Two offbeat items for the day.
Treerats, a two minute film by Sam Driscoll, features a 3D squirrel band with astonishingly well produced special effects. We don't need big studios anymore!
Lindsay Lohan (The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) on a Saturday Night Live sketch playing everybody's favourite witch, Hermione Granger. Warning: you might get distracted by a certain something in the clip. She's 17! =P
Saw this site at a friend's blog. Heh. Found it pretty interesting.
I guess Cinderella has Novercaphobia- Fear of your step-mother
A few other interesting ones are:
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
(so scary... =_=)
Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons
(What on earth are Walloons?)
Syngenesophobia- Fear of relatives
(They are pretty scary sometimes ya?)
Peladophobia- Fear of bald people
(Ian Gordon anyone?)
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words
(I'm scared of the word itself!)
Geniophobia- Fear of chins
(lol! I would suggest growing a beard)
Dextrophobia- Fear of objects at the right side of the body
(This is weird.....let's take object A for example. If said object is taken to the left side of the body, would the person still be afraid of object A?)
In a world where privacy is vanishing see whats in-store. Sealed into a shop window for a fortnight, four intrepid
art-stronauts will transfer their entire lives to the high street in a 24 hours a day, non-stop incubation event.
Without a curtain in sight, watch them eat, wash, cook, sleep and entertain..No one would have thought that life could be so interesting. Find out what its like to go beyond the pane barrier and speak to them each day by phone, fax, email or web site, the addresses and numbers are on the windows.
Both of them together? Does this mean Dennis is going to run for presidency on a third ticket? Haha, what strange bedfellows.. But I suppose not, maybe just to let more people hear more of his views, but more power to Dennis! Hope the Democratic Convention chooses Dennis.. lol
Natural Law Party
____________
'00 Green nominee / consumer activist Ralph Nader (NL), Michal Dplato (NL), Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (NL), author Christina "Chris" Rosetti (NL),
Some offbeat news from Reuters.
A pair of Pentecostal ministers grounded a flight leaving Buffalo, New York after they frightened passengers by declaring the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were a good reason to pray.
One preacher told fellow passengers as the Continental Airlines plane taxied down the runway, "Your last breath on earth is the first one in heaven as long as you are born again and have Jesus in your heart," according to FBI spokesman Paul Moskal.
Passengers on the Wednesday flight to Newark, New Jersey told a flight attendant, who alerted the plane's captain, officials said. The captain turned the plane around.
"They were sincere in their beliefs and were not malicious," Moskal said by telephone from Buffalo. But "in the context of 9/11 it may not have been the best way to promote their religion."
Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives
I think I had a discussion with J over the icq over the issue of same sex marriages quite a long time back. I was undecided then but gradually found myself drifting towards the proponent camp.
As in the case of Brown Vs Board of Education, the movement against same sex marriages is another case of discrimination and segregation. In my opinion, religious stuff aside, it’s a civil rights issue.
Another article in the Economist: The case for gay marriage also talked about the issue of civil rights.
Mr Bush says that he is acting to protect “the most fundamental institution of civilisation” from what he sees as “activist judges” who in Massachusetts early this month confirmed an earlier ruling that banning gay marriage is contrary to their state constitution.
Have US $72,000.00 to spare? Then model-rocks has something to sell you.
My Two Diplomas from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
They hang on a wall and cost $70K - so they MUST be art
A sardonic (and depressing) read, of the scam that is higher education.
The third season of American Idol was surprising, but not for the reasons you might think.
In an opinion piece for Slate, Matt Feeney introduces some new analyses on the apparent oddities of this season's American Idol.
Late Sunday, Kate Aurthur of The New York Times complained that American Idol had been Hijacked by Its Viewers. It "used to exude a sense of pop-cultural justice," but has now "lost its innocence." She was referring to an episode a couple of weeks ago during which capable La Toya London was voted off while the inconsistent but very pretty Jasmine Trias moved into the final three. Aurthur blames the audience (and to a lesser extent, the phone-voting technology) for the fact that "the votes have been so capricious," and have pushed the show far from its stated purpose — to find the best unknown singer and make him or her a star.
But Feeney thinks otherwise.
But the complainers have drawn the wrong conclusions from this year's weirdness. By Idol's own standards, it was far from a bad year. It was the opposite, and that was the problem. The contestants for the third Idol were the strongest ever, something that the judges, when they weren't complaining about the feckless voters, repeatedly acknowledged. There were six different contestants who could, with the requisite throaty loudness, hold a tune and inflict a little vibrato on it.
