Homeowner sick of cold calls changes name to Tim P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-Price.

Man Divorces Wife After She Refuses To Get Rid of Her 550 Cats.

Saudi ghost-hunters raid “haunted” hospital.

Good News: People Eat Other People on a Pretty Regular Basis. Here is a rundown of what we’ve found from just the past six months.

‘Tarantulas’ invade Indian village, ‘kill’ two.

That Unused Hour on Your Parking Receipt? You Might Think About Selling It. [ NY Times]

More tampons, less tips. Why Ovulating Lap Dancer Get Tipped More.

Human Monogamy Started with Weak Males and Faithful Females, According to Research.

Genius and insanity may actually go together, according to scientists.

Analytical thinking erodes belief in God.

The man who can remember every day of his life in detail.

How close are we to a forgetting pill.

Hiding true self at work can result in less job satisfaction, greater turnover.

How the immune system recognizes danger from non-danger.

Regular Exercise May Be Bad for Some People.

Plant geneticists who sequenced the tomato’s genome in hope of breeding better specimens found that it has 31,760 genes — about 7,000 more than a person. [NY Times]

One of the most common and least understood neurobiological disorders, Tourette syndrome is an inherited disorder that affects about 200,000 Americans. Males are affected three to four times as often as females.

Men’s Porn Use Linked to Unhappy Relationships.

Should amputation be offered as a treatment to people suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder? The science and ethics of voluntary amputation.

Compared to a spindly mosquito, the mass of a raindrop is like a bus bearing down on a human. Yet the delicate insects thrive in wet, rainy climates. To find out how mosquitos live through rain showers, researchers pelted them with water drops while filming them at high speed.

2 New Elements on Periodic Table Get Names: flerovium (Fl) and livermorium (Lv).

Astronomers have completed the first search for extraterrestrial intelligence on nearby exoplanets using very long baseline interferometry. No signs of E.T.

Spike in carbon-14 levels indicates a massive cosmic event between ad 774 and ad 775.

Female Suicide Bombers: Clues from Journalists.

An Hypothesis about Suicide Notes.

Greek monetary history also includes one previous failure in a currency union (The pre-World War 1, Latin Currency Union).

Irish Mathematicians Solve The Guinness Sinking Bubble Problem.

How the Surging Popularity of ‘Himalayan Viagra’ Is Causing Murder and Violence in Nepal.

How about those who do not travel? Segmenting the USA non-travel market.

Nintendo’s new Wii U console will embrace social networking. The machine will promote the Miiverse in which users can see what others are playing, share self-created game content and swap gaming tips.

Interview with Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ive.

Our results suggest that the short-term growth of G+ during its first 10 months far outpaced other OSNs. However, we do not observe a bandwagon effect (characteristic of other popular OSNs) in the growth of active users who represent 10.3% of the whole population.

Google Embraces “Paid Inclusion.” What Is Paid Inclusion?

Google Glasses patent hints at speech-to-text display for deaf users.

Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you.

This is a famous murder because of its use of a notably lethal poison. And because the solving of this particular murder changed the history of toxicology.

Michael Geismar’s blackjack run ended just after six o’clock on Friday morning with $410,000 in manila envelopes in cash sitting on a table at Café Bellagio in the namesake Las Vegas luxury hotel, right next to the plates of steak and eggs and glasses of ice water. The co-founder and president of $4.6 billion managed futures firm Quantitative Investment Management couldn’t put the bundled $100 bills in his room upstairs because the safe was already full with about $300,000 in winnings from two nights before.

As a former actual curator, of like, actual art, I think I’m fairly well positioned to say that you folks with your blog and your Tumblr are not actually engaged in a practice of curation.

When Lichtenstein took up the brushstroke motif in 1965.

How to Make Your Vagina Taste Awesome.

Street Art GIFs.

The celebrated Terrier dog “Major” killing 100 rats in 8 minutes, 58 seconds.

Contestants in a marathon dance.

Obama sushi rolls.

The Orvillecopter.

Tokyo Transsexual Cooks and Serves His Own Genitals at Public “Ham Cybele” Banquet.

After her iPhone left her possession during a Disney cruise, a woman started noticing new photos being automatically uploaded to her iCloud account.

American police officer is under investigation after allegedly breaking into his neighbour’s house to do his laundry.

Family fights Coca-Cola for $130million after father bought box with old stock certificate for $5 at garage sale.

Police are looking for an attacker firing darts at people in Brooklyn, after three men were struck Sunday evening.

How 3 simple buttons raised tipping by $144 million in NYC cabs.

Economists list cheapest ways to save world.

Interview with Nick Bostrom: We’re Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction. Previously: The Great Filter.

Perfectionists worry away the benefits of a break from work.

A new study suggests that motivation is not always helpful.

Why Your Best Friend Ditched You For His Girlfriend.

Parents are happier than non-parents, new research suggests.

Looks matter more than reputation when it comes to trusting people with our money.

British researchers have found that gut feeling can override rational thought when people are faced with financial offers that look unfair. Are sweaty brokers more ethical?

Brain circuitry is different for women with anorexia and obesity.

First Gene Therapy Successful Against Aging-Associated Decline: Mouse Lifespan Extended Up to 24% With a Single Treatment.

Sugar can make you dumb.

Long-acting contraceptives best by far. Implants and IUDs outperform the pill, vaginal ring and patch as birth control options, a study finds.

Chimps’ personalities are like people’s, study says.

A new study of online behavior reveals that men and women organize their social networks very differently.

Your Brain on Facebook. [thanks Mike]

Say goodbye to the individual investor on Wall Street. […] Mobile is going to crush Facebook.

Texting Drivers Take Eyes Off Road 5 Seconds On Average: Study. Even talking proved to be dangerous.

Scientists have found that suspicion resides in two distinct regions of the brain.

Anaya has even coined a term for it—”customer service sabotage”—and discerned seven different categories of rude customers who can be a serious liability for the service industry.

Most CCTV systems are easily accessible to attackers.

UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet.

The Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over, and We’re Dancing on its Grave.

Historically, women have often been paid less than men for doing the same or equivalent work. A recent report reveals that an average woman working full time from the age of 18 to 59 years is estimated to lose out on £361,000 over the course of her working life compared with an equivalent male. This article considers the implementation in the UK of the Equality Act 2010 and its impact.

Brigitte Harris cut off her father’s penis, accidentally killing him in the process, because, she says, he sexually abused her for years. In 2009, she was convicted of second-degree manslaughter, and sentenced to five to fifteen years.

What are we fighting when we try to push through a challenging workout?

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index.

Turtles the size of Smart cars once roamed the rivers in what is now Colombia, preying on creatures as large as crocodiles.

Given its location and climate, Greece should be filled with hominid bones and stone tools. Where Are Greece’s Missing Hominids?

Jeff installed a printing press to close the inventory gap with Amazon.  The Espresso Book Machine sits in the middle of Harvard Book Store like a hi-tech visitor to an earlier era. A compact digital press, it can print nearly five million titles including Google Books that are in the public domain, as well as out of print titles. The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore.

The Phantom Menace is George Lucas’s updated mythos for a cynical consumerist age — magical thinking without magic. Watching The Phantom Menace on acid is a paradoxically sobering experience.

Tumblr released statistics prove what most people could have only guessed: There are a shit ton of “Fuck Yeah” blogs.

Marc Jacobs vs. The Graffiti Artist, Round 2: When Jacobs Turns Vandalized Store Into $680 Shirt.

A Psycho-­Historical Analysis of Adolf Hitler: The Role of Personality, Psychopathology, and Development [PDF]

An Interview with Stanley the Adult Baby. Related: Hello and welcome to Bed Wetting Adult Babies/Diaper Lovers.

A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where ‘bump n’ grind’ dancing and striptease were featured.

The Heaven and Hell nightclubs of 1890s Paris.

The only known recording of Freud’s voice.

Proper letter spacing for any possible combination of characters.

Every Time Zone, A Visual Time Zone Calculator.

Click on the performers’ names to see a list of movies in which they died, with a brief description of the death scene. Cinemorgue.

This Poor Stock Photo Model Is Stressed Out All Over The Internet.

Celebrities That Look Like Mattresses.

Faces.

Nuptial nightmare.

New Jersey town begins issuing $85 fines for texting while walking.

Divorce courts mirror society as more women pay alimony.

Connecticut radioactive man pulled over by police.

Urinating swimmers may be why 500 fish died.

A new Israeli law prohibits fashion media and advertising from using Photoshop or models who fall below the World Health Organization’s standard for malnutrition.

Understanding J.P. Morgan’s Loss, And Why More Might Be Coming.

Great news for Vergara’s horny male fanbase.

Physicists store short movie in a cloud of gas.

Researcher runs IP network over xylophones.

Skilled liars make great lie detectors.

“Most people with a mental disorder are happy.”

A walk in the park gives mental boost to people with depression.

Young male drivers are more vulnerable than older men to sleepiness.

Milk contains enough calcium to turn nipples into bone – why do they remain soft?

A citywide ban on public smoking in Colorado led to significant decreases in maternal smoking and preterm births, providing the first evidence in the US that such interventions can impact maternal and fetal health.

Chronic cocaine use triggers changes in brain’s neuron structure.

Why Some Orangutans Never Want to Grow Up. Some males take decades to fully mature; this arrested development can improve their odds of mating success.

Although brain cells are built from a common blueprint, they differ from one another structurally, functionally and genetically. The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron.

Non-verbal communication between conductor, musician leads to better musician.

