Xah's a Word a Day — the Making of Belles-Lettres (temp area)

In February, while discussing New Jersey's newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett's observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn't fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check — go ahead and write it.”

Earlier in the interview, responding to a question on class warfare in the political system, Christie, who has developed a reputation for not mincing words, said he didn't want to discuss Buffett.

According to unnamed sources in the mid 1980s, the CIA created an intelligence unit in Haiti, known as SIN, whose purported purpose was anti-drug activity, but was in reality “used as an instrument of political terror”, and was heavily involved in drug trafficking. The members of the unit were known to torture supporters of populist leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and threatened to kill the local head of the DEA who had investigated them and exposed their operations. According to one U.S. official, the unit was trafficking drugs and never produced any useful drug intelligence.

“In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity, tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct culpability in the actual trafficking … the CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct culpability.”

In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith [a brand of TV] in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.

Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares “the people” against “the elite”, and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social movements (a form of mobilization that is essentially devoid of theory). It is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes”. It can be understood as any political discourse that appeals to the general mass of the population, to the “people” as such, regardless of class distinctions and political partisanship: “a folksy appeal to the ‘average guy’ or some allegedly general will.”

The film begins with an introductory sequence shot in extreme slow motion, involving the main characters and images from space which introduce many visual leitmotifs of the film. A shot from the vantage point of space shows a giant planet approaching Earth; the two planets collide. The film continues, in two parts, each named for one of the two sisters.

Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, was a computer hacker group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The original leader of LulzSec was a computer security specialist that used the online moniker Sabu. His name is Hector Xavier Monsegur. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. Some security professionals have applauded LulzSec for drawing attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks. Recently, it has become known that the leader, Sabu, was in fact working with the FBI. Several members suspected that he was a snitch. In total, there were six arrests.

Chen's finding is that if you divide up a large number of the world's languages into those that require a grammatical marker for future time and those that don't, you see an interesting correlation: speakers of languages that force grammatical marking of the future have amassed a smaller retirement nest egg, smoke more, exercise less, and are more likely to be obese. Why would this be? The claim is that a sharp grammatical division between the present and future encourages people to conceive of the future as somehow dramatically different from the present, making it easier to put off behaviors that benefit your future self rather than your present self.

Chen's paper has yet to be accepted for publication, but it's already generated a lot of press of the sort that's festooned with flashing lights. For example, in his popular blog, Andrew Sullivan headlined the story with the pronouncement “Why Greeks Haven’t Saved for a Rainy Day”. A facetious headline, no doubt. But before someone suggests that the European Union should make bailouts of troubled countries contingent on their retiring their grammatical tense markers, it's worth taking a reality check about the ways in which language can or can't affect the thoughts and behaviors of its speakers.

Once, literary criticism was an elite vocation. Now, writes Martin Amis, we are all critics and in this new democracy, talent and integrity are the losers.

… That time now seems unrecognisably remote. I had a day job at the Times Literary Supplement. Even then I sensed discrepancy, as I joined an editorial conference (to help prepare, perhaps, a special number on Literature and Society), wearing shoulder-length hair, a flowered shirt, and knee-high tricoloured boots (well concealed, it is true, by the twin tepees of my flared trousers). My private life was middle-bohemian — hippyish and hedonistic, if not candidly debauched; but I was very moral when it came to literary criticism. I read it all the time, in the tub, on the tube; I always had about me my Edmund Wilson — or my William Empson. I took it seriously.

Legal commentators point out that while the indictment may be correct and Megaupload might have acted as a criminal conspiracy as claimed, a number of points in the indictment are based upon selective interpretations and legal concepts (described in one article as “novel theories” of the law) and could be challenged in court. An L.A. Times analysis stated that the author was “struck by how far the indictment goes to find something nefarious”; likewise a Techdirt analysis concluded that while the founder of Megaupload had a significant history of “flouting the law”, evidence has potentially been taken out of context or misrepresented and could “come back to haunt other online services who are providing perfectly legitimate services”. Both analyses concur that other evidence could show criminality; the concerns were not irrefutable.

So why the Midtown migration? Like cavemen following mammoth across the Bering Strait, early developers were following their prey. “Who's moving north?” Mr. Barr said. “It's the wealthy and the middle class. If you're an insurance salesman, do you really want to be traipsing through the slums of Five Points or the factories of SoHo to get to work? That land was cheap, but the location was worthless.”

Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. The word's origin is from Greek words μῖσος (misos, “hatred”) and ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos, “man, human being”).

It has long been believed that New Yorkers could thank God for their unusual agglomeration of buildings (or, for those on the Upper West Side not believing in His good work, eons of geological development). It turns out that Manhattan has a bedrock unusually suited to the construction of very tall buildings, in many cases just a few meters below the surface. But that solid land drops away in the gooey middle of the island, long limiting the heights of buildings in the city.

