"The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them." - Will Rogers

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Japanese - "Another interesting feature of Japanese is the distinction between male and female speech. This involves vocabulary, grammar and particularly pitch - women tend to speak in very high, squeaky voices, at least in public, while men prefer low, gruff voices. If a foreign man learns Japanese from his Japanese girlfriend the results can sound very funny to Japanese ears!"

Face it, the right apprentice won - "Why are women so keen always to be seen to be victimised, even when they clearly aren’t victimised at all?... The female candidates in this year’s show spent their entire time bitching, backstabbing, bullying, scheming, lying and passing the buck. The men got on with it and managed to get over whatever petty arguments they had by the end of each episode. The women simply wouldn’t let theirs drop: some are continuing months after filming ended. This female trait is conveniently ignored when women complain of being overlooked or underpromoted, as if their gender exempted them from behaving decently. In my experience, women are far harder to work with than men. Men don’t give you a crap task because they’re jealous of your shoes or mistrust you for months because you have good highlights... I’ll tell you what the issue is with women in business or women and work. It is extremely simple. It is not to do with sexist dinosaur male bosses or with male-dominated industries crushing our genius. It is not to do with glass ceilings. It is to do, very straightforwardly, with the number of hours we are prepared to put in. If you’re happy to work a 16-hour day and never see your children, you too can become a master of the universe."
In the comments: "Well put, as only a woman would be allowed to say, of course."

UCB Rubberband Club - "The mission of this club is to teach how to shoot rubber bands to all members and to have fun while doing this. After the goal of shooting in many different styles has been accomplished members can enjoy a plethora of games to enjoy through the use of shooting rubber bands."

How much money do you need to be happy? Hint: Your sex life matters more - "How much money buys happiness? A wide body of research suggests the number is approximately forty thousand dollars a year. Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, says once you have enough money to meet basic needs – food, shelter, but not necessarily cable —incremental increases have little effect on your happiness... In terms of happiness, job satisfaction is very important but social relationships are most important. And by social relations, most researchers mean sex – with one, consistent partner. So consider giving your career aspirations a little less weight than you give your aspirations for sex."

Firefox 3 Memory Benchmarks and Comparison - "Safari on Windows shows extremely poor memory management, and I do not know whether it ever reaches a high water mark. If this is by design, it is certainly a design that looks inefficient and seems to contradict Apple's marketing... After browsing for 14 hours with these programs, and recording all the results into spreadsheets, the most memory efficient browser in my usage is very clear--Firefox 3.0 not only trumps its older version, but every other popular offering on Windows. This article may help other vendors rethink their marketing campaigns, and may prompt further improvements."

The Straight Dope: Is it crazy to eat clay? - "I'm a student at the Art Institute and I've been eating clay for four years. You are probably not familiar with the process of clay so I will briefly explain. When the clay is completely dry but has not been fired it's called greenware. That's when I eat it. But I once ate a whole teacup after it had been fired (bisqueware)."

The Straight Dope: Do left-handers die young? - "There's a fair amount of evidence that left-handedness is caused by minor brain damage at birth (though there seems to be a genetic component as well). Possibly as a result, lefties are clumsier if perhaps also more creative. Looking through the medical literature, I find studies reporting that lefties have a higher accident rate, are more likely to have their fingers amputated due to power-tool accidents, suffer more wrist fractures, etc. What's more, lefties suffer a higher incidence of allergies, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and certain learning disabilities. Lefties, a 1992 article in the Atlantic notes, also show unusually high frequencies of depression, drug abuse, bed-wetting, attempted suicide, lower-than-normal birth weight, sleeping disorders, and autoimmune diseases."

Priest who was chaplain gets 4 years for sex with inmates - "A Roman Catholic priest was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for having sex with two inmates while a chaplain at a women's prison."
If he'd been having sex with altar-boys, prison might have been a blessing instead.

Urge to kill doctors increased by pain - being-human - "David Fishbain and colleagues at the University of Miami, Florida, found that just over 1 in 20 (5%) of roughly 800 physical rehabilitation patients admitted feeling like they wanted to murder their physician. Even amongst a control group, who were not being treated for any condition, slightly fewer than 1 in 50 (2%) said they had previously had the same urge."

Clothes Unmake the Man - Weird News Story Archive - "The 29-year-old mayor of Chepstow, Wales, has quit rather than dress up for city council meetings. Armand Watts, 29, a hairdresser, liked to wear T-shirts and jeans. “I really don’t see the point of wearing a suit, shirt and tie to sit around in council meetings,” Watts says."