The bro position was played by Dave Clemans of an agency called Taxi, whose adult frat-boy look and constant stream of empty positive affirmations would have qualified him as the heartthrob counselor at a teen summer camp. “I said this before and I really believe it: culture is everything,” Dave said. “If there is any new craft in the industry, innovation is the new craft,” Dave said. “It’s about assembling the right team—the ‘Make It Happen’ people,” Dave said. [Thanks Tim]

The British undercover agent in the underpants bomb plot that has emerged so sensationally in recent days, was recruited using a technique pioneered by the founder of the KGB.

Projections show secularism losing momentum and beginning to decline in both Europe and America by 2050, largely because of low fertility and religious immigration.

I was a teenager the first time I faked an orgasm. It was during cybersex in an early-’90s AOL chat room.

The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable. What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Diaspora aimed to convince consumers otherwise. The founders envisioned a site that would function like a social network but would give users ownership of their data, taking exploitation out of the equation. The Diaspora founders couldn’t imagine their idea would lead to a turbulent two years that would include a move to Silicon Valley, fame, scrutiny, and tragedy.

Interview with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.

Interview with a safecracker.

How Starbucks Trains Customers to Behave.

Shouldn’t the expression “head over heels” be “heels over head”?

New .secure Internet Domain On Tap.

Apple has reportedly been working on its own Maps service for the next version of its iOS platform, meaning it might kick Google Maps off the operating system.

Kickstarter lapse leaves 70,000 project ideas exposed. Company acknowledges screw-up, claims impact was minimal.

Icons that don’t make sense anymore.

3D print glove is a wearable mobile phone. [Thanks Tim]

Russian satellite’s 121-megapixel image of Earth is most detailed yet.

6 Myths Everyone Believes about Space (Thanks to Movies).

Photos that would look cool on the New Shelton Wet Dry [Thank you The Worst of Perth]

I had been living in Mexico City for only two months when I encountered artist P.J. Rountree’s collection of El Grafico covers.

The smell is so powerful that not many visitors can take it. The “poo-machine” at the Museum of Old and New Art.

Let’s see.

Don’t you wish there was some discreet way for girls to quietly advertise the fact they’re into anal?

Hard to tell where these people are from.

Fortune Teller Used Google to Speak to the Dead.

Solution found for dead cows stuck in mountain cabin.

Zoo Keeper Helps Constipated Monkey Pass Peanut By Licking Its Butt For An Hour.

California seller of suicide kits sentenced for tax offense.

Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman’s lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That’s a record number.

Peru coast littered with hundreds of dead birds and dead dolphins.

LAPD plans separate jail for transgender suspects.

Lehman E-Mails Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to the Fall.

Korea plans hashtag-inspired skyscraper.

Happiness model developed by MU researcher could help people go from good to great.

Scientists have long wondered why left-handed people are a rarity. A new study suggests lefties are rare because of the balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution.

Acupuncture and hypnosis have been promoted as drug-free ways to help smokers kick the habit, and there is some evidence that they work.

Study finds emotion reversed in left-handers’ brains.

Jealousy and envy at work are different in men and women.

Research suggests infants begin to learn about race in the first year.

Researchers Aim to Read Your Dog’s Thoughts.

Mobile Spam Texts Hit 4.5 Billion Raising Consumer Ire.

Why Verizon Doesn’t Want You to Buy an iPhone.

An online search portal has been launched that reveals the IP addresses of any Skype user.

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

Electric airplanes are about to take off.

Researchers create life-sized 3D hologram for videoconferencing.

Double Fine raised $3,335,265 in a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. How long before the Kickstarter bubble bursts?

Over at Forbes, Eric Jackson argues quite convincingly that Google and Facebook – powerful though they are now – probably won’t be top dogs on the web for long. How do we deal with the ‘Facebook apocalypse’?

The Scientific Flaws of Online Dating Sites. What the “matching algorithms” miss.

Take top thinkers from Silicon Valley and science, mix them with scientists, innovators and philanthro-capitalists, and you’ve got the Singularity University.

From the diver who finds the body parts, to the forensic specialist who identifies flecks of paint on the victim and the handwriting expert who examines the killer’s notes. What happens at a crime scene?

Valuing art through its theft.

Leonardo da Vinci: How accurate were his anatomy drawings?

Beyond the sale of Munch’s “The Scream” (1895), which smashed the world record for any work of art at auction, the New York sales of impressionist and modern art revealed a strong if not always exuberant market.

For years, geologists have puzzled over mysterious boulders that litter the desolate coastline of Ireland’s Aran Islands. When nobody is looking, the massive rocks somehow move on their own.

Each had paid American Airlines more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the best purchase they ever made.

It is the only instance in the history of naval warfare where one submarine intentionally sank another while both were submerged.

Many New Yorkers have undoubtedly noticed that the subway map has its geographic faults, from peccadilloes like a wayward street to more obvious inaccuracies like the supersize island of Manhattan.

Antarctic krill form one of the largest biomasses of any individual animal species. The total biomass of bacteria may equal that of plants.

This article examines the expanding global tourist trade for fictional places derived from popular narratives that are recreated for the tourist’s pleasure, through a case study of a Harry Potter tour in the United Kingdom.

Jennifer Hayashi Danns, 28, worked as a lap dancer for two years whilst studying at university. She spoke to Ian Sinclair about the industry and her new book.

Materials scientists are researching the link between metals and taste. How cutlery affects your food.

6 media giants control 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to.

Michel Foucault with hair.

List of silent musical compositions.

World’s Loudest Alarm Clock.

Bee, Join me, Welcome baby.

Before entering the club, everyone had to sign a waiver, acknowledging that they were “at peace” with being fucked to death by Dr. Alexander Criscofist.


‘Unabomber’ Global Warming Billboard.

Your source for news about whether or not Oakland is, in fact, burning.

Man charged with assault after demanding moonwalk dance at gunpoint.

Conductor Kurt Masur Falls Off Podium During Concert.

Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes. The Sisters had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” [NYT]

Starbucks Corp said that it will stop using a natural, government-approved coloring made from crushed beetles in its strawberry flavoring by late June, bowing to pressure from some vegetarian customers.

The source of loud “booms” accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: it was a meteor. A big one.

Samsung has become the largest manufacturer of smartphones (overtaking Apple) and of mobile phones (overtaking Nokia).

Austerity policies are driving us towards a double-dip recession, warns US economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Women Seek Less-Dominant Dates in Recession.

While male victims are more likely to be bullied by male homophobic bullies, female victims are bullied by both males and females equally.

Commonly prescribed anti-depressants appear to be doing patients more harm than good, say researchers.

A computer game designed to lift teenagers out of depression is as effective as one-on-one conselling, New Zealand doctors reported.

Cocaine Eats Up Brain Twice as Fast as Normal Aging.

It is what you do in old age that matters more when it comes to maintaining a youthful brain not what you did earlier in life.

Hearing readjusts after head movements.

‘Lie detectors’ are highly fallible, yet suspects are more likely to tell the truth when wired up to them.

Erasing Memories Cell by Cell.

Why can smells unlock forgotten memories?

A new study finds that a high intake of flavonoid rich berries, such as strawberries and blueberries, over time, can delay memory decline in older women by 2.5 years.

The More Informed You Are, the More Likely You Are to Change Your Mind.

Psychologists Use Social Networking Behavior to Predict Personality Type.

New App Watches Your Every Move.

The Chinese character for epilepsy has been changed to avoid the inaccuracies and stigma associated with the previous label which suggested links to madness and, more unusually, animals.

A team of researchers has performed the first-ever computer model simulation of the structuring of the entire observable universe, from the Big Bang to the present day.

Currently the strongest contender for such a unifying theory is something called M-theory.

Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning. [Part II]

Researchers study costs of ‘dirty bomb’ attack in L.A.

A new method reveals which pages of ancient religious texts were most frequently used—and which prayers perpetually put readers to sleep.

Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?

How quantum immortality works. [thanks Tim]

Is Bad Urban Design Making Us Lonely?

What do you sell? Marijuana. The Economics of a Part-time Drug Dealer.

They’ve become a part of the pop-culture landscape: sexy, private shots of celebrities stolen from their phones and e-mail accounts. They’re also the center of an entire stealth industry. The Man Who Hacked Hollywood.

An Essay on the New Aesthetic.

Russia Today, the politsiya, and Western punks alike all want to know: Who is Pussy Riot, when is their next gig, and where can I get their album?

Cargo cult science refers to practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not in fact follow the scientific method.

Nipples at the Met. [thanks GG]

Black and white portrait of famous rapper superimposed with misattributed quote. Text-Only Instagram.

Sadness.

People with A.I.D.S. Plaza, NYC.

In Palm Beach County, Florida alone, Bank of America has sued itself eleven times in foreclosure cases.

15-year-old arrested for hacking 259 companies.

Human-made earthquakes reported in central U.S.

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause. Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists. [thanks GG]

In a study appearing this month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, MIT researchers report that emissions from cars, trucks, planes and power plants cause 13,000 premature deaths in the United Kingdom each year.

What to do with frozen cows stuck in cabin at 11,200 feet?

Japanese scientists regenerate human hair on bald mouse. The team says it will take about a decade before it can be applied to patients.

“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said Abraham Lincoln. It’s a truism that power magnifies personality — but is it true? A new study says no.

Depressed mothers are more likely to needlessly wake up their infants at night than mothers who are not depressed, according to Penn State researchers.

Evolution has given humans a huge advantage over most other animals: middle age.

Those who used speed (meth/ampthetamine) or ecstasy (MDMA) at fifteen or sixteen years of age were significantly more likely to suffer elevated depressive symptoms the following year.

