"I look at what the phone company does and do the opposite." - Craig Newmark

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Gifts to U.S. officials include jewels, pillows, Abs Exerciser - "The gifts range from the extravagant -- like the jewelry -- to the modest -- a $6 assortment of nuts and dried fruit given by the Dalai Lama to Laura Bush -- to the downright odd, like the Abs Exerciser given to President Bush by the prime minister of Singapore... Despite Russia's tensions with the United States over Georgia, U.S. Gen. Peter Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received a machine gun from his Russian counterpart."
A machine gun is more cool!

Winners cannot quit China's medal factory - "For nearly a decade, he has tried to quit canoeing, he told The New York Times during an interview at the training center. He said he would rather attend college or start a business, but acknowledged that he was ill-equipped to do either one... "I do not want to work as an athlete, but as an athlete here I have no freedom to choose my future," Yang said, speaking through the team's official interpreter. "As a child, I didn't learn anything but sport, and now what do I do? I can't do anything else. I have my own dreams, but it is very difficult. I don't have the foundation to make them come true." Officials refused to let Yang retire, even after he won Olympic gold in the C-2 500-meter race with Meng Guanliang at the Athens Games in 2004. He described how they had threatened to withhold his retirement payment if he did not compete through the Beijing Games. "It is not possible to survive without those benefits," said Yang, whose parents say he receives a monthly stipend of $230 and performance-based bonuses."
Ungrateful whiners! They should be sent to re-education camps!

Kudos for the contrarian - "The Queen, visiting the London School of Economics, wondered why the credit crisis and its evolution were not predicted... Shakespeare, traducing Richard III with the connivance of the first Queen Elizabeth, understood better than anyone that a good story is more compelling than the search for truth. The American political scientist, Philip Tetlock, has studied the prognostications of pundits over several decades. He finds that the better known the forecaster, the less accurate the forecast. Business people, politicians and journalists value clarity and certainty of view more highly than acknowledgement of the uncertainty of a complex world. But it is mostly people who appreciate that complexity who have worthwhile things to say about the future."

Inside Shackleton's polar refuge - "It was this final leg in the harshest of environments that defeated Shackleton a century ago. Dressed in threadbare clothing and constantly battling frostbite, his men trekked southwards but on 9 January 1909 Shackleton realised the game was up. With his three companions, he made one final march and planted the Union Jack at 88 degrees 23 minutes south, just 97 miles (156km) from the South Pole. Then with the wind behind them, they turned for home. The return journey became a race for survival, but all four men lived through the ordeal. Shackleton was knighted on his return to England and was reputed to have explained his decision to turn back by saying he knew his wife would prefer a "live donkey to a dead lion for a husband"."

Bacon Salt - "Bacon salt is a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon"

Behind the Name - the Etymology and History of First Names

Police: Men tossed Molotov cocktail - "Two Chipley men have been arrested on arson and other charges after one tossed a Molotov cocktail at the other, and when it failed to explode, the second man threw it back at the first man's house... A Chipley police officer said the device did not work properly because Robinson made it out of a plastic bottle that did not break when it was thrown."

The Religious Condition: Answering And Explaining Christian Reasoning - "This part-philosophical, part-scientific overview explores the psychological and sociocultural influences that subtly provoke Christians to maintain their antiquated views of the universe. While billions of people around the world have merely assumed the solid validity of the Bible, The Religious Condition presents a series of profound questions regarding the implications of such premature assuredness. In addition to the conclusions from actual psychological studies that support these viewpoints, covered topics include the various ways that Christians approach scientific conflicts, the defense of a perfectly moral god who commits immoral acts, the illogical methods of argumentation that Christians invoke in the maintenance and defense of their beliefs, and disingenuous methods utilized by those who wish to defend the idea that religious beliefs are based on reason instead of faith. The Religious Condition answers actual reader responses to the previous works of Jason Long, a former Christian. His fresh experiences in the church and advanced levels of educational enlightenment make him the perfect individual to present this vehemently unpopular, yet undeniably appealing topic."
Exceprts; on the cosmological argument: "Quite the contrary to the claim that all effects require causes, the field of quantum mechanics is based on the principle of non-causality. Creation of strings, creation of matter and antimatter from a vacuum, and perhaps radioactive decay are three examples of processes that we currently believe do not necessarily require a cause."

Buried butter - "Since refrigerators did not exist in those days people had to rely on the peat to protect the butter from daytime heat stop it from growing mould. To help preserve the butter in earlier times, 5% or more salt was added to it. Then, before the butter could be eaten, slices of it were first soaked in water to reduce the salt content. If salt was scarce or unaffordable, the cold, anaerobic, antiseptic peat offered an alternative way to preserve butter through the autumn and winter. It also provided a way to preserve garlic butter, a special kind of butter made especially for use during Lent. Salt could not be used to preserve garlic butter because soaking in water before use would remove the garlic as well as the salt. Unfortunately, there are very few accounts of “bog buttering”, which might give an accurate picture of how it was actually buried in a way that would ensure preservation."

Josh Karpf: General Tso's Chicken - "Preliminary analysis of data confirms the expected correlation between high prices and placement in the peak real-estate strip of 8th Avenue. But, interestingly, there is no relative rise in price corresponding with the presence of the 2, 3, 4, 5, D, Q, N, R, and F subway stations, where higher commuter traffic would be expected to create a relatively captive audience of a greater number of patrons more willing to pay relatively high prices. The presence of greater numbers of Chinese restaurants in the regions of the subway stations cited supra may have created conditions of competition that stabilize the prices of General Tso's Chicken at a lower than expected level. Further analysis might cross-reference the prices of General Tso's Chicken with other menu offerings to test its suitability as an index for other common items, such as Beef with Black Bean Sauce, House Five Delicacies, or Shrimp Toast. Further analysis of data is pending completion of a related project, Kernel Placement: Frequency of Tiny Bits of Corn in Egg Drop Soup in Bensonhurst."

Hocus-Pocus, and a Beaker of Truffles - "A TRUFFLE by any other name may smell as sweet, but what if that name is 2,4-dithiapentane? All across the country, in restaurants great and small, the “truffle” flavor advertised on menus is increasingly being supplied by truffle oil. What those menus don’t say is that, unlike real truffles, the aroma of truffle oil is not born in the earth. Most commercial truffle oils are concocted by mixing olive oil with one or more compounds like 2,4-dithiapentane (the most prominent of the hundreds of aromatic molecules that make the flavor of white truffles so exciting) that have been created in a laboratory; their one-dimensional flavor is also changing common understanding of how a truffle should taste."

we are the new shit.: 20 Pose Ideas - "I am only going to show you the most common pictures of CUTE *AHEM* little common girls available almost anywhere nowadays.
(*While stocks last. Actually, these stocks will never run out. There are too many of them. Multiplying, replicating, cloning.) So you're inspired to become a bimbo as well? Actually, I'd love to see our readers and their attempt to look like one bimbo. Hehe, show us your pictures of you acting like a bimbo"
This is a good illustration for How Girls Waste Time, 39. b): In their friendster profiles, and whatever else profile they put up on the net as a lame excuse to put their picture up - always some doe-eyed, upward shot of their face staring up as if they're giving some sort of blowjob and the guy took a picture from up there while she's getting it on.