10 Pregnancy Facts that no one usually tells you

After the joy of discovering that you are pregnant, sure enough, you want to know exactly what you can expect to feel during the pregnancy stages. You are anxious about how you will handle each stage of pregnancy.

These are the 10 weird things that happen during pregnancy that people probably won't tell you about.

1 - You Could Be Pregnant For Over A Year

Most pregnancies last for about 9 months and doctors are likely to induce labor if pregnancy goes on too long. That being said, it is possible to be pregnant for a whole year. The world's longest pregnancy lasted 375 days, strangely, the baby was only a little under seven pounds.
It certainly puts a whole new perspective on being a few weeks late, doesn't it?

2 - A Male Fetus Can Get Erections In The Womb

Most mothers don't like to think about their baby boys getting erections, even when they are teenagers, but the fact is that many baby boys get boners while they're still in the womb. In fact, babies of both sexes are known to masturbate in utero, but boys are the only ones who can be caught while aroused on the sonogram.

If having sex while pregnant seemed a little creepy before now, just imagine what your baby is doing while you make love.

3 - Your Entire Undercarriage Might Need Stitches

The last place any woman wants stitches is in her taint, but many mothers have to get that area closed up surgically. Nine out of ten women have some type of vaginal tearing after birth, but there are many degrees of tearing. Some tears only require a little care or a few stitches, but the really bad cases go from the vagina all the way to the anus. Some can even affect the muscles beyond your anus. On the upside, tearing that reaches the anus is somewhat rare and only affects one in one hundred mothers.
Massaging the area prior to child birth can reduce tearing, but even then, it won't completely stop tearing in most people.
Suddenly, getting a C-section started sounding a whole lot more appealing, huh?

4 - You May Just Poop Yourself

During childbirth, it is extremely common for a woman to accidentally expel the contents of her bowels. There is a good reason for this –the muscles you use to push the baby out are the same ones you ordinarily use during a bowel movement. As if that weren't enough to get your sphincter ready to go, the baby directly pushes on the rectum as it makes its exit, helping to squeeze out anything near the exit.

In olden times, it was common for nurses to give enemas prior to labor, but this practice didn't end up stopping the mess from happening and often caused dehydration. These days, your doctors and nurses will be ready to help clean up the mess. In most cases, they won't even say anything about it so you won't know the difference.
It does make you think twice about filming the birth though, doesn't it?

5 - You Really Will Glow

Saying a pregnant woman is glowing is a common expression, but most people chalk it up to the woman's excitement about becoming a mommy. As it turns out though, glowing skin is a very real thing for pregnant women. While you're pregnant, the amount of blood in your body will increase by 50%. The extra blood ends up showing through the skin in many areas, particularly the cheeks.

On top of this, hormones cause the oil glands to become more active, resulting in a softer, shinier appearance. When the increased blood flow combines with shine, the result is a noticeable glow.

6 - Your Sense of Smell Gets Better

During pregnancy, your sense of smell increases drastically, as does your sense of taste. Scientists hypothesize that this is to help pregnant mothers avoid eating small levels of toxins that might not be dangerous to an adult, but could be deadly to a fetus. As smoke, alcohol and coffee are all particularly noticeable to pregnant women, this theory certainly seems to be on the right path.

7 - Contractions Don't Stop After Birth

Most mothers will have contractions for the first few days after birth. The muscle cramps are the body's way of stopping excess blood loss. On the upside, if you give birth at the hospital, you'll still be pretty drugged up and will probably barely even notice.

8 - You Don't Really Need To Eat For Two

Despite the widespread rumors that say pregnant women need to gain all the weight they can in order to birth a healthy baby, the truth is that most women will only need an extra 300 calories per day. That's equivalent to about one serving of yogurt and half a bagel. Most women only need to gain about 25 pounds throughout their entire pregnancy.

Of course, if you happen to be at the buffet and are having a tough time resisting the desserts section, go ahead and sneak a little extra. No one will give a pregnant woman a hard time if she pigs out

9 - Your Feet Can Grow Up To One Full Shoe Size

If you're wondering why your feet will get so big when you only gain 25 pounds, it has to do with the excess pressure on your feet paired with relaxed ligaments in your body. As your pregnancy wears on, your body starts to release the tightness of its ligaments to help with the birthing process. Unfortunately for your shoes, this also means your feet start to lose their arch and stretch out on the sides. The flatter, wider shape of your feet will probably be temporary, but if they grew too much, the change could end up being permanent. If your feet do stay a bit larger, it certainly will serve as a great excuse to buy more shoes.