Many contemporary observers believe that Edvard Munch, the brilliant Norwegian artist best known for The Scream, had bipolar disorder.

Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world’s coastal ecosystems, according to the first global study of jellyfish abundance by University of British Columbia researchers.

Scientists Trace Evolutionary History of What Mammals Eat.

50 years of bird poop links DDT with changing bird menus.

A panel of experts in Nebraska has declared human dung more appealing than that of several other species.

Scientists Use Satellites, Poop to Count Emperor Penguins.

When did our ancestors stop sleeping in trees?

Various historians have concluded that Einstein’s first wife Mileva may have secretly contributed to his work. Now a new analysis seeks to settle the matter.

How Drones are Changing Warfare.

Boeing prepares an ultra-secure smartphone.

With rising popularity of Internet-enabled TVs, the usual array of attacks and exploits will soon be coming to a screen near you. Your TV will be hacked.

Amazon’s Cloud Carries 1 Percent of the Internet.

Male editors dramatically outnumber female ones on Wikipedia and that could be dramatically influencing the online encyclopedia’s content, according to a new study.

As recently as 2004, the Cincinnati/North Kentucky Airport (CVG) was a major hub for Delta, and offered nonstop flights to 129 major cities, including Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Paris. Today, the number of flights through CVG has fallen by two-thirds, and an entire concourse stands eerily empty. How a thirty-year-old policy of deregulation is slowly killing America’s airline system—and taking down Cincinnati, Memphis, and St. Louis with it.

Five myths about water.

Why Netflix Never Implemented The Algorithm That Won The Netflix $1 Million Challenge.

Publishers who want to stay in business are going to have to start selling books without digital rights management. DRM locks customers into individual ebookstores and devices, which is the primary way that Amazon perpetuates its stranglehold on this market.

What Amazon’s ebook strategy means.

Drug smugglers and human traffickers have seized control of a narrow corridor of untamed Arizona desert along the U.S.–Mexico border, turning ranches — and even backyards — into killing fields. A visit to the most lawless place in America.

Investigating the massive corruption of the Chinese military.

Copenhagen frequently tops rankings of the world’s happiest, most liveable and best-designed cities. What Copenhagen can teach the world.

A magician sued a rival magician for copying one of his most famous illusions. The case promises to test the boundaries of copyright law as it applies to magic tricks.

Aviation experts say Price, 52, is one of only a handful of people in the world who have built their own flight simulator cockpit in an actual jet nose.

What’s the origin of “the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings?”

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating. Pixar story rules.

The World’s Rudest Hand Gestures.

Pixel Trash Can.

fuck you (.gif)

Snoopy died in his sleep.

David Salo, Tolkien Language Translator. [Wikipedia]

Dr. Klaus Löhlein and his team.

Argentine hospital blamed after “dead” baby found alive.

The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Over-regulated America.

It is illegal in Massachusetts to deface a milk carton.

California town set to ban smoking anywhere outside… even in your own backyard.

Many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties.

Final Stats On Heartland Payment Systems Class Action: $1,925 To 11 People, $600k To Lawyers.

U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border.

The Miss Universe Organization announced today that it will begin allowing transgender women to compete in its annual beauty pageants starting next year.

Japanese ATMs to use palm readers in place of cash cards.

Today, half of U.S. residents are single, and a third of all households have one occupant.

Life expectancy may affect when you get married, divorced, have kids.

Can Men Be Trusted to Take Male Contraceptive Pill?

Study uncovers a possible positive effect of using multiple forms of media at the same time. Multitasking – not so bad for you after all?

Social rank alters gene activity in monkeys.

Excessive worrying may have co-evolved with intelligence.

How Wealth Reduces Compassion.

Women have to work harder than men in order to start sweating, while men are more effective sweaters during exercise.

Eating less fat and exercising are some of the most effective paths to weight loss success.

On 30 June 1908, a mammoth explosion in western Siberia flattened trees across more than 2000 square kilometres. The most common explanation is that an asteroid or comet exploded in the atmosphere, yet no extraterrestrial material has been found. Six mystery blasts.

How To Trigger A Volcanic Eruption On Purpose.

Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular. Does the Early Universe Harbor Evidence of Time Before the Big Bang?

Robot Helicopters To Single Out Pirate Ships.

Why Amazon Wants Your Old CDs.

Nothing is ever exactly as it seems in technology business and that certainly applies to AOL’s recent patent auction.

This sort of thing happens a lot, and a few years ago, Brooklyn law professor Jason Mazzone gave the phenomenon a name – “copyfraud.”

Vang Vieng, deep in the jungle of Laos, is a backpacker paradise where there are no rules. Last year at least 27 travellers died there, and countless more were injured.

For years before they caught him, the Italian police had no idea that Paolo Di Lauro was one of Naples’s most powerful crime bosses, running a drug and counterfeit-goods empire—and responsible for a peace his turf had rarely known.

Beer taxes thus played a crucial role in financing the Dutch Revolt which led to the separation of the Low Countries and, eventually, the creation of Belgium. [PDF]

A parking chair is a chair that is used by a vehicle owner to informally mark a parking space as reserved for oneself.

Fuck your Cherner armchair. Fuck your toilet decal.

TransRatFashion: When we arrived in Rio we were struck by all the transvestites working the streets as prostitutes. We decided to use taxidermied rats, so I started to hunt down the rats.

He also happens to be the man responsible for bringing the bubbly saline injection-based forehead look to Japan.

Thermosaurus Radiator.

The USA Sunglasses by Jeremy Scott.

An Illinois congressman known for his rock-hard abs is rejecting a claim that he used his campaign account to pay for a P90X fitness DVD.

A 23-year-old financier who ran up a bar bill of more than $315,000 has been arrested.

Ice shelf in Antarctica has shrunk by 85% since 1995.

Chinese teenager sold a kidney so he could buy an iPhone and an iPad.

A Colorado man shot a woman in the head after mistaking her red Mohawk hairdo for a bird. [Thanks Seymour]

Wyoming town - population 1 - sells for $900,000 to Vietnamese buyer.

She arrived at the surgery center at 8 a.m., left at 12:30 p.m., and the bill came to $37,000, not counting doctor fees. The bizarre calculus of emergency room charges.

At what age are you happiest? According to a recent survey, the answer is 33.

Why women hate me for being beautiful.

NYC’s Most Insane Real Estate Deal: $55/Month Rent-Controlled Apt In SoHo.

A new study reveals that muscles in the upper face may divulge when people are not telling the truth. Researchers found four different facial muscles that a trained eye can use to separate genuine expressions of emotion from deceptive ones.

A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

In their study, 22 volunteers were faced with the 9 dots problem, a notoriously difficult puzzle. [solution]

Extreme eaters show abnormal brain activity.

New research found a dramatic rise of skin cancer among people under 40, especially women. The researchers speculate that the use of indoor tanning beds is a key culprit.

62 percent of men and 37 percent of women over the age of 65 are sexually active. The main causes of sexual inactivity are physical illness and widowerhood.

A new study shows that women bosses take better care of their employees than men do.

A new study indicates that daydreamers are better at remembering information in the face of distraction.

Herpes linked to coral decline.

Changes in the Earth’s axis of rotation and its orbit around the Sun may have triggered a series of sudden, extreme global warming events 55 million years ago.

A study confirms that long commercials evoke stronger emotions.

It’s hard to believe but nobody has properly calculated how much a social gaming company should be worth. Until now.

New index identifies periods when global stock markets might decline.

Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse.

No self-respecting New Yorker would ever request turn-by-turn directions from 23rd and Park to The Strand. Google Glasses. What could go wrong?

Texas researcher adds ‘Enemy’ feature to Facebook.

The Most Expensive Real-Estate in the World.

Life expectancy in China is increasing but the number of young adults is plummeting due to strict birth control policies. China faces ‘timebomb’ of ageing population.

Does the U.S. Really Have More Oil than Saudi Arabia?

So why did Planned Parenthood turn down nearly a half a million dollars they could put to good use?

Why Las Vegas is moving to Macau.

Welcome to the national headquarters of The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. [more]

He was about to do what no human had ever done before - free-fall to earth at the speed of sound.

The rise of 3D technology is just getting started.

The Pirate Bay launches crazy Physibles category for printing 3D objects. [previously]

Wiiliam Eggleston reprints sell out. The sale was controversial because it included new, larger-format editions of the famous dye-transfer images that the artist first produced in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Hannibal Lecter’s Guide To The ‘Goldberg Variations’.

The Last Handwritten Newspaper In The World.

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” There’s just one problem with both these quotations: No one can point to a primary source proving that Keynes ever uttered them.

Newsweek’s “Mad Men” issue. Stories are set in Newsweek’s 1960s fonts. And many of the advertisements are designed to look vintage-1965.

The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in Esquire, February 1936.

Claire Thompson, David Foster Wallace’s girlfriend of two years, stopped reading his 67-page breakup letter at page 20, she admitted Monday.

Unsimulated sex refers to the presentation in a film of sex scenes where the actors engage in an actual sex act, and not merely simulated sex.

Here are a few signs that an individual may have moved out of the normal social drinking part of the spectrum and into the almost alcoholic zone:

Can a hard-hit baseball crush your skull?

A Better Strategy for Hangman.

How to make your Hanko Stamp.

Visual representation of the history of life on Earth as a spiral.

World Population clock.

Kind of weird how something designed to keep you from being a target for gunmen in the woods has the opposite effect in the city.

Zombie Ass. [Thanks G]

Wife shot dead by husband after dog poops in house.

Woman bites man after being called fat.

