YOU SMELL NICE ARE YOU WEARING COLOGNE? NO I JUST SHOWERED TODAY

Though personality and looks definitely play a part in initial attraction, smell may play a larger role than we suspect. That inexplicable “chemistry” you feel with someone who may not fit your normal dating profile? It could be a subconscious scent drawing you to him or her.

Studies have found that how a person smells gives us clues to their genetic make-up, and thus, their potential to be a compatible mate. On a subconscious level, decoding a scent gives us a powerful tool to ensure our kids will be healthy, and our orgasms will be plentiful.

The first study to indicate that chemical signals play a role in attraction was conducted by Claud Wedekind over a decade ago. Forty-four men wore the same T-shirt for three days. They refrained from deodorants and scented soaps so they wouldn’t interfere with their natural smell. Women then sniffed the shirts and indicated which ones smelled the best to them. By comparing the DNA of the women and men, the researchers found that women didn’t just choose their favorite scent randomly. They preferred the scent of man whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a series of genes involved in our immune system—was most different from their own.

divinecaroline.com | read article

"WAKE ME WHEN YOU NEED ME"

Beaten. I take back everything I said about the Halo series. Fun, decent epic story, and at the end I said to myself "thats one bad ass dude". I still hate Halo fanboys.

WE'LL IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED

iPhone: Yay I was the coolest thing ever in 2007
nuvifone: Guess what I can do?
iPhone: I have visual voicemail. What cool useless features do you have?
nuvifone: 3.5G GSM HSDPA, Google local search, Garmin online services to look up traffic, weather, fuel prices, hotel discounts, etc. GPS navigation on the road or in pedestrian mode. IM, text, email, internet and I'm a phone too.
iPhone: ...Fuck
Garmin: nuvifone

WHAT KIND OF STATE IS THE STATE IN?

2008 Sate of the War Union Address

I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN

JUST DON'T CALL THEM A CULT

"There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale, neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by unenturbulating some of their theta by any of the three valid proceses. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow." - L. Ron Hubbard, Science of Survival p. 170

"Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had tradinaionally given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'it turns my blood to water' " - L. Ron Hubbard, Journal of Scientology Issue 15 G. 1953

"Scientology is the only specific (cure) for radiation (atomic bomb) burns" - L. Ron Hubbard, All About Radiation p. 109"Scientology and all the other cults are one-dimensional and we live in a three-dimentional world. They commit the highest crime: the rape of the soul." -Ron DeWolfe eldest son of Hubbard (born L. Ron Hubbard Jr.) Penthouse, June 1983.

Of the many new religious movements to appear during the 20th century, the Church of Scientology has, from its inception, been one of the most controversial, coming into conflict with the governments and police forces of several countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany) numerous times over the years. Reports and allegations have been made, by journalists, courts, and governmental bodies of several countries, that the Church of Scientology is an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and brutally exploits its members[1]

Local news report


BBC Special: Scientology & Me (4 parts)

ALWAYS BE WORKING ON A SUICIDE NOTE

HALO TRES

The Halo series has ruined millions of adult lives, and a few children's too. Yet I stand before you today to declare it a massive achievement of the human race. Thank you Lord Microsoft for this gift you have bestowed upon us. I swear to uphold the covenant and collect as many hidden skulls as possible in your name. I also hate Halo fanboys. At least I'm done my G damn job in a few days, which leaves me plenty of time to rank up in multiplayer...

Mass [time sink]

Well I blew (maybe not blew, because it wasn't really 'wasted') my paycheck on an Xbox 360. I've been wanting one for a few months now but have had other things i've needed to spend money on. It feels good finally buying it for myself though. Along with the Pro edition (no point in blowing another $100 on the elite for a black paint job, an hdmi cable, and 100 gigs of HD space i wont fill) I purchased Mass Effect. After hearing so much about it, the previews then the reviews I had to get it. I haven't played a solid single player RPG in quite awhile so its refreshing to dive into one so deep as Mass Effect. I've only spent about 2 hours playing and I've probably touched about 2% of the total content available. I feel like a kid again sitting in math class throwing ideas around in my head on how ill level my character and should he become specialized in this weapon or that weapon? Seriously I can remember sitting in classes in high school and drawing out flow charts on what paths to take in games, and throwing down sell prices for items and how could I raise enough for that one I wanted? It's official... I'm still a nerd.