Or so the aphocraphists [aphoristists; Aphorism] have been passing down for decades, at least since noted geologist Christopher J. Schuberth released his seminal The Geology of New York City and Environs amazon in 1968. Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building, it has stood the test of time. But like a bad retaining wall, it all came tumbling down last month.

A hag is a wizened old woman, or a kind of fairy or goddess having the appearance of such a woman, often found in folklore and children's tales such as Hansel and Gretel. Hags are often seen as malevolent, but may also be one of the chosen forms of shapeshifting deities, such as the Morrígan or Badb, who are seen as neither wholly beneficent nor malevolent.

The term appears in Middle English, and was a shortening of “hægtesse”, an Old English term for witch, similarly the Dutch “heks” and German “hexe” are also shortenings, of the Middle Dutch “haghetisse” and Old High German “hagzusa” respectively. All these words derive from the Proto-Germanic “*hagatusjon-” which is of unknown origin, however the first element may be related to the word “hedge”. As a stock character in fairy or folk tale, the hag shares characteristics with the crone, and the two words are sometimes used as if interchangeable.

Research on sex and psychology investigates cognitive and behavioral differences between men and women. … Because social and environmental factors affect brain activity and behavior, where differences are found, it can be difficult for researchers to assess whether or not the differences are innate. Studies on this topic explore the possibility of social influences on how both sexes perform in cognitive and behavioral tests.

… then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

The Umbrella Corporation is a fictional international pharmaceutical company in the Resident Evil universe [a scifi movie and video game], that serves as one of main antagonists in the series. Founded in the late 1960s by prominent British royal descendants Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford, it is portrayed in the games as a major international player in pharmaceutical goods and medical supplies, along with more clandestine operations utilizing genetic engineering, their legitimate status being only a front for their secret research of bio-organic weapons, developed through the use of an unique virus discovered by the company founders shortly after World War II.

[movie review of 〈How to Train Your Dragon〉] Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 stars out of 4, stating that: “It devotes a great deal of time to aerial battles between tamed dragons and evil ones, and not much to character or story development. But it's bright, good-looking, and has high energy”. Claudia Puig of USA Today gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying “It's a thrilling action-adventure saga with exhilarating 3-D animation, a clever comedy with witty dialogue, a coming-of-age tale with surprising depth and a sweetly poignant tale of friendship between man and animal.”

After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Meh­dizadeh, who graduated from York this past spring, discovered narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour a day on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos (striking a pose or using Photoshop, for example). Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates (using phrases like “I'm so glamorous I bleed glitter”) and wall activity (posting self-serving links like “My Celebrity Look-alikes”).

[on Google's self-driving car] I was briefly nervous when Urmson first took his hands off the wheel and a synthy woman's voice announced coolly, “Autodrive.” But after a few minutes, the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting, and other vagaries of the humans around us — including the weaving driver who struggles to film us as he passes.

As we drive the Google car — or are driven by it [a autonomous (self-driving) car] — I watch the action unfold on the computer monitor mounted on the passenger side of the dashboard. It shows how the car is interpreting the world: lanes, signs, cars, speeds, distances, vectors. The rendering is nothing special — a lot of blocky wireframe that puts me in mind of Atari's classic Battlezone. (The display is just one of a host of geeky details — to change lanes, for instance, the driver presses buttons marked Shift and Left on a keyboard near the monitor.) Yet it is absolutely fascinating, almost illicitly thrilling, to watch as the car not only plots and calculates the myriad movements of neighboring vehicles in the moment but also predicts where they will be in the future, like high-speed, mobile chess. Onscreen, the car is constantly “acquiring” targets, surrounding them in red boxes, tracing raster lines to and fro, a freeway version of John Madden's Telestrator. “We're analyzing and predicting the world 20 times a second,” Levandowski says.

Anthony Levandowski, business lead on Google's self-driving-car project, sits in the passenger seat, lanky and spectacled, wearing loud athletic shoes and clutching a MacBook Pro with a bumper sticker that reads “My other car drives itself.” Urmson, with the soft-spoken, intense mien of a roboticist who has debugged a Martian rover in the deserts of Chile, occupies the nominal “driver's seat” — just one of the entities open to ontological inquiry this morning.

Ossicones are horn-like protuberances on the heads of giraffes, male okapi, and their extinct relatives, ….

Ossicones are similar to the horns of antelopes and cattle, except that they are derived from ossified cartilage [connective tissue], and that the ossicones remain covered in skin and fur…. Antlers (such as on deer) are derived from bone tissue: when mature, the skin and fur covering of the antlers, termed “velvet,” is sloughed and scraped off to expose the bone of the antlers.

Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and folklore …. In Chinese art, dragons are typically portrayed as long, scaled, serpentine creatures with four legs. In yin and yang terminology, a dragon is yang and complements a yin fenghuang (“Chinese phoenix”).

In contrast to European dragons, which are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck. With this, the Emperor of China usually uses the dragon as a symbol of his imperial power.

