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

Steps to Stop Yourself From Becoming Part of the Office Party Rumor MillOffice holiday parties can be fantastic opportunities for team building, networking -- and ego-crushing embarrassment. Fill a conference room with a bunch of already overworked employees, add an open bar, a few trays of messy hors d'oeuvres, and an inappropriate office romance and suddenly the potential for a career-crushing disaster is high.

There's the colleague who has just a bit too much to drink and suddenly feels a need to confide in, well, everyone. The newbie who shows up wearing a dress that leaves little to the imagination. The grumpy significant other. The creeper. The over-enthusiastic employee who is so focused on the party that she forgets it's at the office. And then there's the co-worker who dances like Elaine did on "Seinfeld":

What's your holiday-party horror story? (Don't want to get yourself in trouble? Tells us the worst incident you've heard about instead.)

Follow Yahoo! Shine on Twitter, "like" us on Facebook

Also on Shine:

• Office holiday parties and

Read More »from Office Holiday Party Disasters: What's the Worst Thing You've Witnessed?

For many of us, our smartphones are our lifelines. They are our address books and our email in-boxes, our cameras and our music playlists. We use them for work and for intensely personal business, so it's more than a little creepy to know that software pre-installed on our phone could be keeping track of -- and sharing information about -- our every move.

The Carrier IQ controversy started when security researchers discovered that, on some phones, it was acting as much more than the diagnostic tool it was supposed to be. Android developer Trevor Eckhart added fuel to the fire when he wrote a blog post detailing the kinds of things the software was keeping track of -- things like your incoming and outgoing text messages, the websites you visit when you use your smart phone's browser, and even the phone numbers you dial. In a YouTube video this week, he used his own HTC EVO 3D Android phone as a guinea pig, letting viewers watch in real-time as he rooted around under the Read More »from Carrier IQ: Is Your Smart Phone Tracking Everything You Do?

A 13-year-old boy was denied admission to a private boarding school in Pennsylvania, not because his grades aren't good enough or because he's had a troubled past, but because he is HIV positive.

The Delaware County boy has lived with HIV for his entire life. He controls the virus by taking five pills per day, plus vitamins, and sees his doctor about three times a year. Having HIV hasn't stopped him from playing sports or keeping his top spot on the honor roll, but the Milton Hershey School says point-blank that it won't admit the well-qualified boy because of his HIV-positive status. The boy, who is identified by the pseudonym Abraham Smith, is suing the school for discrimination.

On Thursday -- which was, ironically, the 23rd annual World AIDS Day, dedicated to spreading awareness about HIV and AIDS -- the school filed a request asking federal courts to approve their decision to deny admission to the boy.

"The decision to deny enrollment was a challenging one for us to make,"

Read More »from School rejects 13-year-old student because he's HIV positive

Stella "Suzie" Harville and her fiance, Ticha Chikuni. (Photo: AP)In order to "promote greater unity," a Kentucky church has voted to officially ban interracial marriages and prevent mixed-race couples from becoming members after the daughter of a member brought her fiance, who is black, to sing during services.

Stella "Suzie" Harville, a 24-year-old college student in Indiana, told WYMT-TV that she often attends the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Pike County when she's visiting her parents at home. She grew up in that church and was baptized there but is not a member herself, her father Dean Harville told the Kentucky Herald-Leader. In June, she played the piano while her finance, 29-year-old Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe who works at Georgetown College, sang the hymn "I Surrender All."

If she thought her hometown congregation would welcome her fiance with open arms, she was in for a shock: The chuch's pastor, Melvin Thompson, told them that they couldn't sing at the church again. And last weekend the congregation passed a

Read More »from Kentucky church bans interracial couples from becoming members. What year is this again?

Why can't you remember what you were looking for?How many times have you walked into a room to get something, only to promptly forget what you were looking for once you got there? We chalk it up to aging, adult ADD, or even "Mommy Brain," but it turns out that there's actually a link between walking through a doorway and short-term memory lapses, according to psychologists at the University of Notre Dame.

"Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away," said Gabriel Radvansky, whose study was published in the
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. "Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized."

In a series of three experiments, Radvansky had college students move colorful objects from one table to another. Some of them had to take an object from one room, leave it on a table in another room, and then return to the first room with a different object; a control

Read More »from What was I Looking for Again? Why We Forget Things when We Enter a Room

A new study shows that violent video games change the way guys think.Women have long complained that video games mess with their boyfriends' minds, and for years parents have worried about the long-term effects first-person shooter games and games with realistic and gratuitous violence can have on their children's brains. Now, a new study may confirm their fears: Violent video games change the way guys think and feel.

The study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America on Wednesday, shows that just one week of playing violent video games can have a measurable effect on the brains of young adult men.

"For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home," said Dr. Yang Wang, an assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "These brain regions are important for controlling

Read More »from Violent Video Games Change the Way Guys Think, Study Shows

The 12 Days of Christmas are going to cost you more this year.People rarely hand out partridges and pear trees for the holidays anymore, but if they did, they'd have to pay more for them this year. According to the latest numbers crunched by PNC Wealth Management, the Christmas Price Index -- as dictated by the song "The 12 Days of Christmas" -- has gone up 3.5 percent since 2010. And while your own true love may not require any swans a-swimming, chances are that the cost of buying everything on a modern Christmas wish list has gone up by about the same amount.

"As the economy continues to struggle, we are seeing weakness in some areas of demand within the Index," James Dunigan, managing executive of investments for PNC Wealth Management, said in a press release. "That is illustrated in the costs of the Five Gold Rings. While gold commodity prices are at or near record highs, the demand for retail gold is waning, and thus our Five Gold Rings actually dropped by 0.8 percent this year."

That makes gold rings a pretty good buy in real life, too.

Read More »from The True Cost of Christmas? More Than Last Year

Herman Cain has been accused of having a 13-year-long affair.Yet another woman has come forward to accuse Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of sexual misconduct. But this time, the issue isn't sexual harassment or a wandering hand. This time, the claim is that the former head of Godfather Pizza had a 13-year-long extramarital affair that ended just before he announced his bid for the White House. And we can't help but wonder: When it comes to potential presidents, where does one draw the line between private betrayals and public office?

"It was pretty simple," Ginger White told WAGA-TV, a Fox affiliate in Atlanta also known as FOX 5. "It wasn't complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation -- relationship."

White says that the 13-year affair began in the late 1990s in Louisville, Kentucky, when he gave a speech as president of the National Restaurant Association. They had drinks afterward, and he invited her to his hotel room, she told reporter Dale Russell.

She says

Read More »from Herman Cain's alleged 13-year-long affair: Should it matter?