Saturday, October 27, 2012

Chinese Man Sues Wife for Being Ugly, Wins Lawsuit


A man from northern China who divorced and sued his wife earlier this year for being ugly has recently won the lawsuit.
Jian Feng said his issues with his wife’s looks only began after the couple’s daughter was born.  Feng was appalled by the child’s appearance, calling her “incredibly ugly” and saying she resembled neither one of her parents.
With that being the case, Feng initially accused his wife of cheating.  It was at that point that his wife, who has not been named, came forward, saying she had spent $100,000 on intense plastic surgeries to drastically change her appearance before she met Feng.  She never told Feng about those surgeries.
When Feng found out about the procedures, he filed the lawsuit. He said the woman convinced him to marry her under false pretenses.
A judge agreed, awarding Feng $120,000.
[Via MyFOX8]

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Some Nominated Individuals Who Did Not Receive the Nobel Peace Prize


The three most common searches on individuals in the Nobel Peace Prize nomination database, are Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Joseph Stalin.
Joseph Stalin, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.

Mahatma Gandhi, one of the strongest symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the Prize (a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate".
Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. Incredulous though it may seem today, the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939, by a member of the Swedish parliament, an E.G.C. Brandt. Apparently though, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. Brandt was to all intents and purposes a dedicated antifascist, and had intended this nomination more as a satiric criticism of the current political debate in Sweden. ( At the time, a number of Swedish parliamentarians had nominated then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin for the Nobel Peace Prize, a nomination which Brandt viewed with great skepticism. ) However, Brandt's satirical intentions were not well received at all and the nomination was swiftly withdrawn in a letter dated 1 February 1939.
Other statesmen and national leaders who were nominated but not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
Czechoslovakia: Thomas G. Masaryk, Edvard Benes,
Great Britain: Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee,
Ramsay MacDonald, Winston Churchill
USA: the presidents William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman &
Dwight D. Eisenhover; the foreign ministers Charles Hughes, John Foster Dulles
France: Pierre Mendès-France
Western Germany: Konrad Adenauer
Argentina: Juan and Eva Peron
India: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru
Finland: Juho Kusti Paasikivi
Italy: Benito Mussolini
Artists nominated but not awarded the Peace Prize: 
Leo Tolstoy (Russian author), E.M. Remarque (German author), Pablo Casals (Spanish Catalan cellist and later conductor), Nicholas Roerich
Nominees not primarily known for their peace work:
John Maynard Keynes (British economist)
Pierre de Coubertin (French pedagogue and historian best known for founding the International Olympic Committee)
Lord Baden-Powell (Lieutenant-General in the British Army, writer, founder of the Scout Movement)
Maria Montessori (best known for her philosophy and method of educating children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is still in use today in a number of public as well as private schools throughout the world)
Royal nominees:
Tsar Nikolai II (1901), Prince Carl of Sweden (1919), King Albert I of Belgium (1922), Emperor Haile Selassi of Ethiopia (1938), King Paul I of Greece (1950), Princess Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1951)

Monday, October 15, 2012

The Time Indiana Tried to Change Pi to 3.2


Any high school geometry student worth his or her protractor knows that pi is an irrational number, but if you’ve got to approximate the famed ratio, 3.14 will work in a pinch. That wasn’t so much the case in late-19th-century Indiana, though. That’s when the state’s legislators tried to pass a bill that legally defined the value of pi as 3.2.

The very notion of legislatively changing a mathematical constant sounds so crazy that it just has to be an urban legend, right? Nope. As unbelievable as it sounds, a bill that would have effectively redefined pi as 3.2 came up before the Indiana legislature in 1897.

The story of the “Indiana pi bill” starts with Edward J. Goodwin, a Solitude, Indiana, physician who spent his free time dabbling in mathematics. Goodwin’s pet obsession was an old problem known as squaring the circle. Since ancient times, mathematicians had theorized that there must be some way to calculate the area of a circle using only a compass and a straightedge. Mathematicians thought that with the help of these tools, they could construct a square that had the exact same area as the circle. Then all one would need to do to find the area of the circle was calculate the area of the square, a simple task.

