"It turns out the average Mac user is pretty cute, if awkwardly dressed," John Gargiulo, BlueStacks vice president of marketing, said in a release about the findings.
CNet
12.31.2012
Except, of course, moi
Well, yes
"Something has gone terribly wrong when the biggest threat to our American economy is the American Congress," - Senator Joe Manchin, West Virginia.
Daily Dish
But remember, Mark Twain once said:
There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.And:
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
A million here, a million there…
By all accounts, the Air Force’s track record of making bombers the country can afford is dismal. The B-1 program was cancelled mid-stream by the Carter administration after its cost doubled, then revived under President Reagan. The B-2 grew so costly in the early 1990s that the Pentagon ended up buying just a fifth of the aircraft originally planned. The B-2s are actually not used much now, partly because few targets justify risking aircraft that cost $3 billion apiece in today’s dollars, and partly because their flights by some estimates cost $135,000 per hour — almost double that of any other military airplane.
Center for Public Integrity
Prediction: robots in middle-management
No one would bother wasting an hour of the robot's day crying in its office or complaining about fairness.
Daily Beast
"Fiscal cliff" banished: Whew. ("Passion" too.)
A dirty dozen have landed on the 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. The nonbinding, tongue-in-cheek decree released Monday by northern Michigan’s Lake Superior State University is based on nominations submitted from the United States, Canada and beyond.
Green Bay Press Gazette
12.28.2012
Yikes
The Lobster Mobile Telephone Case is another completely unnecessary electronics accessory that recently started trending online because, clearly, we love our technology, but, at the same time, simply can't leave well enough alone.…
…it's still a pretty cool-looking phone accessory. For about an hour. That's when you realize that you have a lobster in your pants.
CNN
Ghosts of drought
(ST. LOUIS, AP) — From sunken steamboats to a millennium-old map engraved in rock, the drought-drained rivers of the nation’s midsection are offering a rare and fleeting glimpse into years gone by.…
Old boats are turning up in several locations, including sunken steamboats dating to the 19th century.
Digital Burg
Veni vidi vici…Wisconsin Dells?
WISCONSIN DELLS -- Fish experts blame an annual disease for the deaths of thousands of fish in Lake Delton at Wisconsin Dells.…
Specialists blamed a disease known as “columnaris” which creates fatal legions on the gills and skin.
River Falls Wisconsin
12.27.2012
Chocolate
They may have been a little shy when they predicted 18 inches. We have that much on the ground right now and it's still coming down, although it's not so much snow now as sleet. (Oh, you thought I meant 18 inches of chocolate?) When you get that much on the ground – snow, not chocolate – there's no turning back. This stuff will be on the ground until March. At least.
Luckily, I have brownies. (This is where the chocolate comes in.) Somebody gave me a box of chocolate brownie mix this past weekend. I hadn't seen a box of brownie mix for 20 years. But there it was. And Monday I went out and bought some eggs. And now it snows. Fate.
The brownies are cooling on the rack right now. Winter, do your worst.
Luckily, I have brownies. (This is where the chocolate comes in.) Somebody gave me a box of chocolate brownie mix this past weekend. I hadn't seen a box of brownie mix for 20 years. But there it was. And Monday I went out and bought some eggs. And now it snows. Fate.
The brownies are cooling on the rack right now. Winter, do your worst.
Miserable? Awwwww…
Senators, frustrated, pessimistic and in some cases downright miserable, returned to Washington with no clear fiscal agenda.…
New York Times
12.26.2012
So you can forget all that cheery stuff you read in November
As the U.S. holiday season winds down, retailers were left to hope that post-Christmas sales could help salvage their worst performance since 2008, preliminary data showed.
Christian Science Monitor
New media, new reality
TV remains the most popular source of news, but its audience is aging: “Only about a third (34%) of those younger than 30 say they watched TV news yesterday; in 2006, nearly half of young people (49%) said they watched TV news the prior day,” the report says.
UNDERNEWS
And still better than asking directions
Among cartographic misfirings, the disaster of Apple Maps is rather minor, and may even have resulted in some happy accidents—in the same way that Christopher Columbus discovered America when he was aiming for somewhere more eastern and exotic. The history of cartography is nothing if not a catalog of hit-and-miss, a combination of good fortune and misdirection.
Wall Street Journal
12.25.2012
Crime stories
Two of them added to our reading list: Live the Night, Dennis Lehane's continuation of the story he began in The Given Day, and J. R. Moehringer's Sutton, the story of America's most prolific bank robber. Two tales well told.
