Links - 15th April 2010

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." - Carl Sagan

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PETA’s Pet Killing Program Set a New Record in 2009 | PetaKillsAnimals.com - "During all of 2009, PETA found adoptive homes for just eight pets. Just eight animals -- out of the 2,366 it took in. PETA just broke its own record... PETA has a $33 million annual budget. But instead of investing in the lives of the thousands of flesh and blood creatures in its care, the group spends millions on media campaigns telling Americans that eating meat, drinking milk, fishing, hunting, wearing leather shoes, and benefiting from medical research performed on lab rats are all “unethical”... The Virginia Beach SPCA, just down the road from PETA’s Norfolk headquarters, manages to adopt out the vast majority of the animals in its care. And it does it on a shoestring budget"

9 Reasons Men are Jealous of Women - "More Life Choices: "Women in my company regularly opt to go part-time or quit when they go back to school, marry or become mothers," says Bradley, an accountant. "Yes, they may not get ahead as quickly as their male colleagues, but they can lead fuller lives and nearly everyone understands. For a guy, it’s up or out. In most companies, even in the P.C. times, if a man decides not to advance he’s considered lazy, a non-go-getter""

Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual? - "Psychologist John Buss estimates that for most of human history, perhaps 2% of women have been lesbian or bisexual (see note 1, below). Not any more. Recent surveys of teenage girls and young women find that roughly 15% of young females today self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared with about 5% of young males who identify as gay or bisexual... Female sexuality is different from male sexuality. If a straight boy kissed another boy, perhaps to amuse some girls who might be watching, he would be unlikely to undergo a change in sexual orientation as a result. But, as Professor Roy Baumeister at Florida State University and others have shown, sexual attraction in many women seems to be more malleable"
Incidentally, the author calls guys losers. Naturally, that's fine, as long as you don't say anything ba about women.

Would You Interrupt Sex to Tweet? - "7% said they'd even check a message during an intimate moment. Eleven percent of those under the age of 25 would interrupt sex for a message"

Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? - "A Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on... "Kids should learn for the love of learning," he says. "But they're not. So what shall we do?"... Maybe one day we will all approach our jobs that way. But until then, most adults work primarily for money, and in a curious way, we seem to be holding kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves... "If you pay a kid to read books, their grades go up higher than if you actually pay a kid for grades"... Kids may respond better to rewards for specific actions because there is less risk of failure. They can control their attendance; they cannot necessarily control their test scores"
Ahh, entrenched interests!

Women "lie, cheat and steal" - "HALF of all women would lie to their husbands or partners to keep their relationship going if they became pregnant by another man... 42% would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, in spite of the wishes of their partner... The favourite fib told by women was "Of course you don't look fat" with "These shoes were only '10" in second place. One bizarre finding was that a third of women (33%) said they would stay with their husband if they found out he was a "secret transvestite", but only half that number (17%) would put up with him if he refused to wash... "To tell a man a baby is his when it's not or to deliberately get pregnant when your partner doesn't want a baby is playing Russian roulette with other people's lives." Eight out of ten women (83%) admit to telling "big, life-changing lies", with 13% saying they do so frequently... An alarming 31% of all women say they would not tell a future partner if they had a sexual disease. This rises for 65% for single women. Nearly half (46%) fake orgasms and more than half (55%) claim they are tired, have a headache, or feel ill to "get out of lovemaking"... Most women (68%) do not trust their partner"

Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited - "A team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men... Bisexuality appears easier to demonstrate in the female sex... most women who said they were bisexual showed arousal to men and to women... Dr. Diamond recruited a group of 90 women at gay pride parades, academic conferences on gender issues and other venues. About half of the women called themselves lesbians, a third identified as bisexual and the rest claimed no sexual orientation. In follow-up interviews over the last 10 years, Dr. Diamond has found that most of these women have had relationships both with men and women"

SuicideGirls, The most expensive meal you will ever eat is... - "The most expensive meal you will ever eat is pussy."

Princess Syndrome Causes, Symptoms, And Treatment - "Use them for sex or ignore them. You may think you’re being mean by using them for sex, but they’re using you to make themselves feel wanted and to cure their insecurities. Females with princess syndrome are whores, they love to be degraded, that’s why these type of girls never go for the nice guys, they want some asshole guido douchebag. Nice guys are the ones that pamper them, so at the end of they day all they want to do is get fucked and call you their daddy."

Lucky Man Marries Thai Twins! - "Mr Wichai, just yesterday, 23 March, got married in pompous ceremony to both twins simultaneously. On being interviewed by the Thai Rath reporters, Mr Wichai declared wholeheartedly, that he didn’t see much problem in having to perform tiresome marital duties with two wives... Both families celebrated the marriage with joy and were said to be delighted for the threesome... 'I would walk past their house each morning and try to decide for myself which one I fancied more, but it was darned impossible – I adored BOTH of them'... The fortunate Mr Wichai, instead of getting a slap in the face, was overjoyed when both girls admitted to having sworn all along, that they wished to marry the same man!... 'For the first three nights of the week, I will sleep with Ms Thipawan and the next three will be spent with Ms Sirintara. As for every Saturday, the three of us will sleep together'"