D.A.N.C.E.

Ed Banger Records
Justice Myspace

'Art raises its head where creeds relax.' - Nietzsche

Beautiful site, beautiful fashion photography. S Magazine

The Worst Generation

Long, but a good read. Hit the link at the bottom for the full article.

I hate the Boomers.

I KNOW IT'S A SIN to hate, so let me put it this way: If they were animals, they'd be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving but a wasteland. If they were plants, they'd be kudzu, choking off every other living thing with their sheer mass. If they were artists, they'd be abstract expressionists, interested only in the emotions of that moment--not in the lasting result of the creative process. If they were a baseball club, they'd be the Florida Marlins: prefab prima donnas who bought their way to prominence, then disbanded--a temporary association but not a team. (...)

WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO THE BOOMER IN CHIEF. It's not for nothing that Pulitzer-prize-winning author David Maraniss called his biography of Bill Clinton First in His Class. (It is interesting to note that the same Boomers who supported Reagan were less likely to vote for Clinton than the World War II generation was.)

Clinton's right-wing critics seize on his personal failings to paint a caricature of the ultimate sixties hippie: pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer; the Muhammad Ali of selfishness--the kind of guy Newt Gingrich called a "countercultural McGovernik." But Clinton's public agenda has, I believe, generally kept faith with old Professor Quigley. His basic political philosophy is to prefer the future to the present and to stress communitarian values over selfish individualism. His most profound emotion is empathy. To this day, he's widely mocked for declaring to a man who was dying of AIDS, "I feel your pain." But feeling someone's pain is true compassion, which literally means "to suffer with." A most un-Boomer sentiment, indeed.

In a classic example of preferring the future to the present, Clinton took a terrible political hit for raising taxes to pay down the deficit. His party lost the House and Senate, but over time the economic policies worked, and because he was willing to pay the short-term price, we enjoy the long-term economic benefits.

But if in his public policy Clinton has been anti-Boomer, in his personal failings he has given ample fodder to his critics and much heartbreak to those of us who love him. Having an affair with a young woman and lying about it is a stupid and selfish act. And Bill Clinton lives with the knowledge that he has caused his family immeasurable pain. But it was ultimately a sin against his family, not yours. You think he got away with it? Got away with it? Imagine how you'd feel if your daughter read a Starr report on the Internet, chronicling your worst, most shameful moment.

He didn't get away with shit.

And if I had to choose, I'd rather have a leader who was rotten to his family but good to the country than the other way around.

IT IS MY VIEW THAT THE TRULY CLASSIC Boomer politician is not Bill Clinton but the man who despises him: George W. Bush. A charming and disarming guy, Bush has coasted through life on his family's money and his daddy's name. He went to the best schools. And while at those elite schools, he served as the model for Otter in Animal House. He went into business (backed by family wealth) and failed. Tried again. Failed. And again--well, you get it. He finally struck it rich when his father's wealthy supporters made him the figurehead managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Bush used his Boomer charm to con the good people of Arlington, Texas, into raising their taxes to build his Rangers a new stadium. When the team was sold in 1998, Bush made a profit of more than $14 million.

And what does Bush offer us, after this life of wretched Boomer selfishness? Lectures about personal responsibility. We have a word for that in Texas: chutzpah.

The specter of Bush the Son striving to avenge Bush the Father brings us to the Question: How could the World War II generation--the Greatest Generation--have raised the Worst Generation?

I put that question to Tom Brokaw, chronicler of the Greatest Generation. Brokaw was born in 1940, so he's not a Boomer chronologically. Nor is he one attitudinally. "I have one foot on each side of the ice floe," he says. (...)

