Pamela Anderson without Rick Solomon - hope springs eternal!

(It seems that this post could become a recurrent feature, judging by the shortness of marriage/divorce cycles. So I am just recycling the old one.)

Anyhow - rejoice, ye olde lechers - Pamela is back on the market! So you have a chance of your miserable lifetime again.

















In fact, your chances are rather nil, but you can always click on that picture. To enlarge it.

Update: oh no, it is despair again, they are back together!

ho Ho HO

Did you hear that story about Ho, Ho, Ho being discarded for being offensive to women?

Now here is a good one from Dick Stanley on a somewhat related subject:

I am not sure that "ACLU " is absolutely necessary in the above, but you get the drift, do you?

He he he...

Alycia Lane bikini photos, Rich Eisen and Suzy Shuster

will not appear here as well, but here is a nice picture of a dragonfly (no clothes at all):

Click to enlarge

Recommended watching time for total relaxation - 5 minutes. No blinking!

The era of the Intelligent Bra

It seems that intelligence is no longer restricted to the world of the live beings and electronic devices (computers, robots, bombs, etc.). Now the first item of clothing joined the parade - the Intelligent Bra.

Women could be spared the discomfort and even injury caused by poor bra design thanks to an "intelligent fabric" with sensors developed by scientists. As many as 80 per cent of women are thought to be wearing the wrong bra, increasing the risk of pain and nerve damage caused by bra straps, particularly during exercise.

Looks like the sentiment expressed in the picture below will become history shortly:

And all the glory belongs to Aussies:

Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia said: "A consequence of current bra design is that the brassiere straps bear much of the load generated by breast momentum during physical activity.

I hoped they have invested enough thought in the design of a new quick release button that men could finally figure out too...

Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections

This post is a tribute to an exceptional work, the title of which I have stolen for the post headline. It is written by an exceptional person, who is humbly describing himself in the following words:

David Hirsh is a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been centrally involved in the anti-boycott campaign within the British academic trade unions and he is the founding editor of the Engage website (www.EngageOnline.org.uk), an anti-boycott campaign and an antiracist campaign against antisemitism. This positioning facilitates participant observation and action research by a key actor in these debates.

What can I say about this work? When we, the bloggers, get into a fight with some other bloggers or some authors whose work we despise, we can be voluble, we can be insulting, we can even be right - but it hardly moves the other side. When a person of David Hirsh's caliber and intellect gets into the fray, it is not for a cheap retort of for a derisive comment or two. Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections is a seminal work that will be much quoted, studied and, of course, much criticized by a certain segment of scientific (oh well...) community.

We can only applaud from the sidelines and give this work a bit of a hand here and there.

A word of caution, though, re the term Cosmopolitan. If the intended meaning is as in dictionary: "A sophisticated person who has travelled in many countries", it's fine and dandy. Unfortunately, this word in its Russian version of "космополит" ("kosmopolit") had quite a different meaning during some very difficult times: a person without a nation, without roots and without loyalty. Of course, the person usually (but not always) happened to be a Jew. If the tyrant hadn't croaked in 1953, a repeat of the Holocaust in its less organized Soviet version would have been close...

But it is surely immaterial now, right? So just go and read this work, it is worth all of your time!

Update: for the impatient - to hear more about the work, listen to this interview with David Hirsh.

Ronaldinho vs. Alexandra Paressant

I have tried to get this out of my head for several days, but no, it is impossible. If the story this lady tells is for real, it means that my beloved team lost because of... no, I am speechless:

More, after the competition ended, Ronaldinho’s girlfriend, Alexandra Paressant, stated that her "boy" skipped camp every night so that the couple could party all night long. And that made Ronaldinho not very loved in Brazil.

Brazil should be the least of your worries, boychick. You are marked by the Elders now... Prepare for a surgery...

A sincere person with serious muscle seeked

Can you be sincere? Are you musclebound? If your answer to both questions is positive (I mean "yes"), please contact me as soon as possible.

