"Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical." - Yogi Berra

***

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement - "Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said."

Fact of the Year: Results Graph on the Seven Roman Virtues - "The Seven Roman Virtues are Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance. View here for the live version of the Seven Roman Virtues graph, and here for other featured results. Below is how Hope compared with Pain and Ambition. Pain, when we lost every reason to hope, and Ambition when we forgot about them."

Cheap flights - low cost and budget airline specialist in Europe & Australasia - skyscanner is good for checking out flight possibilities. I like the fact that it's fast to use, clean, lean and easy to digest, unlike places like Expedia and worst of all, Zuji, the best.

Novena Church priest says no exorcism has been performed in S'pore - "One of the two priests at the centre of the Amutha Valli forced exorcism trial, said no exorcism has ever been performed in Singapore."
That's not what I've heard.

Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife - "The idea of the Spammed Persistently All Month (S.P.A.M.) experiment — which fittingly started on April Fool's Day — was to have 50 volunteers from around the world answer every spam message and pop-up ad on their PC... By the time it was all over, after every bank-account phishing scam, Nigerian bank scheme, and offer for medication, adult content and just plain free stuff had been pursued. "I was horrified," says Mooney, a realtor by profession. "It's all snake oil. I'm amazed at what true junk is out there when you're clicking through on e-mail."... Whether trying to win an iPod online, get free travel brochures, weight-loss tea or Maybelline eyeliner, the effect of entering a home address was extreme. Immediately, a deluge of mail landed at her doorstep, directed to the attention of Penelope Retch... One participant in Australia named Marika wrote, "I don't know whether I would feel safe to surf to that extent again. I tried to sign up for jobs that would generate an at-home income with what seemed like respectable sites, however these sites led to massive amounts of spam." "
I'm sure some of those were genuine! You never know until you try everything! Never stop searching for Truth!!!

Windows UX Taskforce - "Let Microsoft know about the user experience quirks in Windows Vista"
There's no 'about' page, so description from elsewhere: "Long Zheng over at IStartedSomething has begun a taskforce to document the most significant failings of the Windows Vista user experience. Everything from the ancient fonts dialog to the IE download animation are being documented. Users are encouraged to submit new ones or help promot existing ones using a Digg-like system. The hope is that Microsoft or some third party will do something to address these short-comings in Windows Vista."

As temperatures rise, so do power bills - "“I only turn the airconditioning on at night when I sleep. Nothing has changed. They said the airconditioner ‘knows’ the weather is hot and has to absorb more energy to maintain the same degree of coolness,” said Ms Ho, adding that she was not convinced by the explanation."
DUH

'Ingredient in watermelon has effects similar to Viagra' - "A slice of cool, fresh watermelon has effects similar to Viagra, researchers say. Watermelons contain an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body's blood vessels, similar to what happens when a man takes Viagra, said scientists in Texas, one of the United States' top producers of the seedless variety."

Bull Market - Weird News Story Archive - "Alan Greenberg, the 70-year-old chairman of the Bear Sterns investment house, has long required employees to give 4 percent of their wages to charity. He is not exempt from his own decree. For his own latest give-away, he is donating $1 million for Viagra prescriptions for people who can’t afford the anti-impotence drug. How far will a million bucks go, considering the high cost of the drug? “Depending on demand, I might add to it,” Greenberg said. “It can only go up, not down.”"

The New and Not Improved Barack Obama - Editorial - NYTimes.com - "Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings... The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11... We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games."
Considering the New York Times published this editorial, that says a lot.

MFTTW: that's what i've been saying from day one though
that you can't trust obama to keep to his word

he IS trying to get elected
but everyone is like
"oh no he's different... oh no, he will bring CHANGE"

BALLS

i mean it's not as if i'm enough of an idealist to think that politicians should stick to their word

but they should at least not be so damn sanctimonious about their stands