Pussyfooting

I am not a cat fan. But I do like cat macros.

Have a great week ahead!

Midweek sh*t and giggles

For the darling Seorang Blogger who lives in a place with lousy Internet connectivity ...

I give you pictures!

Enjoy, darling!

My namesake!

Or is it the other way round?

Don't care. Here's the cutest video of a sloth trying to cross the road in Costa Rica. I gotta say; the good Samaritan sure have the most fantastic legs.



Isn't the sloth adorable?

(ganked from here)

How do you mend a broken heart?

Chocolates? Alcohol? Beating up some unsuspecting stranger/not-stranger (literally or figuratively)?

Phhbbbttt ... so old school.

If you want to go for the most cutting edge measure, you gotta go the stem cell way.


How do you mend a broken heart? (Full version) from British Heart Foundation on Vimeo.

On the other hand, setting the property belonging to the person who broke your heart on fire may also help. However, make sure that you either have a good lawyer on your side or that you can't be caught.

*grin*

Who says scientists aren't arty?

Don't believe me? Watch this.

Happy Birthday, Carl Linnaeus!

Carolus Linnaeus made pigeon-holing and characterising animals and plants to an elevated science. In honour of his 300th birthday, a group of scientists in Sweden decided to throw a party to celebrate it. It took 3 years to organise (any wedding planner given this kind of time-line would run screaming into the night).

Have a look at the party here. It is super awesome.

Sweet dreams are made of these ...

 
Should I be worried that I seem to be recycling my dreams? Every morning I wake up to some dream that I have had before. Maybe some minor details were changed (like new characters, etc) but the essential storyline and plot are the same.

*sigh*

Does this mean that my imagination has come to a stand still?

*shudder*

Way to destroy one's childhood memories ... :'(

How could GQ desecrate Voltron thusly???!

Not to mention that such paper dolls used to be a particular obsession of mine. They were cheap and came in amazing variety from just RM 0.20 to RM 0.50 per set at your local friendly stationery shop. Since the money to get toys (like Barbie dolls) were routed to feed my reading obsession, these paper dolls were my primary toy.

Darn you, Lady Gaga!

*shakes fist*

Stuff that makes you apoplectic

Apoplexy is a very popular word in historical romances (one of the genres that I devour like a chocoholic inhales Godiva). Some guardian/father/members of nobility/etc will be in an apoplectic fit over the harum scarum adventures of our intrepid hero/heroine. Apoplexy can also mean stroke, which is one of the major causes of death and disability the world over.

Hence, it behooves us to know what can cause stroke and make sure we reduce our risk factor as much as possible. The usual ones are quit smoking, maintain a healthy weight, etc etc, but do you know what are the most common activities that leads to an apoplectic fit?

Drinking coffee. Sex. Being angry.

Straining while on the porcelaine throne (aka straining to shit). Blowing your nose. Shock.

The poor snow leopard could have had a stroke!

Don't believe me? Read it here.

This means that if you want to live longer, don't have sex, eat lots of fibre and keep your mucus to yourself.

As if I'm not paranoid enough in rivers ...

... now I hear that crocodiles can traverse oceans. Granted that this was seven million years ago, but since crocodile design hasn't really changed since then, this is pretty scary.

Oh yeah. Crocs are salt tolerant and can survive six months without food. So by the time they reach the beach where you are frolicking innocently, they are starving and you look like a delicious meal.

Humans are doomed.

(Image ganked from here)

Not these crocs, okay? Only scary near escalators.

OMG! This is severely cool!

The nerd in me is amazed by the amount of work that had gone into this game. If you are interested in how addictive substance of abuse act on the brain or just want to torment some lab mice, go here!

The females of the species ...

is definitely deadlier than the male ...

 

 

Forget being passive-aggressive

Just be aggressive!

Is it obvious I am not an animal lover?

 

I like my animals either on my plate or stuffed. Enuff said.

My inner fangirl, let me show you her

Dear God, blessed are every Friday You gave us breath but more and more for this Friday whence You gave us the delectable Mr Hardy and amp up our anticipation for his upcoming movie.



