced in Western, individualistic countries. These countries tend to have more progressive sex role ideologies, endorsing such items as "A women should have exactly the same freedom of action as a man" and "Swearing by a woman is no more objectionable than swearing by a man"... Williams and Best (1990) also found that gender stereotypes were most differentiated in Western, individualistic culture"
This extension to the Five Factor model shows that besides being crazy, women are emotional and closed-minded; contrary to feminist theory, gender stereotypes are not responsible for all gender differences
Keywords: five factor model gender, psychological disparities societies greater gender equality, larger equity society
Lawyer: Is it right to jail Shaw for 'honest' mistake? - "He said the underage prostitute was neither trafficked nor coerced into prostitution and worked hand-in-glove with the agency to actively misrepresent herself as above 18... "Is it right to send anyone to jail who makes an honest and reasonable mistake as a result of a fraud or deceit perpetrated upon him? Is it even right to convict such a person in the first place?" He added: "It is no exaggeration to describe this case as falling at or very near the extreme outer edge ofculpability. "It is so very far removed from the type of predatory, conscious and exploitative conduct which this offence is really aimed at. "In my respectful submission, it would be an 'absurdly draconian result' and abhorrent on these facts to send Mr Shaw (and others in like position) to jail, let alone convict him.""
24 testimonials couldn't save Howard Shaw - "the common law has long recognised that a person who commits an act under an honest and reasonable mistaken belief is treated, in the eyes of the law, as morally blameless because he lacks criminal intent. "The question to be asked in this case is: What possible public policy objective is served in sending to jail someone who has no criminal intent, who makes an honest and reasonable mistake and genuinely believes he is engaging in perfectly lawful conduct? Why won't a fine do?" he added. Mr Singh said it was the underage prostitute who had engaged in predatory conduct, entrapping men who were entirely unaware of her deception. But Judge See said the fact that Shaw did not ask the girl about her age or make any effort to verify her age, showed it was not an "honest and reasonable mistake". "It may have been a genuine mistake, but not an honest and reasonable one. He made no enquiries about her age and went ahead to have sex with her. He could have been guarded against an offence, but he took the risk," the judge added. "Perception is subjective and prone to errors and lies. Our senses are not always reliable and prone to mistakes." Shaw must have realised the risk that he was putting himself into, should she not be 18, added Judge See""
Perhaps the silver lining in this case is that more men will be aware that they need to ask for ages (and preferably ID too) if they are not psychic (though that won't save them if the ID is fake). I don't think many people realise that this also applies to non-commercial sex with girls under the age of 16 - a "reasonable mistake" is no defence their either.
Man hailed as hero for saving wife over mother - "Xiao Guo told reporters he had heard of people asking married couples the question, "If your mother and your wife were drowning, who would you save?" But he never imagined it would happen to him."
Goodbye Hotmail, hello Outlook.com - "Microsoft tells me its new email header contains 60 per cent fewer pixels and 30 per cent more messages are viewable in a user’s inbox"
Star Wars: The Old MMO Problem - "there's a problem with what we've come to accept as conventional MMO design. It's that that design rests on ideas which are explicitly manipulative of players, having been cynically created to trap them in a system that will never reward them enough to make them feel they can stop playing. This is the dirty little secret of most MMOs. They are not designed to be fun, interesting or even social experiences. They are designed purely so that you keep playing. They are not entertainment; they are traps. "
F2P vs subs - "F2P players never end up paying $60 for a game they then find they dislike, as happens in the packaged goods world. In packaged goods, there are a lot of marketing practices designed to make you pick up and pay for something you do not want, often in large lump sums. (In grocery stores, it’s making you move more slowly on the expensive aisles, by doing things like having smaller, bumpy tiles on the floor; in games, it is things like touched-up screenshots). As a consequence, free to play is more democratic... people playing for free are subsidized by those who pay — often quite a lot... Whales exist independently of the business model, and what free-to-play does is allow them to spend more on their hobby. Thus the free to play business model ends up monetizing core fans better while actually giving access to more players at the free-to-cheap end... If you’re freaked out by seeing business practices nakedly, realize that what’s changed is that you can see them. And to my mind, that’s actually better for you than blissful ignorance"
Email Attachments in Body instead of in Attachment Line - McCombs Wiki - "When I attach a file to my email, why does it sometimes go in the body instead of the header? Usually this has to do with the format of the email. When you send new email messages through Outlook, by default they are set to be HTML emails. However, some mail programs use Rich Text or Plain Text messaging. If you are replying to a Rich Text email, you’ll notice that the attachment goes in the body of the email. If you are replying to an HTML or Plain Text email, it will go in the Attachment line."
Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory
In Olympics weightlifting, you need every drop of power to win. on Twitpic
mashapotato: littleyoshiie: the fuck is going... - Tell what? - "Choi was checking why the sensor reacted even though the foil touched his butt(in fleuret, only upper body is valid target area), by POKING HIS BUTT WITH THE OPPONENT’S FOIL."
Is India ready for ‘Jism 2′? - "It stars a hard-core adult film actress and has a title that would appear to leave little to the imagination. But it’s not a porn movie — Bollywood is certainly not ready for that. Jism 2— the word means “body” in Hindi language — will be released across India on Friday, promising to be one of the most graphic films in Bollywood history... ”Pretending to police the moral values of a society is the easiest way for politicians to earn brownie points”"
What Pericles would say about Obamacare - "The mess in and around Obamacare is a good illustration of what’s wrong with democracy in the United States. Notice I do not say “what’s wrong with democracy”... Pericles’ democracy was designed to reduce the power of wealth to a minimum and it did so. We know that, because for the almost two hundred years of democracy in Greece, the rich often tried to bring it down and replace it with oligarchy. A second cause Pericles would point out is our dependence on elections. “Elections!” you exclaim. “But aren’t they the essence of democracy?” Not at all. Pericles’ democracy cut way back on the use of elections for two reasons: elections give money an opportunity to exercise power, and elections make cliquish infighting the norm in politics. What ought to be the norm (Pericles would say) is serious discussion of what is best for the people... powerful representative bodies in Athens, such as the Council (like our senate), the courts, and the lawmakers, were composed of representatives selected by a lottery to represent equally the divisions of the city, somewhat like an American jury. These representatives didn’t have to run for election, so they didn’t need to listen to special interests, build up a war chest, or do stupid things to embarrass a political party"
Why Most Manufactured Pet Foods Should Not Be Fed To DOGS & CATS - "Scientifically formulated, manufactured pet foods are packed with chemical supplements used to ‘fortify’, i.e. make up for deficiencies in the basic ingredients that are slaughter house and food and beverage industry waste byproducts, and other chemical additives to flavor/taste-enhance, stabilize, preserve, color and ‘texturize’ ( appear like meat and gravy rather than a grey mush)"
India’s first Playboy bunny, under siege - "Hefner is a sexist pig that lives off the objectification of women’s bodies and posits nudity as faux-empowerment... I am now forced into an awkward position where I have to defend Chopra’s decision to pose nude for Playboy in the face of misogynist ideas about women’s purity and modesty as it relates to Indian nationalism. Critique the retrograde and sexist ideas about sexuality that give a magazine like Playboy so much capital, fine. But not the women that choose to do it. Conflating a woman’s sexual expression with the purity or modesty of her culture is one of the roots of sexism and patriarchy."
Translation: like children, women have no moral agency and can do no wrong. Vive le féminisme !
Fighting Fantasy is back! Try your skill in Blood of the Zombies - "I shall satisfy my nostalgic yearnings with this, one of the best things you will see all week. It's a collection of "you chose wrong" endings from the Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure books, and it couldn't be more brilliant. Here's a couple to whet your appetite. From Fighting Fantasy #12: "When you offer the fruit to the chief he takes a piece, bites it and promptly falls over dead. The rest of the aliens are appalled, and leap at you with needle-sharp spears; the ferocity of the attack breaches your armour. You collapse under the wave of bodies, never to rise. You have failed." Disaster! And from Fighting Fantasy #11: "She strikes you down, before helping you to your feet. You walk together into the Valley of Death, where your spirit will wander alone until the end of time." Bleak for a children's book, no?"
YOU CHOSE WRONG - "Your adventure ends here. Badly"
Post ID: 3549561266738294401
"When did Singapore become more expensive than Hong Kong?"
"Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas." - George Orwell
***
A (who left in 2007): When did Singapore become more expensive than Hong Kong?
B: yes A. decent low level entry car 100k, decent small condo 1 mill. property prices have effectively tripled from 7 yrs ago with salaries inching up by 2-3% per year
C: Singapore is more expensive than the rest of the world, period. I am finding it more expensive than the US!
A: I've always found the US to be quite affordable although that is quite a generalisation given the scale of the US. Exceptions are property in some major cities and healthcare, but from what I hear, Singapore is fast catching up.
D: Tau Huay 1.50 油条 80-90 cts..used to be selling with my late grandpa at 10 cents a piece...
C: Well, I think with the exception of NY, none of the other major metropolises are as expensive as Singapore. Not forgetting that in US, a great equalizer in any non-location specific goods is Amazon. And so called branded goods in Singapore are lowest denominators in US - Crocs shoes that cost US$20 goes for SGD75. And let's not even start on the electronics. The only things which are cheaper are labor intensive stuff like barbers and hawker center food.
A: It's the same in the UK in that amazon, eBay and freecycle mean things are at least half the price in Singapore. And even barbers can be same price if one knows where to look, ie Brick Lane, Finsbury Park.
E: Interestingly, that could call the top of a bubble. When cities get really expensive, it's often just before it blows. What does the Economist say about Singapore property prices?
***
A (who left in 2007): When did Singapore become more expensive than Hong Kong?
B: yes A. decent low level entry car 100k, decent small condo 1 mill. property prices have effectively tripled from 7 yrs ago with salaries inching up by 2-3% per year
C: Singapore is more expensive than the rest of the world, period. I am finding it more expensive than the US!
A: I've always found the US to be quite affordable although that is quite a generalisation given the scale of the US. Exceptions are property in some major cities and healthcare, but from what I hear, Singapore is fast catching up.
D: Tau Huay 1.50 油条 80-90 cts..used to be selling with my late grandpa at 10 cents a piece...
C: Well, I think with the exception of NY, none of the other major metropolises are as expensive as Singapore. Not forgetting that in US, a great equalizer in any non-location specific goods is Amazon. And so called branded goods in Singapore are lowest denominators in US - Crocs shoes that cost US$20 goes for SGD75. And let's not even start on the electronics. The only things which are cheaper are labor intensive stuff like barbers and hawker center food.
A: It's the same in the UK in that amazon, eBay and freecycle mean things are at least half the price in Singapore. And even barbers can be same price if one knows where to look, ie Brick Lane, Finsbury Park.
E: Interestingly, that could call the top of a bubble. When cities get really expensive, it's often just before it blows. What does the Economist say about Singapore property prices?
Post ID: 4776777828713882272
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Another point of view of the Ping Pong Show
"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." - George Bernard Shaw
***
The vagina monologue: About those Bangkok ping-pong shows | GlobalPost
There's nothing sexy about Bangkok's most popular "sex show." Here's why.
"Before I came to Bangkok, I couldn’t decide whether I could stomach witnessing a real ping-pong show, the so-called “staple of the local sex industry.”
I thought I would either feel disgusted by the humiliating displays of female genitalia, or would just plain feel sorry for the women whose best chance to make a living is to use their pelvic muscles for entertaining the masses.
