Entertainment stuff from the week 21-27/7/14

Hi Yankers,


Warning: this article starts sexily, gets less and less sexy it goes through, and then makes a kind of upturn towards the end, in non-contemporary stuff. Jasper, you hunk :-D


A fascinating article about a man in India who has been working to fight conservative anti-sexuality in the country:

'Ask the Sexpert: The 90-year-old sex guru'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28353027

Q: In the last semester, I failed one subject. My parents got worried and took me to an astrologer... He asked me to remove my pants… He said the ejaculate after masturbation is equal to 100ml of blood, hence my weakness. Is all of this true? Should I stop masturbating and avoid my girlfriend? I am regretting showing him my penis. Please help.
A: The astrologer is a hoax and completely ignorant of sexual matters. Masturbation is completely normal. I suggest you tell your parents you will not visit such frauds again. Not being able to hit bull's eye at academics each time, is normal. Visit your college counsellor.

There's more about astrologers in the In-other-news section...

I think it's pretty clear that Northeners' impression of Vedic culture as a never-ending sexual reverie is completely wrong.

They get the idea from having heard of the Kama Sutra - a book that is mostly not about sex, and was written by a shrivelled-up prude who'd made an oath never to do any of it himself - which misleads them into a false impression of Vedicism.

"When [Dr Suchitra Dalvie] presented her findings at a conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights in Beijing, the audience was fascinated by India's contradictions. They all knew about India as the "mystical land of the Kama Sutra" - the ancient Sanskrit text about the art of love and sensual pleasure - and were astonished to learn about rudimentary level of sex education or even frank discussion about sex in the country."

Around the world, weird cults have cropped up, exhibiting a generic will to control people's sexualities, commonly through denying them pleasure.

The closest you can get to a truly sexually-liberated religion, is Raëlianism; and even that comes with strings attached, and batshit baubles attached to their other ends.

'Who Are the Raelians, and Why Are They Naked?'
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4059


'Women aroused by 50 Shades of Grey trailer urged to try adult websites'
"The first teaser trailer for the film was released yesterday, to find itself shared by any woman who has ever read the book, along with comments such as ‘phwoar’ and ‘i cant wait!!!!’."
http://newsthump.com/2014/07/25/women-aroused-by-50-shades-of-grey-trailer-urged-to-try-adult-websites/



In other news:

The Honourable Member for Holland & Barrett's got himself in the News, again. He's one of those people who think they can take on reality, in a fight, and win: "I am absolutely convinced that those who look at the map of the sky for the day that they were born and receive some professional guidance will find out a lot about themselves and it will make their lives easier" Yes, he is talking about the geocentric bullshit of astrology. The constellations are arbitrary pictures, in a universe of stars that don't care how you see them from Earth; planets are never temporarily/periodically retrograde; the Sun spends more time over some arbitrary pictures than others, making equimensary horoscopes even more bullshit; and due to precession of axial tilt, all horoscopes are about a month out of whack, anyway! ...and this guy's an elected MP, in the Conservative Party of the UK.
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/mp-wants-astrology-incorporated-into.html
http://doubtfulnews.com/2014/07/member-of-parliament-tredinnick-is-saying-silly-stuff-again/

Last week, the BBC pledged to eradicate false balance from its reporting. That means reporting science as science and superstition as superstition, and not pretending that superstitious nonsense is as valid as scientific fact. Well, guess how they've covered Tredinnick's superstitious beliefs? Yup - all the sympathy is with him. Gah.... #majorleaguefailBBC
https://twitter.com/RichardWiseman/status/492962535512219648
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28464009

Workers with the Insect Museum of West China have verified the largest aquatic insect in the world today, pipping the previous largest known, by 2 centimetres. The dobsonfly is common in India, China, Africa, South America, and some other parts of Asia, but is sensitive to pollution, so is used by ecologists as a metric for water cleanliness. The adults make little use of either their huge jaws or wings; the former being used only during sex, in the week when they come out into the open.
http://phys.org/news/2014-07-museum-workers-pronounce-dobsonfly-china.html

Oh, and here's that blackness story. It's so black that i didn't spot it, when i came to compile items for the blog. In the words of Nigel Tufnel, from 'This Is Spinal Tap': "It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black." Blackness is defined as an opposite of whiteness - emitting little light; or reflecting a low proportion of incident light, and therefore absorbing the rest. That's how black objects of the same material warm up faster, in sunshine, than white ones. But they also lose heat faster, in the dark. This black coating of carbon nanotubes absorbs 99.96% of incidental light - now that's black! Incidentally, the Sun's quite white, in that it emits light at most of the spectrum, but black, in that it doesn't reflect light - it's a black body. The colour of the Sun, of course, is a different question... it's every colour.
http://phys.org/news/2014-07-surrey-nanosystems-super-black-material.html

Hacks have recenly churnalised a two-year-old story about caffeine in Glasgow's coffee. "Research published in the journal Food and Function found the amount of caffeine per serving of an espresso in the Scottish city ranged from 72mg to 212mg. In Parma it was 73-135mg and 97-127mg in Pamplona. It found coffee in Scotland usually used more heavily roasted beans and the serving sizes were larger." Notice the coffee-based pseudoscience in the 'Related Stories' section: "Coffee 'may prevent depression' 27 SEPTEMBER 2011, HEALTH", "Coffee 'cuts risk of male cancer' 17 MAY 2011, HEALTH", "Coffee addiction 'in your genes'  08 APRIL 2011, HEALTH" ..still waiting for the anti-false-balance spirit to kick in....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-15968515