Sounds like a neat trick. The only problem is that it’s impossible to calculate the area of a circle in this way. It just won’t work. Furthermore, when Goodwin was toying with this problem, mathematicians already knew it was impossible; Ferdinand von Lindemann had proven that the task was a fool’s errand in 1882.

Goodwin wasn’t going to let something trivial like the proven mathematical impossibility of his task deter his efforts, though. He persevered, and in 1894 he even convinced the upstart journal American Mathematical Monthly to print the proof in which he “solved” the squaring-the-circle problem. Goodwin’s proof didn’t explicitly deal with approximating pi, but when you’re quite literally trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, weird things happen. One of the odd side effects of Goodwin’s machinations was that the value of pi morphed into 3.2.


Let’s Make a Deal


Although Goodwin’s “proof” was anything but, he was pretty cocky about its infallibility. He didn’t just publish his faulty method in journals; he copyrighted it. Goodwin figured everyone would be lining up to use his revolutionary new trick, and his plan was to collect royalties from businesses and mathematicians who sought to exploit his method.

Goodwin wasn’t totally greedy, though, and that’s where the Indiana legislature entered the picture. Goodwin couldn’t bear the thought of Hoosier schoolchildren being deprived of the fruits of his brilliance just because the state couldn’t foot the bill for his royalties. So he magnanimously offered to let the state use his masterpiece free of charge.

Indiana wasn’t going to get such an awesome deal totally for free, though. The state could avoid paying royalties if and only if the legislature would accept and adopt this “new mathematical truth” as state law. Goodwin convinced Representative Taylor I. Record to introduce House Bill 246, which outlined both this bargain and the basics of his method.

Again, Goodwin’s method and the accompanying bill never mention the word “pi,” but on the topic of circles, it clearly states, “[T]he ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four.” Yup, that ratio is 3.2. Goodwin isn’t afraid to lambaste the old approximation of pi, either. The bill angrily condemns 3.14 as “wholly wanting and misleading in its practical applications.”

Goodwin’s blasting of the old approximation isn’t even the funniest part of the bill’s text. The third and final section extols his other mathematical breakthroughs, including solving the similarly impossible problems of angle trisection and doubling the cube, before reminding any reader who wasn’t sufficiently awestruck at his magnificence, “And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man’s ability to comprehend.“


Math Problem



To anyone who passed the aforementioned high school geometry class, this bill was patently absurd. Apparently Indiana legislators weren’t a pack of math whizzes, though. After the bill bounced around between committees, the Committee on Education finally sent it out for a vote, and the bill passed the House unanimously. No, not a single one of Indiana’s 67 House members raised an eyebrow at a proof that effectively redefined pi as 3.2.

Luckily the state’s senators had a bit more numerical acumen. Well, some of them did. Eventually. After sailing through the House, the bill first went to the Senate’s Committee on Temperance, which also recommended that it pass. By this point, news of Indiana attempting to legislate a new value of pi and endorse an airtight solution to an unsolvable math problem had become national news, and papers all over the country were mocking the legislature’s questionable calculations.

All this attention ended up working in Indiana’s favor. While the state’s lawmakers couldn’t follow Goodwin’s bizarre brand of mathe-magic well enough to refute his proof, there were other smart Hoosiers who could. Professor C.A. Waldo of Purdue University was in Indianapolis while the pi hoopla was unfolding, and after watching part of the debate at the statehouse he was so thoroughly horrified that he decided to intervene.

The legislators may have been nearly bamboozled by Goodwin’s pseudo-math, but Waldo certainly wasn’t. Waldo got the ear of a group of senators after watching the absurd debate and explained why Goodwin’s theory was nonsense. (It seemed that most of the legislators didn’t really understand what was going on in the bill; they just knew that by approving it the state would get to use a new theory for free.)

