A Different Kind of El Niño Phenomenon

Recently eaten: lemon pepper chicken
Recent annoyance: the snow won't last, I just know it

Can you really call this kid a prodigy? Does the nieghborhood brat who shoots cats with his BB gun count as a prodigy? Ok, well, maybe if he did it wearing tight pants and a cape. Just maybe.

Child matador, 11, kills six bulls (via BBC)
An 11-year-old Franco-Mexican boy has killed six young bulls in a single fight, despite moves to stop the event.

Michelito Lagravere has been bullfighting since he was four years old.

Last year several of Michelito's bullfights in France were banned after protests by animal rights groups.

This time the controversial spectacle was given a last minute go-ahead despite pressure from child protection and anti-bullfighting campaign groups.

"Child's play? Methinks not."

Barbarians!

Recently eaten: chopped salad
Recent annoyance: the gooey white-out booger on the end of the brush before you get to the usable stuff

The Brits have gone to great lengths to discredit the Beijing Olympics. They've got a lot to live up to, but the latest expose from China really has the Brits fuming. Long a tolerant nation of crooked teeth, yellow enamel, and generally horrifying orthodontia, the British take personal offense to the story revealed below. This is clearly a toothist country.

Olympic: Child singer revealed as fake (Guardian)
When nine-year-old Lin Miaoke launched into Ode to the Motherland at the Olympic opening ceremony, she became an instant star.

"Tiny singer wins heart of nation," China Daily sighed; "Little girl sings, impresses the world," gushed another headline, perhaps in reference to Lin's appearance on the front of the New York Times. Countless articles lauded the girl in the red dress who "lent her voice" to the occasion.

But now it emerges that Lin lent someone else's voice, following high-level discussions - which included a member of the Politburo - on the relative photogenicity of small children.

The recording to which Lin mouthed along on Friday was by the even younger Yang Peiyi. It seems that Yang's uneven teeth, while unremarkable in a seven-year-old, were considered potentially damaging to China's international image.

Somebody get the girl a retainer!

Manbabies

Recently eaten: halibut
Recent annoyance: javascript

I stole this off BoingBoing but it's so darn creepy and funny at the same time, I couldn't help myself.

Manbabies

The Kid Stays in the Picture...Just Farther Away

Recently eaten: roasted chicken
Recent annoyance: sneezles and wheezles

What's the big whoop? I've been using kid repellent for years. Anyways, children don't have any rights.

U.K. campaign targets kid repellents
England's commissioner for children and a civil liberties group joined in a campaign Tuesday to ban high-frequency devices intended to drive away kids who congregate outside shops and in other areas.

The so-called "Mosquito" device emits high-frequency noise that is audible — and annoying — to young ears, but generally not heard by people over 20.

"This device is a quick fix that does not tackle the root cause of the problem and it is indiscriminate," English Children's Commissioner Al Aynsley-Green said.

The campaigners claim that about 3,500 of the electronic kid repellents, made by a Welsh company, are in use.

Aynsley-Green said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio that the devices do not deal with the real problem, which is that children have no place to gather other than on the streets.

"I think it is a powerful symptom of what I call the malaise at the heart of our society," he said.

"I'm very concerned about what I see to be an emerging gap between the young and the old, the fears, the intolerance, even the hatred, of the older generation toward the young."

Youth crime is a major concern in Britain; according to the crime prevention charity Nacro, young people are responsible for two-fifths of incidents of theft, burglary, robbery and violence.

Fear of violent youth was underlined this week by the conviction of a 19-year-old man, and youths aged 17 and 16 for killing a 47-year-old man who had confronted them about their drunken behavior.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, supported the campaign against the devices.

"Imagine the outcry if a device was introduced that caused blanket discomfort to people of one race or gender, rather than to our kids," Chakrabarti said. "The Mosquito has no place in a country that values its children and seeks to instill them with dignity and respect."

The Mosquito's inventor, Howard Stapleton, has called for agreement about guidelines for using the devices.

"We tell shopkeepers to use it when they have a problem and I would be more than happy to introduce a contract which stipulates to shopkeepers how it can be used," Stapleton was quoted by the Western Mail newspaper as saying.

