92% of Top Ten Billboard Songs Are About Sex

Get your heads out of the gutters, America's musicians. We always knew that with all your nipple-showing and lesbian-kissing and crotch-grabbing that you're obsessed with sex, and today we have the science to back it up: "Approximately 92% of the 174 songs that made it into the [Billboard] Top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages," says SUNY Albany psychology professor Dawn R. Hobbs in Evolutionary Psychology. That's right--"reproductive messages," our newest favorite euphemism.

Those 174 top-selling songs were analyzed in order to determine how many sexy messages they contained in any of 18 sexy categories, including "arousal," "sexual prowess," and "genitalia." There was an average of 10.49 sex-related phrases per song, with R&B being head-and-shoulders(-and-maybe-some-other-body-parts) above the two other musical genres analyzed, country and pop. "Sexual appeal" was the most popular theme among both R&B and pop songs, while "commitment" (yawn) was most prevalent in country music.

He also discovered that sex sells: "further analyses showed that the bestselling songs in all three charts featured significantly more reproductive messages than those that failed to make it into the Top Ten," the report says. That's the trend that not only dated back to 1959 in American music, the study found, but one that goes all the way back to the classy days of opera: "While the frequency of some of the themes differ, these findings clearly show that the same reproductive categories derived from the content analysis of our initial sample of 2009 contemporary songs map surprisingly well onto the lyrics from opera and arts songs dating back hundreds of years."

Five Alternative Career Choices that May have made Mario’s Life Easier

Image Nation: 50 Nifty Forced Perspective Photographs

Forced perspective photography is a simple and effective way to mess with viewers’ eyes and brains by playing on perceived visual perception. Following up on last year’s awesome assemblage of 15 Phenomenal Forced-Perspective Photos, this new group of forced perspective images explores the many ways creative cameramen (and camera-women) add a little “faux” to their photography.

The Sun is There!

Is there anything more symbolic of life, warmth and permanence then the Sun? Of course not, our friendly neighborhood star, burning brightly for billions of years, is huge enough to swallow our humble Earth and everything on it with nary a burp to show for it.
(images via: Mitra Mirshahidi, Piccsy and Maybemaq)
Maybe that’s why the Sun figures so prominently in so many forced perspective photos. Big, powerful stuff scares us, and we have an innate need to cut such potentially threatening, uncontrollable entities down to size… like, umm, soccer ball size.

Cloud Computing

(images via: Delacorr, Vishalgadkari’s Posterous, Leptossomico, and The Chobble)
Ever gazed deep into a typical “Simpsons Sky” filled with fluffy white clouds and noticed some clouds that look like, well, anything BUT clouds? Forced perspective photographers take pareidolia, as it’s technically termed, and run with it.
(images via: Examples Of, Stuandgravy and Design Tutorials 4U)
The fact that clouds themselves can look like smoke, shaving cream, a bank of shimmering snow and much more helps our intrepid photogs create some amazing & amusing image compositions. I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, and still somehow, it’s clouds illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.

Spray You, Spray Me

(images via: Just Stuff I Found, Stuant63 and 2Experts)
Spraying water? Wet just a second while I get my camera. From foaming fountains to wispy waterfalls, flowing water in all its forms is often a large-scale phenomenon providing copious opportunities for forced perspective photography.
(images via: WebResauce and ATBaker)
Flowing water from almost any source typically has a counterpart in miniature: spurting founts and spitting louts, tumbling tributaries and trickling refreshment poured into one’s cup – or more directly. It’s all wet, all right, and all good.

Un-Boliviable!

(images via: Rovemag)
Bolivia’s otherworldly Salar de Uyuni salt flats make an ideal backdrop for forced perspective photography. The high-altitude location’s distinctive lighting, soft colors and far horizons lend themselves to forced perspective photography’s strange content, almost making the subjects of the photos seem quite natural… you might say, unforced. The images above were composed and captured by Kevin Landry, OllieTheBastard, Funkz and Where There Be Dragons.
(images via: Design Tutorials 4U, Lynnith and Denzomag)
It’s likely that these odd images have inspired more than a few budding photographers to try their hand at forced perspective photography, in the process enriching and enlivening the field.

Hand of the Giants

(images via: Chaval Brasil, 11Even and Wiganer.net)
One compositional theme common to many forced perspective photographs is The Giant Hand – actually a normal-sized hand and arm in the near field overlapping some distant object. In real life, our depth perception and stereoscopic vision cue our brains to discern the true positions and distances of objects in the field of vision. Photographers with a careful grasp on differential focus and precise object placement can trick the brain, at least initially.
(image via: Valdenstein)
The triptych above illustrates one of the most difficult types of forced perspective photos, in which the main near and far elements must retain their faux-interactive alignment over a short period of time. We’ll never know how many times the swimmer performed his back dive until the photographer could nail three consecutive shots.

