News story of the day

[Eames]

Interesting.

 

Hmm, Japanese guy in class.

Ask him if he fancies a shag.......

[BOF]

TL;DR. I got the jist though and I'm willing to help their cause.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Fascinating article. I think 'the West' is going much the same way. I can only talk from my own experience, but people I know, although they do date regularly enough, don't want kids because its either too expensive or they just can't be bothered. I know plenty of people who just don't bother with relationships. I like the word 'Mendokusai'.

 

But I don't think it is all doom and gloom. That marriage & kids are no longer the one path through life is a good thing. That there is greater equality between genders is a good thing, shit, that the old understanding of 'gender' is slowly eroding away is a good thing. I think technology is accelerating all those processes so I don't find it that frightening.

 

We just have to be careful that having children is not limited to the rich, which that article kind of hints at.

[mjmooney]

I thought it hinted that educated people wouldn't breed, due to career pressures, the implication being that the peasants would.

 

Leading to some pro-eugenics propaganda in the comments.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Yeah I can see that too. The young educated class rebel against their highly conservative society. They consider the cost of having sex/relationships/marriage/kids to far out weight the benefit. The end result being the educated class not having babies, and it is up to the poor and very rich to make up the numbers. Then you'll end up with an super-rich upper class controlling everything, and a vast working class with no prospects, and the educated class dying out...

 

Well that won't happen but still, it makes a good book.

Edited October 22, 2013 by CarewsEyebrowDesigner

[StigVillan]

Yeah I can see that too. The young educated class rebel against their highly conservative society. They consider the cost of having sex/relationships/marriage/kids to far out weight the benefit. The end result being the educated class not having babies, and it is up to the poor and very rich to make up the numbers. Then you'll end up with an super-rich upper class controlling everything, and a vast working class with no prospects, and the educated class dying out...

 

Well that won't happen but still, it makes a good book.

You've just described the North East of England... Without the super rich.

[BOF]

This would be something to look forward to...

Floating island of rubbish three times size of BRITAIN floating towards California

A floating island of debris three times the size of BRITAIN is heading for the California coastline sparking huge environmental concerns.

Five millions tons of rubbish made up of devastated homes, boats, cars and businesses is making its way across the Pacific Ocean following the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Scientists have already discovered debris on the west coast but their latest findings suggest California is expected to be hit with a deluge all at once.

America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their latest findings showing a huge island of rubbish floating northeast of the Hawaiian Islands.

Boffins have been unable to say for certain when the debris will wash ashore but they have been closely monitoring its movements which stretches from Alaska to the Philippines.

Seven months ago, the first documented debris from the tsunami reached Crescent City, California.

A 20-foot boat belonging to the marine sciences program at Takata High School in the north east city of Rikuzentakata was discovered washed up.

NOAA spokeswoman Keeley Belva said more than 1,600 reports of debris had been firmly traced back to the tsunami.

They included a small boat found in Hawaii, a motorbike washed ashore on the coast of British Columbia and large pieces of a dock in Washington state and Oregon.

A football was also discovered on an Alsakan island still with its owner’s name it.

The boy was traced to Rikuzentakata.

The tsunami devastated the east coast of Japan in March 2011.

Caused by the massive T?hoku earthquake it sent a colossal undersea “megathrust” creating waves up to 41 metres tall crashing on to the shoreline.

The tsunami was so powerful scientists measured it had moved Honshu - the main island of Japan - eight feet.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant was left destroyed sending three of its reactors in to meltdown.

It led to hundreds of thousands of residents being evacuated up to 50 miles away.

However despite the leaking radioactive reactor water from the plant, none of the floating debris has tested positive for radiation.

What are the odds that the state of California sues Japan to get back the cost of any clean-up?

[MakemineVanilla]

The most striking thing about Japan is that its social conventions seem to defy most of the social expectations we in the West tend to assume are normal.

