A recent survey of 1,000 Americans found that 75 percent brought their smartphones when going to the bathroom.

Even better: 30 percent would not consider going to the bathroom without the smartphone.

That’s the world of any for you. Staying connected is more important than staying dry. Blabber outwins bladder.

But not anymore, now you can even get away with making cardboard cutouts of the old ayatollah and pose with them in the strangest ways.

This is a perfect Friday post, think I need the rest of the weekend to figure this out:

Which is most hilarious – the fact that the Irani regime celebrated the 33rd anniversary of ayatollah Khomeini’s return from exile this week, by parading a cardboard cutout of him at the Teheran airport , or the fact that there’s now a hugely popular blog where he parades with everyone from the Beatles to Marilyn Monroe everywhere from in the White House to the foot of the Eiffel Tower?

 After being paid over and over for upping you SAT:s, you can next sign up for the new Beyonce class at Rutgers University starting this spring. According to course director Kevin Allred, it will decompose her appearance and image, how and why they make her so successful and what that says about society.

No mention if one gets paid to take the final exam, though.

Remember how I’ve written before about the world of any’s amazing impact on education? How anyone can (and tens of thousande of people online do) go to Stanford? How universities do anything to compete, including giving courses about how to be Lady Gaga or to survive zombie attacks, even upping former students grades retroactively?

Well, here’s more proof that the world of any makes being a student enjoyable beyond imagination:

The New York Times reports that as colleges compete for students who go by school rankings, some have taken measures to improve their ranks – by paying their students to re-take their SAT:s until the scores are high enough to improve the school’s standings. Again, and again.

I remember the yestermillennium, when students were forced to take tests. And had to take student loans to survive their studies. Who needs student loans anymore, when you can actually get paid to take tests? And the worse you do, the more paid you get as you take the test over and over and over?

Give it a year or two, and “student loans” will probably be as outdated and foreign to the vocabulary as that ol’ IRL acronym…

Seems like the Chinese are impacting on the world of any, indeed. The other week, I wrote about their research efforts resulting in a clinicial diagnose for IAD – Internet Addiction Disorder. Well, now it seems that the UK is formally recognizing IAD, too.

And the last Sunday of January has been proclaimed the International Internet-Free Day.

I don’t know if that one day out of the year is supposed to inhibit the spreading of IAD symptoms such as finger spasms, or to make people remember why they value being connected so much..?

In 363 days’ time, you’ll be able to find out…

That’s what a recent psychological study found. Tracking some hundred Israeli teenagers on a daily basis, it found that their moods improved and anxiety levels decreased if they blogged about their day, and particularly when somebody commented on the post. No matter what the comments were (though a surprising amount – to the researchers – were positive).

So while I’ve highlighted numerous examples here of how falling prey to your own blogarazzi may get you into trouble, pouring your connected heart out may do good, too – by doing just that: Staying connected.

I love that about the world of any. Connecting anyone.

If IRL ceases OL, then, as we move further and further online, we should soon see the end of stalking?

I mean, how could there be stalking if everybody moves on the computer and phone screens instead of being up on their feet?

Well, we’ll soon find out.

Right now, there’s a criminal case in California being taken to higher court against William Lawrence Cassidy. On the charge of stalking. Without having moved his feet a single inch. Harassing a lady hundreds of miles away, in Maryland.  By way of his thumb. On Twitter.

True Lies.

I came to think of it when I read the report of a recent study that found that people are becoming less and less truthful the more they use modern (ICT) media for communication.

Comparing people’s conversations face-to-face, talking on the “dumbphone”, in front of a PC and on the smartphone, it turns out that, in the same order, claims become harder and harder to verify in real life.

And there it is again, IRL. The researchers’ conclusion was that people lie more, the more online they are. But I can’t help thinking, the more online people are, the less would they need to be substantiated IRL? Because that is not who and where they are?

Do we really know that people are less truthful online? Or could the truth just as well be something else, and people someone else, online?

Maybe I’m onto something. Or maybe I’m just making things up, after all I’m writing this online…

It’s already possible to kiss online, and people’s joint prediction, according to the Science Times, is that a majority will find their partner online within ten years.

Then it seems only logical that the next step will be – making babies online?

Well, according to the same crowd-sourced estimate, it will be possible to program organisms by 2026.

Does that mean that four years after we’ve come to a state where the majority of people hook up online, they’ll be able to also do their boogie online, press save and print  – and become parents..?

And place of birth will be dichotomized into BOL or BIRL?

First, I was surprised to realize that I had to think for a second, what does IRL mean?

Second, I was surprised to see someone use the acronym, it was so long since I last saw it?

Third, I was surprised that the person thought we weren’t already “really” communicating?

Maybe it’s just me. What with all the posts I’ve written about twitter births, online kissing, death web services and all – I’m thinking, haven’t all parts of our lives already migrated online and life become as real on- as offline? According to klout junkies, life online is obviously all that counts (not sure I would go that far, though…)

Well, it got me thinking about Science Times’ crowd-sourced future predictions, where people from all over the world have speculated and voted about what life will look like next (and when that next is). Related to a favorite topic of mine, online dating, the crowd-sourced prediction is that by 2020, more people will meet their partner online than offline…