Enough has been written about the sexual exploitation of women in Thailand that I had to think twice (or more like hundred and twice) about whether I should contribute to Thailand’s sex trafficking by venturing to one of these venues.
But like many people visiting Bangkok, I couldn’t resist seeing it with my own eyes.
Most of all, I was dying to see the super-women who were able to use their privates in ways unimaginable to most women west of Bangkok.
Here is where my thinking on this subject was completely off.
A ping-pong show may be many things — comedic performance, a type of synchronized swimming routine using genitals, if you will — but it is certainly NOT a sex show.
Yes, women do insert and pop out various (and often quite impressive) objects out of there — namely ping pong balls, bananas, razor blades and ribbons, among other things — but that makes it about as much of a sex show as birthing of a baby.
Not unlike childbirth, the ping pong show is a graphic — and equally visually disturbing — testament that the vagina is capable of incredible feats.
In between the various performances — or as they put it: ping pong shoots, banana shoots, candle blowing, cigarette lighting, vulva writing, etc. — I chatted to the women who perform these kinds of “vagina monologues” for a living.
“How long did it take you to be able to blow out a candle this way?” I asked one of them.
“Oh, many, many years,” said a woman who came to Bangkok from northern Thailand. She looked proud.
“Who did you learn it from?” I wanted to know.
“My friends,” she said. “I can teach you if you want.”
“Oh, okay. Maybe next time,” I said.
As appealing as it sounded to one day be able to insert a marker in my nether regions and write “Welcome to Thailand," I couldn’t see taking actual lessons while I am here.
By the end of the night, I not only developed a new found respect for the vagina, I also came to the conclusion that the most disturbing thing about the whole experience was the inflated price of the drinks. And the girls always demanding you buy them some too, so they make some extra money.
Why don’t they charge a hefty entrance fee instead and make the performance sort of like a genital Cirque du Soleil?
Let’s be honest here, until the Canadians made a high-brow entertainment out of it, working in a circus had always been frowned upon. My point is that a Thai ping-pong show is nothing more than a cheesy circus show.
Take the guys who perform in “Puppetry of the Penis.”
They have been able to make a pretty good living making comedic shows with their male genitals.
And last time I checked, nobody was accusing them of being sexually exploited.
Maybe it’s time we trusted women enough to make their own choices how they want to make a living."
***
The vagina monologue: About those Bangkok ping-pong shows | GlobalPost
There's nothing sexy about Bangkok's most popular "sex show." Here's why.
"Before I came to Bangkok, I couldn’t decide whether I could stomach witnessing a real ping-pong show, the so-called “staple of the local sex industry.”
I thought I would either feel disgusted by the humiliating displays of female genitalia, or would just plain feel sorry for the women whose best chance to make a living is to use their pelvic muscles for entertaining the masses.
Enough has been written about the sexual exploitation of women in Thailand that I had to think twice (or more like hundred and twice) about whether I should contribute to Thailand’s sex trafficking by venturing to one of these venues.
But like many people visiting Bangkok, I couldn’t resist seeing it with my own eyes.
Most of all, I was dying to see the super-women who were able to use their privates in ways unimaginable to most women west of Bangkok.
Here is where my thinking on this subject was completely off.
A ping-pong show may be many things — comedic performance, a type of synchronized swimming routine using genitals, if you will — but it is certainly NOT a sex show.
Yes, women do insert and pop out various (and often quite impressive) objects out of there — namely ping pong balls, bananas, razor blades and ribbons, among other things — but that makes it about as much of a sex show as birthing of a baby.
Not unlike childbirth, the ping pong show is a graphic — and equally visually disturbing — testament that the vagina is capable of incredible feats.
In between the various performances — or as they put it: ping pong shoots, banana shoots, candle blowing, cigarette lighting, vulva writing, etc. — I chatted to the women who perform these kinds of “vagina monologues” for a living.
“How long did it take you to be able to blow out a candle this way?” I asked one of them.
“Oh, many, many years,” said a woman who came to Bangkok from northern Thailand. She looked proud.
“Who did you learn it from?” I wanted to know.
“My friends,” she said. “I can teach you if you want.”
“Oh, okay. Maybe next time,” I said.
As appealing as it sounded to one day be able to insert a marker in my nether regions and write “Welcome to Thailand," I couldn’t see taking actual lessons while I am here.
By the end of the night, I not only developed a new found respect for the vagina, I also came to the conclusion that the most disturbing thing about the whole experience was the inflated price of the drinks. And the girls always demanding you buy them some too, so they make some extra money.
Why don’t they charge a hefty entrance fee instead and make the performance sort of like a genital Cirque du Soleil?
Let’s be honest here, until the Canadians made a high-brow entertainment out of it, working in a circus had always been frowned upon. My point is that a Thai ping-pong show is nothing more than a cheesy circus show.
Take the guys who perform in “Puppetry of the Penis.”
They have been able to make a pretty good living making comedic shows with their male genitals.
And last time I checked, nobody was accusing them of being sexually exploited.
Maybe it’s time we trusted women enough to make their own choices how they want to make a living."
Post ID: 8415117463987492126
Saturday, October 06, 2012
Some people deserve to be trolled
"If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?" - Steven Wright
***
From:
ieatishootipost: Best Xiao Long Bao in Singapore at Shanghai Renjia. Eat plain without vinegar and ginger. Absolutely delicious and the skin is thin yet resilient. http://instagr.am/p/QbjOxgmszX/
Me: Shanghai Xiao Long Bao at Lau Pa Sat
Shanghai Xiao Long Bao – Singaporean Hawker Centre in Raffles Place Singapore
"Wet to lau pa sat for dinner food trail with friend and in the mean while celebrating my friends belated birthday. We ordered quite a lots of food, including this xiao long bao. The stall is in the centre of this famous food court, but the quality is so bad. The dumplings are not tasty, with the skin a bit hard and chewy, the pork inside is very not fresh, has the bad meaty smell. Moreover, the dumpling is so expensive, $4.50 for 5small pc, which is $0.90 each. I will never try the food from this stall again."
***
From:
ieatishootipost: Best Xiao Long Bao in Singapore at Shanghai Renjia. Eat plain without vinegar and ginger. Absolutely delicious and the skin is thin yet resilient. http://instagr.am/p/QbjOxgmszX/
Me: Shanghai Xiao Long Bao at Lau Pa Sat
Shanghai Xiao Long Bao – Singaporean Hawker Centre in Raffles Place Singapore
"Wet to lau pa sat for dinner food trail with friend and in the mean while celebrating my friends belated birthday. We ordered quite a lots of food, including this xiao long bao. The stall is in the centre of this famous food court, but the quality is so bad. The dumplings are not tasty, with the skin a bit hard and chewy, the pork inside is very not fresh, has the bad meaty smell. Moreover, the dumpling is so expensive, $4.50 for 5small pc, which is $0.90 each. I will never try the food from this stall again."
Post ID: 4091598459381866336
Links - 6th October 2012
"Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something." - William Goldman
***
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic - NYTimes.com - "CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause"
School Assessment Tests: An Imperfect but Vital Measure - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com - "Critics point out that V.A.M. incorporates measurement error. Thus, it is certain that some teachers will receive scores that are either higher or lower than they deserve. The critics are correct. But perfection is too high a standard. The relevant question is whether there is information in V.A.M. estimates that improve a school system's ability to distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. There undoubtedly is. Improving upon the current evaluation system is a remarkably low bar. Research has discovered wide variation in teacher quality. Yet nearly all teachers receive satisfactory ratings under the current system. Further, research shows that the characteristics used to identify effective teachers — for instance, obtainment of a master's degree — are unrelated to classroom effectiveness. In contrast, V.A.M. can be used to predict a teacher's future performance in the classroom. For instance, research by Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen shows that a teacher's performance as measured by V.A.M. in her first two years in the classroom is a far better predictor of student learning than are conventional measures like a master's degree"
A Singaporean In Australia: What Minister Yacoob Really Want - " What Minister Yacoob does not realise is that there is already a code of conduct in the internet. Do you know what it meant to TYPE IN CAPS? If you received an email you are reasonably expected to reply if you are the main recipient under "to:" and recipients under "cc:" and "bcc:" can reply but are not expected to. There are some form of syntax in communication, be in it business emails, flaming wars on a random forum or gaming with your guild mates. The list goes on. Thus, Minister Yacoob's vision was both perplexing and unnecessary... What Minister Yacoob really want was not developing an internet code of conduct but to create a self-censorship culture for Singapore internet users... As long as our government remains incorruptible, why be afraid of the unregulated, irrational virtual milky way? Somebody is afraid here. This is just my opinion."
9GAG - Olympics Opening Ceremony = Lord of the Rings
Staying dry in rain: run or walk? - "A physicist has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain. If you run, you are out in the rain for less time, yet you run into more drops - so what is the optimal speed? Franco Bocci, reporting in the European Journal of Physics, now asserts that both wind direction and a person's stature figure into the answer. In most cases, the general answer is to run as fast as possible; but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin"
The Pompous Ass Words Web Site - "Hello and welcome! This is the Pompous Ass Words site, a place dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. It was partly inspired by the American Heritage College Dictionary's list of "100 Words Every High School Graduate and Their Parents Should Know." When I first saw it I thought, there have to be at least 100 words everyone should know about and never use. So I figured hey, let's start putting that list together... A Pompous Ass Word (PAW) is an uncommonly understood word that is synonymous with a commonly understood one. For example, tendentious is a PAW because it could be substituted with biased with no loss of meaning. On the other hand, ersatz isn't because it isn't synonymous with imitation - it implies a lesser quality as well"
cul pompeux - "Reading your page, I was pleased to see that many of your PAW are ordinary French words. So to be a pompous ass (cul pompeux in French), you just insert in your conversation a few French words that nobody knows the signification and you'll give the illusion of being an educated person. In my country (French part of Switzerland), we get polluted by English words everywhere: big ads in English (specially from telephone companies), sale written on show-windows (sale means dirty in French) and there is a special word in French for clearance sales (soldes). And pompous people often add English words in their conversation to be "in", c'est-à-dire "à la page". 50 or 100 years ago, in French to give the illusion of a "good education", you had to insert Latin expression in your conversation, now, to be "modern", its English. So its a pleasure to see that the pompousass use the same technique on both sides of the ocean"
Learn the definition already! - "I was in the middle of a Ph.D. in linguistics at Cornell then dropped out about ten years ago. We were taught to scientifically and non-judgmentally describe how people actually use words (even if it's "wrong") rather than how they ought to use them. This went against my grammar nazi soul. That's not why I dropped out, but now that I am no longer officially a linguist I've gone back to unashamedly labeling things "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!""
Howard Shaw sentenced to 12 weeks' jail - "Senior District Judge See Kee Oon said the fact that Shaw, a prominent green activist and third-generation descendent of Shaw Organization founder Runme Shaw, did not ask the girl about her age showed it was not a 'honest and reasonable mistake'."
Moral of the story: always ask a girl her age! (this includes those you think are 16 or above if you don't pay them)
17-year-old girl pleads guilty to extortion in Internet love scam - "Blinded by love, she acted in a moment of folly. That was the explanation given by the lawyer of 17-year-old Yap Siew Ting, for her involvement in an Internet love scam, which saw one victim cheated of S$97,350... In a long and detailed mitigation, Yap's lawyer Aloysius Tan highlighted her youthful age, describing Yap as "just an unfortunate and impressionable teenager". Mr Tan added that Yap, whose parents divorced last year, "let her emotions and love for a boy rule over her usual rational and thoughtful self." The court also heard that Yap was working part-time at that time and was assured by Soh that his scam was "alright". Mr Tan emphasised that Yap's role was a more passive one compared to Soh's, and that she ended up being misled by him. Yap, who later requested to speak, told the court that she was remorseful and begged for leniency."
