One quarter of teenage girls in the U.S. have an S.T.D. [NYT] “The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure [...] and teenage girls are paying the real price.”

Islands of the World, from WorldAtlas.com. more inside

Status Quo fan hangs himself after wife left him for Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt - it wasn't until December 2003 that, quite naturally & normally for any red blooded male, Mr Hewitt agreed to let Rick sleep with his wife - as long as he could join in. I mean, this *is* Rick Parfitt we are talking about. Warning: Daily Fail more inside

Photoshop disasters My favourite is the mutant hand, well suited to the MoFi bodice ripper.

Eyeing the Evolutionary Past: "As we survey nature, the eyes of various creatures reveal the underlying means by which a single attribute can express itself over millions of years."

Alpha Centauri may have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone.

The heroic Englishman China will never forget Bravery, determination and sacrifice in war-torn 1940s China.

Human, all too human? [NYT] New York Governor Eliot Spitzer linked to a high-end prostitution ring. Stay tuned for devastating puns.

Thou Shalt Not Blog if Thou Art Boring Thou Shalt Not Ride Invisible Bike, For Such is Surely Sorcery LOL Thou Shalt Not Talk Loudly on Thine Cell Phone in Public Lest I Smite Thee on Thy Bottom and Don't Think I Won't more inside

Top 5 Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos

Teaching Crows to do Useful Stuff - The goal of this project is to create a device that will autonomously train crows. Crows and ravens often score very highly on intelligence tests. Crows Have Human-Like Intelligence more inside

Britain makes camera that "sees" under clothes I'm pretty sure a technological breakthrough of this magnitude is too important a subject to warrant tarnishing the subsequent thread with any sort of puerile comment. Thank you for your restraint. more inside

Practicing self-control consumes real energy. [Via Mind Hacks.]

Incredible Imitations by the Lyre Bird... also the all-time most popular Attenborough clip, and why not? more inside

Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer? - The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. "This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up," says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. "There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there." more inside

Creeptastic! Your Friday Flash Fun for today

Cities sans signage make for the creepy look. [via]

Man buried alive saved by positive thinking, Buddhist meditation, and air trapped in his hat - 'Doctors were astounded, saying that a person could normally not live longer than five minutes in a similar sealed space. One local doctor said: “It’s a miracle that he’s alive after being buried for two hours.”'

Who knew that spreadsheets, flickr, and music would work so well together? You've probably already seen LivePlasma, which shows how musicians influence each other. Now you can get into their brains! Venn diagrams, bar graphs, and pie charts show the process that some of the world's greatest songwriters use when they agonize while writing lyrics. more inside

Sex researchers say: Under 3 too short, over 13 too long.... minutes, I mean minutes!!!!