disptxt

2010-06-21T10:55:00.002-05:00

trainspotting, meet trainspotter

2010-06-20T15:02:00.000-05:00

middle english is really just lolcat, google it

Dual Brain Theory

2009-12-17T18:37:00.001-05:00

In the 1960s, split-brain surgery was used to treat people suffering from severe epilepsy. These operations enabled scientists to investigate the properties of each separated hemisphere, the left and right brain. Patients who had their corpus callosum cut manifested two separate minds. Schiffer, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at HMS and McLean, believes that ordinary people also are of two minds, each associated with one hemisphere. Dual-brain therapy is his application of this principle toward helping people better understand and repair their psychological distresses. Inspired by research that suggested restricting vision to one side might allow a person to communicate preferentially with one hemisphere or the other, Schiffer devised glasses that allow vision only out of the left or right side. He found that about half his patients had a response to these "lateralizing" glasses, often feeling more anxious when looking to the right visual field (left brain) than to the left. Follow-up studies yielded similar results, suggesting that ordinary people frequently manifest two distinct personalities, each related either to the left or right hemisphere.

Headline:

2009-11-18T17:35:00.002-05:00

Rabbi 'offered cocaine for sex'

Link

Poll

2009-11-08T23:22:00.002-05:00

Bear Death

2009-11-03T09:30:00.001-05:00

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Wildlife experts say the conflict in Kashmir has actually resulted in an increase in the population of bears and leopards.

Following the outbreak of the insurgency people had to hand in their weapons to police - which put a halt to poaching.

As a result, there has been a greater incidence of man-animal conflict, say experts.

....

Three years ago, residents of Mandora village near the southern town of Tral, beat a black bear to death which had strayed into the village.

Link

2009-10-14T18:12:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8306631.stm

Have Faith in the Voting Public

2009-10-14T18:06:00.000-05:00

When we walk into a voting booth and cast our vote, we like to think that we are making a considered decision, based on the issues. After all, a properly functioning democratic system, which gives its citizens the power to choose their leaders and shape critical policies, requires that voters are, for the most part, rational and that society can trust them to make sound judgments.
....
And yet, this is exactly what a recent study in the journal Science has found. The study, conducted by psychologists John Antonakis and Olaf Dalgas at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, shows that Swiss children as young as five years can predict which candidates are more likely to win French parliamentary elections.

This finding contributes to a large and growing body of evidence, coming from many research groups, which shows that voters seem to be heavily influenced by a candidate’s appearance, and in particular the kinds of personality traits that a politician’s face projects.

Link

2009-10-11T19:44:00.000-05:00

The near 18:7 resonance pattern with Jupiter only marches clockwise. It never halts and reverses course.

Infrared Photography

2009-10-11T18:27:00.003-05:00

Link

Presidential Doodles

2009-10-11T18:23:00.000-05:00

-Rutheford B Hayes

Link

2009-10-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

Drug Dictionary

Suspicious

2009-10-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

Det Insp Richard Budd said the death was being treated as "suspicious".

He added that only some of the bones were found in the bag - and others were scattered nearby and "partially buried".

2009-08-01T20:32:00.000-05:00

A US jury has found a man guilty of killing his sick 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.

The man, Dale Neumann, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.

She died of a treatable disease - undiagnosed diabetes - at home in rural Wisconsin in March last year, as people surrounded her and prayed.

Link BBC

Faint Glow

2009-07-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

Link

Death By Chocolate

2009-07-08T23:38:00.001-05:00

A spokesman for the local prosecutor's office said the man appeared to have died instantly from a blow to his head by a paddle mixing the chocolate.

His colleagues at the factory tried to shut down the mixer, but were too late.

Local journalists met some of the workers in the car park, covered in chocolate and seemingly in dismay, US network ABC reported.

BBC

Human Morality

2009-07-04T17:34:00.004-05:00

Morality is apparently based more on circumstance then on any sort of character trait. There are unfortunately huge flaws in a lot of the arguments made later on in the program. If you consider some of these ideas from a human level, rather than a purely objective one, then the many of the statements presented start to fall apart. I wonder what sort of person is driven to become a moralist or a philosopher as a career. I'm going to go with my first assumption and say a self righteous asshole. However, the first 10 or so minutes of this podcast are interesting, as annoying the host's accent is.

Link Analysis

Self-help 'makes you feel worse'

2009-07-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

"Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves.

They said phrases such as "I am a lovable person" only helped people with high self-esteem.

