Entertainment stuff from the week 17-23/8/15

Hi cheaters,


So, in the week that Ashley Madison got hacked, there's been a lot of hot air about the subject of... illicit sex.

Why are you blushing? :-P

The names of 39 million members of the meeting website have been made public, because private data going public isn't a bad thing at all, and because the Data Protection Act doesn't exist for a reason.

'Life's short, have you had an affair?'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-life-short-affair.html

Let's be clear: this is not data Wikileaks will be straining to get at - it holds no use for political accountability - it's just an opportunity to slutshame some people.

- frantic phone calls
- lawyers booking holidays with the flood of income
- spouses rushing to get STI checks

Mayhem, palaver, misery! The sky is falling...

'Ashley Madison faces $578M Canadian class-action lawsuit'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-ashley-madison-sued-membership-leak.html

But Ashley Madison is only one website, that has done very little to change the number of people getting nooky despite their spouses' rule-mongering.

Humans have done it; humans will continue to do it; and humans will give Ashley Madison a go if they were going to do it anyway.

'Things to know about Ashley Madison breach: Who's affected?'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-ashley-madison-breach-affected.html

According to lawyer Susan Moss, a "tsunami" of new court cases would follow the publication; but divorce attorney Michael DiFalco has said there would be "a dozen clients caught by text message for every client that might get caught this way."

This glibly follows the pretence that all of the profiles are genuine, however.

Associated Press had claimed to meet "a dozen people" who signed up, but never met anyone. And a husband and wife couple signed up out of curiosity, but nothing happened.

The scandalous assumption is that all of the 36 million e-mail addresses released, were those of married people betraying their spouses, even though they don't even have to have spouses, to sign up! People do have fantasies, you know.

According to PornHub's statistics for 2014, there were 602% more searches for "lesbian scissoring" by women than men, even though women are only 23% of the PornHub member population! [chinnyreckon] I think maybe some of those women are men, acting out the fantasy of being women. Don'cha think?

Even considering the fact that the total number is bloated with duplicate profiles, forgotten profiles, experimental profiles, and the profiles of consensually-present couples (for which it is easy to make up new e-mail addresses) there's still the unsubstantiated premise that what they're doing is morally wrong.

Unless it's actually wrong to want sex with people, then it's not scandalous to have found that some people want sex with other people!

If i, purely hypothetically, had an inter-species crush on, say, Hugh Jackman or Michelle Rodriguez [drools] but i were in a bestial relationship with you, then it wouldn't necessarily be immoral for me to grasp a chance with either of the aforementioned homo sapiens, with both wings, if the opportunity came along.

If i came home and gave you an STD, because i'd been an idiot, and hadn't used contraception {in my cloaca} then that could be legally classed as bodily harm, or 'battery' as it is in the USA.

That's immoral, because it's harmful. The deception can be harmful. The time spent 'bonding' with someone else, means time not spent with you - that can have a net harm.

But the actual humpy-dumpy itself is not immoral.

There's a reason 'cheating' is called 'cheating' - it involves breaking rules.

If i don't impose a rule on you, then you can't break it. If you want to flap over to wherever Hugh or Michelle happen to be, and chance your wing with them, then that's fine by me. I love you, and want you to be happy.

But i don't want you to make me ill, or neglect me, or anything like that. The solution is a mature, adult conversation about interests (desires), requirements, and how to nurture our relationship - not me imposing rules on you!

Imposing rules is an immature, authoritarian attitude - one predicated on insecurity, instead of affection - one that motivates us to lie, in order to achieve sexual satiety without being hurt by the ones we love.

Hunger, whether sexual, or foody, or powdery or leafy, or even Political, continues to exist regardless of the imposition of rules. Prohibition doesn't work.

So don't let your lovers cheat on you - give them permission! That way, you're 'in the loop' and can influence the way the scenario pans out.


'NASA reassures public that there is no asteroid threatening Earth'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-nasa-reassures-asteroid-threatening-earth.html

[sighs] If an asteroid were threatening Earth, you'd probably hear about it from NASA, or ESA - you wouldn't have to wait to hear what they think about it, later.

Even when i'm just repeating what other people have said, i think the fact that people still do this demonstrates that there's an ongoing need for my kind of blog, on the web!