A 17-year-old Indian boy has had, what the surgeons claim to be, 232 teeth removed from a sort of benign tumour in his jaw. The hospital's dental department has forwarded the evidence to the Guinness Book of World Records for judging. The parents expressed happiness at the resolution, and also that they didn't have to pay out 40,000 Rupees for private treatment, which is the same as about 100 bags of sugar - enough to require another trip to the dentist.
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Chew-on-that-232-teeth-removed-from-boys-mouth/articleshow/38880251.cms
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-28437829

Wikipedia has imposed a 10-day ban on an IP address, affecting some (but definitely not all) computers at the US House of Representatives, for "persistent disruptive editing". A notice posted on one of the anonymous entries from Congress said: "Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia... Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted or removed." One of the changes, which was later undone, involved editing John F. Kennedy's file, to say assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted "on behalf of Fidel Castro". 'Conspiracy theorists' in the currently-Republican-Party-dominated House of Representatives? No... we need SCROTUS to sort this out, LOL
http://phys.org/news/2014-07-wikipedia-blocks-disruptive-congress.html

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

'10 Amazing Bets You Will Always Win - NEW (Ep 11)'
http://youtu.be/7kh9p3yi91A

'"Weird Al" Yankovic - Lame Claim to Fame'
http://youtu.be/yazr8JkazmE

'‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, ‘First World Problems’ [VIDEO PREMIERE]'
http://popcrush.com/weird-al-yankovic-first-world-problems-video/

'"Weird Al" Yankovic – Sports Song'
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ba6f6b020a/weird-al-yankovic-sports-song

'Foraging seals hunt around wind farms'
http://youtu.be/KGE5yBNj-QQ

'Crazy Circle Illusion!'
http://youtu.be/pNe6fsaCVtI

'FLOBER - Je t'aime'
No-one does romance like the French :-D
http://youtu.be/nQUQ_E1EAHA

'Grand Theft Love: Real Craigslist Missed Connections Reenacted - {The Kloons + Taryn Southern}'
http://youtu.be/EwD0eCsFQ-M

'1-800-Adopt-A-Dude'
http://youtu.be/6IqK9o-AFSc

'Sex Education in India'
If you didn't read the sexpert article, you will have missed this. In fact, even if you did, you might have missed it :-P [chuckles... "double dowry"]
http://youtu.be/EiIxkOah09E

'Vacuum Bottle Cavitation'
http://youtu.be/MJl8VMoWA4k

'Full Bottle Bottom Blowout'
http://youtu.be/Sq1-JFga-Dw

'How the 'dead water' effect can stop a ship'
http://youtu.be/2Y0k-pWaeTM

'Unfinished London - Episode 3 (Part 2)'
http://youtu.be/KXmpdJO9UOc

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

Word Of The Week: deliquescence -- the process by which a substance has absorbed so much moisture from the atmosphere that it is dissolving into the absorbed water and forming a solution

Book Of The Week: Charlie Chaplin's Uncle - 'Victorian railway caper in snowstorm, dirty doings on the royal train - the humorous side of murdering royalty. Book or Ebook'

Number Of The Week: 33000 -- the altitude, in feet, of flight MH17 when it was shot down by Russian Imperialists; and the number of research papers on GMOs, demonstrating them to be safe

Etymology And Expression Of The Week: peely-wally -- Scottish expression meaning 'pale, wan, insipid, colourless' (pronounced to rhyme with meal-e-rally) and deriving from the English word 'pale' which comes through latin 'pallere' (bearing the same meaning) from Proto-Indo-European 'pel-' meaning 'grey'. Where the 'wally' bit comes from, i currently have no idea!

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


'Funnies #1'
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/92919019255/funnies-1-a-small-collection-of-funny-things


'David Quantick - An Intro To Game Of Thrones (The Now Show 16th May 2014)' (my upload)
http://youtu.be/LYCPds2_Lo8

'Queen - Stone Cold Crazy (Live at the Rainbow)'
http://youtu.be/T8Rfb1Jtmic

'20th Century Fox Flute (ORIGINAL)'
http://youtu.be/XCPj4JPbKtA

'Bloody cow by Phil Pope'
http://youtu.be/h5FvG410XZc

'Status Quid : Boring Song'
http://youtu.be/31RN5_GXJ1c

'Hee Bee Gee Bees - Meaningless Songs In Very High Voices (Live in Swedish TV)'
"The world is very very large, and butter is better than marge" :-D
http://youtu.be/zlWqNl4Yips

''Next Time' - The World Cup Squad - S2E3 - Radio Active' (my upload)
http://youtu.be/tyPY_jjnnMg

'The HeeBeeGeeBees Story - BBC2 broadcast 19th December 1981'
Spinal Tap was done in 1984, by the way - yes, these guys came first! Actually, Spinal Tap didn't even come second, because Bad News happened in 1983 :-D
http://youtu.be/E3gYfYKqltc


'Carrotts Commercial Breakdown'

'Carrott's Commercial Breakdown - 29/12/1989'
http://youtu.be/WZjDt0jmoHk

'Carrott's Commercial Breakdown 2 - 27/12/1991'
http://youtu.be/FCjV4kC_xsE

'Carrott's Commercial Breakdown 3 - 28/12/1993'
http://youtu.be/rCWjlpVIfrQ

'Carrotts Commercial Breakdown 4 - 05/03/1996'
http://youtu.be/bHFenetsuuE
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