"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." - Miss Piggy
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Gene Expression: Physics Envy - "And yet, even then, physicists will be the first to admit that even the most powerful mathematical machinery they are able to bring to bear on a problem can deal successfully with only the very simplest situations, beyond which their equations are useless. Thus, for example, their equations can be solved for the two body problem but not the three body problem in Newtonian mechanics; they can solve the Schrödinger equation when there is only one proton and one electron interacting, but not when there are even two protons and two electrons, let alone anything more complicated than that... Contrast this with the situation in economics. Here the elementary particle, so to speak, is the individual human being, no two of which are alike. What's more, the forces of attraction and repulsion that each individual feels for the goods of this world cannot be measured with any precision at all, much less to an accuracy of 20 decimal places. Furthermore, these forces of attraction and repulsion do not remain constant, even approximately so, over time and place for the same individual, let alone for different individuals, who vary enormously in their likes and dislikes."
The Straight Dope: Hair today, more tomorrow? How effective are treatments for baldness? - "1. Castration. Don't be a wuss. A real man does what it takes to get results. Male pattern baldness is thought to arise from a particular version of an androgen receptor gene. If you've got the wrong one, a testosterone breakdown product, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), gradually reduces hair growth by shrinking the size of the hair follicle, meaning thinner and eventually no hair. No testosterone, no baldness. Whatever other beefs they may have, eunuchs have been famed since the days of Hippocrates for killer hair. Caution: Castration is best thought of as a preventive measure. If DHT has already wasted your follicles, shutting off the tap now won't necessarily bring them back."
zynfandel: why women make bad drivers - "1. They get emotional about driving. 2. Their attention wanders. 3. They make split second decisions but don't have the balls to carry them out. 4. They turn to glare at other drivers. 5. They put on makeup in the car."
YouTube - Famous Sheikh on the Risks of Female Masturbation - "She will bring disgrace upon herself and her family. This will be a disaster, and some relatives might kill her... Obviously, killing her is forbidden and is a grave sin. Even if she did fornicate, she does not deserve to be killed. At the most, she should be flogged."
FaceBookProfile.com - Facebook ASCII, Hacks and Tricks - "The Completely Unofficial Facebook ASCII Art, Photo, Album & Wall Resource"
Ooh, ASCII art for walls.
New lease on life comes with big IOU; British man suing doctors - "The "Last Holiday" scenario has the terminal patient learning to really live for the first time in her life. She tells off her boss, quits her job, empties her bank account and goes on a dream vacation, where she learns all sorts of valuable lessons about embracing life and love. And then she finds out she's not dying after all! It was a big mistake! Talk about your happy ending... Doctors told John Brandrick he had cancer and he had probably less than a year to live. "The 62-year-old council worker quit his job, sold his car, stopped paying his mortgage and dug into his life savings so he could treat himself and his relatives to expensive restaurant meals," reads the story in the Daily Mail... "Turns out Brandrick didn't have a tumor, as originally diagnosed. He had pancreatitis, which is not life-threatening. It's the classic good news/bad news setup. The good news is, you're going to live. The bad news is, you're flat broke.""
A Brief History of Economic Time - "Rising income is only part of the story. One hundred years ago the average American workweek was over 60 hours; today it's under 35. One hundred years ago 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations; today it's over 90%. One hundred years ago the average housekeeper spent 12 hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning and sewing; today it's about three hours."
Interracial Marriages Surge Across U.S. - "In some categories of interracial marriage, there are distinct gender- related trends. More than twice as many black men marry white women as vice versa, and about three-fourths of white-Asian marriages involve white men and Asian women. C.N. Le, a Vietnamese-American who teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts, says the pattern has created some friction in Asian- American communities. "Some of the men view the women marrying whites as sellouts, and a lot of Asian women say, 'Well, we would want to date you more, but a lot of you are sexist or patriarchal,'" said Le, who attributes the friction in part to gender stereotypes of Asians that have been perpetuated by American films and TV shows."