Avenue Odd

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

Engineer: What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!

Doctor: I don't know but I've never seen such ineptitude!

Priest: Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him.

Priest: Hi George. Say George, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow aren't they?

George: Oh yes. That's a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight while saving our club house last year. So we let them play here anytime free of charge!

(silence)

Priest: That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.

Doctor: Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them.

Engineer: Why can't these guys play at night?

Picture taken off Flickr.com. Uploaded on January 10, 2008 by bread_man_017.

please comment!

I would not profess to have visited many restaurants in my short time of existence, but one little question always pops into my mind when i pick up the salt shaker and see grains of uncooked rice in it, mingled into the salt.

At first glance the logical deduction is that the grains of rice, being much larger than grains of salt, would push the salt around so that they would not coagulate and form clumps. Many a times, we (my friends and i) would leave it at that.

So, being the bored student that i am (bored of accounting to be exact), i went and Goggled it to find out if our logical minds served us well.

As it would appear, rice, or starch in general, is a good desiccating agent. It absorbs surrounding atmospheric moisture so that the salt would stay dry and not absorb moisture and clump up. This is a little excerpt of a answer from a professor.

I think both sides of the argument are correct. Indeed, the grains of rice will tend to "knock 
the lumps out of the salt." So would small glass beads. However, the porous starch structure of
well dried rice is also very attractive to moisture by virtue of hydrogen bonds that can form
between water molecules and the -OH groups in the starch matrix. Thus, dried starch grains make a 
fairly decent desiccating agent.

So now we know.

‘tis funny!

When young people are increasingly having pre-martial sex. One has to ask, is the age old yardstick of morality, abstinence, finally obsolete?

This blogger thinks so.

The emphasis of abstinence has always been to “save yourself for that special someone”. However, it has to be noted that these ideas originated from a time and age quite distant, and very much different from ours. In the past, people got married at much younger ages than they do now. Most couples tied the knot at age 23 or below, while in our time, at age 23, in most developed countries, people are pursuing a tertiary education, and the average age of marriage is somewhere along the lines of 28.

Abstinence until marriage was practiced widely, though not universally, in the USA through the 1950’s. So it is possible, in the right cultural circumstances, for abstinence to be the norm.
What were the conditions that made it possible?

–A culture that hides and impedes sexuality. Dress codes, chaperones, no public display of sexual language and images.

–Early marriage: it’s possible to wait a year or two; it isn’t possible to get most people to abstain for a decade or more.

–Lack of contraception, so that pregnancy is a likely outcome of non-abstinence. Contraception was illegal in some USA states as late as 1968.

–Abortion illegal and dangerous.

–Shame and denial if pregnancy results. Hurried marriage with an attempt to cover up the pregnancy, or giving birth in a home for unwed mothers and releasing the baby for adoption, were the options.

Abstinence is certainly unrealistic without honesty, discipline and ethical values.

I would not want to go back to the time when abstinence was enforced by shame, ignorance, and withholding of alternatives.

Expecting total abstinence is unrealistic. Faced with a biological drive to have sex and a conflicting cultural drive not to, there are always going to be teenagers on both sides of the fence. Abstinence should be taught as the ideal solution, but should they choose to have sex anyway, teens should be educated on what the risks are and how to mitigate them, not simply fig-leafing the issue and be done with it.

©Picture taken off Flickr.com. Originally Uploaded on August 12, 2007 by pootydog

If you were a man walking across the campus of Florida State University in 1978, an attractive young woman might have approached you and said these exact words: “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be attractive. Would you go to bed with me tonight?”

If you were that man, you probably would have thought that you had just gotten incredibly lucky. But not really. You were actually an unwitting subject in an experiment designed by the psychologist Russell Clark.

Clark had persuaded the students of his social psychology class to help him find out which gender, in a real-life situation, would be more receptive to a sexual offer from a stranger. The only way to find out, he figured, was to actually get out there and see what would happen. So young men and women from his class fanned out across campus and began propositioning strangers.

The results weren’t very surprising. Seventy-five percent of guys were happy to oblige an attractive female stranger (and those who said no typically offered an excuse such as, “I’m married”). But not a single woman accepted the identical offer of an attractive male. In fact, most of them demanded the guy leave her alone.

At first the psychological community dismissed Clark’s experiment as a trivial stunt, but gradually his experiment gained first acceptance, and then praise for how dramatically it revealed the differing sexual attitudes of men and women. Today it’s considered a classic. But why men and women display such different attitudes remains as hotly debated as ever.

Year upon year we strive towards so-called sexual equality. Can such an ideal equilibrium even exist?

Awareness Test-Amazing - Watch the top videos of the week here

A little awareness test up here, its pretty amazing what you miss when you aren’t looking out for it.

(This is reportedly based on an actual experiment conducted in the U.K.)

Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.

Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable. Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.

One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious.

But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder.

All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him.

This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he's not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he's attacking the new monkey.

One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.

And that is how most of corporate culture is established.

Picture taken off Flickr.com. Originally Uploaded on July 16, 2008, by law_keven

Read an article about what the way you sleep says about you as a person, and thought it might be fun to share, so here goes

Foetus

Those who curl up in the foetus position are described as tough on the outside but sensitive at heart. They may be shy when they first meet somebody, but soon relax. This is the most common sleeping position, adopted by 41% of the 1,000 people who took part in the survey. More than twice as many women as men tend to adopt this position.

Log

Lying on your side with both arms down by your side. These sleepers are easy going, social people who like being part of the in-crowd, and who are trusting of strangers. However, they may be gullible.

Yearner

People who sleep on their side with both arms out in front are said to have an open nature, but can be suspicious, cynical. They are slow to make up their minds, but once they have taken a decision, they are unlikely ever to change it.

Soldier

Lying on your back with both arms pinned to your sides. People who sleep in this position are generally quiet and reserved. They don't like a fuss, but set themselves and others high standards.

Freefall

Lying on your front with your hands around the pillow, and your head turned to one side. Often gregarious and brash people, but can be nervy and thin-skinned underneath, and don't like criticism, or extreme situations.

Starfish

Lying on your back with both arms up around the pillow. These sleepers make good friends because they are always ready to listen to others, and offer help when needed. They generally don't like to be the centre of attention.

The joke’s good.