Hyori Top Girl Fashion Spring/Summer 2009 - Photo

Hyori, the former member of the Korean girl group FINKL and now solo artist and MC, is gaining fresh popularity among audiences at home and abroad. I'm sure these are the reasons why.

(Come on folks...seriously...She's bangin'. Case closed.)

Labels: fashion summer 2009, hot korean, hyolee, Hyori, hyroi lee, top girl fashion

3 Indicted in Theft of 130 Million Card Numbers



SAN FRANCISCO — The man who prosecutors said had masterminded some of the most brazen thefts of credit and debit card numbers in history was charged on Monday with an even larger set of digital break-ins.

In an indictment, the Justice Department said that Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami and two unnamed Russian conspirators made off with more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from late 2006 to early 2008.

Prosecutors called it the largest case of computer crime and identity theft ever prosecuted. According to the government, the culprits infiltrated the computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor in Princeton, N.J.; 7-Eleven Inc.; Hannaford Brothers, a regional supermarket chain; and two unnamed national retailers.

An unspecified portion of the stolen credit and debit card numbers were then sold online, and some were used to make unauthorized purchases and withdrawals from banks, according to the indictment, which was filed in United States District Court in Newark.

Although some states require card issuers to notify customers about security breaches, it is unclear whether all individuals whose card numbers were stolen in this case have been notified and offered new account numbers.

Mr. Gonzalez has been in custody since May 2008, when he was arrested in connection with another prominent data theft at the Dave & Buster’s restaurant chain. He has also been indicted in other thefts of credit and debt cards, including the 2005 data breach at T. J. Maxx stores, a division of TJX, based in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gonzalez is awaiting a trial in New York in the Dave & Buster’s attack and, separately, another in Massachusetts in the TJX breach. Trials on the charges announced on Monday will have to wait until those cases are completed, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Gonzalez’s lawyer, Rene Palomino Jr., did not respond to requests for comment.

Erez Liebermann, an assistant United States attorney in the Justice Department’s New Jersey office, said Mr. Gonzalez’s involvement in so many data breaches suggested that “perhaps the individuals capable of such conduct are a tighter-knit group than may have been previously thought.”

Mr. Gonzalez once worked with federal investigators. In 2003, after being arrested in New Jersey in a computer crime, he helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in New Jersey identify his former conspirators in the online underworld where credit and debit card numbers are stolen, bought and sold.

But Mr. Gonzalez secretly reconnected with his old associates, federal officials have said, and continued to ply his trade using a variety of online pseudonyms, including Segvec and Cumbajohnny.

According to the new indictment, Mr. Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed lists of Fortune 500 companies to decide which corporations to take aim at and visited their stores to monitor which payment systems they used. The online attacks took advantage of flaws in the SQL programming language, which is commonly used for databases.

Prosecutors say the defendants created and placed “sniffer” programs on corporate networks; the programs intercepted credit card transactions in real time and transmitted the numbers to computers the defendants had leased in the United States, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The conspirators tried to erase all digital footprints left by their attacks, according to the indictment.

Heartland, one of the world’s largest credit and debit card payment processing companies, announced in January that its network had been breached but declined to provide many details. The disclosure came during President Obama’s inauguration, which prompted critics to question whether the company was trying to play down the news.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the Secret Service would discuss the investigative breakthroughs in the case. Each defendant faces the possibility of 35 years in prison, and more than $1 million in fines or twice the amount made from the crime, whichever is greater.

Threat Level, a blog run by Wired magazine, reported that Mr. Gonzalez had lived a lavish lifestyle in Miami, once spending $75,000 on a birthday party for himself and complaining to friends that he had to manually count thousands of $20 bills when his counting machine broke.

Richard Wang, manager of SophosLabs, a security company, said the case provided more evidence that retailers and banks needed to strengthen industry standards and encrypt credit card numbers when they are transmitted between computers. Currently, major banks agree to encrypt such data only when it is stored.

Mr. Wang also doubted that the world had seen the last significant theft of credit card numbers.

“I’m not sure how likely it is that they are going to get the Russian co-conspirators,” Mr. Wang said. “Obviously there are still plenty of people with the necessary expertise to pull off these kinds of attacks.”

Labels: albert gonzalez, cybersecurity cybercrime, identity theft, Justice department

Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack




It is possible to successfully fend off a zombie attack, according to Canadian mathematicians. The key is to “hit hard and hit often.”

Oh yes, somebody actually did a study on mathematics of a hypothetical zombie attack, and published it in a book on infectious disease. So, while we still don’t know what to do if a deadly asteroid takes aim at Earth, an unlikely but technically possible situation, we now know what to do in case of a zombie attack.

“An outbreak of zombies is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead,” the authors wrote. “It is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Having spent a fair amount of time mixing science with beer in the wee hours while trying to finish a thesis, I’m guessing that at some point, a graduate student who had spent far too many hours tweaking a mathematical model of infectious disease in the basement of a Canadian university said something like this: “What would happen if we made it so they could come back to life?”

This was followed by the other math students in the basement gathering around the computer, happily creating a plausible model for the outbreak of infectious zombie disease, and then brainstorming on how to make their model relevant.

“Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally,” they wrote. “But possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.”

Right.

Anyway, the model focuses on modern zombies, which are “very different from the voodoo and the folklore zombies.” It takes into account the possibility of quarantine (could lead to eradication, but unlikely to happen) and treatment (some humans survive, but they still must coexist with zombies), but shows that there is only one strategy likely to succeed: “impulsive eradication.”

“Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time,” they concluded.

And if we don’t act fast enough?

“If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead,” they wrote. “This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.”



How fast do we need to deal with the outbreak? Here’s the equation they used, where S = susceptibles, Z = zombies and R = removed. If an infection breaks out in a city of 500,000 people, the zombies will outnumber the susceptibles in about three days.

Maybe being a mathematician wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

Citation: “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” [pdf] by Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith?. In “Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress,” eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009.

Labels: mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection, mathematicians, zombie, zombie attack

Luckless Predator Chatted with 3 Undercover Cops



It’s official. There’s nobody in the chat rooms but pedophiles and undercover police.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of an Indiana man whose online efforts to proposition underage girls led him to not one, not two, but three undercover cops, none of whom apparently knew about the others.

The case began in August 2006, when aspiring sexual predator James Daniel started an online conversation with Amanda_13, a fake 13-year-old girl voiced by Sergeant Richard Howard of the Porter County Sheriff’s Department.

After several highly explicit chats, Daniel asked Amanda_13 to meet him at a park in Valparaiso, Indiana, to have sex. When he showed up, he was arrested for inducing an individual under 18 to engage in criminal sexual activity.

When Secret Service agents searched Daniel’s computer, they found logs of chats with two other apparent minors, who described themselves as 13 and 15 years old, respectively. Federal prosecutors introduced the chats at Daniel’s trial as evidence of his perverted motives.

Supposedly, it was only after Daniel was convicted that the feds realized that one of those girls, daisy13_Indiana, was also a cop working the very same Secret Service operation. They informed Daniel’s attorney, who appealed on the grounds that the government improperly withheld information that would have proven entrapment.

The case became even more bizarre when the three-judge appellate panel reviewing the conviction saw the screen name of the third supposed teenager, blonddt, and recognized it from an earlier case.

“To our surprise, the government was unaware until this panel told it at oral argument that the other screen name, blonddt, was also an officer from the Indiana operation,” wrote Judge Diane Wood (.pdf) on Thursday.

Despite the prosecutorial missteps, the panel upheld Daniel’s conviction, ruling that the additional chat logs still showed his intent to commit a crime. Daniel is serving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, followed by supervised release for life.

There’s no evidence in the record that he ever succeeded in talking with a real underage girl.

Labels: James Daniel, pedophile, sex predator, Undercover cops

More Single Women Seek Attached Men



Researchers have debated for years whether men or women are likelier to engage in “mate poaching.” Some surveys indicated that men had a stronger tendency to go after other people’s partners, but was that just because men were more likely to admit engaging in this behavior? Now there’s experimental evidence that single women are particularly drawn to other people’s partners, according to a report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by two social psychologists, Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University.

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.” To investigate, the researchers quizzed male and female undergraduates — some involved in romantic relationships, some unattached — about their ideal romantic partner.

Next, each of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. The researchers write:

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

Well, that makes sense. But I asked Dr. Burkley, a professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State, if the correlation could also be due to another factor at work in some women: fear of intimacy. Could their interest in unavailable guys be what was keeping them single in the first place?

Maybe, Dr. Burkley replied. “There are many possible explanations for our results,” she told me, “and future research needs to identify exactly why single women prefer taken men. Our lab is currently conducting studies to try and tease apart the different potential explanations for our findings, but your explanation seems quite plausible.”

Labels: dating, mate poaching, Oklahoma State University, social psychology

HOLY CRAP! Windows 7 looks amazing



Good news, everyone! If you’ve been stuck in a time loop using Windows XP, which is nearing eight years old, or Windows Vista, which is just annoying, you can finally break free: Windows 7 is almost here. Microsoft delivers a slickly designed, vastly improved OS that will warp you to the world of today. This upgrade is big, and it’s hugely recommended for Microsoft users.

When we say big, we mean really BIG — so we’re not going to bombard you with an epic overview covering every single aspect. Rather, today we’ll guide you through an early look at some major new features and enhancements we tested in the almost-final version released last week. And in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 22 launch of Windows 7, we’ll continue posting our impressions, testing more features of the OS on various types of hardware.

We’ll start with interface, move on to performance and usability, and then we’ll conclude with the “funner” stuff. Let’s begin exploring, shall we?

Revamped Interface With Improved Presentation
Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be like ditching your old Toyota Camry for a sexy, new Nissan GT-R. Everything from the typography to the icons, and from the toolbar to the windows, has been refined with some extra detail, polish and shadows. Finally, Microsoft creates a clean, modern look that competes with Apple’s finely designed Mac OS X Leopard.



To accompany the new look, there are three new features that make the Windows 7 interface pretty groovy: Aero Peek, Aero Snap and Aero Shake. They’re window-management tools, similar to Apple’s Exposé in Mac OS X. Aero Peek is the most significant: When triggered, the feature displays outlines of all your open windows behind your active window; each outlined box contains a thumbnail previewing its corresponding window to help you choose.

Aero Snap (see screenshot above) is pretty cool, too: Drag a window to the right side of the screen, for example, and Aero Snap will automatically adjust the window into a rectangle that takes up the entire right side (same happens if you drag to the left). And Aero Shake is a cute feature: You click and hold onto a window and give it a shake, and any visible windows behind it will disappear (minimize, not close).

A major change appears in the main toolbar glued to the bottom of the screen. Rather than clutter the bottom of your screen with annoying rectangular tabs, your open applications are instead contained in a small square displaying only the icon of each active app. With AeroPeek activated, you can also preview thumbnails of the activity of apps by hovering over their corresponding taskbar icons. That’s certainly a welcome change now that many of us multitaskers enjoy running a multitude of apps at once

If Internet Explorer 8 is your browser of choice, there’s a bonus: Hovering your mouse over the Explorer icon, you’ll be able to preview all the tabs you have open in a stacked view, letting you go directly to the tab you wish to browse.

Then there’s the Start button at the bottom left corner — a feature Windows fans have grown to love. It’s very similar to the old one, functioning almost exactly the same. The main difference is the addition of a gradient to give it a fresher aesthetic. As for functions, a very useful addition to the Start menu is a search bar that instantly appears at the very bottom. This will make finding and launching files a snap.

Performance and Usability
You’ll immediately notice Windows 7 feels a lot faster than its predecessors, and that’s because memory management has been smartly re-engineered. In older versions of Windows, every application you have open is sucking up video memory, even if the windows are minimized. This isn’t the case in Windows 7: The only windows and apps using video memory are those visible on your screen. Windows users are accustomed to closing applications to boost performance, but that’s going to be unnecessary with Windows 7.

