"Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties." - Doug Larson

***

Crop Circle Confession -- How to get the wheat down in the dead of night - "I made my first crop circle in 1991. My motive was to prove how easy they were to create, because I was convinced that all crop circles were man-made. It was the only explanation nobody seemed interested in testing. Late one August night, with one accomplice--my brother-in-law from Texas--I stepped into a field of nearly ripe wheat in northern England, anchored a rope into the ground with a spike and began walking in a circle with the rope held near the ground. It did not work very well: the rope rode up over the plants. But with a bit of help from our feet to hold down the rope, we soon had a respectable circle of flattened wheat."
The 17/23 correlation is not so easily explained.

Behind the Scenes: The Firefox crop circle! - "This summer John Carey and I, Matt Shichtman, not only completed successful internships as documentary filmmakers for Mozilla, but also left a 45,000 sq. foot crop circle in our wake."
Even the aliens use Firefox!

Ephebophilia: it's today's word, and it matters - "Given the fussing and carrying-on, you would think the poor man had advocated massed orgies with infants. He hadn’t. All that happened was that Terry Grange, the Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys and spokesman on child protection for the Association of Chief Police Officers, suggested greater clarity in the labelling of sex offenders: for instance, he says, it is incorrect to say that those who have sex with underage teenagers are paedophiles — and if we say they are, we risk overestimating the scale of the problem of paedophilia. With predictable fury, Michele Elliott, the director of the children’s charity Kidscape, rounded on the policeman’s wish to reclassify those who have sex with youngsters between 13 and 16: “He is saying they are not paedophiles and they bloody well are.”... A lad in Dover with a girlfriend of 15 may not have his wicked way, but if they hop a ferry to Calais they’ll be fine. Meanwhile, in some American states not only may you have sex at 13 but you may marry at the same age, allowing for the theoretical absurdity that a man could marry in, say, New Hampshire but should he bring his bride to old Hampshire for their honeymoon he could be imprisoned for statutory rape."

Fat Stealers - FT 138 - "Many urban legends, such as stories of microwaved poodles and giant alligators lurking in sewers, are harmless. Others can have serious consequences... Another serious consequence of the [urban] legend is the rise in unprovoked attacks on foreigners... Rumours quickly spread in the town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa that she was detained for selling babies and baby organs. When she was transferred to a larger jail, townspeople rioted, believing that she had bribed guards to be let free. The riot resulted in 60 people being hospitalised and 50 arrested. (Morello 1994) The following month, June Weinstock was beaten unconscious by a mob of about 300 angry villagers in western Guatemala... Weinstock was accused of abducting an eight-year-old boy; he was actually at a religious procession and later returned home."

February Fooled the Forsythia - "When a woman gets past her mid twenties, in fact, her probability of being raped drops off like a continental shelf. If you histogram the figures, you get a peak around ages 12-14… which is precisely the age Lolita was at the time of her affair with Humbert Humbert... Here you see one of the paradoxes of our strange times. Our women dress like sluts; our kids are taught about buggery in elementary school; “wardrobe malfunctions” expose to prime-time TV viewers body parts customarily covered in public since “the lamented end of the Ancient World B.C.” (Humbert); our colleges have coed bathrooms; songs about pimps rise to the top of the pop music charts; yet so far as anything to do with the actual reality of actual human nature is concerned, we are as prim and shockable as a bunch of Quaker schoolmarms. After 40 years of lying to ourselves, we are now terrified of the truth. Which is an unhappy thing, because the truth is bearing down on us fast."

A Kuranian Take on the Religious Gender Gap - "Women are more religious than men by virtually every measure in virtually every culture. But the fun doesn't stop there. Once people admit that this gender gap exists, the most popular explanation is that women are "socialized" to be more religious. Stark and Miller put this theory to the test. If the socialization hypothesis is true, they reason, then the gender gap should be larger in more traditional societies where socialization pressure is more intense. Make sense to me. Survey says: Dead wrong. In fact, the gender gap is smallest in the most traditional societies, and largest in the least traditional societies!... men are more inclined to want some hard proof that religious claims are true, while women are more willing to take religious teachings on faith because they sound nice. Burn me at the stake if you must, but it's true."
I knew it. As I've always said, women are more religious than men because they're more irrational. For example, more women than men believe in astrology. The one on verbal intelligence and religiosity is a bit more complex though.

Murder Most Fish -""In Monkey Mia, off Western Australia, some bottlenose dolphins herd females in estrus away from the group and subject them to repeated and apparently nonconsensual copulations. The males sometimes band together in what are called coalitions to fight off other bands of male dolphins, bent on the same rape themselves."
Power, it's because of Power! And dolphins are fallen!

Chocolate: A heart-healthy confection? - "Debra Waterhouse, a registered dietitian and the author of the 1999 book "Why Women Need Chocolate," thinks both culture and chemicals come into play. Chemicals in chocolate affect levels of the body's mood-affecting chemicals, including serotonin, endorphins and phenylethylamine, which the body releases in response to romance, Waterhouse says. A comprehensive review of chocolate research, published in the October 1999 Journal of the American Dietetic Association, came to the same conclusion. Two nutritionists at the University of Arizona in Tucson examined almost 75 research papers published over the past two decades on the craving for chocolate -- and decided emotions, social values, sensory qualities, chemicals and the hormonal cycles of women all play a role. "It's the whole package," says co-author and nutrition professor Doug Taren"

iPod USB driver for Win98, 98SE

JFK Assassination - SkepticWiki - "That same Newtonian principle explains why JFK's head would have moved towards the shooter. The bullet doesn't meet much resistance as it enters and is going pretty much the same speed when it exits, but as it exits it also takes lots of pieces of skull and brain with it. This makes a kind of jet blast which propels the head in the opposite direction. This effect is easily confirmed by wrapping a melon in one-inch fibreglass tape and shooting it with a high-powered rifle. The melon actually moves toward the shooter. This demonstration was devised by Dr. Luis Alvarez, a friend of JFK, and was demonstrated by Penn and Teller in their book How To Play With Your Food and again on an episode of Bullshit!"

Playboy names UW No. 1 party school - "In its upcoming May 2006 issue, to hit newsstands this Friday, Playboy magazine ranked the University of Wisconsin No. 1 in its list of top 10 party schools, a Playboy representative said Tuesday."

Singaporean Girls Commit More Crimes - "Traditional Asian parenting styles may be to blame for a rise in fighting, stealing and smoking among Singaporean schoolgirls, according to officials, citing results of Ozawa’s study... He said the majority of the girls had dads who neglected them and moms who spoiled them. “The traditional Asian style of a harsh or absent father and a nurturing, though ineffective, mother was especially damaging,” the profile said."

Facebook | I don't need sex because NUS fucks me upside down all the time's Wall - "I've only just been studying here as an non-graduating exchange student for one semester, and I feel fucked already. And the worst thing is, not only does the exams make you feel worthless and ignorant, they also last for too short of a time to be able to give you any pleasure..."