Eideard

An 18-month-old Cambodian boy who has suckled milk directly from a cow daily for more than a month is in fine health, the child’s grandfather said.

The boy, Tha Sophat, made international headlines after his grandfather revealed he had been feeding himself directly from a cow since July when a storm destroyed his home and his parents left for Thailand to find work.

After he stopped breast-feeding from his mother, the boy became ill, said the 46-year-old grandfather.

The boy watched a calf nurse from its mother, and began to do the same thing, feeding directly from the cow each day, Um Oeung added. When the grandfather pulled him away, the boy cried, so he let him continue, Um Oeung told Reuters.

Neighbors and local officials in the village of Pheas in Siem Reap province, about 315 km from the capital Phnom Penh, say they are not happy about the nursing.

“They blame me and have told me not to allow him to suckle from the cow anymore. They say the boy will be ashamed when he grows up and that he will be naughty,” he said on Sunday…

“His health is fine, he is strong and he doesn’t have diarrhea,” said Um Oeung.

He’s ahead of life for so many wee’uns in Southeast Asia. Surely looks like the cow doesn’t mind.

A New York grocery clerk, fearing he might be late for work, jumped onto city subway tracks to haul an injured passenger to safety after he fainted, authorities said.

The victim was taken to a local hospital after his rescue on Sunday by Carlos Flores, who said he leaped to save the man so he would not be late for work.

“I was thinking, if he gets hit I can’t go to work. It’s Sunday. I can’t miss out. It’s a time-and-a-half day,” Flores was quoted as saying in the New York Daily News.

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman said the incident, while heroic, was dangerous.

“We do not recommend that people jump down to the roadbed,” spokeswoman Deirdre Parker said on Monday.

This dude is entirely too honest.

For many 19th- and 20th-century immigrants or their children, it was a rite of passage: Arriving in America, they adopted a new identity.

Charles Steinweg, the German-born piano maker, changed his name to Steinway (in part because English instruments were deemed to be superior). Tom Lee, a Tong leader who would become the unofficial mayor of Chinatown in Manhattan, was originally Wong Ah Ling. Anne Bancroft, who was born in the Bronx, was Anna Maria Louisa Italiano.

The rationale was straightforward: adopting names that sounded more American might help immigrants speed assimilation, avoid detection, deter discrimination or just be better for the businesses they hoped to start in their new homeland.

Today, most experts agree, that traditional immigrant gambit has all but disappeared…

The New York Times examined the more than 500 applications for name changes in June at the Civil Court in New York, which has a greater foreign-born population than any other city in the United States. Only a half dozen or so of those applications appeared to be obviously intended to Anglicize or abbreviate the surnames that immigrants or their families arrived with from Latin America or Asia…

The vast majority of people with clearly ethnic surnames who applied to change them did so as a result of marriage (belatedly adopting a spouse’s surname or creating a new hyphenated one) or childbirth (because they were legally identified when they were born only as a male or female child or were adopting a parent’s name)…

“If you are talking about 1910, the social forces on conformity were much stronger,” said Marian Smith, senior historian of the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, “whereas now an immigrant arrives with all these legal and identity documents, a driver’s license in their pocket, a passport, with one name on it. To change this is a big deal…”

Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said: “Jews and Italians changed their surnames in the past so that people wouldn’t identify them as Jews or Italians, the famous cases of course being movie stars…Betty Joan Perske became Lauren Bacall, and most people didn’t know she was Jewish; whatever name she used, Lena Horne was black.”

And the fools whose understanding of humanity hasn’t progressed beyond 1910 are the bastion of forces demanding conformity to the most reactionary standard of America’s past: if you’re white, you’re right!

Fitting into the ideology of 1910 America.

You better believe I’m happy – or I’ll exterminate you!

The United States may be the richest nation on Earth, a new study indicates, but it’s not the happiest…

There are two major categories of happiness: overall life satisfaction; and more moment-to-moment enjoyment of life. And while overall satisfaction of life is strongly tied to income, meaning richer nations and individuals have more of this overall bliss, how much one enjoys life (by measures such as laughing and smiling) depends more on social and psychological needs being met. These include having social support and using one’s abilities, as opposed to sitting at a mind-numbing job.

The United States, which had the highest gross domestic product per capita, came in at No. 16 for overall well-being and No. 26 for enjoyment, referred to as positive feelings. The No. 1 spot for overall well-being went to Denmark, and New Zealand landed the No. 1 slot for positive feelings.

“Everybody has been looking at just life satisfaction and income,” said study researcher Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and the Gallup Organization. “And while it is true that getting richer will make you more satisfied with your life, it may not have the big impact we thought on enjoying life…”

Overall satisfaction with life went up with both personal and national income, suggesting societal circumstances play an important role in happiness. But positive feelings, which were slightly higher in relation to higher income, were much more strongly tied to feeling respected, having autonomy and social support and working at a fulfilling job…

Some economists think money increases happiness at the low end of the pay scale as it helps people meet their basic needs, but doesn’t do much once a person is lifted out of poverty. This new study suggests the link between money and happiness goes beyond basic needs. While the steepest rise in overall well-being with money occurred in the poorer individuals and nations, there was still a bump in overall happiness at the higher socioeconomic status regions.