Thank you, God. Thank you.

*swoons*

How to headbang

There's something about Mr Joseph Gordon-Levitt ... adorkability? Infectious grin? Crazy dimples?



Oh yeah. He headbangs like a true wild child of the punk generation.

Emo Star Wars?

I knew that Luke was an angsty dude, but the droids too?

You sure learn something new every day.

But I do wonder: Do emo droids cut themselves too? Do they sever a hydraulic line, power back up supply, what? *ponders*

Genius courtesy of paperbeatsscissors.

Everyone's got the message but me ...

There's something about this song that resonates with me. Maybe because I have always felt out of step with everyone else around me.

Enjoy Elizabeth and the Catapult's Rainiest Day of Summer (lyrics here).



Non-sequitur: Am recovering from a mini-cold, the first in a very long time. You only appreciate God's gift of good health when you are busy hacking out a lung or limping along like a lame tortoise with a recalcitrant ankle. Humans. *snort*

Some days ...

... you just feel like unleashing the claw, no?

Post Star Wars apocalypse

Poor Ewoks. *cries*

Bad kitty?

It is not good to have this ...

followed by this ...



Am I morally corrupting you yet?

Points to ponder ... midweek so-and-so.

It's your momma too!

Frankly, every day should be International Women's Day. So there.

Yay!!

Validation for all coffee lovers the world over!!

I could ...

... use this video to troll my cousins who are die-hard Twilight fans.



But I ought to be bigger than that, dammit!

My body belongs to God and me!

I think it is time that we stop questioning what Muslim women choose to wear. Whether she wears the head scarf, or face veil or a string bikini, IT IS HER CHOICE, OKAY?

Why is it a choice? Because that is God's gift and grace to us.

Why Do Muslim Women Wear The Hijab from rainbow collective on Vimeo.

On the days that you are feeling violent ...

... try counting to ten before setting anyone on fire. Unless you are Red Forman.

Kickin' DIY ass

All the laboratories complaining that they don't have enough money for a scanning electron microscope should watch this.



I salute you, Mr Krasnow.

From here.

Let's hear it for equal pay!

Once upon a time in Asia, girl children get only marginal education; priority was given to boys. Today, go to any university in Malaysia (and many parts of the world) and you can see how this is now laughable. More young women are qualified to enter universities than young men. This includes areas like engineering and mathematics, once upon a time the unencroachable domain of males.

Women are now breaching the glass ceiling; just look at personalities like the Governor of Malaysia's Central Bank, Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz. However, women still receive less pay than men worldwide; statistics in the USA show that women earn 77 cents to every dollar that a man earns.

If you want to show your support for equal pay for women, wear red on March 25th, will ya?



P/S Click on video at discretion (not entirely work safe). And you'll never look at your grandma quite the same way.

Midweek sh*ts and giggles

If laughter is the best medicine, why do we still need chemotherapy?

If you ever had a thing for the original Karate Kid ...

... don't watch this.

Wax On, F*ck Off with Ralph Macchio from Ralph Macchio

Love that he looked younger than he did in My Cousin Vinny (aka the last time Marisa Tomei looked like she is of a healthy weight).

*pats Ralph Macchio fondly*

Who is afraid of the Internet?

Beautiful, beautiful animated video that makes you smile, and then think. It may be a little long, but definitely worth clicking.



A lot of people are saying that the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt was largely successful because of the Internet. Connectivity helps to fan the fervour amongst those protesting and garner support to their cause. An Egyptian man even named his daughter Facebook as a tribute to the social networking site.  

But are we naive in thinking that the Internet is so powerful?

The Internet is value neutral; but like a sword, the wielder can both cut and also BE cut. It can be used as a tool by the activists; but by the same coin, the authorities working to stamp out dissidence can also use it to track, identify and contravene the efforts of the activists.

But  as Evgeny Morozov pointed out, when the Internet is primarily used to download bootleg entertainment material (all right, porn, dammit) and to tell/troll your friends of your "noteworthy" activities, the likelihood of the "democratic change" extolled by the cyber-utopians are about as real as the Farmville corn you harvest.

