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National Night: Days of post-war baby boom long gone, Singapore's fertility rate has been plummeting for years now. The government's efforts at matchmaking through the SDU have been disappointing; baby-bonuses haven't been helping. So this National Day, if the official songs aren't doing it for you, if you're further than a heartbeat to love at first sight, Mentos encourages you to kick-back and do your patriotic duty.
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The beautiful library of the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland contains over 2000 manuscripts, including hundreds from the Abbey's glory days of the 9th and 10th centuries. The library is open to the public and to scholars, and the Codices Electronici Sangallenses project is making selected codices - 436 so far - available online.
comment posted at 8:29 AM on Aug-2-12

It's just past 6am in the United Kingdom, and that means the trailer for Series 7(a) of the New Doctor Who has been released to the Internet. It follows this striking desktop image featuring many, many older model Daleks, including the Special Weapons Dalek (not seen since 1988).
comment posted at 5:01 AM on Aug-2-12

The Olympics are never without controversy and 2012 is no different. South Korea's Shin A Lam was held in the throes of perhaps the longest second ever of épée sudden death, as the clock was improperly reset with one full second remaining allowing her opponent to register a hit and knock her out of gold medal contention. Now the Badminton World Federation has accused four pairs of Olympic doubles players with "not using one's best efforts to win a match": essentially throwing their games to secure a better draw.
comment posted at 9:45 AM on Aug-1-12
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"Danny created a room where no one was afraid to speak, no one had to stick to their own specialism, no one was afraid of sounding stupid or talking out of turn. He restored us to the people we were before we made career choices – to when we were just wondering." Frank Cottrell Boyce writes about writing the London 2012 opening ceremony. (It's not the first time he's worked with Danny Boyle - they previously collaborated on the lovely children's film Millions.)
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Jul-29-12
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An ASL, queer version of "Somebody That I Used To Know". Possibly the one refreshing Gotye cover on the interwebs.
comment posted at 6:55 AM on Jul-23-12

On Friday, Baron Sebastian Coe, the conservative politician, former athlete, and Nike board member who is chair of LOCOG (the London Organizing Committee) for the 2012 games, ignited a furor when he said anyone wearing a Pepsi T-shirt is likely to be "booted out" because it would upset Coca-Cola, who is an official sponsor.
comment posted at 4:42 AM on Jul-22-12
comment posted at 4:53 AM on Jul-22-12

Woody Allen's 2011 movie Midnight in Paris tells the story of a modern-day character repeatedly finding himself in the 1920s, in a kind of temporary time travel. As it turns out, this is a real-life phenomenon known as a time slip. Perhaps the most famous documented case was from 1901, at the Palace of Versailles.
comment posted at 9:09 AM on Jul-21-12

In May new French minister caused a stir by wearing jeans to inaugral cabinet meeting. On Tuesday she wore a floral dress when addressing the Parliament.
comment posted at 12:24 AM on Jul-21-12
comment posted at 8:58 AM on Jul-21-12

"I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom." When a "die-hard conservative Republican" woman moves to Canada and encounters the universal healthcare there, hilarity ensues as cultures clash.
comment posted at 3:12 AM on Jul-20-12

How to fix your cracked iPhone glass I hope this will help you save some money if you crack your iPhone screen. Then please take the money you would have spent to go do something nice for someone.
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Jul-19-12

Graffiti from Pompeii is a collection of inscriptions found in Pompeii and published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Much of it is not unlike what you might find scrawled in a toilet stall or on a wall in present day - declarations of love, friendship, and sexual prowess; complaints about careless defecators; philosophical musings about love, life, and death; and meta discussions about the act of graffiti itself.
comment posted at 12:47 AM on Jul-20-12

"Confessions of an Ex-Mormon: A personal history of America’s most misunderstood religion." by Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air and Lost in the Meritocracy. (Via)
comment posted at 12:02 AM on Jul-18-12

The Amazing Contents of Steve Wozniak's Backpack: I usually say that my backpack weighs 50 pounds. I'm not sure but I have to carry it every step through airports. I'm sure that I'm shorter now than before and I don't walk as fast. Everything has its place in my backpack.
comment posted at 7:48 PM on Jul-17-12

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, died today at age 79. According to Covey's family, the death was due to "the residual effects of a bike accident he suffered this past April." The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People has sold more than 20 million copies since its initial publication in 1989, and is one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential Business Management Books." 7 Habits popularized the concepts of "win/win," "interdependence," and "paradigm shift" in self-help and managerial vocabularies.
comment posted at 11:07 PM on Jul-16-12

Our solar system in one very long infographic.
comment posted at 8:41 AM on Jul-16-12

"We thought we were hosts like the queen is at a posh garden party, when actually we're hosts in the way that John Hurt is in Alien." As the Olympics approach, the scandals, inconveniences, mistakes and problems keep mounting, ranging from the frustrating through the comic to the tragic. For your appreciation, a picture of the London Olympics 2012.
comment posted at 3:04 AM on Jul-16-12
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Indian Dubstep is a fun little dance routine by Gerardam, two brothers from India, Johnnathan and Joshua Gerard. Via Ministry of Manipulation, who say, "... this is what happens when two clowns become excellent dancers." Johnnathan composed the music.
comment posted at 11:05 PM on Jul-15-12

