Links - 11th March 2015

15 minutes to tell if you’ll end in divorce - "“We discovered that when a couple has their first baby, 67 percent experience a tragic decline in their relationship happiness and an increase in hostility between the baby’s parents in the first three years of the baby’s life,” he said... Part of the Gottmans’ theory is that there are four major emotional reactions that are destructive to a marriage: Defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Among these four, they consider contempt the most damaging of them all."

5 Ridiculously Expensive Restaurant Menu Items - "230 Fifth's $2,300 hot dog
The famous rooftop lounge in Manhattan offers customers a super expensive hot dog that has thousands of dollars on your typical ballpark frank. This foot-long marvel is made from marbled Wagyu beef that takes 60 days to dry. It's smothered with white truffle butter, French imported mustard, and saffron ketchup, then covered in champagne cooked onions, homemade sauerkraut, and (what else?) caviar. Then just sprinkle on some gold leaf. Fortunately, those who buy this expensive wiener won't just be stuffing their wealthy faces with decadent food. They will also be making a sizable charitable donation to a local food bank with their purchase."

Power 98FM - Timeline Photos - "Hokkien for Dummies"

Why Do Facebook Users… Add Friends? Remove Friends? [INFOGRAPHIC] | Infographic List

Interview with Margaret Loesch, President of Fox Kids (1990-1997) - "I had been in children’s television since 1975. So by the time I got to Fox, and even at Marvel, I had seen a lot of kid’s shows and observed. I had been a part of some that worked and some that didn’t work. What I saw in X-Men was some of the same qualities that I saw in Spider-Man that nobody was dealing with and that is teenage angst: characters that were real yet worked in a fantasy situation, but their emotions were real. So with X-Men, I felt that the idea of a group of young people that were disenfranchised and had these real emotions and special powers that everybody would love to have except their powers were both a blessing and a curse. I felt that that human drama and tapping into the teenage 20-something angst was something I had never seen before in kids television…and I had seen a lot of stuff. That’s what excited me about X-Men. Interestingly enough, that’s also what excited me about Power Rangers, though slightly differently. With Power Rangers I felt what a hoot…what teenager wouldn’t want to have special powers and be able to transform themselves into superheroes to save the day and fight the enemy? Essentially with X-Men it was all about that angst and with Power Rangers it was about empowerment with teenagers. These are two themes I had never seen dealt with much in kid’s programming and I felt that the only way to make our network a hit was to try things that hadn’t been done before, or hadn’t been done in a long time. It wasn’t any great talent or any great gut that I had, it was my experience at seeing the same show done over and over again in so many different ways. I thought how I could excite kids with something they could identify with but was also fresh and different to them. "

Stumbling and Mumbling: The demand for quacks - "He studies not homeopathy but US patent medicines in the 19th century. Despite being practically useless, these enjoyed spectacular long-run growth - Professor Troesken estimates that spending on them grew 22 times faster than US GDP between 1810 and 1939. Why? The answer, he says, is that demand for them was inelastic with respect to failure - people kept buying them even though they didn’t work. This was because the medicines offered enormous consumer surplus; the products were cheap, but the benefits they offered were huge; there’s an analogy here with Pascal’s wager... What’s more, there were several things that stopped consumers learning that the entire industry was useless:
1. Many of the products contained morphine or alcohol, so even though the medicine didn’t make the patient better, it made him feel better for a while. In this regard, patent medicines were superior to homeopathy - and possibly better than at least cheap placebos.
2. Consumers of failed products didn’t tell others of their bad experience. Few people told their colleagues that their Nobby Stiles were as bad as ever.
3. There were countless new products coming onto the market, so someone who had tried many medicines could hope that the new one would finally do the trick. This is, however, not the whole story; several patent medicines had a long product life.
4. Companies spent a fortune on advertising"

