Presenting the latest in Japanese technology. If you thought that Candy Girls were realistic then you are in for a big surprise.

Cutie Doll is a brand of companion dolls with a difference. While Candy Girls cost about 600,000 yen (5,641 USD), Cutie Dolls cost only 50,000 yen (470 USD) - not bad for an incredibly realistic companion loaded with the latest technology from the land of the rising sun.

Below: Cutie Doll is designed with the fickle master in mind - if you get bored of her face, you can just rip it off and wrap another one over her head.

Cutie Doll

Woah

YouTube - Dolphin play bubble rings

The LAPD bought four of the $2,500 devices, which at first glance look like Palm Pilots on steroids, and stored 35 crowd control and other commands: "You must immediately leave the area," "Get down from the pole" and "This area has been declared an unlawful assembly..."

Why doesn't it surprise my that translation tech like this will first be used to boss people around.

Translation Gizmos for L.A. Cops | Danger Room from Wired.com

Nice, nasty, charming, chatty, vulpine, vulgar...when we get down to it, just how many personality traits are there? It's a question psychologists and philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries.

In recent years, researchers have tended to agree that personality is pretty much summed up by the Big Five factors of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness. Now Janek Musek at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia has waded into the debate with the suggestion that there exists an overriding personality characteristic - he calls it the 'Big One' - with which all other personality traits are correlated.

Musek tested hundreds of participants using numerous personality measures, including the Big Five Inventory, the Big Five Observer and the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).

Using a statistical technique called factor analysis, Musek found that a single factor explained much of the variance in people's scores on the Big Five Dimensions of personality. This means that someone who scores highly on one of the five factors (in the case of neuroticism, scores are reversed so that a 'high score' reflects emotional stability) is also more likely to score high on the others. In other words, there seems to be some key trait that captures the essence of all these dimensions.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: In search of the Big One

ATLANTA (AP) -- It sounds like a freakish ailment from a horror movie: Sores erupt on your skin, mysterious threads pop out of them, and you feel like tiny bugs are crawling all over you. Some experts believe it's a psychiatric phenomenon, yet hundreds of people say it's a true physical condition. It's called Morgellons, and now the government is about to begin its first medical study of it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying California-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente $338,000 to test and interview patients suffering from Morgellons' bizarre symptoms. The one-year effort will attempt to define the condition and better determine how common it is.

Apparently not as much horseshit as i originally thought.

News from The Associated Press

Sweden, considered a world leader in gender equality, should ban all advertising that could be considered sexist, according to a government-commissioned report published on Tuesday.

* Swedish advertisers drawn online (20 Jan 08)
* Internet wins advertising battle (28 Nov 07)
* Internet advertising now bigger than TV (7 Nov 07)

In the report, special government rapporteur Eva-Maria Svensson suggested the creation of a law "banning advertising containing sexist content."

Right, because everybody knows repression=equality. If you can't create a world that doesnt think about sex, you can hide it with censorship.

The Local - Sweden mulls ban on sexist ads

Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
Skip to next paragraph
Jamie Rector for The New York Times

Lynne Matallana, who says she has fibromyalgia, said the drugs would aid acceptance.
Related
Times Health Guide: Fibromyalgia

For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.

But other doctors — including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind — say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.

Well, the drug is a painkiller, there's lots of things that can be used for. It doesn't matter whether or not theres a specific condition called fibromyalgia, the market exists and all the people have pain symptoms.

Drug Approved. Is Disease Real? - New York Times

British Chess Magazine
January 18, 2008

We have just heard from the press room in Wijk aan Zee that former world champion Bobby Fischer has died, aged 64. There is a news report (in Icelandic) at www.mbl.is. He died of kidney failure, having been hospitalised with this condition for quite some time. More news when we have it.

More at Fox News and CNN.

Bobby Fischer Has Died At Age 64

Bring bad design to justice.

Design Police

* Bonus: 2 Eraser Refills/Refill Cartridge.
* No. 2 lead equivalent.
* No lead to break!
* Refillable.
* Conforms to ASTM D-4236.
* Made in China.

Really great pencils.

Liquaphite Liquid Graphite Mechanical Pencils | Pentech | Walgreens