Woman arrested for trying to sell her kids on Facebook.

Last Two Speakers of Dying Language Refuse to Talk to Each Other.

2,000 to 4,000 businesses now producing marijuana for legal purposes. Total sales: $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion last year.

450,000 people had robot-assisted surgery last year, making Intuitive Surgical, the maker of the da Vinci machine, one of the hottest stocks around. Hospitals across the country embrace the cutting-edge surgical device but criticism is mounting. CNBC’s Herb Greenberg investigates allegations of problems in the operating room in his latest documentary, “The da Vinci Debate.”

The world of underground surgery for healthy people who feel that their limb is not part of their body and needs to be removed.

This paper proposes that networks can act as covers which allow actors to participate in markets while maintaining a plausible excuse that they are not. [PDF]

Sites listing an individual’s real name have become common. This shift towards real names is not merely a technical convenience, but a specific political turn. As pseudonyms are often associated with Internet trolling and cyberbullying, it is useful to track the use of pseudonyms in history and to consider many of their positive functions.

This month marks 20 years since work started to wipe away one of the most striking features of the Hong Kong landscape for good. A 2.7-hectare enclave of opium parlours, whorehouses and gambling dens run by triads.

Why has China built a ghost town in Africa?

Does riding a motorcycle reduce your sperm count?

Why White People are Called Caucasian? [via Sunday Reading]

The Eat-This-Then-Your-Sweat-Will-Smell-Like-Rose-Water Experiment.

MoMA’s Jackson Pollock Conservation Project.

A Wet Towel In Space Is Not Like A Wet Towel On Earth. [Thanks Tim]

Traveller arrested smuggling live hummingbirds in his trousers.

Videos: Feeling and Retouch.

Man convicted for stealing more than $376,000 worth of copy machine toner while employed by NYC law firm.

Bears In Russia Are Addicted To Jet Fuel, Sniff It To Get High And Pass Out. [Thanks Erwin]

Pick up a pay phone anywhere in New York City this month and you will be transported back in time to a critical moment in New York history: 1993. [Thanks Tim]

What does the United States export?

People who worry habitually about separation and abandonment - the “anxiously attached” - tend to be highly skilled at lie detection, an attribute that means they excel at poker.
How Can I Avoid Procrastination?

There are anecdotal reports that men who wear (Scottish) kilts have better sperm quality and better fertility. But how much is true?

How does the public engage with the new knowledge that advances in neuroscience produces?

The revival of an extinct species is no longer a fantasy. But is it a good idea?

Struggling, trapped bed bugs are impaled by trichomes on several legs and are unable to free themselves. Scientists document how beans create a natural bedbug trap and, potentially, how it could be used to improve bedbug purging efforts.

Do Dogs Try to Hide Theft of Food?

During an interview what’s an appropriate answer when asked “where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

The 12 Best Very Small Agencies to Work For in Government.

The Wi-Fi router you use to broadcast a private wireless Internet signal in your home or office is easy to hack.

It’s time for the flying public to cut the airlines some slack and show a little appreciation. Stop Whining About Air Travel.

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in Vienna.

The Ford “Quonset-Hut Mansion” House, 1948.

Martin John Callanan used a very powerful 3D microscope to take 400-megapixel images of the lowest denomination coin from each of the world’s 166 active currencies.

Central Park, top view.

List of patents for machines that do not and, by their nature, cannot work as described.

‪Turn Empty Water Bottles Into Alcohol Fueled Rockets‬.

Shortcut.

Maine ‘hermit’ gets marriage proposal, bail offer. [previously]

A former head of a sports memorabilia auction house who admitted to using shill bidders to drive up prices and to altering the most valuable baseball card ever sold.

A judge whose smartphone disrupted a hearing in his own courtroom has held himself in contempt and paid $25 for the infraction.

Mexico City tries to get salt shakers off tables.

A man who apparently blew himself up with explosives was known to record video of his neighbors from his property, prompting calls to police from residents. [Thanks Tim]

Men can’t read women’s emotions, study confirms.

Data from a new study of British adults suggest that following a “Western-style” diet (fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, refined grains, and high-fat dairy products) reduces a person’s likelihood of achieving older ages in good health and with higher functionality.

Nobody really understands why listening to music — which, unlike sex or food, has no intrinsic value — can trigger such profoundly rewarding experiences. Salimpoor and other neuroscientists are trying to figure it out with the help of brain scanners.

