Chastity belts on the rise in Indonesia

JAKARTA (UPI) -- Chastity belts are gaining popularity in Indonesian massage parlors as a way to stop clients and masseuses from getting too close, parlor owners say. A number of massage parlors in Batu, Indonesia, are requiring female masseuses to wear padlocks over their pants zippers to prevent men from bombarding workers for sex, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. "We had a hard time rejecting this kind of client because they try over and over and over again, persuading our workers with their dangerously sweet words," Doghado Massage Parlor owner Franky Setiawan said. Meutia Fardia Hatta Swasono, minister for the empowerment of women, said bringing back the old fashioned chastity belt is offensive to women. "It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong," she said. Parlor sex crackdowns come as traditional Islamic values gain popularity in Indonesia, influencing people to cut back on morally questionable activities including the sex trade, alcohol consumption and gambling, the Times reported.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International
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One more Sleep!!

One more sleep and tomorrow I will be flying to USA for the first time!! I am happy and excited to see Las Vegas and my sister there who work as a Nurse.

Dear friends, I am letting you know that I might not be able to see you here on the net..I will try my best to see you soon!!

Please pray for my safe and sound trip!! Thanks a lot!! God bless us all!!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Health and Beauty Tip

Apple Cider Vinegar

Hold your nose and drink up -- this old folk remedy really works! Drinking a little apple cider vinegar each day helps keep skin supple, break down fat, and makes it easier for your body to digest food properly. A daily dose in water also helps keep down your blood pressure. If you just can't bring yourself to drink it, try mixing it with apple juice or honey first.

May Day

May Day occurs on May 1 and refers to any of several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, which celebrates the social and economic achievements of the labor movement. As a day of celebration the holiday has ancient origins, and it can relate to many customs that have survived into modern times. Many of these customs are due to May Day being a cross-quarter day, meaning that it falls approximately halfway between an equinox and a solstice.

ORIGIN

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian Europe, as in the Celtic celebration of Beltane, and the Walpurgis Night of the Germanic countries. Many pre-Christian indigenous celebrations were eventually banned or Christianized during the process of Christianization in Europe. As a result, a more secular version of the holiday continued to be observed in the schools and churches of Europe well into the 20th century. In this form, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the Maypole and crowning of the Queen of the May. Today various Neopagan groups celebrate reconstructed (to varying degrees) versions of these customs on 1 May.

The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer. In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is observed as Mary's month, and in these circles May Day is usually a celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this connection, in works of art, school skits, and so forth, Mary's head will often be adorned with flowers. Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the giving of "May baskets," small baskets of sweets and/or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbors' doorsteps.

Traditional May Day celebrations

May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment. As Europe became Christianized the pagan holidays lost their religious character, They either morphed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint's Day. In the start of the twenty-first century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.

visit The World Wide Web Addict for more infos about May Day which is also known as International Labour/Workers Day

source: wikipedia.org

Maypole or Maibaum

As mentioned in my Wordless Wednesday yesterday, here is now a bit infos about Maypole or Maibaum as called in German. Please visit The World Wide Web Addict for more infos about Maypole...
still busy..busy...busy...hopefully will visit you next week esp. to those friends who leave comments and messages here..I really appreciate it!! I'm having my count down now for my tripto USA and that is two sleeps more!!! hopefully till tomorrow, I can be fully prepared for my trip!! Have a great evening to all!! Take care and God bless us all!!

Maypole

The maypole is a tall wooden pole (traditionally of maple (Acer), hawthorn or birch), sometimes erected with several long coloured ribbons suspended from the top, festooned with flowers, draped in greenery and strapped with large circular wreaths, depending on local and regional variances. What is often thought of as the "traditional" English/British maypole (a somewhat shorter, plainer version of the Scandinavian pole with ribbons tied at the top and hanging to the ground) is a relatively recent development of the tradition and is probably derived from the picturesque, Italianate dances performed in mid-19th century theatricals. It is usually this shorter, plainer maypole that people (usually school children) perform dances around, weaving the ribbons in and out to create striking patterns.

With roots in Germanic paganism, the maypole traditionally appears in most Germanic countries, Germanic country-bordering and countries invaded by Germanic tribes after the fall of the Roman Empire (like Spain, France and Italy), but most popularly in Germany, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Finland in modern times for Spring, May Day, Beltane and Midsummer festivities and rites.

wikipedia.org

Wordless Wednesday

The Maibaum or Maypole in Laaber..
I will try to give you a bit history of Maypole in Germany hopefully tomorrow..
My days are still busy...busy..busy...might l visit you next week again!!
3 sleeps more and will be my flight to US..
Have a great evening everyone!!

Bees Learn Thievery

Even the pinhead-sized brains of insects can learn new skills from their comrades - including theft.

It seems bumblebees can discover how to "rob" flowers of nectar, scientists now reveal.

Normally bumblebees crawl into flowers to get a nectar. In return for this sweet treat, blossoms coat the insects in pollen, which contains plant sperm. When these bees rendezvous with other flowers, they serve as couriers of this pollen, helping the plants breed.

However, bees can bite through the base of a flower to suck up nectar instead, avoiding the pollen altogether. Since they get something for nothing this way - drinking nectar without helping the flowers mate - such behavior can be seen as theft. The bees may commit such an act to get nectar from blossoms they could not fit into, or just to get more nectar than possible by normal means.

Now it appears that bumblebees can quickly learn how to rob flowers if they visit blossoms that others have already burglarized. The bees could learn how to commit such theft by themselves, but this was rare. But, after one bee learned how to rob nectar by watching its comrades, the skill rapidly spread to other bees.

It was long known that bees could learn simple facts from each other - such as where food is, for instance - but the discovery that insects can learn skills from others is a first.

"It was actually first suggested in one of Darwin's journals. He saw bumblebees robbing flowers in a garden one day, and saw honeybees doing something similar afterward," said researcher Ellouise Leadbeater, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary, University of London. "That led us to our work."

The brains of bumblebees are a little larger than 1 cubic millimeter in size, or nearly one-millionth the size of a human brain.

"It's interesting to see what you can do with a small brain," Leadbeater told LiveScience. "But then again, it may be that you just don't need to be very clever to learn a simple technique like this."

In the future, research could see if bumblebees could teach other species of bees how to rob nectar. Other insects that could learn skills from within or outside their species might include ants, Leadbeater speculated.

Leadbeater and her colleague Lars Chittka detailed their findings online April 23 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

news: yahoo.com