In Chinese daily language, excellent and outstanding people are compared to the dragon while incapable people with no achievements are compared with other, disesteemed creatures, such as the worm. A number of Chinese proverbs and idioms feature references to the dragon, for example: “Hoping one's son will become a dragon” (望子成龍, i.e. be as a dragon).

Kiyohime 清姫 “Purity Princess” was a teahouse waitress who fell in love with a young Buddhist priest. After he spurned her, she studied magic, transformed into a dragon, and killed him.

Japanese dragons are diverse legendary creatures in Japanese mythology and folklore. Japanese dragon myths amalgamate native legends with imported stories about dragons from China, Korea and India. The style of the dragon was heavily influenced by the Chinese dragon. Like these other Asian dragons, most Japanese ones are water deities associated with rainfall and bodies of water, and are typically depicted as large, wingless, serpentine creatures with clawed feet.

But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What's more, the company's decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn't the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That's disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

“If it's the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

The show's central character is John Ross “J.R.” Ewing Jr., a greedy, scheming oil baron played by Larry Hagman (a Fort Worth native). J.R. was only intended to be a supporting character when the show premiered, as the series was originally based around J.R.'s brother Bobby and his new bride, Pam. However, J.R.'s machinations became popular with viewers and he quickly became the focus of the series.

The domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus) is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the family Bovidae and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of goat.

Goats are one of the oldest domesticated species. Goats have been used for their milk, meat, hair, and skins over much of the world. In the twentieth century they also gained in popularity as pets.

Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males as bucks or billies; their offspring are kids. Castrated males are wethers. Goat meat from younger animals is called kid or cabrito, and from older animals is simply known as goat or sometimes called chevon, or in some areas mutton (which more often refers to adult sheep meat).

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. As a rule, saboteurs try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions. For example, whereas an environmental pressure group might be happy to be identified with an act of sabotage, it would not want the individual identities of the perpetrators known.

Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. …

While the term was initially self-applied by a small coterie of groups and individuals associated with Industrial Records in the 1970s, it broadened to include artists influenced by the original movement or using an “industrial” aesthetic. These artists expanded the genre by pushing it into noisier and more electronic directions.

Sebastopol is a bucolic little hamlet seated in the western portion of Sonoma County, California. Formerly known for its Gravenstein apples, most orchards have long been planted with vineyards, or converted into the corporate grounds of the tech publishing firm O'Reilly Media. But several years ago a heated battle served to overturn the relative serenity of this community. The conflict erupted over the town's implementation of a contract for a public Wi-Fi network in its main plaza.

There are not 100,000 to 300,000 children in America turning to prostitution every year. The statistic was hatched without regard to science. It is a bogeyman.

Neo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816. Neo-Luddism includes the critical examination of the effects technology has on individuals and communities.

Reform Luddism is an offshoot of Neo-Luddism and represents a personal world view skeptical of modern technology and critical of its many purported benefits.

Both Reform Luddism and Neo-Luddism express significant doubts about the nature of benefits from uncritically embracing new information technology. Neo-Luddism holds the belief that we were better off before its advent and is the opposite of technophilia, the belief that technological innovation will remedy all ills.

Ship grounding is a type of marine accident that involves the impact of a ship on the seabed, resulting in damage of the submerged part of her hull and particularly the bottom structure, potentially leading to water ingress and compromise of the ship's structural integrity and stability.

Piquance (pronounced /ˈpɪkəns/) is a sensation associated with the sense of taste. (colloquially called “hot” or “spicy”.).

The English word piquant comes from the Old French present participle of the verb piquer, meaning to prick; it is Cognate with the Spanish and Portuguese word “picante”, which carries the same meaning, and also with the English word pique. Common synonyms for piquance include hotness, pungence, raciness, spiciness, or the condition of something being spicy hot.

Perfume (English: /ˈpɝː.fjuːm/, French parfum pronounced: [paʁ.fœ̃]) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and/or aroma compounds, fixatives [A liquid mixed with perfume to prevent rapid evaporation.], and solvents [Chemistry. A substance in which another substance is dissolved, forming a solution.] used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces “a pleasant scent”. The odoriferous compounds that make up a perfume can be manufactured synthetically or extracted from plant or animal sources.

The most prevalent single-winner voting method, by far, is plurality (also called “first-past-the-post”, “relative majority”, or “winner-take-all”), where each voter votes for one choice, and the choice that receives the most votes wins, even if it receives less than a majority of votes.

In 2005, Beauchamp and his colleagues proved that cats, tigers and other felines can't taste sweetness because they lack a functional gene for sweetness taste receptors. But they do have genes for the receptors that detect the umami flavor of wide array of amino acids in protein. So Cashew [her cat] and any other mushroom-craving cats are really on a vain hunt for protein, not for fungi, he says.