"People talk about infringing human rights but what about the human rights of the shopkeeper who is seeing his business collapse because groups of unruly teenagers are driving away his customers?"

And Baby Makes One

Recently eaten: lentil soup
Recent annoyance: that scary cockroach on the window ledge on the bus

I like these sorts of guides because there are people stupid enough out there who need them in all seriousness. Britney Spears, I'm talking to you.

Do's and Dont's with Babies

In The Bag

Recently eaten: banana bread pudding
Recent annoyance: typhoid marys at work who spread their sickness around

Ah, that bundle of joy! No, I don't mean the baby, I mean the rice. Only the cray6 Japanese could come up with a such a bizarre birth announcement. Does the rice come with a prize baby inside? Is the rice made of shredded baby?

All That and a Bag of Rice

Rollerball for Midgets

Recently eaten: xiao long bao (meat-filled buns well-known from Shanghai serves with vinegar and ginger)
Recent annoyance: the one english language channel here in HK playing "America's Got Talent" season 1

Just for fun, I am jumping ahead of my China posts to this video of some schoolchildren engaged in some sort of roller derby outside of the Twin Pagoda Temple in Taiyuan.

Quick Post

Recently eaten: chicken saltimbocca
Recent annoyance: Nickelback

Just a quick post on Halloween, my favorite time of year. many of you lament the coming of fall winter like summer didn't just have its deadly grip on us for the last 8 months or so in D.C. bring on the pumpkin smashers and mittens. I'd like to wake up and not be sweating for once. and what could be better than for scaring small children to be socially acceptable for about a week...or two.

Cats And Children Are Winning the War on Terror

Recently eaten: spinach fettuccine, baked chicken
Recent annoyance: It's 70 degrees people, I think you can hold off on wearing the fleece

I read this article on Wired.com today and it read like a page straight out my nightmare book, except that this nightmare has already come true. What do you think children have been scamming us with for years? Cuteness and helplessness. There are plenty of children that get by in the wild with just some grubs and a dead carcass to sleep in, yet, here we are, pawns in their sick game.

Cats Harbor Secret Plan to Turn Us Into Litter-Scooping Robots
One of my cats -- the one that has not yet appeared on I Can Has Cheezburger -- has developed an elaborate routine for getting me up to feed him in the morning. It involves a lot of meowing, jumping on things, knocking things over, and the occasional loud coughing up of hairballs. I can't prove that last bit is intentional, but I'm pretty sure it is.

If I had a real job I wouldn't have to set an alarm clock, but as it is I feel that this is a problem that I must solve, as I solve all my problems, with technology.

The technology in this case is an automatic cat feeder. Most of the automatic feeders on Amazon come with reviews detailing how the cats have managed to work around the DRM (dinner rights management) built into them.

No matter what lies between them and kibble, the cats manage to prod, pull and shove their way to an extra serving. I'm buying one anyway, because I have a Dremel tool, and somehow that convinces me that I can re-engineer the thing to outsmart the one primal urge a cat has left after being sterilized.

I already have an automatic water dispenser for the cats, and I'm thoughtfully eyeing one of those elaborate automatic self-cleaning litter boxes that scoops, flushes and sprays its interior with the delicate scent of live mice, the better to make it not just a litter box, but a space to exist. It occurs to me that with the proper application of money and floor space, you can get machines to take on most of the duties incumbent upon the cat owner.

For instance, any number of electronic cat toys will whip a fuzzy thing around so you can watch Best Week Ever without having to move any part of your body. Better yet, they make actual electronic mice. When I get that time machine working, I'm going to go back to colonial times and explain to a farmer that in the future, we go to the store and buy artificial vermin. I'm sure he'll enjoy thinking about that when he's not busy watching locusts eat his crops or burying his children.

This covers most of the services I provide to my cat, but not all of them. Let's start with the scratching and/or skritching. As far as I can see, this is between my cat and my hand, with very little participation from me. I just kind of stick out my hand and make a repetitive scratching movement, and my cat moves his head and neck around to his liking. I can even do it while playing Warcraft, provided the other people in my group don't mind dying for a cat's pleasure once in a while.