Right.
In romance, the hotties stick together - ""Beautiful people marry beautiful people and less beautiful people marry less beautiful people"... more attractive people placed more importance on physical attractiveness above other features in selecting their dates. Less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities, such as sense of humor."
ObscenityLawyer: Porn Trial: This Time it's Extreme - " Today the Crown Prosecution Service will attempt to persuade a jury that images of fisting should be classified as “extreme pornography” with the risk to the defendant of three years in custody, inclusion on the sex offenders' register and damage to his personal and professional standing. All for a type of image which is commonly viewed, of an activity which is itself is legal to perform and is even discussed in the book Fifty Shades of Grey... After being charged, Simon lost both professional and political positions, despite the fact that no pornography was found on any of his work computers. In fact, no pornography was found on Simon's home computers either. Instead, the police had to “interrogate” Simon's personal email account (server) in order to discover a few images they deemed questionable"
Teenage pregnancy: Setting aside childish things | The Economist - "MTV may have been a good influence. In 2010 the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a non-partisan advocacy group, assigned dozens of teenagers to watch several episodes of “16 and Pregnant”, a reality series that followed a handful of the girls in question. Almost all the young viewers agreed that teenage parenthood was harder than they had imagined... By other measures, curiously, teenagers are still feckless. In 2011 the CDC also reported that they are no more likely to eat a vegetable every day, or to drink milk, than they were in 1991"
This Is How Olympic Divers Really Look While Diving
If Only Singaporeans Stopped to Think: To Singapore... from an expat returning home - "Singapore's impact on most expatriates and other visitors, no matter how long they reside on this island, is often forever. It's the palpable feeling that somehow Singapore gets more things right than most other countries, and that day-to-day life here is on the whole better than in many other places. Not perfect, of course, but better."
If Singapore is so good, why are they leaving?; funny, in other contexts, 'complacency' is supposed to be a bad thing
Why Yes, Those Claw Machines Are Rigged, Says Arcade Operator - "those goddamn claw machines do deliberately have a tissue-thin grip, even when you think you have it lined up directly over that plush toy and can't possibly miss picking it up. The machines have variable PSI strength settings for the claws, wrote TheDJTec. It's designed so that they "pay out" (give you a toy) only as often as state regulations require. I had no idea that there were state regulations concerning this kind of an amusement, but there are"
An Olympic Fencer Refuses To Leave The Floor After Getting Screwed
"It's just a game. Why not put the same energy into helping people rather than train every minute of your life to use an archaic weapon with a blunted point."
Root Beer Float Pops
Japanese engineers have built a giant mech named Kuratas - "The robot can move its torso, arms and hands, and is able to fire 6,000 BB pellets in a minute via its two Gatling guns. It's also controllable via a 3G touch-screen phone if sitting inside the cockpit isn't something you're fond of (you're kidding, right?). There's even a missile launcher that fires plastic bottles at your enemies."
***
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic - NYTimes.com - "CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause"
School Assessment Tests: An Imperfect but Vital Measure - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com - "Critics point out that V.A.M. incorporates measurement error. Thus, it is certain that some teachers will receive scores that are either higher or lower than they deserve. The critics are correct. But perfection is too high a standard. The relevant question is whether there is information in V.A.M. estimates that improve a school system's ability to distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. There undoubtedly is. Improving upon the current evaluation system is a remarkably low bar. Research has discovered wide variation in teacher quality. Yet nearly all teachers receive satisfactory ratings under the current system. Further, research shows that the characteristics used to identify effective teachers — for instance, obtainment of a master's degree — are unrelated to classroom effectiveness. In contrast, V.A.M. can be used to predict a teacher's future performance in the classroom. For instance, research by Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen shows that a teacher's performance as measured by V.A.M. in her first two years in the classroom is a far better predictor of student learning than are conventional measures like a master's degree"
A Singaporean In Australia: What Minister Yacoob Really Want - " What Minister Yacoob does not realise is that there is already a code of conduct in the internet. Do you know what it meant to TYPE IN CAPS? If you received an email you are reasonably expected to reply if you are the main recipient under "to:" and recipients under "cc:" and "bcc:" can reply but are not expected to. There are some form of syntax in communication, be in it business emails, flaming wars on a random forum or gaming with your guild mates. The list goes on. Thus, Minister Yacoob's vision was both perplexing and unnecessary... What Minister Yacoob really want was not developing an internet code of conduct but to create a self-censorship culture for Singapore internet users... As long as our government remains incorruptible, why be afraid of the unregulated, irrational virtual milky way? Somebody is afraid here. This is just my opinion."
9GAG - Olympics Opening Ceremony = Lord of the Rings
Staying dry in rain: run or walk? - "A physicist has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain. If you run, you are out in the rain for less time, yet you run into more drops - so what is the optimal speed? Franco Bocci, reporting in the European Journal of Physics, now asserts that both wind direction and a person's stature figure into the answer. In most cases, the general answer is to run as fast as possible; but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin"
The Pompous Ass Words Web Site - "Hello and welcome! This is the Pompous Ass Words site, a place dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. It was partly inspired by the American Heritage College Dictionary's list of "100 Words Every High School Graduate and Their Parents Should Know." When I first saw it I thought, there have to be at least 100 words everyone should know about and never use. So I figured hey, let's start putting that list together... A Pompous Ass Word (PAW) is an uncommonly understood word that is synonymous with a commonly understood one. For example, tendentious is a PAW because it could be substituted with biased with no loss of meaning. On the other hand, ersatz isn't because it isn't synonymous with imitation - it implies a lesser quality as well"
cul pompeux - "Reading your page, I was pleased to see that many of your PAW are ordinary French words. So to be a pompous ass (cul pompeux in French), you just insert in your conversation a few French words that nobody knows the signification and you'll give the illusion of being an educated person. In my country (French part of Switzerland), we get polluted by English words everywhere: big ads in English (specially from telephone companies), sale written on show-windows (sale means dirty in French) and there is a special word in French for clearance sales (soldes). And pompous people often add English words in their conversation to be "in", c'est-à-dire "à la page". 50 or 100 years ago, in French to give the illusion of a "good education", you had to insert Latin expression in your conversation, now, to be "modern", its English. So its a pleasure to see that the pompousass use the same technique on both sides of the ocean"
Learn the definition already! - "I was in the middle of a Ph.D. in linguistics at Cornell then dropped out about ten years ago. We were taught to scientifically and non-judgmentally describe how people actually use words (even if it's "wrong") rather than how they ought to use them. This went against my grammar nazi soul. That's not why I dropped out, but now that I am no longer officially a linguist I've gone back to unashamedly labeling things "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!""
Howard Shaw sentenced to 12 weeks' jail - "Senior District Judge See Kee Oon said the fact that Shaw, a prominent green activist and third-generation descendent of Shaw Organization founder Runme Shaw, did not ask the girl about her age showed it was not a 'honest and reasonable mistake'."
Moral of the story: always ask a girl her age! (this includes those you think are 16 or above if you don't pay them)
17-year-old girl pleads guilty to extortion in Internet love scam - "Blinded by love, she acted in a moment of folly. That was the explanation given by the lawyer of 17-year-old Yap Siew Ting, for her involvement in an Internet love scam, which saw one victim cheated of S$97,350... In a long and detailed mitigation, Yap's lawyer Aloysius Tan highlighted her youthful age, describing Yap as "just an unfortunate and impressionable teenager". Mr Tan added that Yap, whose parents divorced last year, "let her emotions and love for a boy rule over her usual rational and thoughtful self." The court also heard that Yap was working part-time at that time and was assured by Soh that his scam was "alright". Mr Tan emphasised that Yap's role was a more passive one compared to Soh's, and that she ended up being misled by him. Yap, who later requested to speak, told the court that she was remorseful and begged for leniency."
Right.
In romance, the hotties stick together - ""Beautiful people marry beautiful people and less beautiful people marry less beautiful people"... more attractive people placed more importance on physical attractiveness above other features in selecting their dates. Less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities, such as sense of humor."
ObscenityLawyer: Porn Trial: This Time it's Extreme - " Today the Crown Prosecution Service will attempt to persuade a jury that images of fisting should be classified as “extreme pornography” with the risk to the defendant of three years in custody, inclusion on the sex offenders' register and damage to his personal and professional standing. All for a type of image which is commonly viewed, of an activity which is itself is legal to perform and is even discussed in the book Fifty Shades of Grey... After being charged, Simon lost both professional and political positions, despite the fact that no pornography was found on any of his work computers. In fact, no pornography was found on Simon's home computers either. Instead, the police had to “interrogate” Simon's personal email account (server) in order to discover a few images they deemed questionable"
Teenage pregnancy: Setting aside childish things | The Economist - "MTV may have been a good influence. In 2010 the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a non-partisan advocacy group, assigned dozens of teenagers to watch several episodes of “16 and Pregnant”, a reality series that followed a handful of the girls in question. Almost all the young viewers agreed that teenage parenthood was harder than they had imagined... By other measures, curiously, teenagers are still feckless. In 2011 the CDC also reported that they are no more likely to eat a vegetable every day, or to drink milk, than they were in 1991"
This Is How Olympic Divers Really Look While Diving
If Only Singaporeans Stopped to Think: To Singapore... from an expat returning home - "Singapore's impact on most expatriates and other visitors, no matter how long they reside on this island, is often forever. It's the palpable feeling that somehow Singapore gets more things right than most other countries, and that day-to-day life here is on the whole better than in many other places. Not perfect, of course, but better."
If Singapore is so good, why are they leaving?; funny, in other contexts, 'complacency' is supposed to be a bad thing
Why Yes, Those Claw Machines Are Rigged, Says Arcade Operator - "those goddamn claw machines do deliberately have a tissue-thin grip, even when you think you have it lined up directly over that plush toy and can't possibly miss picking it up. The machines have variable PSI strength settings for the claws, wrote TheDJTec. It's designed so that they "pay out" (give you a toy) only as often as state regulations require. I had no idea that there were state regulations concerning this kind of an amusement, but there are"
An Olympic Fencer Refuses To Leave The Floor After Getting Screwed
"It's just a game. Why not put the same energy into helping people rather than train every minute of your life to use an archaic weapon with a blunted point."
Root Beer Float Pops
Japanese engineers have built a giant mech named Kuratas - "The robot can move its torso, arms and hands, and is able to fire 6,000 BB pellets in a minute via its two Gatling guns. It's also controllable via a 3G touch-screen phone if sitting inside the cockpit isn't something you're fond of (you're kidding, right?). There's even a missile launcher that fires plastic bottles at your enemies."
Post ID: 6479102838661668677
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Links - 29th September 2012
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think interior decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." - Anna Quindlen
***
Extra, extra! Your best friends are getting happy divorced - "Divorce Newspapers have been developed in Japan which allow couples to distribute a report of the demise of their marriage to friends and family quickly and easily. It’s also a way for the newly divorced to save the embarrassment of telling each person individually... The “divorce newspaper” is the creating of divorce guru Hiroki Terai, who is also a strong proponent of “divorce ceremonies.” Divorce ceremonies are either fun or solemn events aimed at giving the couple a chance to look back on their time together and part ways with a good feeling. In some cases divorce ceremonies have even led to a cancelling of the divorce"
delanceyplace.com 9/21/12 - obsessing about sex - "Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound 'animalistic'? It shouldn't. The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more 'human' than animal. Strictly reproductive, once-in-a-blue-moon sex is more 'animal' than human. In other words, an excessively horny monkey is acting 'human,' while a man or woman uninterested in sex more than once or twice a year would be, strictly speaking, 'acting like an animal.'"