10 - The Father Might Show Symptoms of Pregnancy

It's surprisingly common for a father-to-be to start gaining weight, getting morning sickness and even feel cramps in his lower abdomen. The condition is known as a sympathetic pregnancy or the Couvade Syndrome, which comes from the french word couvee meaning "to hatch".

• Reference/Source: Oddee.com by Jill Harness[3/11/2011]

10 of the Most Famous/Known Facts That Are Actually Wrong

Nothing beats a good dose of myth busting – it is one of our favorite pastimes here at the Always10. This top10 list is no exception. Following on from the very popular 10 of the Most Famous/Known Facts That Are Actually Wrong, we are presenting varied list of “facts” that most people believe which are, in fact, insincere talk. By the end of this list you should be ten facts smarter!

10 - The United States Lost the Vietnam War

While it is a fact that the country known as the Republic of South Vietnam no longer exists (having been absorbed by its Communist neighbor to its north) the truth is that its demise was not because the United States lost its seven-year long war there. In fact, by the time the country was overrun by the North Vietnamese in the spring of 1975, the United States had been out of Vietnam for nearly two years, its active involvement having concluded with the signing of the Paris Peace Accord in January, 1973. The only reason the war is considered a “loss” for America was because of its great cost (57,000 Americans killed) and its general unpopularity at home. It could be considered a political defeat, however, in that America was essentially so worn down by the conflict that it lost the will to come to South Vietnam’s defense when the North Vietnamese launched their invasion, thereby effectively surrendering that nation’s sovereignty to its Communist neighbor and giving the U.S. a black eye that took literally decades to recover from. However, it did not “lose” the war in the traditional respect in that it was defeated militarily by a superior foe. In fact, the Paris Accord gave the U.S. everything it wanted from North Vietnam, bringing the war to what could be considered a positive close. Who could have guessed the North Vietnamese would renege on the treaty just two years later?

9 - Charles Lindbergh was the First Man to Cross the Atlantic Ocean by Air

While “Lucky Lindy” became quite the hero when he made the first solo crossing of the Atlantic by air—a grueling 34 hour, 3,600 mile flight—he was not the first man to make the crossing by air. In fact, he was something like the 85th man to do so. The feat was actually first accomplished by a pair of British aviators, John Alcock and Arthur Brown, eight years earlier when they flew a British Vimy bomber from Newfoundland, Canada, to Ireland in June of 1919. It was also accomplished by the entire crew of the German-built and manned zeppelin, the U.S.S. Los Angeles in 1924, when they flew the monster ship to America as war reparations. And, of course, this doesn’t include the men who may have made it but didn’t survive, such as the French aviators Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli, who attempted the flight a mere three weeks before Lindbergh only to vanish somewhere between Paris and New York. (Many suggest, however, that they may have actually made it across, only to crash land in the uncharted forests of Newfoundland.) Lindbergh was, however, the first to make the flight solo, which is what made it such an accomplishment—especially considering that as there was no autopilot in that day, he was forced to remain awake the entire 34 hours of the flight. Talk about a bad flight!

8 - Columbus Was the First European to Discover North America

Though the idea that Columbus was the first European to discover America was held as sacrosanct for most of this countries’ history, it is becoming more commonly acknowledged today that he was probably not the first European to make the crossing. That honor generally goes to some Viking named Leif Erickson, who is believed by historians to have made his way from Scandinavia to Newfoundland a good five hundred years before ‘ol Chris was even born. In fact, the Vikings established villages in Greenland and on the Canadian coast, making them the first Europeans to colonize the New World as well. There is even evidence that the ancient Phoenicians—an eastern Mediterranean sea-going people who lived between 1550 and 300 BCE—might have accomplished the deed centuries earlier than that! Columbus was the first European to discover it in “modern” times, however, and the first to make the fact that a continent existed between Europe and Asia known to the “civilized” world. Another “fact” that needs revising is the one that imagines that Columbus set out on his quest in an effort to prove that the world was not flat. In fact, no one in 1492 believed the Earth was flat. What he wanted to prove is that it was possible to get from Europe to China by sailing west rather than east. In effect, he was looking for a shortcut and found a whole continent in the process.