 

I think if you wanted evidence that romantic love is an artificial social-construct which was invented you would just look at how different it is in Japan, where you will see the sexes living very separate lives and where both courting couples and married partners don't see much of each other, while often spending their leisure time completely separately.

 

The idea of a life-partner being expected to supply all a person's, emotional, sexual, spiritual and intellectual needs, would seem very alien to a lot of Japanese people.

 

Attitudes to marriage are very often entirely pragmatic and not necessarily based on the values we assume in the West.

 

Japan is a country where arranged marriages are still not unusual, although force is not used.

 

So it seems very unlikely that it is possible to make predictions for our own society from what is going on in Japan.

 

What it perhaps does illustrate is the certainty that there may be forces in our own society which raise fecundity.

 

Japan is a much more equal society than our own and the resulting poverty in the UK may be important in driving fertility rates.

 

The one group which ensures that the UK birthrate just about reaches replacement level is young unmarried mothers, there may be a connection between this and poverty.

 

The factor in Japan which is missing from the article, is just how busy the Japanese are: they never seem to stop.

Edited November 5, 2013 by MakemineVanilla

[choffer]

Meet Mr. Balls, Brazil’s Disturbing New Testicular Cancer Mascot

 

 

 

 

 

A Brazilian testicular cancer awareness group has created a mascot for the cause that is beyond disturbing.

Say hello to Mr. Balls, or “Senhor Testiculo”, the wide-eyed, dual-toothed, rosy-cheeked, mole-sporting scrotum that will cause a lifetime of nightmares for anyone who lays eyes on him.

The little curly hairs are an especially nice touch.

 

 

 

http://digitaldeconstruction.com/meet-balls-disturbing-testicular-cancer-mascot/#.UnwOc5FOfwJ

Edited November 7, 2013 by choffer

[chrisp65]

is it just me, or does it look a bit like John Prescott?

[mockingbird_franklin]

is it just me, or does it look a bit like John Prescott?

No, you're wrong, it looks a lot like John Prescott.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Man sues wife over ugly kids and wins

 

 

Remember the saying “a face only a mother can love.” Well in China that saying has taken on an entirely new meaning.

 

Jian Feng a Chinese man sued his wife over what he called “an extremely ugly baby girl,” the newspaper Irish Times reported.

 

Though Feng insisted that his wife had to have an affair because there is no way he could have fathered such an ugly child, DNA tests proved that the girl and all of his kids were in fact his.

 

Feng sued his ex-wife on the grounds of false pretenses, she had undergone over $100,000 in plastic surgery while in South Korea before they met and never told Feng about the procedures “duping him into thinking she was beautiful.”

 

A judge agreed with Feng’s argument and ordered his ex-wife to pay Feng $120,000!  “I married my wife out of love, but as soon as we had our first daughter, we began having marital issues,” Feng told the Irish Times. “Our daughter was incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified me.”

 

 This is what $100,000 of plastic surgery looks like, before and after

 

 

link

Edited November 7, 2013 by CarewsEyebrowDesigner

[troon_villan]

Damn, those are some ugly kids!

[mjmooney]

No they aren't. The boy on the right looks a bit sulky, but they're fine. The dad is a word removed. 

[chrisp65]

shallow pillock has his pathetic way of valuing people undermied by basic plastic surgery

 

maybe he needs some surgery, 'cos he's looking like an arsehole at present

[maqroll]

Turns out Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death...for the life of me I can't think of any suspects.

[mjmooney]

Turns out Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death...for the life of me I can't think of any suspects.

 

Did he ever eat at The Fat Duck? 

