BTW Here's an article in Dutch which goes into more detail: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?articleid=GIC2BGSCT

According to the interview Rouslan Toumaniantz advised the girl to have more than three stars on her face and showed her a drawing of what he had in mind. When she agreed she actually wanted even more stars thatn Rouslan had suggested. She was initially happy with the results but it all changed when she saw how her father entered the tattoo parlor and saw what had happened.

Here's a picture of the tattoo "artist": http://www.standaard.be/Assets/Images_Upload/2009/06/16/toumanian.jpg

The guy's name is Rouslan Toumaniantz. Looking at his face with all the wild piercings, ear studs and facial tattoos Kimberley must have known very well what she was getting into. It's just as clear that Rouslan doesn't look like someone who's very comfortable with outrageous requests and would not say no to 18 year old girls with stupid ideas that they regret 1 day later. It's a good lesson for both of 'em. She'll have the guilt, he will have to pay for the tattoo removal.

seefish3, the book is indeed called 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'. The book takes place in a world where most animals have become extinct which is why electric recreations of animals (like sheep) have become popular. This is one of the things that set humans apart from androids. Humans feel empathy for animals, androids don't.

The song is called Bruises. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairlift_(band) for info on the band.

This picture ( http://www.life.com/image/3428489 ) probably comes from the same photo shoot.

Just typical. If the same thing had happened to a Scottish vegatarian greek orthodox christian policeman with the same silly beard most people would recognize that this guy would never fit in with his co-workers. If you stand out like that, you'll get a few jokes. But because he's a Pakistani muslim his co-workers are at fault because they're racists and anti-muslim bigots.

Polx, it's an urban legend that Sony lost the video format war because they banned porn on Betamax. Sony didn't want _their own_ duplication centers working for the porn industry but there were plenty of other companies who had no problems with producing porn videotapes for the Betamax format.

More recently Sony also prohibited daughter companies duplicating porn Blu-Ray discs (which isn't unique, other companies like Philips feel the same). No problem, the porn industry simply goes to a different company who has no qualms about working with the porn industry.

Sony lost the video format war because VHS was cheaper to license, had longer tape lengths, was based on simpler tech and therefore cheaper and there were a lot more companies producing VHS VCRs. Competition leads to lower prices leads to more products sold. Sony simply couldn't compete with its own expensive proprietary standard against one that was used by all other companies.

Hadiths are not "properly documented by multiple people" if you're a scientist and historian. The hadith are collections of sayings by Mohammed that were _orally_ passed down. Mohammed died in 632. The highed valued hadith collection according to most muslims was written by Muhammad al-Bukhari but he lived _two hundred_ years later (810-870).

Eveil Pundit made a good point about the crusades. Western Europe had been under assault by muslim warlords for centuries at the time of the crusades. Spain had been under muslim rule for almost 400 years, an invasion of France had been fought off, Sicily had been a muslim colony for a century, the Byzantine empire had lost most of its territory to Arabs, the christian churches in the middle east were under siege. Most people in the middle east and north Africa were non-Arab christians at that time. Even now descendants of the original inhabitants of those countries still retain the christian religion of their forefathers, like the Kopts in Egypt or the Assyrians in Turkey and Iraq.

The Crusades were actually one of the few times the west fought back. It didn't help much, since Constantinopel was lost to the west in 1453. The muslim Turks also conquered large parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkan. Their luck turned after they lost the battle of Vienna in 1683 but they still retained large parts of Europe till the 19th century. All in the west has been under attack by muslim invaders for 1200 years.

Personally I'm surprised by the number of people who do believe there's some sort of invisible, all-powerful being floating above us. The funny thing is that most Christians are rational, critical folks who know exactly why all other religions are hogwash. They laugh about the silliness of all other belief systems. They find the Norse and Greek myths ludicrous, the Sikhs superstitious pagans, the Hindus just weird and muslims scary fundamentalists, yet they don't see how their own beliefsystem is just as flawed, ludicrous, superstitious and sometimes even scary when its taken to extremes.

Apple has a very loyal customerbase because of vendor lock in. If you've bought a collection of songs on iTunes, you can only play 'em on an iPod or iTouch. That makes it hard to switch to another brand.

Old news: See

Laptops give up their secrets to U.S. customs agents (Oct 25, 2006)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/24/business/laptop.php

Nevertheless, this is worrying. I'd like to visit the states sometime soon, but those horror stories about US customs and Border Protection agent kinda ruin it for me. I don't want to step on a plane wondering if some paranoid customs agent is going to give me grief once I step down on US soil.

I agree with Kate & Jennifer. That lady has a serious genetic disorder which she has passed on to her first child. It's just dumb luck that her second child is healthy but could still distribute those genes to a future generation.

Some people should really be stopped from having kids when they're so selfcentered that they can only think of their own need to have children and have no eye for the future happiness of their children.

I thought it looked like two bears mating ...

Hey, I recognize that photo! It was used as the cover for Synergy's 1979 LP "Games".