"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway

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Man Up! Hedge-Fund Man’s Advice for Wall Street: Michael Lewis - "We’ve all been hearing a lot lately about the dangers of testosterone. A preposterous idea is gaining traction: that the problem with Wall Street is that it is run exclusively by men. News flash: Wall Street always has been run exclusively by men. If this crisis is worse than previous ones it may be because, for the first time in financial history, women were let in. Remember Erin Callan, Zoe Cruz, Sallie Krawcheck?"

9-YEAR-OLD ALEC GREVEN WRITES DATING BOOK "HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS" - "He's only 9, but this pint-sized pickup artist already knows plenty about pleasing the ladies. So much, in fact, that Alec Greven's dating primer, "How to Talk to Girls" - which began as a handwritten, $3 pamphlet sold at his school book fair - hit the shelves nationwide last week. The fourth-grader from Castle Rock, Colo., advises Lothario wannabes to stop showing off, go easy on the compliments to avoid looking desperate - and be wary of "pretty girls.""

Yokoso! loli-chan desu! - "Today, wore a maid costume! served tea to alice!!! 今日、メードのために服装!役立たれた紅茶をalice!に着ていました。"
Uhh... We can't call them Wapanese. Sapanese?

Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It? - ""Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent," the researchers write, "above and beyond their actual competence." Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered."

DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS: No. 7.—On the Insufficiency of Grace - "THE RUMOR THAT the Rev. Dr. Carolus Fraile, a respected Lutheran pastor at St. Lydia’s in Esplen, had written a manuscript treatise “On the Insufficiency of Grace” caused much consternation in the synod office. Was Dr. Fraile a heretic? It was not in the nature of Lutherans even to ask such a question, yet the subject was too close to the heart of Lutheran doctrine to ignore... When the committee met again six months later, Pastor Strassenbahn reported that Dr. Fraile was a very nice person, and that he seemed very sincere, although it had been very difficult to get an appointment with him—a difficulty he attributed to his overburdened secretary. When pressed, she admitted that she had not specifically brought up the subject of the manuscript, thinking that it would be somewhat indecorous to mention that its existence had become known when Dr. Fraile had made no effort to put it before the public."

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning - "An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue."

Excessive chatting on Facebook can lead to depression in teenage girls - "Frequently discussing the same problem can intensify into an unhealthy activity for those who use Facebook and other electronic means to obsess about it, according to the researchers... Dr Davila said: "Texting, instant messaging and social networking make it very easy for adolescents to become even more anxious, which can lead to depression.""

Let there be adverts: Christians hit back at the atheist bus - "Yesterday I walked to work and saw two London buses with the question: 'When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?' (Luke 18:8) ... If I wanted to run a bus ad saying 'Beware, there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!' I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims."

Bacon Explosion catches fire on Web - "For a nation seeking unity, an American recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and ... well, not vegetarians and health fanatics. Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics. This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors "the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.""

Call to fill vegetarian scholarship at Wycliffe College - "A £15,000-a-year private school in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire is offering sixth-formers a 10% reduction in their fees if they turn vegetarian... As well as being truly vegetarian "and not getting caught eating a burger", successful applicants also have to be good all round students... Perhaps vegetarianism has become so mainstream – even the UN advocates cutting down on meat for environmental reasons – that it no longer represents an act of rebellion. The hippies of the 1960s are now all grandparents. Copying them can hardly be cool."

UN says eat less meat to curb global warming - "Some ideas were contradictory, he said - for example, one solution to emissions from livestock was to keep them indoors, but this would damage animal welfare. 'Climate change is a very young science and our view is there are a lot of simplistic solutions being proposed,' he said. Last year a major report into the environmental impact of meat eating by the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University claimed livestock generated 8 per cent of UK emissions - but eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing. It also said vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence."

AFP: Seductive chemicals hidden in sloppy kisses - "Seductive chemicals are hidden in sloppy kisses, scientists say, but even the most chaste caress can spark an intense hormonal response. "Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouth and that suggests to me that they are unconsciously trying to transfer testosterone to trigger the sex drive in women," said Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey."