Saturday, January 28, 2006

EXCESS ALL AREAS

Show me some e-learning now!

From E-learning Perspectives

What always strikes me when attending international e-learning conferences is how much speakers can say about e-learning and how little they can actually show ... as if e-learning was some kind of religion requiring faith more than facts, loyalty more than lucidity, belief more than insight.


When it comes to learning - and many other subjects for that matter - I personally like to judge for myself. For all those who feel the same way, I listed a series of links to e-learning modules that I happened to come across during my journeys on the web. Enjoy!

Very cool illusion

Very cool illusion

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Thirty-Eight Ways to Win an Argument

Thirty - Eight Ways to Win an Argument, by Schopenhauer


  1. Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

  2. Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his argument. Example: Person A says, "You do not understand the mysteries of Kant's philosophy." Person B replies, "Of, if it's mysteries you're talking about, I'll have nothing to do with them."

  3. Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than what was asserted.

  4. Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.

  5. Use your opponent's beliefs against him. If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage. Example, if the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.

  6. Confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove. Example: Call something by a different name: "good repute" instead of "honor," "virtue" instead of "virginity," "red-blooded" instead of "vertebrates".

  7. State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the proponent's admissions.

  8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

  9. Use your opponent's answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

  10. If you opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.

  11. If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusions as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

  12. If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition. Example: What an impartial person would call "public worship" or a "system of religion" is described by an adherent as "piety" or "godliness" and by an opponent as "bigotry" or "superstition." In other words, inset what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.

  13. To make your opponent accept a proposition , you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical. Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must to everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, "whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents." Or , if a thing is said to occur "often" you are to understand few or many times, the opponent will say "many." It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white; or gray next to white and call it black.

  14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your question without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

  15. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted. For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.

  16. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action. Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, "Why don't you leave on the first plane?"

  17. If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

  18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

  19. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific. Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

  20. If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

  21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character.

  22. But it is better to meet the opponent with acounter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him. For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth. Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice, emotion or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

  23. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

  24. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement. Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than your intended, redefine your statement's limits and say, "That is what I said, no more."

  25. State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears that opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.

  26. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition. Example: "All ruminants are horned," is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.

  27. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against himself. Example: Your opponent declares: "so and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him." You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."

  28. Should your opponent suprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal. No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

  29. When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who is not an expert on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.

  30. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion--that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute. This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

  31. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.

  32. If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a find stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge. Example: "What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can't understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.

  33. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category. Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "Atheism" or "Superstition." In making an objection of this kind you take for granted 1)That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited; and 2)The system referred to has been entirely refuted by the current audience.

  34. You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion. Example: "That's all very well in theory, but it won't work in practice."

  35. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so. You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

  36. Instead of working on an opponent's intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive. If you success in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately. Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma. You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church. He will abandon the argument.

  37. You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what your are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

  38. Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases. If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.

  39. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.

JackinWorld Science Corner

JackinWorld Science Corner

Orgasm intensity and its associated feelings can both vary greatly. Sometimes a person experiences an orgasm that makes them feel like their entire body is going to explode, while at other times they might just experience a pleasant feeling of muscle relaxation. Influencing factors include a persons mood, psychological state, level of desire, relation to partner, drug or alcohol use, expectations, physical condition, and time since the last orgasm.

Psychology Today: The Orgasm Wars

Psychology Today: The Orgasm Wars


For years, scientists have been debating the function of female
orgasm. Nowthey've finally figured it out. For women, the psychology of sexual
satisfaction turns out to be much more sophisticated than most (male) scientists
have been willing to concede. Of course.


Ever since Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson made the subject of human
sexual response safe for respectable scientists, laboratory studies of the
physiologic "hows" of sexual arousal have flourished. Volunteers have been
prodded, filmed, tape-recorded, interviewed, measured, wired, and monitored,
quantifying for the annals of science the shortened breath, arched backs and
feet, grimacing faces, marginally intentional vocalizations, and jumping blood
pressure of human orgasm.


While physiological details abound, fewer scientists have attempted to answer
the "why" questions about human orgasm. To those who view human behavior in an
evolutionary framework, which we believe adds an invaluable perspective, male
orgasm is no great mystery. It's little more than a physiologically simple
ejaculation that is accompanied by a nearly addictive incentive to seek out
further sexual encounters. The greater the number of inseminations a male
achieves, the better his chances of being genetically represented in future
generations.


Compared with the more frequent and easily achieved orgasm men experience,
women's sexual climax has remained a mystery. After all, women do not need to
experience orgasm in order to conceive. So what is the function of orgasm in
females?


