"So, just a suggestion: if you want a relationship that lasts, don't rely on god, lawyers, and social pressure to force it to work. Love and reciprocal trust are the only chains that last, and the only ones that make you feel happy while wearing them."

"When you're out in the field," said Dr Thornton, "if you're studying certain groups, you always set your alarm a bit later because they're consistently lazy." The new study revealed that this laziness or liveliness has a "cultural basis".

"The last few years, possibly since the introduction of Europe-wide televoting, it is being suggested that the voting results of the Eurovision Songcontest are (getting) more related to geographical location or common history than to the songs performed by the artists on the event. This page is dedicated to a modest analysis at Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) about the extend to which these suspicions are genuine."

"Data generated from this simulation suggest that the current system combining patent and open source protection for inventions generates significantly lower rates of innovation (p<0.05), productivity (p<0.001), and societal utility (p<0.002) than does a commons system. Further, the empirical data generated using PatentSim suggests that commons systems can generate significantly greater amounts of innovation, productivity, and social utility than currently predominating patent systems that combine both patent and open source protection for inventions."

"Twitter is blocked in China, but yesterday the Chinese twitters made tag #GoogleCN climbed to the top ten of twitter's keywords. It is a bit touching, and a bit hopeful - A profitable, foreign company get this means filtering and block still not make Chinese people (at least some of them) losing their eyesight and judgment to what is good and what is bad.

However, they are losing, and may lose faster, along with the Cinternet's separation from the Internet. Here are the top 20 websites according to Alexa:"

On the Lukeywes1234 thing. ED has more infos.

"My subject line said (in full), 'meep.' The body said (in full), 'Meep.' Yesterday I received a reply email from Assistant Principal Mark Strout, which said (in full) "Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department."

"Now, you might want to show your Wow to family and friends. You might want to show your Wow, even, to other people out there in the world. But the site is neither messaged or built that way. It's an archetypal example of the corporation wanting to do something community-enabled and just not getting it: 'Hey customers! Send your most special memories to our corporate PR department!'"

"Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world. "

"Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory," said Noreen Hajinlian, principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., which banned hugging. "It wasn't a greeting. It was happening all day."

"To no-one's surprise, a new report shows that faith schools have completely failed to improve educational standards and have instead led to social fragmentation"

"No, it’s increasingly clear that socialism’s newfound popularity comes from the Mitch McConnells, John Boehners, Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Glenn Becks of the world, whose repeated invocations of the term have pushed a previously DOA political movement to new heights of popularity."

"The tweenbot, a cardboard-bodied, cheerful little bugger, is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. Since it can only move forward, it depends on the kindness of strangers to guide it and remove obstacles."

"The approximately 800 million mostly middle class adults and children act as a massive epidemiological experiment that allows hypotheses that faith in a creator or disbelief in evolution improves or degrades societal conditions to be tested on an international scale. ... the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards."

Much better than my now not-on-the-web attempt!

"The watered-down evolutionary psychology prevalent in pop culture enables some men to rationalize sexist double standards about relationships."

"Looking to spur wiki adoption? Applying patterns that help coordinate people's efforts and guide the growth of content, and recognizing anti-patterns that might hinder growth - can give your wiki the greatest chance of success."

"Of the remaining 32 [of 37] states, 27 were completely, correctly predicted, or a success rate of 84.375%! That's certainly not bad, especially considering that no political knowledge was used for the predictions; they could be done completely by machine

"We are studying the spread of two chain letters that were frequently forwarded by email over approximately the last ten years. .. including the network structure and patterns of transmission in time and location"

the guide ... kindly describ[es Engllish] as "animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors" whose "warmth is in the humour". But ... "The English have become obedient consumers rather than active citizens, with brand loyalty the nearest thing to religious/

OMG, WoW skillz aren't linked with age or culture!

"When you have a teenager on the rampage, who are you going to turn to? In America, parents send their troubled offspring to Jamaica's Tranquility Bay - a 'behaviour-modification centre' which charges $40,000 a year to 'cure' them." A rather upsetting art

"Chavs are the foot soldiers of corporate consumerism. They wear branded kit, congregate around halls of bland consumerism – shopping centers, cinemas, fast food outlets – and target anyone who stands out. ..."

A history and taxonomy of cat and other macros.

The history (and potential futures?) of catmacros.

Some comments on psychology in virtual worlds.

"Which American politician doesn't at some stage enlist the help of the founding fathers or invoke the American dream enshrined in the Bill of Rights? Which British politician ever mentions the Magna Carta?"

"One thing is finally beginning to shake up popular attitudes to fatness - the explosion of Arab satellite channels obliterating the monopoly held until recently by the state channel. ... They said they want to be 'a normal size' like the Lebanese pop sta

"You need to lose twenty or gain thirty because where you are right now, I can't do anything with you."

"Thousands of volunteers have been out on the streets trying to persuade people to wait in line in order to present a better image to visitors. The campaign was launched under the slogan: 'It's civilised to queue, it's glorious to be polite.'"

"The absurd (and unfounded) criminalization of Berdovsky and Stevens is part of an über moral tale with a discernible target: General deterrence, as rationale and goal."

"5. Act friendly. We think we act because of the way we feel, but often we feel because of the way we act. So act the way you want to feel. This is uncannily effective—just try it." Existential!

"At the end of the show, I concluded with this remark: 'The weirdest thing about weird people may be how normal they are.'"

A very interesting flash visualisation tool that creates animated graphs for certain statistics on international development.

Info on blogging and all that jazz.

"Constance patiently explained that a lady never, ever grabs the bottle of wine to pour her own drink. She must wait for her host or another man to pour it for her." Fuck France.

"This year alone, the Japanese embassy in Paris has had to repatriate four people with a doctor or nurse on board the plane to help them get over the [culture] shock."

Article on baby names; "Jordan has suffered a similar fate since Katie Price took ownership: top 100 for four years, then it nose-dived to 600 and now doesn't even make the top 1,000."

Based on the 5 Geek Social Fallacies.

Well duh.

Shit! Goths! Where?! On the Beeb!

Playground tactics.

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

A film from Dove depicting the manupluation of beauty for the sake of advertising.

The definition of a 'feral city'.

An article describing common cult characteristics.

Evolution Schmevolution - The Daily Show looks at the debate on evolution vs. creationalism.

Basic info on polyamory.

A must read.