7 - The Wright Brothers Were the First to Fly an Airplane

While the accomplishments of the gifted brothers from Dayton, Ohio cannot be diminished, the fact is there are a number of people who may have accomplished the feat of being the first to fly a manned, heavier-than-air craft in powered flight (as opposed to unpowered gliders, which had been flown for years before the Wright Brother’s first flight). Probably the best claim to having been the first is attributed to a German immigrant named Gustav Whitehead, who may have made one and possibly two flights in a small monoplane of his own design (and powered by a tiny motor also of his own design) as early as 1901—two full years before the Wright Brother’s tried it. Unfortunately, ol’ Gustav was a better mechanic and aviator than an archivist and he neglected to get any photos of the flight or document it (although there was a reporter from a local paper supposedly present—along with a handful of witnesses—who allegedly saw a second flight in 1902). Had he done so, he might have changed aviation history rather than remaining just a footnote. Whitehead wasn’t alone in the claim of being the first, however, as some maintain that Frenchman Clement Ader may have accomplished the task in 1897 in a frail-looking plane named the Avion III and another Frenchman, Felix du Temple, might have done it as early as 1874. Even a Russian Army Officer, Alexander Mozhaiski, supposedly accomplished the feat in a monster steam powered aircraft in 1884, so the list of candidates who may have beat the Wrights into the air is considerable. The Wrights, however, did come up with the first truly controllable aircraft, making the previous claims fairly moot in that none of those earlier attempts flew very far (usually a couple hundred of feet) or were controllable—with the possible exception of Whitehead. If only the man had thought to buy a camera.

6 - Alexander Graham Bell Invented the Telephone

Not to take anything away from the prolific Mr. Bell, but he didn’t come up with this modern little irritant on his own, but was one of several men who were working the idea at the same time. What he did do was be quicker on the draw than his competitors by getting to the patent office first. In fact, some historians maintain that another fellow named Elisha Gray was the first to create a working telephone, only to see Bell get all the credit for it. (And Gray has a pretty good claim according to many, with over 70 other patents—many communications oriented—to his credit. In fact, he may have missed out beating Bell to the Patent Office by a few hours!) Other names frequently mentioned for their work on early communication devices are Antonio Meucci, who was experimenting—quite successfully—with the electromagnetic telephone in 1857; Innocenzo Manzetti—who may have invented a “speaking telegraph” as early as 1865; and the German inventor Johann Philipp Reis, who was working on the idea during the 1860s. However, it was a Hungarian inventor named Tivadar Puskas who made the telephone useful by inventing the switchboard and with it something known as the “party line”, thereby making it possible for people to use Meucci’s/Manzetti’s/ Reis’/Gray’s/Bell’s invention in a practical way.

5 - Charles Darwin Was the First to Conceive of the Theory of Evolution

Like the telephone, no timely idea is birthed by a single mother. There is almost always more than one person working on a good idea at the same time, with one of them inevitably getting most of the credit in the end. This was not only true of inventions, but of scientific theories as well—in this case the (at the time) controversial theory of evolution. British naturalist Charles Darwin is usually credited with coming up with the concept, but the fact is there were any number of scientists and naturalists working on the thorny issue of how human beings got here (in a non-Biblical way). The foundation for the idea may have been laid down by the Greek philosopher and scientist Anaximander (610 BCE-546 BCE), who was the first to suggest that physical forces, rather than supernatural forces, create order in the universe. However, the basics for the modern theory of evolution were first articulated in 1745 by the French mathematician and philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertius. Additionally, Charles Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote of the idea as early as 1796. However, few men did as much for the theory as did the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who came up with the first truly cohesive theory of evolution, in which he argued that there was a natural force that drove organisms up a ladder of complexity, and a second environmental force that adapted them to local environments through use and disuse of characteristics, differentiating them from other organisms—which was very close to Darwin’s concept of natural selection. Darwin’s greatest competitor, however, was the Englishman Alfred Wallace, who presented a very similar theory to Darwin’s to the prestigious Linnean Society in 1858 at the same time Darwin presented his. It was Darwin’s book, the Origin of the Species, however that made him world famous and is why to this very day it is Charles Darwin who gets all the credit (and, from some people’s perspective, all the blame) for the modern theory of evolution.

4 - JFK’s Assassination was Part of a Larger Conspiracy

Though the idea that President Kennedy’s assassination was part of a larger conspiracy is actually an urban legend, the fact that it is believed by such a large percentage of the population—by some estimates, as much as 70%–makes it to many people’s way of thinking, a cold and hard fact. The idea that a lone nut job like Lee Harvey Oswald could have pulled off what was effectively the murder of the century without help is too much for some to accept, leading to nearly fifty years of all manner of conspiracy theories. These theories are generally divided into two groups: one which believes that Oswald was “set up” by someone—the CIA and the Mafia being the main suspects—and the other being that while he was in on the killing, he had help (and, in fact, may have been just one of several gunmen that day). Oswald’s death at the hands of a Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby a couple of days later—in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters no less—seals the deal for most people, making the JFK conspiracy one of the most successful and lucrative cottage industries in America to this very day. Of course, no amount of evidence demonstrating that Oswald indeed possessed the means, motive, and opportunity to carry out the most heinous crime of the twentieth century all by himself or the lack of even a shred of solid evidence to suggest otherwise does little to dissuade the truly convinced, meaning that the idea that JFK’s death was the product of some massive CIA/Cuban/Russian/Mafia/Vice President Johnson plot a “fact” for millions that is unlikely to ever die.

