A Review of "10 Funny Flirting Facts," in honor of Valentine's Day

Today on MSN.com there was an article I found amusing:
10 Funny Flirting Facts (I don't know how long this link will work, but I'll try to include enough of its content here so that you don't have to use the link to understand the awesomeness of the list).

First, the health benefits of flirting -- apparently, people who flirt more often have higher white blood cell counts and better immune systems. According to "studies." I couldn't find any of these studies, but I'm sure it's true.

Second, the hair flip is the most common flirting signal, "according to scientists."

This one is impossible to paraphrase:
"3. In some places, flirting is illegal. In Little Rock, AR, an antiquated law is still on the books warning that engaging in playful banter may result in a 30-day jail term. In New York City, another outdated law mandates that men may be fined $25 for gazing lasciviously at a female; a second conviction stipulates the offender wear a pair of blinders whenever he goes out for a walk."

The list of flirting tips goes on to talk about how people are taking flirting to the next level -- flirting the tech-savvy way includes email and text messaging. People have also taken flirting to the streets -- between cars on a morning commute, or via mass transit.

I found this article pretty entertaining, but I have a nit to pick: like many popular articles, this one mentioned scientific research about its subject, but didn't directly cite the scholarly sources it used. I found this frustrating because I think the idea of being a professional flirting scholar is really, really hilarious, and I wanted a less efforful way of finding all that flirting literature out there. Flirting scholars, please hit me up with some reliable citations. Soon.

I enjoyed this article so much, I decided to ILL a book by the article's author: Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor: The Best and Worst Personal Ads of All Time. I'll let you know if it's awesome.

Sharks Part 2: Told You So...

Internet connectivity has been sporadic for our friends in Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, India, and Bangladesh this week due to three broken internet cables in the ocean. Though repairs are being made, the progress may be slow. Sources don't seem to know what caused the break in the cables, and it is suspected that at least two be the cables were possibly cut by a ship anchor. But, the third broken cable, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, has not been explained. The cable was a mere 35 miles from shore. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History most sharks congregate and attack not far from shore and are drawn towards metallic objects, thus leaving my prediction as shark attack. This has been one of the largest outages since an earthquake in Taiwan in 2006. Remember dear readers that we can create things such as the internet, but we pesky humans will never outsmart nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=internet&st=nyt&oref=slogin">http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=internet&st=nyt&oref=slogin
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/howwhen.htm">http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/howwhen.htm