After receiving Waldo’s coaching, the Senate realized that the new bill was a very, very bad idea. Senator Orrin Hubbel moved that a vote on the bill be postponed indefinitely, and Goodwin’s new math died a quiet legislative death. The Indiana legislature hasn’t tried to rewrite the basic principles of math in the 114 years since. We’ll keep holding out hope that some brave political hopeful jumps on the 2012 campaign as a chance to finally take a stand against the irrational tyranny of √2.


[Via Mental Floss]

Sunday, October 7, 2012

How Technology is Changing the Way We Have Sex


Engineers have three years left to deliver the hoverboard promised to us by Back To The Future II. It’s not looking good though the self-lacing Nike dunks are on track. In the area of sex tech though, we’re already on track to surpass the orgasmatron – the machine for giving instant orgasms – from Woody Allen’s 1973 flick Sleeper well before the 2173 deadline.
Technology is already having a major effect on sex lives the world over and there’s far more to be explored than simply burbling about sexting or women reading 50 Shades Of Grey on their Kindles undetected by the other commuters on their train. From web communities to hardware – pun obviously intended – our sexual culture is evolving and being altered by technology.
Matt Curry, head of e-commerce at Lovehoney or, as he describes himself in his Twitter profile, “Chief Whip & Sexual Tastemaker”, has great insight into the public’s sexual tastes – he sees what they spend their cash on. He reveals that Lovehoney’s latest gadget makes catering to its customers’ whims much easier:
“With sex toys, having instant access via Skype to overseas manufacturing is great. We’ve taken that one step further though: we’re now printing out prototypes sent by sex toy designers in Europe and China with our office 3D printer. It really helps with speed of development. Previously we had to wait for prototypes – even non-functional models – to be shipped via air or even sea. Now we can get an idea of shape and size very quickly.”
It’s not just the ability to quickly see designs that’s helped by the 3D printer. It also means Lovehoney can be far more experimental. Curry says: “We can definitely experiment with more unusual designs now before we expend the time and money required to knock out functional versions.”
His list of favorite sex toys, published on Lovehoney’s blog, gives a good sense of how online purchases make it easier for us to buy what we really want rather than one we’re comfortable to be seen buying. BASIC Sex Toys’s Slimline Butt Buddy is the third most popular sex toy on the site. Curry says: “I try to convince people that the British public are much more into sticking things up their bottoms than they let on and this is brilliant proof of that.”
He goes on: “Working in this industry has taught me that everyone is into something other people would think weird. There’s also a lot more choice now. Ten years ago, you would never have been able to get access to specialist kit like Pipedream Extreme [makers of realistic vaginas, dicks, anuses and mouths], medical fetish equipment or electro items from your local sex shop.”
The ‘Amazon’ shopping experience, our expectation of easy ordering and delivery, has made it normal to buy things off the web and, of course, that means sex toys and related products. Curry brightly notes; “On Lovehoney, you can even read user reviews of a speculum, if that’s what you’re into. 5 stars, I might add!” Amusingly, a search on Amazon itself for vibrators, brings up a selection of “pelvic floor exercisers” and “personal massagers”, code words used by mainstream companies in place of more direct words like vibrator and dildo.
The future of vibrators may be in “teledildonics” — remotely controlled sex toys — but Curry warns that the technology is somewhat slums at this point. He highlights items like the Mojowijo – an add-on for turning your Wiimote into a sex toy – and the Fleshlight VStroker but does not recommend them as they are “not great products”. Better options may be on the way though. Curry reveals:
“There are some advances on the way. I’ve seen various mockups and prototypes of toys that work with iPads and other video chat apps to provide a better long-distance experience. There’s even a semi-satirical mockup of an iPad Fleshlight doing the rounds on the Internet.”
iOS devices have been put to work in the pursuit of pleasure by former Apple employee, Suki Dunham, whose company OhMiBod makes a whole range of music-activated vibrators. The devices buzz to the rhythm of the tunes you choose and the company recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to remotely control connected vibrators and created their own unique vibration patterns. The company’s devices were featured in the Grammy Awards goodie bags in 2010.
