This is the extraordinary story of how someone with an average memory became the fastest American to memorise a deck of cards.

Secrets of a Mind-Gamer – NYTimes.com.

Whilst she was visiting the family in Pakistan. It took her 3 years to get off the list, when the man put in for a promotion and they discovered he was married to a terrorist during the routine background check.

Immigration Officer Puts Wife on the No-Fly List – Lowering the Bar.

The commission on human rights gently reminds governments that in order for people to be able to be part of a democracy they have a right to know what their governments are up to and there are only very strict exceptions to this.

UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info • The Register.

People use status updates to share what’s on their minds, to tell others what they’re doing, and to gather feedback from friends. The different ways people use status updates form some interesting patterns. In this study, we looked at the usage of words in different “word categories” in status updates. This led us to discover some patterns in how people use status updates differently, and how their friends interact with different status updates.

via What’s on your mind? (56).

Worms that were genetically modified by McGill University researchers not only survived exposure to a banned poison, they lived even longer than normal worms, challenging scientists’ understanding of the aging process.

Dr. Siegfried Hekimi and his student Dr. Wen Yang, who are in the Montreal university’s biology department, planned to test the so-called “free radical theory of aging” by genetically modifying wild worms in a lab to accelerate production of free radicals — toxic molecules generated as a byproduct of oxygen use.

Which basically means that using anti-oxidants probably won’t help you at all, when it comes to beating ageing.

via CBC News – Technology & Science – Mutant worms defy aging theory.

It’s a chair, which is also a gym. Loads of excercises! Only $599,-

GymyGym: The World’s First Ergonomic Exercise Chair.

Very good ideas, as well as links to noise cancelling headphones, earplugs and a site that has seat maps of all airlines so you can choose the right seat during online checkin

John Graham-Cumming: How to sleep on a long haul flight.

Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found.

Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers.

Girls who did the same were more popular and more admired by teachers and peers, the researchers found.

via Bullying ‘can be good for children’: Study finds those who fight back are more popular | Mail Online.

A school that has allowed its pupils to start the day an hour later says it has seen absenteeism decline.At Monkseaton High School, in North Tyneside, 800 pupils aged 13-19 have started lessons at 10am since October.Early results indicates that general absence has dropped by 8% and persistent absenteeism by 27%.

via BBC News – Lie-in for teenagers has positive results.

Whether they’re plus sized, normal sized or skinny, women will feel bad about themselves whenever they see a model.

There really is no pleasing them!

Plus Size Models Don’t Raise Self Esteem | The Frisky.

This guy will dump your girlfriend or boyfriend for a small fee  by phone. He records the call and then puts it on YouTube for the world to hear.

IDUMP4U the website where we do all the dirty work for you!.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out I created a “luck school” – a simple experiment that examined whether people s luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person.

I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities listen to their intuition expect to be lucky and be more resilient to bad luck.

One month later the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic 80 per cent of people were now happier more satisfied with their lives and perhaps most important of all luckier. While lucky people became luckier the unlucky had become lucky. Take Carolyn whom I introduced at the start of this article. After graduating from “luck school” she has passed her driving test after three years of trying was no longer accident-prone and became more confident.

via Be lucky – it’s an easy skill to learn – Telegraph.

Aside from vegetarians killing more animals than meat eaters (sounds strange? Consider how much random killing a combine harvester does), they are also worse for the environment as they require more arable land and the processing of  the foods creates way more greenhouse gasses.

Being vegetarian does more harm to the environment than eating meat | Mail Online.

It turns out that it is ok to brag, but only if the subject you are bragging about is brought up by another party in the conversation.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: How to brag.

BA has implemented a policy whereby children are not allowed to sit next to men they don’t know. Flight attendants patrol the aisles and if they find a strange man they start shouting if he doesn’t want to change places. Not only is it sexist, it’s also extremely rude and embarrasing for the passenger.

Mirko Fischer had this happen to him when he was sitting next to his pregnant wife and has had enough, so he’s suing BA.

Bizarrely, BA can’t see the idiocy in their policy and won’t issue statements.

Businessman Mirko Fischer sues British Airwars ‘for treating men like perverts’ | Mail Online.

This court is legal and runs entirely through the internet, meaning it’s cheaper, fixed price and can dispense justice a whole lot faster than the regular courts.

e-Court – De Eerste Nederlandse Online Rechtbank.

It turns out that you can use Google Earth to find whole civilisations in places that people have always thought could never be inhabited by large groups of people. The City of Z or El Dorado has been found this way, it will take archaologists decades to clear it and view it all.

Google Earth helps find El Dorado – Times Online.

But only if you lightly smack them, and you really should stop smacking them after the age of 6 – 11.

Smacked children more successful later in life, study finds – Telegraph.