The study appears in the journal Psychological Science. "

Link BBC

Get Ready for Unintentional Slavery

2009-06-30T11:15:00.005-05:00

A gene mapping test that can test embryos for almost any inherited disease could be available in the UK within a year, say researchers.

Unlike current tests doctors do not need to know the specific gene mutation involved.

At the same time embryos can be tested to check they are generally in good genetic shape.

Experts say there will have to be strict limits on what the test can be used for.

Professor Tony Ruthford, chair of the British Fertility Society said the test would be more reliable although admitted such technology was opening a "Pandora's box".

Link BBC

By way of a further example, let us consider genetic engineering. This will not come into use as a result of a conscious decision by the majority of people to introduce genetic engineering. It will begin with certain "progressive" parents who will voluntarily avail themselves of genetic engineering opportunities in order to eliminate the risk of certain gross physical defects in their offspring. Later, this engineering will be extended to include elimination of mental defects and treatment which will predispose the child to somewhat higher intelligence. (Note that the question of what constitutes a mental "defect" is a value-judgement. Is homosexuality, for example, a defect? Some homosexuals would say "no." But there is no objectively true or false answer to such a question.)

-Ted Kaczynski's "Unnamed Essay (1971)

Spam

2009-06-28T00:26:00.000-05:00

"The residents of the state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) consume the most Spam per capita in the United States. On average, each person on Guam consumes 16 tins of Spam each year and the numbers at least equal this in the CNMI. Guam, Hawaii, and Saipan, the CNMI's principal island, have the only McDonald's restaurants that feature Spam on the menu. Burger King, in Hawaii, began serving Spam in 2007 on its menu to compete with the local McDonald's chains.

The perception of Spam in Hawaii is very different from that on the mainland. Despite the large number of mainlanders who eat Spam, and the various recipes that have been made from it, Spam, along with most canned food, is often stigmatized on the mainland as 'poor people food'. In Hawaii, similar canned meat products such as Treet are referred to as 'poor people Spam'."

Wikipedia

From the Annals of Youtube

2009-06-26T14:03:00.004-05:00

willtarded (21 hours ago)
I totaled my car to this song.

Nick Drake - From The Morning

Right Ear->Left Brain

2009-06-24T13:45:00.001-05:00

"In the third study, the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette.

The researchers obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers' right ear compared with their left."

Link BBC

2009-06-17T14:34:00.002-05:00

"When Mrs Prusik died, Mr Prusik-Parkin is accused of giving her funeral director a false social security number and date of birth so that her death would not show up in government records.

He is then alleged to have started claiming $700 a month in social security benefits in her name on top of his own disability benefits.

Using a walking stick, heavy make-up and fake ID, and accompanied by a man posing as Mrs Prusik's nephew, Mr Prusik-Parkin would, according to prosecutors, collect benefit checks, visit banks and even appear in court."

Link

2009-06-16T15:40:00.002-05:00

Link Cloud Appreciation Society

stochasticity

2009-06-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

randomness and magical thinking

Link RadioLab

Phineas Gage

2009-06-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

"I first noticed the wound upon the head before I alighted from my carriage, the pulsations of the brain being very distinct. Mr. Gage, during the time I was examining this wound, was relating the manner in which he was injured to the bystanders. I did not believe Mr. Gage's statement at that time, but thought he was deceived. Mr. Gage persisted in saying that the bar went through his head....Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor."

Link

Velvet Shock

2009-06-15T13:57:00.001-05:00

"… what about the night Andy Warhol got the Velvet Underground to play a convention of psychiatrists at Delominco’s steak house? The psychiatrists were appalled. “That was revenge - Lou’s revenge,” Cale says, “and I was all for it.” As a teenager, Reed had been given electric shock treatment to “cure” him of homosexuality. “Lou and I were going to put out a record with his psychiatrist’s letter on one side and my arrest record* on the other.”
.........

“The second the main course was served, the Velvets started to blast and Nico started to wail. Gerard and Edie jumped up on the stage and started dancing, and the doors flew open and Jonas Mekas and Barbara Rubin with her crew of people with camera and bright lights came storming into the room and rushing over to all the psychiatrists asking them things like:

What does her vagina feel like?
Is his penis big enough? Do you eat her out?
Why are you getting embarrasssed? You’re a psychiatrist; you’re not supposed to get embarrassed...."