One reason the Boomers were so spoiled, Brokaw theorizes, was their parents' understandable desire to compensate for their own deprivation. "Even those who had not really known poverty in the Depression still had a harder life than most of us can imagine today," he says. "Think about it: Most men worked in manual labor. Most women did manual labor in the home as well. So many parents from that generation have said to me, 'We had so little, we wanted our children to have so much--and we spoiled them.'"

Esquire.com | read article

Yep, that's about right

You really didn't think your plan all the way through did you?

What anti-abortion demonstrators said when asked what the punishment should be for women who got abortions if abortion became illegal. Such a simple question, but apparently one that these people who believe so deeply in their views haven't been asked. This YouTube user has disabled embedding the video, so here is a direct link.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

The future only happens once

I have to say if anything, just listening to Edwards speak is refreshing. Then you realize what he's saying and it's like a day at the water park in the middle of july refreshing. Check out where John Edwards stands on a litany of issues at Ontheissues.org.

When I see a car accident I know I need to stop, because I know I'm the only one who can help.

A North Carolina man who saw an SUV flip and roll on a highway last November was able to provide medical aid to the victims with skills he learned from the America's Army, say the videogame's makers.

Paxton Galvanek pulled one of the passengers out of the smoking car, then found another bleeding heavily from his hand where his fingers had been lost during the crash.

"I used a towel as a dressing and asked the man to hold the towel on his wound and to raise his hand above his head to lessen the blood flow which allowed me to evaluate his other injuries which included a cut on his head," Galvanek said in a letter to the America's Army design team.

Galvanek said he learned about controlling bleeding from playing section two of the "medic" class training in America's Army, a game developed by the Army as a recruitment tool.

"I have received no prior medical training and can honestly say that because of the training and presentations within America's Army, I was able to help and possibly save the injured men," Galvanek said.

Wired.com | read article

Sex basics

Just a few of the useful tips located behind this link. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll laugh your ass off.

- Someone may let out a fart right in the middle of things.
- Sometimes when you pull out and she changes positions she'll fart out her vagina (queefing).
- If you have anal sex you may get some poo on your dick.

Datinggroundwork.com | read article

You have to give them credit

They are standing up for something they believe in.

Don't forget about me!

John Edawards taking a stance on something the other candidates haven't even touched. It's good to hear someone talking about something other then "9/11" or "dissolve the CIA"

Tonight, 200,000 brave veterans will be homeless, and they will sleep in shelters, on the streets, under bridges, and on grates - and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t think there is a problem. For someone who spends a lot of time shouting about patriotism, you would think he would be outraged by the treatment of our homeless veterans. How many more will it take before we wake up and solve this crisis?

While George Bush and Bill O’Reilly continue to ignore our homeless veterans, the American people, whether we are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, must speak out and stand up for those who have stood up for us. We must do everything we can to solve this terrible problem - and we must begin by reaching out to these men and women who are suffering - not pretending they do not exist. After our veterans have served our country honorably, isn’t one homeless veteran one too many?

My gf in GQ

Lilyallenmusic.com | Myspace.com/lilymusic

Update: I'm sad to report that as of today Lily Allen suffered a miscarriage after returning from vacation with her [real] boyfriend Ed Simons.
news.aol.com | read article

Slammin

"American Apparel, we'll make your tits look slammin".

The giant billboard ad for American Apparel on Houston Street in NYC--of a woman wearing only tights, bent over, legs spread--was defaced this week when someone spray painted "Gee, I wonder why women get raped?" Initially we were all, "Misogyny!" But after further consideration, and noticing that this graffiti actually has correct punctuation and everything, we were wondering if this wasn't a social commentary. American Apparel immediately replaced the ad with a different one, featuring a model who is actually wearing a top. But no matter what A.A. puts in that space, it's always attention grabbing, and pushes the envelope. Alex Goldberg and I hung out in front of it and asked passersby what they thought of the campaign, and why they think women get raped.

Jezebel.com | read article

Because so many girls go out wearing nothing but Opaque Pantyhose (Available in 15 colors, 88% Nylon, 12% Spandex construction; Elastic waist; XS/S fits sizes 0-6; M/L fits sizes 6-14; $14.00.) and routinely bend over. Come on.

I just ate my mustache

Two of my favorites going at it.

