November 2011
37 posts
5 tags
October 2011
68 posts
3 tags
Girls given equal rights to British throne under... →
Laura Smith-Spark, CNN:
Sons and daughters of British monarchs will have an equal right to the throne under changes to the United Kingdom’s succession laws agreed to Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
…
The constitutional changes would mean a first-born girl has precedence over a younger brother. They also mean that a future British monarch would be allowed to marry a...
3 tags
Swimming-baby-chasing-a-fishhook-with-a-dollar-bill... →
Fantastic. Explains a lot about Generation Y in general. Also, now’s a good a time as any to remind people to whip out their copies of Generations and Millenials Rising.
4 tags
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks? →
Gwen Sharp of Sociological Images posted about a ScotTissue ad from the 1930s. It’s silly and I love it.
Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?
Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort.
Try wiping your hands six days a week on harsh, cheap paper towels or awkward, unsanitary roller towels — and maybe you, too, would grumble.
Spoiler:...
1 tag
“[Shortstop Elio] Chacon… was eager but not very talented. And he kept running...”
– Roger Angell on the 1962 New York Mets, the losingest major league team in the modern era, as quoted by Geoffrey C. Ward in Baseball: An Illustrated History.
3 tags
285 Indian Girls Change Name from "Unwanted" →
Chaya Babu of the AP with a story that’s great but then also terrible in that it happened at all:
Hundreds of Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed...
3 tags
MegaBus driver arrested for driving drunk →
The title doesn’t do this justice — bizarre story. Glad no one was hurt.
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
Jewish Problems →
Crazy paper by Tanya Khovanova and Alexey Radul on arXiv on Jewish discrimination in Russia:
In the summer of 1975, while I was in a Soviet math camp preparing to compete in the International Math Olympiad on behalf of the Soviet Union, my fellow team members and I were approached for help by Valera Senderov, a math teacher in one of Moscow’s best special math schools.
The Mathematics...
3 tags
2 tags
2 tags
World Scrabble Championships competitors asked to... →
The Associated Press with some Earth-shattering news out of Warsaw, Poland:
Brian Dede, the event coordinator, said a referee had to intervene when opponents Edward Martin from Britain and Chollapat Itthi-Aree from Thailand noticed a missing tile during the last draw of their match.
He said that led to a search on and under the table, and that both players “were asked to show the contents of...
3 tags
Gadhafi Put on Display in Shopping Center Freezer →
Kim Gamel and Rami al-Shaheibi for the AP:
Moammar Gadhafi’s blood-streaked body was on display in a commercial freezer at a shopping center Friday as Libyan authorities argued about what to do with his remains and questions deepened over official accounts of the longtime dictator’s death.
…
In Misrata, residents crowded into long lines to get a chance to view the body of Gadhafi,...
3 tags
Bleach, Pine-Sol thrown in fight at Baltimore Co.... →
Hanah Cho and Steve Kilar, The Baltimore Sun:
A woman poured bleach and Pine-Sol on a Walmart customer in southern Baltimore County, police said, in an incident that closed down the store for several hours Saturday and sent 19 to area hospitals.
…
The Baltimore County Fire Department’s fire and medic units, who arrived on the scene just after 11 a.m., requested the hazardous materials...
3 tags
3 tags
Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying →
Jared Keller for The Atlantic:
… a new application developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College that’s designed to take a photograph of a total stranger and, using the facial recognition software PittPatt, track down their real identity in a matter of minutes. Facial recognition isn’t that new — the rudimentary technology has been around since the late 1960s...
3 tags
4 tags
80 percent of US boys use condoms the first time →
The AP:
A surprising 80 percent of teenage boys say they are using condoms the first time they have sex, a government survey found in a powerful sign that decades of efforts to change young people’s sexual behavior are taking hold.
But another promising trend — a drop since the 1980s in the number of teenagers having sex — has leveled off.
…
The study, released Wednesday, is based on...
3 tags
Second Bush-Era Gun-Smuggling Probe →
The AP:
A second Bush administration gun-trafficking investigation has surfaced using the same controversial tactic for which congressional Republicans have been criticizing the Obama administration.
The tactic, called “gun walking,” is already under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by congressional Republicans, who have criticized the...
1 tag
3 tags
Dr. Thunder is not a real doctor →
I was reading about Dr. Pepper knock-offs on Wikipedia and found this gem, DR. THUNDER. Check out their advertising campaign:
The label of Dr Thunder has recently been redesigned to say that “You’ve never been deep, until you’ve been Dr Thunder deep.”
Oh God.
2 tags
Firing contest by boss leads employees to quit →
Clark Kauffman, The Des Moines Register:
William Ernst, 57, the owner of a Bettendorf-based chain of convenience stores called QC Mart, sent all of his employees a memo in March, outlining a contest in which the workers were encouraged to participate. The memo read:
“New Contest – Guess The Next Cashier Who Will Be Fired!!!
