Let your patriotism explode, raise that flag...

...and as many other double entendres as you can pack into a three minute rap video featuring Mentos and your national duty to make babies.

In Singapore, it's your duty to make babies on August 9:

Yesterday was National Day in Singapore, a day to commemorate the country’s separation from Malaysia in 1965. The event is traditionally marked by a parade, but this year the evening’s festivities might have been more memorable. A little over a week ago, the candy maker Mentos released a commercial promoting “National Night”—a call for Singaporeans to do their civic duty and make babies.

Singapore’s birth rate is at a record low. Female citizens of the country now give birth to about one child in their lifetime, a number that used to be much higher. (American women, by comparison, have about 2 children.) According to a video released by Singapore’s government, the city-state needs to produce about 50,000 children per year to maintain its population and avoid the economic calamity associated with an aging citizenry. But the current birth rate is less than 30,000 children per year. To combat the problem, last month the government sought ideas from the public; that’s when The Freshmaker popped in.

The Daily Mail can post this story...

...and Glen Reynolds can link to the story and post this observation:

“I THINK MY BREASTS SAVED MY LIFE:” Huge-breasted model, 32, walks away from horror crash after her 38KKK chest acts as AIRBAG. Is there anything they can’t do?

But as soon as I mention this newsworthy item and post a picture of the victim, then suddenly it's all, "you're such a male chauvinist pig."

Particularly if I quote the victim, a Ms. Sheyla Hershey:

"'I think my breasts saved my life,' she told Barcroft Media. 'The accident was bad and my boobs are sore, but they protected the rest of me.'

Her car spun around and hit a tree during the crash but she denied the drunk-driving charge in court on Monday, reported the Daily Mirror.

Amazing!

Nonetheless, despite the miraculous nature of Ms. Hershey's deliverance from serious injury, I submit that the story isn't about the story.

The story is about the story about the story.

Tales of the bizarre.

Here is a list of "ten mysterious people."

Along with Kaspar Hauser, the Comte de St. Germain and the Man in the Iron - actually velvet - Mask, the list includes some I hadn't heard of including

Gil Perez

Gil Perez was a Spanish soldier who suddenly appeared in Mexico City on October 26, 1593. He was wearing the uniform of the guards of the Del Gobernador Palace in the Philippines. He claimed to have no idea how he had managed to appear in Mexico. He stated that moments before finding himself there, he had been on sentry duty in Manila at the governor’s Palace. He told them that the governor (Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas) had just been assassinated.


Two months later, news arrived from the Philippines by ship. They carried news that confirmed that the governor had been killed and they verified other aspects of Perez’s story. Witnesses confirmed that Perez had indeed been on duty in Manila just before arriving in Mexico. In addition, one of the passengers on the ship recognized Perez and swore that he had seen him in the Philippines on October 23. Perez eventually returned to the Philippines and resumed his life – which was uneventful until his death. You can read a more indepth article on Gil Perez here.

And the Green Children of Woolpit:

The Green Children of Woolpit were two children who appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, UK, in the 12th century. The children were brother and sister and they had green colored skin. Their appearance was normal in all other areas. They spoke an unrecognized language and refused to eat anything other than pitch from bean pods. Eventually their skin lost its green color. When they learned English they explained that they were from the ‘Land of St Martin’ which was a dark place because the sun never rose far above the horizon. They claimed that they were tending their father’s herd and followed a river of light when they heard the sounds of bells – finding themselves in Woolpit.


Some of the more unusual theories proposed for the origin of the children are that they were Hollow Earth children, parallel dimension children, or Extraterrestrial children.

Weird, weird stuff.

Why employment lawyers would starve in Russia.

Russian court rules that sexual harassment is not only not illegal, but may be mandatory.

Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules


A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.
 
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.


She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.