3 - We Only Use 10% of Our Brain

This “fact” has been so often repeated that most people don’t even question it anymore (thereby demonstrating that it may be true). However, even a moment’s consideration should demonstrate what a fallacy this idea is. The brain is a magnificent organ that does everything from making sure you don’t forget to blink once in a while to helping you remember where you put the car keys. To use only 10% of it, then, would render it little more than vestigial organ which, while making getting shot in the head more an annoyance than a catastrophe, is obviously nonsense. The fact is that despite evidence to the contrary, everyone uses 100% of their brain all the time; it’s just that different parts of it do different things. While it is possible that only 10% of the brain is used for the higher brain functions such as cognitive thought, reasoning, and memory, that doesn’t mean the rest of it is sitting idle. It’s just that those other parts are busy doing all sorts of other things like keeping your heart pumping and making sense of the millions of bits of data being sent to it by the bodies’ sensing organs. In reality, science is only just beginning to understand the complexities of the human brain and its capacity for doing all the stuff it does on a daily basis, making it more of a mystery than ever. The prospect that many of us don’t use our brain to its fullest capacity, however, may be worth considering, but that is a subject for another day.

2 - Roosevelt’s New Deal Ended the Depression

It has been taught for over seventy years that FDR was responsible for ending the Great Depression of the thirties by enacting a dearth of government spending programs collectively known as the “New Deal”. In fact, the success of FDR’s massive spending programs is often pointed to by advocates of big government today as evidence that massive infusions of federal spending is the best hope for the poor, and has been the impetus behind some of the largest federal entitlement programs in history, from Medicare and Medicaid to welfare and food stamps. The only problem is that the New Deal was, in many ways, the Big Bust in that it did little to help the country recover from the Great Depression and, in fact, may have even delayed the recovery by years by raising corporate tax rates to such a level that it flat-lined business hiring for years. It was the Second World War that finally put most Americans to work which, combined with a reduction in tax rates in 1946, led to one of this countries’ greatest boom periods. Don’t believe it? Then just compare how long it took the United States to recover from the Depression compared to the countries of Europe which also saw a huge downturn in the early 1930s; England, France, and even Germany had put the worst of the depression behind them by 1935 while America continued to lumber on for years with high unemployment rates and a sluggish GNP. While no one can fault FDR for his noble intentions in wanting to ease the suffering of many people in this country, the New Deal actually demonstrated that the government that does the least to “fix” the problem actually does the most good by simply letting economic and financial forces heal themselves.

1 - Thomas Edison Invented the Light Bulb

Like so many great inventions in history, this one too must fall into the “I wonder who really invented it first” category. Though Edison is given the credit, work on an incandescent light bulb had been going on long before ‘ol Tom wrapped his prodigious brain around the problem. As far back as 1802 a guy named Humphrey Davy passed an electrical current through a thin strip of platinum to create the first short-lived but impressive light show and after that the race was on to see who could be the first to find a filament that could last more than, say, five minutes. It wouldn’t be until 1841 when another Englishman, Frederick de Moleyns, would patent the first incandescent lamp using platinum wires in a vacuum as a filament. (However, the setup proved to be too expensive to be commercially viable, which is why no one speaks reverently today of de Moleyn’s remarkable invention.) After that, it was just a matter of time until someone stumbled upon a material that would be both economical and long-lasting, both of which would be required to make the light bulb useful. While Edison’s team did come up with a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1200 hours, thereby making the light bulb practical, another British physicist (clever folks, those Brits) by the name of Joseph Swan actually beat Edison when he came up with something that pretty closely resembled Edison’s later bulb by a couple of years. He had even begun installing the things in pubs around London while ‘ol Tom was still seeing if human hair would work as a filament. However, for some reason, history has not been kind to Mr. Swan and he remains largely forgotten (which probably explains why he could be frequently found afterwards drinking away his sorrows in one of London’s many well-lit pubs).
Honorable Mentions: General Custer (was not a General at Little Big Horn but a lowly Lieutenant Colonel. He had been a General during the Civil War but was reduced in rank afterwards, which is the reason for the confusion); George Washington’s Wooden Teeth (they were not wooden at all but made from gold, ivory, lead, and human and animal teeth!); George Washington and the Cherry Tree (Never happened); and The Emancipation Proclamation Ending Slavery (which did not end slavery in the North but applied only to those slaves living in Confederate States. There were thousands of slaves still residing in northern states at the time, though most were domestic servants or slaves by choice—usually for personal or economic reasons—at the time.)