Smoother performance would be a waste if usability weren’t improved, too. Windows 7 won’t disappoint. Remember in Windows XP when you hooked up an external hard drive and it was unrecognized, requiring you to search the web to find that stupid effing software driver? Windows 7 includes up-to-date files, which should automatically recognize your device, and in most cases it’ll “just work.” If, for some reason, Windows 7 isn’t compatible with your attached device by default, it’ll search a database for you in an attempt to find a file to install.

Similarly, Windows 7 tries to streamline networking of peripherals, such as printers and scanners, with a feature called HomeGroup. Let’s say you’re running Windows 7 on computer B in your household, and computer A is the one hooked up to a printer in another room. If computer B is on the same network as computer A, Windows 7 will search for the printer driver on computer A and share it with computer B. The same networking feature will also allow you to share folders and files between networked computers. There’s a catch to this seamless networking: HomeGroup is an exclusive Windows 7 feature. So if your other machine is running the Mac OS, or Linux, then forget about it.

There are also some annoyances that will remind you, “This is still Windows.” When plugging in a thumb drive, for example, Windows will ask you what you want to do with it: Play audio, play a movie, or open the folder to view its files. It’s a thumb drive, for God’s sake: Recognize it and just open the damn folder! After receiving such notifications you can tell Windows 7 to automatically perform one of the aforementioned functions when a specific type of device is attached (see screenshot at right), but we wish the OS would just know what to do.



We also found the software-compatibility checker to be kind of lame. For example, when we downloaded TweetDeck, a .air file which requires Adobe Air, Windows 7 didn’t recognize the file extension and offered to do a search for compatible software. That search did not discover Adobe Air — a pretty popular format — so we were disappointed.

“Funner” Stuff



We were vastly entertained by the desktop backgrounds included with Windows 7. They’re freaky, bizarre, fascinating, disturbing and, in some odd way, beautiful at the same time. We’re speaking specifically of the wallpapers in the “Characters” section, illustrations that Microsoft collected from artists around the world. Take a gander at the screenshots above and below to see for yourself.



Microsoft improves on the entertainment experience, too. Windows Media Center gets a utilitarian makeover that looks a tad like Apple’s Front Row (and we’re not complaining). The revamped program makes it easy to browse your movies, photos, music and so on by tapping a few keys. Nice big thumbnails display previews of your media to make your collection look nice and perdy.

Labels: operating system, software, Windows 7, windows os, windows vista, windows xp

TOP 10: Ways Guys Kill the Mood





No.10 - Bad music
As you dim the lights and turn on a little mood music, choose the tunes carefully. Music relays a message about where the night is headed. Avoid anything too girly (Madonna, Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus) and steer clear of the clichés ("Let’s Get It On," "Sexual Healing," "I Wanna Sex You Up"). While rock music can make sex exciting, "Smack My Bitch Up" and anything by Nine Inch Nails should not be used on a first date.

No.9 - Answering the phone
Do not, under any circumstances, stop a make-out session to answer the phone. In fact, if you go back to your place at the end of a date, turn your phone off. Interruptions can really put a damper on things, and if it is your mom calling, your girl is probably putting on her jacket already.

No.8 - Groping
You should have left messy groping behind in the 10th grade. Simply grabbing at her boobs with your tongue hanging out won’t cut it. By now, you should know what to do. Moving randomly from body part to body part is confusing and never gives your girl a chance to get into it. Move slowly from one body part to the next -- lightly touching at first, then with more passion.

No.7 - Begging
A girl most likely makes up her mind before the date regarding how far she is willing to go, but you do have a chance to change her mind. At the end of the night, give her a good kiss that takes her breath away. This is when she might reconsider going home with you. If she still isn’t interested, do not whine or beg. If you beg, you will never get a second chance --ever.

No.6 - Being selfish
It takes time to get a woman going. She needs kissing, touching, caressing, and more than two minutes to reach orgasm. If you have moved past the make-out stage and the clothes are coming off, take time to focus on her. If you aren’t satisfying her, she could get frustrated (or bored) and call it a night.



No.5 - Bad kissing
It doesn’t matter how hot a guy is, if he can’t kiss, he isn’t going past first base. When you lean in for the first end-of-the-date kiss, remember to control your tongue. Don’t lick her teeth, chin, cheeks, forehead, etc., and try not to stick it down her throat.

No.4 - Bad conversation
Giving a little verbal praise is always appreciated, but too many “Oh babys” can really kill the mood. Going over-the-top with chatter comes across as fake and forced. Just be natural. If things are really heating up, don’t ask too many questions: “Do you like it when I kiss you?” “Does my hand feel good there?” You shouldn’t have to ask; her reactions will tell you if you are doing a good job.

No.3 - Heading straight for home
You can’t cross the plate without making stops at first, second and third. Do not hand her a glass of wine, turn on some music, lower the lights and then stick your hand in her pants.

No.2 - Asking for permission
Most girls like a man who knows how to take charge, so when you ask for permission every step of the way you come across as a wimp. Asking; “Can I kiss you?” at the end of a date, or “Is this OK?” when kissing comes across as weak. You might as well ask: “Can I grow a pair?” Assess the situation; if she's really into it, man up and take the plunge.

No.1 - Managing her moves
Newsflash: Girls know you want them to touch your penis. If you are making out at home, 20 minutes have passed, and she still has not made a grab for the crotch area, chances are, she isn’t going to. Therefore, do not pull her hand toward your genitals, and do not grab the back of her head and push her down. Women are not stupid, and after the head grab she will most likely blow you off -- and not in the way you had hoped.

Labels: dating, dating advice, guys killing the mood, hooking up, romance, Top 10

Ponyo (2008) is like Reading an Asian Girl's Diary

New York Times Review



To watch the image of a young girl burbling with laughter as she runs atop cresting waves in “Ponyo” is to be reminded of how infrequently the movies seem to express joy now, how rarely they sweep us up in ecstatic reverie. It’s a giddy, touchingly resonant image of freedom — the animated girl is as liberated from shoes as from the laws of nature — one that the director Hayao Miyazaki lingers on only as long as it takes your eyes and mind to hold it close, love it deeply and immediately regret its impermanence.

The girl is running parallel to an island road, her eyes wildly fixed on a small car perilously whipping around hairpin bends in a raucous storm. Her name is Ponyo (gurgled and voiced by Noah Cyrus, Miley’s younger sister) and she was once some kind of half-human, half-fish daughter of the sea. But she found a boy, the 5-year-old Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, yet another one of those brothers), or rather he found her, rescuing her by scooping her into a pail. The two were separated — as fated characters invariably are — but she’s found him. Now, as she races along the surface of huge peaking waves she has summoned up by the force of her power, Ponyo is expressing not only her bliss, but also ours.

“Ponyo” is the latest masterwork from Mr. Miyazaki, the influential Japanese animator who has advanced the art with films like “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” The new film, despite the initial distractions of the recognizable voices crammed into the English-language version (a subdued Matt Damon, a fine Betty White), shares thematic and visual similarities with his earlier work, notably its emphasis on the natural world, its tumults and fragility. (As Mr. Miyazaki once put it, “All my animation and comics involve land, sea and sky — they all revolve around what happens on earth.”) But “Ponyo,” which takes some inspiration from “The Little Mermaid,” Hans Christian Andersen’s macabre fairy tale, has a narrative simplicity, or rather the clarity of a distillation.

Despite the connection to Andersen’s tale, there is nothing remotely ghoulish about “Ponyo.” No blood and only a few anxious tears are spilled. Far more than Mr. Miyazaki’s other recent films, this one obviously has been created for young viewers, who will have no trouble grasping its broad story or understanding why the characters do what they do, as when Sosuke, worried about prowling cats, places a leaf over the pail with the goldfish girl. At that point Ponyo is as big as Sosuke’s hand. With her broadly smiling, pale human face and wiggling, red fish body, she looks a little like one of the girls that the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara likes to draw, minus the scowl. She also looks a bit like a well-dressed tadpole.

Like the other characters, with their clean lines and bright splashes of color, Ponyo tends to pop slightly on the screen. Although Mr. Miyazaki eschews the deep space of 3-D animation (over his dead body, as he recently suggested), he is acutely sensitive to texture, an awareness that translates into different visual designs for individual scenes and which intensifies the emotional register of those same scenes. The softly smudged field of grass that surrounds Sosuke’s house like a blanket is striking partly because you can see the touch of the human hand in each blade. The blurred pastel quality of the grass, the softness of this green mantle, convey a feeling of comfort that in turn summons up words like warmth, home, love.

Under the ocean the colors are more saturated and the lines often sharper. In this magical realm of undulating creatures and twinkling lights, Ponyo’s father, a wizard named Fujimoto (Liam Neeson), practices his mysterious art. From the prow of a submerged vessel, Fujimoto — the long tendrils of his rusty red hair waving around his head like octopus tentacles — releases potions that restore the health of the pollution-choked waters.

It’s hard not to think of the wizard, particularly when he gently and very cleanly curses the human world and its harmful ways, as something of a Miyazaki self-portrait. Whatever the case, like his creator, Fujimoto can’t keep Ponyo under wraps: she springs from the sea, exploding into the world with a reckless, infectious, almost calamitous exuberance.

This is nature unbound, or maybe it’s the image of childhood right before culture takes over and initiates its relentless tsk-tsking, telling us to mind our manners, shut our mouths and sit up in our seats. Smitten with Sosuke, Ponyo decides she wants to be human, a wish that involves a visit from her mother (Cate Blanchett) and almost upends the balance of the world. As in the original Andersen fairy tale, which turns on a mermaid who dies because she falls in love with a landlocked prince, humanity has its costs. Not to worry: no one dies in “Ponyo” or even coughs. Its sting is so gentle you might miss it. But when the ocean rises in this wonderful movie, each leaping wave stares out at us with a baleful eye as if in watchful and worried wait.

Labels: asian girl, fujimoto cate blanchett, Ponyo

A Harsh Hello for Visitors From Space

New York Times Review



For decades — at least since Orson Welles scared the daylights out of radio listeners with “War of the Worlds” back in 1938 — the public has embraced the terrifying prospect of alien invasion. But what if, notwithstanding the occasional humanist fable like “E.T.,” all those movies and television programs have been inculcating a potentially toxic form of interplanetary prejudice?

“District 9,” a smart, swift new film from the South African director Neill Blomkamp (who now lives in Canada and who wrote the screenplay with Terri Tatchell), raises such a possibility in part by inverting an axiomatic question of the U.F.O. genre. In place of the usual mystery — what are they going to do to us? — this movie poses a different kind of hypothetical puzzle. What would we do to them? The answer, derived from intimate knowledge of how we have treated one another for centuries, is not pretty.

A busy opening flurry of mock-news images and talking-head documentary chin scratching fills in a grim, disturbingly plausible scenario. Back in the 1980s a giant spacecraft stalled in the skies over Johannesburg. On board were a large number of starving and disoriented creatures, who were rescued and placed in a temporary refugee camp in the part of the city that gives the film its title. Over the next 20 years the settlement became a teeming shantytown like so many others in the developing world, with the relatively minor distinction of being home to tall, skinny bipeds with insectlike faces and bodies that seem to combine biological and mechanical features. Though there is evidence that those extraterrestrials — known in derogatory slang as prawns because of their vaguely crustacean appearance — represent an advanced civilization, their lives on Earth are marked by squalor and dysfunction. And they are viewed by South Africans of all races with suspicion, occasional pity and xenophobic hostility.