“To win our game, write on a piece of paper the name of the next...
3 tags
2 tags
The Big Idea: Perennial Grains →
Robert Kunzig, National Geographic:
Humans made an unwitting but fateful choice 10,000 years ago as we started cultivating wild plants: We chose annuals. All the grains that feed billions of people today—wheat, rice, corn, and so on—come from annual plants, which sprout from seeds, produce new seeds, and die every year. “The whole world is mostly perennials,” says USDA geneticist...
2 tags
NASA testing suitcase-sized nuclear fission... →
Tina Casey, writing for TPM’s Idea Lab blog:
James Werner, who manages reactor technologies for the Space Nuclear Systems division at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, described the new system Sunday at the 242nd Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver.
Describing the new technology at the conference, Werner said: “People would never recognize the fission power...
3 tags
"The Real Third Rail of American Politics:... →
Robert F. Moss for the Los Angeles Times on the role of delicious, delicious barbecue in American politics:
… Rufus Edmisten, who ran for governor of North Carolina in 1984. Late in the campaign, after eating barbecue at rallies three times a day for almost a year, he broke down at a public feed in Raleigh. “We haven’t had any of the damnable barbecue,” he proclaimed....
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
A Christian plot for domination? →
Michelle Goldberg writing in the The Daily Beast about Dominionism, “a fringe fundamentalist movement … which says Christians should rule the world.” And which apparently has ties to Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. What.
Not from The Onion, I swear.
4 tags
Rider on the Storm →
Damn Interesting is updating again, which is neat. Here’s Alan Bellows:
Unable to restart his engine, and struggling to keep his craft from entering a near-supersonic nose dive, Rankin grasped the two emergency eject handles. He was mindful of his extreme altitude, and of the serious discomfort that would accompany the sudden decompression of an ejection; but although he lacked a pressure...
2 tags
4 tags
Police arrest man for child pornography after... →
Kim Hutcherson, CNN:
A central California man has been arrested for possession of child pornography, thanks to a tip from burglars who robbed the man’s property, authorities said.
Last month, a juvenile and a 19-year-old illegally accessed the property of Kraig Stockard, 54, of Delhi, California, according to a statement from Deputy Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff’s...
1 tag
Eric B volunteers at a free studio for Newark... →
I teared up a bit. Be sure not to miss the story of how the program got its name.
3 tags
Spain's round-the-clock solar power plant →
Solar power is pretty awesome, except for that whole thing where it only works when the sun is out.
Well, that used to be the case, but Al Goodman of CNN has news for you:
Located just outside the quaint village of Fuentes de Andalucía, Gemasolar bills itself as the world’s first commercial-scale concentrated solar power plant (CSP) that uses molten salts receiver technology.
2,650 large...
3 tags
Pioneering feminist answers questions →
Gloria Steinem gave a press conference to promote the documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words. Alex Strachan, writing for Postmedia News, recounts what happened:
The first question was a fireball. The bloggers in the room may not have understood it, but it certainly got their attention. A lot of women in the room owe their positions to Steinem, the questioner said. Steinem broke down barriers for...
4 tags
A Changed Russia Arches an Eyebrow at Putin’s... →
Ellen Barry, The New York Times:
It was just a typical summer outing for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin: Clad in a wet suit and fitted with an oxygen tank, he dived to the bottom of a bay and retrieved two ceramic jugs that dated to the sixth century A.D.
The scene, captured by a camera crew and broadcast on the nightly news, cast Mr. Putin as a broad-chested Renaissance man, just the thing...
3 tags
The Shoulders of Giants →
Dana Horn, writing in Science about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered that the Sun was made mostly of hydrogen — but is not given proper credit.
Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. Even today, when it has become fashionable for...
3 tags
FBI seeks to update definition of rape →
Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun:
The FBI is moving to change the federal definition of rape for the first time in 80 years, which authorities and women’s advocacy groups hope will lead to improved tracking of the crime and an attitude shift among investigators.
Critics have maintained that the current definition is archaic, too narrow and leaves crimes uncounted in police statistics,...
1 tag
Chinese driverless car takes successful trip →
Hao Nan, China Daily:
The car, a Hongqi HQ3 with full intellectual property rights developed by the National University of Defense Technology, traveled in daytime, taking only three hours and 20 minutes to finish its trip under full computer and sensor control.
“We only set a maximum speed and then left everything to the car itself,” said Dai Bin, a professor in the research...
3 tags
My Neighbor, Steve Jobs →
In August, a neighbor of Steve Jobs, Lisen Stromberg, wrote a piece about being Steve’s neighbor:
It was at Halloween not long after when I realized he actually knew my name (yes, my name!). He and his wife put on a darn scary haunted house (to be specific, a haunted garden). He was sitting on the walkway, dressed like Frankenstein. As I walked by with my son, Steve smiled and said, “Hi...
3 tags
3 tags
2 tags