• Reference/Source: Ourcuriousworld.com by Jeff Danelek
• Reference/Source: Toptenz.net by Jeff Danelek

10 Reasons: Why You Should Stop Using Facebook?

Facebook privacy policies keep going down the drain. That’s enough reason for many to abandon it. Hey "Facebook Guys", no offense about me writing this list and I'm just voicing my opinion.

I just come to realized the time when I was reading from this article of interestings.net that there is enough reason for me to quit and stop Facebooking.

The author from interestings.net quoted"
After some reflection, I’ve decided to delete my account on Facebook. I’d like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I’d like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I’m not missing anything. In any event, here’s my “Top Ten” reasons for why you should join me and many others and delete your account."

Here are the 10 list why you should stop using facebook:

10. Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided

Let’s start with the basics. Facebook’s Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don’t keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook’s interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you’ll see, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.

9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior

From the very beginning of Facebook’s existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg’s ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world’s largest social network. They’re particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.

8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy

Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook’s privacy changes last January: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: “… the default is now social.” Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that …

At the same time that they’re telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It’s also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).

6. Facebook is a bully

When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works (by crawling all the data that Facebook’s privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the “default is now social.” So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you’re actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don’t want their membership to know how much data is really available. It’s one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.

5. Even your private data is shared with applications

At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you’re not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data – all of it – must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.

4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted

Even if we weren’t talking about ethical issues here, I can’t trust Facebook’s technical competence to make sure my data isn’t hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their “Like” button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users’ profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don’t care too much about your privacy or don’t really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.

3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account

It’s one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you’ve had enough, it’s pretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you’ve used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you’re given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you’re deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you’re back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it’s really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by “buried” I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they’ve “deleted” their account.

2. Facebook doesn’t (really) support the Open Web

The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It’s bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It’s bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It’s bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it “open,” when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can’t use this feature unless you’re on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.

1. The Facebook application itself ****s

Between the farms and the mafia wars and the “top news” (which always guesses wrong – is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I’m single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don’t bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can’t even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let’s not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.

Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn’t the most usable thing in the world, at least they’ve tried to stay focused and aren’t trying to be everything to everyone.

I often hear people talking about Facebook as though they were some sort of monopoly or public trust. Well, they aren’t. They owe us nothing. They can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the laws. (And keep in mind, even those criteria are pretty murky when it comes to social networking.) But that doesn’t mean we have to actually put up with them. Furthermore, their long-term success is by no means guaranteed – have we all forgotten MySpace? Oh, right, we have. Regardless of the hype, the fact remains that Sergei Brin or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could personally acquire a majority stake in Facebook without even straining their bank account. And Facebook’s revenue remains more or less a rounding error for more established tech companies.

While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn’t the only game in town. I don’t like their application nor how they do business and so I’ve made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.

Well that's an interesting thought from interestings.net's author, right? What can you say about it? Feel free to leave comments. Thanks!

• Reference/Source: interestings.net [May 5th, 2010]

The 10 Truths About Toilets

It's the first room we go to when we wake up, the last room we visit when we turn in at night. It's the room that relieves us, comforts and cleanses us. And sometimes it manages to raise our brows-with all the quirky customs and habits that people have about them. Yup, were talking about the most popular room in the house, the humble toilet.

Some truths you might want to know:

1. More than 40 percent of the world’s population do not have access to basic sanitation.

2. In Japan, it’s considered unethical to let other people hear you peeing. So public toilets are installed with music to cover it up. Others use a device called Otohime or Sound Princess to mimic the sound of flushing that some women prefer to music.

3. In Singapore, you could be fined up to $150 for not flushing.

4. In Switzerland, its against the law to flush a toilet after 10 p.m. if you live in an apartment.

5. In Korea, a closed cubicle door in the ladies room means the stall is vacant. Hmmm, you wonder how people know its occupied.

6. The stall nearest the door tends to be the cleanest. People prefer to use the stall at the end of the room.

7. Guys would rather wait than use the vacant stall in the middle; women spend more time in the shower.

8. It has been recommended by dentists that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from the toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

9. Filipinos are saving the forest by using tabo (Dipper). The world consumption of toilet paper accounts for 72,000 acres of woodland per day.

10. Talk about style! The French prefer scented and colored toilet paper, the standard being pink.

• Reference/Source: sundayINQUIRERmagazine, Philippines