Undead Astronauts

ah muslims… i know it’s crass to take pleasure in laughing at and denigrating other ppl’s culture or religion b/c i know it can so easily go both ways at the extremes. but sometimes things break through, if this is indeed not a joke. (and no, i’m not jumping on a bandwagon just b/c some muslims want to put a community center/mosque near ground zero. i have no dog in that fight.)

recently, there was a fatwa issued by a sheik in the saudi justice ministry that concerned women breastfeeding grown men. b/c of strict rules governing interaction between men and women, an adopted son was not allowed to be in the same room alone with his mother. he was adopted after growing too old for breastfeeding, which is the only exception by which a grown man can be in private w/ a woman.

other inconveniences would include a grown man who was hired to do some continuing housework in an occupied house. his presence would necessitate all the females vacate the house if no male family member was home.

so in apparent response to these problems, the sheik’s fatwa allowed the women of the household to breastfeed the grown, unrelated man so that he could be in their presence without them fleeing the home.

hmm.

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i listened to this TED talk today by Sheena Iyengar, a blind sikh-american researcher. her identity perhaps contributed to her insightful work.

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Travel + Leisure magazine’s August 2010 issue put Point Clear’s Grand Hotel Marriott Resort Gulf Club & Spa at the No. 31 spot on its list of the best resorts in America and Canada.

The list was dominated by resorts in Flordia and California, which took up 25 of the 50 spots.

Yay…another AL city on a list of something.

new ktown pics. see more here. nuff said.

beautifulpeople.com is launching a sperm and egg bank. the site, is composed of members who must be voted in by other members. it has magnanimously decided to also allow ugly ppl to enjoy the fruits of their good genes.

“Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone — including ugly people — would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool,” company founder Robert Hintze said in a statement.

ah, if only the rest of the world were so generous, no? still, some ppl (ugly ones) have criticized it as possibly selling false hope, and turning children into “products.”

“This is genetics. It’s still a lottery when you’re picking somebody’s sperm,” he said. “The beauty may not come through in the genetics. … What are the parents supposed to do then? Turn it in?”

i have to give the creators props for shallow chutzpah tho. and certainly, it’s one way to increase the number of offspring from members of highly industrialized societies who are too full of themselves to reproduce. no one wants to imagine a world where the dominant groups are mormons, muslims, and africans who still don’t know how to use birth control.

Edit: pew research has released a report that says 1 in 5 american women go through their childbearing years with no children. being unmarried, edumacated, or white increased the chances of being childless. being married, uneducated, or asian decreased the chances of being childless.

flare, is this the reason u were so bent on getting your own place in shanghai?

The hard-boiled bachelorette, Ma Nuo, has gone on to become one of China’s most recognizable bai jin nu. Marry for love? Fat chance, said the material girl: “I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on the back of my boyfriend’s bicycle.“

…

“My parents think it’s important…. They would rather I marry someone who owns his own property,” said Wei Na, 28, an advertising saleswoman in Beijing. “It just makes you feel more safe if a man has his own place. I think most women feel the same way.”

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the great firewall prevents chinese citizens from “splitting the nation” and other trumped up petty bullshit. but most chinese don’t skirt the controls even though it’s not very difficult to do so. they just don’t care.

but once in awhile, ppl are motivated to give authority the finger, as many chinese did recently w/ regards to the firewall. what might have moved them to do so? political discontent? economic instability? extreme social injustice?

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