Read on.
Read on.
Way to go, Mrs. Smith!
My job for today was to bake ("bake") the pies, which I put in the oven for 1 hour and left for one and a half. But they still look good. Look. And if we put enough ice cream on them who'll care how they taste?
(One apple, one blueberry, if you're asking.)
(One apple, one blueberry, if you're asking.)
If you must ask
…in retrospect, Avatar now seems the high-point of 3D movie-making, with little since 2009 to challenge its achievement. Three years on, has the appeal of 3D gone flat?
BBC
1) Yes.
2) The high point of 3-D moviemaking was House of Wax.
12.24.2012
Kids, etc.
Tech Crunch - “Under most existing laws, if our findings were extrapolated nationally, several million teens could be prosecuted for child pornography,” explains a new study on teen sexting…
The prevalence of sexting has put some experts in the awkward position of pressing for laxer child pornography laws, so that curious teenagers aren’t branded as pedophiles.
UNDERNEWS
12.23.2012
First the world ends and then…
Top U.S. lawmakers voiced rising fear on Sunday that the country would go over "the fiscal cliff" in nine days…
Reuters
Oh nooooooooo!
Some advice from an old, old man
'When I was a kid, you got a big box of bricks and that was it,' says Tracy Bagatelle-Black. 'What stinks about Lego sets now is that they're not imaginative at all.'…
Slashdot
Just forget about "when I was a kid." That was then.
Slashdot
Just forget about "when I was a kid." That was then.
Done
 | HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) |
NRA head: If it's crazy to put armed guards in schools, "then call me crazy" huff.to/UmYm9W | |
Download the official Twitter app here
File under Kneeslapper
If you thought the tale of how Mitt Romney lost the general election was already told, you would be wrong. Because there is so much left to tell, like how Mitt never wanted to be President anyway.
At least, that's what Tagg Romney says in this new Boston Globe report on what went wrong with Romney's campaign.…
Atlantic Wire
And if you don't let him pitch he's going to take his bat and ball and go home.
12.22.2012
"Craziest man on earth"
 | The Atlantic Wire (@TheAtlanticWire) |
You Should Probably See the New York Tabloids' NRA Covers theatln.tc/VYry3K | |
Download the official Twitter app here
12.21.2012
Ig Nobel indeed
From the official list of Ig Nobel prizes for 2012:
MEDICINE PRIZE: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE] for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode.
Make lemonade
Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.
Christian Science Monitor
And the horse you rode in on
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A Louisiana woman ran afoul of police when she gave her neighbors an unusual holiday greeting, hanging Christmas lights in the shape of a middle finger.…
A judge ruled in her favor Thursday.
AP
Snow in Midwest; New York Times swoons
"It’s a really big mess out there,” said David Beachler, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service.…
New York Times
New York Times
No, the world didn't end but it came close
So what is an asshole, exactly? How is he (and assholes are almost always men) distinct from other types of social malefactors? Are assholes born that way, or is their boorishness culturally conditioned? What explains the spike in the asshole population?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
12.20.2012
Horreurs!
Black Périgords and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global warming on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the past dozen years.
At Truffes Folies, in the chic Seventh Arrondissement of Paris, Black Périgords are selling for the equivalent of about €2,000 a kilogram, or more than $1,200 a pound…
New York Times
12.19.2012
So then, having second thoughts?
“The good thing is, [Dec. 21] will not be the end of the world,” Kreskin predicted. “The bad news is that we will still have the same problems, and we will still have the same politicians in Congress.”
MarketWatch
Wait a minute
 | CBS News (@CBSNews) |
MORE: ATF agent's personal weapon found at Mexican beauty queen cartel crime scene cbsn.ws/ZQilB2 (via @SharylAttkisson) | |
They have a beauty queen cartel in Mexico? Who knew?
A find
James M. Cain, one of the all-time great writers of old-fashioned hard-core crime fiction, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity among other classics, also left behind an unfinished novel which has recently been published under the title The Cocktail Waitress. It's a little rough around the edges as befits, one supposes, and unfinished novel, but if you're in the mood for a little hard boiled two-fisted noir, this is the book for you.
The Saturday Review of Literature once proclaimed, "no one has ever stopped reading in the middle of one of Jim Cain's books." Fair warning.
It's on our list.
The Saturday Review of Literature once proclaimed, "no one has ever stopped reading in the middle of one of Jim Cain's books." Fair warning.
It's on our list.
