Links - 15th May 2010

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has." - Will Rogers

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Bus of love in Copenhagen - "A Copenhagen bus company has put 'love seats' on 103 of its vehicles for people looking to make a new friend ... or even something more. 'Even love at first sight is possible on the bus'... 'Some drivers have noticed smiling girls sitting in these seats,' hoping for interesting company"

A Well-Executed Second Date - "You have to choose a place that is within walking distance from your apartment. No one will follow you back to your place via car, or worse, public transportation (eww, gross). That’s just plain slutty. There’s nothing more awkward than a car ride back to your date’s place, where a deafening silence overcomes the vehicle as both of you think about what’s about to come/cum... It can’t look staged: clean your room, but make sure it looks a little disheveled. Perfectly clean rooms are almost as uncomfortable as pigsties"

Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations - "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites... If any violation of terms of use is criminal, users who shave a few years off their age in their profile, claim to be single when they are married, or change jobs or addresses without updating Facebook right away would also have violated the criminal law"

Spidey Halts Robbery - "The saying ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’ ringed true as ‘Spider-Man’ foiled the ploy of a shoplifter, with some help from the Flash and a couple of Jedi knights."

Updated: Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information - "Even for an innocuous interest like cooking, it’s not clear how this change is meant to benefit Facebook's users. An ordinary human is not going to look through the list of Facebook's millions of cooking fans. It's far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply... Facebook has consistently ignored demands from its users to create an easy "exit plan" for migrating their personal data to another social networking website, even as it has continued — one small privacy policy update after another — to reduce its users' control over their information."

Oviedo woman says she fatally estranged husband by accident after rough sex - "She told police that Robert Cline III, 41, was being too rough, that she told him to stop, he didn't, so she got a .38-caliber handgun, pointed it at his chest, warned him again, but he only laughed and leaned toward her, according to her arrest report. The gun went off accidentally, she told police, and still he did not get off her, so she quickly pulled the trigger twice more, wounding him at least once more. Cline then rolled off the bed and onto the floor, and she got a knife and stabbed herself in the belly to make it look like she had acted in self-defense, according to her arrest report... She and Cline had been separated about three months, she told police, but still, they got together every Monday for sex"

Father has face sliced open in racial attack as his son, 5, watches in horror - "'I was with my son and a girlfriend when this mob of 20 Asian youths came up to us. They were saying "Your lot killed one of ours" - meaning white people killed an Asian lad... One of the guys was acting aggressively and the group was swearing and hurling racist abuse. They attacked me because of the colour of my skin. They were very racist'" I'm sure some people will be calling this racist. The article, not the attack

CatGenie - The World's Only Self-Flushing, Self Washing Cat Box

Elva Hsiao admits to eyelid procedure - "[She did it] at her late mother's behest... "Not only do my eyes look bigger, my luck is getting better. My album ("Diamond Candy") became an immediate hit," said Hsiao, who added that she had snagged quite a number of music awards, and managed to avoid getting into bad relationships since her surgery... Hsiao also pointed out that the procedure shaved one hour off the time she needed to put on make-up and go out. "I rather spend that extra hour sleeping instead of putting on make-up," she said, during a promotional event in Taiwan on Monday. Previously, Hsiao had to spend two hours putting on eye make-up, painstakingly position false eyelashes and apply tape to her eyelids to create the illusion that she had double eyelids. She takes an hour more if she needs to do her hair. According to her manager, Hsiao once kept singer Stanley Huang waiting for almost three hours while she dolled herself up, before attending an event with him"

Man jailed for sex with minor - "One night, Kwek asked the victim if she wanted to play 3P, a slang for threesome having sex together. The victim agreed... Kwek had sex with his fiancee, followed by the victim, and then with the fiancee again. After the incident, the fiancee told him not to have sex with the victim again as she regretted having 'shared' her boyfriend with someone else. But Kwek had sex with the victim when they were alone at home on Dec 24"
I finally find out what "3P" is. And I love the fiancée's line. I wonder if the fiancée reported him when he had sex with the girl again..

