Subliminal Learning

One of the things I'd rather missed was how much sublinimal learning has now become mainstream. I think it's something to do with the way in which digital technology has made the whole exercise so much cheaper: this has meant that a great deal more testing has been done and thus that the effectiveness has been shown.

Anyway, when I found out that is was effective I went looking for some product and I found this excellent subliminal CDs site. Called Subliminal.CDs.com it has an excellent selection of CDs to help you learn subliminally. From how to conquer phobias and improve muscle tone to increasing your brain power and sporting prowess. As I say, an excellent range and a well laid out site that's very simple to use.

It's well worth your playing it a visit and seeing what they can do for you.

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Brain Pain

Well, yes, having your skull replaced with a piece of plastic could indeed cause pain and suffering:

A German court has awarded 3,000 euros ($4,100) in damages to a man who had to have the top of his skull replaced with plastic because of a faulty hospital fridge.

Doctors removed the top of the man's head and put it in cold storage while they operated on his brain, the court in the western city of Koblenz said Tuesday.

Because the refrigerator was defective, the section of skull was not kept cool enough and could not be reattached. Doctors replaced the bone with a plastic prosthesis.

As has been noted elsewhere this helps to explain the massive cost of US health care. Can you imagine the damages he would have won over there? Start at $ 10 million and move north I would have thought.

Student Software

Now here's something I didn't actually realize went on: student software discounts. If you're a student registered at a college (and have your ID that can be checked online) then you can get discounts of up to 80% on software. Click through for CampusTech.com, their customers quote them as having "unbeatable prices" and "high customer satisfaction".

College is going to be expensive enough without having to pay full retail, so why not?

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Dumb Thieves

Of course, you do need to have a certain lack of brain power to make crime a career: there are easier ways to make a living quite frankly. But this is impressive even by the standards of the criminal classes:

A thief stole a briefcase and threw it away without noticing it contained 10,000 euros ($13,660) in cash, German authorities said Thursday.

"I think they'll be annoyed when they find out," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.

The case's owner, a 57-year-old Iranian businessman, had reported it missing as he prepared to board a flight in Duesseldorf airport. A policewoman later found it -- ransacked, but still containing the two cash-filled envelopes.

What is actually even more amusing is what's going to happen to hte businessman: you've got to have a reason to carry more than € 6,500 in cash these days, got to prove that you've paid the tax.

WebbyPlanet

Now here's an excellent little site to help you save money. If you're looking for a voucher , coupon or discount, or just for the information about where to get the best deals in the UK then Webby Planet is your destination.

They carry information from over 2000 different retailers: but the most important part of it is the way in which forum members help to update the site. So what you get is information from the thousands of members as they find things either online or on the High Street.

Highly recommended and check it all out by going here.

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Finding Rex IV

Following on from the story of a few days ago where Mexican drug dealers stole the police's sniffer dog, it looks like the dog has been found:

An elite Mexican sniffer dog kidnapped five days ago was found abandoned in a Mexico City park on Monday and reunited with its police handlers.

Working on a tip, federal police found Rex IV -- a highly trained Belgian Malinois sheepdog with a string of drug hauls to its name -- tied to a tree in a park in the gritty Iztapalapa neighborhood, a Public Security Ministry spokesman said.

"When they realized the police were onto them, they abandoned him in a park," the spokesman told Reuters, adding that the dog's identity was confirmed by scanning an embedded electronic chip.

The dog, part of an elite drug squad, was snatched from Mexico City airport on August 22 while it was en route for an operation in the northern state of Sinaloa. The thieves left a black mongrel puppy in its travel cage.

Police only realized Rex IV was missing when the puppy turned up in Mazatlan airport, Sinaloa. They feared the stolen dog, which one official compared to an intelligence agent, could help smugglers find new ways to conceal drug stashes.