Of course, our politicians are happy enough just buying elections.

I’ve lived my whole life that way and I’m a happier man for it.

The average Briton turns up to work with a hangover three times a month, according to a survey and the frequency is expected to increase during next month’s World Cup.

The charity Drinkaware found each day more than 520,000 people in Britain go to work hung over, with nearly one in five of those admitting that as a result they make mistakes and struggle to keep on top of their workload.

“An international sporting event like the World Cup will inevitably capture the attention of the nation and is a great time for people to come together, but hangovers at work are likely to increase,” said Drinkaware Chief Executive Chris Sorek…

While nine out of 10 people said they considered having a hangover at work unacceptable, two-thirds of the 1,085 adults questioned by pollsters ICM admitted they had joked with their colleagues or boss about having a hangover.

Of those who went to work hung over, seven percent have had to leave work early because they were too ill to carry on.

Then, you add in those too wasted to go to work.

Or, my style – call in sick to stay home and watch your favorite team.

“Just pretend to be an answering machine, then hang up!”

Civil servants who continued working during yesterday’s national strike have revealed they were told to pretend to be answering machines to cope with an overload of calls from the public.

Staff at the Department for Work and Pensions in Carlisle said today they were given a brief script to read out before hanging up, in the style found on telephone answering machines.

One worker said: “To begin with, we all found it hard to keep a straight face, and occasionally, I slipped up and I ended up giving my name to the person who was calling.”

The staff said their fake-robot message was issued for peak lunchtime, between midday and 2pm. The script read: “Due to the high volume of enquiries we are currently experiencing we are unable to take your call. Please call back later…”

A spokeswoman for the DWP did not confirm the instruction but said: “Due to a high volume of customer calls yesterday between 12pm and 2pm some customers were asked to call back after 2pm. Otherwise the majority of our customers had their calls and requests dealt with immediately and in the usual manner.”

“The usual manner” when all you have is scabs and supervisors – is fairly incompetent.

Sleeping is the really important Family Value

Prosecutors are investigating accusations that…state employees at the Oklahoma governor’s mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion’s grounds.

Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them on Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

The accusations raise questions about security at the chief executive’s residence and about the oversight of a program meant in part to reward good behavior by allowing inmates to leave prison for the day and work off site.

Department of Corrections officials believe the state workers who supervised the inmates at the governor’s mansion committed sexual battery, forcible sodomy and rape against inmates from the Hillside Community Corrections Center…The department recently turned its findings over to the office of the Oklahoma County district attorney…

Janet Roloff, a lawyer for one of the women, said her client had endured a “violent, bloody rape” that left her with emotional and physical scars. It is illegal for a supervisor and an inmate to have sex, and Ms. Roloff scoffed at the notion that any sex between her client and the state workers was consensual.

“My client was dragged down, held down by one and raped by another,” she said. “That doesn’t sound very consensual, does it?”

Ms. Roloff said her client had been afraid to report the attack until after her release, for fear of retribution. She said the woman had come forward to try to persuade prison officials to stop sending female inmates to the governor’s mansion.

Haven’t seen any intelligent comment from the governor, yet.

We are reassured.

TMZ obtained this photo of the Apple co-founder leaving company headquarters in Cupertino, California around 3:00 PM (Wednesday).

It’s the first time we’ve seen Jobs back in action since January, when he took a leave of absence for a liver transplant. Jobs has reportedly been back at work for about a month.

BTW — this photo was taken on an iPhone.

Har! My boss at the “Big Blog” said he wouldn’t believe Jobs is back at work – without a photo.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs showed up for work on Monday and was spotted leaving the main corporate campus in Cupertino, California, a Reuters witness said.

Speculation had mounted in past days that Jobs had returned to the company he co-founded more than 30 years ago, and emerged after a nearly six-month medical leave.

On Monday, he was seen leaving the main Apple building in Cupertino, California and getting into a black car alone that was then driven off by men in black suits with ear-pieces.

We all knew the Truth is Out There – somewhere in Cupertino…

iPhone Pong

Here are seven clear signs you might have a work spouse:

1. You depend on a particular co-worker for office supplies, snacks and aspirin.

2. There are inside jokes that you and a specific co-worker share.

3. You can be bluntly honest with this person about his or her appearance, hygiene or hair (and vice versa). You’re comfortable enough to point out that the other’s hair is sticking up — or that someone’s fly is down.

4. When something eventful happens at work, this co-worker is the first person you seek out for a de-briefing.

5. At breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks, your closest co-worker knows what to order for you and how you like your coffee (and vice versa).

6. You and your co-worker can finish each other’s sentences.

7. Someone in your office knows almost as much about your personal life as your best friend or real-life spouse does.

I know people who think they have software that fills this function for them.