Using brainwaves for authentication, instead of passwords.

Frequent texters tend to be shallow, research suggests. [Thanks Erwin]

Facebook Charging $1 Million For New, Intrusive Video Ads That Will Run In Users News Feeds. TV-Like ads can be bought for four broad demographic swaths.

Apple is said to be getting very close to nailing down streaming licensing agreements with Universal Music Group and Warner Music.

Trader pleads guilty to making unauthorized purchase of nearly $1 billion in Apple shares.

Virtual Bitcoin Mining Is a Real-World Environmental Disaster.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how much experience you have. It doesn’t matter why you lost your previous job — it could have been bad luck. If you’ve been out of work for more than six months, you’re essentially unemployable.

5 Ways You’re Wrong About Surviving Disasters.

James Joyce’s grandson describes image on official commemorative coin as an ‘insult,’ says coin fiasco is typical of Ireland’s treatment of his family.

In 1983 psychiatrist Giles Brindley demonstrated the first drug treatment for erectile dysfunction in a rather unique way. He took the drug and demonstrated his stiff wicket to the audience mid-way through his talk.

Has anyone ever been killed by a falling piano?

A Complete History of Breakout. [Thanks Tim]

11 very unusual elevators.

Vacuum-Wrapped Tokyo Couples.

Fuck your frame cluster and bench tableau with a cactus on top.

Unhappyhipsters.com

French sports doctor who spent 16 years studying the busts of 330 women aged 18 to 35 suggests bras are useless. Going without could improve firmness.

Bizzare subway ‘kiss’ assault.

How Wireless Carriers Are Monetizing Your Movements. Data that shows where people live, work, and play is being sold to businesses and city planners, as mobile operators seek new sources of revenue.

A new cure for insomnia?

A new study reveals what happens in our brain when we decide to purchase a piece of music when we hear it for the first time.

Scientists have come up with a way to make whole brains transparent [video]. More: Looking through the brain with CLARITY.

A technically sounder basis for worrying more about H7N9 is this: H7N9 shows signs of mammalian adaptation that H5N1 doesn’t show.

Texting, social networking and other media use linked to poor academic performance.

Information technology amplifies irrational group behavior.

Teens Abandoning Social Networks, Study Says.

One of the prevailing personality stereotypes we rarely question is that extremely extroverted people do best in sales. On the flip side, extremely introverted people may as well not even try to sell anything because it’s a foregone conclusion that they simply can’t. Grant found that they pulled in roughly the same percentage of sales.

How does Bitcoin work?

Why Humidity Makes Your Hair Curl.

One story coming out of Joint Special Operations Command is that the Esquire “shooter” isn’t the shooter after all. Sure he was there, but he wasn’t the man who shot UBL, and ended his life. […] The “Shooter” was removed from his DEVGRU Squadron for talking about the operation openly after being warned to “can it.”

Going to Coachella? You’re a Loser and Part of the Problem and Probably Fat.

Google Street View Hyperlapse. [How to]

James Gulliver Hancock is on a mission to draw all the buildings in New York City.

The physics of a pulled tablecloth, seen in slow motion.

Invitation.

The mother of all manes.

Identity Thieves Filed for $4 Million in Tax Refunds Using Names of Living and Dead.

From boat cruises and spas to their own obituary section in the leading newspaper, pets are pampered in a big way in Singapore.

United flight diverted after family complains about movie.

New technologies are emerging that could radically reduce our need to sleep - if we can bear to use them.

Low on self-control? Surrounding yourself with strong-willed friends may help.

Lasers that stimulate targeted neurons ease cocaine addiction in rats.

Diamonds Are Bullshit.

A few years ago a leading elevator design and manufacturing company gave me the task of examining how people experienced and interacted with elevators.

In 1980, Kim Hyun-hee was sent to North Korea’s elite spy training school in the remote mountains, she was given a new name and intensive training in martial arts, weapons and languages.

Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight.

‘Secretbook’ Lets You Encode Hidden Messages in Your Facebook Pics.

In pictures: Ultra-light material. [Thanks Max]

How to Scramble Eggs Inside Their Shell. [video]

Can You Patent A Steak?

Is playing the harmonica linked to male infertility?

How Male Strippers Achieve and Maintain Their Stage Boners.

City bills cyclist $1,200 for damage to police car that struck him.

