Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

Capuchin monkeys: As a child Marina Chapman relied on these jungle primates to survive. (Getty Images) When Vanessa James was a little girl, her mother would tell her bedtime stories of growing up like Tarzan in the jungle raised by a colony of monkeys.

As James got older, she learned those accounts were not fantasy but part of her mother's unbelievable history.

What monkeys can teach us about our babies

Between the ages of four and ten, Marina Chapman's family consisted of 20 or so Capuchin monkeys, native to the jungles of South America. Her memory of how it all started is hazy-she remembers sorting peas in her village when in an instant a hand covered her mouth and she awoke in the jungle.

"All she can remember is being chloroformed with a hand over her mouth," James, told London's Sunday Times this past week. "It's assumed that the kidnap went wrong,"

Two days after fending for herself, she was approached by a colony of monkeys who taught her by example to forage, feed, and survive as one of their own.

"Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do

Daniel Singer: 13-year-old social networking whiz kid.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was 20 when he launched his social networking site. Daniel Singer, creator of the new site YouTell, is 13.

Zuckerberg's influence has created new opportunities for a generation raised on the Internet. (To wit, Daniel pitched YouTell to a San Francisco start-up veteran from his L.A. bedroom.) On the flip side, those opportunities for self-expression can lead to dangerous, sometimes tragic outcomes.

I first heard about YouTell—a site that lets users request anonymous feedback from a selected group of peers ("Do you like my haircut?" "Am I being a good friend?")—the day after tragic news of bullied teen Amanda Todd's suicide surfaced. The idea of a site designed to provide anonymous criticism seemed like a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.

But because YouTell was developed by a 13 year old (along with Daniel's dad Uri Singer, and four other grown-ups), the site is more attuned to both the desires and concerns of the Facebook generation.

For

Does this look like Big Bird to you? (Yandy.com via New York Daily News)It's the law of Halloween. The most popular costumes always spawn "sexy" versions. And this year's most popular costume by a landslide is Big Bird.

After four decades as a kids' icon, the feathered yellow muppet has made a comeback--first a topic of presidential debate, and later as the hottest costume of 2012. The latest surprise is his reincarnation as a "fantasy" costume for daring women.

The website Yandy.com, a retailer of lingerie and Halloween costumes that look like lingerie, features a "yellow bird" outfit that's not very kid-friendly.

Imagine your favorite Muppet as a bachelor-party surprise guest. Those fuchsia-and-orange chicken legs are now thigh-high stockings. And those feathers are now a matted down "cuddle plush mini dress."

Worst sexy Halloween costumes

Yandy has labeled the costume "exclusive yellow dress and stockings" but those floppy bird feet attached to the stockings' ankles are a dead giveaway. Big Bird's got a brand new bag.

The

Ad campaigns for maxi-pads and tampons tend to look like commercials for exotic resorts, replete with beachside strolls, yoga at sunset, and well-absorbed blue dye the color of a crystalline sea. With that Zenlike imagery on the one hand, and on the other the misguided stereotype of the crazy PMSing woman, it must be awfully confusing for men--or at least it was for one Richard Neill, whose amusing tongue-in-cheek comment about period confusion posted to the Facebook page of Bodyform, a British brand of maxipads, has now inspired a national campaign.

"As a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years," Neill wrote. "As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things, I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding, rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn't I get to enjoy this time of joy and 'blue water' and wings !! "

His clever jab at the brand got 80,000

(Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Content Pool)
When Nicole Oetl's boyfriend says he's going to work, he means he's floating 24 miles above the earth, and then jumping down. It's not a relationship for the faint of heart.

Felix Baumgartner's historical jump

On Sunday afternoon, when Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier with his record-setting jump, scientists, engineers and fans rooted for the former military parachutist. But girlfriend Nicole Oetl just wanted him to survive.

"I'll be relieved when Felix is [standing] before us," she told the crowd of media gathered in Roswell, New Mexico to watch the 43-year-old Austrian skydiver make history.

As the fastest human to skydive from the highest altitude, after his 128,097-foot free-fall, Baumgartner has a lot to be thankful for. Topping the list is his 30-year-old girlfriend, who wiped away tears as she watched her boyfriend's descent from a camera alongside his parents.

Why can't women break certain world records?

Oetl is a

On October 13th, the "Happy Birthday" song turns turns nineteen plus a hundred. Over the past two centuries the kindergarten class greeting song has morphed into an ode to presidential lust, a symbol of corporate greed, an excuse to celebrate cake, and a beloved holiday anthem for every day of the year. If you were born in 1893, you'd probably look a lot different now too.

On Thursday night, Congressman Paul Ryan and Vice President Joseph Biden went to war with words in a debate that left nothing off the table. Not even VP kids. From Beau Biden's military service to Ryan's first glimpse of his child via sonogram, the candidates' spawn served as examples and extensions of their messages. Being second in command is no small job, but neither is being born to the second in command. Here's a look at how the children of recent vice presidents have weathered the drama.

Luvs' breastfeeding commercial doesn't shy away from a heated topic.Public breastfeeding just got a little more public. A new commercial for Luvs diapers pulls back the curtain, or rather, blanket for moms who breastfeed in public places.

The 30-second spot, created by ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, begins with a mom breastfeeding her child in a restaurant with a blanket awkwardly covering the act. That was kid number one. Cut to a few years later, same mom, same restaurant, new kid, no blanket. "Hey, up here," the veteran breast-feeder now tells the stunned waiter.

"By their second kid every mom is an expert," the voiceover says, clinching the message that parenting gets easier. But the real takeaway, according to journalists praising the ad, is the promotion of feeding at the restaurant table.

Mom asked to stop breastfeeding in restaurant

"The message that breastfeeding in public is an inalienable right, the confident act of a woman who has been there done that, comes across loud and clear," writes the Miami Herald's Ana