At the more extreme of innovation, researchers from the University of Electro Communications in Tokyo developed a machine – dubbed the Kiss Translation Device – that aims to connect couples French kiss over long-distances. The machine links two rotating straw-like tongues to computers. Noburhiro Takahashi, a member of the team developing the device, told DigInfo TV that the team is working on other elements of kissing like taste, breath and tongue moistness. Thankfully bad breath isn’t one of the factors being studied.
Scientists are also turning their attentions to other orifices. While the Fleshlight is the most famous or infamous artificial vagina, the ungainly RealTouch pushes things even further. The device, designed by a former NASA engineer, has two bands running inside with a reservoir releasing lube. It plugs in using USB and its motion is synced to specially selected porn movies to theoretically mimic the experience of fucking the performers. Quite how erotic that can possibly feel is debatable.
For those who want more than a hole, there is an arms, legs and other body part race between makers of highly detailed dolls. The most prominent brand at the high end is Real Doll, which featured prominently in the Oscar-nominated Lars And The Real Girl, a Playboy shoot by Helmut Newton, and RyanMurphy’s Nip/Tuck among many other TV shows. Less pleasingly for the doll makers, Merlin Mann and John Roderick dubbed the anatomically correct creations “dead rubber girls” in an episode of the Roderick On The Line podcast.
RealDoll’s most prominent rival is the more robotic Roxxxy from True Companion, marketed as a sex robot can that can hold conversation. Each Roxxy model has three inputs (read: orifices) and a programmed personality which allows her to be sleepy, garrulous or “in the mood”. Other “girlfriend profiles” are offered with highly descriptive names: Wild Wendy, Frigid Farrah, S&M Susan, Mature Martha and Young Yoko.
RealDoll has been producing realistic sex dolls since 1996 and while it did offer robotic featured such as remote-controlled hip actuators and computer controlled speech feedback for a time, it has opted to focus on the “realism” of its products. RealDoll’s creator Matt McMullen says of his rivals at True Companion:
“What they’re trying to do really is completely different than what we’ve been doing. We’ve always aspired to make our dolls look and feel as real as possible, hence the name Real Doll, not so much like “hey, we’re going to build a robot.” Not that that’s an area we haven’t explored…it’s just something that I’ve never really been comfortable releasing as a product mostly because of the aesthetics that have to sacrificed when you start putting gears in a doll…it’s hard to keep the doll as beautiful as I would demand it to look.”
The team behind True Companion has been working on their concept for a high-tech sex doll since 1993. Douglas Hines, a former employee of Bell Labs – a crucible of technology that helped produce radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, Unix, C and C++ – created a rudimentary sex robot called Trudy.
True Companion’s official company history explains their goal: “The sex industry was effective at creating very expensive and somewhat realistic dolls but many people were telling us it was like their dolls were ‘catatonic’, like they were injured and unable to speak and interact. They wanted to have their dolls become interactive and be their friends. We solved this problem…”
Speaking to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’s magazine, Spectrum, Hines talked about his sex doll like any inventor dealing with practical problems: “Roxxxy has three inputs and motors where it counts. There’s a lot of heat buildup, so we installed a convection system. [There are] other motors to simulate heartbeat and responsive gestures.”
Like a lot of more traditional consumer technology, Roxxxy hooks up to the web to grab firmware updates that add new behavior based on interactions between owner and robot. Hines employed a voiceover artist to record her vocals as well as noises like snoring and orgasmic yelps. The robot’s knowledge database is pre-populated with phrases based on the buyer’s answers to a 400-question preference questionnaire.
Meanwhile, RealDoll has taken another step forward in its quest for realism by striking a licensing deal with porn studio Wicked to produce representations of its stars. To someone not used to the culture of the realistic sex doll market, the features list of the new product might be a little disturbing:
