September 14, 2009
hi cutie ur realy sexy. msn?
How (not) to write an online-dating message, based on a sample of 500,000 "first contact" messages. [more inside]
Job perk: graze your cow in Harvard Yard
Harvard theologian grazes his cow in the Yard. Harvey Cox, recently retired as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, has exercised his customary right as holder of the oldest endowed chair in America to graze a cow in Harvard Yard. It's hard to tell who had a more unusual day: the professor, author of influential books like The Secular City and The Feast of Fools, or the cow, named Faith for the day, on a day visit from her home at The Farm School in Atholl, Massachusetts.
Religious Studies 101: A Handful of Thorns
Religious Studies 101: A Handful of Thorns - A Radio Play Crossover Event (Intro, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3). Producer and scriptwriter Greg Weisman unites the characters of the critically acclaimed animated series Gargoyles and The Spectacular Spider-Man in a script originally performed at the 2009 Gathering of the Gargoyles fan convention. Please be warned that the script contains spoilers for the aforementioned shows. [more inside]
High Jump Innovator
The Revolutionary "Consider, then, the Fosbury Flop, an upside-down and backward leap over a high bar, an outright—an outrageous!—perversion of acceptable methods of jumping over obstacles. An absolute departure in form and technique. It was an insult to suggest, after all these aeons, that there had been a better way to get over a barrier all along. And if there were, it ought to have come from a coach, a professor of kinesiology, a biomechanic, not an Oregon teenager of middling jumping ability."
Hopefully they won't screw it up.
Discussed several times in the green, Mint.com announced today that the company will be acquired by Intuit.
Time of his life.
After a short battle with pancreatic cancer, Patrick Swayze has died. Having starred in numerous movies throughout his career, he's probably best known for his Roles in The Outsiders, Dirty Dancing and Ghost. [more inside]
Crystal Lee Sutton
Crystal Lee Sutton was fired for trying to organise a union. The incident was made into the 1979 film Norma Rae.
Last week she died at the age of 68.
Iraq's New Surge: Gay Killings
The lynching of gays in Iraq is on the rise, according to ambassador Christopher Hill's testimony before the house today."Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi's group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone." WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE, POSSIBLY NSFW
Ames Research Center Image Library
Chrome megaphone barks / Autumn presents First Alpha / The Spring of Haiku
BeOS has been reborn a number of times, often without significant success but things are looking up. Starting in 1991 with the production of an all-in-one hardware/software home multimedia computer (the BeBox, the first of which was available to the public in 1994), the possible purchase by Apple was at the height of success for BeOS (instead Apple chose to buy NeXT in 1996), and the low point of being when BeOS was bought by Palm for $11 million in 2001, where it became part of the Palm OS Cobalt that nobody wanted. In 2002, news of BeOS' rebirth as yellowTAB came out, with another shift as yellowTAB became magnussoft ZETA, which finally folded in 2007, as their figures were far below expectations. From here, fans and enthusiasts took over, with a number of attempts to re-create BeOS from scratch. Most failed, but Haiku (previously) has survived, and today they announced that the first alpha version of the Haiku operating system is available for download (direct download or through torrent), and a preliminary review sounds positive. [more inside]
"I've got two kidneys, and he needs one..."
Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a genetic disorder affecting 600,000 Americans and 12.5 million people worldwide. Large cysts grow on the kidneys causing urinary problems, elevated blood pressure, and eventually renal failure. Although there is no cure for PKD, patients are generally good candidates for kidney transplants. For patients on Medicare, the transplants are covered, but the needed anti-rejection medication is not after 3 years. The health care bill [pdf] currently in the House contains a provision to change that. [more inside]
The Ghost Fleet of the Recession
A gigantic fleet of semi-abandoned cargo and container ships has been photographed east of Singapore. Meanwhile, the ship-breaking yards at Alang are booming, and the shipping industry is looking for ways to weather the storm. As the recession slashes demand, it seems the shipping industry may be heading for dry dock...
Dear President Bush,
Demanding that you alone be held accountable and no one else be scapegoated would itself be an act of honor. It would draw a line between the past and the future in the same way that Lincoln’s defense of his brief suspensions of habeas corpus conceded Congress’s sole right to remove this core constitutional provision, but defended his action as a necessary emergency measure because a mass rebellion “had subverted the whole of the laws.” You do not deserve to go down in history as the president who brought torture into the American system and refused to take responsibility for it..An Open Letter to George W Bush
Gentlemen, you can't fight here! This is the War Room!
1995 Contractor Study Finds that U.S. Analysts Exaggerated Soviet Aggressiveness and Understated Moscow's Fears of a U.S. First Strike. During a 1972 command post exercise, leaders of the Kremlin listened to a briefing on the results of a hypothetical war with the United States. A U.S. attack would kill 80 million Soviet citizens and destroy 85 percent of the country's industrial capacity. According to the recollections of a Soviet general who was present, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev "trembled" when he was asked to push a button, asking Soviet defense minister Grechko "this is definitely an exercise?" This story appears in a recently released two-volume study on Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985, prepared in 1995 by the Pentagon contractor BDM Corporation, and published today for the first time by the National Security Archive. [more inside]
Toxic Waters
Viktor Suvorov on the beginnings of World War II
Suvorov’s argument is simple. Stalin cleverly lured Hitler into war by offering to divide Poland. This act, Stalin knew, would prompt Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Stalin expected to pick up the pieces. - Eric Margolis [more inside]
A Conversation with Vanessa Winship
High quality antique maps of London & British Isles
MAPCO's aim is to provide genealogists, students and historians with free access to high quality scans of rare and beautiful antique maps and views. The site displays a variety of highly collectable 18th and 19th century maps and plans of London and the British Isles... [more inside]
Size Matters (Sorta Kinda)
If you want a vaginal orgasm, according to a new study size does matter. But is there a hidden agenda behind the study? [more inside]
In Wal-Mart's Image
How Wal-Mart's values are shaping America's economy -- and why this is a very bad thing:
Around the time that the young Sam Walton opened his first stores, John Kennedy redeemed a presidential campaign promise by persuading Congress to extend the minimum wage to retail workers, who had until then not been covered by the law. Walton was furious. Now the goddamn federal government was telling him he had to pay his workers the $1.15 hourly minimum. Walton's response was to divide up his stores into individual companies whose revenues didn't exceed the $250,000 threshold. Eventually, though, a federal court ruled that this was simply a scheme to avoid paying the minimum wage, and he was ordered to pay his workers the accumulated sums he owed them, plus a double-time penalty thrown in for good measure. Wal-Mart cut the checks, but Walton also summoned the employees at a major cluster of his stores to a meeting. "I'll fire anyone who cashes the check," he told them.
Green Revolution
Many UK FreeCycle branches have suddenly broken away from the American parent, as a response to what they see as increasingly centralised (even dictatorial) management. Apparantly this has been boiling for a while. Now, they are calling themselves Freegle. [more inside]
"He had stolen a bound devil from a priest in Franconia, using it to practice sorcery. He later sold in for five guilders."
No collection of Folklore and Mythology would be complete without Anti-Semitic Legends, tales of infanticide and changelings, the Christianizing of Faeries, or incest. (previously, previously)
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