Quite how the police got onto them is unknown: although reports that they've arrested a couple of the people who worked for the dog transport firm shows that they have a pretty good idea who was involved. And it's that last which was the real worry: not that they'd lost a dog...that would have been sad but not hugely important....but that the drug smugglers would have been able to experiment on new ways of hiding drugs.

Nice Work...

...If you don't have to do it. This has to be one of the best scams yet done:

A French tax official cheated the government out of 600,000 euros ($820,000) by creating a phantom identity as a university professor and claiming a salary for some 15 years, the government said Monday.

But didn't anyone at the university that was paying the salary note that he wasn't taking any classes, wasn't publishing any research?

Err, people who ask that obviously don't know much about academia.

Movie Marketing

The sad thing is that there are many highly paid, extremely intelligent, people who work in Hollywood trying to think these things up. Surely there's a better way for them to spend their time?

Here's one way to appeal to one segment of the youthful male market so beloved by film producers -- package your DVD with its own "barf bag."

Genius Products home entertainment is including a paper bag with each copy of its new "Dirty Sanchez" DVD of outlandish pranks and stunts performed by a troupe of four British men who go by the same name.

The bags underscore the message that the DVD is so sickening that even its makers fear viewers may vomit. "(The 'barf bag') was a fun way for us to communicate directly with fans, and tell them what the DVD is all about," said Scott Heffron, Genius' vice president of marketing.

The idea came from the DVD, he said. Before one stunt, the Dirty Sanchez boys encourage audiences to get a "sick bag."

Herre's a thought: why not, umm, spend the money on actually making a decent movie?

Naah, it would never catch on.

Venture Capital Database

Now this is an interesting little site: Venture Capital Database .

As the name suggests it's a database of the venture capital industry. The site itself is clean, efficient and easy to navigate. There's a very useful news ticker of which deals have recently been done: if you know what is being funded and by whom then you're obviously going to be ahead of the game.

There's also separate sections giving listings of those who are venture capital providers, one for those looking for such and also a series of service companies that operate around the industry.

If you're interested in this industry at all, whether as a provider of money or services, or have a business that needs funding, then this site is strongly recommended.

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Puppy Love

So, if you happen to be international drug lords and find that the police are bing too effective in intercepting your shipments, what do you do?

Well, quite, why not kidnap the police dog?

A top police sniffer dog working for an elite Mexican drug squad was stolen during an airport transfer by thieves who left a mixed-breed puppy in its place, the attorney general's office said.

Rex IV, a highly trained Belgian Malinois sheepdog with a string of drug hauls behind him, was checked on to a flight from Mexico City this week with seven other police dogs bound for an operation in the northern state of Sinaloa.

But when the dogs arrived at Mazatlan airport, Sinaloa, their police handlers discovered a small black mongrel puppy inside Rex IV's cage, with the sniffer dog nowhere to be seen.

"In 17 years I've never seen anything like this. It's rather delicate," a Public Security Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Sunday, adding that the worry was the dog could help smugglers find new ways to conceal drugs.

"It's like kidnapping an intelligence agent," he said.

That last is why they didn't simply kill it: now they've got a dog with which they can test new methods of drug concealment. Very clever indeed, actually.

Lap Band Surgical Techniques

If you're looking to lose weight and finding it difficult then you might want to think about lap-band surgery. The idea is that, using laparoscopic techniques (ie, small incisions, not large ones) a band is placed around the upper part of your stomach. This means that you'll feel full while you're eating less: and of course, eating less is the basic idea about any form of weight loss.

Click through to see how your Journey Lite surgeon can help you with lap-band surgery.

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Yeeeow! That's Gotta Hurt

Now, I can understand part of this story. I lived in Russia for a number of years and yes, I can imagine people having to share a flat years after they've divorced. But still:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday.

Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."

The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.

"It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this."

Exaclty what you did of course we don't know, but here's a hint: sitting, naked, in front of your ex-wife and drinking vodka: that probably didn't help.