The South African setting hones the allegory of “District 9” to a sharp topical point. That country’s history of apartheid and its continuing social problems are never mentioned, but they hardly need to be. And the film’s implications extend far beyond the boundaries of a particular nation, which is taken as more or less representative of the planet as a whole.

No group, from the mostly white soldiers and bureaucrats who corral and abuse the prawns to the Nigerian gangsters who prey upon the aliens and exploit their addiction to cat food, is innocent. And casual bigotry turns out to be the least of the problems facing the exiles. As it progresses, “District 9” uncovers a horrific program of medical experimentation yoked to a near-genocidal agenda of corporate greed. A company called M.N.U. (it stands, none too subtly, for Multi-National United) has taken over administration of the prawn population, which means resettling the aliens in a remote enclosure reminiscent of the Bantustans of the apartheid era.

The M.N.U. executive charged with carrying out this program is Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a nervous nebbish whose father-in-law (Louis Minnaar) is the head of the company. Cowardly, preening and hopeless at projecting authority, Wikus is the kind of guy who gives nepotism a bad name. It says a lot about Mr. Blomkamp’s sense of humor, and about his view of his own species, that this pathetic little paper pusher is his chosen agent of mankind’s potential moral redemption.

But I’m getting ahead of the story, and perhaps overselling the allegory. Not that the metaphorical resonances of “District 9” aren’t rich and thought provoking. But the filmmakers don’t draw them out with a heavy, didactic hand. Instead, in the best B-movie tradition, they embed their ideas in an ingenious, propulsive and suspenseful genre entertainment, one that respects your intelligence even as it makes your eyes pop (and, once in a while, your stomach turn).

The early pseudo-documentary conceit, which uses footage that pretends to have been harvested from news choppers and security cameras as well as some by the unseen crew accompanying Wikus on his tour of the prawn camp, fades away after a while. The academic authorities do too, having served the dual functions of providing narrative exposition and demonstrating the high-minded uselessness of official liberal discourse.

Once a terrible accident befalls Wikus, we are at his side and under his skin, and “District 9” subtly shifts from speculative science fiction to zombie bio-horror and then, less subtly, turns into an escape-action-chase movie full of explosions, gunplay and vehicular mayhem.

In the midst of it all you almost take for granted the carefully rendered details of the setting, the tightness of the editing and the inventiveness of the special effects. Not the least of these are the aliens themselves, who are made expressive and soulful without quite being anthropomorphized. (Their whirring, clicking speech, partly understood by Wikus and others who work with the creatures, is translated for the rest of us via subtitles.)

One in particular, named Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope), becomes Wikus’s protector and ward, and their relationship turns “District 9,” in its final act, into an intergalactic buddy picture, with some intriguing (and also possibly disappointing) sequel opportunities left open.

At its core the film tells the story — hardly an unfamiliar one in the literature of modern South Africa — of how a member of the socially dominant group becomes aware of the injustice that keeps him in his place and the others, his designated inferiors, in theirs. The cost he pays for this knowledge is severe, as it must be, given the dreadful contours of the system. But if the film’s view of the world is bleak, it is not quite nihilistic. It suggests that sometimes the only way to become fully human is to be completely alienated.

Labels: District 9, jason cope, movie review, new york times, peter jackson

MAN HAIR




Robert Pattinson's hair has plenty of competition. There is a minor eruption of major hair atop the country’s young male populace.

There are Afros, mohawks, dreadlocks and pompadours. There are “Idol”-ized punky pincushions, Allman-esque hippie cascades (with matching beards) and Bowie-style, parti-colored shags. And these are just the styles that have names. Often enough, these clever young dandies are crossbreeding styles into hybrids unknown to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hair Hall of Fame.

As one might expect, they are proud of the fact.

Victor Jeffreys II, who has a giant Afro, refers proudly to what he calls his “non-normative hair.” Cameron Cooper, a fashion stylist, refers to his creatively shaved skull as “the exclamation point at the end of my sentence.”

These men are what Malcolm Gladwell might call hair outliers (and his own Afro would get him right into the club). Still, spotting them is not hard. Just nip into an edgy salon like Woodley & Bunny in Williamsburg, or run some fatally hip gantlet like the summertime Warm Up parties at P.S. 1 in Queens or openings at 3rd Ward in Bushwick, and you are all but sure to run headlong into an expressive excrescence or two.

“All of a sudden, a big wave of guys just want to experiment,” said Marguerite Jukes, a stylist at the Bumble and bumble salon in the meatpacking district, where the shagadelic manes of the Broadway cast of “Hair” are faithfully kept up. “No one just wants a trim anymore. There isn’t one particular look: It’s a little bit of everything.” She has even become an expert at getting the look not quite perfect, “so it looks like they cut it themselves in their bathroom.”

Often guys who are after a more extreme look will drop the name of some rocker — Robert Plant, Simon Le Bon, Robert Smith, Anthony Kiedis — as inspiration. But what makes this curious trend even curiouser is how little connection the hair actually has to the moment, the man or the music that spawned it. That guy with the long, brown hair and beard may well have techno on his iPod, and the guy with the dyed blue shag is as likely to be drumming his fingers in time to death metal.

“You can never tell what they’re into from their hair,” Ms. Jukes said. She pointed out that her boyfriend, Ben Koller of the metalcore band Converge, has gone for the early-1970s look of the teenage John Michael Osbourne (back when he was the lead singer of Black Sabbath). His band, however, favors a chaotic clash of punk and metal that makes Black Sabbath’s 1970 hit “Paranoid” sound like Doris Day. And however you thought Adam Lambert’s hairstyle pegged him, it was clear to “American Idol” audiences that musically, at least, the man’s got range.

Once upon a time — say, 40 years ago this week, when long-hairs thronged to Woodstock by the hundreds of thousands — you got a hairstyle to show the world your affiliation, to brandish a cultural identity defined by your musical tastes, your political views or how depressed you were. But such literal interpretations of hair appear to be utterly passé, even if the hairstyles themselves are not.

“I don’t think it defines people at all anymore,” said James Carpinello, who, six nights a week, dons a long blond wig and skintight white leather pants to play the fictional 1980s rocker Stacee Jaxx in Broadway’s hilarious hair-metal musical “Rock of Ages.” Practicing for the role never felt quite right, he said, until the day he got to put on “the hair.” (He never calls it a wig.)

“I needed something, and it was the hair,” he said, chuckling. “It makes everything come together.”

And now that “the hair” covers up his own, he has been inspired to let his own grow. He slicked it into a 1930s style for the Tony Awards, but that was only the beginning. “I’ve got this thick pomade,” he said, “and I used that and kind of pulled my hair out so I looked like I’d stuck my finger in a socket. On the train people were looking at me like I was out of my mind, but I thought it was hysterical. Now I want to grow it out so I can have a ponytail.”

Even though he swings a blond wig around for work, Mr. Carpinello may represent the more average guy, simply experimenting rather than going for an out-there style that, should an in-law or a job interview pop up, would call for a hat. Fashionable hair-care companies like Kiehl’s, Shu Uemura and Bumble and bumble report that sales of the more extreme products — strong gels, pomades, pastes and waxes — are up sharply of late, with male customers accounting for much of the increase. But what comes out of the bathroom is anyone’s guess.


“Back in the 1960s, the only important thing was length,” said Michael McDonald, the costume (and hair) designer for the “Hair” Broadway revival. “It wasn’t until the 1970s, and the disco era, that men’s hair started to really have ‘style.’ And then every moment had its look, so that now, in the 21st century, we’ve pretty much seen everything wacky you can do to your hair. It’s all there to go back to and interpret.”

Mr. McDonald can generally spot the inspirations. “There’s a little bit of everything,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little Flock of Seagulls, maybe a little Backstreet Boys.” But there the trail goes dead. If the hair is goth, the clothes might be skater-cum-prep, and the shoes rockabilly. “It’s all mixed up so beautifully,” he said. “It’s really neat the way they can just cut and paste.”

It may be jarring to casual onlookers — those of us accustomed to thinking that hippie hair goes with pacifism and the Grateful Dead, while mohawks go with “Anarchy in the U.K.” — but the guys who are taking the do but leaving its roots have no more qualms about it than a D.J. who samples from other songs.

“I know I’m not a trailblazer,” said Mr. Cooper, the fashion stylist. “To me, it’s just personal. It’s a creative outlet.”

And for some, having statement hair can be a way to avoid being pigeonholed. Mr. Jeffreys, who works as a hedge fund analyst and moonlights as a fine arts photographer, has had his Afro for several years, through college and various undergraduate jobs, because, first and foremost, it is easy to maintain — just an occasional brushing.

“But it would be a lie to say I didn’t like the way it looks,” he said. Having been a cultural anthropology major at Duke who spent time in Ghana, he has long noticed how hair works as a kind of ID.

“Hair really links you to community, whether you’re a punk rocker or a woman who braids her hair a certain way because she’s from Klikor,” he said. As the son of a Costa Rican mother and a white American father, Mr. Jeffreys grew up keenly aware of the tiny visual cues people search for in determining approximately who a person is. His Afro, he said, kind of shorts out the process.

“Those things that our culture puts a lot of value on — gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic class — I’ve had to mediate them all to get anything done in my life, so I’ve tried not to get fixated on any of them.”

For a generation that is, courtesy of the Internet, both disconnected from and connected to the past like no other before it, it makes sense that this point-and-click, cut-and-paste attitude should be present even in the one arena of style in which virtually every man grows his own.

So what if you find yourself wondering: Who is that guy? What’s the deal with that hair? What does it all mean? To turn an old ad slogan on its head: Not even his hairdresser knows for sure.

Labels: afros, hair, hairstyle, mohawks, Robert pattinson

Japanese Hostesses: Many Cinderellas, Few Princes



The women who pour drinks in Japan’s sleek gentlemen’s clubs were once shunned because their duties were considered immodest: lavishing adoring (albeit nonsexual) attention on men for a hefty fee.

But with that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan’s worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

“More women from a diversity of backgrounds are looking for hostess work,” said Kentaro Miura, who helps manage seven clubs in Kabuki-cho, Tokyo’s glittering red-light district. “There is less resistance to becoming a hostess. In fact, it’s seen as a glamorous job.”

But behind this trend is a less-than-glamorous reality. Employment opportunities for young women, especially those with no college education, are often limited to low-paying, dead-end jobs or temp positions.



Hostessing in Japan’s night entertainment industry has provided many women and some men, Japanese and non-Japanese, an opportunity that most other jobs would not have given them: financial ascendancy, and skills and knowledge in dealing with customers to eventually run their own businesses. But does hostessing bring women a rosy life and socioeconomic mobility?

Young women today fancy the celebrity lifestyle in hostessing characterized by tiaras, gowns, perfumes and fun. Like Cinderella, however, most of them can experience a taste of the “good life” within a limited time. After their youthful attractiveness wears off, what awaits them is a barely survivable level of livelihood, unless they meet a reliable “prince.” Under the recurring recessions that began in the 1990s, expecting a prince has become even more unrealistic than ever before, as numerous male workers have been stripped of secure employment and decent pay. Despite and perhaps because of that, some of these young women realize that they are just out to enjoy a momentary glow.



In truth, this article was an excuse to post picture of cute Japanese women. WIN.

Labels: gentlemen's club, hostess, hostessesing, japan, Japanese women

Republicans all Defense, No Offense

Written by Sang Hyun Jung






After President Obama was elected in to office, it was generally understood--within the beltway and across the nation--that republicans would not play nice. The republican side of the House and Senate would attack, fillibuster and wish upon a star to derail the President's and democrats major efforts to reform the government and push out new legislation that would finally address the problems in our society (Healthcare reform, stimulus bill). And when the democrats fail to deliver on their promise, republicans will take it as a win, and a chance to gain some political ground on 2012. It's simple politics.