Euphemisms You Should Know

Euphemism: a word or phrase used to avoid saying an unpleasant or offensive word.

'Senior citizen' is a euphemism for 'old person'.

The article made so much use of euphemism that often its meaning was unclear.

(Thank you Cambridge Dictionaries Online!)

This one is a winner: Got caught cheating by your wife = Crashing the Escalade.



That's what happens when you get caught with your pants down. Sometimes even literally.

Gotta love a nerd

Anyone who ever watched footie at a stadium (live or as a telecast) and/or is a hardcore rock music fan would know this iconic STOMP-STOMP-CLAP. I even had Generation Z students who used this song as template for a performance to explain mitosis.

This masterpiece is the brain child of one Dr Brian May, lead guitarist of the quintessential arena rock band, Queen. Dr May is more than a wild-haired electric guitar virtuoso, he is also an astrophysicist who wrote a book on the cosmology (aptly named Bang! A History of the Universe) based on his work on interstellar dust.

Yup, wild-haired brainy dude.(Thanks Wikimedia Commons!)

Initially, the sound effect was not to be included in the final cut of the song; but he was intrigued by the feedback from the audience during a concert that he thought deeply of how he could incorporate the audience participation in their live act - "a means of uniting the audience".

"I was thinking, 'What can you give an audience that they could do while they're standing there? They can stamp and they can clap and they can sing some kind of chant,' " he says. "To me, it was a uniting thing. It was an expression of strength." - excerpted from NPR interview.


He drew from his physics and mathematics background to create a distinctive sound of thousands of feet stomping and clapping in unison, building sound using old boards and prime numbers. Bet when you were swotting through mathematics, calculus, algebra and geometry, you never thought that you can use it to create a song that nets you millions in royalties, no?

Dr Brian May is the reason why girls love wild haired musicians: the guitar will loosen the knickers, but that brain? Totally meltworthy.

Copy and paste for uncomedic error

Plagiarism in academic circles are considered as one of the highest blasphemy (just below falsifying data). Used to be this is about not acknowledging information sources but the "Ctrl+C" and "Ctrl+V" function in most writing softwares has extended the odd quotes to large swathes of work lifted ad verbatim from the original source (with/without attribution).

 It is not acceptable behaviour.

Anyone teaching at an institution of higher learning will tell you that "copy-paste" term papers are pretty par for the course. The students claim that they are overworked, don't quite understand what is the objective of the paper (and hence stuffed everything possible in it in hopes to garner some mercy points) and all kinds of excuses ("I didn't have time to do the paper properly since my cat died and I'm in mourning." is my personal favourite) to justify their action.

Identifying plagiarised paper of most student is actually pretty easy; just look for islands of flawless sentences in a sea of awkwardly written prose or perfect English sentences from students who could barely identify themselves in said language. Softwares like turnitin makes proving academic dishonesty that much easier.

What are the consequences of citation amnesia? It ranges from suspension, paper retraction or to even stepping down from being the defense minister. Karl-Theodore zu Guttenberg, a charismatic and youthful politician from aristocratic lineage (with the courtesy title of Baron), was alleged to have plagiarised significant portions of with Doctorate of Law thesis. Four years after granting him the degree, the University of Bayreuth withdrew his PhD.

The moral of the story is: If you lie, don't get caught.

Go ahead and drop out of school ...

... but only if you are an amazing warlord with charisma to inspire the golden horde.

Otherwise, hit the books.

Happy International Women's Day!

Eye candy and an emphatic message for women = FTW!




For those who are wondering, the answer is "Yes. I have a thing for Daniel Craig." Silent or otherwise.

Not shooting blanks

Measuring fertility in men often seems to involve a porn magazine, a sterile container and a microscope. However, it appears that there is a less "invasive" way to find out whether your swimmers can actually hit the target.

Gentlemen, time to whip out the measuring tapes!

Frustration ...

I has it.

 
Philosophy to live by, y/y?

What really occurs between Batman & Robin is a mystery...

... I don't think I want to solve it.