Really, though, there's no reason I couldn't substitute one of those robotic hands scientists build to prove that some day robots will be able to make shadow puppets. Just stick it on a "repetitive scratching motion loop" and the cat can go nuts, assuming he isn't terrified by the whirring and buzzing. On the other hand, fiction teaches us that a) most robots turn evil and b) most severed hands turn evil, so maybe this isn't such a good idea.

After that I only need to build a robotic lap -- I think that's called a "heating pad" -- and some sort of sweeper arm to knock the cat off my desk when he's being pesky, and then I'm set. Modern science has very nearly rendered human beings unnecessary when it comes to the life of a cat.

And you know, I can't back this up biologically, but I somehow suspect this is how the cats planned it all along. Time may prove that, evolutionarily speaking, we are simply a large and complex external cat organ, one given the duty of making itself obsolete.

I think, on some level, we know this. That's why so many stories and movies and TV shows are about robots replacing mankind. I think if you look carefully, somewhere in the corner of their austere mechanical fortresses, you'll see a cat box being scooped.

Finally, A Teacher That Gets Results

Recently eaten: brown rice, beef stir fry
Recent annoyance: unwieldy hormones

This is what's wrong with America today. If I threw a chair, and a tiny one at that. at one kid, do you think they would name me teacher of the year? Heck no. I'd be thrown into high security prison before that kid lost another baby tooth. I'm moving to Japan.

Chair throwing coach named 'super teacher'
A Japanese teacher who threw a chair at his students was named "super teacher" by the local board of education despite having been reprimanded several times for using corporal punishment, a news agency said on Saturday.

The 52-year-old high-school teacher in Kyoto has been awarded the title every year since 2005 in spite of a history of aggression in the classroom because his strict teaching methods improved his students' performance.

He was punished three times between 1997 and 2001 for physically attacking students, including throwing a chair at the volleyball team he was coaching, and was again accused of corporal punishment this year, Kyodo news agency said.

The teacher, who was not identified in the news agency report, resigned on Friday, having been on medical leave since the latest accusation. He was selected as a role model due to his "outstanding achievement in leading the volleyball team", Kyodo said, citing board officials.

Japan's school system has been at the centre of heated political debate for some time. Some politicians have demanded stricter discipline at Japanese schools, including harsher forms of punishment, to improve overall standards.

But others say that school children are already under too much pressure due to a heavy workload, a strict exam system and frequent cases of bullying.

Mother Russia

Recently eaten: vanilla heath bar crunch ice cream
Recent annoyance: packing

The Russians are starting a new cold war and this time they're not stockliling nuclear weapons or missiles...this time it's BABIES! Tiny, camouflaged bundles of biohazard designed to ruin lives faster than you can say dasvedanya.

Russian Government Sponsors Conception Day
A Russian region best known as the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin has found a novel way to fight the nation's birthrate crisis: It has declared Sept. 12 the Day of Conception and for the third year running is giving couples time off from work to procreate.

The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia's national day. Couples who ``give birth to a patriot'' during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

Ulyanovsk, a region on the Volga River about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held similar contests since 2005. Since then, the number of competitors, and the number of babies born to them, has been on the rise.

Alexei Bezrukov and his wife, Yulia, won a 250,000 ruble prize - equivalent to $10,000 - in June after she gave birth to a baby boy, Andrei. Bezrukov said patriotism wasn't their motive for having a child, their third, although the money was welcome.

``It was a patriotic atmosphere, you know when everyone around is celebrating, but I wasn't thinking of anything but my son,'' he said. ``The whole thing is great, it's great to get 250,000 rubles when you have a new baby to take care of.''

Russia, with one-seventh of the Earth's land surface, has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled countries in the world. With a low birthrate and very high death rate, the population has been shrinking since the early 1990s.

It is now falling by almost half a percent each year. Demographic experts expect the decline to accelerate, estimating that Russia's population could fall below 100 million by 2050.

In his state of the nation address last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced a broad effort to boost Russia's birthrate, including cash incentives to families to have more than one child.

Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov has added an element of fun to the national campaign.

