Do not Sing and Dance at Karaoke Bars

Otherwise, you may be inclined to use drugs like ecstasy pills. At least, this is the reasoning behind The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, that wants to ban dancing in karaoke bars of Vietnam.

The ministry posted the proposed ban on its website and invited public comment on the move, its latest attempt to clamp down on illegal behavior at the popular singing clubs. Le Anh Tuyen, head of the ministry's legal department has said:

The function of karaoke bars is for singing, not for dancing. The ban for dancing in karaoke bar is to limit the use of ecstasy pills. Any dance in a karaoke bar would violate the proposed ban but "behavior with less danger to society," such as simply moving to the beat of a song without using ecstasy, would not be fined.

Discussion continues as to who will monitor and decide what is dancing or what is "moving to the beat" all around the country.

Common Denominator of Facebook Users

According to a new study by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and her co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University, college students who use Facebook, the 200-million-member social network, have one common denominator: they have significantly lower grade point averages (GPA) than those who do not.

The study found that the GPAs of Facebook users typically ranged a full grade lower than those of nonusers — 3.0 to 3.5 for users versus 3.5 to 4.0 for their non-networking peers.

Karpinski says she isn't surprised by her findings, but notes that the study does not suggest Facebook directly causes lower grades, merely that there's some relationship between the two factors. "Maybe Facebook users are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators," Karpinski told.

In February, Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield cautioned Britain's House of Lords that social networks like Facebook and Bebo were "infantilizing the brain into the state of small children," by shortening attention span and providing constant instant gratification.

New evidence by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a researcher at USC, shows the digital torrent of information from networking sites could have long-term damaging effects on the emotional development of young people's brains. Sites like Facebook and Twitter may blunt people's sense of morality and users could become "indifferent to human suffering" because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people's feelings.

Some experts dismiss all studies of Internet use as flawed, since there is no reasonable way to control for the myriad variables that may affect such research.

Facebook also issued a statement and pointed to another study showing that personal Internet use at work can help focus workers' concentration and increase productivity.

Parents and employers are confused.

Egg Yolk Color Demystified

"Egg yolk color depends on the hen's feed," said Pauline Chan, a dietitian and the managing director of The Nutrition Place, Singapore. "A diet of wheat and white corn meal would produce an almost colorless yolk. If the hen is fed a diet that includes yellow corn meal, marigolds or carotene, the egg yolk would have a deep yellow color."

Brown eggs are produced by hens with red ear lobes and feathers while white eggs are produced by hens with white ear lobes and feathers. There is no significant link between shell color and the nutritional value of an egg.

June Liew, a dietitian at the department of dietetics and nutrition services at Singapore General Hospital added that some people claim that eggs promote soft and healthy hair by nourishing the hair follicles with essential proteins, sulphur content and its wide array of vitamins and minerals. For these reasons, eggs are used to make shampoos and conditioners despite the fact that more studies are needed to prove the efficacy of eggs on skin and hair health.

Porn Production Hit Hard

"Filming is beginning to slowly move to Eastern European countries where girls are willing to do the work for less money," says Michael, a British expatriate who used to work at a publication specialising in the porn film industry.

One of the best known figures in the industry, director and producer Istvan "Kovi" Kovacs disagrees, "Due to the recession and to the free content available on the Internet, the industry is suffering losses in Hungary and everywhere else."

A bulky man in his fifties, "Kovi" has made over 70 X-rated films and won two AVN Adult Movie Awards, also known as the "Oscars of porn", with his production company LUXx Video, which he started in the 1990s.

"Nowadays, Internet users stop at the gates of paid content," says Kovi, sitting in his office in an outer district of Budapest, surrounded by shelves of awards; "Consumers are tightening their belts and with widespread DVD piracy, good times seem to be over for the adult film industry."

Former Coup Leader Appointed PM in Fiji

Karl Marx once said "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce," or if we have to quote George Bernard Shaw, "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience."

President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo apparently heard neither as he has seen no harm in appointing the former coup leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama to head the politically unstable South Pacific nation's government on Saturday, less than two days after a court ruled his 2006 coup illegal.

Bainimarama came to power in a bloodless coup in 2006. On Thursday, in a case brought by former prime minister Laisenia Qarase, the Court of Appeal overturned an earlier judgment that the military chief's government was legal, and called for a new government led by neither man pending fresh elections.

Iloio was quick to respond: he annulled the Constitution, enacted emergency powers for the country's military and police, and finally issued a decree giving himself the power to appoint a prime minister by decree.

After this tactical mistake, we shall soon see how two dancers on a single rope can manage in this troubled heaven.