Fuck
This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo. Fuck is a taboo word. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. This process of silence then enables small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.
Alien Rain
As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.
Meerkat Manor premieres June 9th on Animal Planet
Meerkat Manor is a soap opera with a difference – the main protagonists are 12 inches high, live underground in burrows and survive on a diet of worms, insects and lizards.
This ground breaking series, narrated by Bill Nighy, follows a group of meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. From family squabbles to love affairs, Animal Planet presents a detailed portrait of these curious and entertaining creatures as never seen before. We’ll get to know each individual character as intimately as any human soap star but here the relationships, births, deaths and conflicts are for real…
http://www.animalplanetasia.com/meerkatmanor/feature1.shtml
SOTU
For all I know, this has been blogged to death. My friend LT Goodluck hipped me to it:
State of the Union (SOTU) provides access to the corpus of all the State of the Union addresses from 1790 to 2006. SOTU allows you to explore how specific words gain and lose prominence over time, and to link to information on the historical context for their use. SOTU focuses on the relationship between individual addresses as compared to the entire collection of addresses, highlighting what is different about the selected document. You are invited to try and understand from this information the connection between politics and language–between the state we are in, and the language which names it and calls it into being.
Saviors of Song
Of all the old printed music that Kim Venaas and his orchestras have rescued from the dustbin of history, a faded clarinet arrangement is one of his favorites.
On the front is “Down by the Old Mill Stream.” On the back, a long-ago clarinet player scrawled a giant note, presumably to another musician: “YOUR FLY IS OPEN.”
Radiographer (Opening Prayer and the Revival of Erik Estrada)
First day of class. The First and Second Years joined together for a rare harmonic convergence. I’ll be honest. I was nervous. In part because I was emotionally drained from the Spurs collapse, and also because I wasn’t sure what I had got myself into. What happened next did nothing to lessen these concerns.
The Religious Right and Environmentalism
Another Washington lobbyist on the religious right told the Guardian: “Rich is just being stupid on this issue. There may be a debate to be had but … people can only sustain so many moral movements in their lifetime. Is God really going to let the Earth burn up?”
Bill Moyers
The Italian philosopher Antontio Gramsci once explained that he practiced “the pessimism of the intellect” and the “optimism of the will.” Me, too. My day job as a journalist is to see the world as it is, without whitewash or illusions. But I am also a father, grandfather, husband, neighbor, and citizen. Like everyone else I have some responsibility, as I pass through, to help fix what’s broken. “Pessimism of the intellect” requires of the journalist candor in reporting, facing the facts in what can be an impossible world. But “optimism of the will” means expecting a confident future and getting out of bed every morning to do something to help bring it about.
Prehistoric Ecosystem
Israeli scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered a prehistoric ecosystem dating back millions of years.
The discovery was made in a cave near the central Israeli city of Ramle during rock drilling at a quarry. Scientists were called in and soon found eight previously unknown species of crustaceans and invertebrates similar to scorpions.
“Until now eight species of animals were found in the cave, all of them unknown to science,” said Dr Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He said the cave’s ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel.
Condoleeza Rice at Boston College?
Author Steve Almond resigns his adjunct position at Boston College. Can you blame him?
Cordless Jumprope
“To use the invention, a user holds a handle in each hand, and begins to simulate jumping rope while moving the handles in a circle with their hands and arms. The weighted ball or gear simulates the centrifugal action of a jump rope, thus delivering all the health benefits of jumping rope without any of the disadvantages of stumbling on the rope, having the rope hit the ceiling or the like.”
Found Sentence
Even mentioning homosexuals, sex workers and drug users is taboo among Islamic nations, many Catholic countries — and the Bush administration.
Praise Moves
A little bit more about pop
Get thee to a CDery [or iTunes] and purchase thyself Mott the Hoople’s “Sweet Angeline” [Brain Capers, 1972].
“Angeline, I love you.
Your mouth is like a steak.”
A little bit about pop
As Sheila notes, I’ve already crashed whatever cachet I might have had with my confession of some affection for the instrumental middle of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, so why not go all and make a few more notes?
1] How could I have forgotten what is quite probably my favorite ’60s jam of all, Canned Heat’s “Fried Hockey Boogie”, a piece of music which truly makes me happy simply to be able to hear it?
2] I’m not a great fan of The Mama’s & The Papa’s [sic], but I continue to be amazed by the power and grace of Cass Elliott’s vocals as well as the practically lighter-than-air footwork on display for a few seconds at a time in the DVDs California Dreamin’ and Monterey Pop.
3] For all of these years [and it's a lot of years, trust me] I have thought Jack Bruce was singing “Big bad woman gonna carry me to my grave” on Cream’s version of “Born Under a Bad Sign”. But now that I own Albert King’s original recording, it’s quite clear that King at least is signing “Big legged woman”.
4] Why the critical disdain [which includes the artist himself] for Peter Gabriel’s second album, the one produced by Robert Fripp? There are few performances in progressive or alternative rock as affecting as Gabriel’s “Home Sweet Home.” Simple-minded lyrics or no, the sound of Gabriel’s vocal atop that lovely tune is utterly marvelous, and music is, after all, sound first and sense later.
Notes from the Countryside: Passageway
It came as a whistle—sharp and piercing there on the deck six feet behind us as we ate supper. Unlike their normal trilling, this was simple and direct. It took awhile to recognize it as instruction and support from two adult cardinals to their fledgling just out of the nest.
In the branches of the Nandina, exposed, fragile, and yet camouflaged, the youngster clung to steady itself in the shifting breezes. Mother and father flew in to feed it, and then dashed off for more. Each time, the same whistling encouragement came for it to fly and leave the close proximity of humans. Never abandoned, but wary, the parents coaxed the young stranger-to-flight into the air. Before dusk, it had managed that delicate passageway.
Classic Rock Seafood
Spencer Davis Grouper
Eely Dan
Bachman-Tuna Overdrive
Fleetwood Mackerel
Salmon & Garfunkel
Fish Styx
My Correspondence with Clutch the Rockets Bear
In 2003, I wrote to Clutch about my fear of the upsetting Dallas Mavericks dunk mascot, Mavs Man.
Me:
Dear Clutch,
I am afraid of Mavs Man. What can I do about
this? I mean, he’s scary, right?
Sincerely,
Aaron D. Winslow
Clutch:
I often have nightmares about him too. His face
is just so scary. My
advise is to just stay away from him. Come to
Rockets games instead of
Mavericks games. Hope to see you at a game soon.
Best Swishes!
CLUTCH
Faye Dunaway
“Working with Polanski was difficult in some ways, but I loved working with Jack. I also love fried chicken. But I never got to eat it when I was on set. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Roman anymore.”
Prefab: Living Homes
Posthumous Baptism
Posthumous baptism is a sacred rite practiced in Mormon church temples for the purpose of offering membership in the church to the deceased. Church members are encouraged to conduct family genealogy research and forward their ancestors’ names for proxy baptism.
Duck Eats Alien
Unusual characteristics are commonly on display among male mallards during the spring mating season, according to Travers. Their testicles, for instance, grow to three times the size of their brains, but they have never been known to sprout an alien head, she said.
Pat Robertson Leg Presses 2,000 lbs.!
Mind Controlled Robot
Japanese automaker Honda has developed technology that uses brain signals to control a robot’s moves, hoping to someday link a person’s thoughts with machines in everyday life.
Desmond Dekker, 1942 — 2006
Begin reading all about Desmond Dekker here.