Things that matter

The creator of the hugely popular YouTube video “Free Hugs,” Juan Mann, got screwed over by the guy who made his video. Business Insider reports that Mann hasn’t seen a single dollar from merchandise sales or advertisements placed against the material.

I guess that’s what happens when your mission is to give free hugs to people. Some start thinking you also have free money to give.

And just to make sure everyone knows this, YouTube videos can earn a lot of money. So he didn’t lose just a few hundred bucks.

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that 19.5% of US teens 12-19 have some hearing loss, while 5.3% have noticeable loss.

The researchers analyzed data on 12- to 19-year-olds from a nationwide health survey. They compared hearing loss in nearly 3,000 kids tested from 1988-94 to nearly 1,800 kids tested over 2005-06. The prevalence of hearing loss increased from about 15 percent to 19.5 percent.

That has to be the reason why Ke$ha and Bieber are so popular.

via AP

There’s this silly oversensitive U.S. woman who lost her son in the Afghan war and who is now angry at Electronic Arts for letting players play the Taliban (vs U.S. Army Rangers) in the Medal of Honor video game. She believes that a game modeled after the war her son just died in is “disrespectful,” because “war is not a game, period.”

“My son didn’t get to start over when he was killed. His life is over, and I have to deal with this every day…it’s just not a game.”

Well, duh!

Read the rest of this post »

Another study saying that dark chocolate lowers risk of hearth failure has been published.

Yawn.

I’ve seen so many studies saying the same thing in the past few years that it has become quite annoying to keep seeing the topic receive attention. Maybe researchers should talk to one another more often so that they could do more varied research. I’m just saying. Read the rest of this post »

At least one government technician strongly agreed with the test.

British Columbia used to employ this government backed test where boys as young as 13 were made to look at pictures of nude and semi-clad children and listen to audio descriptions of rape, while their arousal levels were measured with a sensor strapped to their penises. The method was used as a means of interrogating child sex offenders.

Sounds perverse? It sure is. But you know what’s even more perverse? One of the program’s government technicians was recently discovered to be a sex offender himself.

Thankfully, after making that discovery they decided to permanently end the test. It was fucked up on so many levels it’s hard to believe they had it in the first place. I mean seriously, you have adult sex offenders and you’re testing children, with THAT method?

I wonder what they used for girls…

PS: Is this why Bieber is so fucked up?

via ctvbc