This tale starts with Ellen Jacobson, an amateur mushroom hunter in Colorado. As she was cooking up a bolete mushroom, her cat Cashew started brushing against her legs. She put some of the mushrooms in a bowl, and Cashew gobbled them up. “He didn't like them raw,” she told The Salt. “He only liked them cooked.”

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 full details leaked, 720p camera and new flight modes?

It was hard to miss the “2.0” branding over at Parrot's little aerodrome here at CES [Consumer Electronics Show], but with nary a detail we were left speculation what the new major version number means. Now, though, we have some more details. A lot more details, actually. Over at AR Drone Flyers we've spotted what looks to be an official press release detailing everything about the new UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], most notable being an improved 720p camera. You can apparently use this to record footage from the drone and even program it to fly in any direction automatically. In other words, this could be the low-cost aerial camera DIY extreme sports filmmakers have waited for. And, at $299 when it ships in Q2, it'll be quite close to affordable. You can check out a picture of the new drone above and read the full details in the seemingly official press release below.

Bonfires were set on street corners as groups of people, many in Canucks jerseys, threw temporary fencing at [police] officers in riot gear. A mounted police squad tried to regain control among a cluster of federal buildings, while unrest spread to the Granville Mall nightclub zone and the Robson Street shopping district.

On Thursday, May 10, 2007, Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking on National Public Radio, proposed impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's the audio.

… After an interruption, Wilkerson continued: “The language in that article, the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance.”

A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths (called a leaflet), or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book. In order to count as a pamphlet, UNESCO requires a publication (other than a periodical) to have “at least 5 but not more than 48 pages exclusive of the cover pages”; a longer item is a book.

The adverb pamphlet for a small work (opuscule) issued by itself without covers came into Middle English ca 1387 as pamphilet or panflet, generalized from a twelfth-century amatory comic poem with an old flavor, Pamphilus, seu de Amore (“Pamphilus: or, Concerning Love”), written in Latin. Pamphilus's name was derived from Greek, meaning “friend of everyone”. The poem was popular and widely copied and circulated on its own, forming a slim codex. The pamphlet form of literature has been used for centuries as an economical vehicle for the broad distribution of information.

Its modern connotations of a tract concerning a contemporary issue was a product of the heated arguments leading to the English Civil War; this sense appeared in 1642. In some European languages other than English, this secondary connotation, of a disputaceous tract, has come to the fore: compare libelle, from the Latin libellus, denoting a “little book”.

In Spanish, panfleto is a brief writing or libel generally aggressive or defamatory. By extension, it is used for political propaganda writings. Not to be confused with the English term pamphlet, from which it derives, as it does not contain the negative connotations of the Spanish word and is translated more correctly as folleto.

Pamphlets can contain anything from information on kitchen appliances to medical information and religious treatises. Pamphlets are very important in marketing as they are cheap to produce and can be distributed easily to customers. Pamphlets have also long been an important tool of political protest and political campaigning for similar reasons.

I own the whole Gor series, and so far have only read to Book 10. I believe that anyone who tries to read all 25 novels in a row may experience burnout. “Tarnsman,” though, keeps you asking for more. You'll find that the first 4 novels are actually parts of a fascinating story arc that introduces Tarl Cabot to this violent yet fascinating world. Through Cabot's eyes we get to observe the different societies on Gor, their customs and rituals, and also we meet the mysterious Priest-Kings who hold sway over it all. The consistency in the writing is truly remarkable and satisfying.

The Ministry of Magic is the government of the fictional Magical community of Britain in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. First mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the Ministry makes its first proper appearance in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Throughout the books, it is depicted as either corrupt, incompetent or both, its high officials blind to actual events and dangers in the wizarding world, reaching a nadir of corruption during the uprising of the antagonist Lord Voldemort.

The film has received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes says that out of 148 critics, 20% of them gave it a positive review (22% of 27 top critics gave it a positive review), which qualifies the film as “Rotten”. The consensus is “Anthony Hopkins is as excellent as ever, but he's no match for The Rite's dawdling pace and lack of chills – or Colin O'Donoghue's tentative performance in the leading role.”

In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning, that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and of judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king need not necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position itself has a religious significance.

HISTORY: The notion has prehistoric roots and is found worldwide, on Java as in sub-Saharan Africa, with shaman-kings credited with rain-making and assuring fertility and good fortune. On the other hand, the king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim of a human sacrifice, either regularly killed at the end of his term in the position, or sacrificed in times of crisis (e.g. Domalde). …

During the 1980s go-fast boats became the drug-smuggling vessel of choice in many parts of the world. These boats can be detected by radar; as radar coverage improved, Colombian drug cartels started using less easily detected semi-submersibles from the 1990s.

The first time the U.S. Coast Guard found one, authorities dubbed it Bigfoot because they had heard rumors that such things existed, but none had actually been seen. It was late 2006 when a Bigfoot was seized 145 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Costa Rica carrying several tons of cocaine. In 2006 US officials say they detected three; in 2008 they were spotting an average of ten per month, but only one out of ten was intercepted. Few were seized as their crews scuttle them upon interception and they sink within a minute or so.