Latina Dating

One of the things I love about the web (and do you think that Sir Tim Berners-Lee thought this would happen?) is the way in which it has entirely revolutionised the dating scene. Instead of it being, as it used to be, only the rather sad and odd who advertised in the back of the various magazines, the web is now bursting with all of the options known to man.

For example, if latina dating is your thing there is indeed now a site devoted just to latina singles. It has all of the usual functionality (actually, it looks rather better than most dating sites, certainly very easy to use) the major difference being that it is full of latinas looking for a date.

As I say, if that's your thing, sounds perfect, doesn't it?

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Look Lady...

There's being inventive in hyour criminality and yet there comes a point where you're just taking the p**s.

Israeli police arrested a woman who stole a pair of Crocs shoes when she returned to the store hours later to exchange them because they did not fit her son, a police spokesman said Friday.

The bit she didn't realise is that she had been seen stealing them in the first place and was recognised from the CCTV.

I was actually hoping she was really stupid: what would her excuse have been for not having a receipt?

Online Quizzes!

One of the things I do like about lbogs is the way so many people link to online quizzes: you know the sort of things, Which SuperHero are You and so on?

Well, I've found a new site which I think is even better. Instead of the usual online quizzes , where you can only take those that already exist, this one (just click through the link) enables you to create your own and then get readers and friends to take them. Most fun, much better and highly recommended.

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You Alright Then Mum?

I think we can all sympathize here:

A German left his dead mother seated in her favorite armchair at their shared home for two years because he could not face organizing a funeral, police in the southern town of Fuerstenfeldbruck said Friday.

The woman died of natural causes in the chair in July 2005 at the age of 92, a police spokesman said. A doctor called to the scene at the time gave the son a death certificate but he did not register the death.

It all sounds most odd of course, but then people can fin it difficult to do things. At least one thing makes me relieved. He never went back into the room again, which at least means that he wasn't sitting there with her watching TV of anything.

Fluorescent Lighting

As part of this doing up this new to us house I've got to try and decide where, if anywhere, to put fluorescent lighting . I think it's obvious that it should be in the garage: and I'm a fan of it in bathrooms too, especially over a sink and with a mirror. But where else? Is there anywhere else? We've already put metal halide bulbs in the kitchen, so we don't need more bright light there.

Any ideas?

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How Much For the Plane?

Having actually lived in Russia for a number of years I have to say that this does not surprise me in the least:

A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an airshow near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported Friday.

The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the U.S. delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said.

An astounded member of the U.S. delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $500 million if it were to be sold on the spot.

Back in the day there were stories of people swapping tanks for crates of vodka: I actually know someone who bought a MiG 21 as a toy. Sp why not try to buy a B-1?

M&S Travel Insurance

I'd forgotten all about this, silly me. Wondering about where, how, or who to buy travel insurance from I've just remembered that one of the finest brand names in the country, Marks & Spencer provides travel insurance. Absurd, I know, that I should have forgotten this, for we're all aware of their quality, their committment to customer service and so on.

As you can see if you look around the site a little they offer al you could need: single trip travel insurance, multi-trip travel insurance and even, for those who travel a great deal, annual travel insurance. That last is probably the right one for me given my fairly hectic schedule.

Given the news we're now getting from the airlines and the airports, that you've got a very high chance of arriving on a different continent (let alone in a different airport) from your luggage, it does seem like time that I need to do something about this.

Real Estate Schools

I'm not sure if this is just the right time to be thinking of this or just the wrong time. Real Estate Schools that is. With the market in trouble you might think that it's not a good time to be training to do appraosal, home inspections and so on. However, you can also look at it and say that many people will be put off, but there'll still be a need for people to do this work: so it is still possible that there will be a shortage of people.

A slightly difficult calculation. But do have a look at the directory of Real Estate Schools to help you with such a decision: more information is obviously good.

