Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Arnold Schwarzenegger offers up plenty of sordid details in his new autobiography.In his new autobiography, "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story," Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about how his wife, Maria Shriver, confronted him about his secret love child -- and how he begged her not to leave him.

Related: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver break up. Were politics to blame?

On January 4, 2011, Schwarzenegger and Shriver went to a therapist together -- an appointment she requested the day after his term as governor of California ended. He thought the counseling session was to help the couple cope with the transition from public to private life.

Instead, "The minute we sat down, the therapist turned to me and said, 'Maria wanted to come here today and to ask about a child -- whether you fathered a child with your housekeeper Mildred'," Schwarzenegger writes in his book, which comes out next week. "I told the therapist, 'It's true'."

Related: Arnold's Mistress gives first interview

Years earlier, Shriver had asked him if the boy was his, and he had

Devon Carrow can work with his first grade classmates thanks to the VGo robot. (Photo: Derek Gee/Buffalo News)When Devon Carrow was a baby, a cookie-coated kiss from his mom made him break out in hives. An accidental encounter with peanuts at his godparents' home three months later landed him in the hospital, under an oxygen tent. His food allergies are so severe that he doesn't even have to eat something in order to have a life-threatening reaction -- just breathing in trace amounts of an allergen is enough to send him into anaphylactic shock.

"He's almost like the boy in a bubble," his mother, Rene Carrow, told the Buffalo News. "I try to let him do some things. I want him to have the best life he could have."

Related: Is a PB&J the worst weapon a kid can bring to school?

Now seven years old, Devon's severe allergies mean that he can't leave the house for long. If he goes to the movies, his mom has to cover the seats with their own sheets and bring popcorn from home in order to avoid an allergic reaction. Perfumes and fabric softeners cause his throat to swell closed; friends have to take

Lori Popkewitz Alper is petitioning Disney to stop using toxin in its school products.A recent study has found high levels of toxic chemicals in children's school supplies -- levels so high that, if they were toys instead of backpacks, lunchboxes, and raincoats, they'd be banned by the U.S. government. And one Massachusetts mom is fighting back with a petition to make these products safer.

The chemicals, called phthalates, are commonly used to soften plastic and make vinyl. They're in everything from food packaging to plastic bottles, and are also used to make household cleaners and soaps smell good longer. According to a 2012 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, exposure to phthalates can change how the muscle cells in your heart function; exposure has also been linked to increased rates of asthma, early puberty, ADHD, diabetes, cancer, birth defects, and obesity. Children and pregnant women are especially at risk.

Related: Top 5 safer back-to-school shopping tips

The study, "Hidden Hazards: Toxic Chemicals Inside Children's Vinyl Back-to-School

Do you use emoticons?The young folks may not believe it, but emoticons -- those silly strings of symbols that are supposed to illustrate emotions -- have been around for 30 years.

Experts attribute their creation to a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who, in 1982, told his students that the class needed a way to label jokes online.

"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways," Scott Fahlman wrote on an online bulletin board (the precursor to what we call forums today).

PHOTOS: Pets pretending to be emoticons

But some point to a New York Times transcript of an 1862 speech by Abraham Lincoln, in which "applause and laughter" is followed by a winky smile ";)".

("It looks to me like a typo," Fahlman told New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee in 2009. "I can't imagine an editor putting that in and meaning, 'Ha ha,' trying to emphasize what Lincoln had said. That goes beyond the bounds of editorial comment in a piece of reporting

Would the real Duchess of Cambridge please stand up? Heidi Agan, 32, looks so much like Kate Middleton that the mom of two decided to quit her waitressing job at Frankie and Bennie's, a TGIF-like '50s style restaurant chain in England, to work full-time as a Royal look-alike. The move made for a significant bump in pay: From $9.75 an hour to about $1,050 per appearance. Take a look at some side-by-side images of Agan and her Royal doppelganger. -- Lylah M. Alphonse, Y! Shine Senior Editor

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Ann and Mitt Romney campaign in Nashua, N.H., earlier in September.After she's embraced the political spotlight and talked at length about what a warm and loving person her husband really is, Mitt Romney's latest comments from the secretly taped fundraising dinner in Florida seem like a bit of a slap in the face: "We use Ann sparingly right now," he said, "so that people don't get tired of her."

In his defense, Romeny -- who also derided 47 percent of the country for being dependent on the government and told the crowd that "my job is not to worry about those people -- said his remarks were "not elegantly stated" and "off-the-cuff." But in the recording, he sounds like he thinks it's inevitable that voters would get tired of hearing his wife talk.

It doesn't help that she's been tasked with humanizing her husband and reaching out to women voters but forbidden from actually addressing any big issues. In an interview with KWQC news in Iowa on September 7, she answered questions about gay marriage, birth control, and employer-provided health insurance

A Rhode Island school district has banned father-daughter dances. Was it the right move, or just political correctness gone wrong?In an effort to comply with state laws about gender discrimination, a Rhode Island school district has banned father-daughter dances and mother-son baseball games after a single mom complained that her daughter wasn't able to attend a dance.

Related: WATCH: Awesome Father-Daughter Wedding Dance Goes Viral

The mother filed a complaint with the Rhode Island branch of the American Civil Liberties Union last May, saying that her child felt excluded from the dance because she did not have a father figure to take her. The dance was a longstanding event run by a parent-teacher organization.

"I think when schools tell girls 'You love dances' and boys 'You love baseball games,' I think that is going too far," Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steven Brown told talk-radio station WPRO-FM. "That is the whole point of having laws and policies to say public schools should not be the business of really encouraging such blatant stereotypes about what girls like and what boys like."

Related: No

The cult-favorite McRib sandwich won't be available until late December this year. (photo: McDonalds)It has gained a cult following since it was first introduced in 1981, but fans of McDonald's McRib sandwich are going to have to wait a lot longer to satisfy their cravings. Though they're usually on the menu sometime in October, according to AdAge, this year's McRib won't make an appearance until late December.

Related: How to make perfect McDonald's-style French fries at home

Inspired by the pulled pork sandwiches he ate in Charleston, South Carolina, McDonald's first executive chef Rene Arend created the sauce-slathered boneless pork patty in 1981, just two years after the debut of his other big invention, the Chicken McNugget.

"The McNuggets were so well received that every franchise wanted them," Arend told Maxim magazine in 2009. "There wasn't a system to supply enough chicken. We had to come up with something to give the other franchises as a new product So the McRib came about because of the shortage of chickens."

Though it tested well in the Midwest, the McRib -- which is