"But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin

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Blowjob With Braces? FAIL! - "A mid 40s Taiwanese couple went to doctor, complaining that his penis was bleeding and was painful... while the wife was doing the job, the wire on braces somehow cut and torn his foreskin, and it started bleeding."

The day I decided to stop being gay - "I once attended the nuptials of a gay male friend to a girl with whom he had unexpectedly fallen head over heels in love. It was a curious affair: the wedding party was peopled with his ex-lovers — including me, the best man and even the vicar... At the BBC, where I worked for seven years, homosexuality was very nearly compulsory... It seems highly perverse that gays should fight for freedom from the bonds of heterosexual morality and then set to copying their oppressors by creating similar contracts of their own... The late jazz singer, art critic and gay-straight convert George Melly... told me about his Damascene transformation. He was 30 years old, on a country bicycle ride with a group of friends, when it happened. Floridly gay, he suddenly noticed that he was staring at the girls, rather than the boys, and declared to himself, “Oooh, you’re heterosexual now, dearie.” He went on to enjoy a long and happy marriage."
Apparently sexual orientation is not all that fixed for men (at least not for all men) either (we already know that women, as always, are complicated and change their minds). Of course people are trying to silence him in the comments.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine: How to Quit Facebook, Twitter

Pretty women 'anger more easily' - "Researchers found women who rated themselves as pretty displayed a war-like streak when fighting battles to get their own way... they found how attractive other people rated the women also tallied... In men, they found a similar link but with physical strength rather than attractiveness per se"

Asia Carrera FAQs - "How can I get into porno movies?
This is one fantasy that's better left as a fantasy. There's a reason why you always see the same guys over and over in every movie. It's because there are very, very few guys who can perform on command under the demanding, grueling circumstances of shooting a movie. Imagine: it's 5am, you're exhausted, 15 crew guys are grouchy and waiting on you to perform so they can go home. They're giving you nasty looks while you're trying to get hard in the freezing cold, buck naked, on your aching knees on the cold metal hood of a car. The girl, who isn't even very attractive close up, is off set with her boyfriend, smoking a cigarette until you're ready. You're wanking in the cold with an audience of 15 impatient guys, knowing that if you don't get hard, word will spread instantly that you are not reliable. And if you don't come on cue, forcing them to reshoot the scene, you will never be hired again. Directors can't afford delays or failed scenes - so they simply refuse to hire new guys. The way to get around this is by bringing a hot new girl with you, and saying she'll only work with you. Fresh meat is worth its weight in gold around here"

France's Proposed Burqa Ban: Why Americans Might Want to Consider It Too - "Sarkozy has declared that in a country where women enjoy equal rights, he does not want to see those rights debased. Only several thousand French women wear the garment, most coming from communities made up of Muslims who emigrated from former French protectorates... when visiting countries such as Egypt and Morocco, where native women cover all but their faces, I am not likely to go out in public in shorts and a T-shirt, as I do here at home. Some culturally tone deaf Western tourists do dress as if they're touring Disneyland, but most have the presence of mind to cover up somewhat, out of respect for another country's culture, beliefs and tradition. I often wish Muslim immigrant women would repay the courtesy here in the U.S... many [American Muslim women who cover up I interviewed], seemed to have ulterior motives -- motives based on acceptance into a community or by a man who provides emotional or financial support"

Nazi Analogy Jumps the Slope -- and Maybe the Shark - "How are women ski jumpers today like Jews in Nazi Germany? Or are they?... Fifteen women ski jumpers from five countries, supported by feminists around the world, in 2008 launched a legal effort to force the International Olympic Committee to include women's ski jumping in 2010... B'nai Brith's human rights arm recalled the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the IOC did not protest Hitler's barring of Jewish athletes from the Games... B'nai Brith's allies below the 49th parallel have spent a lot of time recently trying to get conservative Christians and Tea Party Republicans to stop using Nazi analogies and Hitlerian imagery as they battle health care reform and President Obama"

Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee - "We did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic."

[CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals - "They were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source."

Secret of genius is sexual chemistry - "The careers of great male scientists, like those of male criminals, are most prolific in the first flush of youth, according to the study. Both groups pursue their chosen paths with greatest panache before the age of 35 and both lose their enthusiasm when they marry. The findings seem to support an observation by Einstein, who in 1942, at the age of 63, wrote: “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so”... In young and single men, testosterone levels are high, leading to risk-taking and creativity. Once a man settles down, testosterone levels fall and so does his creative or criminal output"

Diagnosing Our National Disease: Trends in Income and Happiness, 1973 to 2004 - "The principal force behind declining happiness has been a decline in the number of working-aged Americans who are married, as well as declining marital satisfaction. These trends, however, have been largely independent of trends in income. In fact, once marital factors are considered, the negative trend in happiness reverses direction, and economic factors emerge as the single most important force underlying growing happiness... perceptions of relative income have increased, despite growing income inequality"

Survey: France one of the most productive countries on earth
This is the same reason why Singaporeans work the most in the world, while their productivity fell

Using Fibonacci Numbers to Convert from Miles to Kilometers and Vice Versa - "If the distance you’re converting can be expressed as a single Fibonacci number, then for numbers greater than 21 the error is always around 0.5%. However, if the distance needs to be composed as a sum of n Fibonacci numbers, then the error will be around sqrt(n)·0.5%."

8-year-old Boy Scout placed on terrorist watchlist - "He shares the same name as a person on a security watchlist. Michael Hicks... was first singled out [when] he was just two-years-old. Since then he has found it hard to get on a flight without being mistakenly targeted as a 'suspicious person' on a government watchlist, which triggers a higher level of security screening... More than 81,000 frustrated travellers have asked for their names to be removed from watchlists by the US Department of Homeland Security, and there are currently 25,000 cases pending"
It's a good bet that many of the same people who find it incredible that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab managed to get through security also protest cases like this - and allege racism when security staff are given discretion to not screen 8 year old boys (there're more than half a million people on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment).