The Facebook mistakes people make after a date

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February can make people excitable.


A new year is barely old. Hope springs eternal. And then there's Valentine's Day to add a little piquancy to their emotional state.


Sometimes, though, lovers suffer from a certain lack of self-control. This can manifest itself on society's everyday manifest: Facebook.


I was moved, therefore, that someone had taken the time to list the major faux pas that occur when social contact accelerates beyond decent norms.


I am lovingly grateful to Ranker, which has taken it upon itself to reduce the rancor that might be caused by Facebooked overenthusiasm -- the site has listed behavior to avoid.



Apparently the worst thing you can do after meeting someone in whose charm and personality you might be interested is to immediately send them a Facebook friend request.


This might seem obvious to some.


You don't necessarily have any idea what the other person might really think of you. You know, inside their heads.


And, as Ranker wisely offers: "Now you've just given yourself something else to obsess over: 'Why hasn't my friend request been accepted? Why is it taking so long? Did they even see it?!'


And from one small click, a whole new series of sessions with your shrink is created.


It seems, though, that the human imagination has found many more ways of ruining the course of true love on Facebook.


People apparently pore over their new date's Facebook page, seeking secrets to their true friends, thoughts, and, who knows, other objects of affection.


Some devolve into what seems utterly psychotic behavior, such as liking old photos of their new potential paramour. Who does that? Twisted humans, that's who.


But Facebook offers so many more opportunities for self-destruction.


There's revealing too much in your status update. Sample: "I just went on the best date ever with Marie Dupree and her sexy knees."



More Technically Incorrect



Some people, though, go even further and attempt to insert themselves into comments on their love-object's Facebook page, should they already be Facebook friends. Sample: "You look so WONDERFUL when you're saluting the sun, Shoshanna. Can't wait until we do some saluting together!!"


No, it doesn't end there.


The Facebook gauche end up stalking every second of their new friend's Timeline. ("She dated a clown in 2008? Why would she DO that?")


Worse, there are apparently instances of enthusiasts who get so carried away that they start friending the families of their new objects of affection. ("Hi, Mrs. Aziel, you don't know me, but your daughter and I...." Oh, you finish the sentence.)


Facebook offers so many avenues of potential despair that there is only one way that you can use it to avoid complication, pain, sorrow, heartbreak, sleepless nights, and that bottomless feeling of lost opportunity: Don't go anywhere near it.



Top 10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid After 1st Dates
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Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival

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Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."


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Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures Dozens

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A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway today sent chunks of debris flying into the stands, injuring more than 30 spectators, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.


At least 14 of the injured were transported to hospitals and more than a dozen others were treated at the speedway, Dayton president Joie Chitwood III. All the drivers involved in the crash have been treated and released, Chitwood said.


ESPN reported that one of the spectators taken to the hospital was on the way to surgery with head trauma.


The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.




The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."


PHOTOS: Crash at Daytona Sends Wreckage Into Stands


Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.


When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.


His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.


"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."


Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.


"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. "But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."


Repairs are under way on the fence where the crash happened and are expected to be completed before the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Chitwood said.


He told reporters NASCAR does not anticipate having to move any of their fans for the Daytona 500 and expects all seats will be filled.



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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

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SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.











A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).













But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.












The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.


















To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.












Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.












It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.












William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."












This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"




















































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Street theatre catches fancy of India's youth

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NEW DELHI: Theatre, which is a big part of Indian tradition, has evolved over the years.

An ancient form of theatre which was once practised to drive home political agendas is today being extensively used to create awareness of social issues in the country.

The growing prominence of street theatre has also caught the fancy of the young.

She moves about with her arms stretched, hair strewn and in ragged clothes.

Delivering her dialogue in a shrill tone, she trails around throwing questions at the surprised audience.

This is not a scene from a Bollywood movie but a snippet of a street play on the status of women in India.

With no stage, arch lights, make-up and minimum props, the medium of street theatre - also known as the people's theatre - has gained wide-spread acceptance and popularity in modern India.

As realistic as it gets, street theatre has become a popular medium to spread awareness about pressing social and political issues in the country.

Dramatist and film-maker, Siddhant Malhotra, said: "I think it is the best possible way to spread awareness, because there is a group of 100 people watching your play.

"You can interact with them, you can engage them right on and they will get your point. By performing a 30-minute play, if you're engaging 100 people at a time, you're changing 100 people at a time which even an advertisement cannot do."

As the name suggests, street plays can be performed anywhere on busy roads, market places or outside offices.

This enables it to reach out to the majority of people for whom theatre is not accessible, like in rural and backward areas.