... Such a large, tightly bunched field invites chaos. It is one of the few remotely scientific principles of political science that voting procedures involving three or more candidates or preferences are unpredictable and sometimes perverse in their outcomes, especially when, as in weighted-voting arrangements, voters can choose not just a single favorite, but can express the order and strength of several preferences. (American Idol voting registers strength of preference in several indirect ways: the decision to get up and vote at all; the willingness to persist through busy signals and other telecom snafus; and, given the option of unlimited voting, the motivation to do all these things repeatedly.)
There was also race, which came up most conspicuously on a selection show at the end of April when the three lowest vote getters were all black women with excellent voices. (If there are any suspicions that Fox manipulates the votes, that image of three black women huddling together awaiting elimination should banish them. Network executives must have been cringing.) But this showed that the race question cuts in several directions. Some observers immediately inferred that these three were splitting the black vote — Idol voting is for, not against contestants—thus implying that black voters were voting their race.
The Moscow times reports that Bruce Blair, president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information has disclosed yet another revelation that makes us wonder how we lived past that era.
Blair, who was a Minuteman nuclear missile launch officer in the 1970s, regularly ran through simulations in which he and his colleagues launched up to 50 missiles at the Soviet Union.
It appears that within the precise set of miliatry protocols required in launching a Minuteman, one of which was the safety locks, a reform instituted by Robert McNamara (the former U.S. defense secretary of Vietnam War fame). These were intended to be crucial in preventing accidental nuclear war by requiring that a secret unlock code be entered.
However, Blair divulges,
the U.S. Strategic Air Command was worried that a bunch of sissy safety features might slow things down. It ordered all locks set to 00000000 -- and in launch checklists, reminded all launch officers like Blair to keep the codes there. "So the 'secret unlock code' during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War," Blair says, "remained constant at 00000000."
Three Accused Soldiers Had Records of Unruliness That Went Unpunished
The link speaks for itself, although you need to register to read it. The New York Times even with its insufficient level of journalistic ethics ( ie, the Judith Miller scandal ) is still a relatively valid source.
NY editor slams apology for his record
Show of anger by sacked New York Times man
On another Note:
Let's blame Germany and France for the war! And this coming more than a year after the invasion. Well, someone ought to tell Lech that with that sort of logic, the whole world must be blamed except the aggressors. < to insert Albert Einstein's quote that's eluding me>
"It's not the United States that is to blame for the war, but rather the EU, and in particular Germany and France."
The Star reports that the Sabah Wanita Umno has urged the party to take action against Kota Kinabalu Umno pro tem chief Roselan Johar Mohamed for his recent remarks on rape.
Reselan had stunned the audience during his closing ceremony speech of the “Legal Literacy Seminar” for Women, at Wisma SESB on the 22nd of this month, when he suggested that,
if you cannot fight rape, better lay down and enjoy it.
Why do we cringe at the sound of fingernails down a blackboard? Why do paper cuts hurt so much? Why do you sometimes bump into people on the pavement even though you can see them coming?
A new book by Laura Lee, The Pocket Encyclopaedia Of Aggravation, reveals the scientific facts behind life's most infuriating irritations. An article in The Mirror, gives us a preview.
Oh. And for those interested,
Fingernails: Researchers found a striking resemblance between the scraping and the warning cry of the macaque monkey. They now believe it may be an evolutionary reflex.
Paper cuts: The incisions may be small but they cut just into the layer of nerve endings. The paper also contains irritants - fibres and chemicals - which add to the pain
Bumping people: When nearing a stranger, you communicate which side you'll pass from 8ft away, by glancing to the left or right. Miss that signal and you may well collide.
Channel 2 Japan -Total Anonymity
I think I heard bout this website quite a long while back. Can't really remember how I came upon it. Just found it rather fascinating...
Some say that it's become a magnet for the malcontents of Japan, who'll announce their intentions on the website before committing the crimes. On any given day you can read messages about users' schemes to assault their bosses, murder their teachers or blow up a neighborhood kindergarten. Most are just hot air but a few actually carried out the acts they talked about in the website. The reason that it's so open's coz there's total anonymity in the website. Users does not even have a username. But the website's not just a site for the ravings of weirdos...
The bulletin board wasn't meant to be a soapbox for deranged malcontents but rather a rare haven for Japanese to discuss normally taboo subjects, like the yakuza, the royal family and discrimination against Koreans—topics the mainstream media either sanitizes or simply won't touch. "The Emperor is a war criminal. How is it that we haven't yet done away with the Imperial system?" asks an outspoken visitor to the history page. "In Japan, the press has had a monopoly over information," says Tomofumi Akiyama, a lawyer who specializes in multimedia law. "The Internet has opened the door for everyone to gather and transmit information."
