Links - 24th January 2011

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." - Ernest Benn

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'Toylets' games make a splash in Japan urinals - "Games include "Graffiti Eraser" in which a user tries to aim at the pressure sensor in the urinal to erase virtual graffiti on the display... Another is called "The North Wind and The Sun and Me", in which the strength of a urine stream determines the extent to which a virtual girl's skirt gets blown up by a digital wind. "Splashing Battle!" pits the user against the previous urinal user in terms of stream strength"

Genes may play role in friends we choose, says study

Boffins play 'Pac-Man' with tiny living organisms - "The game-fancying boffins have also set up live versions of other games, dubbed "POND PONG", "Ciliaball" and "Biotic Pinball". In Biotic Pinball, the paramecia play the part of rolling balls and the paddles are supplied by squirting "occasional whiffs of a chemical into the fluid, causing the paramecia to swim in one direction or another""

Men have upper hand in sexual economy - "As women progress in educational and professional opportunities, their odds of finding a committed man appear to go down... women in the 18- to 23-year-old group feel they don't need men for financial dependence, many of them feel they can play around with multiple partners without consequence, and that the early 20s isn't the time to have a serious relationship. But eventually, they do come to want a real, lasting relationship. The problem is that there will still be women who will have sex readily without commitment, and since men know this, fewer of them are willing to go steady"
Maybe this is another reason women are bitter about female liberation and feminism; Salon has a slightly longer take

Do you dare to eat alone? - ""No, I have not tried eating alone in campus yet... Today I asked my friend to come earlier so that she can eat with me. And before that I went to message, like, a lot of my other schoolmates to ask them, 'Oh, are you free to have lunch today?'... You're just sitting there and you're just eating and you're not really doing anything, and people are just walking around looking at you, and then you'll feel that, 'They think I have no friends'"... "It's okay to go to the washroom yourself. It's okay to go on the MRT yourself""
This is quite sad. And boliao that the ST actually covered this 'story'
Amusingly an NUS spokesman said ‘The ‘Eating alone in the school canteen’ campaign exemplifies the creative and community spirit that can be found in our students.’

Do I Love My Wife? Are You Really in Love Test - Esquire - "Sex boosts attachment. When you have an orgasm, your brain pumps out oxytocin, heightening feelings of closeness. Which is why one-night stands often last past one night. And why exhausted married couples should force themselves to hump once in a while. In fact, semen itself contains oxytocin. You literally have a love syringe between your legs... "I actually think men in your situation" — meaning married with young kids — "should be encouraged to go to the Internet and look at pornography, because it brings novelty into the home"... Even when I was in the romance phase of the test, the sex regions of the brain lit up. 'This is beginning to look like quite a message for women'... Here's what my wife said when she found out she was going up against Angelina Jolie: "If you don't find Angelina more sexually attractive, there's something wrong with you." The results are in — and apparently there's something wrong with me... "The Chinese participants tended to associate love with negative features, e.g., heartbreak, and spontaneously listed more negative items than Americans, who associated love with more positive features, e.g., adoration"... Julie snaps at me today for forgetting to buy her oranges on the way home. She accuses me of being inconsiderate. "Sorry," I say, "but it's a scientific fact that I love you""

21-Year-Old Bristol Man Stabs Partygoers, 1 Fatally, Over Flatulence Jokes

Why buy "JLS condoms" when you could have these? on Twitpic - "Protect your "Wand" from "Hogwarts" when enteringher "Chamber of Secrets""

Inflatable Cock Fighting (picture, possibly NSFW)

Study: Young kids better with tech than 'life skills' - "58 percent of children aged two to five know how to play a "basic computer game" compared with 52 percent who know how to ride a bike. Sixty-three percent can turn a computer on and off, and 69 percent can use a mouse. By contrast, only 20 percent can "swim unaided," 11 percent can tie their shoelaces without help, and 20 percent know how to make an emergency phone call"
Self-selection: they polled mothers online

Singapore's flawed 'freedom' - ""The idea that unregulated markets always result in more economic freedom is, in my view, ideology, not economics"... Rather than calling the rankings an index of economic freedom, "'Openness to rich outsiders' is more accurate... More bizarrely, the index doesn't explicitly measure state ownership of businesses, except in the financial sector... "I probably would not invest in a company that the Singapore government controlled," said Michel Levin, founder of shareholder rights advocate The Activist Investor... But Singapore suffers from a sort of caste system, where it's difficult to advance very far up the economic ladder if you don't have the right connections"... "Friends ask me what Singapore is like and I call it 'Cuba with money': same politics and climate, with very different economies," Levin said. They also have surprisingly similar levels of freedom, depending on how you choose to measure it"

Is Hello Kitty's new friend Mell a reclusive hikikomori? - "Sanrio are encouraging people to send in letters, messages and tweets to convince the withdrawn character to emerge"

A Few Successful Things Focus Groups Hated - "Baileys Irish Cream was also despised by focus groups. “They hated the stuff and didn’t believe it was Irish or even real”"

The Kant Song

JFK Twitter account chronicles president's life - "Posts to the account explain the president's life 50 years ago through both his own words and explanations of his actions"

Mark Landis, Prolific Art Forger - "Unlike most forgers, he does not seem to be in it for the money, but for a kind of satisfaction at seeing his works accepted as authentic"

Video Games vs Real Life - Video games superimposed on real life

Differences in earnings between male and female physicians - A summary from elsewhere: "For physicians below the age of 45, with 2-5 years of experience, there no income disparity once one adjusts for: a) hours worked per week – men work 62, women work 51, b) specialty – men work in more remunerative specialties than women (in 4 highest-paying fields [radiology, general surgery, anesthesiology, subspecialty surgery], 27% of men practice, 14% of women; in 3 lowest-paying fields [general practice, pediatrics, general internal medicine], 42% of men practice, 55% of women), c) practice setting – men work in more remunerative settings, and d), miscellaneous factors – AMA membership, marital status, etc. For physicians with 6-9 years of experience, women make 96% of men’s income even after adjustments. For physicians with 10 or more years of experience, women make 85% of men’s income even after adjustment"
The increasing gap can be explained by runaway effects

Happy Birthday, Jerk: First PC Virus Born 25 Years Ago - "When Pakistanis came in for, say, Lotus 1-2-3, they were sold clean, uncontaminated copies. But foreigners, particularly Americans, were given virus-ridden versions. Why the special treatment for outsiders? The brothers' somewhat confused rationalization hinges on a loophole in Pakistani law. According to Basit, copyright protection in Pakistan does not extend to computer software. Therefore, he says, it is not illegal for local citizens to trade in bootleg disks; technically, they are not engaged in software piracy. Then why infect American buyers? 'Because you are pirating,' says Basit. 'You must be punished.'"
This would be called racism if it were the other way around

DA: Pa. Abortion Doc Killed Babies with Scissors - "[He was] accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them. Dr. Kermit Gosnell was also charged with murder in the death of a woman who suffered an overdose of painkillers while awaiting an abortion... most doctors won't perform [abortions] after 20 weeks because of the risks... State regulators ignored complaints about Gosnell and the 46 lawsuits filed against him, and made just five annual inspections, most satisfactory, since the clinic opened in 1979, authorities said. The inspections stopped completely in 1993 because of what prosecutors said was the pro-abortion rights attitude that set in after Democratic Gov. Robert Casey, an abortion foe, left office. Williams accused state Health Department officials of "utter disregard" for the safety of women undergoing abortion... The state's reluctance to investigate, under several administrations, may stem partly from the sensitivity of the abortion debate"
Being too pro-choice is bad too