Is Sex Necessary? - "The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it's harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female. (This assumes that you are engaging in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted disease)... In women, sex also prompts production of estrogen, which can reduce the pain of PMS... Seminal plasma contains zinc, calcium and other minerals shown to retard tooth decay. Since this is a family Web site, we will omit discussion of the mineral delivery system. Suffice it to say that it could be a far richer, more complex and more satisfying experience than squeezing a tube of Crest--even Tartar Control Crest. Researchers have noted, parenthetically, that sexual etiquette usually demands the brushing of one's teeth before and/or after intimacy, which, by itself, would help promote better oral hygiene... But is there such a thing as too much sex? The answer, in purely physiological terms, is this: If you're female, probably not. If you're male? You betcha... Women who abstain from sex run some risks. In postmenopausal women, these include vaginal atrophy. Dr. Winch has a middle-aged patient of whom he says: "She hasn't had intercourse in three years. Just isn't interested. The opening of her vagina is narrowing from disuse. It's a condition that can lead to dysparenia, or pain associated with intercourse. I told her, 'Look, you'd better buy a vibrator or you're going to lose function there'""

OpenDislike - "OpenDislike is a simple way to tell other sites about the things you dislike on the web"

Man marries his dying cat - The Local - "Postal worker Uwe Mitzscherlich decided to marry his 15-year-old black and white cat Cecilia because she may not have long to live... “Cecilia has such a trusting nature,” Mitzscherlich told the paper. “Between us there is an inner bond, a harmony of hearts – it’s unique.” The two met some 10 years ago when he was vacationing on the Baltic Sea coast. The love between them was so strong that when the 39-year-old, who lives in Possendorf near Dresden, realised that his asthmatic and overweight feline friend would likely die soon, he decided to make it official... Dressed in a tuxedo with a top hat, the groom held his bride, who wore a tiny wedding gown. The ceremony was complete with flowers, a wedding march, vows and a kiss"

Scientists create men with emotional sensitivity - "Women be assured: it's not men's fault. They just don't have enough Oxytocin. All it takes, according to German scientists, is a healthy dose of the hormone linked to female reproduction and men can be as caring, sensitive and empathic as women."
Now it's time to create women with rationality.

Dictionary definition of 'siphon' wrong for 99 years - "An OED spokesman said the offending entry was written in 1911, by "editors who were not scientists""

Working overtime increases heart risk, a study finds - "People who regularly put in overtime and work 10 or 11-hour days increase their heart disease risk by nearly two-thirds, research suggests."

Facebook Executive Answers Reader Questions - "Q: Why not simply set everything up for opt-in rather than opt-out? Facebook seems to assume that users generally want all the details of their private lives made public.
A: Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice."
Sounds like Singapore. Like it or Leave.

Worst-Paying College Degrees - "10. Drama
9. Fine arts
8. Hospitality and tourism
7. Education
6. Horticulture
5. Spanish
4. Music
3. Theology
2. Elementary education
1. Social work... They say that crime doesn't pay. As this list seems to point out, neither does helping people"

Schoolchildren 'routinely monitored' by CCTV - Telegraph - "Schoolchildren are as likely to be monitored by CCTV as prisoners or international air travellers... As many as 85 per cent of teachers have reported the use of CCTV in their schools and one-in-10 said cameras had even been placed in toilets. According to the study, some schools are also using other techniques such as fingerprinting, metal detectors, electronic identity cards, eye scanners and facial recognition systems"

Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer - "There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it... The U.S. is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor... One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man"... "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should"... Other people don't exist for Rand, either. Part of her ideas are nothing more than a ditzy dilettante's bastardized Nietzsche... The fear that some felt at the time was that these philosophers' dangerous, yet nuanced ideas would fall into the hands of lesser minds, who would bastardize Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and poison the rest of us. This aptly describes Ayn Rand... "If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral"... Rand also despised democracy"

Japan panics about the rise of "herbivores"—young men who shun sex, don't spend money, and like taking walks. - "Grass-eating men are alarming because they are the nexus between two of the biggest challenges facing Japanese society: the declining birth rate and anemic consumption. Herbivores represent an unspoken rebellion against many of the masculine, materialist values associated with Japan's 1980s bubble economy... Japan has rarely needed its men to have sex as much as it does now. Low birth rates, combined with a lack of immigration, have caused the country's population to shrink every year since 2005... "We don't care at all what people think about how we live"... In response to the herbivorous boys' tepidity, "carnivorous girls" are taking matters into their own hands... before World War II, herbivores were more common"

Strange Geographies: Searching for the “Real” Venice - "The signs for Piazza San Marco are everywhere, and they take every conceivable form, from official-looking placards to handwritten signs taped in windows to graffiti spray-painted by locals, undoubtedly sick of being asked, in halting, guide-book Italian, Scusi, dov’e Piazza San Marco? My strategy was simple: whenever I saw one of these signs, I turned on my heel and went the opposite direction. This resulted in my getting hopelessly, desperately lost over and over — truly accurate maps of Venice do not seem to exist — but I would argue that the only way to begin to find Venice is to get lost in it."