From the comments
We’re all made better by those who choose to love us.
Genius on the cheap
My mother and my father wanted for me to be a genius. So did I. When I found out a couple of days ago that I couldn’t be I made up my mind to stick as close as I could to those who were. A feat, a procedure one finds one can accomplish, on the cheap by reading. And by reading. And by reading.
—Gordon Lish, “The Revised Life: Gordon Lish,” interview by B.C. Edwards, Bomblog, July 7, 2010
$25 baby
A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it
Although our memories always feel true, they’re extremely vulnerable to errant suggestions, clever manipulations and the old fashioned needs of storytelling. (The mind, it turns out, cares more about crafting a good narrative than staying close to the truth.)
. . .
[W]e like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them. But they aren’t. A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.
—”Memory Is Fiction,” Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex, June 4, 2010
Via @jorunn
Wimbledon liveblog
From the Guardian (order reversed for easier reading):
7.20pm: And so this match goes on and on, on and on. Somewhere along the way, the players have mislaid their names. The man who was once Mahut is now a string-bag of offal. The man who was Isner is a parched piece of cow-hide. The surviving members of the audience don’t seem to care who wins. They just cheer and applaud whoever looks likely to make a breakthrough and bring this nightmare to a close. Invariably they are disappointed.
The offal looks fresher, possesses a piercing backhand and still throws itself about the court on occasion. But the cow-hide can serve and has the advantage of going ahead by one game and forcing the offal to catch-up. This the offal is only too happy to do. It hits a backhand down the line and then follows that up with an ace, and the score now stands at 45 games apiece.
7.30pm: Let it end, let it end, it’s 46-all. It was funny when it was 16-all and it was creepy when it was 26-all. But this is pure purgatory and there is still no end in sight. John Isner has just struck his 90th ace. Nicolas Mahut, poor, enfeebled Nicolas Mahut, has only hit 72. Maybe we should just decide it on the number of aces struck? Give the game to Isner and then we can all crawl into our graves.
7.45pm: What happens if we steal their rackets? If we steal their rackets, the zombies can no longer hit their aces and thump their backhands and keep us all prisoner on Court 18. I’m shocked that this is only occurring to me now. Will nobody run onto the court and steal their rackets? Are they all too scared of the zombies’ clutching claws and gore-stained teeth? Steal their rackets and we can all go home. Who’s with me? Steal their rackets and then run for the tube.
It’s 48-48. What further incentive do you need?
8pm: Don’t look now but I think the cow-hide has officially expired. John Isner stands at the baseline. He is facing the right way but he is no longer moving and the string-bag of offal peppers him with aces left and right to bring the score to 50-50. But Cow Hide is still facing the right way and that says something. And he is still vertical, and that says something too. What it says, unfortunately, is that the match is not quite over yet.
8.05pm: In the stands, a woman is laughing. She laughs long and hard and her laugh is the sort of ghastly yodel you normally hear in antique horror movies about Victorian insane asylums. “Wa-la-ha-la-wah,” she goes. “Wa-la-ha-la-ha-la!” Will nobody drag her out? Call in the goons in white coats. Get this woman to a lobotomy!
Mahut is serving to make it 51-51. Wouldn’t you know it, he does. He makes it to 51-51, finishing up with an ace.
Via @seanaes
Dear Clusterflock,
Can we keep the hostility below a blood relation level? I actually like you people.
What’s considered acceptable language in your family?
Omega Institute in Your Pants, 2010 edition
So, my friend Susan (whom Kelsey got to meet on Tuesday) gets the Omega Institute‘s annual catalogue of “educational experiences that awaken the best in the human spirit,” and she’s got this game, you see, in which she adds “in Your Pants” to the name of each course, for extra . . . awakening. Here’s the latest array of enhanced offerings:
The Costs of War, Violence, and Denial in Your Pants
Truth Heals: What You Hide Can Hurt You in Your Pants
The Art of Extreme Self-Care in Your Pants
Spring Ecstatic Chant in Your Pants
Dance of Liberation in Your Pants
Creating Opportunity in Career Transition in Your Pants
Goddess to the Core in Your Pants
Being Fully Present in Your Pants
This Beautiful Wound in Your Pants
Digital Nature Photography in Your Pants
Enlist!
Conspicuous drinking is the deliberate theme in both photographs—the soldiers appear absolutely mellow—while the entertaining fencing match can only invite speculation. Endorsing drunkenness as [a] means to lure recruits seems to be an outlandish proposition, or can this be taken as a brash if surreal recruiting scenario? The table is rich in detail replete with a little brown jug, bottles and corks, full drinking glasses, and smoking apparatus—sufficient vice to sooth[e] the rigors of campaigning and the terror of the battlefield.
From the catalog for Cowan’s auction 2010, American History, Including the Civil War, which took place on June 11. These beauties sold for $1,057.50.
There is about ten thousand times more information about American history in this auction catalog than the sum of everything I ever learned about it in school.
Y’all?
Are you following what’s going on in South Carolina?
This video makes me feel so, so, so furiously igry. I feel bad for the guy. There is just no way this is going to turn out well for him.
Good Housekeeping
These have been around the Internet block a few times, but they’re new to me, so I thought maybe they are to some of y’all, too.
(Via SC)
A fleeting moment of warmth
Striving for happiness through increased capacity to consume is like urinating in one’s trousers on a cold winter day: it only provides a fleeting moment of warmth.
—Demos Helsinki, “The Politics of Happiness – A Manifesto: Towards the futures of one Earth” (PDF, 303 KB); English version, draft (Helsinki: WWF, 2010), p. 9
Via Liz Danzico, on Bobulate, which is the best fucking name for a blog since “Clusterflock.”
