Do you wash you jeans often? A scientific test proved that, it is healthy to wear your jeans as long as you want, without washing.

In Edmonton, Canada, a guy didn’t wash a pair of skin-tight jeans for 15 months and it was just fine. He wanted to break in the denim so that the fabric would leave distinct wear lines following the contours of his body.

Josh Le, the University of Alberta student, on the 15th month of wearing the jeans, asked his textile professor to test it for bacteria. The result was very surprising. Although the result showed high volume of five different types of bacteria but none were harmful to the body. The high volume of bacteria was found in the crotch area.

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How often do you wash your jeans?

A team of 8 to 10 year-old kids in the United Kingdom have written and published an article on their research on bumblebee. The scientific journal, Biology Letters, accepted the paper written by a team of 25 children from Blackawton Primary School, Blackawton, Devon, UK.

The school kids investigated on how bumblebees see colors and patterns using a series of experiments in a local churchyard.

The headmaster of the school, Dave Strudwick, told that the kids, "devised, conducted and wrote up an experiment which resulted in genuinely novel findings," and hence the article deserved to be published in the peer-reviewed journal. Biology Letters is published by the Royal Society.

In an statement, the Royal Society said:

The field of insect color and pattern vision is generally poorly understood and the findings reported by the school children represent a genuine advance in the field.

Biology Letters editor Brian Charlesworth acknowledged that the children’s paper was the world’s "first in high quality scientific publishing."

R. B. Lotto of Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London has co-authored the journal paper. If you think you are scholastic enough to understand the kid’s research, the full article can be read here for free.

The Wikileaks’ cablegate has angered governments, leaders, and citizen all over the globe. Few but powerful targeted their anger against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Majority were angered by the the US government’s approach in dealing with the current situation and its diplomatic approach in dealing with the foreign countries.

The Brazilian President, Lula, says, "The guilty one is not the publisher, it is the person who wrote.."

The Ecuadorian government has even offered Julian Assange residency in the country "without any conditions".

For those who want to know more on cablegate, a UK newspaper, Guardian, has published a detailed analysis on the reaction of about 40 countries in different parts of the world.

WikiLeaks, a website notorious of leaking confidential and classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents, has  released new batch of US diplomatic cables on Sunday. It was told that WikiLeaks website was hit with a denial-of-service (dos) attack as it prepared to publicize the thousands of diplomatic cables.

On Sunday, Nov. 28, the website has released some of the more than 250,000 cables, which were given to the New York Times and other media groups for release. The documents exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy, including candid and embarrassing assessments of various world leaders.

The cables date as old as 1966 and as new as the end of February 2010. They represent the confidential communications between 274 embassies throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. Out of the 250K cables, 15,652 are classified Secret. Attached graph is the part of the graph showing the total number of different types of cables related to their embassies.

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WikiLeaks – US diplomatic cables released- major US bank documents to follow

A MacLean’s article on colleges and universities has spurred the racial debate in Canadian Universities. The article talks about a number white students avoiding big-name schools to avoid "too Asian" crowd and be at home with the fellow whites. The not-too-Asian colleges choices are less competitive and easy to get admitted to and have more parties and fun activities.

Responding to the article, US Blogger angryasianman says he doesn’t like:

… the part that makes Asian students sound like joyless, socially-isolated, singularly-focused drones under the command of overbearing immigrant parents.

It seem, the article was very popular and the editors apparently have edited the original article. The archive of the original article however is still available here.

I think the author of the article should have mulled upon a few facts before writing it:

• Nobody else is more Canadian than aboriginal/native descents. If white people are "white Canadians" then the Asian should also be ‘Asian Canadians’.
• Asians and all other minorities should integrate into the Caucasian population and vice versa. There is no excuse of not doing so. Discrimination between recently migrated European and recently migrated Chinese would only be based on skin color.
• Some students being smart doesn’t make competition unfair.

On contrast, it is also true that:

• Memorizing a book and getting good grades doesn’t necessarily mean they are smart.
• Some people, by their inherited nature, isolate themselves and don’t mingle easily with others. Usually the first generation and second  generation migrants tend to have such behavioral problem.

Cooks Source Magazine, a free, advertising-supported publication has found a new ‘recipe’ of increasing ‘Facebook friends’ from 110 to thousands overnight! Jut to give the clue on how it is increasing – there were 4,400 likes on its Facebook page at the time I stared writing this post and at the time I finished it, there were 4,533 likes. That was 133 more likes in 20 minutes!

But, the ‘friends’ are there only to express their dissatisfaction over the copyright infringement and rude response to blogger, Monica Gaudio, whose article they published without the authors consent and knowledge.

Monica asked for an apology and a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism for the copyright infringement. Judith Griggs, the magazine’s editor and principal operator’s response to Monica reads like:

But honestly, Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn’t "lift" your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!

He says, that was based on his ’3 decades’ in the publishing business. What follows is even more ridicules:

If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

When the news spread like wildfire, the magazine’s Facebook page became flooded with new ‘friends’. Overwhelmed by the response, Griggs posted a not-so-apologetic apology in the Cooks Source page in Facebook. The apology however doesn’t even mention the plagiarism allegations:

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her" and then observes "You did find a way to get your ‘pound of flesh…’ we used to have 110 ‘friends,’ we now have 1,870… wow!

The ‘friends’ didn’t like it and every major newspapers have written headlines and a Wikipedia page is also created for the controversy.

Taking internet and bloggers lightly has become more like "kicking hornet’s nest" for Cooks Source.

This post is a follow up to my previous post on rude and polite signboards. This temporary signboard in 39st NW, Calgary, Canada is the only signboard, I have seen, to be polite enough to add a ‘Please’ in it!

I would love to hear from you on the issue of making the signboards more polite like this one!

A tiny guy with long name – Khagendra Thapa Magar, has just turned 18 today, on October 14, 2010.

To hand over his 18th birthday present, the title of the World’s Shortest Man, Guinness World Records Book team has gone to Nepal.

I wrote about Khagendra back in 2007 when He Pingping, the shortest man then, met the tallest man of that time Bao Xishun. At that time, he was told to be only 50 cm tall. It sure is a very slow growth rate at 17 cm in three years, as he measures 67 cm now.

Happy Birthday and Congratulation for the record, Khagendra !

According to the data derived from 2008 personal income-tax returns, Statistics Canada has found that Calgary led other metropolitan areas in median-family income. Calgary was followed by Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau.

Calgary families earned $91,570 in 2008, well above the Canadian average of $68,860. Edmonton followed with family income of $88,190, and Ottawa-Gatineau was third with $87,160.

As the data was based on 2008,  when the people were yet to feel the effects of economic crisis. I suspect, the equation might have changed in the past couple of years.

A 19 year-old computer science student at Stanford University, Feross Aboukhadijeh, created the YouTube Instant on Thursday and woke up Friday morning to find:

The Washington Post called to do an interview, Venture Beat put my picture on their front page, and Mashable wrote a front page story …twice. YouTube Instant also made it to the All Things Digital front page and the Hacker News home page three times.

That was not all: a Wikipedia entry in his name and a job offer from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley via Twitter. Hurley later e-mailed him to set up a meeting, which, Aboukhadijeh says was scheduled for Monday.

Feross was impressed by the Google Instant released on the very same day. He says, tt took him about three hours to complete the YouTube version of Instant.