When he held the first competition in 2005, 311 women signed up to take part - and qualify for a half-day off from work. In June 2006, 46 more babies were born in Ulyanovsk's 25 hospitals than in June of the previous year, including 28 born on June 12, officials in the governor's office said.

More than 500 women signed up for the second contest on Sept. 12, 2006. Exactly nine months later, 78 babies, triple the region's daily average, were born. They were welcomed into the world as Russia's national anthem was played, the officials said.

Since the campaign began, the birthrate in the region has risen steadily and is up 4.5 percent so far this year over the same period in 2006, according to the regional administration's Web site.

Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection.

The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, an SUV made in Ulyanovsk. They told reporters they were planning to have another child anyway when they heard about the contest.

Irina Kartuzova had to have a Caesarian section to deliver the baby and it was scheduled for June 12.

The selection committee chose the Kartuzovs from among the 78 couples because of their ``respectability'' and ``commendable parenting'' of their two older children, a spokesman for the governor said.

Other contestants won video cameras, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.

Under the federal program, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are to receive certificates worth $10,000, which can be used to pay for education or to improve the family's living conditions.

Monthly support payments were raised this year to $60 from $28.

Well, I Guess We're All Gonna Die

Recently eaten: fatty tuna
Recent annoyance:

Well, it's been another unfunny day in the news. I thought all the crazies come out when it's warm...

Boys Will Be Boys Will Be The Spawn of Satan

Recently eaten: vodka rigatoni and chicken
Recent annoyance: mosquito bites so itchy that they wake me up in the night

If you ask me, all children are little hellions, whether their last name implies it or not. Better to leave them on some island like Lord of the Flies until they are old enough to be let back into normal society.

Catholic School Opens Gates to Hell Boy
The Hell family has protested to a Catholic school in Australia after it objected to enrolling their son because of his name.

Officials said the boy had been offered a place at the St. Peter the Apostle school in the southern city of Melbourne after discussions among the principal, the parish priest and the family over his last name.

But Alex Hell, 45, said he would rather send 5-year-old Max elsewhere because the school balked at taking the boy because of his family name. Hell said he had Austrian heritage and that the name means "bright."

Hell, a Roman Catholic father of three, said he and his wife initially offered to enroll Max using his mother's maiden name, Wembridge, but later changed their minds.

"It just didn't sit right," Hell told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

He said the school withdrew its offer of enrollment for the boy, and only backed down when Hell took his story to the media.

The organization overseeing Catholic schools in Melbourne issued a statement to the media that acknowledged the dispute, but did not give details or address Hell's claim that the initial enrollment offer had been withdrawn.

In the statement, director of Catholic Education Stephen Elder said using the boy's mother's name was the parents' idea to "assist the child in the transition of schools."

"After discussions between the parish priest and principal, St. Peter the Apostle School has made an offer of enrollment to the student," Elder said. "The school is working with the family in the best interests of the child."

It did not mention Hell's claim that the school had initially refused to enroll his son using that name.

The little guy doesn't look so bad

Lie Like A Baby

Recently eaten: burgers, amish potato salad, baked beans, sweet potato fries
Recent annoyance: that nagging, yet mysteriously recurring ankle injury

Everyone scoffed when I said babies couldn't be trusted.

Don't be fooled by the swaddling clothes, babies are liars
Babies learn to lie when they're six months old, earlier than previously believed -- and these tender deceptions are practice for later, more complicated duplicity.

That's the conclusion of University of Portsmouth psychologists who, based on parent interviews and studies of 50 children, say they've identified an unexpectedly rich culture of infant fibbing.

Said the Globe and Mail:

Long before children can understand complex ideas about truth and deception, Dr. Reddy writes in the April issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, "they are engaging in subtle manipulations of their own and others' actions, which succeed in deceiving others at least temporarily."

The Telegraph added,

Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents' attention.

The researchers say that fake crying, used to get attention though nothing is wrong, is a first step on the slippery slope to deception. The dishonesty, said lead investigator Vasudevi Reddy, can be detected when babies pause to see if they've been heard -- showing that they're "clearly able to distinguish that what they are doing will have an effect."

"This is essentially what all adults do when they tell lies," said Reddy.

Ah, innocence lost....