Mexican Navy intelligence kept track on him and one week later, on December 16, 2009 he was traced to another luxurious apartment community where a 90-minute shootout ensued. About 200 Mexican Marines, two Navy Mil Mi-17 helicopters, from which marines rappelled, and two small Army tanks surrounded the building complex where he was hiding. Approximately 20 fragmentation hand grenades were used by Beltrán Leyva's gunmen to keep the Navy from advancing into his position.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, alleged, “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.

Rattlesnakes are predators who live in a wide array of habitats, hunting small animals such as birds and rodents. They kill their prey with a venomous bite. All rattlesnakes possess a set of fangs with which they inject large quantities of hemotoxic venom. The venom travels through the bloodstream, destroying tissue and causing swelling, internal bleeding, and intense pain. Some species, such as the Mojave Rattlesnake, additionally possess a neurotoxic component in their venom that causes paralysis and other nervous symptoms.

The threat of envenomation, advertised with the shaking of the rattle, deters many predators. However, rattlesnakes fall prey to hawks, weasels, king snakes, and a variety of other species. Rattlesnakes are heavily preyed upon as neonates, while they are still weak and mentally immature. Very large numbers of rattlesnakes are killed by humans. Rattlesnake populations in many areas are severely threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, and extermination campaigns.

In the original (1966-68) live action TV version of Batman, more than one actress portrayed Catwoman, but without a doubt Julie Newmar created the iconic role, in a costume and with mannerisms that set many a teenage boy's heart aflutter.

In this classic sequence, Catwoman is cornered by Batman, and considers finally reforming — if Batman will do something in return. But this leaves a quandary — “What about Robin?” - Scat! Darn Catwoman Part 3

In ancient China, for heavy crimes including adultery, “licentious” or “promiscuous” activity, males had their penises removed in addition to being castrated. It was one of the Five Punishments that could be legally inflicted on criminals in China. They were designed to permanently disfigure for life. “Castration”, in China, meant severing of the penis in addition to the testicles, after which male offenders were sentenced to work in the palace as eunuchs. The punishment was called “gongxing” (宫刑), which meant “palace punishment”, since men castrated would be enslaved to work in the harem of the palace. It was also called “fuxing” (腐刑). Husbands who committed adultery were punished with castration as required under Zhou Dynasty law. While men were castrated, women who committed adultery were punished by confinement. The exact crime was called Gong, and referred to “immoral” heterosexual sex between males and females. The punishment stated- “If a male and female engagein intercourse without morality, their punishments shall be castration and sequestration [respectively].”

Lee is, of course, not alone in having this anonymous violent hatred directed toward him. On parts of the internet it has become pretty much common parlance. Do a quick trawl on the blog sites and comment sections about most celebrities and entertainers – not to mention politicians – and you will quickly discover comparable virtual rage and fantasised violence. Comedians seem to come in for more than most, as if taboo-breaking was taken as read, or the mood of the harshest baying club audience had become a kind of universal rhetoric. It's not quite heckling this, though, is it? A heckle requires a bit of courage and risk; the audience can see who is doing the shouting. Lee's detractors were all anonymous. How should we understand it then: harmless banter? Robust criticism? Vicious bullying?

While some state media echoed Wang's sentiment, many netizens questioned his every statement from the death toll to the cause and called him the face of a ministry mired in allegations of corruption and ineptitude.

…

The quick sacking of three top local railway officials in Shanghai — who were in charge of the affected rail lines — failed to placate the public, either. The announced new Shanghai railway chief prompted more scorn than applaud, as the replacement — the railway ministry's chief dispatcher — was once demoted for his role in another fatal train accident in 2008 that killed 72 people.

Back online, many users — already jittery about safety in their daily life — now view China's high-speed rail, long considered a symbol of the country's fast rise, as a metaphor of its troublesome approach to development.

Speaking of success, Kimberly Winnington tells me she'll be accompanying the documentary's directors to the Emmy awards, perhaps hobnobbing with TV's best stars. Which shows how far you can go, when you work the virtual coal mine.

The twisted appeal, of course, was the incongruity of seeing a racist, anti-Semitic polemic — complete with smiley-face Hitler T-shirts and onstage Sieg Heil-ing — articulated by these cherubic little girls.

Now, the Gaede twins say they have changed their views and attribute their earlier political pronouncements to youthful naivete. “My sister and I were home-schooled,” Lynx pointed out. “We were these country bumpkins. We spent most of our days up on the hill playing with our goats.”

In 2006, News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman and his associates, investigator Glenn Mulcaire and Davy Craig (Editor of the Weekly News), were arrested due to allegations of phone hacking made by the British monarchy in 2005. Goodman and Mulcaire were subsequently charged and imprisoned for four and six months, respectively, while then-editor Andy Coulson resigned but was not formally charged at the time.