“…new articulated spine, which allows for completely realistic and natural torso positioning and range of motion…the new removable deep throat mouth insert, which features a canal which goes down the throat of the doll versus straight back into the head, for up to 7” of penetration…full head design without magnets or velcro…a numbered certificate of authenticity signed by the actress…”
While many RealDoll fans are very taken with the latex version of women of Wicked, others are disappointed by the specs and option packages available. Despite the very different products under discussion, RealDoll forums don’t differ all that much from those discussing mobile phones or cars. Here’s an example of one user’s view of the Wicked RealDoll range:
“I really like the Wicked Real Doll body out of them all – specifically the body on the Electra doll. I just don’t like the face. Unfortunately, when I tried to find the options available, there are none. Is it possible to switch out a head on this body if you pay extra? I could live without any special skin tone but I can’t handle the face on the doll…to me [it] looks a bit agitated…I really would like that body but not a doll that looks like it wants to kick my ass. Sorry for being blunt. What would it cost to order a different head?”
Jessica Drake, a writer, performer and producer for Wicked, has also been immortalized as a RealDoll. She described the process to 69adget.com:
“It’s a really scientific process. My body and my face was scanned by a computer from head to toe, all the way round. The doll is an exact replica of me, right down to the lifelines on my palms…my hands and feet were molded separately for even more details like my nails and veins. My doll has the same dimples in her lower back that I have…my ‘lady parts’ were molded to be exactly the same as the real thing. That meant another visit to RealDoll, where their specialists poured a special mixture around my bits as I was on a table in a rather compromising position. It was cold but it warmed up rather quickly. My nipples were done in the same way.”
Drake is very positive about the response she has received from fans who have purchased her in doll form: “I’m really flattered…[it’s] giving me the ability to fulfill the fantasies of even more people…that someone would enjoy me so much that they’d take me home and make me theirs is quite the turn on. I’ve already gotten a few emails from people telling me how much they enjoy me!”
It’s unsurprising that customers are so demanding. The standard RealDoll, female or male, costs $5999 before you choose any of the optional extras (which include pubic hair and the option of extra faces). A rather matter-of-fact note at the bottom of the order form states: “Your female doll comes dressed in stylish seasonal lingerie with high heeled shoes. She will also come with a bottle of perfume and a cleaning kit.” The male doll ships in boxers and, curiously, a tank top.
While modern materials and the freedom provided by the web have made a more profitable business of developing and selling sex dolls, they are by no means a new concept. As far back as the 16th century the dame de voyage, a makeshift sex doll made of cloth, was used by French and Spanish sailors on long, lonely voyages. Iwan Bloch in The Sexual Life of Our Time discussed commercialized sex dolls in 1908:
“[There are] clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies which subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature…such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of “Parisian rubber articles.”
By 1955, dolls were being openly advertised with Max Weissbrodt promoting Bild Lilli in Germany, a model based on a cartoon character popularized by the Bild Zeitung newspaper. However, unlike the direct and serious copy that promotes the RealDoll today, poor Lilli was marketed as a joke for “men who perhaps could not afford the real thing” and advertised in pamphlets distributed in red light districts.
It was another technological leap forward that kicked the sex doll industry into the 20th century as vinyl, latex and silicone became more commonly available and allowed more realism. The great joy of the web for the sexual adventurer is that there is no longer a need to seek out a catalogue packed with “Parisian rubber articles” as the internet is history’s greatest repository of the niche and naughty.