Being already terribly busy with several money-making (or, rather, money-collecting, this is how easy it is) schemes, not the least of them with that rich widow (or, rather, ex-widow since our marriage) of Benin, I am more than willing to share the spoils of my multi-million future ventures. There is another reason I am going to share the benefits of this new enterprise with you, my lucky stranger. It will become apparent to you in a jiffy.

It all started with a cry for help from the battle-scarred fields of Iraq. "Can You Be Sincere?" asked the e-mail in its "Subject" line, and of course I can, we, the Elders, are trained to look sincere with the best of them. And here is the gist of the letter:

Dear Friend

My name is Sgt. Jason Herzog*, I am an American soldier with Swiss background, serving in the military with the army’s 3rd infantry division. With a very desperate need for assistance, I have summed up courage to contact you. I found your contact particulars in an address journal. I am seeking your kind assistance to move the sum of (US$ 25 million ) Twenty Five million united states dollars to you, as far as I can be assured that my share will be safe in your care until I complete my service here, this is no stolen money, and there are no danger involved.
Source of money:
Some money in various currencies was discovered in barrels at a farm house near one of Saddam’s old palaces in Tikrit-Iraq during a rescue operation, and it was agreed by staff Sgt. Kenneth Buff and I that some part of this money be shared among both of us before informing anybody about it since both of us saw the money first. This was quite an illegal thing to do, but I tell you what? No compensation can make up for the risk we have taken with our lives in this hell hole Of which my brother in-law was killed by a road side bomb last week.

Only an unfeeling worm could remain deaf to this desperate cry for help. Especially when such a healthy amount of money is involved. In short, we must help our brave Sarge to transfer the moneys to the place of his choosing, which I guess will be a Swiss bank. There is one hitch, though, that forces me to look for assistance. You see, the money is, most probably, in low denomination banknotes and even coins, this is why barrels are used to store it. Unfortunately, due to my excessive portliness and generally delicate physique, I cannot undertake the venture alone. Since I will be the brain of the whole operation, your share will be a generous 25% of our take, which, I am confident, will be 12 million USD.

So, if you are of a charitable mood and don't mind making a few bucks out of it, please contact me with proof of your sincerity and brawn. The first acceptable candidate wins!

To stress the urgency - another quote from the appeal by our brave Sarge:

I do not know how long we will remain here, and i have been shot, wounded and survived two suicide bomb attacks by the special grace of God...

See how desperate the situation is? Come on the run, please.

(*) For privacy the middle name of the sender was removed. Do not ask me to divulge it.

Google Knol, Elf on the Shelf or Spanx?

Is Google Knol geared to overtake Wiki, our good ole Wiki? A good question.

Are New York women skipping the gym lately, packing into girdle-astic Spanx power panties? Could these wonder panties work for men too?

The elf, named Fisbee, appeared at Bob and Carol Aebersold's house every Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas. Or, at least, so they say (I personally believe them, cause no rational person will invent such a name for an imaginary elf). But doesn't elf frighten off Santa and his deers?

Too many questions...

Democracy then, idiocracy now.

By a strange coincidence, I was at the last chapter or two of the excellent work by Nick Cohen - "What is Left?", when I got a tip about a spoof site Not Democracy Now, mimicking the infamous Democracy Now site of infamous Amy Goodman. Not being a fan of DN in general or Amy Goodman in particular, I was forced to take a look at the DN site to get a first impression. Tell you what - there wouldn't be a second impression, unless under torture.

The coincidence is funny, because Amy Goodman is fitting the profile of many characters Nick Cohen put under a scalpel in his book - the lefties who, after the loss of their socialist beacon, are guided by a very primitive missive: "enemy of my enemy is my friend". The missive that causes many of the "progressive left" to become in the worst case fellow travelers for every bloody dictator and merciless murderer in the world or, in a better case, to provide fertile ground for unimpeded growth of poisoned mushrooms like George Galloway, Norman Finkelstein, Ward Churchill and, lest we forget, Noam Chomsky the Mastermind of the century.