Taste The Rainbow

(images via: ClickClickClickClick and Porcelain Poetry)
Get this guy some Skittles, stat! Rainbows rank among nature’s most beautiful phenomena and pose a unique challenge for photographers looking for an unusual forced perspective shot… just how far away is a rainbow, anyway? AS far as the old Irish legend of there being a pot at the end of every rainbow, well, those cursed leprechauns never did say what KIND of a pot it was, now did they?
(images via: KPStahmer, Kotlus and JPG Mag)
Since you never can get enough “rainbow over the outhouse” photos, here are a few more. The sacred and the profane, together once again!

Hat Trick

(images via: Jason W and Zphaze)
Grasping the Eiffel Tower between your fingertips? Ho hum. Wearing the big hat outside Angel Stadium in Anaheim? Home run! Of course, the grinning fan above isn’t really wearing that giant hat… the Giants play at AT&T Stadium anyway.

“I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing”

(images via: Telovation, Jasoneppink and Snapshots From My Mind)
Hungry for more forced perspective photos? Well step right up, sit right down, and open wide. Photographers seem to take unusual pleasure in producing images of us eating really, really big things.

(image via: Natural Artificial and Rianpie)
You can keep your Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, we’ve got us a Gargantuan Pumpkin! Once hollowed out (and how long would THAT take?), you can build a bonfire inside for Halloween and bake pumpkin pies for a small city. As for the Corncob Water Tower in Rochester, MN, you just knew a photo like the one above was going to be taken sooner or later.

Behind the 8-Ball

(images via: Lokesh Kumar, Ken B Miller and Aksfa.net)
AC/DC might have big balls but with just a little forced perspective photographic wizardry you can too! Then again, you could always be Bigfoot instead.

The Glitterati

(images via: Gencept, Buzzfeed and Impactlab)
As mentioned, it can be difficult to maintain a sense of consistent focus when composing a forced perspective photograph. Sometimes it doesn’t matter; in fact it’s desirable. The small selection of “sparkly” shots above shows what can happen when distorted, out-of-focus light adds a little extra unexpected content to a photographic composition.


Forced perspective as a first choice? Why not… photography is great for capturing reality but the medium has so much more to offer when the subject is artistic expression. Go ahead, give it a “shot” sometime!

When They Got Back from the Moon, Apollo 11 Astronauts Went through Customs

NASA has confirmed that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins went through customs upon their return to Earth and the United States. They filled out the above form, declaring their travel itinerary and that they had brought back moon rocks, dust, and samples through the US border. They did not mention the whiskey smuggled inside Aldrin’s suitcase.

The Occupy Wall Street movement spreads

What started in NewYork City in mid September, a call to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street," has continued to feed similar groups around the United States taking up the name and cause. Groups have gathered to bring attention to many issues, with a central focus on the economic hardships and inequality they say many Americans face. -- Lloyd Young (35 photos total)

 A protester affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protests stands with a U.S. dollar bill taped over his mouth in Zuccotti Park, New York Oct. 10. (Andrew Burton/Associated Press) #

Of snakes and Fears...

     Last couple of days have seen a new kind of fear and prudence by my wing mates. The discovery of a three and a half feet long snake at the end of the corridor has made every one to feel its presence wherever they can imagine. It has been reportedly seen over different periods of time and at different places.

    Finding a snake in the bathroom can seriously dampen the willingness (pun intended) of the wing dwellers to use it unless it is the most unbearable call of nature. But still there are many who continue to use the same place to complete their usual daily chores. Ever since I saw the uninvited guest of our bathroom, who seems to be liking the place,I have shifted to the facilities of the first floor. Not that they are less susceptible to such visits by our crawling creatures, but after spotting it you keep expecting it their everytime you go. And there have been instances where it has been spotted at unexpected and weird places (under the urinal, inside the pot yuck!!). Today was the culmination of the series of events where the cleaner spotted the snake in one of the bathrooms adjacent to the one where one of my friends was having a bath. The person had to run with soap and lather all over his body through the corridor to the floor abov. Every time I visit the abode of our new creepy companion, I look out for it before I can sneek in and take a leak. The funny thing about all this is that the same snake has been spotted in different wings of the hostel and everybody acknowledges its presence. But barely has anyone got the courage to do something about it. May be everybody knows that it is better to let the new guest settle in and enjoying the company of its human dwellers.
    After all guests are guests and won't be there forever to rest.

Global protests

There are many forms of protest, many ways to express an objection to particular events, situations, policies, and even people. Protests can also take many forms - from individual statements to mass demonstrations - both peaceful and violent. In the last 30 days, there have been numerous protests across the globe in many countries. The following post is a collection of only some of those protests, but the images convey a gamut of emotions as citizens stand up for their political, economic, religious and lifestyle rights. -- Paula Nelson (51 photos total)

As protesters sleep in Zuccotti Park, N.Y. police officers receive instructions. A group of activists calling themselves Occupy Wall Street targeted the Financial District for more than a week of demonstrations in late September. The group said they sought to bring attention to corporate malfeasance, social inequality, and the yawning gap in income between America's rich and poor. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)