World AIDS Day is held on 1 December each year and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day and the first one was held in 1988.
http://www.worldaidsday.org/about-world-aids-day.php
by The Punjapit Alliance
COSMETIC surgery, skinny jeans and hoop earrings are in fashion in North Korea as the pursuit of female beauty remains unbound by the communist state’s chronic food shortages, an online newspaper reported.
Daily NK, a North Korea-specific Internet newspaper, quoted sources in the North saying that although facelifts are illegal state surgeons are performing cosmetic surgeries in secret in return for bribes.
Doctors receive 2,000-3,000 North Korean won (officially S$17 – S$26) for an upper eyelid surgery which can remove excess fatty deposits that appear as puffiness, it said.
‘Upper eyelid surgeries and cosmetic tattoos on eyebrows, lips and the corners of eyes are widespread in North Korea,’ a source from Pyongyang was quoted as saying. ‘Many women want plastic surgeries regardless of deprivation and food shortages,’ the source added.
One kilo of rice costs 2,000 won in the North, according to Daily NK, although the reported exchange rate for the Northern Won is said to be widely different from the actual rate used in Pyongyang. The North used to ban women from wearing jeans or mini-skirts, having flashy hairdos and other forms of ‘capitalist decadence’.
Its drab socialist concept of female beauty is traditionally limited to toneless make-up, ear-length haircuts and ankle hemlines. But restrictions eased, reportedly on orders from Mr Kim Jong Un, the youngest son of leader Kim Jong Il and heir apparent, the online newspaper said. Some upper-class women in Pyongyang are now daringly walking in skinny jeans in the street, it said.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_668583.html
by Elizabeth and A + E
Standing just three inches high, a miniature Chinese snuff bottle stunned bystanders as it sparked a bidding frenzy.
Collectors eager to snap up the highly prized artifact, battled it out pushing the the price five times over the pre-sale estimate of £400,000.
The 18th century antique eventually sold for £2 million to a private Asian collector over the telephone, smashing the world record for a snuff bottle which was set 18 months ago.
Adorned with decorative scenes of Chinese landscapes and portraits of a young woman and topped with a mother of pearl stopper, the enamelled glass object was created in the Imperial Palace workshops in Peking – now Beijing – during the reign of Emperor Qianlong.
by The Punjapit Alliance
Truly strange news, that a sex scandal would happen involving a coffin, and with photos and videos there is truth. A netizen posted a video claiming that it was real footage, with that video showing a couple engaging in sexual activity in a coffin, the scene being very indecent. In this recently exposed and publicized video, a male and female couple appear in a room where coffins/caskets are placed. The two of them look around and seeing that there are no one around, they began passionately kissing and touching each other. In the throes of passion, the male strips the female completely naked and then carries the female onto the coffin…
by The Punjapit Alliance
It’s the kind of bawding school where six of the best could have a whole new meaning.
Because at the £1,400-a-term International Sex School in Vienna, Austria, corporal punishment is part of the curriculum, not a punishment.
Swedish-born headmistress Ylva-Maria Thompson says anyone over the age of 16 can enrol as a pupil to learn at what she calls “the world’s first college of applied sexuality”.
Students live in a mixed sex dormitory block where they’re expected to practise their homework.
Added the school head: “Our core education is not theoretical, but very practical. The emphasis is on how to be a better lover.
“Sexual positions, caressing techniques, anatomical features. And we teach people hands on.”
Raunchy adverts showing a couple making love have already been banned by straight-laced Austrian TV.
“This is wrapped up in a very stylish way but it is just selling sex,” said one protester.
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Bawding_school_for_sex_students
by Arthur Furrowfield
Admirers who have smothered Oscar Wilde’s grave with kisses will no longer be able to get so close to the stone memorial as lipstick marks are eroding it.
For years fans – especially women – have visited the huge memorial in Paris’s largest cemetery Pére Lachaise to pay homage to the Irish dramatist.
But expressions of love for the unconventional playwright have often spilled over into thousands of red lipstick kisses and graffiti messages which have covered the bottom half of the tomb.
The public will no longer be able to get so close as a glass barrier has now been constructed, the Observer said.
It will re-open on Wednesday on the anniversary of Wilde’s death.
Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland had repeatedly appealed to the public to leave the grave alone, but to no avail.
Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde who died in Paris in 1900 aged 46. His restored tomb will be unveiled this week
He said there was a £7,700 fine for anyone caught defacing the tomb but recognised culprits were largely tourists who left the country before police were able to track them down.
He said grease in lipstick absorbs into the stone and every time it is cleaned more stone is eroded.
He told the newspaper: ‘From a technical point of view, the tomb is close to being irreparably damaged.
by Elizabeth, A + E
The world’s first urine-controlled video game has been installed in a London bar.
Visitors at the The Exhibit Bar in Balham can play one of three games every time they use a urinal.
Gordon MacSween, one of the game’s co-founders, said he was not sure how the public would react to the game initially.
But as soon he saw it go on trial at a bar in Cambridge he knew he was on to something good.
The game was designed to create a valuable media opportunity from the 55 seconds the average male spends while he pees just staring at a blank wall.
There is an advert played before and after the game promoting a drink you can buy at the bar.
At the end of the game, players are encouraged to post their scores via mobile to Twitter and to a live leader board so they can compete with their friends.
The units will be rolled-out in selected venues across the UK in early 2012.
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/New_game_is_more_wee_than_Wi
by The Punjapit Alliance
Good news, American Samoa football fans! For the first time in their long and not-so illustrious history, the ‘world’s worst football team’ has finally won, ending a 16-year, 30-strong string of defeats with a 2-1 victory over Tonga.
Celebrating the World Cup qualifying round win as if they’d actually won the World Cup itself, the American protectorate’s football is still in a jubilant mood, after drawing 1-1 with the Cook Islands. That’s right, two matches undefeated! Get in!
It makes a fantastic change from their infamous defeat at the hands of Australia two years ago, where they were royally thrashed 30-1 by the Aussies.
“Maybe we have a chance to do something special here beyond this one game,” said Coach Thomas Rongen before the 1-1 draw, “but let’s enjoy this one right now.”
“I hope that we can now improve our standing in the FIFA rankings and get into the hundreds,” he added, speaking to American Samoa’s football federation. “We are 204 at the moment and this win will have helped.”
Currently, American Samoa are still joint last at the bottom of FIFA’s international football rankings, but considering the island only has 55,000 inhabitants and all the of the players are amateurs taking time off from work to play, it’s really not that bad. Kind of. Maybe.
“It’s amateur football at its best,” said Rogen. “The game at the highest level can be very cynical, but this is just about 23 guys making sacrifices.”
Their 2-1 win over Tonga
by The Punjapit Alliance
A British man dragged a piano up a mountain in Thailand – to play Beethoven for blind elephants.
Paul Barton, 50, achieved a long-held ambition as he sat behind his piano, just feet away from the elephants.
He decided to do the challenge to help raise funds for the blind elephants, which live in a reserve on the mountains of Kanchanaburi.
Mr Barton said: “It was a 50th birthday present to myself. My wife and I have been working with blind elephants for many years, and I thought it might be something they would enjoy to listen to.
“I sat down and thought, what do you play to an elephant? You only get a short time, so I started trawling through my books and then Slow movement 2 from Beethoven’s Pathitique Sonata just stuck.
“I had to drag the piano up a mountain, I have a really bad back, but I wanted to make the effort so I could feel like I had undergone a personal challenge.”
Yorkshire-born Mr Barton moved to Thailand 16 years ago with his wife to be closer to the elephants.
He hopes to put on a concert with him and the elephants before the end of the year to raise money for an electric fence.
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Man_drags_piano_up_mountain_for_elephants
by The Punjapit Alliance
Mireille Loup was born in 1969 in Lausanne. She now lives and works in Arles, France. After studying in Belgium and France, she graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles in 1994. After that, she had numerous solo exhibitions all over Europe and group exhibitions in the United States, Canada and Latin America. In her very intimate work, she deals with the fears and dreams of the individual in modern society. For «Nocturnes», she was inspired by Peter Pan’s author James Matthew Barrie.
Initially Mireille Loup graduated from the National School of Photography, Arles, France, and the Institut Saint-Luc (E.R.G.), Brussels, Belgium, as well as the School of Fine Arts in Caen, France, and the University of Caen, Humanities and arts Department, France. After that she has had a successful career with more than a hundred shows accross the globe, received many awards and has her artworks in many private and public collections like the FNAC (Fond National d’Art Contemporain), the FRAC (Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain) Ile-de-France, the Musée de la Photographie, Braga, Portugal, the Artothèque du Limousin, Limoges, the Collection Mario Testino, the Collection Ileana Tounta, Athènes, Greece.
via: http://www.mireilleloup.com/
by A + E and Elizabeth + Pip G.
Punjapit 