Babies not as innocent as they pretend [Telegraph]

Sneaky babies learn to lie before they learn to talk [Globe and Mail]

Teach Your Children Well, Or Their Karma Will Be Ruined Forever

Recently eaten: spaghetti and meatballs
Recent annoyance:

I don't even know where to begin with this article. The fact that this kid got away with ruining the mandala. Too bad these aren't Shaolin monks, then that kid would have gotten his comeuppance. This is what happens when you bring culture to Missouri. This is why we can't have nice things.

Toddler ruins monks' sand design
The little boy spotted the pretty pile of colored sand on the floor of the vast hall and couldn't resist. Slipping under a protective rope, he danced all over the sand, ruining the carefully crafted picture.

Never mind that it was the creation of eight Tibetan monks who had spent two days cross-legged on the floor of Union Station, meticulously pouring the sand into an intricate design as an expression of their Buddhist faith.

They were more than halfway done with the design — called a mandala — on Tuesday when they ended their work for the day and left. The little boy showed up sometime later with his mother, who was taking a package to a post office in the hall.

"He did a little tap dance on it, completely destroying it," said Lama Chuck Stanford, of the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.

A security tape shows the boy's mother returning to the mandala, grabbing her son by the arm and walking out of camera range.

The monks saw the destruction Wednesday.

"No problem," Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India, said through a translator. "We didn't get despondent. We have three days more. So we will have to work harder."

The monks are on a yearlong tour of the United States and Canada to raise money for their monastery. The original monastery in Tibet was destroyed.

In a ceremony Saturday, they will sweep up the sand and offer bits to onlookers for their gardens. The rest will be placed in the Missouri River.

"The belief is that it will carry the blessings all over the planet, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi to the gulf and to all the oceans of the world," Stanford said.

Un-break My Heart

Recently eaten: salmon, artichokes
Recent annoyance: people in grocery stores who cannot drive their carts properly

What kind of competition is this? I mean, it's not exactly hard to make a little baby cry especially if you look big enough to eat one of them. Is sumo wrestling so commercialized that instead of actually competing in the sport itself, they have taken to making little babies cry? Well, I wholeheartedly support this new direction that the sport is taking.

Sumo wrestlers making babies cry

"If I had to guess, I'd say female."

The Most Dangerous Predator in the Animal Kingdom is Not the Human

Recently eaten: foot longs from RFK
Recent annoyance: spring fever combined with allergic lethargy

I'd say this little kid is pretty darn awesome. And that means a lot coming from the non-kid person such as myself. I especially enjoyed the scary evil hamster sketch at the bottom.

The Rats of Spring: "Evil Hamsters," a child's poem

Bang On The Drum All Day?

Recently eaten: slow cooked pork, fingerling potatoes
Recent annoyance: uncomfortable bar stools

Now I realize that not everyone is on a 9-to-5 work schedule, but having bummed around the city for the last couple of days, there is an untapped labor pool just waiting for the right employment opportunity.

There seems to be a long line outside the decrepit liquor store on 14th and U Sts.

Many elderly, retired persons have been found at a matinee at the movie theater.

Don't they have truant officers anymore? I must insist on this because there are teenagers and small children all over the place during the school hours. What better education is there for a young person than some hard manual labor?

As for me, I'll be the carefree yuppie sipping hot chocolate at Starbucks.

Ice Scream

Recently eaten: enchilada
Recent annoyance: a bus that comes early??!!

This is why I hate children AND birds.

Boy's screaming kills chickens
"Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in eastern China - and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog.

According to a local newspaper, the bizarre sequence events began when the boy arrived at a village home in the eastern province of Jiangsu in the summer with his father who was delivering bottles of gas.

A villager was quoted as saying the little boy bent over the hen house window, screaming for a long time, after being scared by the dog.

"One neighbour told police that he had heard the boy's crying that afternoon and another villager confirmed the boy screaming by the hen house window," the newspaper said.

A court ruled the boy's screaming was "the only unexpected abnormal sound" and that the 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.

The boy's father was ordered to pay around £117 in compensation to the owner of the chickens. "

Just Cause It's Friday

"What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to save a solid gold baby? Maybe we'll never know."