He almost got rid of her... next time

Just wait for the end when its played in slow motion. Hilarious.
Break.com | Scaring Mom Leads To Concussion video

Apple TV: this time it's for real

Divx players could play DVDs, but they could also play Divx discs, which were promoted as a something between a rental and a true purchase. The discs themselves were cheap, and allowed for the viewing of the film in a 48 hour period once you started it. You could then unlock the disc permanently for an additional "purchase" fee that took into account what you had already paid. The strangest part about it was probably the modem - yes, a modem - that it used to manage its DRM. I don't think we were using the term DRM in 1998, but that's how we would have described it. Divx was at the center of the first real flamewar I had seen online, citing things privacy concerns and the limitations it placed on the consumption of media. I'm not sure it was ever going to work. The idea that you could never really own these discs was a strong point of contention, but even with a DVD (called "Open DVD" by advocates at the time) your ownership isn't exactly absolute.

It may be that some people are really excited by devices like the Apple TV, certainly the device has seen improvements, but whenever Steve Jobs starts talking about this thing I go instantly into a coma. The duration of this coma is exactly the length of time that he discusses it, and once he moves on to something that is useful or important I am rejuvenated. It is funny, or perhaps sad, but the almost universally reviled Divx format was actually more lenient than today's digital downloads. The partial, limited-use, occluded ownership of the iTunes model is now so engrained that these rentals can be worse than bad, and no one remembers.

Penny-Arcade.com | comic
Apple.com | apple tv

We are our own asteroids

Ok maybe the image of the Death Star blowing up is kind of extreme, but I saw all the Star Wars movies on sale for sooo cheap at Walmart today. I have to go back and get them.

More than a decade ago, many scientists claimed that humans were demonstrating a capacity to force a major global catastrophe that would lead to a traumatic shift in climate, an intolerable level of destruction of natural habitats, and an extinction event that could eliminate 30 to 50 percent of all living species by the middle of the 21st century. Now those predictions are coming true. The evidence shows that species loss today is accelerating. We find ourselves uncomfortably privileged to be witnessing a mass extinction event as it's taking place, in real time.

The fossil record reveals some extraordinarily destructive events in the past, when species losses were huge, synchronous and global in scale. Paleontologists recognize at least five of these mass extinction events, the last of which occurred about 65 million years ago and wiped out all those big, charismatic dinosaurs (except their bird descendants) and at least 70 percent of all other species. (...)

In 2007, of 41,415 species assessed for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, 16,306 (39 percent) were categorized as threatened with extinction: one in three amphibians, one quarter of the world's pines and other coniferous trees, one in eight birds and one in four mammals. Another study identified 595 "centers of imminent extinction" in tropical forests, on islands and in mountainous areas. Disturbingly, only one-third of the sites surveyed were legally protected, and most were surrounded by areas densely populated by humans. We may not be able to determine the cause of past extinction events, but this time we have, indisputably: We are our own asteroids.

washingtonpost.com | read article

Bat for lashes

Obsessed with this video/song right now.

Hard wooden dick [NSFW]

Winona Ryder is so effin hot.

I don't care if you can play the guitar.

You just made it a lot easier for me to decide who's not getting my vote Mike Huckabee.

The United States Constitution never uses the word "God" or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from "We the People." However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it's time to put an end to that.

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

Joe Scarborough [of MSNBC's Morning Joe] finally suggested that while he believes "evangelicals should be able to talk politics ... some might find that statement very troubling, that we're going to change the Constitution to be in line with the Bible. And that's all I'm going to say."

rawstory.com | read article

Think-Of-Something-To-Do-And-See-That-Task-To-Completion!!!!!

Taken from "An Open Letter to Larry The Cable Guy" via bobanddavid.com

Hello Larry,
It's me, David Cross. Recently I was shooting something for my friends at "Wonder Showzen" (the funniest, most subversive comedy on American T.V. at the moment) and when we were taking a break one of the guys on the show asked me if I had seen some article in something somewhere wherein you were interviewed to promote your new book "Please-Git-R-Done" (published by Crown Books $23.95 U.S.) and they asked about your devoting a chapter to slamming me and the "P.C. Left". (...) I said I wasn't aware of the article. They went on to tell me that you said basically (and I am not quoting but paraphrasing their recall) that I could kiss your ass, that I've never been to one of your shows (true) and that I didn't know your audience (untrue).

