"Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone." - Hodding Carter

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How women love their mobile phones... more than their boyfriends

Passions over 'prosperity gospel': Was Jesus wealthy? - "Jesus' wealth is evident even in the Gospel accounts of his execution, some pastors say. The New Testament reports that Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus' clothing while he hung on the cross. They wouldn't gamble for Jesus' clothing unless it was expensive, Anderson says.... "The only way you can make Jesus into a rich man is by advocating torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically""
"torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically" describes apologetics perfectly

Bingo caller told to cut 'fat ladies' patter by council - "John Sayers, who runs charity games in Sudbury, Suffolk, says he was told by a council clerk the traditional bingo call could upset some players. Mr Sayers said no-one had complained before, but now players moaned his new numbers-only style was boring. A town council spokeswoman said it was "sad" they had to give the advice but they had to be "politically correct"... A council spokeswoman... added: "It is very sad because it is part of the fun of bingo but unfortunately in today's society people take it literally""

A new study shows that singletons might be just as psychologically well-off as married people.

Probably Bad News: News fails, because journalism isn't dying fast enough. - One example: "A TEENAGER who tried to copy a scene from the hit film American Pie by shagging an apple pie was rushed to the hospital with serious burns to his penis"

The longest literary sentence - "Move over, James Joyce and all the other pretenders. The new owner of the record for the longest sentence in published literature is Mathias Enard for his 517-page French novel “Zone.” In fact, the entire novel, except for a few pages of flashbacks, is made up of a single 150,000-word sentence."

Physics Buzz: For a Quick Exit, Just Block the Fire Door

Pictures of 56 Chinese Ethnic Groups
A lot of them carry rifles. Too bad that won't save them from the CCP.

ExitAhead! Last.fm to eBay Search - "1. You tell us the username of your last.fm account.
2. We check last.fm for the artists you have recently scrobbled, and the artists recommended by last.fm.
3. We search eBay for music by those artists."

Men Stare at Opposite Sex 43 Minutes a Day - "According to a new study, men stare at up to 10 women a day, which equals about 43 minutes spent every day ogling... women gawk at men about half as much"
The more interesting question: how much do women look at other women?

Men Who Help Clean Get More Sex?

Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes - "From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational... Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine... In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern."
I'm surprised the Hitchens quote (in God is not Great) made it to Singapore - it's very seditious, calling Islam "not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms"!

Security charade: how I made a bomb and blew up a plane - "Unless we are all actually forced to strip naked at the airport - and probably not even then - the fact is that we can never erect a Berlin wall to physically stop everyone taking bad things on planes. All our efforts to do so, all the silly routines to which we dutifully submit, are at best a minor hindrance, a deterrent to nutters; at worst a charade and a distraction from the real target... the editor of the magazine Aviation Security International, said he could not recall a single time when a bomb had been found using an airport X-ray machine alone. Airport security, he said, was "theatre", designed to reassure the public rather than to stop bombers... Airport security means, above all, starting long before the airport, with intelligence... the guilty get missed because the authorities are spending too much time hassling the innocent"

Singapore workers work longest hours: ILO report - "Only workers in Iceland put in almost as many hours in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Real wages also fell at the same time. Though nominal wages rose 4.2 per cent in 2008 according to the Ministry of Manpower, real wages dropped 1 per cent, according to the ILO report"

Sure, God has a sense of humour. Shame about some of his followers - "I was accused of knowing too many words and too few facts; of being stupid and anti-Christian - many assumed these were identical; of being overly subtle and of laying about me with a blunt instrument. Of not having read the Bible, of having read but not understood it, of having got the wrong Jesus (easy to do), of being one of the chosen (are they serious?), of misunderstanding history (no doubt), of misquoting Brian Houston (no way), of being insulting (I do try) and of showing off (well, natch)... Taking up religion seems to involve having your humour gland surgically excised. There's no obvious explanation for this. Comedic failure is generally a sign of class insecurity. Feminists, for example. Cyclists."

Sex differences in driving and insurance risk - "Men are more likely than women to be involved in crashes that occur on bends, in the dark or those that involve overtaking. Women, on the other hand, have a greater frequency of crashes occurring at junctions than men. This supports the suggestion by Storie (1977) that men are more at risk from accidents involving high speed while women are at more likely to be involved in accidents resulting from perceptual judgement errors... [The WHO] concludes: "Research is needed to examine the potential benefits of gender and age-differentiated policies for issuance of driving licences and related issues". The fact that this WHO report was prepared by the Department for Gender and Women’s Health suggests that driving-related policies that differentiate between genders are not seen as cutting across broad notions of equality in this context.
When you discriminate against men, it doesn't cut across broad notions of equality.

Men's and Women's Irritating Driving Habits - "Women were certainly harsher about men than the other way around... "The old stereotype that men are always criticising women's driving has been turned on its head by these results, as it's definitely women who get the most irritated""

Sex Drive: How Do Men and Women Compare? - "Nuns do a better job of fulfilling their vows of chastity than priests... 62% of priests admitted to sexual activity, compared to 49% of nuns. The men reported more partners on average than the women... Homosexuality is a more fluid state among women than men. In another broad review of studies, Baumeister found many more lesbians reported recent sex with men, when compared to gay men's reports of sex with women. Women were also more likely than men to call themselves bisexual, and to report their sexual orientation as a matter of choice... Women's attitudes towards (and willingness to perform) various sexual practices are more likely than men's to change over time. Women who regularly attend church are less likely to have permissive attitudes about sex. Men do not show this connection between church attendance and sex attitudes... Women with higher education levels were more likely to have performed a wider variety of sexual practices (such as oral sex); education made less of a difference with men. Women were more likely than men to show inconsistency between their expressed values about sexual activities such as premarital sex and their actual behavior"
I found this by looking for gender differences in driving. Grr.

Sex and the SUV: Men, Women, and Travel Behavior - "University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz reports that in 9 of 10 households that identify themselves as “feminist,” the man does most of the driving when both partners are in the car."