On this day...

(Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)
1835 – European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yar in Southeastern Australia founded the city of Melbourne.
1862 – American Civil War: James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson led their Confederate troops to a decisive victory against John Pope's Union Army at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia.
1918 – Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, helping to spark the Red Terror in the future Soviet Union, a repression against Socialist-Revolutionary Party members and other political opponents.
1992 – German race car driver Michael Schumacher won his first Formula One race at the Belgian Grand Prix.
1995 – Bosnian War: NATO began its bombing campaign against the Army of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All moments of profound historical importance. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if even one of those events had not happened? How would the world be different today? Just a single moment in history that could change the entire course of the Earth. Makes you wonder...

Smiggle

So a few weeks back I obtained a free blue Smiggle pencilcase from Reorientation Day at Monash, and it prompted the following conversation today:

Rachel (my sister): Haha, you have a Smiggle pencilcase. That's soooo manly *eyeroll*
Me: Hey, I got it for free, okay. That makes me Asian, not gay.
Rachel: Could be both.

Kids. They sure grow up quick, huh? xD

Also, credit to Michelle Phan for including the following song in her latest vid. Love it!



(For all you kids who read this as a Facebook note, and not on my blog www.dailyglassofoj.blogspot.com, get on it!)

Same-sex marriage

Gay rights activists constantly batter their religious opposition for what they percieve to be religious folk as "forcing" their views onto the LGBT community.

And yet these same people then turn around and proclaim that they must be allowed to have the same rights in marriage as non-same sex couples.

Marriage itself is an inherently religious ceremony. What those gay rights activists are doing is essentially trying to force the non-gay community to accept their beliefs, changing their practices merely to accomodate others.

Anyone else see a double standard here? Anyone else see just a tint of hypocrisy?

Gay rights activists want everyone else to change, just to accomodate them. And they seem constitutionally incapable of comporomise, but then berate everyone else for not doing what they percieve as "compromise", but is actually forcing other people to bend to their wishes.

I think the ideal middle ground would be the legalisation of civil unions between one person and another, regardless of whether it is between a male and a female, or a male and a male, or a female and a female. In that way, the idea of 'marriage' is not altered, while people who are homosexual can still become life partners. And that, after all, is what marriage is really about. Not about dressing up and standing a church, but rather the commitment to a lifetime with the person that you love. If you can get that, does it matter about the venue, or if it's a priest that blesses the holy matrimony? These things are all irrelevant.

65th anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima

Here at dailyglassofoj, we often take the mickey out of various things. But there are some things that even we must be serious about. Yesterday, the 6th of August, was the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, back in 1945. While that act remains controversial even today, it is indisputable that many tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people continue to live with the consequences.

I was reading the paper, and chanced upon a mention of Sadako Sasaki, the famous leukemia victim who died in 1955, after attempting to fold a thousand paper cranes in the hope of being granted a wish. There is a human cost to all war, a cost that echoes through the eons.

I close with the inscription below Sadako's statue at the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshima:

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth."

It's common knowledge...

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Study_observes_masturbation_and_other_sexual_trends_among_US_teens

"A recently published nationwide survey of US teenagers indicates boys tend to masturbate more — and start younger — than girls."

"Nearly three-fourths of boys reported having masturbated, compared to only less than half of girls. About half of boys reported masturbating twice or more per week, also higher than the 23 percent of girls."

Multikill!

Alright so I was reading Wiki news (the Current events page on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events), and I came across this article: http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE7710EN20110802

Was so confused. Four dead and seven wounded from a single landmine? What were they doing, standing on top of one another and jumping through the minefield?!

Yeah.