In short - if you want to see a choice selection of fun interviews with choice selection of thoroughly unpleasant characters - from above mentioned Mastermind to Pol Pot (hmm... I wonder whether it's a coincidence) - please do not hesitate. Go to the Not Democracy Now site and enjoy! I did.

Weekly Lec*

I once saw a miracle - just when we could have done without one.

(*)See here what it is all about.

***

Terry Pratchett - bad news

Come on, Terry, we do not believe it.

Just stay put and do what you do best, we all need you.

Now they can fight - it is official.

Lebanon's top Shiite cleric says Muslim woman may hit back if beaten by husband

I have somehow missed this sensational headline. It is necessary to understand its precise meaning, not that a saying of any religious cleric must carry something precise.
The following statement carries more information:

A Muslim woman is allowed to fight back in self-defense if hit by her husband, Lebanon's top Shiite cleric declared Tuesday in a ruling rare for the male-dominated Islamic society.

I am not trying to be sarcastic here, just to get a full measure of this, doubtlessly important decree by a fairly important (albeit in Lebanon only) Grand Ayatollah. So the new fatwa does not necessarily forbid a man to beat his wife, but at least it allows the wife to hit back.

Taking into account the ratio of weight and muscle between a man and a woman, not to speak about the currently dominant culture of male superiority an macho sense of honor - how many women in the Middle East will actually follow this fatwa? And of those who follow - how many will be killed of beaten into pulp?

No doubt, this is an important precedent, and hopefully the example will be followed. But the way from here to suffrage is still very long. And, besides, the same fatwa still says that "Islam gives men supremacy over women in running household affairs".

So, let's not hold our collective breath for now.

Jodie Foster, Cindy/Cydney Bernard and my confusion.

It was a great and pleasant surprise to discover that Jodie Foster and I share the same preference.

But while googling for the picture of Foster's partner the only live creature that came up was this:

Cindy Bernard is the name, but surely it cannot be true?

Update: that confusion was settled, it is Cydney after all, but the picture remains for now...

General Francois Hajj RIP - Jooz guilty again?

Syrian officialese is anything but unpredictable. Year after year the same "unidentified government official" continues to churn the same old, same old. And the latest do in Lebanon is not an exception from the rule.

A top general in the Lebanese army was killed early Wednesday when a powerful car bomb exploded beside his vehicle in a residential suburb of Beirut.

And, of course, here comes that official:

Syria denounced the assassination with the official SANA news agency quoting an unidentified official as saying that Israel and "its tools in Lebanon" were responsible for Hajj's murder.

Bleh...

Ehud Barak says...

According to an article from JP:

A large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip has dropped to the back burner in recent days after an assessment within the defense establishment found that the daily border raids the IDF has been conducting have had an effect on Hamas's military capabilities, senior defense officials said Tuesday.

If you are ready to believe this crapola, here is more:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the operation had achieved "very important results" in the fight against the manufacture and firing of Kassam rockets and mortar shells. Speaking during a visit to a navy base in Haifa, Barak said that IDF operations like the one on Tuesday allowed Israelis to celebrate Hanukka and light candles in peace.

But hold the horses with the celebrations, here is some news for Barak:

As post-Annapolis talks were set to kick off around Wednesday noon, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two barrages of Kassam rockets at the western Negev. One person was lightly wounded and two very lightly wounded; one of the rockets landed on a sidewalk in the middle of a main street in the city.

Several salvoes fired in the early morning hours amounted to a total of 17 rockets fired in a space of less than two hours.

This immediately after the operation that "achieved very important results"...

Update: and more government-issue crap:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Tuesday to remove the threat of Qassam rockets from the southern part of the country.

Yeah... like we keep hearing for the last 7 years.

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.