Science Daily: The most comprehensive study of 20th century children’s books ever undertaken in the United States has found a bias towards tales that feature men and boys as lead characters. Surprisingly, researchers found that even when the characters are animals, they tend to be male.

The study also found that:

-Males are central characters in 57 percent of children’s books published per year, while only 31 percent have female central characters.

-No more than 33 percent of children’s books published in any given year contain central characters that are adult women or female animals, but adult men and male animals appear in up to 100 percent of books.
-Male animals are central characters in more than 23 percent of books per year, while female animals are in only 7.5 percent.
– On average, 36.5 percent of books in each year studied include a male in the title, compared to 17.5 percent that include a female.
– Although books published in the 1990s came close to parity for human characters (with a ratio of 0.9:1 for child characters; 1.2:1 for adult characters), a significant disparity of nearly 2 to 1 remains for male animal characters versus female.

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Check out all the celebs above that attended the Lakers vs Dallas semi-finals game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles last night (Monday).

Each year, this A list celebrity actor leaves his family and his work for a week to go “rough it” in the wilderness. So inspired by Henry David Thoreau, the actor secretly gets dropped off into the Idaho wilderness and lives off the land until he’s picked up at a rendezvous point. He does this to reconnect with himself and with nature, but keeps it under wraps because he worries that if word got out, it might disturb his rituals and he wants absolute privacy when he goes.

Within about two hours of reports first surfacing (and since confirmed by the President) that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, a Facebook Page titled “Osama Bin Laden is DEAD” has already accumulated more than 150,000 “likes.”

Mashable.com Reports:
The page appears to be adding thousands of likes by the minute with users also sharing hundreds of comments and links to stories about the news.

Interestingly, the page itself appears to have been setup well prior to tonight as a way to advocate the theory that Bin Laden had actually died long ago.

The page description reads in part: “Osama Bin Laden has not been found and will never be found because he died a long time ago. This may be news to you because it wasn’t in the news. His death is critical to the CIA because they want you to believe in this so called ‘War on terror’ which has made the world a more dangerous place. If Osama Bin Laden was alive, he would’ve been found – just like Saddam Hussein.”

Nonetheless, the page is now serving as a real-time discussion board for the historic news.

The pressure and hard work is finally breaking Kirstie Alley down and now we’ve learned Kirstie had a mini-tear fest during practices of DWTS this week.

US Magazine Reports:

While rehearsing with pro partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, the 60-year-old actress broke down in tears when he told her to “stop talking” during Monday’s episode of Dancing With the Stars.
“I need a break!” Alley wailed. “You scream and jump around and I’m frustrated.”

According to Chmerkovskiy, 31, Alley has what it takes to win the competition — she just needs a little help getting there. “I don’t care about her physical shape because I know she can do it,” he explained.

“Maks puts a lot of pressure and expectations on me. I think that’s why I like him, so I have to take it up a notch,” Alley added. “I have hugely high standards for myself and so does Maks, so when I think we’ve pushed ourselves as hard as we can push, we push harder.”

Do you think Kirstie has what it takes to make it to the next round on Tuesday?

via Huffington PostThe titular track off The Lonely Island’s new album, “Turtleneck And Chain” has been leaked, and the song features none other than Snoop Dogg himself.

While Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone have been releasing bits and pieces of their sophomore album via “SNL” digital shorts and other music videos, and now you can hear the latest song in the audio clip below.

The Lonely Island feat. Snoop Dogg – Turtleneck & Chain by refresher.sk

Vegans be damned! Or… at the very least, vegans prepare yourself to fight the Meat Monster!
Packing 1,160 calories without all the fixings Burger King has unleashed this monsterous meal to Japan only.The burger consists of two hamburgers, a chicken breast, two slices of cheese and three slices of bacon, with only a few veggies, of course, to balance it out. It also comes with lettuce, tomatoes and onion.
Click under the jump to see a picture of this beast!
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