The shows are not ticketed or pre-scheduled, as the main aim is not to make money but to reach out to as many people as possible.

Often packed with dramatic dialogues, catchy songs and hyperbole, street plays have a telling effect on the masses.

Young dramatists, who often use this medium to generate awareness, feel that a casual approach and lack of a formal atmosphere help them in connecting with the viewers.

Ayushi Kumar, a student and dramatist, said: "Street theatre is one of the art form where actually we are so close to the audiences that we are almost with them. So we can talk, we can connect and to bring that feeling in which they can reflect on themselves. I believe street is the strongest form of theatre for that."

Another student and dramatist, Shiva Sreenivasan, said: "You have a lot of fun when you watch it and when you are having fun you are also getting a message in your head. That is the most important thing. You're just not there and watching it like a niche audience that watches a street play. It's not like that.

"The thing is that we address proper moral issues for the society and for the people of the country. So, it is very easy for us to connect with them, explain our point and get our point through."

Street theatre practitioners hope that the tradition can help to bring about long-term change to Indian society, which despite its progress is reeling under the darkness of social evils like rape, dowry and child marriage.

- CNA/ir



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Crave Ep. 110: Prevent a hangover with the worlds first 'sober pill'?

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Prevent a hangover with the worlds first 'sober pill'? Ep 110



Subscribe to Crave:

iTunes (HD) | iTunes (SD) | iTunes (HQ)


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This week on Crave, William Shatner has some choice words for J.J. Abrams, and we toss one back in the greatest drinking game ever invented. Cheers! Plus, we dodge a bullet the size of a football field as an asteroid nearly collides with Earth. Phew.




Crave stories:


- Russian meteorite fragments pop up for sale online

- Amazon opens celebrity memorabilia store

- Nanotech 'sober pill' could one day de-drunk you

- This sheet turns your windows into mirrors

- Man to get first bionic hand that can 'feel'

- Sony PS4 event skewered in animated parody


- Crave giveaway! Kanex Sydnee four-port recharging station

Social networking:

- Stephen on Twitter

- Stephen on Google+


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Space Pictures This Week: Space Rose, Ghostly Horses

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ACLU: US Too Tough on Undocumented Immigrants

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The American Civil Liberties Union says United States border security treats people crossing the border illegally to look for work as criminals instead of as desperate people trying to feed their families.


Border security continues to be a central point of the ongoing immigration reform debate, with Republican saying they won't move forward without it and Democrats arguing the borders are already secure.


Now, a 2005 Bush policy known as Operation Streamline, currently in effect, is slowly making its way back into the conversation. Religious, civil rights and legal groups say the program should be reexamined for its civil and human rights impact before any more policies on border security are put into place


"Before we push for border security we need to evaluate existing measures," Joanne Lin, ACLU legislative counsel, told the media Thursday. "Does it make sense to use an expensive program to indiscriminately prosecute migrant workers, people trying to reunite with families and people fleeing violence."


However, Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, said calling the program a human rights issue is "not legitimate adjective to use."


"Two administrations' Justice Departments have done this for years now," Krikorian said. "I'm pretty confident when weighing the propriety of this kind of action, the consistent, years-long [involvement by] two separate Justice Departments, from two separate parties ... this is not a violation."




Operation Streamline, currently in place in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, is a partnership between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security that orders federal criminal charges brought against every person who illegally crosses the border.


Because of the volume of cases, judges often conduct hearings with as many as 80 people at a time, some sitting in the jury box to fit everyone in the room, all pleading guilty in a matter of hours.


"It seriously undermines the American values of due process," said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU-N.M. Regional Center for Border Rights. "There is no jury because they all plan to plead guilty. That's when you realize it's a rubber-stamp process, a true masquerade of justice. ... Do we really want a justice system that treats people not as individuals with families, jobs and dreams, but as just another unit in a legal assembly line?"


In 2010, in a report to the Human Rights Council, the Vatican came out against the policy, saying, "The Holy See noted that 'Operation Streamline' against irregular migrants should be suspended," until the U.S. finalizes rules on immigration policy.


"From our view, immigrants who cross the border looking for a job, looking for work or trying to reunite with their families are not criminals and they shouldn't be treated as criminals," said Kevin Appleby, director of the Office of Migration Policy and Public Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.


Proponents of the policy, like Krikorian, say criminal prosecution discourages folks from trying to illegally enter the United States.


"They should have started it [Operation Streamline] a long time before they did as it is an essential part of deterring illegal immigration," he said. "It really is a crime to sneak into the United States, and we almost never prosecuted illegal entry before Operation Streamline."






