@headsign
I cringed when I saw your link. I've stopped reading this blog a long time ago, because of Laurel's notorious propensity of drawing and talking waaay to much about herself, especially about some private things I don't want to know. Therefore, at that time, you could find many trolls attacking her on these things, as well as lost souls full of "empathy", craving for attention and explaining to everybody how harsh was their childhood. Of course, the veracity of these stories was impossible to verify. So, I'm not sure this kind of site is the good place to make an objective opinion.

About levels of brutality: I guess it's the case. I have personally never witnessed anybody brutally chastising his child in public. Not ever a slap. I mean, a violent slap, the noisy, hurting one that makes the kid's face turn. But yes, catching a kid by the arm, shaking him and looking him in the eyes, with a harsh remind of where the authority is, you can see. My friends do that with their kids. Daddy or mommy, with the approval of the other parent. A thing of last resort, often with a mix of anger and fear. You know, when you kid absolutely doesn't want to hear you, tests your authority and keeps playing silly near the busy road or way to close from the edge of the terrace, 6 meters above the ground. Or starts to throw a tantrum, even if I've rarely seen this.
I have lived this kind of situation. No trauma, thanks.

But of course, I'm talking about the people I know, educated middle-class with on social issues (even if child abuse doesn't correlate with social situation).

And of course, you don't have to even touch a kid to break him, you know, moral abuse (worst, I think).

@headsign
I call for bulls**t.
Either you are trolling hard, or it is real, and your experience is well to narrow to mean anything.
Try beating your kids in France, and you may discover why our prisons are considered the worst of the western world.

@Ryan S

Well, one image and one comment to summarize:
http://media.fukung.net/images/37960/f1c54dd05df9a38f041b5f98882d35b5.jpg

Change "Best miracle" by "simplicity of the explanation".
A the beginning, the explanation was basically "it's like this, because we don't understand it at all".
Then "we include some evidences in a nice complex narrative"
Now "We play with advanced scientific concepts we don't understand to try to push some rather vague but definitely religious ideal"

Do you realize you are juggling with some advanced concepts in neurology, genetics, psychology...all discovered and conceptualized through scientific method, only to try to salvage your broken beliefs ?

Seriously, stop it now.

If you think about it, you have plenty of architectural works that are in fact copy of pre-existing things. Not exact rip-off, but re-interpretations, lower-scale copies etc...
So, it would be funny to see a copy of this Austrian village in China...built with traditional Chinese architecture ! That would we a clever thing.

if it's just a bad rip off,well... too much money in hands, meets bad taste.

@emrecnl
Our current gov' is pretty pro-american and pro-anglo in general. In fact, it's more technophobia than a problem with the language.

Owl and cat together...
Mice worst nightmare.

@philosophile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish#Size

In fact, goldfishes are closely related to carps. Koi carps are simply naturally mutated (and selected) regular carps (and would quickly breed into normal brown carps in wilderness). Same story with goldfishes.

But true, this videos looks fake

Nothing new
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_syrup

@lolwut
@vonskippy
Following your way of thinking, we could say that all Americans are obese gun toting idiots, German obsessional Nazis in disguise, Brits inbred alcoholics with bad teeth and so on...And I don't talk about darker skinned people or religious minorities, of course.

@J
I'm glad I'm not the only one to have noticed the baby bear rug...

Something really disturbing (with a high lol-factor, however): the frozen image on Youtube (before starting the video) shows the little Knut laying on a towel. And it looks like a cute tiny bear cub skin rug...

184 kg ? How many Mega Grains is that ?

Considering the quanty of beer and tea consumed per capita, it would indeed explain why are Brittons so reasonable.

Let's do the same thing with western movies with John Wayne, in 1/100 s sequences

Slow motion high definition movie.
Of cats.

WTF with cats the Internet ?!

Oh well, I'll watch it a fourth time.