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Immigration and Emigration

New figures out showing that while we have record immigration we also have record emigration:

Almost 200,000 of those leaving for a year or more were British citizens - one every three minutes - and the rest were foreign nationals returning home or going elsewhere.

Since 1997, 1.8 million British nationals have left the country and about 900,000 have returned. At the same time, more than three million foreign nationals arrived and about half that number left.

The departure of so many Britons is exacerbating the demographic and cultural changes wrought by high levels of immigration.

Despite the exodus, the population is rising - because emigrants are more than balanced by immigrants, with 574,000 arriving.

There'll be a lot of huffing and puffing about this but the most important thing to me is that if, as we all hope this is, this remains a free country, then of course people must be able to leave if they so wish.

The other sideof that isthat people should be allowed in, as well.

Great Travel Guide

Now here is a site that has really taken the possibilities of the web to heart. They've also got the point about Web 2.0 as well, in that te great joy is being able to accumulate and present reader generated content along with more obviously commercial material.

What they've done is create a travel guide: simple enough you might think for it's certainly not the first travel guide out there, not by a long way. But instead of simply posting up (very) thinly disguised advertisements, or reprinting pieces from newspapers and magazines, they've actually thought long and hard about how to add value to all of this.

So their travel guide has, for example, blogs from regular travellers, just like you and me, making a record of where they go and what they do. There are forums where you can discuss things further and, of course, professional advice on travel related matters.

They then add in access to the resources you'll need to plan the same or similar trips. I think it's an excellent way of dealing with creating a travel site with a difference. Thoroughly recommended.

Hooking a Diver

Boy, here's something of a catch, don't you think?

A Dutch scuba diver became the surprise catch of the day for a 13-year-old boy fishing in the Netherlands when his hook got caught in the man's lip.

"I heard a sound on my head and immediately I felt a jerk on my lip," Wim van Huffelen, who had been swimming in the North Sea, was quoted as saying by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The daily ran a picture of the diver with the hook embedded in his lower lip.

These sorts of stories always leave me thinking. What did the diver say to the lad? What did the lad think he had caught? Something big, I'll bet, but a human with a hook through his lip wouldn't fight very hard. Was he about to bash the diver on the head to stop him thrashing?

Tsk, modern journalism, you see. Never answering the questions everyone wants to know about.

Too Early Quasi, Too Early

There's a huge amount of amusement to be had from this story:

A Dutch priest has been fined 5,000 euros ($6,800) for ringing his church bells too loudly in the morning.

The Catholic priest began ringing the bells at just after seven in the morning soon after arriving in Tilburg about six months ago, a spokesman for the town council said.

This prompted dozens of complaints from residents and the council in the southern town agreed the priest was breaking the rules.

"The priest can ring his bells whenever he likes but he has to keep within noise regulations. People don't appreciate it," the spokesman said.

The first level of amusement is, of course, that what did those who bought houses near a church expect was going to happen?

The second is a little darker: so, do muezzins have the same noise limits placed upon them when they cal for prayer from the minarets of the mosque? And if not, why not?

Poker Strategy

There0s a lot more to poker than it just being a game of cards: in fact, along with chess, it's probably one of the two most complicated games that we humans play.

The first complication is that there are so many different variations of the game. Hold'em uses different tactics and strategy (or rather, requires different...to be successful) from Omaha or Seven Card versions of the game. The odds are different of different hands, for example, the portion of the pack that you can see is different and so on.

The second important point is that what actually happens with the cards is the least important part of the game. They are a foil, only , certainly at the higher levels, what you do with your hands while you play the real game. That is, while you play the hopes and reactions of the other humans sitting around the table.

For that's what poker is really about, reading other people, working out what they're doing, and then changing your own tactics to match that.

These two sets of complications lead to it being necessary for you to understand the various strategies you should be employing. Fortunately, there's a great web site set up to explain just these to you. Try it out here, poker strategy explained to you, all the variations of the game.

