by Jennifer A. Zimmerman Psychology Department Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York This study investigates what effect, if any, watching television has on people’s sexual behavior.

Left: Figure 1. A page from the survey form that was given to male participants.

The Population Problem

For populous countries such as China and India, population growth is seen as a major and vexing problem. The governments of these nations worry that soon there will be more people than the land can support.

The Chinese Crisis

Chinese officials are developing elaborate, expensive plans for more effective family planning, including the development and delivery of better birth-control services. The Chinese State Family Planning Commission recently announced a series of new scientific and technological projects for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). These include the production of 15 new contraceptives and abortificant medicines. The technologies under consideration in China have serious drawbacks. They are costly, and are likely to be implemented inefficiently. It could take many years -- perhaps decades -- before their intended effects reached a satisfactory, or even noticeable level. Some different, better method is sorely wanted.

The Indian Innovation

This past year, an official in India proposed that televisions be given to the nation’s citizens, because televisions are an effective form of birth control. The official explained that people would rather watch television than engage in sexual intercourse:

In a mark of frustration over India’s perennially stalled family planning efforts, the country’s health minister has come up with a somewhat Orwellian proposal: distribute telvisino sets to the masses to keep their minds off procreation.... Chandreshwar Prasad Thakur suggested last month to the Indian parliament that "entertainment is an important component of the population policy." To drive down birth rates, he said, "we want people to watch television." Population experts, meanwhile, say the minister’s proposal betrays the false assumption that India’s poor breed merely because they have nothing better to do. [Science, vol. 293, September 14, 2001, p. 1987.]

Perhaps for political reasons, the proposal was received with skepticism.

To Test the Television Theory

It's time for another movie quote quiz from mental_floss! In today's Lunchtime Quiz, you are challenged to sort your Farrelly Brothers films. You'll be given quotes, and you try to recall if each is from Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, or There’s Something About Mary. I've seen two of the three, but I kept mixing them up and scored only 36%. You will do better! Link

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What's black and white and red all over? Somewhere in Russia, there is a traffic light that comes with a bonus. -via The Daily What

Our friends at Oddee are putting together a book of photobombs -pictures in which someone or something intrudes to make the photo much funnier than intended. Do you have a great photobomb? They're looking for submissions to include in the book. Get all the details and see some funny examples at Oddee. Link

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The conundrum is: you you want to look cool, or avoid being haunted by your dead friend for the rest of your life? This anti-drunk driving ad is from New Zealand. -via reddit

What is this grasshopper confused about? Buzzfeed asked its readers for captions. What words would you put in his mouth? Link

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Sergei Ganyushev, a 25-year-old from Arkhangelsk, Russia, was stranded on an island in the White Sea only 150 kilometers from the Arctic Circle for 16 days. He set out along on October first to gather seaweed, but his boat sprang a leak.

Sergei managed to swim to Malaya Sennukha, one of the small stony islets dotting the area. There he survived on seaweed and rainwater, taking shelter in a makeshift dwelling of stones and a few wooden planks.

He said he gave up looking for passing ships three days before rescue and was about to take his own life when the helicopter flew overhead. When he heard the rotor, he managed to get up and wave down the aircraft.

Curiously, no one had reported Sergei missing. The helicopter was looking for survivors from another seafaring incident, in which a motorboat with a monk and a worker from a nearby Orthodox Christian monastery sank in the vicinity of the archipelago last Thursday.

The monk was found dead, but the search continues for his companion. Ganyushev was treated for hypothermia and malnutrition. Link -via Arbroath

If AT-ATs had wheels, they wouldn't fall down so easy. But they were built a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, possibly before the invention of the wheel. However, Christopher Aleria improved upon the design by setting an AT-AT body atop an Axial Rock Crawler 4x4 remote control vehicle. Link -via Illuminations and Other Stuff

Feast your eyes on these creative jack-o-lanterns designed to display your favorite video games! Ranker listed 35 of them -not 35 jack-o-lanterns; there are way more than that, but 35 video games that have been carved on pumpkins. From Oregon Trail to Halo, from Tetris to Doom, you'll see them all, and get some great ideas for your own jack-o-lantern! Link -Thanks, Brian!

Halloween is a time for silly costumes, and some use it as an excuse to drag out every racial and cultural stereotype they can think of for a silly costume. That's not cool. Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) is an organization at Ohio University that put out a series of posters to "educate and create dialog" and to ask people to think before they select an insensitive Halloween costume. See the rest of the posters at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Link -via I Am Bored

This Twaggie, illustrated from a Tweet by @charstarlene, really hits close to home. My daughters are 13, 13, and 14, and their computers are in my office so they can feed off my modem. Purgatory, indeed! Link

Cracked has posted the fifth in a series of urban legends and the true tales behind them. The stories are all plain weird, like the guy in Japan who started noticing food in his apartment was disappearing.

Was he losing his mind? Being messed with by a shy poltergeist? To find out, he set up a series of spy cameras around his house. The next morning, he ran back the footage on the camera and that's when he saw it. A strange woman crawling out of a cupboard like it was the TV in The Ring. And if you think that's terrifying, imagine what happened inside his stomach when, at the end of the video, she crawled back into the cupboard. The one that was just a couple of feet away from where he was standing, watching the video.

Presumably in an effort to maintain bowel control, the man assumed the woman was a burglar who was only temporarily hiding in the cupboard, and had since left. He called the police, who pointed out that all the locks on his doors and windows were undisturbed. There was simply no evidence whatsoever that anybody had broken in -- in other words (cue dramatic strings) the woman had been in the house all along.

Read the rest of this story and six others. And don't be spooked! Link -Thanks, Jack!

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German aquaculturist TCHelmut put a glass observation tower in his koi pond. The fish get a good view of their surroundings and people get a good view of the fish! There are more videos at his YouTube channel, including the installation of the tower and how it looks at night. -via The Daily What

An art project at the Something Awful forums had gamers and artists transforming 21st century video games into 8-bit screenshots, as they would look played on an old Atari system. The Legend of Zelda looks a lot different! Check out a gallery of other games in the old style at Unreality magazine. Link

Twitter user Carrie Bishop took a snapshot of this sign announcing a business vacation. It doesn't have to be true to be eye-catching! Link -via Boing Boing