tales of an ordinary girl

Astronomy
Suspension Bridge Solargraph (I'd love to do this! - Ed)



Games
Study: violence in games not that compelling for most gamers
The authors performed six studies in total, but they were in broad agreement, so we'll only discuss the more compelling ones here. For the experimental portion, these involved playing an essentially identical game with different degrees of violent content. One group of participants was randomly assigned to play the game House of the Dead 3 on the different extremes of its gore settings, while a second was split between those who played the normal version of Half-Life 2, and a those who played a modified version that turned the adventure into an elaborate game of tag.

In both cases, the primary influences on enjoyment were the sense of competence and satisfaction, along with the immersive nature of the game. Generally, females rated immersion as more important, while males went for competence (and consistently rated their own expertise very highly).

Impressions: Dawn of War II beta video walkthrough



Government
When Being Right Doesn’t Matter
“Can’t we just shorten that first sentence?” asks the radical libertarian. “A drinking age is an embarrassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation. Parents must take responsibility for their children here as in every other area of life. Perhaps the law should recognize this. Probably communal moral suasion would work even better. Yet either way, saying that ‘all drinking is bad until you’re 21, when everything magically turns OK’ is obviously just a silly taboo.” The radical libertarian harrumphs in a self-satisfied way. He’s good it; he’s practiced it often. He’s also completely right, which happens to be beside the point.

International


Law
Woman Says Anti-Abortion Nurse Removed IUD Without Permission, Then Lectured Her
A clinic nurse first removed her intrauterine birth-control device without permission, says the patient in a federal action, then told her that "having the IUD come out was a good thing," because "I personally do not like IUDs. I feel they are a type of abortion. I don't know how you feel about abortion, but I am against them."

Photography
A Lenticular Cloud Over New Zealand



Religion
Female Pastors = Porn
Most churches rely on women to crank the engines. Many church programs would cease if women didn’t run them. Here’s what baffles me: why do women continue serving congregations and denominations in which the (almost invariably male) leaders believe (or behave like they believe) they are second-class citizens? How long will they continue doing so? Many churches bemoan the fact that most of their men enter the front door as children and exit the back door as teens or young adults. In this age of deepening awareness of gender equality issues, if church leaders don’t examine the roles of women in their institutions (and in their theology), they may arrive one day, turn on the lights, and discover that the women have followed the men out the back door.

Science
The Universe’s Pixels and Holographic Reality?
Scientists may have actually detected the grain or pixels of the universe. This may mean that our reality, everything we see and do, our entire universe in fact, is like a 3-dimensional holographic image of sorts projected from somewhere else. Talk about a one-two punch.

Sexism
Diamond orgasms are a girl’s best friend
The latest misogynist stereotype confirmed*** by evo psych wanks is the belief that women are shallow gold diggers that don’t really know what love is. “Women are born whores,” is quite possibly the favorite sacred belief of evolutionary psychology.

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.

They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.

“Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research. (Bullshit - Ed)