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Confused? Of course you are.

Journalist Dan Slater wrote a piece for the Atlantic print edition about a man named Jacob who, through the magic of online dating, has been able to meet and sleep with many women and he is no longer interested in getting married.  In response, Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal took to the Atlantic's website to refute Slater and his "spineless" argument with a lot of data and somewhere around 1,800 words.

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Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,”January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain and my new book, Science Left Behind, which I co-authored with Hank Campbell.

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Bachmann tweeted:

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According to a report by CBS News in July, the then-33 unsuccessful attempts by House Republicans to repeal the law had used up around 80 hours of time in Congress, or two full work weeks, at a cost of around $48 million.

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San Francisco's newest star — the first river otter seen in the city in decades — surfaced its whiskery head furtively, a mouth full of sea grass. The crowd oohed as large waves pounded rocks just offshore, a briny smell and chill in the air.

The otter ducked back under water and took the sea grass underneath a concrete remnant of the historic baths, where the animal was building a nest.

"We came here to see the baths and this was just a bonus," said Eliza Durkin, who brought her son Jonathan to the site for a school project on historic places.

Beyond tourists, the otter has mystified and delighted conservationists, who are piecing together clues to figure out how he got there. The whiskery creature was first spotted by birdwatchers in September and has since settled into the City by the Bay.

River otters once thrived in the San Francisco Bay area, but development, hunting and environmental pollution in the 19th and 20th centuries has taken its toll on the once thriving local population.

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Vulture interviewed Gilligan to find out what the writing team is thinking about in this "schizophrenic" time. “It’s going to be polarizing no matter how you slice it," he said. "But you don’t want 10 percent to say it was great and 90 percent to say it sucked ass. You want those numbers to be reversed.”

Gilligan didn't reveal any plot twists, but he did share what the writers are thinking about when writing the show's final episodes:

1. Even Gilligan doesn't know how the show is going to end, yet, but he's hoping to create something that will mix the element of surprise with a sense of inevitability:

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I spent all my time on the computer chatting with friends. Then, I made mistakes. One of my adult friends cursed and posted something inappropriate, and I cursed back. Also, I friend-requested grownups who I did not know. About a day later, my dad found out. He was really mad. I had to deactivate my account.

And so begins the story of Grom Social, the social networking site for the 15 and under set that Marks founded after being summarily booted from Facebook. Even though there are other kid-friendly networks he could have joined, none really appealed to the preteen. "They were all childish," he told the "Today" show.

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Written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a book for children, The Hobbit is widely regarded as a prelude to the darker and more complex Lord of the Rings trilogy. The One Ring that is the focus of The Lord of the Rings, and which threatens to destroy Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth, is first discovered in The Hobbit by the protagonist Bilbo Baggins. The true nature of the ring is never revealed in The Hobbit — it is depicted simply as a magic ring that conveniently endows Bilbo with the ability to become invisible.

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According to the AP, DeGette introduced the bill with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road in New York. From the AP:

[DeGette]'s district includes the site of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. It is also adjacent to last year's Aurora movie theater shooting site. In both of those attacks, the shooters' rifles were modified with high-capacity magazines. Those devices allow attackers to fire dozens of bullets without pausing to reload.

Though it's still unclear whether a ban can pass the Republican-controlled House, there were some promising signs from at least one Republican earlier today.

Rep. Peter King, also from New York, said on "Morning Joe": "I voted for the assault weapon ban back in 1994. My father was a police officer. I really don't know why people need assault weapons."

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Though the Time Warner decision had reportedly been threatened due to Current’s low ratings, there’s no denying that at least some segment of the U.S. viewing public has long harbored antipathy toward Al Jazeera. An editorial published today by Fox News runs through the talking points about the network it calls “anti-American terror mouthpiece Al Jazeera.” Among them: “Al Jazeera, known as the network of the Arab Street, is also known for taking anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror positions.”

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But nearly three weeks after the Dec. 14 bloodbath, the American far right – from elements of the Tea Party to bigoted bloggers to conspiracy theorists – is working itself into an absolute frothy uproar at even the possibility that it may become more difficult to purchase a military-style assault rifle or a magazine that carries dozens of bullets.