Thai Group Says Steve Jobs Reincarnated as Warrior-Philosopher - "he has said the reincarnated Mr. Jobs spends much of his time lounging in a glass palace resembling an Apple store. Phra Chaibul also has said the being formerly known as Steve Jobs is attended by 20 servants, who seem to resemble the Apple store 'Geniuses' who help customers set up their iPhones and other devices here on earth."
Japanese Charity Breast-Squeeze! - "All money raised will be donated to STOP!AIDS, a charity aimed at promoting the awareness, treatment, and prevention of AIDS. Oppai momi is particularly popular in Japan, and there are plenty of Japanese style pubs where you can go have a beer and also a squeeze of the waitresses breasts after a hard day in the office. This is the first oppia momi fundraiser we are aware of though."
RTA advertisement (NSW, Australia) - YouTube
"Such a sexist ad says a lot about the people behind it."
Throw like a girl? With some practice, you can do better. - "She believes that men and women aren’t as different as they are often portrayed, and she has mined data on social, psychological, communication and physical traits, skills and behaviors to quantify the gap. After looking at 46 meta-analyses, Hyde found what she defined as a “very large” difference in only two skills: throwing velocity and throwing distance."
Kate Middleton topless photos: When did bare breasts become taboo?
Kate Middleton's Boobs: Why Are We So Obsessed With the Royal Chest? - "Helen of Troy's face may have launched a thousand ships, but it was really her breasts that buoyed the army. Legend has it that sight of them caused Menelaus to drop his sword... It is fitting, as well as quite funny, that the royal couple fled the tata tornado only to land back in time, in the Solomon Islands, where they encountered bare-breasted women at every turn"
"the best part about the treatment is that it is not age biased as it caters to women in their 20s, 30s or 40s" (picture)
Asian Swingers Online dating at asianswingers.net - Front page
Only one out of four people in the picture is Asian. And of course it's a girl
Burger king has no burger, Swensen's has no ice cream & Soup restaurant no soup (image)
If you want to live the American dream, move to Denmark
Sophos Antivirus Detects Itself as Malware, Deletes Key Binaries
Putin muses on the benefits of group sex - "President Vladimir Putin of Russia has mused that group sex is better than one-on-one intercourse because participants can take a break."
An Introduction to Singaporean Food | Serious Eats - "This kind of perfection in simplicity can only come from a place where eating is a way of life unto itself. And where a meal is judged solely by what comes on the plate—fancy restaurants and big name chefs not necessary... As one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, it's drawn workers in from everywhere, and where large populations of immigrant workers go, good food is sure to follow. Singapore feels similar to New York in this way: not only is it a glass-towered metropolis of wealth; it's also a hotbed for a half dozen or so different ethnic groups making—and cooking—their way through the world"
Presumably he hasn't checked out all the food blogs where a meal is judged more by how it looks and where it's served than what comes on the plate
How Hobbies Can Help You Get Hired - At Work - WSJ - "“Reading” by itself is a snooze. But “reading medical mysteries” is a little quirky and shows some intellectual rigor"
Saudi Arabia's Female Olympic Athletes Called 'Prostitutes'
Krugman, Human Weakness, and Desert - "When someone drops out of high school, overeats, or fails to exercise, you tell us that their behavior is only "human." But if a conservative or libertarian objects to paying taxes to help people who make these choices, you get angry. Question: Why are you so forgiving of people with irresponsible lifestyles, but so outraged by people who don't want to pay taxes to help people with irresponsible lifestyles? This seems morally perverse. If you're going to single anyone out for condemnation, it should be the person who behaves irresponsibly in the first place, not the complete stranger who asks, "How is this my fault?""
A Superstitious Fund - "The Superstitious Fund Project is a live one year experiment where an uncanny algorithm or SUPERSTITIOUS AUTOMATED ROBOT will trade live on the stock market"
Bill Dickens on Me on Poverty: A Rejoinder, Bryan Caplan - "the American poor had very high rates of employment and high marital stability when the welfare state was smaller... It's still easy for today's white working class to get jobs that would support a family at the income level of the 1950s. U.S. per-capita income in 1950 was under $10,000 (1990 dollars). That actually understates the ease of maintaining earlier living standards because modern household technology and family size make it a lot easier for mothers to work... As women's labor market opportunities improved, their interest in low-status men with stable jobs declined. This in turn led many low-status men to either give up on work and women, or try to impress women in other ways. Some of these "other ways," strangely, are self-destructive behavior like non-remunerative crime and substance abuse... How do you, Bill Dickens, respond when your students don't come to class, don't study, fail the final exam, then come crying to you? Whether you tell them or not, I strongly suspect you're thinking, "Your failure is your own damn fault." You don't give them the same assistance or sympathy that you'd give a hard-working student who's struggling with the material. I think such meritocratic moral intuitions are sound, and ought to guide public policy as well as private conscience. If people are poor because they're behaving irresponsibly, they should be far down our queue of people to help - if they belong on the queue at all. That said, I also happen to think that reducing the generosity of the welfare state and making assistance conditional on good behavior will (eventually) reduce bad behavior... if the trade-offs are bone-headedly simple - like "heavy drinking makes you less employable" or "single motherhood is tough" - very very bad decisions are a matter of choice. This in turn seriously undermines efforts to claim "victim" status"
The Post-Employee Economy: Why Sky-High Profits Are Here to Stay - "Robots have come to destroy our way of life, just as we saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, though not as we expected. They're taking our jobs, and are forcing us to reexamine how we value ourselves... It's a bit perverse that we cheer the gains in health-care employment while we decry the rise in health-care costs - the two are related. Presumably, technology will cause health-care productivity to soar, reducing the need for health-care workers. Again, great for consumers and capital, bad for displaced workers... Americans continue to define themselves by work when technology continues to reduce the demand for labor... The end of the age of consumption and the decreasing need for labor are intertwined"
Laser Eye Surgery: 10 Years Later - ""Our findings are that both are safe after 10 years," and the visual correction holds for the most part, says researcher Jorge Alio, M.D., Ph.D., an ophthalmologist"
Gabriel Seah's answer to Why do many doctors performing LASIK opt to continue to wear corrective lenses instead of getting the procedure done on themselves? - Quora - "In 2008, 30% of the refractive surgeons surveyed by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery had had LASIK, PRK or LASEK performed on their own eyes, which was four times the frequency among the general public. Some ophthalmologists do not want to undergo LASIK for specific reasons, like the need to work with a microscope"
Osama bin Laden 'wanted 9/11 follow-up' - "Bothered by altitude sickness, he said, he volunteered to be a suicide bomber but was rejected because he had not undergone enough religious training... he was arrested in Pakistan after leaving the tribal areas because the fighting season was over and he wanted to find a wife."
What are some stereotypes that Asian people have about White people? - Quora
Newsbeast.gr | Ο,ΤΙ ΝΑ 'ΝΑΙ : Η κακόγουστα κάνει πάρτι
Weird nailart
Polar Bear Population Higher than in 20th Century: Is Something Fishy about Extinction Fears? - "If 300 years of study revealed 60-80 cycles of climate changes, the arctic climate would have presumably undergone many more cycles of drastic changes over the past thousands of years. And with a more than 110,000-year history of survival, it doesn't mak sense to believe that polar bears are dying unable to withstand swimming exhaustion due to larger water bodies... If the world is actually feeling threatened that polar bears might cease to exist at some future point of time, why are they still being subjected to legal hunting?"
***
Extra, extra! Your best friends are getting happy divorced - "Divorce Newspapers have been developed in Japan which allow couples to distribute a report of the demise of their marriage to friends and family quickly and easily. It’s also a way for the newly divorced to save the embarrassment of telling each person individually... The “divorce newspaper” is the creating of divorce guru Hiroki Terai, who is also a strong proponent of “divorce ceremonies.” Divorce ceremonies are either fun or solemn events aimed at giving the couple a chance to look back on their time together and part ways with a good feeling. In some cases divorce ceremonies have even led to a cancelling of the divorce"
delanceyplace.com 9/21/12 - obsessing about sex - "Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound 'animalistic'? It shouldn't. The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more 'human' than animal. Strictly reproductive, once-in-a-blue-moon sex is more 'animal' than human. In other words, an excessively horny monkey is acting 'human,' while a man or woman uninterested in sex more than once or twice a year would be, strictly speaking, 'acting like an animal.'"
Thai Group Says Steve Jobs Reincarnated as Warrior-Philosopher - "he has said the reincarnated Mr. Jobs spends much of his time lounging in a glass palace resembling an Apple store. Phra Chaibul also has said the being formerly known as Steve Jobs is attended by 20 servants, who seem to resemble the Apple store 'Geniuses' who help customers set up their iPhones and other devices here on earth."
Japanese Charity Breast-Squeeze! - "All money raised will be donated to STOP!AIDS, a charity aimed at promoting the awareness, treatment, and prevention of AIDS. Oppai momi is particularly popular in Japan, and there are plenty of Japanese style pubs where you can go have a beer and also a squeeze of the waitresses breasts after a hard day in the office. This is the first oppia momi fundraiser we are aware of though."
RTA advertisement (NSW, Australia) - YouTube
"Such a sexist ad says a lot about the people behind it."
Throw like a girl? With some practice, you can do better. - "She believes that men and women aren’t as different as they are often portrayed, and she has mined data on social, psychological, communication and physical traits, skills and behaviors to quantify the gap. After looking at 46 meta-analyses, Hyde found what she defined as a “very large” difference in only two skills: throwing velocity and throwing distance."
Kate Middleton topless photos: When did bare breasts become taboo?
Kate Middleton's Boobs: Why Are We So Obsessed With the Royal Chest? - "Helen of Troy's face may have launched a thousand ships, but it was really her breasts that buoyed the army. Legend has it that sight of them caused Menelaus to drop his sword... It is fitting, as well as quite funny, that the royal couple fled the tata tornado only to land back in time, in the Solomon Islands, where they encountered bare-breasted women at every turn"
"the best part about the treatment is that it is not age biased as it caters to women in their 20s, 30s or 40s" (picture)
Asian Swingers Online dating at asianswingers.net - Front page
Only one out of four people in the picture is Asian. And of course it's a girl
Burger king has no burger, Swensen's has no ice cream & Soup restaurant no soup (image)
If you want to live the American dream, move to Denmark
Sophos Antivirus Detects Itself as Malware, Deletes Key Binaries
Putin muses on the benefits of group sex - "President Vladimir Putin of Russia has mused that group sex is better than one-on-one intercourse because participants can take a break."
An Introduction to Singaporean Food | Serious Eats - "This kind of perfection in simplicity can only come from a place where eating is a way of life unto itself. And where a meal is judged solely by what comes on the plate—fancy restaurants and big name chefs not necessary... As one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, it's drawn workers in from everywhere, and where large populations of immigrant workers go, good food is sure to follow. Singapore feels similar to New York in this way: not only is it a glass-towered metropolis of wealth; it's also a hotbed for a half dozen or so different ethnic groups making—and cooking—their way through the world"
Presumably he hasn't checked out all the food blogs where a meal is judged more by how it looks and where it's served than what comes on the plate
How Hobbies Can Help You Get Hired - At Work - WSJ - "“Reading” by itself is a snooze. But “reading medical mysteries” is a little quirky and shows some intellectual rigor"
Saudi Arabia's Female Olympic Athletes Called 'Prostitutes'
Krugman, Human Weakness, and Desert - "When someone drops out of high school, overeats, or fails to exercise, you tell us that their behavior is only "human." But if a conservative or libertarian objects to paying taxes to help people who make these choices, you get angry. Question: Why are you so forgiving of people with irresponsible lifestyles, but so outraged by people who don't want to pay taxes to help people with irresponsible lifestyles? This seems morally perverse. If you're going to single anyone out for condemnation, it should be the person who behaves irresponsibly in the first place, not the complete stranger who asks, "How is this my fault?""