In San Francisco, if you ever leave your bike unlocked, it will be stolen. If you use a cable lock to secure your bike, it will be stolen at some point. Unless you lock your bike with medieval-esque u-locks, your bike will be stolen from the streets of most American cities. Even if you take these strong precautions, your bike may still get stolen. What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?

The fat and cholesterol found in steak may not be the only components bad for the heart, according to researchers who have found another substance in red meat that can clog the arteries.

In Oregon, unintentional drug overdoses now kill more people than car accidents. The drugs that are driving up those numbers and killing most often are opiates—heroin and prescription pain medication, including methadone.

“Higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing oysters to grow slower, and their predators — such as blue crabs — to grow faster.”

Exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition. Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.

Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple’s encrypted chat service are “impossible to intercept.” And: DEA Accused Of Leaking Misleading Info Falsely Implying That It Can’t Read Apple iMessages.

New Skype malware spreading at 2,000 clicks per hour makes money by using victims’ machines to mine Bitcoins.

Viewers who tag shows using Shazam’s iOS and Android apps will be served cast information, trivia and news, feeds from Twitter, links to show data on sites including IMDB and Wikiepdia, and song details from the soundtrack.

Kids in England aren’t using Facebook. They’re all on a chat program you’ve never heard of, called Kik, which has roughly 40 million users. [Kik.com]

Why aren’t we all using Japanese toilets?

Why Do We Hate Certain Words?

How common are prostitute-seeking men and how much do they differ from men in the normal population?

The first sociological study of pimps was published in February 1931.

The XXX-rated activity was found out because IP addresses from Vatican City downloaded pornographic torrent files.

Drawings from the Gulag.

15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children. [Thanks Tim]

A transgender man who made worldwide headlines after he married and gave birth to three children will appeal an Arizona judge’s ruling denying him a divorce from his wife of 10 years.

Cougar Cruises Bring Younger Men To Older Women.

Cross dressing Catholic priest to plead guilty to meth dealing ring. He had also purchased a bookstore - one that sold primarily pornography and sex toys - which he used as a front to launder money.

Chinese fishing vessels are taking a huge unreported global catch, fisheries researchers have found. Instead of an average 368,000 tonnes a year that China reported to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, its fleets hauled in as much as 4.6 million tonnes, the scientists estimate.

Ireland’s Homeowners: Global Champions in not Repaying Mortgages. [Chart]

Dream contents deciphered by computer. (60 percent accuracy)

Films for oral application offer an interesting new approach for drug administration.

Does Greek coffee hold the key to a longer life?

Men deliver ripe coffee berries to El Molino mill for processing in El Salvador, November 1944.

A growing body of research suggests that tea helps prevent cardiovascular disease, burn calories and ward off some types of cancer.

What we exhale is unique to us – our ‘breathprint.’

New research from an international team of scientists suggests evolution, or basic survival techniques adapted by early humans, influences the decisions gamblers make when placing bets.

One study famously found that people who had big wins on the lottery ended up no happier than those who had bought tickets but didn’t win. It seems that as long as you can afford to avoid the basic miseries of life, having loads of spare cash doesn’t make you very much happier than having very little.

The men and women who helped hide Ratko Mladic through his many years as a fugitive saw him as a Serb hero. But just in case their loyalty should waver, they were presented with a gift: photographs of their children. The implication was clear: if we can shoot them with a camera, we can shoot them by other means as well.

Russian Cyber Criminal Unmasked as Creator of ‘Most Successful’ Apple Malware Ever. Researchers estimated that the malware was earning its operator up to £6,600 [$9,900] per day.

The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge.

The warships of the future will be floating factories that create everything from food to robots and spare parts — all thanks to 3-D printers. One far-out idea from the U.S. Naval Institute: printable ships.

“When is the difference between 99% accuracy and 99.9% accuracy very important?” When it can stop a Zombie Apocalypse.

“Such adaptations [i.e., retention of the hymen] are explicable only if the male of the species finds it to his advantage to seek a virgin.”

How to Light a Bar on Fire.

The “Russian Banksy” is dead at 28.

Bull riding, 1916.

Portable Masturbatorium.

German flea circus hit by freeze. Entire troupe wiped out. “This is no April Fool’s.” [more]

The county where no one’s gay.

Gay Men, Straight Women: What’s the Attraction? New research suggests at least part of the answer lies in their ability to give one another trustworthy mating advice.

More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China appear to be missing.