For decades, Republicans have obstructed real social progress. They're great at it. When the ir was a demcratic majority or a democratic President, Republicans played major defense. They hounded President Clinton, and gloated when they killed "Hillarycare". Great defense.

But where is the offense? Why is that Republicans suddenly gain a voice when democrats want to reform healthcare. Why is that conservatives on the hill have alternative solutions only when democrats are forming solutions. Where were these "fiscally responsible" solutions when Reagan had a ideological majority? Where were these "conservative answers" when George Bush Sr. and George W. and their ilk dominated the Senate and presidency.

Reagan and both Bushes, and the republican majority didn't even try to pass any legislation on healthcare. By looking at history, it's hard to see that Republicans will ever pass legislation that cuts into the pockets of pharma lobbyists and their companies. They had their chance. Now democrats have the ball.

Labels: chris matthews, healthcare debate, party of no, republican

Cash a Bank Check with an iPhone

Written by Sang Hyun Jung



The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately — through their phones.

USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, plans to update its iPhone application this week to introduce the check deposit feature, which requires a customer to photograph both sides of the check with the phone’s camera.

Customers will not have to mail the check to the bank later; the deposit will be handled entirely electronically, and the bank suggests voiding the check and filing or discarding it. But to reduce the potential for fraud, only customers who are eligible for credit and have some type of insurance through USAA will be permitted to use the deposit feature.

USAA may seem like an unlikely innovator in mobile banking. It ranks in size just below the top 20 banks in the United States, and serves mostly military personnel, though many of its products are available to anyone.

But with just one branch, in San Antonio, and customers deployed all over the world, the company has been aggressively developing an anytime, anywhere banking strategy. Three years ago, it introduced the option of depositing a check from home using a scanner. That laid the groundwork for the phone deposit feature, which USAA plans to offer on other phones this year.

“Mobile is going to be a bigger part of how people do commerce and how they interact with their financial institutions,” Mr. Peacock said. “The great value that we see is the time savings.”

About a million of USAA’s 7.2 million customers use their cellphones to access their accounts — either via text message, a mobile browser or an iPhone application introduced in May. The deposit feature, which USAA previewed in an online video in June, puts the bank in the vanguard of the effort to turn cellphones into portable branches.

The most popular banking tasks done on cellphones are reviewing account balances, transferring money, making payments and finding A.T.M.’s, analysts say. But in general, mobile banking has been slow to catch on. Mr. Holland said tighter budgets have forced banks to focus on using technology in ways that cut costs or generate revenue, rather than simply creating buzz.

“If banks can get people to stop calling call centers for mundane inquiries and instead send a text message,” he said, “that saves a bank about $14 for every one of those inquiries.”

Mr. Holland predicted that other banks would follow USAA and offer some type of mobile deposit capability, especially deposit options aimed at small-business customers who may be willing to pay for the convenience.

Labels: bank iphone app, iphone, online banking, usaa

Town hall Mobs

Written by Sang Jung



Freedom of Speech is one of the most valued principles of America. It is exercised in town hall meetings, and is symbolized as such.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.
So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

It’s well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

The latter group, by the way, is run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain. Mr. Scott was forced out of that job amid a fraud investigation; the company eventually pleaded guilty to charges of overbilling state and federal health plans, paying $1.7 billion — yes, that’s “billion” — in fines. You can’t make this stuff up.

But while the organizers are as crass as they come, for the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is what are they angry about?

Let me make it perfectly clear. These mobs are not angry about anti-privatization, socialism, and government-run healthcare. They do not care about the deficit and government spending. America, currently, incorporates elements of socialism like Medicaid and Social Security. The same programs if touched would create a massive national hissy fit. As for anti-privatization, how can they be all “free market” when a few months ago they were assailing Wall Street, and preaching about the good ol’ values from Main Street.



The most raucous members of these mobs always cite the woes of the $1.3 trillion dollar deficit and the increase in government spending. Yes, they will have to pay for it later on. But how has this been any different from any other time, administration, or point in modern American history. And most Americans, view the national deficit as an abstract idea. These mobs don’t care about the deficit. If they did they would have been just as angry about the funding for the Iraq war and the greater war on terrorism.

What these mobs are angry about is change. Real change. They’re scare that their lives will change. They’re scared that the social order they’re used to will change. They’re scared that the old values they hold dear will change. To these mobs, Change is bitter medicine.

But as our mothers use to say: medicine is bitter. But it’s good for you. And so is Change.

It's called Diplomacy, Stupid

Written by Sang Jung





Criticisms from some of the Republican senators of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s success in gaining the release of two American journalists from North Korea’s gulag are misplaced. The Clintons’ behavior demonstrated respect for the expertise of their advisers and restraint from political grandstanding. Any propaganda gain for the North Korean regime will be short-term and limited. It’s even possible that the episode will have a positive effect on our troubled nuclear negotiations. What "Bubba" Clinton did was called diplomacy.

Ever since the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were captured on North Korea’s border with China in March, America has had little diplomatic leverage. The Obama administration could have gone the "John Bolton" route: finger-pointing, high talks, and bombs.

Some (mostly Fox) commentators are suggesting that the Clintons’ actions showed American weakness by expressing regret to a ruthless dictator. These critics need to ask themselves: how would a more aggressive approach have gained the release of these two women from a sentence of 12 years of hard labor?

Dick Morris,a conservative political commentator, said this:




Heartless, cold, ignorant, deuche are some the words when describing the aptly named Dick.

The American people know bolstering the egos of Pyongyang’s leaders is no pleasure. Just look at Bill Clinton’s grim expression in photos of him with Mr. Kim. But it is a proved means to a desired end.

If tensions begin to cool and North Korea shows itself more open to legitimate talks, then the Clinton diplomacy will have helped to produce unexpected dividends. For the moment, however, it is enough to have two of our citizens back from the gates of Hell with America’s dignity intact. It's called diplomacy, stupid.

Labels: bill clinton, diplomacy, euna lee, laura ling, north korea, pyonyang

New Strain of H.I.V. Is Discovered

Written by Sang Jung



European scientists have discovered a new strain of the AIDS virus. It came from gorillas, creating a mystery about when and how the first patient found to have the strain became infected.

It is thought to be likely that this is the first time scientists have documented the jump of a simian immunodeficiency virus to humans from a gorilla. All three other known strains of the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V.-1, have been linked to chimpanzees. But genetic tests showed that the new virus was closely related to a recently recognized gorilla virus.

The most likely explanation for the new virus’s emergence is gorilla-to-human transmission, probably a result of humans slaughtering apes or handling or eating their meat.

But the scientists said they could not dismiss the possibility that the chimpanzee virus linked to H.I.V.-1 was transmitted to gorillas and then to humans, or was directly transmitted to humans and then to gorillas.

The new virus strain was isolated in 2004 from a 62-year-old woman upon her arrival in Paris from Cameroon in West Africa. She has not been treated for AIDS and has no signs of the syndrome, the scientists said.

The woman had lost weight in 2003 and had been ill with a fever a number of times, the scientists said in reporting the discovery, in the Aug. 2 issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The authors of the report said they presumed that she had been infected through sex. The woman told her doctors that she had sexual partners in Cameroon after her husband’s death, but there was no information about whether any were infected — or, if they were, how they had contracted the virus.

The amount of virus in her blood is high, reported the French and British scientific team, which was led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen in France. But the number of CD-4 blood cells, a key laboratory measure of the progression of AIDS, is stable at about 300 per cubic millimeter.

The scientists suspect that there are additional undetected cases because the patient lived in a semiurban area of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, and she said she had no contact with apes or their meat. More studies are needed to determine how often the new virus infects people.

One thing is for sure, after reading this we're all wondering if their are actually people making sweet jungle love to gorillas.

Labels: AIDS, Cameroon, gorilla, H.I.V.-1, Jean-Christophe Plantier

Oral Sex is Good for Pregnant Women

Written by Sang Jung






If you're thinking about conceiving, or certainly if you are already pregnant, there is some pretty convincing evidence that instead of just swallowing, say, folic acid, you might want to swallow something else.

Let me be delicate about this, if I can.

As far as I can tell, not only should you be having lots of oral sex with the father of your baby -- even up to a year before conceiving -- you should also make sure to ingest his seminal fluid. Listen to what I'm telling you: the international medical community is giving you an Rx for oral. Sure, they say frequent intercourse is good, too, but oral is better. So, if you care about having a healthy baby and not potentially unleashing what scientists call a "destructive attack on the foreign tissues" of your fetus, if you want to avoid immunological disorders during pregnancy, and I'm sure you do, get to work. Or to pleasure, depending on how you feel about it.

Basically, the research says you need to be able to tolerate your baby's foreign, paternal DNA; in other words, you need to get your body accustomed to the stuff, need to cozy up to some daddy double helix for a while so your body doesn't reject it.

This is what I found excerpted online, from the Journal of Reproductive Immunology:

"While any exposure to a partner's semen during sexual activity appears to decrease a woman's chances for the various immunological disorders that can occur during pregnancy, immunological tolerance could be most quickly established through oral introduction and gastrointestinal absorption of semen."

I could not make this up. Gastrointestinal absorption of semen. I know. For the man in your life, this news should not be hard to swallow. Sorry.

According to a group of Dutch researchers, "exposure to semen provides protection against developing preeclampsia." That's from a paper with the catchy title, "Immune Maladaptation in the Etiology of Preeclampsia: a Review of Corroborative Epidemiologic Studies." Or you could use the subtitle: "Semen is Your Friend."

This merited a trip to Wikipedia, where I found all sorts of links to academic papers on the subject and, buried therein, the dryly worded but unmistakable information about oral.

After I did some digesting about women ingesting, I had to stand up from my desk chair and say to no one in particular, "Really?" If I've heard about a new mother eating her own placenta in a panini, if I've scoured sights like this for every possible detail about pregnancy, how have I missed this gem? Some of the studies I read weren't all that new, but you'd think they would have made a bigger and more long-lasting splash.

Maybe penises need a new publicist.

Now, to be fair, the Dutch researchers do warn that with a new partner, condoms should be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases: "However, a certain period of sperm exposure within a stable relation, when pregnancy is aimed for, is associated with a partial protection against preeclampsia," they insist.

HTML Comment Box is loading comments...

Labels: oral sex, Pregnancy, Research study, Semen, women

Ryan O'Neal Hits On His Own Daughter At Farrah's Funeral

Labels: daughter, farrah fawcet, ryan o'neal

Let’s be like Canada

Written by Sang Jung




President Obama is currently tackling substantive issues on what should be in the healthcare legislation, as well as how should the legislation be presented to the American people. This is no easy task. Polls are showing Obama’s overall job performance has slipped from 61% to 53%, and on healthcare 51% to 41%. The people are losing confidence.

The public’s confidence is being eaten away by the Republic Political Machine, which would like nothing more than to kill this bill where it stands. Nothing would make republicans happier than watching Obama trip up on healthcare and thus fall from grace. So they hoot and shout their tired old phrases: “Market-based is the best!” “No socialism” “..don’t want to be like Europe and Canada.” Although a new low was struck when some Republicans in the senate stated that this healthcare bill would promote mandatory euthanasia for senior citizens—classy.

I can understand why they shout these slogans, no matter how flawed they are in terms or logic. Republicans project themselves as fiscal conservatives. And as fiscal conservatives they worship the ideas of the free market; efficiency through private enterprises. I also understand why Republicans compare social initiatives to socialism, because tax payers end up paying for community programs. What I don’t understand is why they bring up Europe and Canada as examples of what not to do.

Maybe these videos can explain why:

HTML Comment Box is loading comments...