In 2009 and 2010, further revelations emerged regarding the extent of the phone hacking and the number of News of the World employees who may have been aware of the practices. By March 2010, the paper had spent over £2 million settling court cases with victims of phone hacking. In July 2009,[3] The Guardian made a series[4] of allegations of wider phone hacking activities at the News of the World newspaper, that were aimed at other people like the TV host Chris Tarrant.

This led to several prominent figures who were covertly snooped upon bringing legal action against the News of the World's owner and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Amongst those who began legal action were football agent Sky Andrew, the actors Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan, the television presenter Chris Tarrant and ex-Sky Sports presenter, Andy Gray.[5]

Public reaction to the scandal in Britain was swift. On 6 July, 2011 British prime minister David Cameron announced to parliament that a public government inquiry would convene to further investigate the affair.

Colbert then segued into a segment poking fun at Bush's sinking approval ratings: «Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in “reality”. And reality has a well-known liberal bias … Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty,[…] because 32 percent means it's two-thirds empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.»

The argument is generally phrased along the lines of “is Google+ a facebook killer?”. This is a somewhat contrived and sensational narrative, so let me try and explain what I think the argument is really about, in perhaps less shrill terms.

I have serious problems with the direction taken by Canadian policy and politics in the last five years. But as a reporter, I feel like I’ve been holding my breath. Every question I asked, every tweet I posted, and even what I said to other journalists and friends had to go through a filter, where my own opinions and values were carefully strained out. Even then I’m not sure I was always successful, but I always knew at the CBC and subsequently at CTV that there were serious consequences for editorial. Within the terms of my employment at CTV, there was a clause in which the corporation (now Bellmedia) literally took ownership of my intellectual property output. If I invented a better mouse trap, they owned the patent. If I wrote a novel, they got a cut. Rhymes on the back of a napkin? Bellmedia is hip to the jive, yo. And if I ever said anything out of line with my position as an “objective” TV reporter, they had grounds to fire me. I had a sinking feeling when I first read that clause, but I signed because I was 23 and I wanted the job. Now I want my opinions back.

LUCIUS. Approved warriors and my faithful friends,
  I have received letters from great Rome
  Which signifies what hate they bear their Emperor
  And how desirous of our sight they are.
  Therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness,
  Imperious and impatient of your wrongs;
  And wherein Rome hath done you any scath,
  Let him make treble satisfaction.

Jimmy Bulger was arrested in 1943 at the age of 14 and charged with larceny. He by then had joined a juvenile gang known as the “Shamrocks” and would eventually be arrested for assault, battery and armed robbery and was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory.

While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn't that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.

Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

Research on romance has consistently shown that men and women who don't notice attractive strangers tend to be more satisfied in their own relationships and are more likely to stay with their partners long term. Of course, that blindness has to come naturally. When a person is forced to divert his attention from that cute bartender — by, say, a jealous partner's opprobrium — it could result in a sort of "backlash" effect, which may end up reducing his level of relationship commitment.

“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm'd thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
Ill be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.”

I propose a moratorium on language changes. This would be a period of several years during which no changes to Python's grammar or language semantics will be accepted. The reason is that frequent changes to the language cause pain for implementors of alternate implementations (Jython, IronPython, PyPy, and others probably already in the wings) at little or no benefit to the average user (who won't see the changes for years to come and might not be in a position to upgrade to the latest version for years after).

Mr. Cutts sounded remarkably upbeat and unperturbed during this conversation, which was a surprise given that we were discussing a large, sustained effort to snooker his employer. Asked about his zenlike calm, he said the company strives not to act out of anger. You get the sense that Mr. Cutts and his colleagues are acutely aware of the singular power they wield as judge, jury and appeals panel, and they’re eager to project an air of maturity and judiciousness.

When you read the enormous list of sites with Penney links, the landscape of the Internet acquires a whole new topography. It starts to seem like a city with a few familiar, well-kept buildings, surrounded by millions of hovels kept upright for no purpose other than the ads that are painted on their walls.

When he found himself out of work in November 1754, Foote rented the Haymarket theatre and began to stage mock lectures. Satirizing Charles Macklin's newly opened school of oratory, these lectures created a sort of theatrical war, especially when Macklin began to appear at the lectures himself. At one particular lecture, Foote extemporized a piece of nonsense prose to test Macklin's assertion that he could memorise any text at a single reading.

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal are described as being "campy" or "cheesy". When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal. American writer Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp" (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present.

this is a testament to extremely penurious friends. keep-inacentaurdump-public

The percentages, and the graph in particular, have been passed around in our field from reputable person to reputable person. The people who originally created the fabrications are to blame for getting this started, but there are clearly many people willing to bend the information to their own devices. Kinnamon's (2002) investigation found that Treichler's percentages have been modified in many ways, depending on the message the shyster wants to send. Some people have changed the relative percentages. Some have …

Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.