Maybe you should start one of your own, too [nudge, nudge] ;-)


In other news:

'Man makes $10,000 a month sending people potatoes' ""I would say the two things that hold everyone back in life is fear and doubt," Craig said. "The fear of failure and the fear of wasting your time, and the doubt that you can actually achieve something big on a huge scale"." Congratulations! You just came up with a total waste of time, that achieves nothing, except making you richer. And that's the entrepreneurialism 101 :-D
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/man-makes-10000-month-sending-people.html

Oh dear, Grauniad. Oh dear. They're apparently incapable of telling what a scientist is, and what mythology is. Scientists didn't say that. Their research has nothing to do with the subject of the article. And the article you published was written by someone who believes in the mythical city in question. Atlantis is a myth - it's never been anywhere! To hear more about Atlantis, follow the link to the Archaeology Podcast's episode on the subject.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/way-down-below-the-ocean-where-there-is-no-atlantis/

Ancient rock paintings - the possibilities are endless! Especially if you're earnestly trying to perceive something that's not actually depicted in them. For example, the pterosaur supposedly drawn in this painting, on a wall in Black Dragon Canyon, Utah, and rediscovered in the 1920s. A recent study has demonstrated that the drawings actually show two tetrapods, two humans, and possibly a river/cave/horn. Creationist Religionists, however, strenuously try to see a pteranodon in the paintings, so that they can turn around to real scientists, and say "Dinosaurs lived with humans, so religion's right and evolution's wrong. Checkmate, Atheists." People with the same motive, but a different superstition, perceive different things in such art - space aliens and spacemen, for example.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/creationists-foiled-again-ancient-rock-painting-is-not-a-pterosaur/

Week 2, in the Nazi Gold House. Last week, we had the story about the ~£11,000 gold bar, pulled out of the Königssee, in Switzerland. That story was wrong, though -- the Königssee is in Germany, not Switzerland [facepalm]. But this week, we have another Nazi Gold Hunt tale, with a missing train, full of gems and guns, apparently discovered, and claimed. The tale of the missing gem train is not new, and as yet there is no evidence that the claims to the train's discovery are true. The claimants are apparently seeking 10% of the value of the findings - this might well be a genuine demand, but even if a train exists, and they've found it, it's not necessarily the train. It's not necessarily Nazi Treasure.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/nazi-treasure-train-supposedly-found-in-poland/

Lab grown human brains are now a thing? According to a neuroscientist at Ohio State University, they have developed a human brain to the maturity of a five-week-old foetus', in a lab (but not in a foetus - that would be cheating!). The trouble is, they've decided to wave a big red flag that their claim's phony - their research hasn't been published... 'yet'. Big mistake. Clairvoyance isn't real, and Science knows it. But Media organisations don't care about that. For someone seeking fame and glory, declaration without publication is the way to go - pollies who claim clairvoyant evidence ("i know i'm right, and we will find evidence that i'm right, after you've elected me") are abundant - but there's no way to tell someone who's just excited about their research, and can't hold it in, from the majority of fakers, who make claims without recourse to substantiation. That's why declaration without publication is a red flag for baloney.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/lab-grown-brain-claim-announcement-without-peer-review-is-a-red-flag/

This case is an example of such clairvoyant policy formation. Charter schools (in the USA), academies (in England), free schools (in Sweden) and the growth of for-profit providers running schools in India and Africa, have been pushed by libertarian conservatism in those respective countries - the assumption that eroding regulation is somehow going to hand-wavily make people smarter. Or just richer. The proponents think 'small government' is better, or 'small anything' is better, or that schools are a good opportunity for profit, but instead of this honest presentation of motive, the subject is couched in terms of academic success, and doing what's right for the schools and the children. They have to do that, of course, to placate teachers and parents. But the evidence for the claim - that these unregulated schools are benefited by 'autonomy' is purely clairvoyant. The evidence to justify policies that have already been put in place, simply doesn't exist. This is not good pedagogy. This is not good schooling. This is not good science.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-opinion-evidence-success-independent-schools.html

Did you know that the Greenwich Meridian is actually in the wrong place? Not the theoretical location, of course, but the physical representation of it, at the Greenwich Observatory, in London. Due to the limitations of uncertainty, in the measurement that decided the line's location, in the late 19th century, the marker is 0.001472° out of place. The position was calculated by drawing a line between the stars of the celestial sphere (night sky) and the centre of the Earth; but the geology of the Earth's surface can cause minute deviations in the measurement of the location of Earth's centre. Mountains will divert plumblines! As a result, the line between the meridian and the Earth's centre is slightly askew, and so the line at the Greenwich Observatory is 102.5 m west of where it should be. You can check this by looking at a co-ordinates showing map, such as this one, where i have linked the exact location of the Observatory's 'meridian line'. Ignore the numbers on the tab (which give Blackheath Avenue's vague co-ordinates) and place your cursor over the pointy bit of the place-indicator. At the bottom of the screen, the specific polar co-ordinates are displayed, and you will clearly see "51.477..., -0.00147..." demonstrating that the location is 0.00147 (3dp) degrees to the west of the real Greenwich Meridian.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-greenwich-prime-meridian-wrong.html

