Adult entertainment | Lapping it up | Economist.com (subscription required):

Whilst the tabloids have revelled in the woes of the ?Lap Dunce?, the New York Times has groped for higher ground, running an op-ed, which argued that in strip clubs, ?paying the price is part of the experience…A reasonably priced lap dance is not a right.?

The Federal Reserve | Big Ben strikes gold | Economist.com (subscription required)

Unlike some critics, we are worried not that he will go soft on inflation, but about other elements of ?Bernankenomics?. In 1999 Mr Bernanke co-authored one of the first academic papers arguing that central banks should not worry about rising asset prices unless they affect inflation. He thus provided intellectual ammunition for the Fed’s inaction during the late 1990s stockmarket bubble and the current housing bubble. But we, along with officials at the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Reserve Bank of Australia, reckon that he is wrong. Central banks should sometimes raise interest rates to curb asset-price booms.

And they were right… I’m in one of the most overpriced areas in the country, it’s great for renters… That Porsche TT or GT2 with amazing residual value is looking better and better (I like the GT3 the most, but the 997 GT3 will have an engine that exhibits the RMS problem, and its residual value sucks)… We only live once… LOL…

LOL, I live in the “richest city in the U.S.”… Now, how a household with median income of $71k can afford an average home at $600k is beyond me… Bubble bubble… 🙂

The ten richest cities in the U.S. – Luxist – www.luxist.com:

The prize for the richest city goes to San Jose, CA, with a median household income of $71,765 and an average
home price of $625,000.

Mice sing for sex:
David Pescovitz:
Washington University researchers have discovered that male mice serenade females in ultrasonic songs. When lowered in frequency so humans can hear them, the vocalizations sound like birds whistling. The mice were spurred to sing with the scent of female urine. From Scientific American, where you can also hear a recording of a mouse song:

Although humans have long been listening to the serenades of birds and whales, among other animals, mouse songs have fallen on deaf ears for the past several decades, because they are out of the range of human hearing. When (scientist Timothy E.) Holy and co-author Zhongsheng Guo started taping the ultrasonic utterances of 45 male mice, they quickly found that the high-pitched sounds exhibited repetitive phrases, or motifs, that varied over time but that were repeated with some regularity. In short, they qualified as songs…

Although the lovestruck mouse’s repertoire cannot compete with that of an adult canary, the singing of mice does offer an opportunity to potentially study the genetics of song learning, especially if mice learn from a “tutor” as many birds do. And the wild cousin of the lab mouse just may possess an even wider range. “Domestication has changed many aspects of mouse behavior,” Holy remarks. “It would be intriguing to find out if [wild mouse] songs are more or less birdlike than the lab mouse songs.”

Link

UPDATE: BB reader Radagast says, “The original journal article was published in PLOS Biology, a creative-commons licensed journal. Along with the full text of the article, the website also has a number of (also creative-commons licensed) audio files featuring the singing mice.” Link

Sherry recommended a film called Battle Royale to me at NetFlix, just watched it tonight. It was AWESOME! Now I have to buy the sequel from YesAsia as Netflix doesn’t have it yet. I love how they display a score card when somebody died, very cool! Not sure why they didn’t officially release this film in the States, its treatment of fascism is similar to Fight Club, another one of my favorite movies.