Link

Body Language

2009-06-14T21:21:00.001-05:00

"A fascinating study has shown that we're unable to read insights into ourselves from watching a video of our own body language. It's as if we have an egocentric blind spot. Outside observers, by contrast, can watch the same video and make revealing insights into our personality."

Link

Edward H. Rulloff

2009-06-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

"Every learned man who enters Rulloff's presence leaves it amazed and confounded by his prodigious capabilities and attainments. One scholar said he did not believe that in the matters of subtle analysis, vast knowledge in his peculiar field of research, comprehensive grasp of subject and serene kingship over its limitless and bewildering details, any land or any era of modern times had given birth to Rulloff s intellectual equal." Twain stated in a private letter to the editor of the Tribune that he hoped to arouse public support for commuting Rulloff's sentence. New York Governor John T. Hoffman rejected all appeals for clemency however.

Link

Racial Slur Database

2009-06-14T17:33:00.000-05:00

Link

Gävle Goat

2009-06-14T17:25:00.002-05:00

# 1966 Stig Gavlén came up with the idea of a giant goat made out of straw. But it turned out that Gavlén organisation did not have enough funding for the goat. Then Harry Ström, who at that time was the chairman of the Södra Kungsgatan Ideella Förening (a non-profit society), decided to pay the whole cost for the goat out of his own pocket. The goat stood until 12.00 PM that New Year's Eve, when it went up in flames. The perpetrator, who was from Hofors, Gästrikland, was found and convicted of vandalism. The first goat was insured and Ström got all his money back.
......
# 1987 A heavily fireproofed goat was built. It got burned down a week before Christmas.
# 1988 Nothing happened to the goat this year, but gamblers were for the first time able to gamble on the fate of the goat with English bookmakers.
......
# 1990 Nothing happened. This year the goat was guarded by many volunteers.
......
# 2005 Burned by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and a gingerbread man by shooting a flaming arrow or molotov cocktail at the goat at 21:00 on 3 December.[15] Reconstructed on 5 December.

Wikipedia Link

All your gods are belong to schizotypalism/temporal lobe disorder

2009-06-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

Click To Play

Free Will

2009-06-14T16:40:00.002-05:00

"In a series of experiments in the 1980s, Benjamin Libet studied the relationship between conscious experience of volition and the BP e.g.[9] and found that the BP started about 0.35 sec earlier than the subject's reported conscious awareness that 'now he or she feels the desire to make a movement.' Libet concludes that we have no free will in the initiation of our movements though, since subjects were able to prevent intended movement at the last moment, we do have a veto."

Wikipedia Link

2009-06-11T19:51:00.000-05:00

Link BBC

2009-01-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

Medical professional Samir Guliyani, a cyclist, said "maybe killing is not the best way but stray dogs are a menace".

"The way they suddenly pounce on bike riders is dangerous. Something has to be done and they have to be off roads."

On the subject of Pamela herself, Mr Guliyani said: "She is hot but why is she writing to the municipal commissioner?"

BBC

Alejandro

2007-09-28T21:36:00.001-05:00

Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Origin of the Universe

2007-09-28T21:18:00.000-05:00

The answers:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Not entirely surprising

2007-09-13T21:08:00.001-05:00

When asked what they would do in such a situation, almost everyone replies that of course they would refuse to commit murder. But Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiment, conducted at Yale University in the early 1960s, revealed that this optimistic belief is wrong. If the request is presented in the right way, almost all of us quite obediently become killers.

........

To Milgram's surprise, even though volunteers could plainly hear the agonized cries of the learner echoing through the walls of the lab from the neighboring room, two-thirds of them continued to press the shock button all the way up to the end of scale, 450 volts, by which time the learner had fallen into an eerie silence, apparently dead. Milgram's subjects sweated and shook, and some laughed hysterically, but they kept pressing the button. Even more disturbingly, when volunteers could neither see nor hear feedback from the learner, compliance with the order to give ever greater shocks was almost 100%.

Link

2007-09-13T19:38:00.001-05:00

Russian press reports say Mr Pichushkin was planning to kill one person for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard.

Link

2007-09-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

After an awkward, 15-second period of silence, Winters thankfully moved away from the podium, only to be replaced by 32-year-old Laurel Hale, who seemed eager to prove to every citizen of New Bedford that she had the brainpower of an autistic dog.

"I'm just going to say one thing because I don't want to take up too much of anyone's time," said Hale as her 6-month-old daughter pawed at the microphone. Hale then somehow managed to link the synthetic-turf issue to the lack of places to sit in public areas, her inability to get the buttons at the crosswalk to work, and the apparent overabundance of cable television channels.