There's something about logos that makes them a magnet for protest. Whether it's Starbucks, Gap, or some other company, new or changing logos always provide an opportunity for a bit of splenetic outrage.

But outside the den of self-interest that is an FCC docket, academics were also pondering the question. In 2009, for instance, well-respected University of Minnesota scholar Andrew Odlyzko suggested that net neutrality (which he favored) might then “open the way for other players, such as Google, then emerge from that open and competitive arena as big winners, to become choke points. So it would be wise to prepare to monitor what happens, and be ready to intervene by imposing neutrality rules on them when necessary.”

Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use.

There is an important distinction to be made between squatting by necessity and squatting as political statement. In this period of global recession and increased housing foreclosures, squatting has become far more prevalent in Western, developed nations.

It was a quiet winter night three days after Christmas. My almost 14 year old self was lying in bed unable to fall asleep. As I did a couple of times before, I quietly went to my sister's desk and stole a pen she no longer used. I went back to bed, lay down on my stomach and (probably after wetting it in saliva) inserted the smooth end of the pen inside my ass. I didn't know why I frequently got an urge to do this. It just felt like something I needed to do. It filled me with excitement because it was taboo. It also made me a bit ashamed and humiliated that I felt I wanted to do it. As I lay there, sticking my butt up and moving it so that the other end of the pen would I rub against the duvet, stimulating me, I also circled my clitoral glans with my finger.

Learned the word Precocial. Hares are prococial, while rabbits are not. It's a biology term. If a animal's young is relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching, it is called precocial. The opposite term is Altricial.

A few days later, as a personal token of appreciation for his service in the military, a congressional staffer who worked for Senator Charles Schumer and was a friend of the McLaughlin family presented McLaughlin with a flag bought at the Senate stationery store. Two years later, when McLaughlin was packing to leave for Iraq under McCoy’s command, he put the flag in his duffel.

The number of recalcitrant donkeys online are amazing. Even after showing them proof, they insist to the contrary.

Xah, I can't think of anyone who can bandy such terms as "pussy flood" and sundry over-the-top rants and still keep a mien of erudition and venerability. Yet, YOU pull it off with aplomb.

Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996 (Cairo was also the codename of Windows NT 4.0). Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips."[1] Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since appeared in other products.

After spending two years as a darling of the digerati, Apple's iPhone has started getting some hate mail. And it's not coming from people happy with other devices who resent the fuss over this one gadget, but from folks who had until recently used or admired the iPhone.

So back in February, influential tech blogger Om Malik switched from AT＆T to T-Mobile, citing "static, the dropped calls and above all the shoddy call quality." Others have followed; the TechCrunch blog has been particularly vituperative about what it sees as AT＆T's inadequacies.

This type of advertising isn't exactly Google's bailiwick, but the Big Dog in search probably feels a need to respond in some fashion to Microsoft, whose recent slew of Bing advertisements suggest that the poor signal-to-noise ratio of today's search engines is frustrating to users. Microsoft is also trying to create the impression that Google's keyword-based search business model is to blame.

SG: What was your favorite scripting environment/language before you decided to create Monad? Why?

JS: Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with the existing tools. I love the interactivity and composability of KSH/utilities but I hate their inconsistency and the need to do text parsing. I love the power and programmability of PERL and TCL but I hate their idiosyncrasies and their lack of a good interactive experience. I love the consistency and production-orientation of VMS DCL and AS400's CL but I hate their composability model. I love the UNIX model of surfacing everything through the filesystem but I hate the anemic semantics of the filesystem.

Trevor, Max's snitch, supplies him with information that leads him to three drug addicts in an empty train station.

On November 18 McPherson was involved in a minor car accident. Paramedics initially left her alone because she was ambulatory, but after she began to remove her clothes, the paramedics decided to take her to the hospital. At one point she remarked that she had taken off her clothes in hopes of obtaining counseling. Hospital staff agreed that she was unharmed, but recommended keeping her overnight for observation. Following intervention by fellow Scientologists, McPherson refused psychiatric observation or admission at the hospital and checked herself out after a short evaluation.

Arriving for the inauguration, those around Bush looked increasingly old and weary. Dick Cheney turned up in a wheelchair, having injured his back moving boxes into his new home in suburban Virginia. Bush's father, former president George HW Bush, appeared doddery, swaddled against the cold and leaning heavily on a cane.

The two presidents made a joint effort to exude bonhomie. Earlier in the day, as they arrived at the White House for morning coffee, the Obamas presented a gift wrapped with a red ribbon to George and Laura Bush. The smiles were warm and Obama made a point of publicly thanking his predecessor for his “generosity and cooperation” during the transition.

He ignored chants of “no more Bush” and “bye bye Bush” from the masses in the Mall, grinning gamely as he glad-handed the VIPs sitting alongside him.

At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolfdog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

The woolly community process by which mathematical proofs become accepted seems all the worse when one considers the fact that mathematics is applied in the real world.