A Superstitious Fund - "The Superstitious Fund Project is a live one year experiment where an uncanny algorithm or SUPERSTITIOUS AUTOMATED ROBOT will trade live on the stock market"
Bill Dickens on Me on Poverty: A Rejoinder, Bryan Caplan - "the American poor had very high rates of employment and high marital stability when the welfare state was smaller... It's still easy for today's white working class to get jobs that would support a family at the income level of the 1950s. U.S. per-capita income in 1950 was under $10,000 (1990 dollars). That actually understates the ease of maintaining earlier living standards because modern household technology and family size make it a lot easier for mothers to work... As women's labor market opportunities improved, their interest in low-status men with stable jobs declined. This in turn led many low-status men to either give up on work and women, or try to impress women in other ways. Some of these "other ways," strangely, are self-destructive behavior like non-remunerative crime and substance abuse... How do you, Bill Dickens, respond when your students don't come to class, don't study, fail the final exam, then come crying to you? Whether you tell them or not, I strongly suspect you're thinking, "Your failure is your own damn fault." You don't give them the same assistance or sympathy that you'd give a hard-working student who's struggling with the material. I think such meritocratic moral intuitions are sound, and ought to guide public policy as well as private conscience. If people are poor because they're behaving irresponsibly, they should be far down our queue of people to help - if they belong on the queue at all. That said, I also happen to think that reducing the generosity of the welfare state and making assistance conditional on good behavior will (eventually) reduce bad behavior... if the trade-offs are bone-headedly simple - like "heavy drinking makes you less employable" or "single motherhood is tough" - very very bad decisions are a matter of choice. This in turn seriously undermines efforts to claim "victim" status"
The Post-Employee Economy: Why Sky-High Profits Are Here to Stay - "Robots have come to destroy our way of life, just as we saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, though not as we expected. They're taking our jobs, and are forcing us to reexamine how we value ourselves... It's a bit perverse that we cheer the gains in health-care employment while we decry the rise in health-care costs - the two are related. Presumably, technology will cause health-care productivity to soar, reducing the need for health-care workers. Again, great for consumers and capital, bad for displaced workers... Americans continue to define themselves by work when technology continues to reduce the demand for labor... The end of the age of consumption and the decreasing need for labor are intertwined"
Laser Eye Surgery: 10 Years Later - ""Our findings are that both are safe after 10 years," and the visual correction holds for the most part, says researcher Jorge Alio, M.D., Ph.D., an ophthalmologist"
Gabriel Seah's answer to Why do many doctors performing LASIK opt to continue to wear corrective lenses instead of getting the procedure done on themselves? - Quora - "In 2008, 30% of the refractive surgeons surveyed by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery had had LASIK, PRK or LASEK performed on their own eyes, which was four times the frequency among the general public. Some ophthalmologists do not want to undergo LASIK for specific reasons, like the need to work with a microscope"
Osama bin Laden 'wanted 9/11 follow-up' - "Bothered by altitude sickness, he said, he volunteered to be a suicide bomber but was rejected because he had not undergone enough religious training... he was arrested in Pakistan after leaving the tribal areas because the fighting season was over and he wanted to find a wife."
What are some stereotypes that Asian people have about White people? - Quora
Newsbeast.gr | Ο,ΤΙ ΝΑ 'ΝΑΙ : Η κακόγουστα κάνει πάρτι
Weird nailart
Polar Bear Population Higher than in 20th Century: Is Something Fishy about Extinction Fears? - "If 300 years of study revealed 60-80 cycles of climate changes, the arctic climate would have presumably undergone many more cycles of drastic changes over the past thousands of years. And with a more than 110,000-year history of survival, it doesn't mak sense to believe that polar bears are dying unable to withstand swimming exhaustion due to larger water bodies... If the world is actually feeling threatened that polar bears might cease to exist at some future point of time, why are they still being subjected to legal hunting?"
Post ID: 8791743861706627820
"Japanese" Dating
Japanwommendating.asia — Experience Dating with Japanese Girls Number One for International Dating:
"Experience the joy of a Japanese Lady and set your life on fire!"
This must be the first time I've seen "Japanese" ladies with names like Peng, Liling,
Lingyan, Sha, Huabi, Wenhui, Yancen or Ting.
I don't think the photo of a geisha typing on a laptop comes from a stock photo site, so I wonder how much they paid to commission it.
"Experience the joy of a Japanese Lady and set your life on fire!"
This must be the first time I've seen "Japanese" ladies with names like Peng, Liling,
Lingyan, Sha, Huabi, Wenhui, Yancen or Ting.
I don't think the photo of a geisha typing on a laptop comes from a stock photo site, so I wonder how much they paid to commission it.
Post ID: 8740440217195857404
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The Next Generation - Weird
"I never get my hopes up so I never get let down." – Eeyore
***
Starhub: Local Server - Ping 31ms, Download Speed 8.53Mbps, Upload Speed 1.08Mbps
MyRepublic: Local Server - Ping 14ms, Download Speed 37.03Mbps, Upload Speed 33.09Mbps
Starhub: US West Coast - Ping 410ms, Download Speed 9.07Mbps, Upload Speed 1.00Mbps
MyRepublic: US West Coast - Ping 196ms, Download Speed 4.48Mbps, Upload Speed 2.45Mbps
***
Starhub: Local Server - Ping 31ms, Download Speed 8.53Mbps, Upload Speed 1.08Mbps
MyRepublic: Local Server - Ping 14ms, Download Speed 37.03Mbps, Upload Speed 33.09Mbps
Starhub: US West Coast - Ping 410ms, Download Speed 9.07Mbps, Upload Speed 1.00Mbps
MyRepublic: US West Coast - Ping 196ms, Download Speed 4.48Mbps, Upload Speed 2.45Mbps
Post ID: 4018297349953710236
Links - 26th September 2012
"When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him." - John Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
***
“New atheists” are privileged racist homophobic imperialists | Butterflies and Wheels - "who says Greta Christina (since she’s the example Scofield chose to illustrate that claim) belongs to a privileged group? Who, in particular, says she does so more than Be Scofield? He has some forms of privilege that she doesn’t have. Why does he get to italicize from their own social location by way of rebuking Greta, as if she loomed over him like the lord of the manor? Why is her reason more tainted by privilege than his? I don’t know; I suspect he’s just posturing."
Bees 'could deter vandals' at Greenfield heritage park
Your Facebook personality is genuine (study)
Storming the Sand Castle | BioWare Blog - "If there’s any criticism I would level, it’s that many fanfiction writers insulate themselves in the safe cocoon of an appreciative audience so that they never receive the criticism required to grow. There’s no harm in that; not everyone needs to grow as a writer– but those who do find that criticism, somewhere, can turn into pretty fantastic writers... They laden their prose with words they fancy because they think it makes their writing more poetic. It doesn’t. It makes your prose heavy, and while there might be some readers who appreciate that, it won’t make you a better writer. Be sparing with your language, and realize there isn’t a sentence so clever it shouldn’t be cut if it doesn’t assist your purpose– which is telling a story"
Mass hysteria in upstate New York: Why Lori Brownell and 13 other teenage girls are showing Tourette’s-like symptoms. - "Victims are often accused of faking it, but more often they are suffering real physical symptoms that are psychological in origin. The phenomenon has been observed for centuries, with the blame shifting to whatever specific anxieties are culturally pervasive at the time. But one theme has remained consistent: The victims are overwhelmingly female... Victims of mass hysteria are so often female that gender imbalance is one clue doctors use to differentiate hysteria from poisoning"
IKEA stores, a wonderland for Chinese freeloaders - "Taking a nap, freeloading on air-conditioning, sipping free coffee, and organizing a speed dating event…It seems that quite a number of Chinese go to IKEA stores for anything but furniture shopping... Last year, IKEA Shanghai experienced a coffee crisis. It told its customers that 30 yuan (US$4.6) spent on a membership card can guarantee them countless free refills of coffee in the cafeteria. The promotion became a near disaster: each Tuesday and Thursday, hundreds of members of a matchmaking club at their middle age and beyond came from all over the city and took up seats for five or six hours while meeting their dates. Each one of them got free coffee from an organizer who flashed her own IKEA membership card to the staff at the cafeteria and then generously extended her privilege to everyone in the club. Bags of creamer, sugar and disposable cups ran out in half an hour"
Bernhard Schlink: being German is a huge burden - ""Germans have a melancholic, a pessimistic streak, which cultural historians trace back to the thirty years' war [a series of wars between 1618 and 1648 that devastated much of Europe including large parts of Germany]. There are these beautiful comparisons of German, English and French soldiers' war songs, and the English and French ones, they're all about hope and victory, and the German soldiers' songs are all about losing comrades, or imminent death. This pessimism I think leads people to ask now: 'Have we had it too good?'""
Singapore and Hong Kong men are the most promiscuous in Asia - "Singapore and Hong Kong men are the most promiscuous in Asia, with an average of 16 bed partners in their lifetime, according to a worldwide survey carried out by condom producer Durex. For women, Malaysian women are the most promiscuous in Asia with some 39 percent confessing that they cheated on their partners in the poll, which covered 29,000 women in 36 countries. The Malaysian women came third behind Ghana (62 per cent) and Thailand (59 per cent). In fourth and fifth place were Russia (33 per cent) and Singapore (19 per cent) respectively."
Condom highly sought after as gift for Chinese New Year - "many young men are out making a living by themselves and are reunited with their wives or girlfriends only during the New Year. Condoms that are rarely used throughout the year now sell like hot cakes for people’s quality time."
Material greed of Chinese women turns Chinese men off; Western women become popular - "[He] has found himself more attracted to the traits of the Western female character. He thinks that these women are more independent, straight-forward and less coddled than Chinese women. Being outspoken is what they especially appeal to Li Lei. “If they have something they want, they will tell you directly”... Tony had two relationships with Chinese women, but was angered by having to find out why his girlfriend had mood swing. As a result, he made up his mind two years ago that women from North America or Europe suit him better. Part of the reason why they now prefer Western women is an increasing number of Chinese women are materialist"
Diva - My S'pore boyfriends were not driven, boring dependent, childish - "After she broke up with her Singaporean boyfriend two years ago, Miss Ang had enough of local men. Her ex had called her materialistic after she told him that being content with a future salary of $3,000 a month was not good enough for her. “So I decided I wanted someone different,” Miss Ang said. The 21-year-old set her sights on Caucasian men, and 10 months after she broke up, she got her wish. She met her current German boyfriend, 25, at the smoking area outside a Clarke Quay pub. He approached her and started a conversation. “Normally, Singaporean men would not be so bold,” she said... [She] spoke with a Western accent... “I love my boyfriend because he is very reserved and simple”... “I also want to have beautiful children who are mixed blood, to create diversity in the family”"
Self-confessed ex-SPG: Local men are sensible, responsible gentlemen - ""When I was an SPG, I wanted to explore and thinking these Caucasian men were more adventurous and intelligent -- my thoughts fooled me. I was disappointed dating a few of the most inglorious and ignorant men I've ever met. They always think they are way smarter and able to outsmart me. But when I outsmart them in turn, they feel threatened and hate the feeling of losing to an Asian woman. Thus, they begin to turn nasty... I would describe local men as researchers, humans curious about their planet. When they don't know something, they are eager to learn more about it. They research and gain more knowledge about it unlike Caucasian men, who tend to think they know it all... most of them don't really care how you look, it's just how you sleep with them"
The Sexual Double Standard - "A more lighthearted approach to a sexual double standard was taken in a study done in Texas examining country music lyrics. All of the songs used were sung by female artists. Interestingly, these researchers found that female singers excused infidelity from married women but not married men... A later study by Marks and Fraley investigated why recent empirical results seems to support the lack of a sexual double standard while anecdotal evidence still strongly supports it’s existence. Their findings suggested that the confirmation bias (a tendency to search for information that confirms already held precepts) sustains belief in the sexual double standard (2006: 25)."