Once upon a time…
… shortly after the invention of the wheel, children – many of them, at least – were told that if they weren't very good they might get, instead of toys or candy, a lump of coal in their stockings for Christmas. I thought of that the other day when I was – yes, it's true – hanging up my own stocking (this year it is 71 candy canes old) and wondered, how many of us are left who have actually ever seen a lump of coal? I remember when houses were heated by coal and coal-fired locomotives pulled the trains.
Some 40% of the electricity used in the United States is generated by burning coal and virtually all of is produced in the U. S. (at great environmental cost). So there's still a lot of it around. Not too many people outside certain industries or certain parts of the country have ever seen it now, so if you're trying to scare your kids you'd better think of something else.
Some 40% of the electricity used in the United States is generated by burning coal and virtually all of is produced in the U. S. (at great environmental cost). So there's still a lot of it around. Not too many people outside certain industries or certain parts of the country have ever seen it now, so if you're trying to scare your kids you'd better think of something else.
Getting right to the point
The two biggest challenges to making general-purposes robots are, as they always have been, hardware and software.…
Daily Beast
12.18.2012
Brilliant
I was going to make pea soup for supper and I got all the ingredients out and put them on the counter and then I walked away and forgot the whole thing and now it's too late arghhh. Sure, I have other stuff I can eat, but still. Maybe I need a minder. Or some shiny new electronic device.
I suppose it depends on what kind of hold you're talking about
Leading print and online news outlets have sent a joint letter to former Romney campaign officials contesting expenses billed to their reporters over the course of the 2012 campaign.…
Complaints include "$745 per person charged for a vice presidential debate viewing party on Oct. 11; $812 charged for a meal and a hold on Oct. 18…
Also, how would you like "former Romney campaign official" on your resume?
Politico
Not so well then
A 21-year-old Joliet man accidentally shot and killed himself while trying to demonstrate how the safety mechanism worked on his new handgun, authorities said today.
Chicago Tribune
12.17.2012
Wait! Make that 17!
16 things you might not know about Tim Scott
Who is Tim Scott?
The South Carolina GOP congressman will replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint.
Oh.
Fun, though
"Virtually all the information that has entered the public domain about these investigations [into the erstwhile Petraeus affair] has constituted a violation of law," says Daniel J. Metcalfe, a professor at American University Washington College of Law…
CNNMoney
Oops, stuck (again)
The two most recent books on our reading list are the first two volumes of Ken Follet's Century Trilogy. There is no third volume yet, so we'll have to wait for that.* The first two books will keep you reading for a a while, though.
The Century Trilogy is, essentially, a history of Europe in the 20th century. So it covers some pretty familiar ground. But Follett is a master storyteller, and his tale of life in those years is compelling. These first new books would make excellent companions for the string of long, dark evenings just ahead. And maybe by spring, Follett will be ready to tell us how the story ends.
*(We are also waiting expectantly for the third volume of Hilary Mantell's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell.)
The Century Trilogy is, essentially, a history of Europe in the 20th century. So it covers some pretty familiar ground. But Follett is a master storyteller, and his tale of life in those years is compelling. These first new books would make excellent companions for the string of long, dark evenings just ahead. And maybe by spring, Follett will be ready to tell us how the story ends.
*(We are also waiting expectantly for the third volume of Hilary Mantell's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell.)
12.16.2012
Nothing to see here, move along
'Meet The Press' host David Gregory saidthat no pro-gun rights senators would agree to go on the show on Sunday.
"We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning," he said. "We had no takers."
12.15.2012
12.14.2012
Oh that Winston
We so often hear the famous Churchill dictum on democracy:Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.Indeed quoting Churchill can be used against democracy as form of government:
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Enter Stage Right
You mean it's just, well, water?
"After speaking to several Nestlé Waters' employees, this officer was informed for the first time that the Ice Mountain five-gallon bottles do not contain 100% natural spring water but instead contain resold municipal tap water," the legal complaint charged.
USA Today
12.13.2012
Crabs attack!
“They're natural invaders,” murmured Craig Smith, a marine ecologist from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “They're coming in with the warmer water.”…
Scientific American
12.12.2012
And pretty soon you're talking about real money
How much does the United States spend each year occupying the planet with its bases and troops? How much does it spend on its global presence? Forced by Congress to account for its spending overseas, the Pentagon has put that figure at $22.1 billion a year. It turns out that even a conservative estimate of the true costs of garrisoning the globe comes to an annual total of about $170 billion. In fact, it may be considerably higher. Since the onset of “the Global War on Terror” in 2001, the total cost for our garrisoning policies, for our presence abroad, has probably reached $1.8 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
The Nation
What? Holiday?
