On The Moth storytelling podcast, the great Lewis Lapham reminisces about his first job, covering Oakland City Hall for the San Francisco Examiner in an era when reporters wore hats. Featuring The Horny Photographer, The One-Legged Woman, and The Unencumbered Widow. Hat tip: Silas....

On World AIDS Day last week, UNAIDS published new estimates of the number of people living with AIDS around the world, and Xaquin G.V. turned the data into a cartogram, or a value-aread map: Click image for larger view. Hat tip: Flowingdata.com....

The UK Telegraph has a witty tee-up for the Copenhagen conference, where celebrity travel and other extravagances will produce the equivalent of 41,000 tonnes of CO2, an amount equal to that produced by a small British city over the same period. Among the nuggets: [T]his being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term...

"Up to two times more than a manual brush." Sex sells, the saying goes, but this ad appears to rest upon a sublter formula: Selling sex sells. Does Oral B really hope to sell a lot of disguised masturbatory aids, or is it hoping to build customer loyalty by presenting itself as sex-positive?...

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After one too many disappointments, Biblically named British writer Hephzibah Anderson swore off boinking for a year, then wrote an intriguing article about the experience. Moneyquote:
"Beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes," Thoreau cautioned, but today I am shopping for a chaste wardrobe. The clothes I pick out are generous and tough, nothing flimsy or flyaway. In my newly chaste state, my instinct is to wrap up and hide away.