Unholy fiberglass

Iran police 'target mannequins'

Iranian police have warned shopkeepers not to display female mannequins without a hijab, or showing bodily curves, Irna news agency reports.

Display of bow ties and neckties, and the sale of women's underwear by men are also banned, the police said.

The move is part of a crackdown on Western influences and enforcement of dress codes in recent years. "Un-Islamic behaviour" has been targeted since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first election in 2005.

"Using unusual mannequins exposing body curves and with heads without hijabs [Muslim veils] are prohibited to be used in the shops," police said in a statement carried by Irna.

Correspondents say that in the past such campaigns usually only lasted throughout the summer, but last year's crackdown, including on tight trousers for women, was still continuing in the winter.

Iranians who violate dress codes for the first time are generally cautioned, but repeat offenders can face court action and "guidance classes".

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feed reader

Dear Lazyweb, what should I use to read RSS feeds?

Given that almost all of my friends have given up on using Livejournal for actual blogging, the only thing I really use it for these days (besides hosting my own posts) is as an RSS aggregator for the 200+ feeds I subscribe to.

Lately Livejournal seems utterly incapable of keeping their feed poller running. Last week, no feeds updated for more than 5 days, and now it's happening again: it's been more than 12 hours since any feed has updated.

I wish I could just use Mail.app as my feed reader, but it doesn't work for shit. It re-posts un-changed entries all the time.

I gather a lot of people use Google Reader, but for previously discussed reasons, I refuse to log in to any Google account. So forget that.

Are there any free OSX desktop apps for this that don't suck? Or other free web sites that don't suck?

Update: Almost everybody is recommending NetNewsWire. It seems ok so far. This may end up being the final nail in the coffin of LiveJournal for me.

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