(Reuters) - Most Americans are nowhere close to having their holiday shopping done, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows…
Chicago Tribune
Oh.. That one. Right.
12.11.2012
Oh crap
The local Walgreens is having a sale on SPAM today and I was going to go get some but I got busy and now I'm out of time and I would go tomorrow but now I remember the world is ending tomorrow (12/12/12, right?). Phooey. No fair.
You left the wrench where?
SEOUL, Dec. 11 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is believed to be disassembling a long-range rocket, a senior military source in Seoul said Tuesday, a day after Pyongyang announced it will extend its 13-day launch window due to technical problems.
Yonhap News
12.10.2012
Salon: Michigan gives up
Michigan has lost so many educated workers that the state’s leadership seems to feel it has no choice but to become a low-wage haven. The kind of place that attracts chicken processors, not software engineers. (There is a Google office in Ann Arbor. It was set up there by Google founder and University of Michigan graduate Larry Page, as a sop to the state he abandoned for Silicon Valley, which is to the 21st century economy what Detroit was to the 20th.) Unable to adjust to the 21st century, Michigan is going back to the 19th.
-more-
Guys like this are running the country
"I'm a little more encouraged than I would have been if you had asked me about it a week ago," Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the so-called Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission, said on CBS' Face the Nation Sunday.…
…"they've started to tango now. And, you know, any time you have two guys in there tangoing you have a chance to get it done," he said.
Chicago Tribune
12.09.2012
If you're worried about that so-called fiscal cliff…
Behold! The Johnston, Rhode Island SWAT team and their gear. According to providencejournal.com, taxpayer largesse has equipped Johnston’s paramilitary-style police with two Freightliner tractor-trailers, twelve Humvees; 30 M-16 rifles and conversion parts to transform them into M-4 weapons; 599 M-16 magazines containing about 18,000 rounds; a sniper targeting calculator; night vision equipment, 44 bayonets for ceremonial purposes; five generators from M1 tanks; and 23 snow blowers. In this federally subsidized hardware bounty they are not alone . . .
Hullabaloo
There is more than one way to save a buck.
Just the thought, dude, just the thought
Minnesotans come by tour bus to watch the mayhem whenever the white stuff falls from the sky [in Seattle], just for the entertainment value. They sit out there in their t-shirts and lawn chairs, eating lutefisk, and lament the fact it isn't cold enough to ice fish.…
Chocolate Chip Mint
12.08.2012
Not with a bang but a whimper
American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.…
Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.…
Telegraph
And more:
Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.
Maybe those Mayans were right after all.
Sometimes a person wonders just how many senior commanders those guys have
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Tribal sources from Pakistan's northwest said on Saturday a U.S. drone attack had killed a senior al Qaeda commander…
Chicago Tribune
Yeah, we don't need your friggin' farms; we have grocery stores
WASHINGTON (AP) — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has some harsh words for rural America: It's "becoming less and less relevant," he says.
AP
12.07.2012
Eyes of Texas are ka-boom
In a recent investigative report by the Center for Responsive Politics and Hearst newspapers, the authors expressed concern that drones were being pushed into the domestic market before safety and ethics issues had been sufficiently addressed. Such fears were confirmed this week when the first police department in the country to acquire an aerial drone crashed the $300,000 aircraft into its own SWAT team.
Salon
Harsh, dude…
Ross Douthat, The New York Times’s Catholic-conservative columnist, is so obsessed with women’s fertility it’s really too bad he can’t get pregnant himself and see firsthand what it’s all about.
…but hey, go for it.
…but hey, go for it.
Reich: Jobs first
Today’s jobs report shows an economy that’s still moving in the right direction but way too slowly, which is why Washington’s continuing obsession with the federal budget deficit is insane. Jobs and growth must come first.…
-more-
12.06.2012
And tra-la-la to you
Newsweek is about to begin laying off staff, a move expected since the publisher scheduled its print magazine to shutter at the end of the year.…
The Newsweek layoffs join others in what is becoming an increasingly sad December for journalists.
- The New York Times is offering its fourth buyout in five years, with 30 newsroom managers targeted.
- The Cleveland Plain-Dealer is planning to eliminate 58 of the 168 Guild positions from its newsroom.