YouTube video shows Indian beer thief hiding 20-pound case under skirt - What's On Tianjin
Tapioca pearls in bubble tea contain carcinogens: German study
Virginity cream sparks Indian sex debate - "An Indian company has launched what it claims is the country's first vagina tightening cream, saying it will make women feel "like a virgin" again. The company says it is about empowering women... Ancient India has always been celebrated for its openness and lack of hypocrisy, for its modernity and inclusive attitude; but in one aspect, it has remained rigid: the need for women to be virgins... she has even heard stories of companies which work at night, such as call centres, finding their toilets full of condoms which they cannot flush down, as some couples find it hard to find a place to be alone"
Why top sport stars might have 'more time' on the ball - "an individual's perception of time does seem to slow as they prepare to make a physical action"
Eating less fails to extend monkey lives - "monkeys eating 30 per cent less than control animals did not have longer lives. Dieting monkeys also died from age-related diseases just as often as controls. The results not only conflict with findings from worms, flies, rats and mice, but also with those of a very similar study of rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in 2009."
Cost of staging NDP: $115, spent in 10 years
I'm sure this doesn't assume paying NSFs at market rates
No go for cycling lanes - "On average, 18 cyclists died every year from 2008 to 2011, Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim said in Parliament on Monday. Half of the cyclists involved in fatal and injury accidents were partly at fault... Those who don't observe the highway code are also a menace. Cyclists sometimes ride two-abreast in a single lane, blocking vehicles whose drivers end up waiting behind them, said avid cyclist Stephen Choy, 47. Some cyclists in housing estates also ride on pedestrian paths "thinking they have the right of way and then expect drivers to give way at zebra crossings""
""I am really angry. I have seen so many cyclists disobey traffic rules, yet cyclists are always the angels and motorists are the culprits," said the Tampines resident. "We are not against cyclists but they must obey the rules. Motorists are the poor scapegoats.""
How the contraceptive pill messes with women's minds: Rage, despair, low sex drive... - " the Pill affects women’s choice in men. The study showed women taking it tend to choose reliable, caring and steady men, rather than adventurous, dashing and dangerous types... Using a medically respected questionnaire, researchers found Pill takers had an average depression rating of 17.6 compared to 9.8 in non-users... A study of more than 1,000 women at Germany’s University of Heidelberg found the Pill dramatically reduces levels of desire and arousal during sex."
How ironic that it reduces desire
***
“New atheists” are privileged racist homophobic imperialists | Butterflies and Wheels - "who says Greta Christina (since she’s the example Scofield chose to illustrate that claim) belongs to a privileged group? Who, in particular, says she does so more than Be Scofield? He has some forms of privilege that she doesn’t have. Why does he get to italicize from their own social location by way of rebuking Greta, as if she loomed over him like the lord of the manor? Why is her reason more tainted by privilege than his? I don’t know; I suspect he’s just posturing."
Bees 'could deter vandals' at Greenfield heritage park
Your Facebook personality is genuine (study)
Storming the Sand Castle | BioWare Blog - "If there’s any criticism I would level, it’s that many fanfiction writers insulate themselves in the safe cocoon of an appreciative audience so that they never receive the criticism required to grow. There’s no harm in that; not everyone needs to grow as a writer– but those who do find that criticism, somewhere, can turn into pretty fantastic writers... They laden their prose with words they fancy because they think it makes their writing more poetic. It doesn’t. It makes your prose heavy, and while there might be some readers who appreciate that, it won’t make you a better writer. Be sparing with your language, and realize there isn’t a sentence so clever it shouldn’t be cut if it doesn’t assist your purpose– which is telling a story"
Mass hysteria in upstate New York: Why Lori Brownell and 13 other teenage girls are showing Tourette’s-like symptoms. - "Victims are often accused of faking it, but more often they are suffering real physical symptoms that are psychological in origin. The phenomenon has been observed for centuries, with the blame shifting to whatever specific anxieties are culturally pervasive at the time. But one theme has remained consistent: The victims are overwhelmingly female... Victims of mass hysteria are so often female that gender imbalance is one clue doctors use to differentiate hysteria from poisoning"
IKEA stores, a wonderland for Chinese freeloaders - "Taking a nap, freeloading on air-conditioning, sipping free coffee, and organizing a speed dating event…It seems that quite a number of Chinese go to IKEA stores for anything but furniture shopping... Last year, IKEA Shanghai experienced a coffee crisis. It told its customers that 30 yuan (US$4.6) spent on a membership card can guarantee them countless free refills of coffee in the cafeteria. The promotion became a near disaster: each Tuesday and Thursday, hundreds of members of a matchmaking club at their middle age and beyond came from all over the city and took up seats for five or six hours while meeting their dates. Each one of them got free coffee from an organizer who flashed her own IKEA membership card to the staff at the cafeteria and then generously extended her privilege to everyone in the club. Bags of creamer, sugar and disposable cups ran out in half an hour"
Bernhard Schlink: being German is a huge burden - ""Germans have a melancholic, a pessimistic streak, which cultural historians trace back to the thirty years' war [a series of wars between 1618 and 1648 that devastated much of Europe including large parts of Germany]. There are these beautiful comparisons of German, English and French soldiers' war songs, and the English and French ones, they're all about hope and victory, and the German soldiers' songs are all about losing comrades, or imminent death. This pessimism I think leads people to ask now: 'Have we had it too good?'""
Singapore and Hong Kong men are the most promiscuous in Asia - "Singapore and Hong Kong men are the most promiscuous in Asia, with an average of 16 bed partners in their lifetime, according to a worldwide survey carried out by condom producer Durex. For women, Malaysian women are the most promiscuous in Asia with some 39 percent confessing that they cheated on their partners in the poll, which covered 29,000 women in 36 countries. The Malaysian women came third behind Ghana (62 per cent) and Thailand (59 per cent). In fourth and fifth place were Russia (33 per cent) and Singapore (19 per cent) respectively."
Condom highly sought after as gift for Chinese New Year - "many young men are out making a living by themselves and are reunited with their wives or girlfriends only during the New Year. Condoms that are rarely used throughout the year now sell like hot cakes for people’s quality time."
Material greed of Chinese women turns Chinese men off; Western women become popular - "[He] has found himself more attracted to the traits of the Western female character. He thinks that these women are more independent, straight-forward and less coddled than Chinese women. Being outspoken is what they especially appeal to Li Lei. “If they have something they want, they will tell you directly”... Tony had two relationships with Chinese women, but was angered by having to find out why his girlfriend had mood swing. As a result, he made up his mind two years ago that women from North America or Europe suit him better. Part of the reason why they now prefer Western women is an increasing number of Chinese women are materialist"
Diva - My S'pore boyfriends were not driven, boring dependent, childish - "After she broke up with her Singaporean boyfriend two years ago, Miss Ang had enough of local men. Her ex had called her materialistic after she told him that being content with a future salary of $3,000 a month was not good enough for her. “So I decided I wanted someone different,” Miss Ang said. The 21-year-old set her sights on Caucasian men, and 10 months after she broke up, she got her wish. She met her current German boyfriend, 25, at the smoking area outside a Clarke Quay pub. He approached her and started a conversation. “Normally, Singaporean men would not be so bold,” she said... [She] spoke with a Western accent... “I love my boyfriend because he is very reserved and simple”... “I also want to have beautiful children who are mixed blood, to create diversity in the family”"
Self-confessed ex-SPG: Local men are sensible, responsible gentlemen - ""When I was an SPG, I wanted to explore and thinking these Caucasian men were more adventurous and intelligent -- my thoughts fooled me. I was disappointed dating a few of the most inglorious and ignorant men I've ever met. They always think they are way smarter and able to outsmart me. But when I outsmart them in turn, they feel threatened and hate the feeling of losing to an Asian woman. Thus, they begin to turn nasty... I would describe local men as researchers, humans curious about their planet. When they don't know something, they are eager to learn more about it. They research and gain more knowledge about it unlike Caucasian men, who tend to think they know it all... most of them don't really care how you look, it's just how you sleep with them"
The Sexual Double Standard - "A more lighthearted approach to a sexual double standard was taken in a study done in Texas examining country music lyrics. All of the songs used were sung by female artists. Interestingly, these researchers found that female singers excused infidelity from married women but not married men... A later study by Marks and Fraley investigated why recent empirical results seems to support the lack of a sexual double standard while anecdotal evidence still strongly supports it’s existence. Their findings suggested that the confirmation bias (a tendency to search for information that confirms already held precepts) sustains belief in the sexual double standard (2006: 25)."
YouTube video shows Indian beer thief hiding 20-pound case under skirt - What's On Tianjin
Tapioca pearls in bubble tea contain carcinogens: German study
Virginity cream sparks Indian sex debate - "An Indian company has launched what it claims is the country's first vagina tightening cream, saying it will make women feel "like a virgin" again. The company says it is about empowering women... Ancient India has always been celebrated for its openness and lack of hypocrisy, for its modernity and inclusive attitude; but in one aspect, it has remained rigid: the need for women to be virgins... she has even heard stories of companies which work at night, such as call centres, finding their toilets full of condoms which they cannot flush down, as some couples find it hard to find a place to be alone"
Why top sport stars might have 'more time' on the ball - "an individual's perception of time does seem to slow as they prepare to make a physical action"
Eating less fails to extend monkey lives - "monkeys eating 30 per cent less than control animals did not have longer lives. Dieting monkeys also died from age-related diseases just as often as controls. The results not only conflict with findings from worms, flies, rats and mice, but also with those of a very similar study of rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in 2009."
Cost of staging NDP: $115, spent in 10 years
I'm sure this doesn't assume paying NSFs at market rates
No go for cycling lanes - "On average, 18 cyclists died every year from 2008 to 2011, Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim said in Parliament on Monday. Half of the cyclists involved in fatal and injury accidents were partly at fault... Those who don't observe the highway code are also a menace. Cyclists sometimes ride two-abreast in a single lane, blocking vehicles whose drivers end up waiting behind them, said avid cyclist Stephen Choy, 47. Some cyclists in housing estates also ride on pedestrian paths "thinking they have the right of way and then expect drivers to give way at zebra crossings""
""I am really angry. I have seen so many cyclists disobey traffic rules, yet cyclists are always the angels and motorists are the culprits," said the Tampines resident. "We are not against cyclists but they must obey the rules. Motorists are the poor scapegoats.""
