finally here!
BAND 6 people!
woot
funny joke
A teacher asks her class, ''If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?'' She calls on little Johnny.
''None, they all fly away with the first gunshot.''
The teacher replies, ''The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking.'' Then Little Johnny says, ''I have a question for YOU. There are three women sitting on a bench having ice cream. One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?''
The teacher, blushing a great deal, replies, ''Well I suppose the one that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone.''
''The correct answer is the one with the wedding ring on...but I like your thinking.''
teenage girls get stupider and stupider by the day
Time magazine reported that 17 girls at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, a largely Catholic fishing town of 30,000, are pregnant, four times as many as last year. All are 16 or younger.
Joseph Sullivan, the school's headmaster, told the magazine that last autumn officials began noticing a large number of girls had started asking for pregnancy tests at the school clinic. By May, the nurse had given 150 tests and some students were coming back several times.
"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Mr Sullivan told Time.
The girls were questioned and nearly half admitted to making a pact with their peers to get pregnant and raise their babies together.
Time said some of the fathers were men in their 20s. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," Mr Sullivan told the magazine.
The baby boom has prompted calls for better contraceptive services, including prescriptions for students that do not require parental consent. The calls were met with such fierce opposition that the proponents, a nurse and doctor who described the situation as "an epidemic of teen pregnancy", resigned.
The nation's teenage pregnancy rate increased in 2006 for the first time in 14 years, according to the most recent figures from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some blame the trend on films such as Juno and Knocked Up, arguably pro-pregnancy films that show young, unwed mothers, or celebrities such as Jamie Lynn Spears, the 17-year-old sister of Britney, who yesterday gave birth to a baby girl.
One young mother and former student of Gloucester High, which has a free day care centre for children, said many of the now pregnant students approached her when she was expecting and said how lucky she was to have a baby.
"They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Amanda Ireland, 18, told Time. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 am."
but wait, there's more!
High School "pregnancy pact" is an urban myth
It should come as no great surprise that Kathleen Kingsbury's TIME Magazine story about a "pregnancy pact" at a Massachusetts high school is falling apart under cursory scrutiny. Allegedly, seven or eight students resolved to get themselves pregnant and raise their babies together.
The piece attracted worldwide attention, likely because it confirmed society's worst fears about wanton, irresponsible, poor girls conspiring to reproduce. The story probably also stoked reader nostalgia for the good old days when pregnant teenagers were summarily banished:
The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center. [TIME]
Kingsbury heard about the alleged pact from a school principal during an interview about a recent spike in teen pregnancies at the school. He became Kingsbury's sole source for the pact story.
At the time, I thought it was suspicious that Kingsbury couldn't get a single participant in the pact to confirm that the collusion occurred. According to her story, the girls and their families "declined to be interviewed." I have to wonder how hard Kingsbury tried to confirm the principal's allegations. Did she try to track down the fathers of these babies, or anyone else who might have direct knowledge of the pact, if one existed? Or did she just take "no comment" for answer? I'm disappointed that TIME chose to air such an inflammatory rumor without corroboration.
The principal claimed that the spike was due to seven or eight girls who decided to get pregnant on purpose and raise their babies together. The sensational tale made headlines worldwide. Like all good stories, this one improved in the re-telling. MSNBC reported that there were seventeen conspirators in the group, up from seven or eight in the principal's original claim.
Alarmed, the mayor of the town pressed the principal for details. According to the mayor, the principal's memory was foggy when he was pressed for details in a meeting with herself and the superintendant. He couldn't remember how he heard about the pact.
Now, the principal has issued a statement challenging the mayor's claims about his shaky memory.
Time published the assertion without further evidence. On Monday, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said that an inquiry had turned up no evidence of a pact, and she claimed that Mr. Sullivan “was foggy in his memory of how he heard this information.” And a local newspaper reporter covering the story closely said “the idea of the pact is not something we had reported and not something we have found.”
In his latest comments, Mr. Sullivan aimed “to put to rest the notion” that he had difficulty recalling his underlying evidence:
My only direct source of information about the intentional pregnancies at the high school was the former nurse practitioner at the Health Center. My other sources are verbal staff reports and student/staff chatter, all of which I have found to be very reliable in my experience as a principal and all of which I filter myself for accuracy and keep confidential.
Kim Daly, the former head nurse practitioner who was his direct source, told The New York Times that she could not back up the “pact” claim. “It was complete news to me,” said Ms. Daly. “I have never heard of it, ever.” [The Lede]
Subsequently, one of the pregnant students told Good Morning American that was no pact to get pregnant. The 17-year-old mother to be said that a bunch of girls who were already expecting decided that they would help each other raise their babies while staying in school. Somehow, the rumor mill twisted this benign self-help arrangement into a bizarre reproductive conspiracy.