The first room bombards you with noise: Hitler speeches, wailing women, pounding Death Metal. The Hungary’s House Of Terror.

As part of an independent, controlled study, Unger has cracked only his left-hand knuckles every day for the past 56 years.

According to a recent survey of two thousand women, a staggering 25 percent would rather win America’s Next Top Model than a Nobel Prize.

Modern dressers buy new fashions faster than we ever have before. Only about 15 percent of discarded clothing is recycled or reused, whether by individual or industry.

What science tells us about young girls and the incredible shrinking childhood. Featuring Ainsley, who began growing pubic hair at age 6. [NYT]

New research explains how speaking more than one language may translate to better mental health.

Does the brain ‘remember’ antidepressants?

You can’t do the math without the words.

Scientists say they’ve figured out how exposure to germs in infancy reduces the risk of allergies and other immune system problems.

A new treatment for cancer, by eating cancer cells.

A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer — a high proportion of them from university labs — are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.

The best human tuners have always been able to outperform electronic devices that do the same job. Until now.

How Cooperation Can Slow Emergency Evacuations.

Passengers litter less on carriages that smell of cleaning product.

Unless development patterns change, by 2030 humanity’s urban footprint will occupy an additional 1.5 million square kilometers - comparable to the combined territories of France, Germany and Spain, say experts.

The hidden history of lobotomy’s non-inventor.

Dimethyltryptamine is so hot right now. Interview with people who just smoked DMT.

There was a time when mothers gave their babies opium, people bought hallucinogens at the local bar, and anxious patriots sent hypodermic needles and cocaine to soldiers as a present.

How the Plummeting Price of Cocaine Fueled the Nationwide Drop in Violent Crime.

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say).

First, it is easier to punish than it is to regulate. Second, this preference for punishment may not be particularly healthy.

New artificial intelligence programs can analyze data sets to produce news articles that mimic the human voice. Is the Future of Journalism Computerized?

Good journalism costs money. Good investigative journalism often costs a lot of money. How much? Editor John Drescher says it’s not unsual for the paper to spend $150,000-$200,000 on a single reporting project.

Middle school boys who are reluctant readers value reading more after using e-readers.

Apple and five of the “Big Six” trade publishers are reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations.

Who Was Casanova?

What’s the Earth really made of?

We have made similar cuts to our use of utility electricity, using one-tenth the amount that comparable San Diego homes typically consume. In this post, I will reveal how we pulled this off.

Smart windows keep heat out – but let light in.

Mage, Japan’s Island Beyond the Reach of the Law.

One reason for abandoning China is quality: Some products are too flawed to sell. [Thanks Paul]

What Do Movie Producers Do? A Movie Producer Explains.

How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big-Budget Flick. [Wired]

Houses in fairy tales are never just houses.

love that the official Dragon Tattoo DVD is confusing people for looking bootleg.

Damien Hirst gallery to open in 2014.

At 29, Sheikha Mayassa Al Thani is the art world’s most powerful woman.

Cindy Sherman talks about her selections for MoMA’s “Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman” film exhibition.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Were Genetic Mutants.

Online dating scammers looking for money, not love.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW: Will My Date Have Sex On The First Date? ASK: Do you like the taste of beer?

Should I Date This Weirdo Who Sniffs My Crotch Sweat at the Gym?

The Enormous Benefits of Autophagy, or Why You Should Stop Eating Once in Awhile.

10 Reasons Why Dishwashers Are Better Than Hand-Washing.

Can static electricity kill you?

One pizzaiolo gets about 18,000 customers per week, of which approximately 50 ask for anchovies. Why Do Pizzerias Offer Anchovies?

What does the S in the dollar sign represent? [more: Wikipedia]

Big Fame Lucky Business Card.

‪10 Most Concealable Weapons (including Razorblade Cap)‬ [video]

Family tree.

Footshaking.

Hell’s Angels Forever, NYC. [video]

World Map: Metal Bands per 100,000 People.

Hombre Espacial.

Baptism.

Raccoon jaw and tongue with mother of pearl and resin.

Woman’s ‘phantom limb’ never existed in the first place.

Snow Globes Set Fire to a Couch by Magnifying the Sun’s Rays.

Estranged wives are having to adjust their expectations about their divorce settlements as a result of the trend for investment banks to reward their bankers with bonuses in deferred shares, rather than cash.

One out of 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, compared with one out of 100 people in the general population.

Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War.

One in Four HIV Patients Sexually Abused in Childhood.

Aspirin seems to be a miracle drug. New research shows that taking a low dose of the painkiller each day can cut the risk of a range of cancers, and could even treat the disease.

Mankind’s ancestors may have started walking on two legs simply because it allowed them to carry more food away in their hands, boosting their chance of survival, scientists believe.

Could rosemary scent boost brain performance?

Faces are considered more attractive when they’re moving.

The discovery of a hormone-like molecule in the scalp may offer new clues for treating male baldness.

Self-Dissolving Tinnitus Treatment Gives New Hope.

Researchers in Florida have found that when they deplete a smoker’s self control, smoking a cigarette may restore self-control.

Wielding a gun increases a person’s bias to see guns in the hands of others, new research shows.

Scientists measure how energy is spent in martial arts.

Sexual sadists show increased peripheral sexual arousal when observing other individuals in pain. The neural mechanisms underlying this unusual response are not well understood.

Why Your 1st Marriage Has a 50% Chance of Lasting.

Will marriage matter? Effects of marriage anticipated by same-sex couples.

Animals and 6-Month-Old Infants Are Getting Fatter…

How Stress Makes Oranges Better for You.

Last year, physicists discovered that red wine can turn certain materials into superconductors. Now they’ve found that Beaujolais works best and think they know why.

Twitter Not So Good At Predicting Box Office Revenues After All.

What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have in Common? Understanding why some people choose professions where accomplishments go unheralded.

The Paperless Office is Actually Arriving.

Is Magazine Publishing Really Screwed?

he object of fashion: methodological approaches to the history of fashion.

In a 30 year period, around 26,000 freed slaves were brought to the island after being rescued from slave traders.

NYC’s underground LowLine park would pipe in sunlight for trees.

How Christian Marclay created The Clock, his twenty-four-hour video collage.

Damien Hirst and the great art market heist.

A classmate from college set me up at Sotheby’s, a company I knew little about.

Who wrote the Iliad?

Future Shock: “too much change in too short a period of time.”

Do E-Books Make It Harder to Remember What You Just Read?

Techniques for Solving Sudoku Puzzles.

The Perfect Martini.

Probably don’t take a picture of your penis.

How to Get Some Guy to Marry You.

The 10 Rules of Great Paper Writing.

Breakdown of a Murakami novel.

Background art from animated cartoons.

Did a German ad agency blatantly steal an idea to make these charming Lego ads? More: Lego = Minimalist Simpsons.

Wildrose is a conservative provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Danielle Smith is their current leader. This is her bus.

Welcome Joe back to the trail.

Zoom!

Angelina Jolie to sack stylist over Oscar dress humiliation.

Chicago Billboard Provides Helpful Reminder That Hot Dogs Cause Butt Cancer. Related: Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels.

Steve Jobs smelled so foul that none of his co-workers at Atari in the seventies would work with him. Entreating him to shower was usually futile; he’d inevitably claim that his strict vegan diet had rid him of body odor, thus absolving him of the need for standard hygiene habits.

Most unpaid internships are illegal.

Accomplished Chinese women are a new “leftover” generation: Too successful to marry, but disrespected without a man.

Allen Stanford, the billionaire Texas banker who was once knighted by the government of Antigua, was convicted of stealing $7bn in customer money to fund a high end lifestyle that involved sponsorship of an international cricket tournament, yachts, and island properties.

For 150 years, the rest of the world has shown scant interest in the Canadian dollar. But now tiny Iceland…

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs [NY Times].

The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis.

Extreme Poverty In The U.S. Has Doubled In The Last 15 Years.

Extreme Poverty Down Despite Recession, World Bank Data Show. [NY Times]

Words spelled with more letters on the right of the keyboard are associated with more positive emotions than words spelled with more letters on the left, according to new research by cognitive scientists.

A new study shows that bringing somebody back to your freezing apartment may increase their loneliness and send them in search of the “social warmth” a companion can provide.

Married adults who undergo heart surgery are more than three times as likely as single people who have the same surgery to survive the next three months, a new study finds.

The Upside of Anger: 6 Psychological Benefits of Getting Mad.

When men get stressed, their bodies get more revved up than women’s. Now, two Australian researchers have a theory as to why — and it all boils down to a single gene.

How repeated stress impairs memory.

Old memories interfere with remembering new ones. Scans in healthy people reveal how the brain juggles outdated versus fresh information.

Why We Deny.

It turns out that sometimes sex can induce retrograde amnesia.

Ketamine - Magic Antidepressant, or Expensive Illusion?

Forty years ago, LSD was used in the treatment of alcoholics — with good results. A meta-analysis of studies from that period suggests that the psychedelic drug merits a second look.

Why a classic psychology experiment isn’t what it seemed. More: Unbeknownst to them, walking the hall was the real experiment.

The juicy fruit can cause negative side effects with a number of prescription and over-the-counter medicines.

There has been a lot of talk recently of the promise of personalised medicine, but some recent research led by Cancer Research UK may mean that this isn’t as simple as we thought – a genetic profile from one part of a tumour may not be the same as a sample from nearby in the same tumour. The genetics of cancer? Not as simple as we thought.

The Good News About the Virus in Your Genes.

Will we ever restore sight to the blind?

Can The Human Brain See Quantum Images?