SO, I went and got your book, "Gitting-R-Donned", and excitedly skimmed past the joke about that one time you farted and something farty happened, on past the thing about the fat girl who farted and finally found it, Chapter 5 - Media Madness. Well, needless to say I farted. I farted up a fartstorm right there in the Flyin' J Travel Center. I fartingly bought the book and took it home with an excitement I haven't experienced since I got Bertha Chudfarter's Grandma drunk and she took her teeth out and blew me as I was finger banging her while wearing a Jesus sock puppet in the back of the boiler room at The Church of the Redeemer off I-20 (I don't care who you are, that's funny.) (...)

But I want to address some of the things you write about me in "Git-to-Gittin'-r-Done". In response to the Rolling Stone article, but first let me say this; you are very mistaken if you think that I don't know your audience. Hell, I could've been heckled by the parents of some of the very people that come see you now. I grew up in Roswell, Georgia (near the Funny Bone and not far from The Punch Line). The very first time I went on stage was at The Punch Line in Sandy Springs in 1982 when I was 17. I cut my teeth in the south and my first road gigs ever were in Augusta, Charleston, Baton Rouge, and Louisville. I remember them very well, specifically because of the audience. I remember thinking (occasionally, not all the time) "what a bunch of dumb redneck, easily entertained, ignorant motherfuckers. I can't believe the stupid shit they think is funny." So, yes, I do know your audience.

bobanddavid.com | read letter

So as not to be taken out of context, you really should read the whole letter. It's well worth it, especially if you or a loved one really thinks fart jokes and saying the same line that basically is saying "complete the task" is funny AND you're over the age of 14.

Rock Cock block the vote! ... Updated

Rep. Dennis Kucinich won't be taking part in MSNBC's debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday. It certainly won't be the first time that Kucinich was excluded from a recent Democratic debate. But the difference is Kucinich was initially invited, and had met the criteria, for the MSNBC debate. Then, MSNBC changed the criteria and told Kucinich he was uninvited.

Alternet published a Kucinich press release, which said that 44 hours after Kucinich got a congratulatory letter and invite from NBC to the Nevada debate, they notified him of their changed criteria, and his exclusion.

In the press release, the Kucinich campaign took a shot at the media as a whole: "When 'big media' exert their unbridled control over what Americans can see, hear, and read, then the Constitutional power and right of the citizens to vote is being vetoed by multi-billion corporations that want the votes to go their way."

According to the Los Angeles Times, the original criteria for the debate called for the inclusion of the top four democratic candidates in national polling. With Bill Richardson dropping out of the race last week, that moved Kucinich to fourth place in polls. NBC decided to change the criteria, featuring the top three Dem. candidates: Sen. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama.

huffingtonpost.com | read article

I just recently read something similar involving Kucinich being left out of something. If anyone finds it, please let me know.

Here's another Chomsky video that is relevent to the above article.



Update: This is as of 4pm Jan 14th.

A Las Vegas judge has ruled that democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in the Tuesday night presidential debate in Las Vegas.

Kucinich filed a lawsuit against NBC. He said he was initially invited to be in the nationally televised debate but the offer was later rescinded. Base on the earlier invitation, Judge Charles Thompson ruled in Kucinich's favor saying if he isn't included, he will issue an injunction stopping the debate.

lasvegasnow.com | read article
cliffschecter.bravenewfilms.org | read article

Someone call Jimmy Carter, we're about to get shit on.

chomsky.info | site

America, fuck yeah

Jeb Bush: The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money.

"I just got stunlocked for 5:18"

World of Warcraft forums never cease to amaze me. You can find the dumbest people on there arguing about the dumbest shit, or you can find a diamond in the rough like this; which isn't saying much because its forum about a game about wizards and dragons.



I lol'd, then I kind of wanted the last 5:18 of my life back.