Added Hale: "Also, Councilman Reed, you need to get us out of Iraq. Now."

Link

Sick

2007-09-08T19:25:00.001-05:00

Mrs. Cottom’s 11-year-old daughter, Asia, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, died when hijackers crashed the plane into the Pentagon. She and her husband, Clifton, soon had to choose between taking what they perceived as a minimal award from a federal fund set up to compensate victims or calling one of the many lawyers who had sent what Mrs. Cottom calls “advertising packages” and filing a lawsuit.

“She came to me and convinced me that she could bring justice to the situation, and I trusted what she said,” Mrs. Cottom recalled. When government compensation for deaths was eventually made, the average was $2 million, and the range was $250,000 to $7.1 million.

Pain and suffering is another matter, more ineffable. The Sept. 11th fund awarded a flat rate of $250,000 for pain and suffering for each person who died in the attacks, and another $100,000 each to surviving spouses and children.

The Cottoms’ lawyers would not say how much Asia might have received from the fund. Mrs. Cottom said she believed they would have received little more than the minimum $250,000 — an amount she found “insulting.”

NYtimes

Yawn

2007-09-08T19:20:00.000-05:00

The BPS Research Digest reports that children with autism are seemingly 'immune' to contagious yawning - perhaps as a result of their reduced social awareness.

Seeing someone yawn, or indeed, just thinking about someone else yawning, makes us more likely to do the same. For example, this article may well be enough to trigger a yawn in some people.

One of the three key aspects of autism is a difficulty with social interaction (the other two being difficulties with certain types of abstract thinking and a restricted or repetitive range of interests or behaviours).

So a group of researchers, led by psychologist Dr. Atsushi Senju, wondered whether children with autism might be less susceptible to yawn contagion.

They came up with the 'I wish I'd thought of that' idea of showing videos of people yawning to groups of typically developing children, and children with a diagnosis of autism.

Link

How to Cash in on Death

2007-09-07T22:32:00.001-05:00

The room twitters in amazement. It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all might have gone.

Link

2007-09-03T09:39:00.001-05:00

US President George W Bush is making an unannounced visit to Iraq for a meeting with key advisers.

He arrived at al-Asad air base, west of Baghdad, accompanied by US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Mr Bush is expected to use the visit to argue his case that the build-up of US troops is helping to stabilise Iraq.....

Now, as then, the surprise trip was shrouded in secrecy because of the ongoing instability.

2007-08-31T21:24:00.000-05:00

The Israeli military has said a tank fired at three Palestinian children who were killed in Gaza on Tuesday because troops mistook them for militants.

The three cousins - two boys aged 10 and 12, and a 12-year-old girl - were playing near rocket launchers outside Beit Hanun, a military statement said.

An internal army investigation found soldiers had detected "unidentified movement and opened fire", it added.

The army initially said militants had sent the children to get the launchers.

Both the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses have said children have been used to retrieve launchers after rockets have been fired.

But army aerial surveillance videos of the incident proved the children were simply playing tag.

"They were playing right next to the launchers, including touching them," the army statement said.

The soldiers used the aerial video to direct the tank fire, the army said.

"At the very last second, it was apparent that they were children, but it was impossible to stop the explosion," it added.

Link

Read the last line again

2007-08-30T23:28:00.001-05:00

A Burning Man participant was found dead this morning, hanging from the inside of a two-story high tent, according to Mark Pirtle, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Land Management.

The apparent suicide would be the festival's first in its 21 year history, Pirtle said.

Pershing County coroners are investigating the scene and preparing to remove the body. Pirtle said the man was hanging for two hours before anyone in the large tent thought to bring him down. "His friends thought he was doing an art piece," Pirtle said.

Ignorance

2007-08-27T09:14:00.001-05:00

"I saw three people with my own eyes. When they got very sick and people could not look after them, they buried them," she told reporters.

She described how one person called out "mama, mama" as the soil was being shovelled over their head.

Villagers told her that such action was common, she said.

Link

ugh

2007-08-23T10:29:00.000-05:00

Old age is apparently not preventing US citizens from enjoying active sex lives, researchers there say.

In a survey of 3,005 people aged 57 to 85, a significant number said they were sexually active into their 70s and 80s.

Link

2nd Amendment Rights

2007-08-18T15:43:00.000-05:00

A man in Florida surprised police by handing in a surface-to-air missile launcher during a gun amnesty in the city of Orlando.

