religion

It only takes about 20 minutes after the last time you had sex to become a "virgin" again. That's if you've shelled out $29 for the Artificial Virginity Hymen.

The product has been getting some press, after conservative Egyptian politicians said they want the product banned. They're concerned that brides might use the product to fake their virginity, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Changing your Facebook status to "[Your name here] is dead" would be just one small step in simplifying the post-mortem wrangling and puzzlement over how to update, monitor or remove a person's online identify after death, at least until it's standard practice to include all key passwords in one's will.

Also in today's links: making sense of the sentiments we spew, snails evolve in a strange direction, and what would Jesus nanoengineer?

British government officials are planning to deploy search-engine optimization in their war on terror, working with certain Muslim groups to push "positive" depictions of Islam up in the Google rankings.

Also in today's links: watching your kids like a hawk, living like a pig, and more.

A stove that burns trash while cooking food is being plugged as a way to combat the problem of excessive trash, while also providing a means to cook food and boil water for the poor in Kenya. The "community cooker" -- which is close to being put in use -- burns at a high enough temperature "to destroy toxins in the rubbish, particularly plastic." There's a tall chimney meant to carry away the fumes but, I still can't quite imagine wanting to eat anything that's been so close to the smell and emissions from burning garbage.

Also in today's links: science and Islam, garbage and food, and more.

Over the last century, science and religion have been like oil and water: They just don’t mix. Scientists and people of faith seem to disagree about everything, particularly when it comes to hot-button issues like evolution and stem cell research. But not everyone thinks the two groups should be so polarized. John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist who worked at Cambridge for 25 years before becoming an Anglican priest in 1982, has spent his career trying to bridge the divide.

"Socially interactive" robots are being developed that can interact naturally with people, such as turning toward a person to give the impression of paying attention. The goal is to have such machines perform assistive tasks from hugging to encouraging stroke victims to perform important exercises or children with autism to imitate behavior. Researchers designing what such robots will look like also have to avoid the "uncanny valley" -- a phrase based on the idea that people are most comfortable with robots that look either completely human, or identifiably not human.

Also in today's links: blaming quants, mapping science, imaging religion, and more.