I'm no tourist

Zaysen: Who do you think this man is? The Lord?
Colonel Trautman: No. God would have mercy. He won't.

A classic line in a series of movies full of them. I cant wait for Rambo IV on Jan 25th. He rips a fucking guys throat out in the trailer... in the trailer.

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo (SYLVESTER STALLONE) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he’s running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border, the world’s longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region.

That all changes when a group of human rights missionaries search out the “American river guide” John Rambo. When Sarah (JULIE BENZ) and Michael Bennett (PAUL SCHULZE) approach him, they explain that since last year’s trek to the refugee camps, the Burmese military has laid landmines along the road, making it too dangerous for overland travel. They ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween and drop them off, so they can deliver medical supplies and food to the Karen tribe. After initially refusing to cross into Burma, Rambo takes them, dropping off Sarah, Michael and the aid workers…

Less than two weeks later, pastor Arthur Marsh (KEN HOWARD) finds Rambo and tells him the aid workers did not return and the embassies have not helped locate them. He tells Rambo he’s mortgaged his home and raised money from his congregation to hire mercenaries to get the missionaries, who are being held captive by the Burmese army. Although the United States military trained him to be a lethal super soldier in Vietnam, decades later Rambo’s reluctance for violence and conflict are palpable, his scars faded, yet visible. However, the lone warrior knows what he must do…

filmschoolrejects.com | read article

Braaaains

Aaron: You know that story, about how NASA spent millions of dollars developing this pen that writes in Zero G? Did you ever read that?
Abe: Yeah.
Aaron: You know how the Russians solved the problem?
Abe: Yeah, they used a pencil.

Many of the suggestions in Teach Yourself Training Your Brain are surprising, such as cuddling a baby, cheating at school, reading out loud and doing your university degree in business studies. Co-authors Terry Horne and Simon Wootton say their recommendations are based on and backed by the latest research by leading experts around the world.

For decades we have thought that the cognitive capacity of our brains is genetically determined, whereas it’s now clear that it’s a lifestyle choice. What we eat and drink, how we learn at school and what type of moods we have are all crucial,’ said Horne, a business lecturer at the University of Central Lancaster and an authority on thinking and learning.

Have eggs, fish or cold meat at breakfast. Stick to protein-based foods at lunchtime such as oily fish with dark green vegetables. Avoid bread, pasta or pizza and drink tea, ideally green or herbal, not coffee. Snack on nuts, not biscuits or other sweet things. Ideally, eat carbohydrates in the evenings only. Avoid caffeine, alcohol and red meat.

guardian.co.uk | read article

How in the hell did I miss this one?

Seriously, how did this one get past me. I won't even begin to comment on this story. In todays world of lawsuits, and finger pointing where someone has to take the blame for everything, who would you blame?

Megan Meier died believing that somewhere in this world lived a boy named Josh Evans who hated her. He was 16, owned a pet snake, and she thought he was the cutest boyfriend she ever had.

Josh contacted Megan through her page on MySpace.com, the social networking Web site. They flirted for weeks, but only online — Josh said his family had no phone. On Oct. 15, 2006, Josh suddenly turned mean. He called Megan names, and later they traded insults for an hour.

The next day, in his final message, Josh wrote, “The world would be a better place without you.”

Sobbing, Megan ran into her bedroom closet. Her mother found her there, hanging from a belt. She was 13.

Six weeks after Megan’s death, her parents learned that Josh Evans never existed. He was an online character created by Lori Drew, then 47, who lived four houses down the street in this rapidly growing community 35 miles northwest of St. Louis.

nytimes.com | read article

Buy, no sell... yeah... wait

Witty, funny and hits the nail on the head.

"Now people are saying the [subprime lending] crisis is likely to turn into financial melt down, can that be avoided?"

"It can be avoided provided governments and central banks give up, the financial speculators back the money we've lost..."

"But isn't that rewarding greed and stupidity?"

"No.. no, its rewarding what the Prime Minister Gordon Brown called "the ingenuity of the market". And we dont want this money for ourselves, we want this money to put it back into the market so we can carry on borrowing and lending."

