Untamed tongues a-wagging on the web

Tired of only reading gossip about Paris and her pals and yearn to get the dirt on your friends and neighbors? The folks behind GossipReport.com certainly hope so. "We are the only site that focuses on gossip of the noncelebrity," said Ashley Murphy, the website's director of media relations, who also pointed out, "We don't create gossip, we just organize it." That's an important legal distinction to make, since Section 230 of the federal 1996 Communications Decency Act doesn't hold websites liable for what's posted by anonymous visitors on their online forums. But just because it's legal doesn't make it ethical. As James 3:5 says about our untamed tongues, "How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!" Imagine that blaze multiplied many times over on the Internet.

Coming to a Wal-Mart near you

Move over G.I. Joe; there's a new gang in town: the Tales of Glory Spirit Warrior Action Figures. The figurines of famous Bible men like Daniel, Sampson, and Goliath will begin appearing on Wal-Mart shelves next month and represent the first time the world's largest retailer has carried a full line of religious toys. Only about one-sixth of Wal-Mart's 3,300 stores will carry the toys and were selected based on the number of Bibles they sell. "They'll carry anything that sells," said David Croyle, president of FamilyLife. "This simply signals intelligent buying within Wal-Mart." If you're a parent, are these toys something your child would play with, and are they something you would buy for him or her?

America's beautiful people

This is what makes American people so Beautiful!!

Photo of the Week: First Drive-in Service Station

A far cry from the "Service Station of Tomorrow," provided by the Shell Oil Company, shows a service station built in St. Louis in 1905, the first drive-in station in the world. Its original equipment, a gravity tank on stilts, a faucet and a fifteen-foot length of gardenhose, was considered a radical improvement over the old method of retailing gasoline in 5 and 10 gallon cans at paint and hardware stores.

WWJD?

I was born and raised Catholic, but I can't help myself fom saying...

The Pope is insane.

Yesterday he reiterated something he's claimed for a long time - years, actually, due to the fact that he was quite high up in the church before he became the head honcho a couple of years ago.

The Catholic Church is the only true church. All other faiths are inferior.

Call me crazy, but I fail to see anything Christian about claiming supremacy above all others and alienating non-Catholic religions.

He stinks of Bush: Old, stubborn & misguided.

That is all.

Why it's OK to yawn at a meeting

We yawn when we're bored. We yawn when we're tired. We yawn to increase the supply of oxygen to our blood.

At least that's the conventional wisdom. But a pair of novel experiments by University of Albany psychologists suggests we may have yawning all wrong. Here's a summary of the work (complete paper here):

The first experiment demonstrates that different patterns of breathing influence susceptibility to contagious yawning. When participants were not directed how to breathe or were instructed to breathe orally (inhaling and exhaling through their mouth), the incidence of contagious yawning in response to seeing videotapes of people yawning was about 48 percent. When instructed to breathe nasally (inhaling and exhaling through their nose), no participants exhibited contagious yawning.

In a second experiment, applying temperature packs to the forehead also influenced the incidence contagious yawning. When participants held a warm pack (46 C) or a pack at room temperature to their forehead while watching people yawn, contagious yawning occurred 41 percent of the time. When participants held a cold pack (4 C) to their forehead, contagious yawning dropped to 9 percent.


These results clearly suggest that yawning regulates the temperature inside your head, and that perhaps we yawn to cool our brains. What we don't have here is any biochemical cause-and-effect, but this is an incredibly interesting theory all the same.

The findings, if valid, draw a few unexpected conclusions about yawning. First of all, rather than stimulating sleep, a good yawn should fend off falling asleep. And secondly, far from being an indicator of boredom, yawning would appear to be a mechanism for maintaining attention.

So be sure and remember this for your next staff meeting -- it's an excellent excuse, and possibly even a valid one!

As Randall Parker suggests, this finding may have also some practical results. If you feel the need to yawn, do so. If you're mind is lagging at work, hold a cold drink to your forehead. And if you're trying to maintain a productive workplace, keep the environment cold.

Video: Speeding No Small Matter in Australia

When you first read the slogan, SPEEDING: NO ONE THINKS BIG OF YOU, you might think it was a reminder that people think poorly of those who break the law. Think again. This new road-safety campaign, launched in Australia last week, is aimed a bit more below the belt—by suggesting those men who speed have small penises. In the television and cinema advertisements, young "hoons"—Aussie-speak for speeding or reckless drivers—are mocked by unimpressed women who wave their little fingers at the drivers in a parody of their manhood.