New research predicts that rising temperatures will lead to a massive “greening,” or increase in plant cover, in the Arctic (as much as 50 percent over the next few decades).

Network Theory Approach Reveals Altitude Sickness to be Two Different Diseases.

Are we rapidly approaching a time when progress in mathematics effectively comes to an end?

Forget next-day delivery. The standard in online shopping is rapidly approaching next-hour delivery. How Robots and Military-Grade Algorithms Make Same-Day Delivery Possible.

Deadly Hospital Superbugs: How to Protect Yourself

Is there such a thing as a left-handed cat?

Tokyo renters paying $568 for tiny coffin-sized apartments.

Man arrested with 21 tons of stolen cheese.

Looking like a prostitute is now LEGAL in France after bizarre law banning ‘passive’ soliciting is overturned.

New York State ranks dead last in personal freedom.

Female students just as successful as males in math and science, Asian-Americans outperform all.

Waiters’ tips and the weather: Analysis of a possible connection.

How Climate Change Could Eventually End Coffee.

15 minutes of fame? Study finds true fame isn’t fleeting.

Older, more experienced therapists cry more often in therapy.

New study shows that neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend following release from prison.

Killer Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto provides a valuable resource for those studying the narrative and discursive dimension of crime.

In the United States, nearly one in five women have been raped at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — most of them before age 25. Across the planet, more than one in three women will be physically or sexually abused by men.

Why Your Next Phone Will Include Fingerprint, Facial, and Voice Recognition.

How to Make a Computer from a Living Cell. Genetic logic gates will enable biologists to program cells for chemical production and disease detection.

Gartner predicts 3D printers will cost less than a PC by 2016.

HBS Case: LEGO. How LEGO-one of the most profitable toymakers in the world-grew to global dominance from humble beginnings; the mistakes that led it near bankruptcy; and why one turnaround attempt failed while a second succeeded.

The Biological Basis Of Orchestra Seating.

15 Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English Immediately.

The 25 Least Visited Countries in the World.

More creepy bunnies.

Ghost-hunting Basquiat in his old East Village apartment .

DETETCIVE: (looks at floor) Im cant beleave it.Its is… (turns to camera) coverd in Crimes.

Body Scripture.

When Engineers Have Dogs.

Store Charging Patrons $5 For ‘Just Looking’, To Offset Losses From Internet Shoppers. [Thanks Glenn]

Next-Gen $100 Bills Prove Hard to Make, Easy to Fake.

Crime has dropped in Juarez, the notoriously dangerous Mexican city. We can thank good, old-fashioned police work.

Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves.

Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor.

Women Make Better Decisions Than Men, Study Suggests.

How team conflict can be beneficial.

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a “do not eat” signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

It is widely believed that dietary salt leads to increased blood pressure, and higher risks of heart attack or stroke. This is the “salt hypothesis.” Two major observational studies do not support the salt hypothesis.[PDF]

A study published in the Journal of Hypertension in 2011, which analyzed data from over 6,000 people, failed to find an association between lowered salt intake and lowered risk for heart attacks, strokes, or death.

Chewing accelerates cognitive processing speed.

Research on warning labels printed on cigarette packages has shown that fear inducing health warnings might provoke defensive responses. Reformulating statements into questions can avoid defensive responses elicited by textual- and graphic warning labels.

Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

A lack of physical exercise causes or contributes to the development of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, some types of cancer, depression, obesity or osteoporosis. And something as simple as physical exercise reduces the risk of getting some of these diseases.

We show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

Kafka was a fervent womanizer, carrying on numerous romantic involvements (and frequenting brothels) throughout his life. Here, he tries to convince Bauer to marry him.

James Franco: Lindsay Lohan wanted to have sex with me, I said no, because she had “issues.”

On January 26, 2008, a 30-year-old part-time entrepreneur named Mike Merrill decided to sell himself on the open market. He divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 a share.

Giovanni Di Stefano conned clients like Saddam Hussein out of large sums of money by setting himself up as a lawyer when he had no legal qualifications and was not registered to work as a lawyer.

Debbie Schlussel says, with her usual blend of moderation and critical insight, “every single person involved with this movie is a complete scumbag unworthy of human life” and gives it “four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens” which must mean it’s really bad. [Thanks Rob]

Room 237 presents a compendium of Shining fans and scholars offering various readings on what the film is really “about.”

Why are the French drinking less wine?

The Joys and Dangers of Exploring Africa on the Back of an Elephant.

