• Hacking the Hyperlinked Heart: “Being hypercompetitive, I wasn’t about to let some bubblegum-popping blonde steal the neurotic Jewish doctor of my mother’s dreams.” Heh. The article is interesting — and the results are sometimes quite odd.
• Seven Pictures of Reasonable, Polite, and Modest Protest Signs: My favorite: “I am a little upset.” Next time I go to a protest, I need a sign that says, “My life is already super-awesome, but it would be even better if [X].”
• Body Ritual among the Nacirema: Do you get it?
• Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing: “Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed articles on the preprint server arXiv. … The initiative, called the Episciences Project, hopes to show that researchers can organize the peer review and publication of their work at minimal cost, without involving commercial publishers.” I have nothing against commercial publishers per se, but academic publishing needs to undergo some major changes with the times, methinks.
• Anti-Abortion Group to Lawmakers: Please, Let’s Talk About Rape!: If Personhood USA was a front for Democrats, it would act… well, exactly as it does. Recall that every GOP presidential candidate except Romney willingly embraced “personhood for zygotes” in this last election and participated in Personhood USA’s debates. (Alas, Romney then selected a personhood zealot for his running mate.) Such zealous social conservatism is a big part of why the GOP has been losing elections in Colorado and elsewhere… and why they’ll continue to do so without serious reform.
• Look How the 49ers Won Over a Patriots Nation for the Super Bowl: A map of the fan bases of NFL teams based on Facebook “likes.” Pretty nifty! And, here’s more data and maps from the source.
• Montana lawmaker offers pain instead of prison: What I find interesting about proposals like this is that (1) they seem really barbaric and inhumane and yet (2) almost any sane person would opt for the lashes rather than the prison term.
• Study: People ‘Highly’ Enjoy Sex, Condom or No: Shocking but true: “Overall, men and women reported sex as being ‘highly arousing and pleasurable,’ regardless of whether or not a condom or lubricant was used. Sex of all kinds was rated positively in terms of perceived pleasure, arousal, and experience of orgasm.”
• Professor lists all the excuses he will not accept: I could add a few to this list!

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