What's your take on same-sex marriage? Instead of automatically turning to our elders for sage relationship advice, perhaps we ought to start consulting the youngsters. Not surprisingly, kids are a naturally open-minded bunch that we tend to corrupt with our own biases and racist baggage (yes, that means you, Halloween mom).
Watch how a few five to thirteen-year-olds react after watching viral marriage proposals via Huffington Post. After their initial shock, the kids are impressively tolerant and insightful to LGBT unions, as evidenced in this memorable quote:
"If one person should be able to do something, then everybody else should be able to do it."
So, grownups, that pretty much settles it. Maybe one of these cuties should run for office. I hear Toronto desperately needs a new mayor...
You will never look at a banana the same way again—guaranteed—once you read about the unexpected discovery a British woman made when she was about to peel the imported fruit.
"I thought it was mold," said Consi Taylor, a twenty-nine-year-old Londoner, of the white spots she noticed on her banana. "[B]ut when I had a closer look I saw some funny looking spots...and was horrified to see they were Brazilian Wandering Spiders. They were hatching out on the table, scurrying around on my carpet."
Incredibly, the story gets worse. According to an article in Gawker, Taylor was offered a measly £10 ($16) when she returned the fruit to Sainsbury's supermarket.
Then she sent a photo of the spiders to a pest control outfit, only to discover she was dealing with so-called banana spiders from Brazil, rated as "the most toxic" and dangerous arachnid by Guinness World Record standards.
Taylor was told to get her family the "hell out of the house and never look back" until the fumigation was complete. Sainsbury’s were decent enough to stump up the cost of the extermination, and pick up the hotel tab while the Taylors were temporarily homeless.
This, after reiterating that the chain has tight "controls on imported products at all stages." Still, evidently not stringent enough, as the odd spider egg can and does gets through (cue: freak outs all over the world).
"I hope I didn’t eat one but I can’t be sure," Taylor said. "I now have a phobia of buying bananas. We don’t know whether they’ve all gone."
Who needs slasher flicks? Just throw in the odd spider story. Take it from a serious arachnophobe, there's a reason these long-legged dudes are the third biggest phobia (right after death and public speaking) among sane and otherwise rational individuals.
The simplicity of the scheme belies its genius. A sting operation by Amsterdam-based group, Terres des Hommes, uncovered more than a thousand adults trying to engage in sex acts with a ten-year-old Filipino girl.
The genius part? The girl was a computerized decoy set up by international children’s rights group to lure potential pedophiles from seventy-one countries during the ten-week project.
According to an article in the National Post, fifty-four Canadians were among those caught in the honey trap.
“It’s frightening to see that these people think that the Internet is a completely lawless space,” said one of researchers who chose to protect his identity. “The most shocking part of this—aside from the horrific child-abuse material that we were sometimes sent—was just the fact that it was so easy to catch these people. They have zero risk perception.”
Since the people so readily handed over personal information, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses, Interpol can now forward this information to authorities to enable prosecution for child pornography and child prostitution.
Once the fictitious girl named “Sweetie” logged on to various public chat rooms, it was easy to lure users, who offered anywhere between $1 and $100 using prepaid credit cards to watch her perform a sex act via webcam.
“It was so clear that these people were after 10-year-old children,” said the researcher. “Some men would say, ‘I’ll pay you $500 to see you and your six-year-old sister have sex’.”
Sick sick sick. Kudos to Terres for their amazing efforts. All the more reason to be vigilant online, for your child's sake.
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