It’s reminiscent of the reaction that surrounded the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. That legislation, which applied only to newly manufactured guns, helped fuel a powerful militia movement – one that has been eclipsed by the recent surge in the anti-government “Patriot” movement, which includes armed militias.

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On Jan. 14, viewers will log into CBS and Twitter to vote for one of three alternate endings in an episode that investigates the death of an Oahu State University professor. “I've always felt the most fun aspect of watching a mystery is trying to figure out ‘whodunit,’” executive producer Peter Lenkov said.  “Now the 'Hawaii Five-0' viewers will actually get the chance to tell us who they think committed the crime and we will listen. I love that our dedicated and attentive fans will actually play a part in resolving our story.”

But wait -- isn't the best part of a murder mystery being surprised by the reveal? Well, let's hope that the move to involve the audience is not part of a wider social experiment that results in a twisted new genre of scripted reality TV shows reality scripted TV shows.

CBS plans to publish all three alternate endings on CBS.com after the episode airs. Watch the promo below:

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A spokeswoman for Senate President John Cullerton tells The Associated Press the proposal to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples will get a committee hearing Thursday but there aren't currently enough votes to pass it on the floor.

Spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon (rih-KEE'-shuh ful-AHN') says she doesn't know how many votes there are for the plan or when it might be called. Some Democrats were not in attendance Thursday. Phelon says no Republicans supported it.

Cullerton's Democrats have 35 seats in the Senate - five more votes than needed for passage.

The Legislature is in lame-duck session until Jan. 9, when the new session is sworn-in.

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Lamo's elegant responses show a man attempting to detach himself from the realities of Manning's harsh detention and worrying legal prospects. They also show a man with enough philosophical soundness to reject questions about acting with hindsight.

Lamo told the Guardian's Ed Pilkington that he has not closely followed Manning's recent pretrial hearings:

It's not because I take it lightly, but because I take it as seriously as I do. Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it. You either fold it into your character, come to terms and go on with your life, or you get stuck in that moment forever. For a while I thought I would be. I took it badly. But I came to terms and continued my life some time ago. It has, after all, been two years.

... I knew my actions might cost him his life. In that respect, any other outcome is preferable.

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Browsing local store shelves offers a simple way to gauge the ethnic mix of any London neighborhood. With its eclectic range of East European and Middle Eastern fare, Bestco is typical for catering to the various nationalities that have recently flocked here to forge new lives.

Unscientific as they are, such snapshots reflect a more detailed picture that emerged last month when the government published the results of its first census in a decade. It was a moment in which Britain looked at itself in the mirror — and barely recognized what it saw.

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The study confirms what largely seems like common sense: Financial insecurity is stressful, and anxiety associated with unemployment and low household income can affect how well parents parent. It's easy enough to understand how more time worrying about keeping the lights on could mean less time to focus on helping with homework and strengthening family bonds.

Led by Dr. Seethalakshmi Ramanathan of the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University, researchers used information about 8,984 youth born between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 1984, as a sample group. As Time magazine reports:

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"I can FINALLY share this!" she wrote. "This was 10 weeks ago when I was having my C-section. Dr. Sawyer broke my water and my daughter reached up out of my stomach and grabbed the doctor's finger and my hubby caught this special moment. Truly amazing."

It is indeed a special moment. In the black-and-white photo, you can see an attending hand pushing Atkins' belly up as a small hand reaches past an umbilical cord and around the wet finger of the delivery doctor. It's an arresting image, one that captures baby Neveah – that's "heaven" spelled backward -- at precisely the instant she made her Oct. 9 entrance into the world. Her first human touch.

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U.S. antitrust regulators added that they have found no evidence to claims that Google unfairly favors its own services in search results.

Google did agree to license patents deemed to be "essential" for rival mobile devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and smartphones running on a Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. Some of the patents in question came as part of Google's $12.4 billion acquisition of device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings earlier this year.

Regulators say Google is also promising that upon request, it will exclude snippets copied from other websites in its summaries of key information, even though the company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Despite the fair-use practice, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or "scraping," of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation.

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