'Time' or 'time'?

I love reading about these kinds of things, even if its hard to wrap my head around some of the ideas. I read a Brief History of Time when I was 13, again it was way over my head but it blew my mind.

The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and future are not absolutes. Einstein’s theories also opened a rift in physics because the rules of general relativity (which describe gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos) seem incompatible with those of quantum physics (which govern the realm of the tiny).

Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.

“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.” (…)

The possibility that time may not exist is known among physicists as the “problem of time.” (…)

The laws of physics don’t explain why time always points to the future. All the laws—whether Newton’s, Einstein’s, or the quirky quantum rules—would work equally well if time ran backward. As far as we can tell, though, time is a one-way process; it never reverses, even though no laws restrict it.

“It’s quite mysterious why we have such an obvious arrow of time,” says Seth Lloyd, a quantum mechanical engineer at MIT.

The mother of all initial conditions, Lloyd says, was the Big Bang. Physicists believe that the universe started as a very simple, extremely compact ball of energy. Although the laws of physics themselves don’t provide for an arrow of time, the ongoing expansion of the universe does. As the universe expands, it becomes ever more complex and disorderly. The growing disorder—physicists call it an increase in entropy—is driven by the expansion of the universe, which may be the origin of what we think of as the ceaseless forward march of time.

Time, in this view, is not something that exists apart from the universe. There is no clock ticking outside the cosmos. (…) Contrary to what Newton believed, our ordinary clocks don’t measure something that’s independent of the universe. In fact, says Lloyd, clocks don’t really measure time at all.

“I recently went to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder,” says Lloyd. (NIST is the government lab that houses the atomic clock that standardizes time for the nation.) They told me, ‘Our clocks do not measure time. No, time is defined to be what our clocks measure.’ Which is true. They define the time standards for the globe: Time is defined by the number of clicks of their clocks.”

discovermagazine.com | read article

Mo money, no problems

The Port Authority missed its New Year’s Eve deadline to finish excavating Ground Zero, and developer Larry Silverstein will start collecting $300,000 a day in penalties.

Despite working 20 hours a day, construction crews are still weeks away from clearing the subterranean beds on Church St. for Silverstein to erect Towers 3 and 4 of the sprawling project.

The Port Authority, which owns the site, said it could end up owing Silverstein $9 million to $13.5 million in fines because of the delay.
nydailynews.com | read article

New Favs

I may have found my new favorite photographer, Werner Amann. His photo's are something i've always strived to achieve in my own. Im also in love with the tone and saturation of these photos and others like him. werneramann.com

Im also quite enjoying Rankin's photos as well. Tight cropped compositions where the negative space is just as intriguing as the naked figures. The use of flash on some is also very voyeuristic.
rankin.co.uk

Giving back to the community

Old news, but funny none the less.

Where hip hop needs to be

Cool videos of the boys from Bmore, Spank Rock and XXXchange. Warning, the second video may not be suitable for anyone, or if you are at least at work.

"Wake up one day and 'chicken noodle soup' is on, and you tryna figure out what's happening. And someone has to save it. Me? I don't feel like saving hip hop. I'm not that responsible, I cant save myself."

Giada

Oh Giada De Laurentiis. You had me at "here's a great way to get all your veggies in, with tons of flavor". You are the Bobby Flay to my southwestern cuisine.


Giada.com

Quickie

I hope everyone had a good New Years. I was in my car downtown at midnight, not really wanting to be out chasing people around town to hang out.

I like design, I went to school for it and liked it so much I switched majors soon after starting. When it comes to user interfaces, I like mine friendly, aesthetically pleasing, clean and informative at the same time. And i've strived to make my WoW interface no different. I could even afford to scale down or get rid of the raid boxes on the right. My favorite changes from the original UI are the bars at the bottom and my info and targets info (not in shot) in the upper left. Don't mind the obligatory paper doll window being open. /cough armory page. I just got back into it after a hiatus.. give me time on getting upgrades.

And for the record to those who play and may check this... the DPS in the lower right is not my real DPS, and yeah I only have 100g... I'm poor.