Erik Nordmark comments

@kiyoshiMukai "What do all these countries have in common?"

I live in Sweden but spent a lot of time in Japan, the US and limited time in many other countries. My wife is from South Korea. As a parent I can't imagine bringing up my children anywhere else than here in "Scandinavia" (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland). I've never been to Iceland (except for their airport), but have some friends from there and we in the Nordics ("Scandinavia" plus Iceland) are quite similar in mentality (relaxed, calm, "it will be okay in time" etc), similar values (human equallity/respect/rights, freedom of speech/religion etc), have similar trust in governments/politics and share a lot of history and culture and so on. Even if we are in fact separate countries, we are also part of the Nordics and strongly feel that we are united somehow. We are basically happy people by nature, and maybe we just don't know any better. Or as my Norwegian friend put it (about Danish people being the happiest in the world): they have low expectations in life and constantly become positively surprised.

Not sure what's more scary, being chased with a hammer and knife by your son or your dad.. What could drive a man to do such a thing.. Now I need to watch something uplifting on youtube to get rid of these horrible images in my head.

Interwsting to hear anecdotes and comments from people with first-hand experience. Thanks for sharing!

Could he have been after the photos rather than the camera? I suppose a couple of photos could be worth a lot more than the camera itself. Or maybe he has a special interest for athletes in swimsuits. Perhaps he did something stupid which he was afraid was caught on the journalist's camera (like the CCTV camera did).

Okay, you can go back to sleep now:

The Sanrio PR representative said, "We never said she was a human," and also explained the concept of anthropomorphization, "Hello Kitty is a 擬人化 (gijinka), a personification or anthropomorphization. Basically just like Micky Mouse...No one would mistake the Disney character for a human–but at the same time he’s not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn’t a human, she’s not quite a cat either."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_Kitty

I have heard of cases where nobody other than the girl/woman herself has known about the pregnancy right up until the baby is born. It just doesn't show that much on some girls/women and/or some pregnancies. Especially if you go to great lenghts to hide it on top of that. Just like it varies with other typical symtomps like feeling sick, cravings, mood swings etc. It could be that this girl was shocked (and exausted) right after the baby was born and didn't know how to explain the baby to her parents. When the baby started crying, the girl tried to quiet the baby by putting tissues in her mouth, not realizing/intending to suffacate it.. Just a theory. It does not have to be more than a really unfortunate accident.

I'm not proud or anything, but I bought the PS3 just to play Final Fantasy XIII I think it was. I pre-ordered it and got it on the release day and after a couple of weeks I realized I'm too old for this sh...