Here's another example of Science working well - through self-correction. When Science finds it's wrong, it's the only thing around that can set wrongnesses straight, and that's exactly what it does. When the meridian's wrong, change it. When a paper's been fraudulently reviewed, chuck it. Credit to German based publishing company 'Springer' for retracting 64 articles, due to the addresses of peer reviewers being faked. Those publications were spread across ten different journals, whereas the 43 that the same company had to chuck out, last March, were all in BioMed Central. This might seem like a concession of pseudoscience, but acceptance of inadequacy is actually a sign of integrity. Superstitionists don't do the same - for them, it's all about PR. In case you were wondering about the scale of this problem, there have been only 230 cases of review fraud, in the three years studied, so that's 230/4,038,000 publications = 0.000057 that have to be retracted. Not very much! Peer review is still an important part of the scientific method, wherein the best method is still for the study authors to pick their own reviewers, as they will best know who is capable of it. Good journals can always override, and papers can always draw negative attention from peers who think the authors chose unwisely. Ultimately, the problems of publication bias, study size, and replication abundance, are vastly more retarding to scientific progress than peer review fraud.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-publisher-retracts-articles-fake-peer.html

"A Russian artist and sculptor has claimed that he met the mysterious and elusive Yeti in eastern Russia, and that the mythological creature even posed for a sketch". Just turn to the right a bit. Yes, that's your best side, love. Now, how would you like to prove that this is actually a picture of you, and not just a generic drawing made up by me? Ah, yes - of course - just scratch the bark in a way that i couldn't possibly have done. You're so smart, bigfoot... and a brilliant muse. Seeya later!
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/portrait-of-a-telepathic-yeti/

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Skydiving spiders show off their gliding skills'
https://youtu.be/SxO1N-90H8E

'Shelf Life Episode 9 - Kinsey's Wasps'
https://youtu.be/lHc5l4gQsro

'Rain Bomb: Rare 'Wet Microburst’ Caught on Camera in Stunning Timelapse'
https://youtu.be/a_G2KRzha7o

'Holmium (new) - Periodic Table of Videos'
https://youtu.be/HQahtzCU0BU

'Final Encounter: Cassini and Dione'
https://youtu.be/_kKfo7NCYTI

'Introduction to Food Marketing to Youth'
https://youtu.be/ZJvy3eNo-KQ

'The Devil's Purpose'
https://youtu.be/Oomtwqtkbjw

'The Sarkeesian Effect: REALITY BENDING FAIL!'
The comic incompetence of masculists David Aurini and Jordan Owen outstrips even Sarkeesian and McIntosh. Note to the audience: that doesn't mean the feminist bigots win, by default. Equality isn't a boxing match! "In the red corner, we have the males; and in the blue corner, we have the females..." :-D
https://youtu.be/pXhnVjQBBaM

'It's just an illusion'
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-just-illusion.html

'Through The Window - Assassin's Creed Unity (Glitch) - GameFails'
Dat bitch gat style :-D
https://youtu.be/0tlT_qP_pwY

'5 Baffling Uses of CGI in Movies'
https://youtu.be/tAJqVfu6AqA

'5 Weird Ways Dragon Ball Was Censored'
https://youtu.be/mlO0lbWUjZc

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: retardation -- the act or result of delaying; the slowing of something's progress; in Physics, the opposite of acceleration, or negative acceleration; in Medicine, the decline of mental performance

Quote Of The Week: “It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The New Millennium Edition

Fact Of The Week: Max Factor - the 'cosmetics' (aesthetic insecurity) company - is named after Max Factor, a polish businessman, and founder of the Max Factor company. The original spelling of his name was Maksymilian Faktorowicz. In 1904, fearing Christian persecution of Jews, in Russia, he migrated to the USA, where the Max Factor company was born. Also born there were three kids, including Frank Factor, who advised him to use the term 'make-up' in relation to 'cosmetics'. Before then, it had only been used by those in theatre and the sex industry.

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'Chairpacabra - The Elder Scrolls Online (Glitch) - GameFails'
https://youtu.be/ObNKNUWm3Fc

'My People Need Me - Far Cry 4 (Glitch) - GameFails'
https://youtu.be/7grFDY5P05E

'First Day On The Job - Fails of February 2015'
https://youtu.be/fh-ucbB3ovA?t=1m

You can't beat AC for glitches. You really can't :-D

'Horse Dance Surprise - Assassin's Creed Unity (Glitch) - GameFails'
https://youtu.be/kkhqHW1Hm0E

'Assassin's Creed Unity's Most Hilarious/Stupid Glitches'
https://youtu.be/jZDs1AR9qh8
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