The 10 craziest items you can't sell on eBay - Yahoo! News

The 10 craziest items you can't sell on eBay - Yahoo! News ;..  Magic potionsSelling things on eBay that aren't actually real is an interesting phenomenon that may be more common than you think. So common, in fact, that as of August 30, eBay is taking action to ban services that may not even be real. One casualty of this new rule is the selling of magic potions — which currently have a rather large presence on the site. Small vials of liquid being sold for the purposes of defeating "demons" or improving your luck are abundant, but not for long.

6. Prayers
Regardless of what religion — or non-religion — you favor, you've probably never considered the act of praying as something you could actually sell. Well, apparently some intrepid eBayers have monetized the act of speaking to a deity, and ask for real, actual money in order to pray for you or someone you care about. As of August 30, that will no longer be allowed. Thank God.

Netvibes – Social Media Monitoring, Analytics and Alerts Dashboard

Netvibes – Social Media Monitoring, Analytics and Alerts Dashboard: Netvibes is the all-in-one dashboard intelligence platform for real-time social media monitoring, social analytics, brand sentiment, reputation management, team management, company intranets and community portals. The #1 dashboard solution for Fortune 500 brands, agencies and enterprises."

RELOADED as in...

RELOADED as in...

What we think about the 50 states — in 1 map

What we think about the 50 states — in 1 map ;.. In politics, perception often trumps reality.  Put another way: What people think they know about a politician, an issue or anything else goes a long way to determining how they feel about it — whether or not their initial perception is based in reality or not.

That perception obsession has lead us to seek out any and every tool that helps us get at how people think about their politics — and each other.

Inferring Default Probabilities from Credit Spreads: The Journal of Fixed Income

Inferring Default Probabilities from Credit Spreads: The Journal of Fixed Income ;... PROBABILITIES on DERIVATIVES, ... That an implied volatility can be extracted from the market price for an option is well known. Less familiar is the fact that with a set of options with the same maturity and a range of strike prices, an estimate of the entire risk-neutral probability density (RND) can be extracted without the need to specify the market’s option pricing model. There are several alternative ways to do this in the literature, and the authors examine two of them. The behavior of the RND provides a detailed look at how the market’s (risk-neutral) expectations respond to important information events, such as a change in the interest rate target followed by the central bank. In this article, the authors look at how these monetary policy decisions by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Banco de México are reflected in the market for FX options on the peso/U.S. dollar exchange rate. The results show that the exchange rate RNDs do respond significantly to interest rate surprises, and the extraction procedure that completes the RND by adding tails from a generalized extreme value distribution appears to have more success in capturing extreme values than does the alternative procedure that imposes a tail shape.

Preseason Ranks: Top 200 - Yahoo! Sports

Preseason Ranks: Top 200 - Yahoo! Sports ;..  FANTASY REALMS... ;... Scoring system: Pass TD = 4; 25 Pass Yards = 1; Rush/Receive TD = 6; 10 Rush/Receive Yards = 1

FantasyPros is the leading aggregator and analyzer of fantasy football rankings. They provide free consensus rankings, accuracy ratings, and innovative decision-making tools.

‘Jim Henson’s Fantastic World’ at Museum of the Moving Image - NYTimes.com

‘Jim Henson’s Fantastic World’ at Museum of the Moving Image - NYTimes.com

Daily Shot: Bad Parenting Moment, Blurry Specs for Orthodox Jews, NFL Head-Butter | Daily Shot - Yahoo! Shine

Daily Shot: Bad Parenting Moment, Blurry Specs for Orthodox Jews, NFL Head-Butter | Daily Shot - Yahoo! Shine

25 Things Women Will Never Understand About Men | Strollerderby

25 Things Women Will Never Understand About Men | Strollerderby ;.. MSN Living recently published 50 Things That Still Perplex Men About Women and I literally LOL’d. From the “insta-cry” to the group bathroom visits, women reign supreme as the more complicated species.
While it may seem just about every man problem can be solved by the trifecta of sports, sex, and food, this truth does little to explain these top 25 man habits.
Men, we’re begging. Please help us understand.

25 Things Women Will Never Understand About Men | Strollerderby

25 Things Women Will Never Understand About Men | Strollerderby

Top Chinese politicians accused of taking part in an orgy after 100 naked photos go viral on micro-blogging site | Mail Online

Top Chinese politicians accused of taking part in an orgy after 100 naked photos go viral on micro-blogging site | Mail Online ;.. 
The Global Times, which is affiliated with the Communist Party, cited a police officer with the Lujiang county public security bureau as confirming the case was under investigation, but did not confirm if a suspect had been arrested, according to The Huffington Post.
The images, which went viral on Weibo last week, have sparked so much attention on the micro-blogging site that the State Council Information Office, China's top web censor, has stepped in.
It has issued an official directive stating that 'all websites must stop following and hyping the so-called "Lujiang Indecent Photos Incident."'

Internet Evolution - Todd Watson - The New Statistics

Internet Evolution - Todd Watson - The New Statistics ;..  Do you want to become a statistics geek?

I'm generally a words guy myself, but numbers have their place.

And increasingly, what we as mere mortals can do with those numbers using increasingly friendly, utilitarian software is making it easier than ever to manipulate numbers.

UN panel concludes war crimes perpetrated in Syria - www's column on Newsvine

UN panel concludes war crimes perpetrated in Syria - www's column on Newsvine ;.. PERPETRATED, ...a U.N. expert panel concluded Wednesday, in a report that provides in chilling detail further evidence of a conflict spiraling out of control.
The panel appointed by the U.N.'s 47-nation Human Rights Council blamed the government and allied militia for the killing of more than 100 civilians in the village of Houla in May, nearly half of them children, and said the murders, unlawful killing, torture, sexual violence and indiscriminate attacks "indicate the involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the government."
The panel also concluded in its final report Wednesday to the Geneva-based council that anti-government armed groups committed war crimes, including murder, extrajudicial killings and torture, but at a lesser frequency and scale.
It is the first time the panel has used the term "war crimes" to describe its findings. That is because the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversees the Geneva Conventions known as the rules of war, only said in mid-July that it now considers the conflict in Syria to be a full-blown civil war, meaning international humanitarian law applies throughout the country.

US-China Trade and the WTO: Unrealistic Expectations | China Hearsay

US-China Trade and the WTO: Unrealistic Expectations | China Hearsay

Prominent China Blogger Demands Public Apology | China Hearsay

Prominent China Blogger Demands Public Apology | China Hearsay

RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

RELIGION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ITS EVOLUTION - Dr. Riccardo Privitera's column on Newsvine

FISHES SWIMMING

FISHES SWIMMING

Summer in a Land of Contradiction - NYTimes.com

Summer in a Land of Contradiction - NYTimes.com ;..  There is nothing uniquely Russian, really, about all this. Across America and Europe, tens of millions of harried urbanites take off each summer for the simple attractions of a wilder world beyond their confectioned city enclaves.

And yet.

Only in this eclectic, elusive, eternal country does everything feel unchanging yet uncertain. However reliably the vast Russian landscape can enthrall, or the conversation lurch from minutiae to Chekhovian contemplation of anything from death to a hiccup, there is a constant precarity to it all.

This summer, Lida, at 72, is contemplating leaving our village, despite her glorious garden and the many happy hours spent in her lovingly constructed wooden dacha. Five years after a stroke, she fears that she and her 75-year-old husband, Slava, can no longer cope alone. The state offers only material support, slight at that. Still, the land here exerts a pull that the prospect of life in a distant town nearer her daughter does not. “Fate will decide,” she concludes. “Only God knows.”