Labels: Canada, healthcare debate, Healthcare reform, Obama

Hyori Top Girl Fashion Spring/Summer 2009 - Photo

Hyori, the former member of the Korean girl group FINKL and now solo artist and MC, is gaining fresh popularity among audiences at home and abroad. I'm sure these are the reasons why.

(Come on folks...seriously...She's bangin'. Case closed.)

Labels: fashion summer 2009, hot korean, hyolee, Hyori, hyroi lee, top girl fashion

3 Indicted in Theft of 130 Million Card Numbers



SAN FRANCISCO — The man who prosecutors said had masterminded some of the most brazen thefts of credit and debit card numbers in history was charged on Monday with an even larger set of digital break-ins.

In an indictment, the Justice Department said that Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami and two unnamed Russian conspirators made off with more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from late 2006 to early 2008.

Prosecutors called it the largest case of computer crime and identity theft ever prosecuted. According to the government, the culprits infiltrated the computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor in Princeton, N.J.; 7-Eleven Inc.; Hannaford Brothers, a regional supermarket chain; and two unnamed national retailers.

An unspecified portion of the stolen credit and debit card numbers were then sold online, and some were used to make unauthorized purchases and withdrawals from banks, according to the indictment, which was filed in United States District Court in Newark.

Although some states require card issuers to notify customers about security breaches, it is unclear whether all individuals whose card numbers were stolen in this case have been notified and offered new account numbers.

Mr. Gonzalez has been in custody since May 2008, when he was arrested in connection with another prominent data theft at the Dave & Buster’s restaurant chain. He has also been indicted in other thefts of credit and debt cards, including the 2005 data breach at T. J. Maxx stores, a division of TJX, based in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gonzalez is awaiting a trial in New York in the Dave & Buster’s attack and, separately, another in Massachusetts in the TJX breach. Trials on the charges announced on Monday will have to wait until those cases are completed, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Gonzalez’s lawyer, Rene Palomino Jr., did not respond to requests for comment.

Erez Liebermann, an assistant United States attorney in the Justice Department’s New Jersey office, said Mr. Gonzalez’s involvement in so many data breaches suggested that “perhaps the individuals capable of such conduct are a tighter-knit group than may have been previously thought.”

Mr. Gonzalez once worked with federal investigators. In 2003, after being arrested in New Jersey in a computer crime, he helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in New Jersey identify his former conspirators in the online underworld where credit and debit card numbers are stolen, bought and sold.

But Mr. Gonzalez secretly reconnected with his old associates, federal officials have said, and continued to ply his trade using a variety of online pseudonyms, including Segvec and Cumbajohnny.

According to the new indictment, Mr. Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed lists of Fortune 500 companies to decide which corporations to take aim at and visited their stores to monitor which payment systems they used. The online attacks took advantage of flaws in the SQL programming language, which is commonly used for databases.

Prosecutors say the defendants created and placed “sniffer” programs on corporate networks; the programs intercepted credit card transactions in real time and transmitted the numbers to computers the defendants had leased in the United States, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The conspirators tried to erase all digital footprints left by their attacks, according to the indictment.

Heartland, one of the world’s largest credit and debit card payment processing companies, announced in January that its network had been breached but declined to provide many details. The disclosure came during President Obama’s inauguration, which prompted critics to question whether the company was trying to play down the news.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the Secret Service would discuss the investigative breakthroughs in the case. Each defendant faces the possibility of 35 years in prison, and more than $1 million in fines or twice the amount made from the crime, whichever is greater.

Threat Level, a blog run by Wired magazine, reported that Mr. Gonzalez had lived a lavish lifestyle in Miami, once spending $75,000 on a birthday party for himself and complaining to friends that he had to manually count thousands of $20 bills when his counting machine broke.

Richard Wang, manager of SophosLabs, a security company, said the case provided more evidence that retailers and banks needed to strengthen industry standards and encrypt credit card numbers when they are transmitted between computers. Currently, major banks agree to encrypt such data only when it is stored.

Mr. Wang also doubted that the world had seen the last significant theft of credit card numbers.

“I’m not sure how likely it is that they are going to get the Russian co-conspirators,” Mr. Wang said. “Obviously there are still plenty of people with the necessary expertise to pull off these kinds of attacks.”

Labels: albert gonzalez, cybersecurity cybercrime, identity theft, Justice department

Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack




It is possible to successfully fend off a zombie attack, according to Canadian mathematicians. The key is to “hit hard and hit often.”

Oh yes, somebody actually did a study on mathematics of a hypothetical zombie attack, and published it in a book on infectious disease. So, while we still don’t know what to do if a deadly asteroid takes aim at Earth, an unlikely but technically possible situation, we now know what to do in case of a zombie attack.

“An outbreak of zombies is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead,” the authors wrote. “It is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Having spent a fair amount of time mixing science with beer in the wee hours while trying to finish a thesis, I’m guessing that at some point, a graduate student who had spent far too many hours tweaking a mathematical model of infectious disease in the basement of a Canadian university said something like this: “What would happen if we made it so they could come back to life?”

This was followed by the other math students in the basement gathering around the computer, happily creating a plausible model for the outbreak of infectious zombie disease, and then brainstorming on how to make their model relevant.

“Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally,” they wrote. “But possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.”

Right.

Anyway, the model focuses on modern zombies, which are “very different from the voodoo and the folklore zombies.” It takes into account the possibility of quarantine (could lead to eradication, but unlikely to happen) and treatment (some humans survive, but they still must coexist with zombies), but shows that there is only one strategy likely to succeed: “impulsive eradication.”

“Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time,” they concluded.

And if we don’t act fast enough?

“If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead,” they wrote. “This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.”



How fast do we need to deal with the outbreak? Here’s the equation they used, where S = susceptibles, Z = zombies and R = removed. If an infection breaks out in a city of 500,000 people, the zombies will outnumber the susceptibles in about three days.

Maybe being a mathematician wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

Citation: “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” [pdf] by Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith?. In “Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress,” eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009.

Labels: mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection, mathematicians, zombie, zombie attack

Luckless Predator Chatted with 3 Undercover Cops



It’s official. There’s nobody in the chat rooms but pedophiles and undercover police.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of an Indiana man whose online efforts to proposition underage girls led him to not one, not two, but three undercover cops, none of whom apparently knew about the others.

The case began in August 2006, when aspiring sexual predator James Daniel started an online conversation with Amanda_13, a fake 13-year-old girl voiced by Sergeant Richard Howard of the Porter County Sheriff’s Department.

After several highly explicit chats, Daniel asked Amanda_13 to meet him at a park in Valparaiso, Indiana, to have sex. When he showed up, he was arrested for inducing an individual under 18 to engage in criminal sexual activity.

When Secret Service agents searched Daniel’s computer, they found logs of chats with two other apparent minors, who described themselves as 13 and 15 years old, respectively. Federal prosecutors introduced the chats at Daniel’s trial as evidence of his perverted motives.

Supposedly, it was only after Daniel was convicted that the feds realized that one of those girls, daisy13_Indiana, was also a cop working the very same Secret Service operation. They informed Daniel’s attorney, who appealed on the grounds that the government improperly withheld information that would have proven entrapment.

The case became even more bizarre when the three-judge appellate panel reviewing the conviction saw the screen name of the third supposed teenager, blonddt, and recognized it from an earlier case.

“To our surprise, the government was unaware until this panel told it at oral argument that the other screen name, blonddt, was also an officer from the Indiana operation,” wrote Judge Diane Wood (.pdf) on Thursday.

Despite the prosecutorial missteps, the panel upheld Daniel’s conviction, ruling that the additional chat logs still showed his intent to commit a crime. Daniel is serving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, followed by supervised release for life.

There’s no evidence in the record that he ever succeeded in talking with a real underage girl.

Labels: James Daniel, pedophile, sex predator, Undercover cops

More Single Women Seek Attached Men



Researchers have debated for years whether men or women are likelier to engage in “mate poaching.” Some surveys indicated that men had a stronger tendency to go after other people’s partners, but was that just because men were more likely to admit engaging in this behavior? Now there’s experimental evidence that single women are particularly drawn to other people’s partners, according to a report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by two social psychologists, Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University.

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.” To investigate, the researchers quizzed male and female undergraduates — some involved in romantic relationships, some unattached — about their ideal romantic partner.

Next, each of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. The researchers write:

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

Well, that makes sense. But I asked Dr. Burkley, a professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State, if the correlation could also be due to another factor at work in some women: fear of intimacy. Could their interest in unavailable guys be what was keeping them single in the first place?

Maybe, Dr. Burkley replied. “There are many possible explanations for our results,” she told me, “and future research needs to identify exactly why single women prefer taken men. Our lab is currently conducting studies to try and tease apart the different potential explanations for our findings, but your explanation seems quite plausible.”

Labels: dating, mate poaching, Oklahoma State University, social psychology

HOLY CRAP! Windows 7 looks amazing



Good news, everyone! If you’ve been stuck in a time loop using Windows XP, which is nearing eight years old, or Windows Vista, which is just annoying, you can finally break free: Windows 7 is almost here. Microsoft delivers a slickly designed, vastly improved OS that will warp you to the world of today. This upgrade is big, and it’s hugely recommended for Microsoft users.

When we say big, we mean really BIG — so we’re not going to bombard you with an epic overview covering every single aspect. Rather, today we’ll guide you through an early look at some major new features and enhancements we tested in the almost-final version released last week. And in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 22 launch of Windows 7, we’ll continue posting our impressions, testing more features of the OS on various types of hardware.

We’ll start with interface, move on to performance and usability, and then we’ll conclude with the “funner” stuff. Let’s begin exploring, shall we?

Revamped Interface With Improved Presentation
Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be like ditching your old Toyota Camry for a sexy, new Nissan GT-R. Everything from the typography to the icons, and from the toolbar to the windows, has been refined with some extra detail, polish and shadows. Finally, Microsoft creates a clean, modern look that competes with Apple’s finely designed Mac OS X Leopard.



To accompany the new look, there are three new features that make the Windows 7 interface pretty groovy: Aero Peek, Aero Snap and Aero Shake. They’re window-management tools, similar to Apple’s Exposé in Mac OS X. Aero Peek is the most significant: When triggered, the feature displays outlines of all your open windows behind your active window; each outlined box contains a thumbnail previewing its corresponding window to help you choose.

Aero Snap (see screenshot above) is pretty cool, too: Drag a window to the right side of the screen, for example, and Aero Snap will automatically adjust the window into a rectangle that takes up the entire right side (same happens if you drag to the left). And Aero Shake is a cute feature: You click and hold onto a window and give it a shake, and any visible windows behind it will disappear (minimize, not close).

A major change appears in the main toolbar glued to the bottom of the screen. Rather than clutter the bottom of your screen with annoying rectangular tabs, your open applications are instead contained in a small square displaying only the icon of each active app. With AeroPeek activated, you can also preview thumbnails of the activity of apps by hovering over their corresponding taskbar icons. That’s certainly a welcome change now that many of us multitaskers enjoy running a multitude of apps at once

If Internet Explorer 8 is your browser of choice, there’s a bonus: Hovering your mouse over the Explorer icon, you’ll be able to preview all the tabs you have open in a stacked view, letting you go directly to the tab you wish to browse.

Then there’s the Start button at the bottom left corner — a feature Windows fans have grown to love. It’s very similar to the old one, functioning almost exactly the same. The main difference is the addition of a gradient to give it a fresher aesthetic. As for functions, a very useful addition to the Start menu is a search bar that instantly appears at the very bottom. This will make finding and launching files a snap.

Performance and Usability
You’ll immediately notice Windows 7 feels a lot faster than its predecessors, and that’s because memory management has been smartly re-engineered. In older versions of Windows, every application you have open is sucking up video memory, even if the windows are minimized. This isn’t the case in Windows 7: The only windows and apps using video memory are those visible on your screen. Windows users are accustomed to closing applications to boost performance, but that’s going to be unnecessary with Windows 7.

