wug7a bookofodds.com/ Four-legged friends have long provided their own furry brand of affection—but pets can facilitate relationships of the human variety, too. Dogs in particular, with their long-held reputation as man’s best friend (and probably woman’s, too), have lately acquired a new role: wingman. Pongo, the canine protagonist of Disney’s 1961 animated classic, 101 Dalmatians, might have … Read more
You like her. She likes you. You’ve gone on a few dates, felt that fluttering excitement and ineffable chemistry, and now it’s time to take the next step. You want to have sex. Lord knows there are plenty of rough spots when you get to know someone intimately. But before you even slip between the … Read more
Loud sex is now as good as a warrant. Believe it or not, the Superior Court of New Jersey recently ruled that high-volume sex is cause enough for police to search a home. It is just the latest move in the battle over privacy in the US. The walls of solitude just got a little thinner, especially for … Read more
People are liars—lying liars, as Al Franken might say. From white lies to whoppers, people lie and mislead and obfuscate about everything: sex and relationships, work and money, feelings, opinions, intentions. The odds a person will tell a lie in a day are 1 in 2.49. Apparently, we evolved to lie: deception appears to have emerged … Read more
From satellite parts to hail, the skies teem with hard objects, and every now and then those objects fall to Earth. Then again, the sky is a big place, as is the surface of the earth, and a human being is relatively tiny. So just how likely is it to be hurt by something from … Read more
“I think I am becoming uncommonly tolerant of substandard coffee.” My Platoon Sergeant is sitting at the wooden picnic table across from me sipping from a Styrofoam cup. He fixes me with a dull gaze and puts his cup down and chuckles. “Sir, why you gotta use all them big words? Nobody here is impressed. … Read more
When a 21-year-old Yale student jumped to his death from the Empire State Building on March 30, 2010, he joined a rather small, sad club: the iconic skyscraper has seen only about 30 such suicides since it went up in 1931. About 3.5 million people visit the Empire State Building’s observation deck each year, which means the … Read more
Of all the travelers’ tales, stories about being sick can be the most frightening. From stomach ailments like Delhi Belly, to burrowing Brazilian worms, to respiratory illnesses like SARS, no experience of being sick abroad is ever pleasant. To make matters more complicated, even simple ailments can be more difficult to handle in countries where sanitation … Read more
Just how dangerous is texting while driving? It’s 23 times as dangerous as driving without doing it. Text messaging behind the wheel increases the risk of a car accident 23 times, according to a recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. By comparison, a driver blood-alcohol level (BAC) between 0.05 and 0.09 only increases the risk … Read more
What’s New Year’s Eve without a glass of bubbly? This is the season to celebrate, but the holidays mean more than an upswing in good cheer and liquor sales—they also herald an annual epidemic of drunk driving. According to a report released in 2007 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), drunk-driving related fatal crashes rise … Read more