Ancient impact may explain moon’s magnetic mystery. Anomalies near crater suggest scattering of iron-rich debris.

Uranium production in Africa, and what it means to be nuclear.

How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web.

Nigeria’s email scammers exposed.

Why Is iPad So Much More Dominant Than iPhone?

In this post, I’ll take a closer look at the “cryonics dilemma”, mapping out the basic contours of the decision-problem faced by anyone thinking about undergoing cryopreservation.

An Autoethnographic Account of a Tattooed Female and (Re)appropriation of the Tourist Gaze.

Confessions of a Genius Art Forger.

The Enduring Legacy of Basquiat’s Hair.

What happened for Duchamp between Nude Descending a Staircase and Fountain— between 1912 and 1917? And why should it matter to us?

Listen to the music from Bret Easton Ellis’ entire oeuvre.

A/V Recommends: Zebra Katz.

On On view now at Columbia, an exhibition of Edward Gorey art, books and ephemera, collected by an early admirer who was his friend until his death.

“The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.” 1928 Letter to 16-Year-Old Jackson Pollock from His Dad.

Dear Mr. Orwell, […] Yours sincerely, Aldous Huxley.

The novel has been described with the term “Mommy porn,” a distressing new addition to the lexicon.

Crossword: Computers vs. humans.

How Do You Cite a Tweet in an Academic Paper?

The punctuator. [more photos]

A unique codex technology, the volvelle consists of one or more layers of parchment or paper discs and shapes fastened to a leaf, allowing for each individual layer to be rotated independently of the other components.

The Associated Press introduces new logo and look.

Five common Misconceptions About the Middle Ages.

What Do All The Controls In An Airplane Cockpit Do?

Transform Your iPhone Into a Microscope: Just Add Water.

A list of most of the commonly-used proverbs in the English language, with links to the meaning and origin of many of them.

Manicules.

Watch as photographer Eric Kim employs extreme ambushing techniques and goes on a spree on Hollywood Blvd with a Canon and a hand-held flash.

She’s in for a very long flight.

En voiture, Simone.

Scratch ‘N’ Sniff Centerfold.

Kids Are Still Getting Drunk By Shoving Vodka-Soaked Tampons Up Their Butts.

Thai teen girls think braces are cute. They’re also deadly. [thanks Tim]

Oklahoma Senator Pickets Personhood Bill With Hilarious, Obscene Sign.

According to a new study, eating cheese can alter your dreams. [thanks Tim]

Billboard promoting literacy night contains spelling mistake.

US Newspaper Ad Revenues Drop To 60Yrs Low.

North Korea Suspends Nuclear Testing. United States offers food aid in exchange for moratorium on uranium enrichment and weapons testing.

Why Russia needs to rebuild its military, by Vladimir Putin.

A mother describes the surprising effect that the pharmaceutical sleeping drug Ambien has had on her brain-damaged son. [NY Times]

Ever wonder how dogs can walk barefoot in the snow? A Japanese scientist may have the answer — an internal central heating system.

The odorous compound responsible for halitosis - otherwise known as bad breath - is ideal for harvesting stem cells taken from human dental pulp, scientists have discovered.

Yes, pheromones send signals about your moods, your sexual orientation and even your genetic makeup.

Brain cells know which way you’ll bet.

Do consumers prefer to pay $29 for 70 items or get 70 items for $29?

Showing off in humans: Male generosity as a mating signal.

Does religious background influence sexual orientation?

What’s the best time to be creative? New research finds circadian rhythms in our creativity.

Advocates for the increased use of neuroscience in law have made bold and provocative claims about the power of neuroscientific discoveries to transform the criminal law in ways large and small.

No cash. Only a few credit card receipts that look like they’ve been signed by Stephen Hawking’s anus.

Healthy people seeking amputations are nowhere near as rare as one might think. In May of 1998 a seventy-nine-year-old man from New York traveled to Mexico and paid $10,000 for a black-market leg amputation; he died of gangrene in a motel.

Dotcom didn’t look like a criminal genius. With his ginger hair, chubby cheeks, and odd fashion sense—he often wore black suits and white-on-black wingtip shoes—he looked like he should be setting up a magic table.

Computer scientists have developed a simple algorithm that accurately guesses your hometown using the location information of photos uploaded to Flickr.

He was fired from the company he helped create, YouSendIt. Then the cyberattacks started. A Silicon Valley Tale of Humiliation and Revenge.

Internet pioneer Larry Smarr’s quest to quantify everything about his health led him to a startling discovery, an unusual partnership with his doctor, and more control over his life.

Research, no motion: How the BlackBerry CEOs lost an empire.

Yahoo has asserted claims on patents that include the technical mechanisms in the Facebook’s ads, privacy controls, news feed and messaging service.

We must all be eunuchs when we play videogames, inhabiting stories where sex is an invisible phenomenon.

For the US, the war confirmed its status as a sovereign state and tested the limits of manifest destiny. On this side of the border, the matter is much simpler: if we hadn’t won the War of 1812, we wouldn’t be Canadian.

Which is the best language to learn? French.

We celebrate Nietzsche for being anti-everything, but why is there no anti-Nietzsche?

When did TED lose its edge? When did TED stop trying to collect smart people and instead collect people trying to be smart? Related: A TEDTalk from the future as envisioned by Prometheus director Ridley Scott.

Life as a Landlord. [NY Times ]

The film is in the public domain because the producers failed to renew the copyright in 1973.

National Cheerleaders Convention, Daytona Beach, Florida , 1998.

Henley Beach, Adelaide, 2012.

Décollage (up above).

Japanese Fart Scrolls Are the Best Scrolls.

Catastrophe.

More and more undeniable sightings of UFOs produced over major cities.

“Carrie vs Amélie” 3 Hooks Set.

Duchamp was here.

Electric cigarette explodes in man’s mouth.

Bizarre details emerge from investigation of Athens credit card cloning ring.

Naked bondage role-playing lands two in jail. Couple tell police that episode in busy parking lot was just a Valentine’s Day game.

IPO planned for Empire State Building.

Zelda Kaplan, 95, New York City’s oldest style icon and clubgoer, known for her regular presence at fashion galas and late-night partying, died Wednesday in the front row at a fashion show.

We should not allow a man to punch his girlfriend in the face and continue his career unabated.

Man’s body lays undiscovered in home for four years after suicide, and is only discovered by realtor who came to repossess house. He found Mr Carter’s ‘nearly skeletonized’ remains on his stairway, a gunshot in his head, and a handgun on his chest.

Novelty-seeking, a personality trait long associated with trouble, turns out to be one of the crucial predictors of emotional and physical well-being. [NY Times]

Creative individuals are more likely to be arrogant, good liars, distrustful, dishonest and maybe just a little crazy.

Drugs delivered wirelessly. Implanted microchip that releases medications on command has been tested in people for the first time.

New research suggests drinking diet soda every day is linked to a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and vascular death.

All genes aren’t indispensable. Even healthy people may have about 20 genes that are completely inactivated, a new study finds.

Study Finds Goats Adjust Their ‘Accents’ Based On Social Surroundings.

Leaf-cutting ants are less productive as their colonies expand, new research suggests, indicating that there is a limit to how big a colony can get.

From New England to Peru, an unprecedented number of dolphins have been beaching themselves in recent weeks, and experts are grappling as to why.

Few people realize that Asian and African elephants are about as different from one another as we are from chimpanzees.

Seeing, feeling have something in common. A protein needed for eye development is also involved in detecting vibrations.

Scientists Move Closer to Creating an Invisibility Cloak.

Mathematical Model Computes Snow Flake Shapes for the First Time.

Seven equations that rule the world.

Human activity is adding nitrogen even to waterways isolated from direct human contact.

Someone asked me recently how the price of a cocktail is determined.

Inside Instagram.

The Internet makes magic disappear. YouTube has killed the magician’s art, and threatens the stores where tricks have been passed down for generations.

Some of YouTube’s more popular producers of original videos are quietly reporting their viewership numbers have suddenly dropped.

How to Charge an ipod with fruits. [Thanks Tim]

Military Adapts Pro Sports Software To Speed Decision Making.

Every single item in the shop—from the RPG launchers in the “vault” to the endless shelves of swords, grenades, bombs, kilos of fake coke, and glocks in the sprawling basement—is manufactured in-house.

A mystery of mysteries: “If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret, you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.”

Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy.

Why Do Vampires Prefer Louisiana?

A statistics professor says he can predict crime before it occurs.

The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician.

Because card counting is not illegal, most casinos can only ask players to leave.

The Mad Men Experiment: Does Boozing Lead to Funnier Ads. [Thanks Tim]

Saint Valentine is the patron saint of both lovers and epilepsy – sadly, a little known fact.

The Role of Brands in Human Culture. (interviews)

This paper presents the emergence and transformation of body-­‐voice, a specific dialogical relation between different I‐positions in a case study of a woman who becomes blind.

We celebrate Nietzsche for being anti-everything, but why is there no anti-Nietzsche? Malcolm Bull’s new book aims to answer this question.

A Life without Affects and Passions: Kant on the Duty of Apathy. [PDF ]

Visualizing citations in research literature.

Petit recueil de 18 moisissures argumentatives pour concours de mauvaise foi.

Scientists discover world’s smallest chameleon in Madagascar.

A medical chart of Tom Waits’ upper body.

The Alternative Swedish Dictionary.

Let’s not forget the environmental impact - how flowers were killed to make that wreath?

List of lists of lists.

Does anyone else have that fetish where you get totally turned on by women who dress like retarded gymnasts who are about to rob a 7-Eleven?