Matt Curry says of the web’s more niche hangouts: “I see so many niches. Online communities are giving people the opportunity to discuss and explore aspects of their sexuality. If you realized you had a sexual attachment to cuddly toys, you’d once have felt repressed but now you have access to, say, the Teddy Babe section of the UK Love Doll forums.” I checked. That’s definitely a thing. Once again Rule 34 – the hypothesis that pornography or sexually related material exists online for any conceivable subject – is proved right.
Curry makes a strong over-arching point about how the web has renewed and revitalized sexual culture: “Anonymity has really allowed people to be much more open online. Yes, you get exhibitionists and fantasists but the majority are people just looking for an outlet and some advice.”
For young people, there seems to be, despite media reports to the contrary, a lot to be celebrated about the interaction of technology and our sex lives. “The Use of Technology in Relationships”, a report published by the University of Plymouth earlier this year in association with the UK Safer Internet Centre found that 88% of 16 – 24 year-olds strongly agree that technology has had a positive impact on their relationship.
Over half of respondents said online activities formed a regular part of interaction in their relationship (60%) and were an important part of forming new relationships (52%). However, almost half of those surveyed agreed that online interaction could damage “offline” relationships.
The interaction between online and offline relationships is blurring though. Whether they are out-and-out hookup apps like Grindr and its straight equivalent Blendr or presenting themselves as a “social experiment” when users are clearly getting sexual like Badoo, so many apps are places for getting sex. Craigslist has always been a hot bed of no-strings attached action but location-awareness has given the quest for anonymous sex a new lease of life.
Grindr has over 4 million users in 192 countries. That’s a sexual revolution by anyone’s arithmetic. Cottaging meets coding. Mutual masturbation meets monetization strategies. But not everyone believes that’s a good thing. The problem with Grindr and, in fact, all web and mobile hook up strategies was brilliantly summed up by journalist and theorist Mark Simpson:
“Now, call me old-fashioned but what is the point of sex to a single homosexualist if it doesn’t get you out of the bloody house? On the hottest night of the year? Gays – all of them, every last one of them, especially those in relationships – are ‘logged on’ with lob ons, looking for someone who will ‘travel’ while they ‘accom’.
If Joe Orton had his time again his diaries would have been just printouts of thousands of Gaydar profiles and alarming digicam photos. “I, for my part, look back on my pre-internet days of compulsive cruising…in the driving sleet and rain as a golden age of warmth, romance and human contact…the evil of internet cruising – and the reason it will become irresistibly, devastatingly mainstream – is precisely its efficiency…but efficiency is precisely what sex is not about.”
That is the crux of where technology’s role in the future of sex gets problematic. The human experience that is most tied to the idea of intimacy can be enhanced by technology but it can also allow us to dive into the most solipsistic behavior possible, fulfilling our own most selfish needs without the need to think of anything else. In June 2006, Henrik Christensen of the European Robotics Research Network told The Sunday Times he believed “people [were] going to be having sex with robots within five years.” True Companion’s customers already are but how long before the robotic side of the sex industry becomes mainstream?
Wherever there is a new technology, be it VHS, BluRay or 3D, the sex industry is quick to adopt it. Days after Google announced its Glass AR eyewear would be available to developers, Quentin Boyer of major porn producers Pink Visual was claiming his company would be the first to develop porn for it. He says, matter-of-factly: “The style of porn known as ‘point of view’ has been a popular type of content for a while now. Obviously a device that allows you to shoot high quality video in a truly hands-free fashion will make shooting porn that much easier.” Good work Google, you’ve just brought us the future of dirty movies.
Whether it is allowing us to indulge our kinks, however mild – 50 Shades of Grey on Kindle – or extreme – discussing $6000 latex girls, or facilitating real life contact, technology has an increasing role in modern sexuality. The defining question of the next 10 years is likely to be whether it’s used more to maintain intimacy with partners over great distances and enhance relationships or create insular worlds where we can please ourselves. Oh, and when that orgasmatron is going to get off the drawing board.
[Via The Next Web]