The pregnancy pact story had the ring of an urban legend from the very beginning. The reporter and the public were way too eager to believe that wanton females besotted by Juno were getting pregnant to take advantage of their high school's inclusive policies for teen moms. This wasn't journalism, it was a bad morality play. Now the shoddy story is finally unraveling. Unfortunately, the rumor has spread so widely that it will take a lot of debunking to strip the fable of its aura of truthiness.
optical illusion
Interesting optical illusion, it’s Albert Einstein right? Step away from your
computer about 3-5 meter, picture of Albert became a picture of
Marilyn Monroe.
hellboy 2
just got back from watching the premiere of hellboy 2.
i wonder how long i can keep your attention here, because i have a lot to say, and you might probably get bored.
spoilers ahead. turn back now if you can't take it....
all right. you're still here.
hellboy 2 was summer fare, nothing more, nothing less.
predictable, saccharine sweet, action packed,
and as is usually the case, a plot shot full of holes.
for instance,
why does the bad guy, who severely wounds the hero, leave without finishing the job?
or why, when the hero is perched on a precarious ledge, not try to kill the hero?
is there a bad guy code of ethics or something?
and i know this is a comic book adaptation, but do the characters all have to be two dimensional?
even the so called hero, hellboy is about as expressive as a plank of wood.
no emotion whatsoever.
his lady love, pregnant but refusing to accept it.
so much potential, yet all wasted
the fish.
he is a pain to watch.
at least he has an excuse for being inexpressive.
it's as if the producers just wanted something to move the movie along till they got to the action scenes, which by modern standards barely pass the mustard.
i'm tired.
go watch for yourself.
Wrath of Nature
excerpt from the daily mail
go here
Few sights in nature can compare to the sheer magnificence of a
volcano erupting in full flow.
But while scenes of molten lava are relatively commonplace, this
otherworldly picture of Chaiten Volcano in southern Chile shows a
truly spectacular, and devastating, volcanic phenomenon.
Scroll down for more...
This astonishing picture shows the Chaiten volcano erupting
during storms in the middle of the night
As clouds of toxic ash and dust tower into the sky, they ionise
the air, generating an explosive electrical storm. Colossal forks
of lightning spark around the noxious plume as it spews from the
volcano's crater, creating an image of raw, terrifying energy -
as if the air itself were ablaze.
Now, the worst-case scenario is the collapse of the volcano
accompanied by a "pyroclastic flow" - a devastating
super-eruption of scorching dense gas and molten rock that would
roll down the mountainside at 100mph or faster, incinerating and
flattening all in its wake.
Thankfully, experts think this is unlikely at this stage.
Scroll down for more...
The Chaiten volcano has triggered earth tremors and spewed ash
two miles into the air
Seen from space, Chaiten's ash plume streams across
Argentina towards the Atlantic
Locals wear masks to protect themselves from the all-pervasive
ash near Futaleuf
The gigantic plume of smoke from the volcano dominates the
skyline
Pyroclastic flows are also called nuees ardentes - or
"burning clouds" - and are probably the single most
destructive weapon in nature's armoury, capable of flattening
cities in seconds.
It was such a catastrophe that destroyed the Roman town of
Pompeii in AD79.
The 3,300 ft Chaiten Volcano, 800 miles south of the Chilean
capital Santiago, is erupting for the first time in thousands of
years, sending a plume of ash into the sky that stretches as far as
Argentina.
It is also spewing out chunks of lava and hot rock. Authorities
have already evacuated around 4,200 people from the town of
Chaiten, six miles from the volcano, but 300 civilians and troops
remain and are being evacuated now. Rescue is complicated by the
fact that southern Chile is fragmented by fjords and access is
often difficult.
Scroll down for more...
The village of Chaiten, next to the volcano, was virtually
emptied in a massive evacuation
Winds carried the ash to other towns in the region and across
the Andes to Argentina
A local resident cycles through the ash as it settles across the
town
The authorities are also evacuating a second town, Futaleufu.
Some of Futaleufu's 1,000 or so residents had already crossed
into neighbouring Argentina, where some areas have been showered
with ash and where authorities last week closed schools and treated
some for breathing problems.
The ash is more than six inches (15 cm) thick in places, and has
contaminated water supplies.
Chile, which sits right on the Pacific's volcanic "ring
of fire", has the world's second most active string of
volcanoes behind Indonesia.
HKU alumni dinner at KLGCC
why would i be at an alumni dinner when i haven't even entered university?
good question.
too bad i don't have an answer.......
well anyway, in case you can't tell, there is a very big disparity in the ages of the alumni gathered here.
in the early days, it seems that hong kong uni had almost 50 percent malaysian students.
and the fees were like 300 ringgit.
and they had butlers, who shined their shoes etc etc etc
but, at one point hong kong uni stopped admitting international students.
only around 1995 did they start taking in malaysian students again.
so there was this old guard, who saw their numbers dwindling, waiting for new alumni to join the club.
which is part of the reason i had a chance to attend the dinner at all.....
the chairman, tan sri samuel kam is 91. graduated in 1938 (i think, can't really remember). kids, history lesson, that's before the second world war. heck, tis before even the third world war....
most of the alumni there have grandkids.
not just grandkids, grandkids that are older than me.
i positively feel like a baby next to them.....
but still they're all as hale and hearty as you could expect them to be.
when that age you reach, look as good as them, you will not.
props to benedict, the secretary (80 years old. wow) for organising such a successful dinner.
oh! the dinner.
food was okay (we were at the takakura japanese restaurant)
standard fare really.
starters was baby octopi.
followed by tempura.
followed by grilled mackerel.
followed by rice, miso soup, ginger stir fried beef.
then dessert was some kind of ice cream wrapped in a pastry.
but there was one waitress i just could not take my eyes off.
she looked so demure in her kimono.......
wow!
hot stuff...
i'm definitely going back just to get her number XD
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