Reduce, reuse, recycle
(Via @carolinavallejo)
Spam name
Puddeszay Geste.
And another one:
Sponer Bowse.
“What it is hanging is not a dumbbell, but loneliness.”
In the end, that french fry was able to hold firm, and I was moved by the french fry’s unwavering determination, so I did not continue tormenting it, so it can live out its old age…
A Chinese netizen set out to test the claim that an unwrapped McDonald’s Happy Meal does not rot, even after being left out for a year. Conclusion: bullshit.
Does McDonald’s rot or not? Photos refute American dietitian’s fallacy
(Via @fugueur)
Not everything ridiculous happens in Texas
A naked man “yelling that he was Jesus” was the cause of a five-car pileup on I-95 when a driver decided to get a better look. . . . The naked man had jumped into a car when police arrived, but they tracked him down nearby. Don’t they know that nobody f*&%s with the Jesus?
—Naked Man Thinks He’s Jesus, Causes Five Car Crash by Jaya Saxena, Gothamist.com, June 6, 2010
Your assistance is requested
At my first real office job, one morning our publicist walked around the office saying to each person, “Today’s my birthday! Give me a hug!” Ours was an uncommonly touchy-feely office to begin with (or, put another way, a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen), in which, for example, one of the department heads would routinely demand backrubs, and people would give them to her, but I nevertheless thought this was a remarkable—and smart—way to approach the having of one’s birthday. Leave it to a publicist to think of such a method.
So, here I am.
Today’s my birthday! Give me a hug!
The antidote
or, as BoingBoing styles it, the Unicorn Chaser, to tonsilstoneitis:
Sir Izacat Mewton
Sir Mewton and his sister, Grabbity, with their butler, Kevin
(Via @grabbity)
A horrifying thing I just learned about
Tonsil stones.
Tonsil stones.
Uuuurrrrggggk.
(Via Twitter, but I’m not linking to anything, because I don’t want to be held responsible for anybody’s passing out from grossness, and you all know how to Google, anyway.)
LEGO Felt Tip 110
There’s an FAQ on the YouTube page.
(Via Adam Parrish)
NeurotiChair? TantrumTable?
Emotional IKEA furniture made by my classmate Adam Lassy, as demonstrated by other classmates:
There are some more videos of the IKEA Robotics project on Adam’s Vimeo page.
(Via Filippo, the one getting his leg humped at the end.)
More fucking nomenclature
The expression “boiled as owls,” introduced by Sheila the other day, caught my eye (though she had used it earlier), as I am strongly pro-owl, and I felt compelled to look up its etymology. The origin seems to be obscure, but according to John Dean of Oxford on alt.english.usage, OED offers the following citations:
boiled:
c. Intoxicated. slang. Also phr. as drunk as a boiled owl. (1885 Referee 31 May 3/3 Twiss+had just the boiled-owlish appearance that is gained by working all night in a printing-office.) 1886 J. A. Porter Sks. Yale Life 156 There is a balm for a headache caused by last night’s debauch to have it said you were ‘slightly cheered’ or ‘slewed’ or ‘boiled’. 1892 Daily Tel. 12 Dec. 5/4 The expression, ‘Intoxicated as a boiled owl’, is a gross libel upon a highly respectable teetotal bird. 1922 Joyce Ulysses 300 He brought him home as drunk as a boiled owl. 1928 Amer. Speech IV. 102 Expressions synonymous with or circumlocutory for ‘drunk’+blotto, boiled. 1940 ‘H. Pentecost’ 24th Horse (1951) v. 45 He’s boiled to the ears.
You’re welcome.
Daily Kos’s first-ever Oil Spill Booming School
This is nearly a month old, but I only just found the open tab in my browser; no idea where it came from—one of youse? But I think you’d better read it, for various reasons, some of which will become immediately obvious.
Fucking Nomenclature
Since this is your first day of DKos Booming school,
you HAVE to fightlets go over some important definitions and oilfield grammar. Rope is not rope. It is fucking rope. All of it. Every yard of rope is fucking rope. Every section of boom is fucking boom. An anchor block is not an anchor block. It is a fucking anchor block. You get the idea. Later, when you’re accustomed to all of this, you can substitute “goddamed”, “motherfucking”, “piece-of-shit-c*nt” (never understood that one myself) or “cocksucking” for fucking. But for now, it’s all fucking.Fucking Boom
Generally, boom is long and bright bright orange or yellow. It is not bright bright orange or yellow so you can see it, dear fledgling boomer, but so Governors, Senators, Presidents and The Media can see it. It has a round floaty part that floats, and a flat “skirt” that sinks. A RULE: the floaty part never floats high enough and the skirt never rides low enough. Some oil will ALWAYS go over the boom and some will ALWAYS go under it. Our task is to MINIMIZE both! We do that by fucking proper fucking booming.
—fishgrease, “Fishgrease: DKos Booming School,” May 10, 2010, dailykos.com
Click through to the story for a handy diagram, and much, much more.
Just act natural!
Joseph’s post got me digging around on the Internets to find this again:
On June 13, 2009, Robert Sapolsky, world renowned professor of neurology, neurological sciences, neurosurgery and biological sciences gave the class day lecture in association with commencement weekend 2009. Having been selected to talk by the Stanford University graduating class, Sapolsky spoke about the uniqueness of humans in relation to the rest of the animal world. A few of the topics he spoke on include aggression, theory of mind, the golden rule and pleasure.
First part’s just intro. The actual talk starts around the five-minute mark.
ShipYourReptiles.com
Via Erin.
One of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard
and the most enraging:
Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.
One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.
It gets worse.