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29 Year Dentists Career: No Licence!

There's one really rather important part that has been left out of this story:

Malaysian police have arrested a man who practiced as a dentist for 29 years although he had no medical training and treated patients at his home in a cast-off examining chair.

The impostor's closest brush with the dental profession was during the years 1962 to 1978, when he assisted an army dentist by carrying his bag on visits to plantation workers' homes, the New Straits Times reported Wednesday.

"I watched the doctor diagnose and treat problems with teeth," the paper quoted the unidentified man as saying when officials raided his home this week.

"I also saw how he would extract teeth and make models and measurements for dentures."

The 63-year-old man, who convinced his neighbors he was a retired army dentist after being told he was too old to work as a dentist's assistant, charged 20 ringgit ($5.76) for extractions and 130 ringgit for dentures, the paper said.

Yes....but how good was his dentistry? Was he doing better or worse than a trained dentist? Does 29 years experience beat having a dental training? Those are the important things we need to know...

Missionary Travel Agency

Yes, I suppose I should have thought of this before. Of course such a travel agency is going to exist. One that specializes in the overseas travels of missionaries, bringing the word of God to the heathen. They offer missionary flights, of course and the other sections of the site are interesting. They make the obvious point that given that all of their staff are commited Christians you know that they'll be honest. They have special contracts with the airlines for missionaries and as may of their people have done this work before then they'll know what you're going through and what your needs are.

You can also check out their section of testimonials, to see wat earlier users of the service have to say about it.

Well worth checking out.

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@

I do like this story: on two different levels.

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While "@" is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.

Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions.

Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like "King Osrina."

Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name.

Firstly, why not give your child an unusual name? If they don' like it, they can always change it: as Zowie Bowie did.

The second is, what on earth is a government doing telling people which names they may use for their children anyway? Got bugger all to do with The State, what people are called!

Excellent Quiz Site

I do like these sites that offer the internet quizes that you can take and then post up on your blog.

This one seems better than the rest though, fired by some real wit. Try this one: Where Should I Live ? There's a whole host of other such quizzes there as well and they're adding to the list all of the time.

Of course, my favourite was the one with the logo up at the top there. Yes, I did get full marks!

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Crackers in Caracas

Hugo Chavez once again shows that he hasn't really quite grasped reality:

World oil prices are headed for $100 per barrel, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez predicted on Saturday, and said he will cut supplies to the United States if the U.S. government "attacks" the South American nation again.

World oil prices might well go to $100 a barrel, but the threat to stop supplies to the USA is empty and futile. Oil is, you see, fungible.

There's two things Chavez can do.

1) Stop pumping oil altogether: difficult, but not impossible. However, at that same moment, there'll be no money coming in and thus he'll be overthrown. So he won't do that.

2) Sell the oil he is pumping to someone else. At this point, the oil that would have been bought by that someone else will then be sold to the Americans instead. So nothing has changed, at least on the grander scale.

Element Skateboards

Once again we're seeing how the web can enable companies to offer a greater range of products at fine, fine prices.
Back only a few years a company like Modern Skate & Surf, with four outlets in Michigan, would be limited to selling in just those areas of Michigan. If it wanted to expand it would have had to buy or build stores in further cities: and then stock all of those stores.
Now, however, it can sell over the net, meaning that it hasn't had to deal with the huge cost of all that real estate and stock.
That then has a further knock on effect. It's able (because it only has to have one stock) to have a vastly wider range of such things as element skateboards ,zero skateboards and the like. Thus we get to have more choice (and they also cover ice skating, roller skating and so on). Further, given the reductions in their costs, we get to have all of these things on offer to us at vastly lower prices.

Ain't the internet and this capitalism thing great?
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Tobacco Taxes Cut Smoking

So runs the entirely unremarkable story from USA Today:

Higher state taxes on smoking are producing sharp declines in tobacco consumption in the United States, just as Congress considers a huge federal cigarette tax hike, USA Today reported in its Friday editions.