They also revealed the immense scope of crimes and abuses, which included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, improper tax audits, illegal wiretapping on a massive scale, and a secret slush fund laundered in Mexico to pay those who conducted these operations.

A human being traveling on a bicycle at low to medium speeds of around 15-25 km/h, using only the energy required to walk, is the most energy-efficient means of transport generally available. Air drag, which is proportional to the square of speed, requires dramatically higher power outputs as speeds increase. A bicycle which places the rider in a seated position, supine position or, more rarely, prone position, and which may be covered in an aerodynamic fairing to achieve very low air drag, is referred to as a recumbent bicycle or human powered vehicle. On an upright bicycle, the rider's body creates about 75% of the total drag of the bicycle/rider combination.

She was Carlotta Monti in the biopic W.C. Fields and Me (1976) and one of her most famous movie roles came as Miss Eve Teschmacher, moll of criminal mastermind Lex Luthor, in Superman (1978). For this role she was nominated for the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Glenn Gould usually hummed while he played, and his recording engineers varied in how successfully they were able to exclude his voice from recordings… This became “an unbreakable and (notorious) habit”. Some of Gould's recordings were severely criticised because of the background “vocalise”. For example, a reviewer of his 1981 re-recording of the Goldberg Variations opined that many listeners would “find the groans and croons intolerable”.

“But you know, when he's got a bunch of half-naked poontang walking the floor of his lake house, he just likes to pay us a visit and make sure we got everything we need.”

Herb Stempel (born December 19, 1926) is an American teacher who was famous for his celebrity as a television game show contestant — and for helping to expose what became known as the quiz show scandals after his long run as champion on the 1950s show Twenty One was ended by Columbia University teacher and literary scion Charles Van Doren.

Charges of sexism have become Hillary's rote strategy for evading scrutiny. But by entangling the noble movement of modern feminism with her own knotty psychodrama, Hillary is reinforcing hoary stereotypes about women. Will every losing woman candidate now turn on the waterworks and claim to be maimed by male pride and prejudice?

Hillary has tried to have it both ways: to batten on her husband's nostalgic popularity while simultaneously claiming to be a victim of sexism.

Those who think she will withdraw gracefully in a few weeks are living in cloud cuckoo land. The Clintons are ruthless scrappers who will lock their bulldog teeth in any bloody towel.

In 1997, she ended her estrangement with the entire Jackson family and returned home to Hayvenhurst. That year, she divorced Gordon. Jackson has no children and currently resides in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The design remained relatively unknown in the West for almost another 200 years, until an American, Nathanael Herreshoff, began to build catamaran boats of his own design in 1877 (US Pat. No. 189,459), namely 'Amaryllis', which immediately showed her superior performance capabilities, at her maiden regatta (The Centennial Regatta held on June 22, 1876, off the New York Yacht Club's Staten Island station[1]). It was this same event, after being protested by the losers, where Catamarans, as a design, were barred from all the regular classes[1] and they remained barred until the 1970's.

We have recently resolved Bet 117 on Long Bets about the adjusted cost of energy. It was an interesting case where we had very specific criteria for who would win the bet, yet we could not adjudicate it when the time came. The bettors cited the Department of Energy published numbers to resolve their bet. However in the first quarter of 02006 when the DOE posted their numbers, they then quickly retracted them. It turns out they had several years worth of data incorrect due to the deceptive data from the Enron energy kerfuffle. It took the DOE over a year to straighten it all out.

Trimarans are popular with many sailors for their stability; however, if capsized (for example by a rogue wave), they are virtually impossible to right, in contrast to monohulls, and this would typically be a fatal disaster for the boat's crew.

In the bet Winer asserts, “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 02007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times's Web site”. The premise of this bet is excellent, but unfortunately the arguments were quite vague on how to adjudicate the bet. Long Bets encourages bettors to construct arguments that involve the least amount of interpretation possible. Once this bet came up for adjudication we urged both parties to come to their own decision, but they asked Long Bets to be the final arbiter. We have done our best with the information and resources available to us, but this process should be a good instructor both to future bettors and ourselves…

Is Hillary Clinton the saviour of feminism? Or its albatross, dragging feminism backwards under a weary weight of old-guard victimology and male-bashing?

The highlighting faces are my own choices, because I felt it was important for me to foist my personal style choices on the general public.

Prior to winning the Nobel Prize, her work was largely unknown outside the German-speaking world and was said to resemble that of acclaimed Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard, with its pathology of destruction and its concomitant comedic abrogation.

Disemboweling is evidently the theme du jour. As the political wars rage in this amazingly acrimonious primary season, the skin has been ripped off the establishment in both parties, and their guts have been exposed. We're seeing the pulsing inner workings of partisan ideology as never before.

The house dust mite, is a cosmopolitan guest in human habitation. Dust mites feed on organic detritus such as flakes of shed human skin and flourish in the stable environment of dwellings.