[mjmooney]

 

Qatar's accidental vagina stadium is most gratifying

 

The resemblance of the Al-Wakrah World Cup stadium to the female genitalia can only be a good thing – sport and vaginas are not always such public bedfellows

 

Al-Wakrah stadium: 'With its shiny, pinkish tinge and labia-like side appendages, the building was just asking for trouble.' Photograph: Aecom

 

Have you ever heard of the Vagina Building? If you're not from Chicago, it's unlikely – but if you are, it's a precious part of local folklore and a celebrated shape on the skyline. Towering amid the clustered phallic skyscrapers, the Crain Communications Building (its slightly more official name) was completed in 1983 with a prominent vertical slit in the front. Urban legend – for sadly, that is all it is – states that the building was designed by a woman sick to her back teeth of phallic architecture as a big feminist middle finger to the men who had made her live in the shadow of their huge metal penis replacements for decades. The truth is that the vaginal resemblance is accidental, and the architect behind it very much male. But the story persists, and is still told with a sense of pride. Luckily for all of us who enjoy a good story involving construction and genitalia, this week has proven that Chicago's Vagina Building will soon be rubbing, er, shoulders with another case of "accidental vagina representation". The design for Qatar's new Al-Wakrah sports stadium has quickly gone viral: with its shiny, pinkish tinge, its labia-like side appendages and its large opening in the middle, the supposedly innocent building ("based upon the design of a traditional Qatari dhow boat") was just asking for trouble. And trouble came, in the form of Buzzfeed and thousands of Twitter fans. Surely a well-populated Facebook group is only hours away.

 

As those who have tried to keep alive the tale of the Chicago Vagina Building know, there is something quite pleasing about a building shaped like a fanny. Look out on to the London skyline and penises are everywhere: the Gherkin, for instance, might even be visible from your office window right now, thrusting itself into the grey autumn sky among wisps of cloud, a proud red light shining at its very tip. And that's without even going into the phallic implications of Big Ben. The world even has an ode to the wonky boner, that lopsided erection that is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Penile structures were just as abundant in the ancient world, of course – and while the humble yoni once had its heyday in certain parts of Asia, it still usually took a backseat wherever ornamental penises were involved.

 

The Qatari stadium's resemblance to a woman's private parts may be unintentional, but I for one applaud it. Perhaps the bigwigs behind the design (no doubt all male) should embrace this so-called faux pas and rebrand it as a deliberate nod towards the increasingly liberal Qatari policies concerning women in sport. In a world where sport and vaginas very rarely come together with such prominence (see every UK female footballer's salary versus every UK male footballer's salary), this can only be a good thing. And after all, why not have 45,000 people crammed inside a woman's reproductive system? It's not like they haven't been there before.

 

Holly Baxter is co-founder and editor of the Vagenda blog

 

• • theguardian.com, Monday 18 November 2013 13.27 GMT

Edited November 19, 2013 by mjmooney

[BOF]

Putting the 'fan' in fanny. Literally!

[BOF]

So maybe Brittany was poisoned

 

Brittany Murphy toxicology tests suggest heavy metal poisoning

Father commissions reports after 2009 death of troubled 8 Mile actor initially ruled as caused by pneumonia

 

A toxicology report commissioned by Brittany Murphy's father has suggested that the 8 Mile actor did not die from natural causes, as was previously thought.

After Murphy's death at the age of 32 in 2009, the LA coroners office concluded that pneumonia was the cause of death, with "anemia and prescription drugs [playing] a role". Her husband Simon Monjack died five months later, also of natural causes.

However, Murphy's father Angelo Bertolotti secured the release of tissue samples and submitted them for independent testing.

The report states: "Ten (10) of the heavy metals evaluated were detected at levels higher that the WHO [The World Health Organization] high levels. Testing the hair strand sample identified as 'back of the head' we have detected ten (10) heavy metals at levels above the WHO high levels recommendation."

The report goes on to state: "If we were to eliminate the possibility of a simultaneous accidental heavy metals exposure to the sample donor then the only logical explanation would be an exposure to these metals (toxins) administered by a third party perpetrator with likely criminal intent."

Bertolotti said: "Vicious rumors, spread by tabloids, unfairly smeared Brittany's reputation. My daughter was neither anorexic nor a drug junkie, as they repeatedly implied ... I will not rest until the truth about these tragic events is told. There will be justice for Brittany."