Smoother performance would be a waste if usability weren’t improved, too. Windows 7 won’t disappoint. Remember in Windows XP when you hooked up an external hard drive and it was unrecognized, requiring you to search the web to find that stupid effing software driver? Windows 7 includes up-to-date files, which should automatically recognize your device, and in most cases it’ll “just work.” If, for some reason, Windows 7 isn’t compatible with your attached device by default, it’ll search a database for you in an attempt to find a file to install.

Similarly, Windows 7 tries to streamline networking of peripherals, such as printers and scanners, with a feature called HomeGroup. Let’s say you’re running Windows 7 on computer B in your household, and computer A is the one hooked up to a printer in another room. If computer B is on the same network as computer A, Windows 7 will search for the printer driver on computer A and share it with computer B. The same networking feature will also allow you to share folders and files between networked computers. There’s a catch to this seamless networking: HomeGroup is an exclusive Windows 7 feature. So if your other machine is running the Mac OS, or Linux, then forget about it.

There are also some annoyances that will remind you, “This is still Windows.” When plugging in a thumb drive, for example, Windows will ask you what you want to do with it: Play audio, play a movie, or open the folder to view its files. It’s a thumb drive, for God’s sake: Recognize it and just open the damn folder! After receiving such notifications you can tell Windows 7 to automatically perform one of the aforementioned functions when a specific type of device is attached (see screenshot at right), but we wish the OS would just know what to do.



We also found the software-compatibility checker to be kind of lame. For example, when we downloaded TweetDeck, a .air file which requires Adobe Air, Windows 7 didn’t recognize the file extension and offered to do a search for compatible software. That search did not discover Adobe Air — a pretty popular format — so we were disappointed.

“Funner” Stuff



We were vastly entertained by the desktop backgrounds included with Windows 7. They’re freaky, bizarre, fascinating, disturbing and, in some odd way, beautiful at the same time. We’re speaking specifically of the wallpapers in the “Characters” section, illustrations that Microsoft collected from artists around the world. Take a gander at the screenshots above and below to see for yourself.



Microsoft improves on the entertainment experience, too. Windows Media Center gets a utilitarian makeover that looks a tad like Apple’s Front Row (and we’re not complaining). The revamped program makes it easy to browse your movies, photos, music and so on by tapping a few keys. Nice big thumbnails display previews of your media to make your collection look nice and perdy.

Labels: operating system, software, Windows 7, windows os, windows vista, windows xp

TOP 10: Ways Guys Kill the Mood





No.10 - Bad music
As you dim the lights and turn on a little mood music, choose the tunes carefully. Music relays a message about where the night is headed. Avoid anything too girly (Madonna, Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus) and steer clear of the clichés ("Let’s Get It On," "Sexual Healing," "I Wanna Sex You Up"). While rock music can make sex exciting, "Smack My Bitch Up" and anything by Nine Inch Nails should not be used on a first date.

No.9 - Answering the phone
Do not, under any circumstances, stop a make-out session to answer the phone. In fact, if you go back to your place at the end of a date, turn your phone off. Interruptions can really put a damper on things, and if it is your mom calling, your girl is probably putting on her jacket already.

No.8 - Groping
You should have left messy groping behind in the 10th grade. Simply grabbing at her boobs with your tongue hanging out won’t cut it. By now, you should know what to do. Moving randomly from body part to body part is confusing and never gives your girl a chance to get into it. Move slowly from one body part to the next -- lightly touching at first, then with more passion.

No.7 - Begging
A girl most likely makes up her mind before the date regarding how far she is willing to go, but you do have a chance to change her mind. At the end of the night, give her a good kiss that takes her breath away. This is when she might reconsider going home with you. If she still isn’t interested, do not whine or beg. If you beg, you will never get a second chance --ever.

No.6 - Being selfish
It takes time to get a woman going. She needs kissing, touching, caressing, and more than two minutes to reach orgasm. If you have moved past the make-out stage and the clothes are coming off, take time to focus on her. If you aren’t satisfying her, she could get frustrated (or bored) and call it a night.



No.5 - Bad kissing
It doesn’t matter how hot a guy is, if he can’t kiss, he isn’t going past first base. When you lean in for the first end-of-the-date kiss, remember to control your tongue. Don’t lick her teeth, chin, cheeks, forehead, etc., and try not to stick it down her throat.

No.4 - Bad conversation
Giving a little verbal praise is always appreciated, but too many “Oh babys” can really kill the mood. Going over-the-top with chatter comes across as fake and forced. Just be natural. If things are really heating up, don’t ask too many questions: “Do you like it when I kiss you?” “Does my hand feel good there?” You shouldn’t have to ask; her reactions will tell you if you are doing a good job.

No.3 - Heading straight for home
You can’t cross the plate without making stops at first, second and third. Do not hand her a glass of wine, turn on some music, lower the lights and then stick your hand in her pants.

No.2 - Asking for permission
Most girls like a man who knows how to take charge, so when you ask for permission every step of the way you come across as a wimp. Asking; “Can I kiss you?” at the end of a date, or “Is this OK?” when kissing comes across as weak. You might as well ask: “Can I grow a pair?” Assess the situation; if she's really into it, man up and take the plunge.

No.1 - Managing her moves
Newsflash: Girls know you want them to touch your penis. If you are making out at home, 20 minutes have passed, and she still has not made a grab for the crotch area, chances are, she isn’t going to. Therefore, do not pull her hand toward your genitals, and do not grab the back of her head and push her down. Women are not stupid, and after the head grab she will most likely blow you off -- and not in the way you had hoped.

Labels: dating, dating advice, guys killing the mood, hooking up, romance, Top 10

Ponyo (2008) is like Reading an Asian Girl's Diary

New York Times Review



To watch the image of a young girl burbling with laughter as she runs atop cresting waves in “Ponyo” is to be reminded of how infrequently the movies seem to express joy now, how rarely they sweep us up in ecstatic reverie. It’s a giddy, touchingly resonant image of freedom — the animated girl is as liberated from shoes as from the laws of nature — one that the director Hayao Miyazaki lingers on only as long as it takes your eyes and mind to hold it close, love it deeply and immediately regret its impermanence.

The girl is running parallel to an island road, her eyes wildly fixed on a small car perilously whipping around hairpin bends in a raucous storm. Her name is Ponyo (gurgled and voiced by Noah Cyrus, Miley’s younger sister) and she was once some kind of half-human, half-fish daughter of the sea. But she found a boy, the 5-year-old Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, yet another one of those brothers), or rather he found her, rescuing her by scooping her into a pail. The two were separated — as fated characters invariably are — but she’s found him. Now, as she races along the surface of huge peaking waves she has summoned up by the force of her power, Ponyo is expressing not only her bliss, but also ours.

“Ponyo” is the latest masterwork from Mr. Miyazaki, the influential Japanese animator who has advanced the art with films like “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” The new film, despite the initial distractions of the recognizable voices crammed into the English-language version (a subdued Matt Damon, a fine Betty White), shares thematic and visual similarities with his earlier work, notably its emphasis on the natural world, its tumults and fragility. (As Mr. Miyazaki once put it, “All my animation and comics involve land, sea and sky — they all revolve around what happens on earth.”) But “Ponyo,” which takes some inspiration from “The Little Mermaid,” Hans Christian Andersen’s macabre fairy tale, has a narrative simplicity, or rather the clarity of a distillation.

Despite the connection to Andersen’s tale, there is nothing remotely ghoulish about “Ponyo.” No blood and only a few anxious tears are spilled. Far more than Mr. Miyazaki’s other recent films, this one obviously has been created for young viewers, who will have no trouble grasping its broad story or understanding why the characters do what they do, as when Sosuke, worried about prowling cats, places a leaf over the pail with the goldfish girl. At that point Ponyo is as big as Sosuke’s hand. With her broadly smiling, pale human face and wiggling, red fish body, she looks a little like one of the girls that the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara likes to draw, minus the scowl. She also looks a bit like a well-dressed tadpole.

Like the other characters, with their clean lines and bright splashes of color, Ponyo tends to pop slightly on the screen. Although Mr. Miyazaki eschews the deep space of 3-D animation (over his dead body, as he recently suggested), he is acutely sensitive to texture, an awareness that translates into different visual designs for individual scenes and which intensifies the emotional register of those same scenes. The softly smudged field of grass that surrounds Sosuke’s house like a blanket is striking partly because you can see the touch of the human hand in each blade. The blurred pastel quality of the grass, the softness of this green mantle, convey a feeling of comfort that in turn summons up words like warmth, home, love.

Under the ocean the colors are more saturated and the lines often sharper. In this magical realm of undulating creatures and twinkling lights, Ponyo’s father, a wizard named Fujimoto (Liam Neeson), practices his mysterious art. From the prow of a submerged vessel, Fujimoto — the long tendrils of his rusty red hair waving around his head like octopus tentacles — releases potions that restore the health of the pollution-choked waters.

It’s hard not to think of the wizard, particularly when he gently and very cleanly curses the human world and its harmful ways, as something of a Miyazaki self-portrait. Whatever the case, like his creator, Fujimoto can’t keep Ponyo under wraps: she springs from the sea, exploding into the world with a reckless, infectious, almost calamitous exuberance.

This is nature unbound, or maybe it’s the image of childhood right before culture takes over and initiates its relentless tsk-tsking, telling us to mind our manners, shut our mouths and sit up in our seats. Smitten with Sosuke, Ponyo decides she wants to be human, a wish that involves a visit from her mother (Cate Blanchett) and almost upends the balance of the world. As in the original Andersen fairy tale, which turns on a mermaid who dies because she falls in love with a landlocked prince, humanity has its costs. Not to worry: no one dies in “Ponyo” or even coughs. Its sting is so gentle you might miss it. But when the ocean rises in this wonderful movie, each leaping wave stares out at us with a baleful eye as if in watchful and worried wait.

Labels: asian girl, fujimoto cate blanchett, Ponyo

A Harsh Hello for Visitors From Space

New York Times Review



For decades — at least since Orson Welles scared the daylights out of radio listeners with “War of the Worlds” back in 1938 — the public has embraced the terrifying prospect of alien invasion. But what if, notwithstanding the occasional humanist fable like “E.T.,” all those movies and television programs have been inculcating a potentially toxic form of interplanetary prejudice?

“District 9,” a smart, swift new film from the South African director Neill Blomkamp (who now lives in Canada and who wrote the screenplay with Terri Tatchell), raises such a possibility in part by inverting an axiomatic question of the U.F.O. genre. In place of the usual mystery — what are they going to do to us? — this movie poses a different kind of hypothetical puzzle. What would we do to them? The answer, derived from intimate knowledge of how we have treated one another for centuries, is not pretty.

A busy opening flurry of mock-news images and talking-head documentary chin scratching fills in a grim, disturbingly plausible scenario. Back in the 1980s a giant spacecraft stalled in the skies over Johannesburg. On board were a large number of starving and disoriented creatures, who were rescued and placed in a temporary refugee camp in the part of the city that gives the film its title. Over the next 20 years the settlement became a teeming shantytown like so many others in the developing world, with the relatively minor distinction of being home to tall, skinny bipeds with insectlike faces and bodies that seem to combine biological and mechanical features. Though there is evidence that those extraterrestrials — known in derogatory slang as prawns because of their vaguely crustacean appearance — represent an advanced civilization, their lives on Earth are marked by squalor and dysfunction. And they are viewed by South Africans of all races with suspicion, occasional pity and xenophobic hostility.