Police hold man on suspicion of stealing five tones of ice from a glacier in Patagonia to sell as designer ice cubes for cocktails.

Giant Crack in Antarctica About to Spawn New York-Size Iceberg.

After lifting a ban on porcupine hunting, the Pennsylvania Game Commission ran into a thorny problem: reports of a new black market for the rodents’ meat in Southeast Asia.

Cannibal who ate head of former lover proposes to Satan-worshipping vampire girlfriend behind bars of psychiatric unit.

Forever 21 condemned for selling Kurt Cobain’s Flipper shirt.

Wealthy Chinese have been snapping up contemporary art, top wines and some the world’s most expensive cars. Now they’re adding pigeons to their must-have list.

A study just published in Plos Biology has shown for the first time that human speech can been reconstructed from brain waves.

Just how ants create the highly efficient network of trails around their nests has never been fully understood. Now researchers think they’ve cracked it.

Design Performs a Key Role in Spider Webs, Scientists Say.

Are sexual and emotional infidelity equally upsetting to men and women?

Sex differences in feelings of guilt arising from infidelity.

An abundance of unwanted sexual opportunities perpetrated by insensitive, physically and sexually abusive men may be a factor in the expression of homosexuality in some women.

The young women were more likely to modulate their eating according to the eating pace of their same-sex dining companion.

The science of belly button fluff.

The synapse: where the magic happens.

The Direction of Gravity.

How Snowflakes Are Formed.

Cats–and most other animals–have a third eyelid. Related: The nictitating membrane (from Latin nictare, to blink) is a transparent or translucent third eyelid present in some animals.

The mismeasure of neuroscience.

Does online dating really work?

Online dating’s said to be the future of relationships, now that we’re all too busy to meet people in real life. But claims that websites can match you with your ideal partner using scientific algorithms are bull, according to a team of psychologists.

Being single is more expensive than being married.

How to Predict The Spread of News on Twitter. Computer scientists have discovered the four factors that make news stories popular on Twitter.

Facebook is not your typical dot.com but I believe it is heading for the same fate as many of the tech bubble dinosaurs of 10 years ago.

Sprint to lose money on iPhone until 2015. And: The iPhone is a nightmare for carriers.

Google’s Biggest Advertisers.

Google Maps Help Predict Meth Labs Before They Open.

How to skip ads on YouTube.

The logic of a Thomson Reuters takeover of the Financial Times.

The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy.

How Tumblr’s David Karp built a £500 million empire.

Youth unemployment across Europe.

Related: More evidence emerges that Spain and Portugal may bypass recession and go straight to depression.

Trent Arsenault has never had sex, but he’s the father of fifteen children—and counting. The more he antagonizes the FDA, and unnerves television audiences across America, the more his in-box is flooded with requests for his sperm.

What does the law say about autonomous vehicles?

Frank Ahearn, a forty-nine-year-old man who helps people disappear. See also: There are three key steps to disappearing. First, destroy old information about yourself.

NYC Still Marijuana Arrest Capital Of The World: Arrests Rose Again Last Year. Since 1977, marijuana possession in New York State has been decriminalized for amounts of 25 grams or less, as long as it’s not in public view.

The Department of City Planning recently completed its most ambitious study of parking in Manhattan in three decades. [NY Times]

Chicago Has Half Of The 10 Most Expensive Restaurants In America.

A young cowboy from Texas who joined the elite US Navy Seals became the most deadly sniper in American history. In a book published this month he provides an unusual insight into the psychology of a soldier who waits, watches and kills.

Nice Things to Say About Attila the Hun.

The plot was conceived over a round of drinks.

What did people do in a Medieval City?

The rise and fall of lap dancing.

The telling reasons why, at least in football, China is unlikely to rule the world in the near future.

New legal brief filed in Gordon vs.McGinley appeal.

Why @GSElevator Is a Fake.

Romanian model Ioana Spangenberg, “The Human Hourglass.”

Tragic divorced mail order bride is the new goth.

Horizontal Shower.

Bounce.

Transformer.

George Clooney lookalike winner.

Key cleaner.

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel was spending $2,500 a month on rubber bands just to hold all their cash.

(…)

Carly Simon’s dad is the Simon of Simon and Schuster. He co-founded the company.

(…)

When the mummy of Ramses II was sent to France in the mid-1970s, it was issued a passport. Ramses’ occupation? “King (deceased).”

(…)

According to NASA’s FAQ page, “There are no plans at this time to send children into space.”

(…)

Horses can’t vomit.

{ Mental Floss | Continue reading }

Man stuck in mud for 3 days, is rescued.

FDA approves computer chip for humans.

The DJ was hit by a cab that crashed into his hotel room while he was sleeping.

Women are better at parking than men, study says.

A bill introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature prohibits “the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses.”

Birth control pills recalled for packaging error that may interfere with proper dosing and result in unintentional pregnancy.

McDonald’s confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives —  in its hamburger meat.

A teenage girl who has eaten almost nothing else apart from chicken nuggets for 15 years has been warned by doctors that the junk food is killing her.

Ultrasounds Before Abortions? Only if Men Get Rectal Exams for Viagra, Virginia Lawmaker Says.

Zapping testicles with ultrasound can reduce sperm counts and might be used in the future as an inexpensive, reliable and reversible male contraceptive, according to U.S. researchers.

Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness.

Divorce at a younger age hurts people’s health more than divorce later in life, according to a new study.

New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience: Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don’t.

The neuroscience of happiness. New discoveries are shedding light on the activities that make us happy. An expert explains.

A club drug called “Special K” is generating a lot of buzz among researchers who study depression. That’s because “Special K,” which is actually an FDA-approved anesthetic named ketamine, can relieve even suicidal depression in a matter of hours.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms, may help people with depression.

Music is largely a primeval tool to gain the favour of mates, argues evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks.

If you are an evening person, you’re probably at your creative peak early in the day. In contrast, if you’re a morning person, then the evening is the best time for musing.

Powerful people feel taller than they are.

Study: Most People Lie on Weight Surveys.

A controversial study finds genetic signatures that may be able to identify people with the best chance of living to 100 or beyond.

Airplane headache refers to a characterized type of headache that occurs during take-off and landing. The pain appears to be unique to plane travel and not associated with other conditions.

The odds of a major depressive episode are more than double for those working 11 or more hours a day compared to those working seven to eight hours a day.

Many people continue to smoke after being diagnosed with cancer.

Although around two thirds of us would prefer to die at home, in the developed world the trend in recent years has been for the majority to spend their final days in an institutional setting. But according to this study the tide has now turned and an increasing number of people in the UK are dying at home.

You’re running late for work and you can’t find your keys. What’s really annoying is that in your frantic search, you pick up and move them without realizing. This may be because the brain systems involved in the task are working at different speeds: the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up.

When housed in an aquarium with a swirling robotic school, what determines whether a fish will join the crowd?

How Space Debris Is Spinning Out of Control.

Pac-Man Proved NP-Hard By Computational Complexity Theory. The classic ’80s arcade game turns out to be equivalent to the travelling salesman problem, according a new analysis of the computational complexity of video games.

Over four months in 2009, Mr. Whitaker, a federal prisoner and convicted con artist, was the lead actor in a government sting targeting Google Inc. that yielded one of the largest business forfeitures in US history.

The Pirate Bay’s New Plan to Destroy Capitalism: Downloading physical goods.

Facebook’s estimated PSR is 26 times greater than the average of these comparable companies. Facebook’s IPO will be way overvalued.

Do you spend more or less time on Facebook now than you did a year ago?

People used to know what banks did. Bankers took deposits and lent them out, paying short-term depositors less than they charged for risky or less liquid loans. The risk was borne by bankers, not depositors or the government. But today, bank loans are made increasingly to speculators in recklessly large amounts for quick in-and-out trading.

The science of backward weather forecasting.

I think we should let elephants loose in Australia. Australia has a long history of ecological disaster from alien species – so why is ecologist David Bowman proposing adding yet another?

“We were already sure Caravaggio projected images of his sitters, but we have now found mercury salt in his canvases, which is light-sensitive and used in film.” Was Caravaggio the first photographer?

Artist David Hockney denies attacking Damien Hirst for using assistants to complete his works.

Artist Mike Kelley Dead at 58, an Apparent Suicide.

Is Modern Finance Ruining Modern Art? [Thanks Joe!]

This is a masterful map. And the secret is in its careful attention to design.

William Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language is displayed more in the grammar he used than in his words, according to a researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

What Does a Conductor Do? A critic decides to find out—by stepping up to the podium himself.

Why Stories Sell: Transportation Leads to Persuasion.

An idea’s been floating around for some time that whales more than chewed people — that they swallowed them, and people might have survived in the stomach.

A Hidden Madness tells the story of an accomplished individual who has reached the pinnacle of his profession despite suffering for over thirty years from the severe mental illness bipolar disorder

His headstone reads: “Lost life by stab in falling on ink eraser, evading six young women trying to give him birthday kisses in office of Metropolitan Life Building.” This happened the day after Valentine’s day, on February 15th, 1909—which also happened to be his 15th birthday. And to clarify, an ink eraser is not an eraser, it’s more like a knife.

When John Davidson’s apartment gets robbed, he learns that the easiest way to get his stuff back is to have one drug dealer lie to another drug dealer while he lies to the police.

Polly remained in the prostitution business until the early 1940s, opening and closing her bordello many times.

He left behind his wife, his two young children, and Jacques, the softcore erotica magazine that he started with Danielle.

How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back.

Flying People in New York City. [video]

The Big Benefits for Restaurateurs Who Think Small.