How the contraceptive pill messes with women's minds: Rage, despair, low sex drive... - " the Pill affects women’s choice in men. The study showed women taking it tend to choose reliable, caring and steady men, rather than adventurous, dashing and dangerous types... Using a medically respected questionnaire, researchers found Pill takers had an average depression rating of 17.6 compared to 9.8 in non-users... A study of more than 1,000 women at Germany’s University of Heidelberg found the Pill dramatically reduces levels of desire and arousal during sex."
How ironic that it reduces desire
Post ID: 5653632078156767485
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Now THAT is Retarded
"School is learning things you don't want to know, surrounded by people you wish you didn't know, while working toward a future you don't know will ever come." - Dave Kellett
***
From: R-word | Spread the Word to End the Word
"The R-word is the word 'retard(ed)'. Why does it hurt? The R-word hurts because it is exclusive. It’s offensive. It’s derogatory. The R-word is hate speech...
When they were originally introduced, the terms “mental retardation” or “mentally retarded” were medical terms with a specifically clinical connotation; however, the pejorative forms, “retard” and “retarded” have been used widely in today’s society to degrade and insult people with intellectual disabilities. Additionally, when “retard” and “retarded” are used as synonyms for “dumb” or “stupid” by people without disabilities, it only reinforces painful stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities being less valued members of humanity."
Recent pledges:
Default pledge: "I pledge and support the elimination of the derogatory use of the r-word from everyday speech and promote the acceptance and inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities."
My pledge: "The R Word is pernicious but I find the term "intellectual disabilities" almost as offensive and insulting. I support inclusion of the "Differently-abled"!"
(there is a delay between pledging and having the pledges show up - I'm suspecting it's more due to screening of pledges than server lag, since I didn't see anyone pledging that "this campaign is retarded")
As @lynnylchan comments, "Not allowed to say 'disabled', it's now 'differently abled'... this is pointless."
In other words, the website and campaign are already outdated and offensive.
Moral of the story: Offence is in the Eye of the Offended.
More: Pinker on the Euphemism Treadmill
***
From: R-word | Spread the Word to End the Word
"The R-word is the word 'retard(ed)'. Why does it hurt? The R-word hurts because it is exclusive. It’s offensive. It’s derogatory. The R-word is hate speech...
When they were originally introduced, the terms “mental retardation” or “mentally retarded” were medical terms with a specifically clinical connotation; however, the pejorative forms, “retard” and “retarded” have been used widely in today’s society to degrade and insult people with intellectual disabilities. Additionally, when “retard” and “retarded” are used as synonyms for “dumb” or “stupid” by people without disabilities, it only reinforces painful stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities being less valued members of humanity."
Recent pledges:
Default pledge: "I pledge and support the elimination of the derogatory use of the r-word from everyday speech and promote the acceptance and inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities."
My pledge: "The R Word is pernicious but I find the term "intellectual disabilities" almost as offensive and insulting. I support inclusion of the "Differently-abled"!"
(there is a delay between pledging and having the pledges show up - I'm suspecting it's more due to screening of pledges than server lag, since I didn't see anyone pledging that "this campaign is retarded")
As @lynnylchan comments, "Not allowed to say 'disabled', it's now 'differently abled'... this is pointless."
In other words, the website and campaign are already outdated and offensive.
Moral of the story: Offence is in the Eye of the Offended.
More: Pinker on the Euphemism Treadmill
Post ID: 5933456675359158148
Monday, September 24, 2012
Ars gratia artis
"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." - Graffito
***
On the film "Fiesta":
"I should have known my next picture would be trouble as soon as the Mexican tailor demanded that my bosom would have to go. Almost from beginning to end, Fiesta was jinxed…
Before shooting began, I traveled to Mexico City to get fitted for a traje de luces, the beautiful jewel-encrusted suit of lights that every matador wears in the ring. The tailor who was making my suit was very by-the- book — it never registered with him that this was for a movie, or if it did, he didn't care. When I went for my first fitting, he looked at me, took my measurements for the jacket, shook his head, and said,
Imposible, senorita.
He was upset because traditionally the stiff jacket must lie vertically against the chest. Given the measurements he wanted, the only way a woman could wear one "properly" would be if she were constructed like supermodel Kate Moss — perfectly flat. Now I wasn't quite Jane Russell, but I did have a bustline; and this little tailor was just sickened at the sight of me because I was ruining the look of his suit. At that point he refused to do any more work on it unless I agreed to have my bosom surgically removed.
When I realised he was serious, I crossed my arms over my chest. We were at an impasse – a Mexican standoff”
--- The million dollar mermaid / Esther Williams, Digby Diehl
***
On the film "Fiesta":
"I should have known my next picture would be trouble as soon as the Mexican tailor demanded that my bosom would have to go. Almost from beginning to end, Fiesta was jinxed…
Before shooting began, I traveled to Mexico City to get fitted for a traje de luces, the beautiful jewel-encrusted suit of lights that every matador wears in the ring. The tailor who was making my suit was very by-the- book — it never registered with him that this was for a movie, or if it did, he didn't care. When I went for my first fitting, he looked at me, took my measurements for the jacket, shook his head, and said,
Imposible, senorita.
He was upset because traditionally the stiff jacket must lie vertically against the chest. Given the measurements he wanted, the only way a woman could wear one "properly" would be if she were constructed like supermodel Kate Moss — perfectly flat. Now I wasn't quite Jane Russell, but I did have a bustline; and this little tailor was just sickened at the sight of me because I was ruining the look of his suit. At that point he refused to do any more work on it unless I agreed to have my bosom surgically removed.
When I realised he was serious, I crossed my arms over my chest. We were at an impasse – a Mexican standoff”
--- The million dollar mermaid / Esther Williams, Digby Diehl
Post ID: 4596834375979880617
u r wt u wr - 24th September 2012
"If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like." - Phyllis Diller
***
u r wt u wr:
- 'You can't catch me'
- 'Kiss me. It's trendy'
- 'Cute'
- 'New Menico
US 27
There my they time
What's your name'
- 'a sparkling weekend is coming' (this was worn on a saturday so presumably it was not that weekend)
- 'My boyfriend is a tenant. Were-something-'
- 'Need a hug today'
- 'somewhere sometime it could happen. Love edc'
- 'I'm SMART. That is why I am still SINGLE'
- '*something* *pic if strawberry* it is juicy'
- 'Good cats make u :) naughty cats make u :* but i -something- them all'
- 'Sweet cherries' (7 year old girl)
- 'There's a wild thing inside us all' (Secondary school girl with mother)
- 'You don't forget me. That's why I like you'
- 'Vamp'
- 'coffee chocolate men. All better rich'
- 'Shrink to fit' (I could see her tummy)
- 'Like me to love St.'
- 'Always imitated never duplicated' (Why you would want to, I wouldn't know)
- 'You know you love me too'
- 'remember me'
- 'I haven't met a boy I couldn't beat'
- 'B.U.M college rule #237. Not remembering is the best part'\
- 'I'm not perfect but I'm limited edition' (rationed crap is still crap)
- 'remember me'
- 'nice' (Must've referred to her personality, I'm sure)
- 'Show off' (There wasn't much to show)
- 'player'
- 'more respect less attack'
- 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me' (She was maybe in her early 40s. She had quite a lot of pimple craters, had neither figure nor butt, and had early stage female pattern baldness)
Guys:
- 'mark ♥ erwin' (turns out his name was neither)
- 'remember when sex was safe and motorbikes were dangerous'
- 'Love to love' (these were inside a lipstick mark)
- 'Smile if you're gay'
***
u r wt u wr:
- 'You can't catch me'
- 'Kiss me. It's trendy'
- 'Cute'
- 'New Menico
US 27
There my they time
What's your name'
- 'a sparkling weekend is coming' (this was worn on a saturday so presumably it was not that weekend)
- 'My boyfriend is a tenant. Were-something-'
- 'Need a hug today'
- 'somewhere sometime it could happen. Love edc'
- 'I'm SMART. That is why I am still SINGLE'
- '*something* *pic if strawberry* it is juicy'
- 'Good cats make u :) naughty cats make u :* but i -something- them all'
- 'Sweet cherries' (7 year old girl)
- 'There's a wild thing inside us all' (Secondary school girl with mother)
- 'You don't forget me. That's why I like you'
- 'Vamp'
- 'coffee chocolate men. All better rich'
- 'Shrink to fit' (I could see her tummy)
- 'Like me to love St.'
- 'Always imitated never duplicated' (Why you would want to, I wouldn't know)
- 'You know you love me too'
- 'remember me'
- 'I haven't met a boy I couldn't beat'
- 'B.U.M college rule #237. Not remembering is the best part'\
- 'I'm not perfect but I'm limited edition' (rationed crap is still crap)
- 'remember me'
- 'nice' (Must've referred to her personality, I'm sure)
- 'Show off' (There wasn't much to show)
- 'player'
- 'more respect less attack'
- 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me' (She was maybe in her early 40s. She had quite a lot of pimple craters, had neither figure nor butt, and had early stage female pattern baldness)
Guys:
- 'mark ♥ erwin' (turns out his name was neither)
- 'remember when sex was safe and motorbikes were dangerous'
- 'Love to love' (these were inside a lipstick mark)
- 'Smile if you're gay'
Post ID: 5721070844487880012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Links - 23rd September 2012
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." - Lucille Ball
***
Australian Brothel complains Church will bring “Wrong Sort of People” - "A North Shore brothel has complained to the local council about plans to build a church in the same street, fearing it will bring the wrong sort of people into the area."
Sexy friends 'deter male advances' - "A team researching how males and females act socially with one another have found that certain female fish who are not in the mood to mate deliberately hang around with "more sexually attractive" female fish in order to deflect attention from randy males"
The Great Singapore Penis Panic and American Mass Hysteria - "Forty-three years ago, a strange series of events unfolded on the island of Singapore. Hundreds of men rushed to the hospitals of the island with the terrifying belief that their penises were shrinking. Each feared that if his penis shrank away completely, he would die. Some came with lucky red strings tightly wrapped around their penises to prevent the lethal disappearance. Others had clamps holding their wayward organs in place. Most often it was a firm grasp of a hand, their own or a frightened family member's, that prevented the shrinking penis from slipping away and taking their life with it. Oddly enough, about a dozen women also fell victim to the panic. This was the Great Singapore Penis Panic, or what doctors refer to as an epidemic of the psychiatric condition called Koro"
The quintessential SG girl / Drunk on fun. - "I’ve been here in Perth for almost a month, and each day, I learn a little more about this new home of mine and the people inhabiting it. One of the hardest things I had to learn - and it was something I was quite shocked by - was the views on Singaporean girls... the ones most likely to judge you, and form stereotypical views about you, are the Permanent Residents, ABCs (Australian Born Chinese for you noobs) and overseas students who have been here for at least three years. They’re views on Singaporean girls are… to say the least.. not very flattering. In fact, you can almost hear them scoff every time they say, “typical SG girl..”"
