Category Archives: Uncategorized

School for Scoundrels – Japanese style

At his “Pickup School for Men Who Can’t Get Any”:http://fujitakikaku.com/nanpa/, Satoshi Fujita teaches the geeks of Tokyo that sex comes first, then the relationship. In a strange combination of the Japanese love of self-improvement and the Western concern for the carnal, many _Nanpa_–the art of picking up women–tutors offer their secrets up for sale to any willing to learn. For Fujita it seems, life is all about the )*$$^ and after 10 years of teaching on the side and developing his own seduction science he is now a full-time _nanpa_-expert. For more about Fujita, his school, and his secrets read this wonderful article from “Wired”:http://www.wired.com/, “Inside the Bizarre World of Japanese Pickup Schools”:http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2008/02/pick_up_school/
Of course, for those unwilling or unable to attend Fujita’s classes, one can always get one of the “previously featured”:http://duenos.net/article/314/HoneyDollsSexDolls Honey Dolls, also from Japan.

Who's the sexiest vegetarian?

http://www.goveg.com have put together yet another tasteless venue in which hot women wear very little clothing in the name of animal freedom. In the "Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door":http://www.goveg.com/feat/sexiest_vegetarian_next_door_2008/index.asp contest, visitors vote for these vegan vixens in a NCAA-type tournament bracket and the hottest gets a trip to Hawaii. Sound good? Go "vote":http://www.goveg.com/feat/sexiest_vegetarian_next_door_2008/index.asp

Man Test Inc.

http://www.ex-da.com, offer clients a fair and confidential evaluation of their partner's fidelity through staged encounters with attractive strangers, all captured on video. The "integrity testers" or "honey trappers" as they are more euphemistically called can be engaged through private detective firms like the one above, "UK Honey Trap":http://ukhoneytrap.co.uk/index.php, or "Honey Traps":http://www.ukhoneytraps.co.uk/. If you're interested in getting pick-up experience and getting paid for it, you can become a honey trapper yourself through the recruitment pages at any of their websites. More at "Reuters.com":http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSL132980220080213?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10005&sp=true . Thanks Melissa. Another fun way to deal with infedelity is by embracing it like the "previously featured":http://duenos.net/article/158/Coupledocumenttheirsexplorations couple who kept a "blog":http://www.katieanderic.com/ about their sexplorations.

The unappreciated glass squid


Found in the deep sea mountain range of the North Atlantic (creatively titled the Mid-Atlantic Ridge), the glass squid is clearly underrepresented in children’s literature and biology classes. Although, to be fair, the more common representation of the creature is more along the lines of this picture:

What the hob-nobs up there have to say

YouTube does seem to have become a strange ‘cool hunting grounds’ when it comes to coaxing your video into becoming popular. If you’re interested in what famous musicians, political analysts, university professors, or religious leaders have to say then you might check out bigthinkBig Think – a video media website that allows users to ask questions and rank answers in a more serious fashion. It won’t be strange little Gophers with dramatic music or badger, badger, mushroom but it may in fact be a worthwhile use of your time.
Ask the Big Think
Thanks to Laurie Bridges for the snag-

Innovation Incarnate

How to solve the US oil debacle, robots that climb walls, environmental justice in New York, dangerous things that you should make your kids do, why we have so many freaking choices of pasta sauce, and best/worst of all: local warming.
What the crap is this? TED. Ideas worth spreading. A conference held yearly – some of the coolest speakers with the most brilliant ideas, all available online in video form.
Try watching one a day – they release new ones frequently.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/

Obesity (and smoking) saves health plans money

As much as it might be crass to say it, this makes sense. A recent study coming out of the Netherlands is concluding that as far as the financial health of a nation-wide medical program goes, obesity is good for business. Obese people and smokers tend to die 7 years earlier of relatively simple problems derived from being grossly overweight or filling their lungs with tar. People who eat or smoke themselves into such a weakened position tend to fall to things like heart disease, lung cancer and diabetes whereas healthy people need much longer and more expensive treatment for strokes and degenerative diseases. According to the study, healthy Dutch people cost the health system around $417,000 from age 20 onwards, whereas the obese and smoking populations only cost $371,000 and $326,000 respectively over the same period. The margin is not huge, but spread out over a population of 300 million, that’s some real expense. Of course, there are things more important than saving money, but this brings an interesting perspective to the re-drafting of our national health system over the next couple of years.
More on the study at “Wired Online”:http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/O/OBESITY_COST?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-02-05-02-58-08. For the study itself, consult the “Public Library of Science”:http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html&issn=1549-1676
Previously counter-intuitive information featured on “Duenos health”:http://duenos.net/article/health:
* “Dirt could help fight depression”:http://duenos.net/article/115/dirt-could-help-fight-depression.
* “Napping lowers chance of heart trouble”:http://duenos.net/article/36/napping-lowers-chance-of-heart-trouble.
* “Sleeping in is good for you”:http://duenos.net/article/30/sleeping-in-is-good-for-you.

The Geography of Bones



What do you do with a dead body? The American way of death (which happens to be the title of a rather boring book) usually seems to involve burial in a coffin or cremation.

Over in Ghana, some people have become quite creative with their coffins, crafting ones that often reflect the life of the deceased (Were you a pilot? Get buried in a plane! Did you like beer? Why not a beer bottle coffin?) that are creative, artistic, and expensive. National Geographic has an interesting video about the trade in unique coffins.

As for the past…in Victorian England, the fear of being buried alive was so pervasive that dozens of inventors created bell-and-pulley systems for coffins to alert those above ground of a premature burial. People bought caskets with glass partitions that could be smashed by a hammer or pulley system (they didn’t realize that these systems would fail from soil interference).

Before that, Roman children who had lived to forty days and begun teething were called rapti and burned in the case of death, while their Greek infant counterparts were never buried during full night or day but only during Ἡμέρας ἀρπαγίω, the gray dawn just before morning appeared.

Today, you can have yourself or your loved one turned into a postmortem diamond (with the help of LifeGem)…or even, supposedly, a pencil . Alternately, Memorial Spaceflights will release a “symbolic portion” of cremated ashes into “deep space” or take the ashes on a return-trip flight in a commercial or scientific satellite.

Another commonly cited, currently practiced burial tradition is that of sky burial. Tibet supposedly has nearly 1,200 sky burial sites. Although details vary, monks generally prepare bodies (stripping flesh, dipping certain sections in yak butter or flour, crushing bones) for the consumption of vultures and other birds of prey. Zoroastrians practice a similar form of burial at the Towers of Silence, on top of which corpses are placed in rings (men around the outside, women in an inner ring, and children inside that) and bones are collected in an ossuary pit at the center. Water burial, also common to Tibet, involves allowing fish to take care of the body—although due to water contamination this practice has greatly decreased in popularity.
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On that cheerful note, I’ll introduce myself (since I’m new to the blog). I’m Kristin Ginger. I’m currently a senior English major/Spanish minor at Carleton College in Minnesota and have a wide range of leisure reading interests that will probably surface here from time to time. Not all are as morbid as this one,
fortunately.