Darwinian theorists who made early attempts to address female orgasm proposed
that orgasm keeps a woman lying down after sex, passively retaining sperm and
increasing her probability of conception. Others suggested that it evolved to
create a stronger pair bond between lovers, inspiring in women feelings of
intimacy and trust toward mates. Some reasoned that orgasm communicates a
woman's sexual satisfaction and devotion to a lover.


Most recently, evolutionary psychologists have been exploring the proposition
that female orgasm is a sophisticated adaptation that allows women to
manipulate--even without their own awareness--which of their lovers will be
allowed to fertilize their eggs.


Male Nipples?


The diversity of evolutionary hypotheses reflects one general attitude: that
the quickened breath, moaning, racing heart, muscular contraction and spasms,
and nearly hallucinatory states of pleasure that orgasm inspires constitute a
complex physiologic event with apparently functional design. But critics of
adaptationist hypotheses have long argued that evolution is more slipshod than
purposeful. A few, including Harvard evolutionist Stephen lay Gould, have
insisted that female orgasm probably doesn't have a function.


Instead, Gould argues, female orgasm is incidental, caused by an anatomical
peculiarity of embryonic development. In embryos, the undifferentiated organ
that later becomes the penis in males becomes the ditoris in females.
Antiadaptationists like Gould--whose thinking uncannily parallels Freud's belief
that women spend their life in penis envy--hold that the clitoris is,
biologically speaking, an underdeveloped penis; it can let women mimic male
orgasm, but it has no functional relevance or evolutionary history of its
own.


Well known for his emphasis on chance events and structural constraints as
major players in the evolutionary process, Gould sees the supposed
functionlessness of female orgasm as a classic illustration why scientists ought
not automatically assume that a trait has adaptive significance. He criticizes
other evolutionists for overemphasizing natural selection and functionality, and
concludes that female orgasm is like the male nipple--nothing more than
developmental baggage.


Many evolutionists have rejected Gould's notion that women's orgasms are
developmentally contingent on men's. Unlike a male nipple, adaptationists have
pointed out, the female orgasm does something. It inspires strong emotions that
can affect bonding and sexual preferences, making women more likely to prefer
the company of one mate over another.


Only during the past few years have studies begun to yield evidence that may
resolve the baggage-versus-adaptation debate over women's orgasms.


Sperm Competition, with Women Judging


Clues for a reasonable adaptation hypothesis were readily available by the
late 1960s, when The British Medical Journal published an exchange of letters
about the muscular contractions and uterine suction associated with women's
orgasm. In one letter, a doctor reported that a patient's uterine and vaginal
contractions during sex with a sailor had pulled off his condom. Upon
inspection, the condom was found in her cervical canal! The doctor concluded
that female orgasms pull sperm closer to the egg as well.


Yet, it was only three years ago that two British biologists, Robin Baker and
Mark Bellis, tested the so-called upsuck hypothesis. They were building upon
ideas articulated by evolutionary biologist Robert Smith, who suggested that
since women don't have orgasms every time out, female orgasm favors some sperm
over others. Baker and Bellis sought to learn just how female orgasms might
affect which of a lover's sperm is used to fertilize a woman's eggs.


They asked volunteers to keep track of the timing of their orgasms during
sex, and, after copulation, to collect male ejaculates from vaginal flowback--a
technical term denoting a distinct form of material that emerges from the vagina
several hours after sex (scientists have devised a way to collect it). The team
counted sperm from over 300 instances of human copulation.


They discovered that when a woman climaxes any time between a minute before
to 45 minutes after her lover ejaculates, she retains significantly more sperm
than she does after nonorgasmic sex. When her orgasm precedes her male's by more
than a minute, or when she does not have an orgasm, little sperm is retained.
Just as the doctors' letters suggested decades earlier, the team's results
indicated that muscular contractions associated with orgasm pull sperm from the
vagina to the cervix, where it's in better position to reach an egg.


Baker and Bellis proposed that by manipulating the occurrence and timing of
orgasm--via subconscious processes--women influence the probability of
conception. So while a man worries about a woman's satisfaction with him as a
lover out of fear she will stray, orgasmic females may be up to something far
more clever--deciding which partner will sire her children.


Good Men Are Hard To Find


Meanwhile, other researchers were making discoveries about the nature of male
attractiveness. Behavioral ecologists had noted that female animals, from
scorpion flies to barn swallows, prefer males with high degrees of bilateral
body symmetry, called developmental stability in the parlance of science.


Development, or the translation of genes into parts of the body, can be
perturbed by stresses such as disease, malnutrition, or genetic defects. One
measure of developmental instability is deviation from bilateral symmetry in
traits like hands, eyes, and even birds' tail feathers. Males whose immune
systems are strong, and who forage well, develop with high symmetry, so females
who choose symmetrical suitors are securing good genes for their offspring.


Evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill and psychologist Steve Gangestad at
the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque have tested whether humans also
share this preference. And indeed they do. In their studies, women consistently
identify as most attractive males whose faces (and other body parts) are most
symmetrical.


But this, it turns out, is more than a matter of mere aesthetics. A large and
growing body of medical literature documents that symmetrical people are
physically and psychologically healthier than their less symmetrical
counterparts.


Thornhill and Gangestad reasoned that if women's orgasms are an adaptation
for securing good genes for their offspring, women should report more orgasms
with relatively symmetrical mates. Collaborating for a second time, the two,
along with graduate student Randall Comer, devised some very interesting studies
to test this idea.


First they enrolled 86 sexually active heterosexual couples from among the
undergraduates. The average age of the partners was 22 and the couples had been
together an average of two years. Then the researchers had each person
privately--and anonymously--answer questions about his or her sexual
experiences.


The researchers took facial photographs of each person and analyzed the
features by computer; they also had them graded for attractiveness by
independent raters blind to the study. They measured various body parts to
assess bilateral symmetry--the width of elbow, wrist, hand, ankle, and foot
bones, and the length of the second and fifth fingers. Earlier studies had
suggested all of these were associated with health.


Indeed, the hypothesized relationship between male symmetry and female orgasm
proved to be true, the researchers recently reported in the journal Animal
Behavior (Vol. 50, December). From data on sexual behavior provided by the
women, those whose partners were most symmetrical enjoyed a significantly higher
frequency of orgasms during sexual intercourse than did those with less
symmetrical mates. Even the data on sexual experience provided by the men showed
the women had more orgasms with the most symmetrical men.


Of course, symmetry is a relative thing, and a relative rarity at that. No
one is perfectly symmetrical, and very high symmetry scores were few and far
between in this sample, as in others. In consolation, Thornhill and Gangestad
point out that the differences they are measuring are subtle, and most require
the use of calipers to detect.


What's Love Got To Do With It?


It's important to note what did not correlate with female orgasm during sex.
Degree of women s romantic attachment did not increase the frequency of orgasm!
Nor did the sexual experience of either partner. Conventional wisdom holds that
birth control and protection from disease up orgasm rates, since they allow
women to feel more relaxed during intercourse. But no relationship emerged
between female orgasm and the use of contraception.


Nor can the study results be explained by the possibility that the
symmetrical males were dating especially uninhibited and orgasmic women. Their
partners did not have more orgasms during foreplay or in other sexual
activities. Male symmetry correlated with a high frequency of female orgasm only
during copulation.


The findings support evolutionary psychologists' "good genes" hypothesis:
Women have orgasm more often with their most symmetrical lovers, increasing the
likelihood of conceiving these men's children. Well, that's how it would have
worked for millennia, before condoms and the Pill.


And it is for the precontraceptive stone age that our brains seem to be
built; the agricultural and industrial revolutions are flashes in the geological
pan, far too recent in evolutionary terms to have fundamentally changed the way
we experience emotions or sex. To argue, as may champions of chance like Gould,
that sexual attraction has remained completely arbitrary throughout evolution
seems increasingly unwarranted.


Cheating Hearts


Here's the cruelest part of Thornhill and Gangestad's findings: The males who
most inspire high-sperm-retention orgasmic responses from their sexual partners
don't invest more in their relationships than do other men. Studies show that
symmetrical men have the shortest courtships before having sexual intercourse
with the women they date. They invest the least money and time in them. And they
cheat on their mates more often than guys with less well-balanced bodies. So
much for the beleaguered bonding hypothesis, which wants us to believe that
women with investing, caring mates will have the most orgasms.


The women who took part in the study were no saints, either. They sometimes
faked orgasm. Their fakery was not related to male symmetry. Faking, however,
was more common among women who reported flirting with other men. Clearly
earlier theories were not too far off the mark when they proposed that a man
looks for cues of sexual satisfaction from his mate for reassurance about her
fidelity. Faking orgasms might be the easiest way for the woman with many lovers
to avoid the suspicions of her main partner.


Baker and Bellis found that when women do engage in infidelity, they retain
less sperm from their main partners (their husbands, in many cases), and more
often experience copulatory orgasms during their trysts, retaining semen from
their secret lovers. Taken together, these findings suggest that female orgasm
is less about bonding with nice guys than about careful, subconscious evaluation
of their lovers' genetic endowment.


Exhibit B


Patterns of female orgasm point to one important conclusion about our
evolutionary past--that sexual restraint did not prevail among women. But that's
only part of the evidence. Exhibit B is male ejaculation.


Baker and Bellis found that the number of sperm in men's ejaculate changes,
and it varies according to the amount of time that romantic partners have spent
apart. The longer a woman's absence, the more sperm in her husband's ejaculate
upon the couple's reunion. Males increase ejaculate size, it seems, to match the
increased risk that a mate was inseminated by a competitor.


In an ancestral environment of truly monogamous mating, there would have been
no need for females to have orgasm or for men to adjust ejaculate size. Both are
adaptations to a spicy sex life.


Male Bias


Darwin proposed that female animals' preferences have shaped male ornaments
such as peacocks' tails. But his audience--largely male scientists--laughed off
his theory of sexual selection on the grounds that females (human or otherwise)
are too fickle to exert the necessary selection pressure.


Today, evolutionary biology is no longer so completely a male discipline. But
many male evolutionists nevertheless carry old biases. The notion that female
orgasm is anything other than a developmental legacy leaving females able to
imitate "the real thing" will be difficult for some to accept. But as
uncomfortable as it may make many of us men--including male scientists--a
woman's orgasm appears to be a more complex and discriminating comment about her
lovers' merits than are our own.


Explosive Findings!


If we use his study's findings to understand how we humans are designed to
behave in the sexual domain, says Randy Thomhill, Ph.D., then we are better
equipped to deal with problems that arise in relationships. He points to the
following results as among those we should take to heart:


o A woman's capacity for orgasm depends not on her partner's sexual skill but
on her subconscious evaluation of his genetic merits.


o Women's orgasm has little to do with love. Or experience.


o Good men are indeed hard to find.


o The men with the best genes make the worst mates.


o Women are no more built for monogamy than men are. They are designed to
keep their options open.


o Women fake orgasm to divert a partner's attention from their
infidelities.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

United Irelander: Irish warlord boasts 3 million descendants

United Irelander: Irish warlord boasts 3 million descendants

Up to three million men around the world could be descended from a prolific medieval Irish king, according to a new genetic study.

It suggests that the 5th-century warlord known as "Niall of the Nine Hostages" may be the ancestor of about one in 12 Irishmen, say researchers at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Niall established a dynasty of powerful chieftains that dominated the island for six centuries.

In a study of the Y chromosome - which is only passed down through the male line - scientists found a hotspot in northwest Ireland where 21.5% carry Niall’s genetic fingerprint, says Brian McEvoy, one of the team at Trinity. This was the main powerbase of the Ui Neills, which literally translated means "descendants of Niall".

The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas: Niall of the Nine Hostages - The Musical!!!

The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas: Niall of the Nine Hostages - The Musical!!!

The
Ballad of Niall of the Nine Hostages


Translated from the Celtic by Earl Fando
(public disclaimer - Mr. Fando knows approximately two
words of
Celtic...possibly)


Oh sit ye down, let me speak of him, a lad who you never could rile

A young man with real stamina, a bloke who's name was Niall

Oh Niall was a mighty rabbit man, a harer brave and pure,

But at the end of the day, put the rabbits away, it's shaggin' time for sure,

three hours sure.


The lasses liked him getting rough, their bonnets Niall would lob,

If not for the forming of the morning dew he'd still be on the job,

still be on the job.


Niall left his mark with the women folk, throughout the Emerald Isle

With Muireann, and Siobhán too, Dearbhaile (who was his wife)

Caitríona, and the rest have all been known by Niall!


**********

Strangely enough, this ancient Celtic ballad can be easily sung to the theme from href="http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/gilligan.htm">Gilligan's Isand.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

CNN.com - Mouthy�parrot 'reveals�sex secret' - Jan 17, 2006

CNN.com - Mouthy�parrot 'reveals�sex secret' - Jan 17, 2006:

"LONDON, England -- A computer programmer found out his girlfriend was having an affair when his pet parrot kept repeating her lover's name, British media reported Tuesday.

The African grey parrot kept squawking 'I love you, Gary' as his owner, Chris Taylor, sat with girlfriend Suzy Collins on the sofa of their shared flat in Leeds, northern England.

But when Taylor saw Collins's embarrassed reaction, he realized she had been having an affair -- meeting her lover in the flat whilst Ziggy looked on, the UK's Press Association reported.

Ziggy even mimicked Collins's voice each time she answered her telephone, calling out 'Hiya Gary,' according to newspaper reports.

Call-center worker Collins, 25, admitted the four-month affair with a colleague called Gary to her boyfriend and left the flat she had shared with Taylor, 30, for a y

Fire Fart - Google Video

Video: lighting a candle with a fart.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Mind Hacks: Does cannabis cause psychosis?

Mind Hacks: Does cannabis cause psychosis? Stupid question, eh? Everyone knows it causes the munchies ...

His Noodly Appendage ...

No, it's not what you might be thinking. Read about the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Open Letter - Intelligent Design.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Railroad Absurdities

Railroad Absurdities explains why the major design feature of the world's most advanced transportation system [the Space Shuttle] was originally determined by the width of a horse's ass.