September 6, 2012
"I just do love winning gold. I really do. That's the best colour."
In January 2003, Esther Vergeer, a 21-year old Dutch wheelchair tennis player lost her singles match to Daniela Di Toro in the quarter-finals of the Sydney International. What no one knew at the time was that this was the end of an era. Now 31, Vergeer hasn't lost a singles match since. The world's most dominant athlete in an individual sport, she's going for her 470th consecutive victory today, in the gold medal match at the Paralympics. [more inside]
Her Rights at Work
The Political Persecution of Australia’s First Female Prime Minister "Can it really be the case that a tax – a carbon tax – could spur so many people to such levels of hatred? I find that impossible to believe, so I have to conclude that the persecution of Julia Gillard has to be about something else."
Warning - some text and imagery may be NSFW or offensive - a "Vanilla" version is available
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Howard Cooper has owned the only VW (and now Porsche and Honda) dealership in Ann Arbor, Michigan, since 1972. At 83 he finally decided to retire, selling the dealership.
With 89 employees counting on their jobs, he turned down offers for a higher amount in order to sell to a company that agreed to keep the current employees on, nobody can afford to lose a job in Michigan right now!
And then, he walked into the dealership this week and distributed checks to his employees, in the amount of $1,000 for each year they had been employed. For some of them this amount was almost $30,000.
What The Fakht?
"I Want Fakht You" is a semi-show-stopping musical number in the new Hindi comedy/fantasy film "Joker" (official trailer), a rather odd movie (by Bollywood standards) about what happened after the Inmates literally started running the Asylum (plus a rocket scientist, some post-colonial history, a media circus and maybe aliens!).
It MUST be noted that the word "Fakht" is Hindi for "Just", so the lyric is "I Want Just You", but the audio may still be NSFW for clueless Anglophones.
It MUST be noted that the word "Fakht" is Hindi for "Just", so the lyric is "I Want Just You", but the audio may still be NSFW for clueless Anglophones.
Melinda Gates and investing in women's health
Baby's on Fire
Following much speculation Amazon has refreshed the hardware for it's Kindle range, including the Kindle Paperwhite (featuring a "flattened out fibreoptic display") and an updated version of the sold out Kindle Fire and a new 8.9 Inch Kindle Fire HD. Earlier Kobo announced their new range, including a Kindle Fire like tablet. Between this, speculation that the Surface RT will have an astonishingly low price and rumors of a 7" iPad coming soon (probably to be announced sometime after Apple's September 12th iPhone 5 event) is the window of opportunity for stock Android tablets closing?
Two men, four surnames
"Anyone who finds David Foster Wallace a literary genius has got to be included in the Literary Doucebag-Fools [sic] Pantheon ... I continue to find David Foster Wallace the most tedious, overrated, tortured, pretentious writer of my generation ... DFW is the best example of a contemporary male writer lusting for a kind of awful greatness that he simply wasn't able to achieve. A fraud." Bret Easton Ellis has been savagely criticising the late David Foster Wallace on Twitter. [more inside]
All stories are mine. The whole world’s mine.
The first performance of "Purple Rain"
Wendy Melvoin is fresh from high school. She is a wearing a V-necked sleeveless top, and patterned shorts. She is playing the first chords of a new song on her purple guitar, opening chords that she wrote, a circular motif with a chorus effect. Wendy is nineteen and she has the high cheekbones and diffident confidence of a Hollywood upbringing. She half-smiles at the faces that crowd close to the low club stage. This is Wendy’s first gig with the new band, and the song she is playing is “Purple Rain,” and nobody in the audience has ever heard “Purple Rain” before because this is the night that Prince and the Revolution record the song.
The Slow Web Movement
Timely not real-time.
Rhythm not random.
Moderation not excess.
Knowledge not information.
These are a few of the many characteristics of The Slow Web.
"That was like a speed bump for him"
On September 15, 2001, at the American Memorial 500, Champ Car driver Alex Zanardi lost both legs, and 70 percent of his blood, in a horrific crash (around 1:40, not for the squeamish). Yesterday, he won gold in the 2012 Paralympics. [more inside]
ENCODE: the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements
In 2001, we learned the sequence of our genome; now, we have amassed a vast amount of knowledge about what those sequences actually do. Yesterday, the data from the ENCODE project went live. [more inside]
There is no minimum safe exposure level for any form of asbestos fibres, according to the World Health Organization.
More Australians have died from asbestos poisoning than died during the First World War so the Australian Government has just announced the creation of the Office of Asbestos Safety following the receipt of the Asbestos Management Review (pdf).
Its aim to to complete the removal of all asbestos from Australian buildings by 2030.
Asbestos is a global issue, and while Australia is keen to eliminate its use Canada is still mining and exporting the toxic substance which keeps turning up everywhere. [more inside]
How To Make Foreign Friends
How To Make Foreign Friends You can still mix with Americans. Imagination is a powerful thing. You can have a taste of Canada and all those creamy countries whose Visa’s you have coveted. All here in Nigeria. Granted, the foreigners who come here may not always be the cream of the lot, but beggars cannot be choosers. You will manage the ones here in Abuja. You will enjoy their company so thoroughly that your Visa rejections will cease to hurt. After all, is it not people that make a place? My job is to help you learn how to mix with and enjoy the company of foreigners from creamy countries, right here in Nigeria.
Bill Clinton's remarkable skill
What are the secrets of former American President Bill Clinton noted oratory? Is it the writing, the body language or his unique human touch? Whatever it is, his gift for speeches was on full display at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. [more inside]
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Email stress test: Experiment unplugs workers for 5 days — Slave to your email? Wonder what would happen if you had to do without it?
Freddie Mercury: Out on Stage, Brown in the Closet
"Take everything you know and imagine about Freddie Mercury: the iconic British rock star, the philandering partier, the serial maker of testosteroned-anthems, and flip it around to something less familiar: Farrokh Bulsara, a demure, bucktoothed Indian boy in a Bombay boarding school, listening to Lata Mangeshkar, playing cricket." -- Janaki Challa writes about the contradiction in the openly gay image of Freddie Mercury the performer and his much more private cultural identity off it.
Turns out, celebrities are bullies too.
Comedians are using their fans for co-ordinated safety in numbers bullying. Simon Pegg, Ricky Gervais and Noel Fielding [...] have used their combined follower count of just under 6 million to bully people – Gervais in particular does so repeatedly – and I’m sick of the fact that they’re not called to account for it. You will have heard plenty about “trolls and haters” in the wider media, but very little about celebrities endorsing and directing this behaviour.
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