Under the no-questions-asked scheme, "Kicks for Guns", anyone who surrendered a firearm would receive trainers or $50 (£25).

The Orlando Sentinel newspaper said the man exchanged the rocket launcher for designer footwear for his daughter.

He told the newspaper he found the 4ft (1.2m) weapon in a shed last week.

The unidentified man said he had tried in vain to get rid of the launcher, which is designed to blow aircraft out of the sky.

"I took it to three dumps to try to get rid of it and they told me to get lost."

Link

Enough determination, and you can see anyone naked

2007-08-07T16:20:00.000-05:00

First, every single one of the many thousands of photographs was fed into a shredder, and then each of the shreds was fed to the flames, thereby insuring that not a single intact or recognizable image of the nude Yale students -- some of whom had gone on to assume positions of importance in government and society -- would survive.

It was the Bonfire of the Best and the Brightest, and the assumption was that the last embarrassing reminders of a peculiar practice, which masqueraded as science and now looked like a kind of kinky voodoo ritual, had gone up in smoke. The assumption was wrong. Thousands upon thousands of photos from Yale and other elite schools survive to this day.

Link

L'Inconnue de la Seine

2007-08-04T20:00:00.001-05:00

L'Inconnue de la Seine (from French for the unknown woman of the Seine) was an unidentified young woman whose death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artist homes after 1900. Her visage was the inspiration for numerous literary works in both French and other languages as well.

The legend of her suicide begins in 1900, when her body was pulled out of the Seine River in Paris. A worker at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he made a plaster cast of her face. In the following years, numerous copies were produced, and these copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. In similar fashion to the smile of Mona Lisa, there were numerous speculations on what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.

The afterimages provided another interesting aspect to her popularity. The original cast had been photographed, and new casts were created back from the film negatives. These new casts displayed details that are usually lost in bodies taken from rivers and lakes, but the apparent preservation of these details in the visage of the cast seemed to only reinforce its authenticity.

Critic A. Alvarez writes in The Savage God: "I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her." According to Hans Hesse of the University of Sussex, Alvarez reports, "the Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s. He thinks that German actresses like Elisabeth Bergner modeled themselves on her. She was finally displaced as a paradigm by Greta Garbo.

Me Neither

2007-07-30T22:23:00.000-05:00

Many Asians 'do not feel British'

BBC Link

2007-07-26T12:55:00.003-05:00

It is a remarkable bit of irony, that finger. Venerated, kept in reliquary, subjected to the same treatment as a Saint. But this finger belonged to no Saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. A man so dangerous to the religious institution he was made a prisoner in his own home. It sits in a small glass egg atop an inscribed marble base in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, or the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. … As with a fine wine, it took some years for Galileo’s finger to age into something worth snapping off his skeletal hand. The finger was removed by one Anton Francesco Gori on March 12, 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death. Passed around for a couple hundred years it finally came to rest in the Florence History of Science Museum. Today is sits among lodestones and telescopes, the only human fragment in a museum devoted entirely to scientific instruments. It is hard to know how Galileo would have felt about the final resting place of his finger. Whether the finger points upwards to the sky, where Galileo glimpsed the glory of the universe and saw God in mathematics, or if it sits eternally defiant to the church that condemned him, is for the viewer to decide.

2007-07-26T12:55:00.001-05:00

I may have a big mouth but I cope with it very well.

He kills himself

2007-07-24T23:28:00.001-05:00

Pakistan interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told the AFP news agency that Mehsud blew himself up with a hand grenade after soldiers raided a hideout in the Zhob district of Balochistan.

"Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hideout." he said.

It appears he did not want to be captured alive
-Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema

Taleban commander 'kills himself'

2007-07-20T23:38:00.001-05:00

Bush to Have Colon Exam

2007-07-20T21:03:00.001-05:00

US President George W Bush will have a routine colonoscopy on Saturday, temporarily transferring power to the vice-president, the White House says.

Under the US constitution, power can be transferred to the vice-president if the president is incapacitated.

What is normal?

2007-07-19T15:24:00.001-05:00

Officials on Wednesday said the concentration of noxious gases in the affected region was 23 times above normal.

Link

Contradiction

2007-07-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

Rafiqullah said he was trained to drive a car and shown suicide attack videos at the madrassa in Pakistan.

He crossed the border and was met by a man who gave him a suicide vest. Rafiqullah said he did not want to carry out the attack but the man threatened to kill him.