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Mood-sensing smartphone tells your shrink how you feel

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PEOPLE with anxiety, depression or stress are often asked to record their mood changes throughout the day, helping psychologists fine-tune their treatment. But they often forget, recording only sparse information at best. Now an emotion-sensing smartphone app that automatically generates someone's "mood diary" could give psychologists all the data they need.













It's the brainchild of Matt Dobson and Duncan Barclay, founders of speech recognition firm EI Technologies, based in Saffron Walden, UK. Instead of relying on people writing diaries, the app, called Xpression, listens for telltale changes in a person's voice that indicate whether they are in one of five emotional states: calm, happy, sad, angry or anxious/frightened. It then lists a person's moods against the times they change, and automatically emails the list to their psychologist at the end of the day.












To work, the app has to be always on, listening out for the user's voice once every second, whether they are talking to family, friends, colleagues or even pets. It also listens in on phone calls. If the user is silent, the app does nothing. Crucially for the users' privacy, it doesn't record their words, instead seeking out telltale acoustic features – like pitch – that are indicative of emotional state.











This kind of emotion recognition via voice pattern already works well and is a "hot area" of research, says Stephen Cox, head of the speech processing lab at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who is scientific adviser for the firm.













Initially, Xpression will send 200-millisecond-long acoustic snapshots to a remote server where a machine-learning system will work out a person's emotional state before sending it back to the app for storage. Factors like voice loudness, intensity, changes in pitch and speaking pace allow the system to accurately estimate somebody's emotional state. "We extract acoustic features and let the machine-learning system work it out," says Cox. This ability will be built into the app itself eventually, says Dobson.












There's a strong need for this kind of technology, says Adrian Skinner, a clinical psychologist with the UK's National Health Service in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. "With conditions like depression, people tend to stop doing things like filling in mood diaries. If this app gives us more complete diaries it could help us better find the day-to-day triggers that raise or lower a patient's mood," he says.


















The firm is a finalist in a UK government competition to identify the nation's top mobile tech company, to be judged on 26 February. An insurance company has already expressed an interest in using the app to ensure the workplace stress therapy it pays for is effective. Clinical trials are due to take place later this year.












This article appeared in print under the headline "We know how you really feel"




















































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Asian markets mixed, yen claws back some losses

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HONG KONG: Asian markets were mixed on Friday, with Tokyo dragged by a further strengthening in the yen, while the euro faced selling pressure following weak eurozone data.

Losses on Wall Street added to the gloom after disappointing US economic figures, while traders were casting an eye to a general election in Italy at the weekend.

Tokyo fell 0.50 per cent by the break, Hong Kong lost 0.85 per cent and Shanghai was off 0.16 per cent, but Sydney jumped 1.26 per cent and Seoul added 0.23 per cent.

While some markets were lifted by bargain hunting, sentiment was still weak after minutes from the US Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting that stoked fears it could end its huge monetary easing sooner than expected.

Japan's Nikkei was weighed as the yen rose against the dollar and euro, clawing back some of the massive losses it has seen in recent months.

In early Tokyo trade the dollar sat at 93.04 yen, compared with 93.11 yen in New York Thursday. However, the Japanese unit -- which has lost about 17 per cent against the greenback since November -- is much stronger than the 94.00 yen seen at the start of the month.

And the euro fetched 122.78 yen, against 122.81 yen, and well off the 125.50 yen earlier in the week.

The euro bought $1.3189, against $1.3188 in New York Thursday and well short of the $1.3350 on Monday.

The euro came under increased pressure after a leading eurozone growth indicator showed private business activity hit a two-month low in February.

The Purchasing Managers' Index published by London-based Markit fell to 47.3 in February from 48.6 the previous month.

The February figures contrasted sharply with an improvement in the previous three months, which saw it hit a 10-month high in January.

There is nervousness about Sunday's Italian election, which is too close to call and which markets have warned could send the economy back into crisis if there is no clear winner.

Some fear a return of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, which could lead to the dismantling of recent economic reforms that have helped draw the country back from economic crisis.

On Wall Street the Dow was down 0.34 per cent, the S&P 500 eased 0.63 per cent and the Nasdaq dropped 1.04 per cent after worse-than-expected US business activity data, while new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week.

Consumer prices also came in flat for a second month in a row in January, underscoring weak inflationary pressures in the world's number one economy.

Meanwhile, traders are becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of progress in Washington on a deal to avert the sequester, deep government spending cuts economists say will slow US growth.

Oil prices rose, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April gaining 17 cents to $93.01 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April adding 17 cents to $113.70.

Gold was at $1,581.30 at 0247 GMT, compared with $1,568.41 late Thursday.

- AFP/ck



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