The newspaper, conducting its own analysis of taxation and consumption figures, said the degree of decline in smoking appears to be tied directly to the size of the tax increase.

For example, cigarette sales fell 18 percent in North Carolina last year after the state tax was raised in two steps to 35 cents from a 5 cents, the newspaper said.

In Connecticut, per capita consumption of cigarettes has fallen off 37 percent since 2002 while state taxes have increased from 50 cents per pack to $1.51, according to the newspaper.

But in South Carolina, which has kept its lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax at 7 cents since 1977, cigarette consumption has fallen only 5 percent since 2000, USA Today said.

Well, yes, of course higher taxes reduce smoking. It's not just what they're meant to do, it's what any half literate person would assume they do: tax an activity and you get less of it.

However, we might actually want to go further. Taxing capital means less capital invested: taxing work means less work performed. As long as people are happy to accept both sides of this, that taxing desirable things causes less of them, as well as taxing undesirable things produces less of them, then I'm happy.

Koozies

Now, this is a really fun site. Full marks to whoever came up with this idea. Have a look at their range of personalized beer koozies . Now a koozie, as we all know, is that foam type thing that you put around your cold beer can. It serves two functions, to stop you hand warming your beer and to stop your beer cooling your hand.

But what these guys have done is made them in the shape (amongst other things) of a shirt, and you can get them in the colors of your team.

An excellent idea and well worth checking out.

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Get Orf My Land!

The cry of the farmer everywhere:

A German farmer angry with police for trying to confiscate his tractor wrecked three patrol cars and evaded capture for seven hours before an elite unit managed to arrest him, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

The farmer, 53, was pulled over by police for driving his tractor without a license, despite several previous warnings.

The officers called in three patrol cars for help before asking the farmer to get out of his vehicle.

He refused, and proceeded to ram the cars with his tractor, making full use of its attached muck spreader and hydraulic fork. Officers were only just able to scramble out of harm's way.

The farmer then drove into a forest, where he eluded a manhunt involving two helicopters and an armored car for seven hours.

There's very definitely a different way of seeing things from farmers. Why should they have to deal with all the paperwork, the form filling and the licences, of the urban society, when they're not part of it?

I also think it's pretty good work of his to avoid the chase for 7 hours: it's not as if tractors are really all that fast now, is it?

South Carolina Real Estate

What with all of this turmoil in the mortgage markets we might not think it's quite the right time to go house shopping. However, for those who can finance properly, such turmoil is exactly the right time to go looking for a bargain: there's a lot of distress sellers out there.

Why not have a look at the charleston sc real estate for example. While there may be small problems, people who are over extended, no one thinks that the growth in the area is going to slow so in hte medium term this looks like a good time to get in on the dip. For more information on the south carolina real estate you should probably check out the Century 21 site (the relevant parts are linked above) as they are one of the global leaders in real estate and have all the facts and figures (plus, of course, access to a large number of properties) at their fingertips.

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Bigger, Better, Condoms

This is an interesting addition to human happiness:

Futura said the study of 108 healthy couples showed its CSD500 condom helped men to get a firmer erection compared with a standard condom, increased penis size and made the sexual experience last longer, delivering statistically significant results.

The condom has a small amount of gel in its peak that dilates the arteries and increases blood flow to the penis.

I think I can guess what the've got in that gel, too. There'll be two things. One to increase the blood flow, so a vaso dilator, along the same lines as Viagra (and there are a number of people working on such topical applications of similar drugs) and this is what gives the increase in size.

However, this generally works to increase sensitivity: so there needs to be something else in there to reduce it. Along the lines of novacaine perhaps (and yes, topical application of that will indeed work).

But the combination, a boon to housewives everywhere!

Dance Wear

Clearly, what it is considered suitable to wear when going dancing has changed somewhat since I used to boogie. Although I have to say, it seems to be a change for the better if these dance club wear outfits are anything to go by.