Link

Racing Without Legs

2007-07-13T22:21:00.001-05:00

South African amputee runner Oscar Pistorius has finished second in a 400m race with able-bodied athletes at the Golden League meet in Rome.

Later in the meeting, a French long-jumper was seriously injured when he was hit in the back by a stray javelin.

Link

Augustus Owsley Stanley III

2007-07-13T08:47:00.000-05:00

His all-meat diet is a well-known example. When he was younger, Bear read about the Eskimos eating only fish and meat and became convinced that humans are meant to be exclusively carnivorous. The members of the Grateful Dead remember living with Bear for several months in 1966 in Los Angeles, where the refrigerator contained only bottles of milk and a slab of steak, meat they fried and ate straight out of the pan. His heart attack several years ago had nothing to do with his strict regimen, according to Bear, but more likely the result of some poisonous broccoli his mother made him eat as a youth.

Link

2007-06-27T21:42:00.001-05:00

I recently took up ice sculpting. Last night I made an ice cube. This morning I made 12, I was prolific.

-Mitch Hedberg

Link

2007-06-19T11:01:00.000-05:00

"The action by the British Queen in knighting Salman Rushdie, the apostate, is an unwise one," he said to loud applause from MPs.

Protest against Salman Rushdie's knighthood in Lahore
The knighthood has generated anger across Pakistan

"The British monarch lives under this illusion that Britain is still a 19th Century superpower and that bestowing titles is something still deemed important."

The knighthood has also been strongly condemned by the assembly of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, which described it as "a campaign waged in Europe and the West to hurt the feelings of Muslims".

Link

Gynecomastia

2007-06-14T11:34:00.001-05:00

Plastic surgeons in the United States suggested that the rise in popularity of professional golf may have also contributed to public awareness of gynecomastia; several prominent popular players have slightly enlarged chests.

Link

Flat Earth Society FAQ

2007-06-11T17:52:00.001-05:00

Q: "Why do the all the world Governments say the Earth is round?"

A: It's a conspiracy

Q: "What about NASA? Don't they have photos to prove that the Earth is round?"

A: NASA is part of the conspiracy too. The photos are faked.

Q: "Why has no-one taken a photo of the Earth that proves it is flat?"

A: The government prevents people from getting close enough to the Ice Wall to take a picture.

Q: "How did NASA create these images with the computer technology available at the time?"

A: Since NASA did not send rockets into space, they instead spent the money on developing advanced computers and imaging software instead

Q: "What's underneath the Earth?" aka "What's on the bottom?" aka "What's on the other side?"

A: This is unknown. Some believe it to be just rocks, others believe the Earth rests on the back of four elephants and a turtle.

Link

June 10, 2005

2007-06-10T16:28:00.000-05:00

Police still have no suspects after a burning body was found in the parking lot of Yankee Stadium early Friday morning.

Investigators say the victim was on fire when they found him under the Macombs Dam Bridge on Jerome Avenue and 161st Street.

It's not clear whether he was alive at the time he was set on fire.

He had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and may have been shot.

Cat Photography

2007-06-06T16:14:00.001-05:00

A camera is attached to a cat named Mr. Lee, and photos are taken periodically throughout the day from his perspective. The resulting photo journal details 4 days in the life of an outdoor cat as he meets other cats, sees snakes, and hides beneath cars.

Link

Breastmilk cheese

2007-06-06T15:58:00.000-05:00

My extensive experience in making Paneer compelled me to try something different, that is, making Paneer out of my own breastmilk. Basically this is human cheese. Why would I do that? Well, basically, there are about twenty bags (each 150ml) of frozen breastmilk in the fridge, and they have passed their three months drinkability period, which means I would not be able to donate the milk like I did before. But the milk is still less than six month old, which is the actual expiry date. So what do I do with it? I could make cream soup like I did several months ago. But I really wanted to try something different, and making Breast Milk Paneer sounds really exciting.

Link

2007-06-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

I object to all this sex on the television, i mean, i keep falling off
-monty python's flying circus

He's not a monkey

2007-06-01T18:21:00.000-05:00

"They're using a real monkey," Hirsch says. "Just don't call him that. He's a chimpanzee. He gets upset if you call him a monkey."

Link

Ed Gein was an American serial killer.

2007-05-27T20:07:00.000-05:00

Searching the house, authorities found

* severed heads acting as bedposts in the bedroom;
* skin used to make lampshades and upholster chair seats;
* skulls made into soup bowls;
* a human heart
* a face mask made out of real facial skin found in a paper bag;
* a necklace of human lips;
* a waistcoat (which he called a "mammary vest") made up of a vagina and breasts stitched together;
* other items fashioned from the parts of human bodies, including a belt made from nipples.
*socks made from human flesh.