"We once could only get information through mass media filters, such as newspaper companies or TV stations. We could send a letter with some kind of information disclosure to a newspaper, but whether they would pick it up in the papers depended on the editor's decisions. It can be said that only the information convenient to the media was reported.
However, there is a lot of interesting news that the mass media won't pick up. Let's say there is a person who wants to tell certain information, and then he posts it on Channel 2. If the news is really interesting, there should be people who are intrigued by it, then they will respond to it, getting more attention. It's the users who decide the value of the news on Channel 2.
There have been quite a few stories that the mass media picked up (from Channel 2) that became big stories. At the same time, Channel 2 has a role as an ombudsman, investigating mass media's reports. For example, some people objected to touching stories that TV stations reported, like "a female high school student started a social welfare business as a CEO," and "a brain-damaged boy developed an unusual talent, publishing books and poetry." They proved that mass media could make a mistake."
For those who would want more information than those published in your papers.. The original was taken down by the authorities, but here it is, in unedited glory!!
Conservatives beware.
Washingtonienne Blog
Do read the posts which well, are entertaining to say the least. Read them before this archive disappears...
Neko Oni
Sharingan Clantaker
We all know Aunt Jemima is a racial slur for African-Americans. But perhaps it is less commonly known that Charlie was a derogatory term for the Vietnamese because it
Originated during the Vietnam War (1960-1974) from the phrase 'Viet Cong,' shortened to V.C., which in the military phonetic alphabet is 'Victor Charles' which gets you to 'Charlie.'
Now now, what should you do during a period of uncertainty?
Uncertainty about what you ask?
Everything under the sun!!
check out:
http://www.ready.gov
If you get confused about the info in the webpage...
Check out the easy guide to understanding those 'oh so confusing' alert pictures.
Understanding those Alert Pictures
Neko Oni
Sharingan clantaker
Florida executes man who wanted death sentence
Anyways, this guy, he’s pretty twisted... Strangled a fellow prisoner to force the state of Florida to execute him. Granted, the fellow prisoner in question was no saint either. -_- Ah...I’m not an opponent of capital punishment but still...
"Death penalty opponents said executing Blackwell would send a dangerous message to all prisoners serving life sentences.
"The message goes out to every lifer in the state," said Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "If you don't like your life in prison, kill a prison worker or kill a fellow inmate and the state will assist in your suicide."
I'll have to admit it was the word Bushido that first caught my attention. But the parallels made by the author about the Iraqis and the Samurais who refused to change with the times really made me think about the meaning of "Bushido" and how people interpret it.
"Meanwhile, when the five Japanese hostages were finally released, what awaited them at home was harsh criticism, instead of a warm reception. What moved the critics to bash them seems to be the belief that the freed hostages sympathized more with their captives rather than with the United States or the Japanese government.
What was the case with ``The Last Samurai''? Capt. Algren, who was captured by Japanese militants, not only sympathized but assimilated with them. He even worked out a war plan and attacked the Japanese government army together with his captives. What he did was much more outrageous than the case of the Japanese hostages in Iraq.
But Japanese audiences cheered and applauded the hero, despite his behavior. How erratic and arbitrary human sentiments can be."
After exhaustive examination of faulty intelligence and gullibility by the White House administration, the influential New York Times finally turns the spotlight on themselves in analysing their own pre-war coverage.
The editors write:
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
Felton suggests two must-read copyright articles. In particular, one of which, written by UC Berkely law professor, Mark Lemley, critiques the new style of copyright-extension argument in a succint and logical fashion.
Felton abstracts:
The usual rationale for copyright is that it operates ex ante (which is lawyerspeak for beforehand): by promising authors a limited monopoly on copying and distribution of any work they might create in the future, we give them an incentive to create. After the work is created, the copyright monopoly leads to inefficiencies, but these are necessary because we have to keep our promise to the author. The goal of copyright is to keep others from free-riding on the author's creative work.
Recently, we have begun hearing ex post arguments for copyright, saying that even for works that have already been created, the copyright monopoly is more efficient than a competitive market would be. Some of the arguments in favor of copyright term extension are of this flavor. Lemley rebuts these arguments very convincingly, arguing that they (a) are theoretically unsound, (b) are contradicted by practical experience, and (c) reflect an odd anti-market, central-planning bias. Based on this description, you might think Lemley's article is long and dense; but it's short and surprisingly readable. (Don't be fooled by the number of pages in the download -- they're mostly endnotes.)
G.Quest - Whatever Interests Us