Tony lives in the same building as his brother and sister in law. They have all been addicted to heroin for around 25 years. Inhabitants of Vancouver’s Sketchy East Side Photographed by Claire Martin.

25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore.

We visit Kokoro HQ, part of the Sanrio Group responsible for one of the most famous Japanese exports, Hello Kitty. Since their inception on 1984 Kokoro have created various ‘ofrobots.’ [video ]

The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World.

‘Brand Love’ Index Score.

Dictionary. Michael Jackson sampler.

Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized. The parents of 13-year old Caitlin Teagart have decided to end her life, saying she can now do nothing but lay on the couch and whine about things being “gay.”

Anatomical Cross-Sections made with quilled paper by Lisa Nilsson.

Ad for Shame.

Iggy Pop Wears Lady Dior.

Portable burrito.

Redheads rejected by sperm banks.

A British sperm donor has fathered 17 families, raising the risk of the offspring meeting and unwittingly having an incestuous relationship.

Man Killed In Train Accident Sued By Woman His Flying Body Parts Injured. [Several witnesses said he was smiling as the train hit him.]

Sweden dealt a symbolic blow to the global fight against digital music and film piracy by recognizing a group that promotes file-sharing across the Internet as a religion.

12-year-old girl found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off men trying to force her to marry.

Woman auctions space on her bottom for tattoo.

There is an “unhealthy correlation” between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent financial crashes, according to Barclays Capital.

Officially known as “Compensation Communication Day,” today is the day when many at Goldman are finding out what their bonus will be. And it’s “really ugly” today, according to one Goldman employee.

There are more slaves today than at any point in history, remaining as high as 12 million to 27 million, even though slavery is now outlawed in all countries.

For the first time since 1965, homicide drops off list of top 15 causes of death in the US.

Vinyl sales rose by 39 percent in 2011.

Babies can tell whether you made a mistake or not from the tone of your voice.

How to Decode a Monkey Face.

What’s the Most Dangerous Over-the-Counter Drug?

Certain species of fungi can convert lead into stable mineral forms, hinting at new strategies for bioremediation.

So What If You Don’t Sleep Enough? Actually, you’ll die earlier, be fatter, and be worse at your job.

The G-Spot: Myth or Anatomical Mystery?

Two new sequencing machines will read a human genome in 24 hours.

In 1997, The Lancet published a medical study of three genuine Haitian zombies.

A New York psychoanalyst reveals her concerns about the profession.

Koro, the fear that the genitals are fatally shrinking into the body.

Not all appearances of name-brand items in movies result from product placement.

What’s the best animal to slice open and crawl inside to stay warm? Assuming a bitterly cold day (9 degrees Fahrenheit), a stiff wind (12 miles per hour), and a 500-kilogram cow with half its insides scooped out, and factoring in the heat produced by the resident human, my assistant Una estimates the cow’s body would lose about 3 degrees per hour. She concludes you’d have right around 15 hours, best case, before hypothermia set in.

‘Hacker’ Journalism - A New Utopia for the Press?

Are online newspapers the modern day equivalent of 19th century bourgeois cafés for democratic discussions?

Have you looked at the number of white papers out there lately? And how they all suck? At the collateral? At the websites? At the press releases and the fatuous corporate blogs? Enterprise writing does not “go viral.”

26 reasons not to trust what you read in the newspaper.

Five ways the digital camera changed us.

The 20 Hardest Corporate Interviews In America.

Top 10 Bands With Members Who Don’t Play Anything.

7 surf sicknesses. [thanks tim]

6 Things Movies Love to Get Wrong About The Workplace.

Jeet Kune Do is a hybrid martial arts system and life philosophy founded by martial artist Bruce Lee with direct, non classical and straightforward movements.

Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation.

Feature-length film, The Trashmaster, made entirely in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The EyeWriter is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.

Robert De Niro’s real taxicab driver’s license from 1975.

Google’s Mapping Tools Spawn New Breed of Art Projects.

Vermin Supreme (2012 Presidential Candidate). [video]

Helping the retarded to know God.

Camera Store Gets Virtual Tour From Google Street View.

Have you every wondered which part of the other side of the earth is directly below you?

Porn for the Blind.

Penis tattoo gives guy permanent erection.

Louis Vuitton sues Hangover 2 for using fake luggage.

Watching Paint Dry Championship attracts international interest.

A Swedish woman who lost her wedding ring 16 years ago was flabbergasted when she found it again, around a carrot growing in her garden.

The number of twins born in the United States has doubled in the last three decades largely as a result of fertility treatments.

Pigeons on par with monkeys in maths ability.

A new report from McKinsey Global Institute attempts to quantify how much the internet is worth.

Worldwide there are approximately 200 million users of (illegal) drugs. That is one in twenty people between 15 and 64, according to a study published in The Lancet.

We provide direct evidence of market manipulation at the beginning of the financial crisis in November 2007.

Should we erase painful memories? “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” could soon become a reality — but the concept raises some thorny questions.

Letting go of memories supports a sound state of mind, a sharp intellect–and superior recall.

This was the first study to put volunteers under anaesthesia solely as part of an experiment. It turns out the conscious mind keeps working way past the point where people are medically defined as unconscious.

Scientists have several explanations for why modern humans are the only hominids that have chins.

How crossword puzzles mess with your mind.

The Earth’s rotation is notoriously unpredictable. So how can a clock keep time for 10,000 years?

Earth Must Have Another Moon, Say Astronomers.

Does The Weather Affect Your Mood? Do grey skies make you blue or is it summer that gets your goat?

Physiognomy “is the assessment of a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face.” Although one might think of physiognomy as an outdated pseudoscience, along with its brethren craniometry and phrenology, facial phenotyping has undergone a resurgence of interest.

How to break Murphy’s Law.

It’s never too early to start thinking about dessert.

Atlantic salmon just can’t catch a break. Like their Pacific counterparts, Atlantic salmon are anadromous, meaning they live in the ocean as adults, but swim upriver to spawn. Who’s Eating Atlantic Salmon?

On the second line the words ‘‘DONATING = LOVING’’ (loving condition), ‘‘DONATING = HELPING’’ (helping condition), or no inscription (control) appeared. The second line was changed each day and for each bakery according to a random distribution. Results showed that more donations were made in the loving condition compared to the two others, whereas there was no difference between the helping and the control conditions. [PDF]

Are there differences in mortality among wine consumers and other alcoholic beverages?

Novice wine drinkers are more easily swayed to purchase wine based on its advertising.

As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit.

Effin finally allowed on Facebook.

As Mark Zuckerberg, Apple designer Jony Ive, author Danielle Steel, and other guests mingled, acts including Snoop Dogg, Jane’s Addiction, and the Killers—flown in on private jets—performed for the well-lubricated crowd. It’s always sunny in Silicon Valley.

Apple & Google Bid For UK Football TV Rights?

The End of the Web? Don’t Bet on It. Here’s Why.

Everything I need to know about startups, I learned from a crime boss.

Why is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation investing in GM giant Monsanto? [2010]

The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin.

The House bill is called the Stop Online Piracy Act. Hollywood’s pirate cure is worse than the disease.

This article addresses the ongoing, increasing privatization of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems – the emergence of systems that users may only join by personal, friend-to-friend invitation.

It appears that the Internet is soon going to fulfill its potential to become a giant on-demand repository of television shows (and movies) available asynchronously. As companies such as Netflix and Hulu increase their activities in this sphere, there are many unanswered questions about the impacts of this transition. In this paper we attempt to foretell the impact of this shift on one key aspect of television viewing: the amount of time viewers devote to it.

The curious tale of how Cesare Lombroso, the founder of criminology, met War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy to confirm his theory on how genius and madness were linked.

Malcolm Gladwell Has No Idea Why “The Tipping Point” Was A Hit.

I want to tell the story of the rise of the suburban poltergeist in factual TV from the 1970s onwards, how those reports inspired Ghostwatch…

David Hockney criticised Damien Hirst for the “insulting” use of assistants to create his works.

The Cuban Literacy Campaign was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60-76 %, with educational access in rural areas and a lack of instructors the main determining factor. By the completion of the campaign, 707,212 adults were taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96 %.

Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447’s flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.

Double-Blind Violin Test: Can You Pick The Stradivarius?

Bauhaus: How A Movement Failed to Protect Its Name.

Wilhelm Reich , the man who started the sexual revolution.

6 Pop Culture Visionaries Who Get Too Much Credit.

Barry Minkow. His many lives: entrepreneur, fraud fighter, pastor, movie actor - and serial swindler.

After ten years, the pesky 9/11 Truth movement has refined its arguments but still hasn’t proved the attacks were an inside job. Their key claims are refuted on multiple grounds.

Until 1912, there was no set design for the Stars and Stripes. And so, hidden in older versions of the flag, its makers laid hints of the country’s history and quest for identity.

The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light.

15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent .

Child Bride Courtney Stodden and Creepy Old Husband Give Weirdest Interview Yet. [video, july 2011]

The latest completely useless Amnesty International ad.

Farrah Fawcett Barbie.

Sex is no accident. [video]

Supposedly this is a real photo of Michael Jackson drinking vodka straight out of the bottle with a female midget on each leg.

The Pleasure Throne.

Dog Doo Transmitter. [Thanks Cassandra!]

Michael Jackson’s hair converted into roulette ball.

FDA cracks down on DIY sperm donor in Calif.

Woman’s breast implant disappears during Pilates.

A former Greek policeman who invented 19 fictional offspring to claim benefits for what would have been the largest family in Greece has been arrested for benefit fraud.