So far, Gunnar Garfors has visited 196 of the 198 countries (193 UN members, the Vatican, Kosovo, Palestine, Western Sahara, Taiwan). He set a world record by visiting 5 continents in 1 day on June 18, 2012 using only scheduled transport.

Draw a Tyrannosaurus rex from memory, right now. It’s probably wrong in a very significant way.

Do you know anyone who loves email? I don’t. 10 Rules For Emailing Busy People.

How stores spy on you.

If you’re just dying to get stop-and-frisked, you should either:

Each year since 2004, on the anniversary of the infamous blaze, volunteers fan out across the city to inscribe in chalk the names and ages of the victims in front of their former homes.

Hermes is selling a $91,500 crocodile T-shirt.

I hope your bag is comfortable, asshole.

Howard Family Dental.

Actresses without teeth.

The theft of used cooking grease from city restaurants has risen in recent years thanks to the demand for “yellow grease” — a valuable ingredient in biodiesel.

Fla. House passes bill banning Internet cafes.

Blood monitoring implant tells your smartphone when you’re about to have a heart attack.

Motion-sensing wristband buzzes to tell health-care workers if they are washing their hands properly.

A huge study involving over 12,000 participants across 51 cultures from Argentina to Uganda has concluded that men tend to have more varied personalities than women. That male and female students tended to rate men’s personalities with more variability might say more about how men are perceived, than about how they actually are.

The Difference between being smart, educated, and intelligent.

Researchers use menstrual blood stem cells to treat heart failure.

Men and women get sick in different ways. Recent research in laboratory medicine has revealed crucial differences between men and women with regard to cardiovascular illness, cancer, liver disease, osteoporosis, and in the area of pharmacology

“On which side of the central seam in your pants, do you keep your penis?”

“I don’t know. I don’t identify with the term ‘rich.’ But I think I make a shit-ton of money,” a 24-year-old Google employee making low six figures told me. Tech has brought very young, very rich people to the Bay Area like never before. And the changes to our cultural and economic landscape aren’t necessarily for the better.

Google’s increasingly aggressive effort to steal online retail from Amazon is turning into one of the most intriguing business battles of the year.

This paper provides the most comprehensive discussion to date of whether so-called automated, autonomous, self-driving, or driverless vehicles can be lawfully sold and used on public roads in the United States. [Stanford | PDF]

When the British eventually moved in on the swamp, they found that of the nine hundred troops that originally fled into the swamp, only around twenty seriously wounded and weakened Japanese soldiers were left. In all, about 500 Japanese soldiers escaped from Ramree despite the intense blockade instituted to stop them. If Wright’s claim is true, however, the Ramree crocodile attacks would be the worst in recorded history. [Thanks Tim]

Scaffolds and sidewalk sheds on the rise in New York.

Two hero lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the museum’s attempts to make its absurd but optional $25 admission fee appear to be mandatory.

Yesterday NY Hardcore scene photographed by Brooke Smith (the actress who played the woman in the well in Silence of the Lambs).

The F-word can only be used once in a PG-13 movie.

Edward Mordake supposedly had an extra face on the back of his head, which could neither eat nor speak, although it could laugh and cry. [Thanks Tim!]

I am looking for a DJ that plays in the pacha basement to help me give the illusion that I am playing with them for 1 hr. [Craigslist]

Guy Scratches Own Back, Finds Knife Blade Someone Stuck In There Three Years Ago.

The Transportation Security Administration’s plan to allow small knives on planes has sparked a revolt in Congress.

French man arrested after posing as an airline pilot and gaining access to the cockpit on a US Airways flight.

The study, at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore, found that a single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was enough to cause positive effects for up to a year. Single magic mushroom can change personality.

New method to mass produce anti-cancer natural killer cells from embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells.

The paradoxical relationship between religious belief and criminality.

Bubble Weapons System. The new system unleashes “bubble plumes” which can, claim Raytheon, create large regions of “bubbleized” water. These plumes can not only damage a ship’s power-train, but also, in the case of a large vessel, sink it by causing it to break in two due to uneven buoyancy.

Doomsday Recalculation Gives Humanity Greater Chance of Long-Term Survival.

11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on mapping a cemetery in a Geographic Information System (GIS).

Why do chimpanzees build nests?

Is Taking Your Pet on an Airplane Worth the Risk?

Engineering analyses of Noah’s ark.

⚓.

I’ve been posting my letters…