The South African setting hones the allegory of “District 9” to a sharp topical point. That country’s history of apartheid and its continuing social problems are never mentioned, but they hardly need to be. And the film’s implications extend far beyond the boundaries of a particular nation, which is taken as more or less representative of the planet as a whole.

No group, from the mostly white soldiers and bureaucrats who corral and abuse the prawns to the Nigerian gangsters who prey upon the aliens and exploit their addiction to cat food, is innocent. And casual bigotry turns out to be the least of the problems facing the exiles. As it progresses, “District 9” uncovers a horrific program of medical experimentation yoked to a near-genocidal agenda of corporate greed. A company called M.N.U. (it stands, none too subtly, for Multi-National United) has taken over administration of the prawn population, which means resettling the aliens in a remote enclosure reminiscent of the Bantustans of the apartheid era.

The M.N.U. executive charged with carrying out this program is Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a nervous nebbish whose father-in-law (Louis Minnaar) is the head of the company. Cowardly, preening and hopeless at projecting authority, Wikus is the kind of guy who gives nepotism a bad name. It says a lot about Mr. Blomkamp’s sense of humor, and about his view of his own species, that this pathetic little paper pusher is his chosen agent of mankind’s potential moral redemption.

But I’m getting ahead of the story, and perhaps overselling the allegory. Not that the metaphorical resonances of “District 9” aren’t rich and thought provoking. But the filmmakers don’t draw them out with a heavy, didactic hand. Instead, in the best B-movie tradition, they embed their ideas in an ingenious, propulsive and suspenseful genre entertainment, one that respects your intelligence even as it makes your eyes pop (and, once in a while, your stomach turn).

The early pseudo-documentary conceit, which uses footage that pretends to have been harvested from news choppers and security cameras as well as some by the unseen crew accompanying Wikus on his tour of the prawn camp, fades away after a while. The academic authorities do too, having served the dual functions of providing narrative exposition and demonstrating the high-minded uselessness of official liberal discourse.

Once a terrible accident befalls Wikus, we are at his side and under his skin, and “District 9” subtly shifts from speculative science fiction to zombie bio-horror and then, less subtly, turns into an escape-action-chase movie full of explosions, gunplay and vehicular mayhem.

In the midst of it all you almost take for granted the carefully rendered details of the setting, the tightness of the editing and the inventiveness of the special effects. Not the least of these are the aliens themselves, who are made expressive and soulful without quite being anthropomorphized. (Their whirring, clicking speech, partly understood by Wikus and others who work with the creatures, is translated for the rest of us via subtitles.)

One in particular, named Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope), becomes Wikus’s protector and ward, and their relationship turns “District 9,” in its final act, into an intergalactic buddy picture, with some intriguing (and also possibly disappointing) sequel opportunities left open.

At its core the film tells the story — hardly an unfamiliar one in the literature of modern South Africa — of how a member of the socially dominant group becomes aware of the injustice that keeps him in his place and the others, his designated inferiors, in theirs. The cost he pays for this knowledge is severe, as it must be, given the dreadful contours of the system. But if the film’s view of the world is bleak, it is not quite nihilistic. It suggests that sometimes the only way to become fully human is to be completely alienated.

Labels: District 9, jason cope, movie review, new york times, peter jackson

MAN HAIR




Robert Pattinson's hair has plenty of competition. There is a minor eruption of major hair atop the country’s young male populace.

There are Afros, mohawks, dreadlocks and pompadours. There are “Idol”-ized punky pincushions, Allman-esque hippie cascades (with matching beards) and Bowie-style, parti-colored shags. And these are just the styles that have names. Often enough, these clever young dandies are crossbreeding styles into hybrids unknown to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hair Hall of Fame.

As one might expect, they are proud of the fact.

Victor Jeffreys II, who has a giant Afro, refers proudly to what he calls his “non-normative hair.” Cameron Cooper, a fashion stylist, refers to his creatively shaved skull as “the exclamation point at the end of my sentence.”

These men are what Malcolm Gladwell might call hair outliers (and his own Afro would get him right into the club). Still, spotting them is not hard. Just nip into an edgy salon like Woodley & Bunny in Williamsburg, or run some fatally hip gantlet like the summertime Warm Up parties at P.S. 1 in Queens or openings at 3rd Ward in Bushwick, and you are all but sure to run headlong into an expressive excrescence or two.

“All of a sudden, a big wave of guys just want to experiment,” said Marguerite Jukes, a stylist at the Bumble and bumble salon in the meatpacking district, where the shagadelic manes of the Broadway cast of “Hair” are faithfully kept up. “No one just wants a trim anymore. There isn’t one particular look: It’s a little bit of everything.” She has even become an expert at getting the look not quite perfect, “so it looks like they cut it themselves in their bathroom.”

Often guys who are after a more extreme look will drop the name of some rocker — Robert Plant, Simon Le Bon, Robert Smith, Anthony Kiedis — as inspiration. But what makes this curious trend even curiouser is how little connection the hair actually has to the moment, the man or the music that spawned it. That guy with the long, brown hair and beard may well have techno on his iPod, and the guy with the dyed blue shag is as likely to be drumming his fingers in time to death metal.

“You can never tell what they’re into from their hair,” Ms. Jukes said. She pointed out that her boyfriend, Ben Koller of the metalcore band Converge, has gone for the early-1970s look of the teenage John Michael Osbourne (back when he was the lead singer of Black Sabbath). His band, however, favors a chaotic clash of punk and metal that makes Black Sabbath’s 1970 hit “Paranoid” sound like Doris Day. And however you thought Adam Lambert’s hairstyle pegged him, it was clear to “American Idol” audiences that musically, at least, the man’s got range.

Once upon a time — say, 40 years ago this week, when long-hairs thronged to Woodstock by the hundreds of thousands — you got a hairstyle to show the world your affiliation, to brandish a cultural identity defined by your musical tastes, your political views or how depressed you were. But such literal interpretations of hair appear to be utterly passé, even if the hairstyles themselves are not.

“I don’t think it defines people at all anymore,” said James Carpinello, who, six nights a week, dons a long blond wig and skintight white leather pants to play the fictional 1980s rocker Stacee Jaxx in Broadway’s hilarious hair-metal musical “Rock of Ages.” Practicing for the role never felt quite right, he said, until the day he got to put on “the hair.” (He never calls it a wig.)

“I needed something, and it was the hair,” he said, chuckling. “It makes everything come together.”

And now that “the hair” covers up his own, he has been inspired to let his own grow. He slicked it into a 1930s style for the Tony Awards, but that was only the beginning. “I’ve got this thick pomade,” he said, “and I used that and kind of pulled my hair out so I looked like I’d stuck my finger in a socket. On the train people were looking at me like I was out of my mind, but I thought it was hysterical. Now I want to grow it out so I can have a ponytail.”

Even though he swings a blond wig around for work, Mr. Carpinello may represent the more average guy, simply experimenting rather than going for an out-there style that, should an in-law or a job interview pop up, would call for a hat. Fashionable hair-care companies like Kiehl’s, Shu Uemura and Bumble and bumble report that sales of the more extreme products — strong gels, pomades, pastes and waxes — are up sharply of late, with male customers accounting for much of the increase. But what comes out of the bathroom is anyone’s guess.


“Back in the 1960s, the only important thing was length,” said Michael McDonald, the costume (and hair) designer for the “Hair” Broadway revival. “It wasn’t until the 1970s, and the disco era, that men’s hair started to really have ‘style.’ And then every moment had its look, so that now, in the 21st century, we’ve pretty much seen everything wacky you can do to your hair. It’s all there to go back to and interpret.”

Mr. McDonald can generally spot the inspirations. “There’s a little bit of everything,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little Flock of Seagulls, maybe a little Backstreet Boys.” But there the trail goes dead. If the hair is goth, the clothes might be skater-cum-prep, and the shoes rockabilly. “It’s all mixed up so beautifully,” he said. “It’s really neat the way they can just cut and paste.”

It may be jarring to casual onlookers — those of us accustomed to thinking that hippie hair goes with pacifism and the Grateful Dead, while mohawks go with “Anarchy in the U.K.” — but the guys who are taking the do but leaving its roots have no more qualms about it than a D.J. who samples from other songs.

“I know I’m not a trailblazer,” said Mr. Cooper, the fashion stylist. “To me, it’s just personal. It’s a creative outlet.”

And for some, having statement hair can be a way to avoid being pigeonholed. Mr. Jeffreys, who works as a hedge fund analyst and moonlights as a fine arts photographer, has had his Afro for several years, through college and various undergraduate jobs, because, first and foremost, it is easy to maintain — just an occasional brushing.

“But it would be a lie to say I didn’t like the way it looks,” he said. Having been a cultural anthropology major at Duke who spent time in Ghana, he has long noticed how hair works as a kind of ID.

“Hair really links you to community, whether you’re a punk rocker or a woman who braids her hair a certain way because she’s from Klikor,” he said. As the son of a Costa Rican mother and a white American father, Mr. Jeffreys grew up keenly aware of the tiny visual cues people search for in determining approximately who a person is. His Afro, he said, kind of shorts out the process.

“Those things that our culture puts a lot of value on — gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic class — I’ve had to mediate them all to get anything done in my life, so I’ve tried not to get fixated on any of them.”

For a generation that is, courtesy of the Internet, both disconnected from and connected to the past like no other before it, it makes sense that this point-and-click, cut-and-paste attitude should be present even in the one arena of style in which virtually every man grows his own.

So what if you find yourself wondering: Who is that guy? What’s the deal with that hair? What does it all mean? To turn an old ad slogan on its head: Not even his hairdresser knows for sure.

Labels: afros, hair, hairstyle, mohawks, Robert pattinson

Japanese Hostesses: Many Cinderellas, Few Princes



The women who pour drinks in Japan’s sleek gentlemen’s clubs were once shunned because their duties were considered immodest: lavishing adoring (albeit nonsexual) attention on men for a hefty fee.

But with that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan’s worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

“More women from a diversity of backgrounds are looking for hostess work,” said Kentaro Miura, who helps manage seven clubs in Kabuki-cho, Tokyo’s glittering red-light district. “There is less resistance to becoming a hostess. In fact, it’s seen as a glamorous job.”

But behind this trend is a less-than-glamorous reality. Employment opportunities for young women, especially those with no college education, are often limited to low-paying, dead-end jobs or temp positions.



Hostessing in Japan’s night entertainment industry has provided many women and some men, Japanese and non-Japanese, an opportunity that most other jobs would not have given them: financial ascendancy, and skills and knowledge in dealing with customers to eventually run their own businesses. But does hostessing bring women a rosy life and socioeconomic mobility?

Young women today fancy the celebrity lifestyle in hostessing characterized by tiaras, gowns, perfumes and fun. Like Cinderella, however, most of them can experience a taste of the “good life” within a limited time. After their youthful attractiveness wears off, what awaits them is a barely survivable level of livelihood, unless they meet a reliable “prince.” Under the recurring recessions that began in the 1990s, expecting a prince has become even more unrealistic than ever before, as numerous male workers have been stripped of secure employment and decent pay. Despite and perhaps because of that, some of these young women realize that they are just out to enjoy a momentary glow.



In truth, this article was an excuse to post picture of cute Japanese women. WIN.

Labels: gentlemen's club, hostess, hostessesing, japan, Japanese women

Republicans all Defense, No Offense

Written by Sang Hyun Jung






After President Obama was elected in to office, it was generally understood--within the beltway and across the nation--that republicans would not play nice. The republican side of the House and Senate would attack, fillibuster and wish upon a star to derail the President's and democrats major efforts to reform the government and push out new legislation that would finally address the problems in our society (Healthcare reform, stimulus bill). And when the democrats fail to deliver on their promise, republicans will take it as a win, and a chance to gain some political ground on 2012. It's simple politics.

