'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man Email

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/cosmopolitan_institute_completes

Taking tree hugging to a whole new level

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us/10tree.html?hp

Explaining the Sara Palin effect to snooty Europeans

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7600000/7600592.stm


"We fry things nobody ever considered friable - things like cupcakes, banana sandwiches and batter dipped artificial cheese…even pickles."

Avoiding high-fructose corn syrup makes you a racist

Just came across this ad, produced quietly by the Corn Refiners Association, in favor of high-fructose corn syrup. I was tempted to introduce it, with references to white guilt and the 3 AM ad, but I think it pretty much speaks for itself.



Here's a direct link to the second spot, which features a picnicking couple and a phallic dessert to help encourage you to down more sugary corn-derived swill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsgXPt564Q

Onion News Network?! I'm in love.

Um, this is pitch-perfect. These people have the news personae down even better than The Daily Show, I think. Just awesome.

On the religiosity of Evolutionists

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin

Tour of Wasilla

I hate to say it, but this looks a little like my hometown. Except that we have nothing quite as flashy as the the Sports Complex in Mt Vernon, though we have Target AND BigK AND SuperWalmart. Plus, last time I went home, they had given the Dairy Queen a flashy remodel.

Economists: Selfish Bastards

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/economics_frank/frank.html

Here's a post I found on BoingBoing pointing to an older paper looking at whether the study of economics inhibits cooperation.

In the course of researching my next novel, I happened upon this old paper by Robert H. Frank, Thomas Gilovich, and Dennis T. Regan, "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?" Its conclusions: Economics grad students are more likely to free ride than the general public. Economists are less generous than other academics in charitable giving. Economics undergrads are more likely to defect in prisoner's dilemma problems. Students are less likely to return found money after studying economics but not after studying another subject like astronomy. No wonder they call it "the dismal science."

A study by Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames found that students of economics are indeed much more likely to free-ride in experiments that called for private contributions to public goods. Their basic experiment involved a group of subjects who were given an initial endowment of money, which they were to allocate between two accounts, one “public,” the other “private.” Money deposited in a subject's private account was returned dollar for dollar to the subject at the end of the experiment. Money deposited in the public account was first pooled, then multiplied by some factor greater than one, and then distributed equally among all subjects.

Under these circumstances, the socially optimal behavior is for each subject to put her entire endowment in the public account. But the individually most advantageous strategy is to put all of it in the private account. The self-interest model predicts that all subjects will follow the latter strategy. Most don't. Across eleven replications of the experiment, the average contribution to the public account was approximately 49 percent.

It was only in a twelfth replication with first-year graduate students in economics as subjects that Marwell and Ames obtained results more nearly consistent with the self-interest model. These subjects contributed an average of only 20 percent of their initial endowments to the public account, a figure significantly less than the corresponding figure for noneconomists (p.05).

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/04/economists-selfish-b.html

hilarious craigslist post

http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/pet/824400966.html

Russia's Vladimir Putin saves TV crew from Siberian tiger

Russia's Putin Saves TV Crew From Siberian Tiger

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East.

Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild.

Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.

"Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too," a presenter on Rossiya television said at the start of the main evening news.

The 55-year-old former KGB spy, who cultivated a macho image during his eight years as the Kremlin chief, was shown striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert boots before grappling with the feline foe.

He helped measure the Amur tiger's incisors before placing a satellite transmitter around the neck of the beast, which can weigh up to 1,000 lb and measure around ten feet from nose to the tip of the tail.

The Amur tiger, the world's biggest wild cat, has recently pounced back from the brink of extinction to hit its highest population level for at least 100 years, the WWF said last year.

Putin thanked Western researchers for being involved in programs to save the Amur tigers.

"First of all, we must thank our colleagues, Americans, European colleagues for being involved with this during a difficult time for Russia when no-one was paying any attention to this," Putin said.

Putin last year made it into glossy magazines across the world by donning combat trousers and baring his muscular torso for photographers while on a fishing trip in the Yenisei river.

Sensitive to a growing environmental movement in Russia, Putin as president redrew a planned oil pipeline route to avoid Lake Baikal and scrapped plans for an Olympic village near Sochi that could have damaged local flora and fauna.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080831/wl_nm/russia_putin_tiger_dc_1

"Bush Lets War Widow Punch His Arm Once" - The Onion

Bush Lets War Widow Punch His Arm Once

WASHINGTON—In an unprecedented gesture of apology, President Bush allowed widow Mary Holt, 32, to punch him once on the left arm Monday as retribution for the death of her husband, Marine Pfc. David Holt, who was killed in a 2007 roadside bomb explosion outside Fallujah. "President Bush cares very deeply about the families of our fallen heroes," said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who later explained the stipulations of the punch, which included no monkey bubbles or taking a running start. "The president gladly would have let Mrs. Holt punch his favored right arm if it didn't still sting from when little Abigail Pritchard give him a five-second Indian burn for her grandmother being killed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." After delivering the blow, Holt reportedly sustained massive internal hemorrhaging when five Secret Service agents tackled the grieving widow to the ground.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_lets_war_widow_punch