And The Winner of the 2010 Bad Sex in Fiction Award Goes To...

...The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville. Here's an excerpt:

He caught her rhythm, pulling and releasing, cradling and crushing; pushing up through his fingers with each swing, mining up, like an otter through wet sand. Her sounds shifted from moans to grunts, insistent, almost desperate cries from the throat … He unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her. He hooked his fingers into her waistband, caught the elastic of her underwear and began pulling down. The knot on her light cotton trousers held fast as the fabric reached the curve of her backside. She twisted from him and stepped back.

Read more terribly bad sex from The Shape of Her at the Guardians website, or have a look at other contenders for worst sex story books.

Angry noodle

Demands explanation! Thought this noodle was hilarious so definitely worth a share!

No Senior Citizens Discount

Not everyone has the same feeling about pensioners and discounts.

An advantage to being color blind

Worlds scariest airstrips

Ever wondered what it would be like landing on some of the... shorter runways around the world? Here are a couple of runways I dont think I would be too happy landing on.

Mercury poisoning makes male birds homosexual

This is an interesting story for a Thursday. Apparently mercury poisoning makes male ibis homosexual. For those of you not ornithologically inclined; an ibis is the same type of family that our beloved (annoying) Hadeda`s belong to.

Low levels of mercury in the diet of male white ibises cause the birds to mate with each other rather than with females. As a result many of the females can't breed, and fewer chicks are produced.

It's the first time a pollutant has been found to change an animal's sexual preference. Many chemicals can "feminise" males or reduce fertility, but males affected in these ways still prefer females.

Mercury is extremely toxic, particularly in the form of methylmercury, which reduces breeding in wild birds by disrupting their parenting behaviours. To find out if it also affected mating, Peter Frederick of the University of Florida in Gainesville and Nilmini Jayasena of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, captured 160 young white ibises from south Florida. They gave them food laced with methylmercury and monitored them closely.

The birds were split into four groups. One group ate food with 0.3 parts per million methylmercury, which most US states would regard as too high for human consumption. A second group got 0.1 ppm, and the third 0.05 ppm, a low dose that wild birds would be exposed to frequently. The fourth group received none.

All three dosed groups had significantly more homosexual males than the control group. Male-male pairs courted, built nests together and paired off for several weeks. Higher doses increased the effect, with 55 per cent of males in the 0.3 ppm group affected. Male-male matings were responsible for 81 per cent of unproductive nests in the dosed groups.

Meanwhile the heterosexual pairs courted less and were bad at parenting – patterns of behaviour that were both already known to be caused by methylmercury poisoning. The combined effects of male-male pairing and poor performance by male-female pairs could be severe. "In the worst-case scenario, the production of young would fall by 50 per cent," says Frederick.

Looking for effects on courtship and mating is novel, says Tony Scheuhammer of Environment Canada's National Wildlife Research Center in Ottawa, Ontario. "People normally study pairs that have already mated to see how good they are at parenting," he says.

The source of the full article can be found at the fantastic New Scientist website.

A look at Russia in color from 1900 to 1915

My last blog post that had pictures of America in color from the early part of the 20th century went down pretty well so I thought I would share pictures I found from the same source of Russia in color right at the beginning of the 20th century.

It is a pity that communism effected Russia on such a drastic scale as it looked like they were well on their way by some of the beautiful buildings shown. One is also reminded of the strong contrast between early developed Russia and early rural Russia.

There are loads more pictures where these came from all of them available online from the Denver Post. 

What does John Stewart have to say about Wikileaks?

For some reason our South African conservatives are as thick and uneducated as their American counterparts and in the local MyBroadBand forums our local conservatives are behaving like idiotic Republicans.

They are acting as though the diplomatic cable release is the end of the political world and everyone is going to die and this leak is bad for everyone.

Rubbish! I say. The more transparent and accountable governments and corporations are the less corruption and human misery there will be. John Stewart pretty much echoes my sentiment but in a much more humorous way. Have a look at this clip from his latest show!

Buy your own Tron motorbike - Really cool!

 For those of you that are not in the know. There is a new Tron movie coming out called Tron: Legacy. A Florida motorbike shop have developed 10 custom-built, street legal Tron Light Cycle lookalikes. For only $55 000 you to can purchase one of these elite bikes.

Read more about these fantastic bikes at Wired Magazine.

Twilight for Bernice

My best friends wife is a bit fanatical about her enjoyment of the Twilight series so I thought I would share this short summary of the series for her :D