Actually, you really might want to have a look all through that site. There's not just the aforementioned dance wear, there's a fascinating (no, really) pvc and leatherwear section, of course there's a sexy lingerie part to the site as well.

A huge series of various outfits, (nurse, office lady etc) and, yes, even 8 inch stilletos.

The shipping policies look very good indeed (including using an anodyne name for the shipper) and a very good returns policy too: oh, and did I mention that the prices are all very reasonable as well?

So, if that's what you're looking for, some spicy clothing, why not check out the site?

Disclosure Policy.

Not Surprising

Really, where do people get these things from:

As many as 11 million British motorists are unable to read a basic road map, according to a survey released Monday.

The poll revealed over three quarters of British drivers were unable to identify the motorway map symbol, while only one percent of motorists would pass the Cub Scout Map Reader badge test.

"It's pretty embarrassing the majority of Cub Scouts have better map-reading skills than the majority of the adult population," said Colin Batabyal, head of underwriting and business development at eSure, which carried out the survey.

There's two things here. The first is that the education syste in the UK is so appalling that there's at last 11 million people who cannot read a book, let alone a map.

It's also true that there's some 30 million women in the UK so we should be surprised that the number who cannot read a map is not much higher.*

* No, that's not just some sexist jibe. There is strong evidence that male and female map reading skills are very different.

A Mortgage Blog

Now here's an interesting addition to the blogosphere, a blog focussing solely upon mortgage advice .

There's two reasons I welcome it. The first is that the traditional media are always very careful not to upset financial advertisers. It's where all too much of their income comes from, so they really don't like to uncover the slightly dodgy (but legal) activities of all too many of these companies. On a blog, of course, there is no such pressure.

The second is that the blog format allows the author to write in much greater detail. Exactly what's going on, not compressed into the 400 or 500 words typical of a mainstream piece. While with some writers this leads to maundering, when discussing financial products it's much better to present all of the details, so as to present the whole story.

For example, this blog about piggyback loans. Now I'm pretty savvy financially (I've worked in the industry, but I've been out a few years) and I didn't know anything about such loans. But it's explained simply and clearly so that I know what's going on. Similarly, this one about indymac makes very clear the changes going on in the marketplace as a result of the meltdown in sub prime loans.

All in all an excellent resource for anyone trying to find out more about how mortgages and the mortgage markets work (or, regrettably, in the current circumstances, don't work).

Disclosure Policy.

Banana Purges

No, not some evil dictator deciding to clear the world of bananas, rather, the use of bananas to clear a different sort of problem.

Sheikh Mohsin, 35, grabbed the 45,000-rupee ($1,115) necklace from a woman in the eastern city of Kolkata Friday and popped it into his mouth when cornered by police.

Officers then fed him 40 bananas over a few hours believing they would act as a purgative, and sat back and waited for results.

Mohsin passed an uncomfortable night in jail, but not the piece of jewelry.

Forty bananas and still not passing it? Sheesh, what does this guy have, an iron stomach?

Dozens of bananas failed to do the trick but an Indian thief has finally produced a gold necklace he had snatched and then swallowed after police fed him a hearty meal of chicken, rice and local bread.

Ah, that does it. Well, that'll probably be the last decent meal he gets for a while: he's facing 3 years jail time now that the police actually have their evidence.

Digital Camera Reviews

So where do you go for advice? There's no point in asking a salesman as he'll just sell you whatever they have a pile of in the back room. That's also true of all too many places on hte web: you'll be told what they think you want to hear, not what you need to know. Which is why I really rather like this site of digital camera reviews.

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I've got a bit more reading to do there I think then I'll finally take the plunge and buy my first digital camera. My wife is insisting that we should have photos of the kittens: all too soon they'll be cats and nowhere near as cute. That my parents also want photos of the new house is another reason. So, excuse me, back to the camera reviews.