Non-Techie Cofounder Learns Code, Builds New Site Feature in 6 Days
Twitter / tastylongwiener - "This made me LOL so hard! A+ for effort though"
How to Make Love Like a Caveman - "So we can look back to six to seven million years and say, that has been six to seven million years of human primate promiscuity, pretty much uninterrupted until we get to 10,000 years ago with agriculture and the advent of monogamy. So that gives you a sense of why it’s so difficult for most people. We’ve been, you know, going down this same path for so long and then suddenly we’re told, no, no, that’s not the way we behave anymore. And in fact, that’s not natural. So if you behave that way or you want to behave that way or you fanaticize about behaving that way or you get off on watching other people behave that way, there’s something wrong with you. You’re sick"
Letter to Singapore « youdonthavetoagree - "In London, I can be a saint or a sinner. I can be City boy, goth girl, punk kid; I can be in with the media, in with the cool kids, I can drop rhymes in East End ghettos and I can drop cash in Mahiki on cocktails. I can be posh, p oor, upmarket, downmarket, chav, toff, hippie, indie. I can be gay or straight, man or woman. I can make myself up, make myself down. And London will still embrace me, and I will always find somewhere that will take me in, and raise no eyebrows should I wear hoop skirts and pierce my lip and call myself Bettie Page. I’m not sure you could ever do that, Singapore. You say you celebrate diversity, but really you only grudgingly tolerate it"
Power Ranger Lego Intro - YouTube
It's fatuous to deny race link in child sex-grooming case, says equality chief Trevor Phillips - "He was asked on BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show whether the case illustrated a cultural problem in part of the Pakistani Muslim community about the way men regard white women as ‘fair game’... ‘I think anybody who says that the fact that most of the men are Asian and most of the children are white is not relevant, I mean that’s just fatuous’"
SUPER SEXY HIV AWARENESS MUSIC VIDEO (HD version) - YouTube
Gillette’s worst nightmare? Possibly. « The Grooming Guru
The true story of how McDonald's started (picture)
Feel The Pride - YouTube
Comments: "I feel something, but I'm not sure it's pride.."
"Nasa scientist. Captain America. Marry Bieber. Basically, they all dream of leaving Singapore. Niiiice~"
"as a comedy, its a gem. The way the absurdist-humor element digs into our own anti-nationalism (lol just scroll and read the comments), irony at its best. Brilliant script. I'm amazed the authorities couldn't see the allusion to actual singaporean-bashing by singaporeans in the overly dramatic second-half of the video."
At first I thought this was a spoof video
Watch the Simpsons' amazing Game of Thrones intro
Before and After Marriage (picture)
Remake / Submissions
Bride's 'Cold Feet' May Predict Divorce - "While men seemed more likely to have cold feet, their wives' reservations better predicted future problems"
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - "Have you even heard of Pacman?... Think about it. It's like Kafka wrote a Lovecraft story"
Japanese Porn Star Tries, Fails, to Repair Japanese-Chinese Tensions
David Briggs: The Complicated Connection Between Religion and the Paranormal - "both individuals with no religious beliefs and the most committed individuals -- those who attend services weekly -- are among the least likely to hold paranormal beliefs. Those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God are also highly unlikely to hold paranormal beliefs"
Japan’s Phillips Curve Looks Like Japan
What Is the Koran? - "Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries—they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God... "To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community"... The orthodox Islamic view, Abu Zaid claims, is stultifying; it reduces a divine, eternal, and dynamic text to a fixed human interpretation with no more life and meaning than "a trinket ... a talisman ... or an ornament""
The dark side of Dubai - "All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars. "The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship"... "When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path"... It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police... "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex"... "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world""
Office romance still frowned upon in Singapore
BLACKFIVE: Another View of the Syrian “Revolt” - "The Syrian Christians to a man told me that the “freedom fighters” where nothing more than Sunni Jihadists looking to take advantage of the various “Arab Spring” movements that had been successfully overthrowing stable dictatorships throughout the region in favor of radicalized Muslim groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. They told me at that time that these groups were not only the main aggressors in the conflict, but that they were specifically targeting Christians for both religious persecution and for political retaliation. Several told me that in Homs the graffiti left by the insurgents often stated, “Alawites to the grave, Christians to the cross”... The once vibrant and always peaceful Iraqi Christian community was systematically hunted down and killed by both al Qaeda and JAM with the bulk of the survivors fleeing to…Syria"
Study of the Day: Why That Last Piece of Chocolate Tastes the Best - "If you think something is the last, you'll tend to like it the best"
***
Australian Brothel complains Church will bring “Wrong Sort of People” - "A North Shore brothel has complained to the local council about plans to build a church in the same street, fearing it will bring the wrong sort of people into the area."
Sexy friends 'deter male advances' - "A team researching how males and females act socially with one another have found that certain female fish who are not in the mood to mate deliberately hang around with "more sexually attractive" female fish in order to deflect attention from randy males"
The Great Singapore Penis Panic and American Mass Hysteria - "Forty-three years ago, a strange series of events unfolded on the island of Singapore. Hundreds of men rushed to the hospitals of the island with the terrifying belief that their penises were shrinking. Each feared that if his penis shrank away completely, he would die. Some came with lucky red strings tightly wrapped around their penises to prevent the lethal disappearance. Others had clamps holding their wayward organs in place. Most often it was a firm grasp of a hand, their own or a frightened family member's, that prevented the shrinking penis from slipping away and taking their life with it. Oddly enough, about a dozen women also fell victim to the panic. This was the Great Singapore Penis Panic, or what doctors refer to as an epidemic of the psychiatric condition called Koro"
The quintessential SG girl / Drunk on fun. - "I’ve been here in Perth for almost a month, and each day, I learn a little more about this new home of mine and the people inhabiting it. One of the hardest things I had to learn - and it was something I was quite shocked by - was the views on Singaporean girls... the ones most likely to judge you, and form stereotypical views about you, are the Permanent Residents, ABCs (Australian Born Chinese for you noobs) and overseas students who have been here for at least three years. They’re views on Singaporean girls are… to say the least.. not very flattering. In fact, you can almost hear them scoff every time they say, “typical SG girl..”"
Non-Techie Cofounder Learns Code, Builds New Site Feature in 6 Days
Twitter / tastylongwiener - "This made me LOL so hard! A+ for effort though"
How to Make Love Like a Caveman - "So we can look back to six to seven million years and say, that has been six to seven million years of human primate promiscuity, pretty much uninterrupted until we get to 10,000 years ago with agriculture and the advent of monogamy. So that gives you a sense of why it’s so difficult for most people. We’ve been, you know, going down this same path for so long and then suddenly we’re told, no, no, that’s not the way we behave anymore. And in fact, that’s not natural. So if you behave that way or you want to behave that way or you fanaticize about behaving that way or you get off on watching other people behave that way, there’s something wrong with you. You’re sick"
Letter to Singapore « youdonthavetoagree - "In London, I can be a saint or a sinner. I can be City boy, goth girl, punk kid; I can be in with the media, in with the cool kids, I can drop rhymes in East End ghettos and I can drop cash in Mahiki on cocktails. I can be posh, p oor, upmarket, downmarket, chav, toff, hippie, indie. I can be gay or straight, man or woman. I can make myself up, make myself down. And London will still embrace me, and I will always find somewhere that will take me in, and raise no eyebrows should I wear hoop skirts and pierce my lip and call myself Bettie Page. I’m not sure you could ever do that, Singapore. You say you celebrate diversity, but really you only grudgingly tolerate it"
Power Ranger Lego Intro - YouTube
It's fatuous to deny race link in child sex-grooming case, says equality chief Trevor Phillips - "He was asked on BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show whether the case illustrated a cultural problem in part of the Pakistani Muslim community about the way men regard white women as ‘fair game’... ‘I think anybody who says that the fact that most of the men are Asian and most of the children are white is not relevant, I mean that’s just fatuous’"
SUPER SEXY HIV AWARENESS MUSIC VIDEO (HD version) - YouTube
Gillette’s worst nightmare? Possibly. « The Grooming Guru
The true story of how McDonald's started (picture)
Feel The Pride - YouTube
Comments: "I feel something, but I'm not sure it's pride.."
"Nasa scientist. Captain America. Marry Bieber. Basically, they all dream of leaving Singapore. Niiiice~"
"as a comedy, its a gem. The way the absurdist-humor element digs into our own anti-nationalism (lol just scroll and read the comments), irony at its best. Brilliant script. I'm amazed the authorities couldn't see the allusion to actual singaporean-bashing by singaporeans in the overly dramatic second-half of the video."
At first I thought this was a spoof video
Watch the Simpsons' amazing Game of Thrones intro
Before and After Marriage (picture)
Remake / Submissions
Bride's 'Cold Feet' May Predict Divorce - "While men seemed more likely to have cold feet, their wives' reservations better predicted future problems"
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - "Have you even heard of Pacman?... Think about it. It's like Kafka wrote a Lovecraft story"
Japanese Porn Star Tries, Fails, to Repair Japanese-Chinese Tensions
David Briggs: The Complicated Connection Between Religion and the Paranormal - "both individuals with no religious beliefs and the most committed individuals -- those who attend services weekly -- are among the least likely to hold paranormal beliefs. Those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God are also highly unlikely to hold paranormal beliefs"
Japan’s Phillips Curve Looks Like Japan
What Is the Koran? - "Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries—they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God... "To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community"... The orthodox Islamic view, Abu Zaid claims, is stultifying; it reduces a divine, eternal, and dynamic text to a fixed human interpretation with no more life and meaning than "a trinket ... a talisman ... or an ornament""
The dark side of Dubai - "All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars. "The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship"... "When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path"... It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police... "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex"... "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world""
Office romance still frowned upon in Singapore
BLACKFIVE: Another View of the Syrian “Revolt” - "The Syrian Christians to a man told me that the “freedom fighters” where nothing more than Sunni Jihadists looking to take advantage of the various “Arab Spring” movements that had been successfully overthrowing stable dictatorships throughout the region in favor of radicalized Muslim groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. They told me at that time that these groups were not only the main aggressors in the conflict, but that they were specifically targeting Christians for both religious persecution and for political retaliation. Several told me that in Homs the graffiti left by the insurgents often stated, “Alawites to the grave, Christians to the cross”... The once vibrant and always peaceful Iraqi Christian community was systematically hunted down and killed by both al Qaeda and JAM with the bulk of the survivors fleeing to…Syria"
Study of the Day: Why That Last Piece of Chocolate Tastes the Best - "If you think something is the last, you'll tend to like it the best"
Post ID: 9130978424059098057
What 'Rock n Roll' means
"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose." - Woody Allen
***
"The music from which rock ‘n’ roll was born throbbed with more libidinous content and performance than anything coming out of white America at the time. Even the name was salacious. ‘Rock ‘n’ roll’, according to the cultural historian Michael Ventura,
When the music crossed over to white middle-class radio, so many songs involved rocking and rolling that radio deejays — possibly naively, perhaps cunningly — called it rock n roll.
From its very birth, rock sizzled with sex. Elvis was such a sex bomb that his FBI file apparently declared him a ‘definite danger to the security of the United States’, and it only got more dangerous from there."
--- Sex, Genes and Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution Has Shaped the Modern World / Rob Brooks
***
"The music from which rock ‘n’ roll was born throbbed with more libidinous content and performance than anything coming out of white America at the time. Even the name was salacious. ‘Rock ‘n’ roll’, according to the cultural historian Michael Ventura,
was a term from the juke joints of the South, long in use by the forties, when a music started being heard that had no name, wasn’t jazz and wasn’t simply blues and wasn’t Cajun, but had all those elements and could not be ignored. In those juke joints ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ hadn’t meant the name of a music. it
meant ‘to fuck’.
When the music crossed over to white middle-class radio, so many songs involved rocking and rolling that radio deejays — possibly naively, perhaps cunningly — called it rock n roll.
From its very birth, rock sizzled with sex. Elvis was such a sex bomb that his FBI file apparently declared him a ‘definite danger to the security of the United States’, and it only got more dangerous from there."
--- Sex, Genes and Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution Has Shaped the Modern World / Rob Brooks
Post ID: 3978998351190026666
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