Students Think They Can Multitask. Here's Proof They Can't

Answer to Why are women so negative about the "picking up women" school of thought? - Quora - "Negging is not about criticizing, or insulting, or lowering a girl's self-esteem. It's teasing, it's banter. It's what most people do with their friends on a daily basis and what makes conversations fun and interesting. The problem with most guys who hit on girls is that they completely dispose of the way they normally communicate with other people and start agreeing with everything women say in an effort to please them. They supplicate to them, which makes the interaction not only ingenuine, but extremely uncomfortable. The idea behind negging is really just saying that it's OK to poke and prod in a fun, playful way... the reason women are so negative about the pickup community is because media and society propagate false assumptions and incorrect beliefs about what it's all about. Women hate pickup because most of them don't really understand it. The seduction/pickup community is, at it's core, just a self-improvement community. And at the heart of every self-improvement system lies the question, what does it mean to be better? "

What It’s Like to Have a Micropenis - "My predictable physical ideal is a skinny, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, boyish, probably dark-haired, intellectually dominant woman who will not be bothered with makeup and such and will tell me exactly what she wants me to do and will get quite annoyed if I fail. I have never actually had a relationship with such a woman... I can tell just by the way people walk and the way they look and the way they relate to other people that they have a big penis. You go into a meeting and the guys are swaggering around with their legs akimbo as if they’ve been riding a horse because they’ve got such an enormous package they can’t really walk straight and it’s just crazy"

What the perfect breast looks like, according to men and women - "British doctors surveyed 1,315 people (men, women, and plastic surgeons), asking them to look at photos of different breasts and pick the proportions they liked best. The winning ratio across all three groups: 45:55, as in 45 percent of breast tissue falls above the nipple line and 55 percent below. Turns out, this is a “natural” shape—similar to the Venus de Milo—and nothing like the orb-like, fake boobs of yore."

Exploding Excrement Topples Building In China, Injuring 15 - "In another excrement-related incident, a man and his mother both died trying to retrieve his wife's new mobile phone -- worth 2,000 yuan ($320) -- from a toilet septic tank, reports said in May. The man jumped in to try to locate the phone but was overcome by fumes and passed out"

Officer testified he was punched twice - "US police officer Darren Wilson said he felt he was authorised to use force against Michael Brown after the teenager punched him twice in the face... Wilson said he went for his gun because he thought that a third punch from Brown could have 'knocked me out or worse'... One unidentified male witness who was working at a location near the shooting provided an account that aligned closely with Wilson's."

Israeli gay party promoter slammed for ISIS-themed party - "As the new Islamic State gains traction in the Middle East, we at Drek have decided to give in to Sharia law and cheer the stubborn Daesh"

Board games' golden age: sociable, brilliant and driven by the internet

Student: Men who have been raped still have more privilege than women - "Polick-Kirkpatrick alleged in her piece that when men participate in “feminist conversations about sexual violence,” women feel uncomfortable as men are “taking up much-needed space in their community” as, according to the student, women are most often the victims and men are most often the perpetrators. “When men want a space in this feminist conversation, it indicates the already prevalent patriarchal desire to control how oppressed groups fight their own battles,” Polick-Kirkpatrick wrote. “When one comes forward to report and discuss the atrocities they have experienced, this should not mean they take up the space of others in the same conversation, even within the feminist community.”"

Uber Quietly Removed Blog Posts Examining Link Between Prostitution And Rides - "mashing up with the San Francisco Crimespotting map, the team made a few determinations: “Areas of San Francisco with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary also have the most Uber rides. Be safe, Uberites!” Then, the post goes off on a bit of tangent, as the authors get curious about the prostitution stats. They notice that prostitution arrests in both San Francisco and Oakland seem to spike the second Wednesday of each month. Why? “Someone pointed out to me that Social Security and welfare checks arrive on the second, third, and fourth Wednesdays of each month,” the team writes. “Oh man. Now we’re into dangerous, politically-charged territory”... “The company examined its rider data, sorting it for anyone who took an Uber between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday night. Then it looked at how many of those same people took another ride about four to six hours later – from at or near the previous nights’ drop-off point. Yes, Uber can and does track one-night stands. Consider it the Uber equivalent of the walk of shame.”"