Los Angeles city officials last week spotlighted a surprising revelation involving red-light camera tickets: Authorities cannot force violators who simply don’t respond to pay them. For a variety of reasons, including the way the law was written, Los Angeles officials say the fines for ticketed motorists are essentially “voluntary” and there are virtually no tangible consequences for those who refuse to pay.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0727-red-light-cameras-20110727,0,496609.story
Dutch psychologist Aldert Vrij believes that he has identified the precise ingredients of “good liars”: manipulativeness, acting, expressiveness, physical attractiveness, natural ability to perform, experience with lying, confidence, emotional camouflage, eloquence, well-preparedness, unverifiable responding, information frugality, original thinking, rapid thinking, intelligence, good memory, truth adherence / bending the truth, and decoding suspicion in the listener.
Read about it here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=18-attributes-of-highly-effective-l-2011-07-07&WT.mc_id=SA_20110721
It’s a few years old, but worth seeing.
Thanks to Kedmobee.
ADAMS — Residents of Watertown and the southern part of Jefferson County may see a man and his mannequin traveling along Route 11 and in the city.
A man who goes by the name of Ned Nefer, 38, is traveling from Syracuse to Watertown by foot. He is pushing Teagan, a 6-foot mannequin that Mr. Nefer claims is his wife.
Mr. Nefer said he was born in Syracuse and in the 1980s spent some time at the Children’s Home of Jefferson County in Watertown, where he said he met Teagan when she was just a head. He said he built a body for the mannequin and the two were “married” Oct. 31, 1986, in California.
They are traveling to the former Children’s Home on State Street, where the two met, he said. Mr. Nefer said he has not been back to Watertown since 1988.
http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20110609/NEWS03/306099966
“He’s encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks,” the caller phoned to tell this reporter.
“Why didn’t your friend call the police?”
“He was trespassing and didn’t want to get in trouble,” the caller replied. As it happens, the caller’s friend is an urban explorer who gets thrills rummaging through and photographing the ruins of Detroit. It turns out that this explorer last week was playing hockey with a group of other explorers on the frozen waters that had collected in the basement of the building. None of the men called the police, the explorer said. They, in fact, continued their hockey game.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20090128/metro08/901280491/Frozen-in-indifference–Life-goes-on-around-body-found-in-vacant-warehouse#ixzz1R5Z1kmW4
Thanks to P.C. for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
150 miles away from Rio de janeiro, near the traditional Brazilian colonial town of Paratay, a bizarre Carnival craze erupts each year – a parade in which the only costume required is layers of thick, dark, sticky mud.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/down-and-dirty-at-brazil-mud-party/story-e6frfq80-1225831195387
The bidding for the annual power lunch with Warren Buffet ended with a new record in New York with a final bid of $2,626,411 – just $100 higher from the previous year.
The Journal of Applied Psychology found that women who are 25 lbs. below average weight take home an additional $15,572 each year.
On the other hand, men who are 25 lbs. below average weight take home $8,437 less each year.
“Perhaps the most startling finding of this investigation is that men and women experience opposite incentives regarding weight in the very thin to average weight range. Whereas women are punished for any weight gain, very thin women receive the most severe punishment for their first few pounds of weight gain. This finding is consistent with research showing that the media’s consistent depiction of an unrealistically thin female ideal leads people to see this ideal as normative, expected, and central to female attractiveness.“
“Studies have demonstrated that people assign positive personality traits to drawings or photographs of mesomorphic (muscular) men and mostly negative traits to nonmesomorphic men. For example traits ascribed to mesomorphic men were very positive (i.e., best friend, has lots of friends, polite, happy, helps others, brave, healthy, smart, and neat). By contrast … ectomorphic (slender) men were described with a different set of negative traits (i.e., nervous, sneaky, afraid, sad, weak, and sick).”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/skinny-women-make-more-money-2011-6#ixzz1PGurvRmL
It's Interesting 