What is the probability that you are dreaming right now? asks Jan Westerhoff, author of Oxford University Press' Reality: A Very Short Introduction (large excerpts at Google Books). Westerhoff explains that since it's accepted that about 20% of time sleeping is REM (dreaming) sleep, if you sleep 8 hours a night, then 10% of your "conscious" time is actually dream time.*
comment posted at 7:51 AM on Jul-15-12

Banksters this story stretches far beyond Britain. Barclays is the first bank in the spotlight because it offered to co-operate fully with regulators. It will not be the last. Investigations into the fixing of LIBOR and other rates are also under way in America, Canada and the EU. Between them, these probes cover many of the biggest names in finance: the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Employees, from New York to Tokyo, are implicated.
The rotten heart of finance. A scandal over key interest rates is about to go global.
Naomi Wolf: The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. This global financial fraud and its gatekeepers.
comment posted at 8:19 PM on Jul-15-12
comment posted at 8:33 PM on Jul-15-12

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. The Obama campaign has been running ads attacking him for outsourcing while at Bain. Mr. Romney claims this unfair, he says "he left the firm in February 1999, but a review of public records shows that his authority lingered for three more years as Bain repeatedly listed him on government filings as the man in charge".
comment posted at 1:10 AM on Jul-14-12
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Does it really matter if Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated? Some people say that you can't be chairman CEO and president of a company and not be responsible for what it does, even if they invested in aborted fetuses.
comment posted at 7:07 AM on Jul-13-12

"The last European monopoly, in any area, is crumbling. This recently-opened transfer window has underscored, more than anything else, that it is no longer the European football clubs’ birthright to sign the greatest players in the world." -- Leander Schaerlaeckens on the growing clout of Chinese, Brazilian, and (WTF?) Indian soccer leagues in grabbing the top talent
comment posted at 2:01 AM on Jul-12-12
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Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney just took his case to the NAACP. This satirical look at Mitt's prep session.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Jul-11-12

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”

Daniel Tosh has more or less apologized after a Tumblr user posted a friend's experience at one of his recent shows. But the controversy has now somehow drawn in Louis C.K., who posted an apparent message of support for Tosh on Twitter the same week a date-rape-themed episode of Louie aired on FX. C.K. has also broached heckling on Louie [NSFW], and had previously defended Tracy Morgan in a similarly charged situation.
comment posted at 5:38 AM on Jul-11-12

It's been a big week for high speed rail proponents and infrastructure hawks. This week, the California Legislature approved startup funds for the $68 billion high-speed line linking San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento and points in between. Today, Amtrak unvelied its $151 billion plan (PDF) for the Northeast Corridor. Both will take decades to complete. Detractors worry about exploding costs and operating losses, while supporters stress jobs, mobility, and international competitiveness. Europe and Japan have lapped us a few times over. However, those who want to do this quickly and cheaply might want to take a lesson from once-ambitious China.
comment posted at 6:41 PM on Jul-10-12

What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
comment posted at 5:47 AM on Jul-10-12

When was the last time you finished a video game? The case for movie-length, narrative video games.
comment posted at 7:31 AM on Jul-10-12

The Ones We've Lost: The Student Loan Debt Suicides: "I'm an advocate for people who are struggling to pay their student loans, and I've been receiving suicidal comments for over two years and occasionally receiving reports of actual suicides".
comment posted at 7:20 AM on Jul-10-12

As reported in this article in the Guardian, a US appeals court recently ruled that confidential oral history interviews given by former members of Northern Irish paramilitary groups to researchers from Boston College are not confidential.
comment posted at 9:22 AM on Jul-9-12

After spending $5 billion dollars to develop the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), the US Army is abandoning the grey-green pixelated camouflage because it has routinely failed to hide soldiers from view in nearly every environment it has been tried in, and considers adopting the UCP "a colossal mistake" and a "fiasco".
comment posted at 9:39 PM on Jul-8-12

During the Global LGBT Workplace Summit of July 5 and 6, 2012 in London, Google announced the "Legalize Love" campaign . Launched in Poland and Singapore and eventually intended for every country where the company has an office, it will focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist.
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"At PSFK Conference NYC, Vikram Gandhi spoke about his latest movie Kumaré - The True Story of A False Prophet. While he was born in New Jersey, the film director spoke about how he had been noticing how the Indian-heritage culture he had experienced as he grew up, was being used by Americans and other Westerners to help solve their emotional and spiritual issues. To explore this idea further he dressed up as a guru, created a backstory with YouTube video and website, spoke like his grandmother and recruited followers in Arizona. What's unique is that throughout the film is that he tells everyone he was an illusion and asks his followers to look in a mirror to solve their own problems."
comment posted at 9:21 PM on Jul-8-12

But it is already too late. CNN has been carefully orchestrating its transformation into a shockingly efficient news distribution company. They have been planning to saturate every screen in reach with this story as fast as possible, and the producer’s initial go-ahead pulled the trigger. On the air, Wolf Blitzer is sending the coverage to the Courthouse steps. And as planned the reporter is putting her phone down to go on the air, which cuts herself off from the only CNN employee with access to the opinion. We’re getting wildly differing assessments: SCOTUSblog compiles first-hand accounts of the minutes between 10:06 and 10:15am on June 28, when CNN and FOX misreported and retracted that the mandate had been struck down.
comment posted at 12:03 AM on Jul-10-12

The BBC's new Olympics 2012 ad (full 2m40s version; SLYT) is a CGI masterpiece for the video gamer era. (best viewed with YouTube HD resolution settings on)
comment posted at 11:21 AM on Jul-7-12