- News Corp. is shutting down The Daily iPad news publication Dec. 15 andlaying off most of the staff.
12.05.2012
Why not a spigot in every house?
Starbucks announced at its investor day that it's planning to add at least 1,500 new locations in the U.S. over the next five years, the AP reports.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-plans-to-open-even-more-shops-2012-12#ixzz2ECgkJnDX
Now you're talking.
Wait, we're still learning how to spell "sequestration"
"Minimum wage stays the same, but the price of food goes up, the price of gas goes up and the electric goes up," says Scott, 51. "How do you pay all your bills with 40 hours a week at $8 an hour?"
USA today
12.03.2012
So this is the great fiscal fix?
President Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, are in general agreement on the overarching issue: that the relevant Congressional committees must sit down next year …
New York Times
Do it next year?
Yo, USA Today, get a grip
Happy royal news! The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a baby
Newspaper once again claims its place as the only TV news show you can wrap fish in.
Maybe not so thankful after all
The endless streams of confetti that rained down during this year's Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was more than just your average bits of torn paper — according to New York news station WPIX-TV, parade-goers found that shredded police documents from the Nassau County police department were mixed in with the usual confetti.
The Verge
I wonder what they use in DC.
12.02.2012
World ends, this time for sure
In New Hampshire, where the state motto on the license plate reads "Live Free or Die":
A New Hampshire legislator is breathing new life into a proposal to prohibit state employees from wearing perfume and other fragrances to work.
Huffington Post
You just cannot not make this stuff up.
State Street may be great, but Lower Wacker rocks
It's hard to imagine just how awesome Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago is if you've never driven on it, but here's a piece from the Chicago Tribune that comes close to explaining it.
Also, for extra credit, 35 years of Apple TV commercials.
Also, for extra credit, 35 years of Apple TV commercials.
12.01.2012
In the brave new world it's all about re-branding
Broadwell can remake her image and recover from the scandal, Anderson-Smith says. The photos and other personal information about her "can help rewrite the script."
"She's certainly not the first woman to betray her husband, and she won't be the last. She made a bad judgment call, but there's certainly more to her than that," she said. "It's a reshaping, a rebranding.
USA Today
Now, if we can only figure out how to do artisanal, sustainable re-branding, we'll be home free.
Picky, picky
DHS has spent $430 million over the past nine years to provide radios tuned to a common, secure channel to 123,000 employees across the country. Problem is, no one seems to know how to use them.
ProPublica
Headline to nowhere
From this morning's Chicago Tribune:
Shallow non-tender pool for White Sox
Hint: They're talking about tendering contracts here, not, say, tender pitching arms. And of course, the pool has no water.
When it's 25° and snowing…
…it might be – might be – time to give up on summer. But the forecasters say it'll get to 50° tomorrow, so I'm not. Giving up, I mean. And that's final.
11.30.2012
You simply cannot find entertainment like this anywhere else
 | OpenSecrets.org (@OpenSecretsDC) |
After spending tens of millions to defeat Dems, @uschamber looks for a voice in the fiscal debate: nyti.ms/Wzjres @nytimes reports | |
11.29.2012
Wait! Wait! Let me guess!
| HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) |
RT @HuffPostLive: WATCH: Man who tattooed Romney/Ryan logo on his face explains why he's getting it removed huff.lv/SsyBDW | |
Best career advice ever
For an especially lucrative occupation, one might consider becoming a fired college football coach.
New York Times
11.28.2012
An old AOL CD would be my guess
The Mars rover Curiosity has found something — something noteworthy, in a pinch of Martian sand. But what is it?
The scientists working on the mission who know are not saying.
New York Times
Oh no! Not that! BP threatens to think
The U.S. government temporarily banned BP Plc from federal contracts on Wednesday over its "lack of business integrity" in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, a move that the British company had said could force it to rethink its entire U.S. operations.
Reuters
Yes, darlin', the end of civilization is near
9:25AM EST November 28. 2012 - Could the United States be facing an organic peanut butter shortage?
USA Today
The real problem with getting old…
…aside from general creaks, groans, and rattles, is that you fall into a kind of time warp, an alternate reality, and things like this from this morning's Chicago Tribune keep turning up.
Now to me, a traditional medication is cod liver oil. Which is not really a medication at all, of course, but just a remedy. Antidepressants, however, are certainly not traditional medications to me. Antidepressants are some newfangled thing, the very latest in chemical intervention. Of course, this distinction may simply be due to sloppy writing at the Tribune, but that's another thing.