-Edward Theodore Gein

Perverse

2007-05-26T09:46:00.001-05:00

An unusual perversion: the desire to be injured by an automobile operated by a woman.

American Journal of Psychiatry. 1960 May;116:1032.

KEELER MH.

Kid Kills Hog

2007-05-25T18:57:00.000-05:00

"It's a good accomplishment.I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Link

2007-05-23T19:40:00.000-05:00

Father Time sure could dance

2007-05-23T18:53:00.000-05:00

This girl in my class didn't know there was a third Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean it's coming out this Thursday. She should be shot.

2007-05-22T16:43:00.001-05:00

Unity is a common enemy

Objectophilia

2007-05-20T10:18:00.000-05:00

Bill Rifka shares his homoerotic inclination for objects with 41-year-old Doro B., who fell for a metal processing machine while at work and "immediately sensed a female presence." The machine has been enticing her with its "sweet hum" ever since. But sometimes it also makes Doro worry: "My sweetie had one of her tantrums and junked her measuring appliance," she noted fearfully in her online journal.

Link

The New Pollution

2007-05-17T20:04:00.000-05:00

The pollution in Calcutta, India has gotten so bad that traffic police have to wear oxygen tanks to prevent respiratory diseases such as lung cancer.

-via BBC News

2007-05-16T20:48:00.000-05:00

Occasionally, I'd say it goes slightly too far, such as the rape scenes that seem to go on forever, and the forced abortion scene, which I really could've lived without.

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

Shrinking Genitalia and Mass Hysteria

2007-05-15T16:21:00.001-05:00

In his book Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion, Robert E. Bartholomew writes,

“In parts of Asia, entire regions are occasionally overwhelmed by terror-stricken men who believe that their penises are shriveling up or retracting into their bodies, whereupon they will die. Those affected often place clamps or strings onto the precious organs or have family members hold the penis in relays until an appropriate treatment is obtained, often from traditional healers. … Episodes can endure for weeks or months and affect thousands. Psychiatrists are divided as to the cause of these imaginary scares. Some believe that it is a form of group psychosis triggered by stress, while others view it as a mass hysteria. … While these episodes may appear humurous to Westerners, they offer a valuable lesson because they show how vulnerable we all are to mass delusion.”

Genital Retraction Syndrome and Genital theft, is called Koro in China

Jerry Falwell, 73, dead of heart rythm abnormality

2007-05-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. One of the conservative lobbying group's greatest triumphs came just a year later, when Ronald Reagan was elected president.

...

Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.

-From The Associated Press

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." -Falwell

preschoolers thoughts on aging

2007-05-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

-First they grow up as a young kid. They eat healthy and they get taller. And soon they get much taller and they go to heaven. If they can't walk, they get a wheelchair.

-They have scrabble scrabble just on her face. And she's got shiny teeth.

What happens to people when they get old?

Dangerous Chemistry

2007-05-10T19:42:00.000-05:00

Golden Book of Chemistry (Download)

The Dangerous projects include: making chlorine, ammonia, hydrogen, and ethanol.

The book is long out of print, and used copies are very expensive (Amazon.com has used copies for over $100). Of course, in today's litigious environment, no major publisher would dare republish a book that had actual chemistry experiments in it, for fear getting sued. I have long wanted to own a copy of The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.

-Mark Frauenfelder

Habeas Schmabeas

2007-05-08T15:41:00.000-05:00

President Bush sounded almost misty-eyed as he spoke of how Britain had written many of the chapters in the history of human freedom, from Magna Carta to philosophers such as John Locke. “Our two nations hold fundamental values in common, including the rights and dignity of the individual,” Mr Bush intoned. Then he cut to the chase, describing how the two countries were advancing the causes of liberty, and fighting tyranny and oppression, whether in London, New York, Kabul or Baghdad. “Our work remains the surest path to peace,” he said.

This American Life presents a report on Guantanamo Bay -Link

2007-05-08T15:07:00.001-05:00

"It was only as late as in 1994 that I succeeded in proving myself alive," Bihari, 52, said.

-Reuters

Justice

2007-05-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

"I'm very sorry and from now on I'm going to pay complete attention to everything"
-Paris Hilton

Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton has been jailed for 45 days after being found guilty of violating her probation for a drink-driving conviction.