Toronto Zoo’s ‘gay’ penguins split as Buddy finds a female mate.

Iceland, where everyone’s related to Bjork. Genealogical website helps couples avoid incest.

Frogs can detect earthquakes.

Like humans, wasps recognize faces.

Can the width of a CEO’s face affect his firm’s performance?

What does it mean for your relationship when you find yourself stuck in a rut? A group of researchers decided to answer this question by examining how being bored now affects relationship satisfaction down the road.

How removing clothes changes the way the mind is perceived. More: The Psychology of Nakedness.

Naked mole rat: Even its sperm is weird. Previously: In addition to its longevity, naked mole-rats have an extraordinary resistance to cancer as tumors have never been observed in these rodents.

Chimpanzees more closely related to humans than previously thought.

Ecstacy users may be causing permanent harm to their brains, new research suggests.

Alcohol causes risky sexual behavior. (Until now, researchers were doubtful about the exact cause-and-effect relationship between alcohol consumption and unsafe sex.)

A group of investigators from the University of Iowa have published a case report about a 14 year old boy with severe antisocial behavior: He is aggressive, manipulative, and callous; features consistent with psychopathy. Other problems include: egocentricity, impulsivity, hyperactivity, lack of empathy, lack of respect for authority, impaired moral judgment, an inability to plan ahead, and poor frustration tolerance.

Deliberate skull deformations that tracks the practice of molding the shape of the skull from ancient times to the modern body modification scene.

Taxi driver training changes brain structure.

Why humans have a fear of snakes, even though they pose little threat in modern society.

Inverse zombies studied using anaesthesia.

The depressingly endless stream of papers that claim to have found that body posture somehow influences the contents of some cognition about the world. The latest “exciting” new finding claims that estimates of magnitude (size, amount, etc) are affected by your posture.

Nonhuman Inspection in Public Washrooms.

“Most pumps are made of rigid materials,” says Nawroth. “For medical pumps inside the human body, we need flexible pumps because they move fluids in a much gentler way that does not destroy tissues and cells.” Nawroth is working with Caltech engineer John Dabiri, an expert on jellyfish propulsion.

This paper considers how people respond to space in restaurants.

Walking may have had wet start. Based on the way that primitive lungfish use their fins to move along tank bottoms, researchers argue for an underwater start to four-legged locomotion.

Male Physical Attractiveness Part II: Chicks Dig Scars. [Thanks Tim]

It is now possible to use dental X-rays to predict who is at risk of fractures.

In Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, the penis is connected directly to the brain.

In the last few months, search engines have banished much of the useless content that used to plague their results. How did they do it?

A new model of human interactions predicts how many people will purchase a product when a seller advertises it.

Netflix Looks Toward Original Content, Competition With HBO Go.

Google’s 3 Top Executives Have 8 Private Jets.

Louis CK’s Paypal Experiment Already a Success.

In his book, Isaacson incorrectly suggests Jobs created and wrote much of the “To the crazy ones” launch commercial. To me, this is a case of revisionist history. The Real Story Behind Apple’s ‘Think Different’ Campaign.

Facebook’s Timeline turns your old updates into an unexpurgated biography.

Brick-and-mortar stores still have some reasons to exist. For the following reasons, the Internet still hasn’t turned us into full-on cyber-consumerists.

The 25 Most Valuable Blogs In America.

After successfully counterfeiting “lifestyle” drugs such as Viagra and Cialis, Xu had branched out into even more profitable life-saving medications, such as Plavix and Casodex, as well as Tamiflu for avian flu, which brought in profits more than 500 per cent higher than Viagra. How investigators unravelled Europe’s biggest-ever fake-medicine scam.

The True Origins of Pizza: Irony, the Internet and East Asian Nationalisms.

Sörgel based his solution for Pan-European power and self-sufficiency on the observation that, although significant amounts of water flow into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar (from the Atlantic Ocean) and the Dardanelles (from the Black Sea), its level stays the same, through evaporation. Hence his proposal to dam the Mediterranean at both ends, using the reduced inflow to generate massive amounts of hydroelectricity. The Atlantropa Project.

Freakonomics: Examination of a very popular popular-statistics series reveals avoidable errors.

Would-be space explorers, scientists, and a couple of crackpots gather at DARPA’s 100-Year Starship Symposium to try to get interstellar travel unstuck.

Imagine a bill covered with microscopic holes that make it glow slightly in the light. It’s tech borrowed from a butterfly, and it may soon be foiling counterfeiters around the world.

Laser tattoo removal gains popularity.

Inside the Vatican’s pornographic bathroom.

When she was found dead at 41, Carole Myers left a statement saying she had suffered Satantic child abuse at the hands of her parents. But did she?

I went to the bookstore and bought a book on counting called “Blackjack for Blood.” I practiced on decks of cards at home. I thought I had it down. I felt like I was ready.

Around 63 readers, identified by number in a program and on a giant screen to the right of the room, read portions of the text over a five-hour period.

Remembering Larry Levan, ‘The Jimi Hendrix Of Dance Music.’

Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935.

Top economists reveal their graphs of 2011.

5 Puzzling International Borders.

52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity.

Past and future of famous logos.

Lists of Note. [Thanks Glenn]

Why is there no blue food?

Have you ever?

What Did the World’s First Mug Shots Look Like?

Man models women’s push-up bra in Dutch ads.

Skunk tail and pig tail.

The Museum of Unnatural History.

Pussy pussy pussy marijuana.

Man sues former hostages, says they broke promise.

Fire kills 15 eunuchs at eunuchs convention.

Who owns the aurora borealis? Norwegians claim Finns are trying to “steal” the celestial phenomenon from them.

World’s longest Christmas cake created in China.

Paris cleans lipstick off Oscar Wilde grave.

Teenage sex ‘leads to bad moods’ in later life.’ More: The researchers had a group of 40-day-old male hamsters (the equivalent of human teens) mate with adult females in heat.

Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long.

Evidence has emerged that the brain’s capacity to absorb information is limiting the amount of data humanity can produce.

Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions.

Would you kill one person to save five?

Are you too old to learn a second language?

Why can’t a blindfolded person tell white wine from red? A top neuroscientist explains how the brain creates flavor.

Another genetic puzzle: why is mitochondrial DNA only inherited through the mother’s side?

Boys with autism have a bigger brain.

When I was in fifth grade, my brother Alex started correcting my homework. This would not have been weird, except that he was in kindergarten—and autistic. Many researchers are starting to rethink how much we really know about autistic people and their abilities. These researchers are coming to the conclusion that we might be underestimating what they are capable of contributing to society.

A surprising drug has brought a kind of consciousness to patients once considered vegetative — and changed the debate over pulling the plug. [NY Times]

Turtle embryos can communicate across eggs. River Murray Turtle embryos can adjust their developmental rate so that all the eggs in a clutch can hatch around the same time, a new study has found.

Because of where the baby dolphin sits (near the mama’s tail) during development, the mothers couldn’t flip their tails up and down as far as they could after giving birth.

A new strain of H3N2 swine flu that circulates in pigs has been jumping occasionally into people.

A national biosecurity board that monitors “dual use” research is apparently worried about an as-yet-published study in which a mutant form of H5N1 avian influenza virus was found to be easily transmissible in ferrets, which are considered good models for flu in humans.

Quantum computers, some researchers argue, will help us think differently about what we can and can’t know, and forge a new understanding of how the world of logic and information connects to the material one.

Technology experts can detect if images are photoshopped or not.

Several universities are registering .xxx addresses to protect their reputation.

They blamed the problem on Yelp, its supplier of local business data, which could well be correct, but Apple never said “and we’ll fix it right away.”

Facebook Targets Huge IPO.

I’m One Of The 20% Of U.S. Women On Antidepressants: And My Life Is Better For It.

This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings. Related: Philosophy of a prize-winning procrastinator.

I want to focus on something absolutely central to the interpretation of the world in which we live in terms of mathematics: the notion of a point – in particular, a point in space.

Philosophy in Review, an open access, specialist book review journal in philosophy, published six times a year.

Thirty-six scheduled executions would translate into 72 kidneys and corneas divided among the regional hospitals. Every van contained surgeons who could work fast: 15-30 minutes to extract. Drive back to the hospital. Transplant within six hours. Chinese medical authorities admit that the lion’s share of transplant organs originate with executions.

Eichmann went to Jerusalem, and Mengele remained in South America. It was during the Mengele investigation that the procedures and techniques of forensic identification of human remains were methodologically developed.

Mr. Hagendorf began his project with the aim of trying every pizza in New York City’s five boroughs. But with more than 1,600 pizzerias in town, he narrowed his focus to Manhattan and set simple rules: only order plain cheese pizza; only eat at places selling individual slices…

Taking revenge, Cartrain took the box of pencils that were part of Hirst’s sculpture, Pharmacy, which was being shown as part of its Classified exhibition.

The first automatic elevator was installed by Otis Elevator Co. in 1924; the things became common in the 1950s. When Will We Have Unmanned Commercial Airliners?

China’s demand for oil will equal US demand by 2040.

Recessions and unemployment rates, 1929-2011.

Declawing Cats, Tipping, Going Vegan… 6 Innocent-Sounding Topics That Are Guaranteed Flame Wars.

How much chalk dust enters the air when a teacher uses a blackboard?

Why Do We Love to Eat Hot Peppers?

The best public restroom in America?

10 Longest Lasting Hollywood Marriages.

Your World of Text is an infinite grid of text editable by any visitor.

Free Bernie Madoff.

Hammer.

Meet the “Melonator.”