The other day I run across a statistic that was touted as the highest value seen since we began keeping records. And when did we begin keeping records? 2004. Dude. They might as well have said last Tuesday.
Spending on traditional medications, such antidepressants, and those for blood pressure and cholesterol, fell 0.6 percent over the first three quarters of the year…
Now to me, a traditional medication is cod liver oil. Which is not really a medication at all, of course, but just a remedy. Antidepressants, however, are certainly not traditional medications to me. Antidepressants are some newfangled thing, the very latest in chemical intervention. Of course, this distinction may simply be due to sloppy writing at the Tribune, but that's another thing.
The other day I run across a statistic that was touted as the highest value seen since we began keeping records. And when did we begin keeping records? 2004. Dude. They might as well have said last Tuesday.
11.27.2012
Some days, you just can't win
Jill Kelley, the Tampa, Fla., socialite who inadvertently launched the FBI investigation that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, will be sacked as an “honorary consul” for South Korea because she used the title for personal gain, a senior official said Monday during a U.S. visit.
NBC
Oh, and reason why she was appointed "honorary consul" to begin with? To help sell some kind of coal gasification project. Surprised?
Work avoidance achievement of the decade
A British adventurer has become the first person to travel to all 201 sovereign states in the world without flying, ending his four-year odyssey early Monday when he arrived in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation.
Y! News
Lost in translation
Chinese Website Congratulates Kim Jong Un On Being Named The Onion's Sexiest Man Alive
Buzzfeed
11.26.2012
Now do you believe in evolution?
MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man choked to death after downing dozens of live roaches during a contest earlier this year in which the grand prize was a python, an autopsy released Monday concluded.
AP
So they made this suicide pact a while back and now they're having second thoughts
A failure to reach a deal over the year-end automatic spending cuts and an expiration of tax breaks – known collectively as the fiscal cliff – would hit consumer spending and economic growth in the holiday season, according to the White House.
The Guardian
Consumer spending! Dude! Don't shoot!
You can't un-read this, can you?
A Popemobile that was used for John Paul II's historic tour of Ireland in 1979 is now up for hire for stag parties and hen nights for 250 euros an hour.
The Telegraph
And then what? Have them bronzed?
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has once again promised that Twitter users will, indeed, be able to download a full archive of their tweets in just a matter of weeks.
TechCrunch
This kind of thing has always mystified me. Yes, I did start saving my emails a few years ago, but only because the cost of storage is now so low it's not worth the calories it takes to punch DELETE. More often than not, it's better to just forget.
11.25.2012
11.24.2012
Oh, BTW, go Buckeyes
Buckeyes are nuts.
I've lived in both Ohio and Michigan so my policy where that big game is concerned is to always root for the winner.
Wait til next year.
I've lived in both Ohio and Michigan so my policy where that big game is concerned is to always root for the winner.
Wait til next year.
11.23.2012
Of course we are still here
We have been medically indisposed for the last few days but we're back, just in time to bring you this meditation on the greatest authentically American holiday, from Salon.
Shopping is the lifeblood of our economy; capitalism as we know it would founder if we all stopped buying stuff. In this context, “buying nothing” on the very day that the Christmas shopping season traditionally begins would be foundationally unpatriotic. And if that means passing the gravy while standing in line in front of Wal-Mart, so be it.
Read the full story here.
11.20.2012
11.18.2012
And all this time I thought it was Lucy and Milton Berle
Now TV’s experiencing its own golden age with Louie, 30 Rock, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and dozens of other ambitious series competing for our attention.…
The Verge
Don't get old. It's too confusing.
Get blown away
A few years ago there was a book on our reading list called "The Worst Hard Time," by Timothy Egan, about the dustbowl years in Texas and Oklahoma. Tonight on PBS Ken Burns tells the story in the first installment of a two-part series. The second part is tomorrow night. Here's a preview.
Watch it. It's sure to be worth it.
Watch it. It's sure to be worth it.
11.17.2012
But Facebook, not so much
The No. 1 activity that makes people happy is -- gird yourself -- sex.
This is closely followed by drinking alcohol and volunteering. Which proves that guilt can drive you to pleasure too.
Other Top 10 appearances are made by activities such as listening to music, hobbies, and gaming.
I suppose you could call this a messy divorce
The unfortunate ex-husband’s Coca-Cola bottling factory in Uzbekistan was promptly shut down, three of his relatives were imprisoned, and 24 were deported at gunpoint to Afghanistan.
Oops
And no book deal.
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