For decades, Republicans have obstructed real social progress. They're great at it. When the ir was a demcratic majority or a democratic President, Republicans played major defense. They hounded President Clinton, and gloated when they killed "Hillarycare". Great defense.

But where is the offense? Why is that Republicans suddenly gain a voice when democrats want to reform healthcare. Why is that conservatives on the hill have alternative solutions only when democrats are forming solutions. Where were these "fiscally responsible" solutions when Reagan had a ideological majority? Where were these "conservative answers" when George Bush Sr. and George W. and their ilk dominated the Senate and presidency.

Reagan and both Bushes, and the republican majority didn't even try to pass any legislation on healthcare. By looking at history, it's hard to see that Republicans will ever pass legislation that cuts into the pockets of pharma lobbyists and their companies. They had their chance. Now democrats have the ball.

Labels: chris matthews, healthcare debate, party of no, republican

Cash a Bank Check with an iPhone

Written by Sang Hyun Jung



The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately — through their phones.

USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, plans to update its iPhone application this week to introduce the check deposit feature, which requires a customer to photograph both sides of the check with the phone’s camera.

Customers will not have to mail the check to the bank later; the deposit will be handled entirely electronically, and the bank suggests voiding the check and filing or discarding it. But to reduce the potential for fraud, only customers who are eligible for credit and have some type of insurance through USAA will be permitted to use the deposit feature.

USAA may seem like an unlikely innovator in mobile banking. It ranks in size just below the top 20 banks in the United States, and serves mostly military personnel, though many of its products are available to anyone.

But with just one branch, in San Antonio, and customers deployed all over the world, the company has been aggressively developing an anytime, anywhere banking strategy. Three years ago, it introduced the option of depositing a check from home using a scanner. That laid the groundwork for the phone deposit feature, which USAA plans to offer on other phones this year.

“Mobile is going to be a bigger part of how people do commerce and how they interact with their financial institutions,” Mr. Peacock said. “The great value that we see is the time savings.”

About a million of USAA’s 7.2 million customers use their cellphones to access their accounts — either via text message, a mobile browser or an iPhone application introduced in May. The deposit feature, which USAA previewed in an online video in June, puts the bank in the vanguard of the effort to turn cellphones into portable branches.

The most popular banking tasks done on cellphones are reviewing account balances, transferring money, making payments and finding A.T.M.’s, analysts say. But in general, mobile banking has been slow to catch on. Mr. Holland said tighter budgets have forced banks to focus on using technology in ways that cut costs or generate revenue, rather than simply creating buzz.

“If banks can get people to stop calling call centers for mundane inquiries and instead send a text message,” he said, “that saves a bank about $14 for every one of those inquiries.”

Mr. Holland predicted that other banks would follow USAA and offer some type of mobile deposit capability, especially deposit options aimed at small-business customers who may be willing to pay for the convenience.

Labels: bank iphone app, iphone, online banking, usaa

Town hall Mobs

Written by Sang Jung



Freedom of Speech is one of the most valued principles of America. It is exercised in town hall meetings, and is symbolized as such.

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.
So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

It’s well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

The latter group, by the way, is run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain. Mr. Scott was forced out of that job amid a fraud investigation; the company eventually pleaded guilty to charges of overbilling state and federal health plans, paying $1.7 billion — yes, that’s “billion” — in fines. You can’t make this stuff up.

But while the organizers are as crass as they come, for the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is what are they angry about?

Let me make it perfectly clear. These mobs are not angry about anti-privatization, socialism, and government-run healthcare. They do not care about the deficit and government spending. America, currently, incorporates elements of socialism like Medicaid and Social Security. The same programs if touched would create a massive national hissy fit. As for anti-privatization, how can they be all “free market” when a few months ago they were assailing Wall Street, and preaching about the good ol’ values from Main Street.



The most raucous members of these mobs always cite the woes of the $1.3 trillion dollar deficit and the increase in government spending. Yes, they will have to pay for it later on. But how has this been any different from any other time, administration, or point in modern American history. And most Americans, view the national deficit as an abstract idea. These mobs don’t care about the deficit. If they did they would have been just as angry about the funding for the Iraq war and the greater war on terrorism.

What these mobs are angry about is change. Real change. They’re scare that their lives will change. They’re scared that the social order they’re used to will change. They’re scared that the old values they hold dear will change. To these mobs, Change is bitter medicine.

But as our mothers use to say: medicine is bitter. But it’s good for you. And so is Change.

It's called Diplomacy, Stupid

Written by Sang Jung





Criticisms from some of the Republican senators of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s success in gaining the release of two American journalists from North Korea’s gulag are misplaced. The Clintons’ behavior demonstrated respect for the expertise of their advisers and restraint from political grandstanding. Any propaganda gain for the North Korean regime will be short-term and limited. It’s even possible that the episode will have a positive effect on our troubled nuclear negotiations. What "Bubba" Clinton did was called diplomacy.

Ever since the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were captured on North Korea’s border with China in March, America has had little diplomatic leverage. The Obama administration could have gone the "John Bolton" route: finger-pointing, high talks, and bombs.

Some (mostly Fox) commentators are suggesting that the Clintons’ actions showed American weakness by expressing regret to a ruthless dictator. These critics need to ask themselves: how would a more aggressive approach have gained the release of these two women from a sentence of 12 years of hard labor?

Dick Morris,a conservative political commentator, said this:




Heartless, cold, ignorant, deuche are some the words when describing the aptly named Dick.

The American people know bolstering the egos of Pyongyang’s leaders is no pleasure. Just look at Bill Clinton’s grim expression in photos of him with Mr. Kim. But it is a proved means to a desired end.

If tensions begin to cool and North Korea shows itself more open to legitimate talks, then the Clinton diplomacy will have helped to produce unexpected dividends. For the moment, however, it is enough to have two of our citizens back from the gates of Hell with America’s dignity intact. It's called diplomacy, stupid.

Labels: bill clinton, diplomacy, euna lee, laura ling, north korea, pyonyang

New Strain of H.I.V. Is Discovered

Written by Sang Jung



European scientists have discovered a new strain of the AIDS virus. It came from gorillas, creating a mystery about when and how the first patient found to have the strain became infected.

It is thought to be likely that this is the first time scientists have documented the jump of a simian immunodeficiency virus to humans from a gorilla. All three other known strains of the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V.-1, have been linked to chimpanzees. But genetic tests showed that the new virus was closely related to a recently recognized gorilla virus.

The most likely explanation for the new virus’s emergence is gorilla-to-human transmission, probably a result of humans slaughtering apes or handling or eating their meat.

But the scientists said they could not dismiss the possibility that the chimpanzee virus linked to H.I.V.-1 was transmitted to gorillas and then to humans, or was directly transmitted to humans and then to gorillas.

The new virus strain was isolated in 2004 from a 62-year-old woman upon her arrival in Paris from Cameroon in West Africa. She has not been treated for AIDS and has no signs of the syndrome, the scientists said.

The woman had lost weight in 2003 and had been ill with a fever a number of times, the scientists said in reporting the discovery, in the Aug. 2 issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The authors of the report said they presumed that she had been infected through sex. The woman told her doctors that she had sexual partners in Cameroon after her husband’s death, but there was no information about whether any were infected — or, if they were, how they had contracted the virus.

The amount of virus in her blood is high, reported the French and British scientific team, which was led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen in France. But the number of CD-4 blood cells, a key laboratory measure of the progression of AIDS, is stable at about 300 per cubic millimeter.

The scientists suspect that there are additional undetected cases because the patient lived in a semiurban area of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, and she said she had no contact with apes or their meat. More studies are needed to determine how often the new virus infects people.

One thing is for sure, after reading this we're all wondering if their are actually people making sweet jungle love to gorillas.

Labels: AIDS, Cameroon, gorilla, H.I.V.-1, Jean-Christophe Plantier

Oral Sex is Good for Pregnant Women

Written by Sang Jung






If you're thinking about conceiving, or certainly if you are already pregnant, there is some pretty convincing evidence that instead of just swallowing, say, folic acid, you might want to swallow something else.

Let me be delicate about this, if I can.

As far as I can tell, not only should you be having lots of oral sex with the father of your baby -- even up to a year before conceiving -- you should also make sure to ingest his seminal fluid. Listen to what I'm telling you: the international medical community is giving you an Rx for oral. Sure, they say frequent intercourse is good, too, but oral is better. So, if you care about having a healthy baby and not potentially unleashing what scientists call a "destructive attack on the foreign tissues" of your fetus, if you want to avoid immunological disorders during pregnancy, and I'm sure you do, get to work. Or to pleasure, depending on how you feel about it.

Basically, the research says you need to be able to tolerate your baby's foreign, paternal DNA; in other words, you need to get your body accustomed to the stuff, need to cozy up to some daddy double helix for a while so your body doesn't reject it.

This is what I found excerpted online, from the Journal of Reproductive Immunology:

"While any exposure to a partner's semen during sexual activity appears to decrease a woman's chances for the various immunological disorders that can occur during pregnancy, immunological tolerance could be most quickly established through oral introduction and gastrointestinal absorption of semen."

I could not make this up. Gastrointestinal absorption of semen. I know. For the man in your life, this news should not be hard to swallow. Sorry.

According to a group of Dutch researchers, "exposure to semen provides protection against developing preeclampsia." That's from a paper with the catchy title, "Immune Maladaptation in the Etiology of Preeclampsia: a Review of Corroborative Epidemiologic Studies." Or you could use the subtitle: "Semen is Your Friend."

This merited a trip to Wikipedia, where I found all sorts of links to academic papers on the subject and, buried therein, the dryly worded but unmistakable information about oral.

After I did some digesting about women ingesting, I had to stand up from my desk chair and say to no one in particular, "Really?" If I've heard about a new mother eating her own placenta in a panini, if I've scoured sights like this for every possible detail about pregnancy, how have I missed this gem? Some of the studies I read weren't all that new, but you'd think they would have made a bigger and more long-lasting splash.

Maybe penises need a new publicist.

Now, to be fair, the Dutch researchers do warn that with a new partner, condoms should be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases: "However, a certain period of sperm exposure within a stable relation, when pregnancy is aimed for, is associated with a partial protection against preeclampsia," they insist.

HTML Comment Box is loading comments...

Labels: oral sex, Pregnancy, Research study, Semen, women

Ryan O'Neal Hits On His Own Daughter At Farrah's Funeral

Labels: daughter, farrah fawcet, ryan o'neal

Let’s be like Canada

Written by Sang Jung




President Obama is currently tackling substantive issues on what should be in the healthcare legislation, as well as how should the legislation be presented to the American people. This is no easy task. Polls are showing Obama’s overall job performance has slipped from 61% to 53%, and on healthcare 51% to 41%. The people are losing confidence.

The public’s confidence is being eaten away by the Republic Political Machine, which would like nothing more than to kill this bill where it stands. Nothing would make republicans happier than watching Obama trip up on healthcare and thus fall from grace. So they hoot and shout their tired old phrases: “Market-based is the best!” “No socialism” “..don’t want to be like Europe and Canada.” Although a new low was struck when some Republicans in the senate stated that this healthcare bill would promote mandatory euthanasia for senior citizens—classy.

I can understand why they shout these slogans, no matter how flawed they are in terms or logic. Republicans project themselves as fiscal conservatives. And as fiscal conservatives they worship the ideas of the free market; efficiency through private enterprises. I also understand why Republicans compare social initiatives to socialism, because tax payers end up paying for community programs. What I don’t understand is why they bring up Europe and Canada as examples of what not to do.

Maybe these videos can explain why:

HTML Comment Box is loading comments...

Labels: Canada, healthcare debate, Healthcare reform, Obama