A Los Angeles judge ruled she must start her sentence on 5 June and has no prospect of an early release.

love, BBC News

Amesbury Archer

2007-05-02T19:01:00.000-05:00

Tests on the bones showed that the Archer was a man aged between 35 and 45. He was strongly built, but he had an abscess on his jaw and had suffered an accident a few years before his death that had ripped his left knee cap off. As a result of this he walked with a straight left which swung out to the side of him, and suffered from an infection in his bones which would have caused him constant pain.

link

In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia

2007-05-01T14:27:00.000-05:00

“This guy’s the champion,” said Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, leaning over the nether regions of a duck — a Meller’s duck from Madagascar, to be specific — and carefully coaxing out his phallus.

When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.

-New York Times

2007-04-29T19:11:00.000-05:00

Versions of the Pledge: (changes between versions are shown in bold; for reason of the changes, please see the History section)

* 1892:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
* 1892 to 1923:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
* 1923 to 1954:
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
* 1954 to Present:
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."

-wikipedia

Monster Mash singer dies aged 69

2007-04-27T15:36:00.000-05:00

The singer who found fame with the novelty song Monster Mash, has died.

Bobby "Boris" Pickett, whose spot-on Boris Karloff impression made the record a Halloween favourite, died of leukaemia aged 69 in Los Angeles.

While famous as a one-hit wonder, the song charted three times in the US - in 1962, 1970 and in 1973 when it also reached number three in the UK.

Pickett performed until last year, joking at his shows: "And now I'm going to do a medley of my hit".

very fresh octopus

2007-04-26T20:19:00.000-05:00

link (youtube)

Parasitic twins

2007-04-25T18:59:00.000-05:00

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

“He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside,” she said. “First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair.”

Inside Bhagat’s stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

“We were horrified. We were confused and amazed,” Mehta said.

At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat’s twin brother from his stomach.

2007-04-22T08:06:00.000-05:00

Last month, a French student named Alexis Lemaire became the first human to mentally calculate the 13th root of a 200-digit number:

83689566882369569398
37328662225645224726
78046649383667749735
75581573035075704089
62528802385783156837
68029349382010563433
63855595931514450415
14949070941909770444
93056602684027718696
24155688082648640933

He arrived at the correct 16-digit answer, 2391481494636373, without writing or typing, in 513.55 seconds. Last year he set a new unofficial record for finding the 13th root of a 100-digit number: 3.62 seconds.
-Extracted from The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society

2007-04-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can -- even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment -- someone always came to save America at the last moment -- especially in 'B' movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan -- and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at -- like a 'B' movie.
-Gil Scott-Heron

2007-04-21T12:16:00.001-05:00

....stand in a dangerous place and everyone will watch.
-David Byrne

1,428 year old business dies

2007-04-18T06:12:00.001-05:00

The world's oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders' descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.
-Business Week

2007-04-17T21:02:00.001-05:00

If Mama Cass had shared her last sandwich with Karen Carpenter, they'd both be alive. -Robin Williams

Ritual Suicide of Samurai

2007-04-17T20:25:00.000-05:00

In time, committing seppuku came to involve a detailed ritual. A Samurai was bathed, dressed in white robes, fed his favorite meal, and when he was finished, his instrument was placed on his plate. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloths, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem. With his selected attendant (kaishakunin, his second) standing by, he would open his kimono (clothing), take up his wakizashi (short sword) or a tantō (knife) and plunge it into his abdomen, making a left-to-right cut. The kaishakunin would then perform daki-kubi, a cut in which the warrior was all but decapitated (a slight band of flesh is left attaching the head to the body). Because of the precision necessary for such a maneuver, the second was often a skilled swordsman. The principal agreed in advance when the kaishaku made his cut, usually as soon as the dagger was plunged into the abdomen.

2007-04-16T19:43:00.000-05:00

I know that when I go to Orlando, the Mouse is going to fingerprint me and search my bags, because the Fourth Amendment isn't a "Disney value."
-Cory Doctorow from Why Online Games Are Dictatorships

2007-04-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

"I was sitting in class when we heard loud popping noises a couple rooms down... The teacher and a student went into the hallway and rushed back in and told everybody to get down. We put a table against the door and had a few students holding down the door. The gunman tried to shoulder his way in and when he saw that he couldn't, he put two shots through the door it was the scariest moment of my life..."

-Ruiqi Zhang, a computer engineering major, who was in Norris 205 this morning