June 2010
22 posts
in medieval and renaissance europe, thousands of... →
even after they could no longer stand, they would writhe and twist on the ground, sometimes foaming at the mouth. there are a few hypotheses regarding the condition’s cause, but scientists and historians have never found a clear motivation for the bizarre behavior.
Watch“…cities in the future would not only be made of brick and mortar, but also defined by bits and flows of information. the urban dweller would become a nomad who inhabits a space in constant flux…”
a new tribe.
A tribe of hunter gatherers living in trees in the remote forests of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua region has been discovered for the first time by the country’s census, an official said on Thursday.
Strange that the tribe would have such a detailed Wikipedia article given their supposedly recent discovery.
From what I can tell, though, this is not the first contact with the...
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fandom.
south korean.
german.
go mannschaft!
(from thebigpicture, some of the best photojournalism in the world.)
"The supertaster gene could be a remnant of our... →
“The more taste buds you have, the more intensely you perceive tastes, especially bitter ones. People who are particularly sensitive are called supertasters. They can have up to twice as many taste buds as the rest of us.
“… Women are more likely to be supertasters and so are people from Asia, Africa and South America.”
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“I am pursuing the possibility of giving the semantics of tense in a tensed...”
– Peter Ludlow.
dedicated to the pretty girl reading gregory ward’s pragmatics. sorry i didn’t say “you’re into pragmatics?” or, “i love gregory ward,” or “hello.”
Watch“how far will our nomadic species have wandered?”
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'WRITING FICTION FOR SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS'
“Ah, come sit down, Carl.” Professor Carnegie spreads his arms out, places his left hand on my back, and guides me toward a chair across from him.
The coffee shop bustles around us. People maneuvering drinks to their seats, couples chatting idly, a business man speaking excitedly to a more important businessman. Professor Carnegie and I sit underneath a world atlas of oceanic...
i'm comic sans, asshole. →
(via flawlessfumbles)
the ragbag: the great day →
my niece, who is a famous 2nd grade novelist, just sent me her latest memoir. it’s called the great day and its virtuosic twist at the end is an m. night shyamalan movie waiting to happen.
the great day (2010)
the date is may 25. one day i was having a horrible, bad yucky day! it was…
“She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl...”
– Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49.
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rooks
i played drunk chess with B last night.
we were both playing sloppy. i would look eight moves ahead with some pieces and not others, or i’d look ahead with a piece that i later saw was blocked.
B said, “you doubled your pawns.”
i said, “shit.”
> “it’s okay, you can take it back.”
“no, it’s fine. my mistake.”
>...
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you go, estonia. →
the belarusian language is in much worse trouble. it may effectively die out in the next twenty years. will belarus decide to save its language, too?
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did you know that steve jobs has an illegitimate... →
an article from my good friend’s father.
When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa’s mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn’t be Lisa’s father because he was “sterile and...
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the silliest reduplication there is.
Shm-reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with shm- (sometimes schm-), pronounced [ʃm]. The construction is generally used to indicate irony, derision or scepticism with respect to comments about the discussed object:
He’s just a baby!Baby-shmaby. He’s already 5 years...
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GRAHAM T. AUTUMN IN ROAD TOWN, BRITISH VIRGIN...
I was eleven.
One morning, I was staring out our window at the giant yachts docking at Road Harbor.
My father said, “Did you know that this whole city burnt down? In the 1850s, some rioters set fire to everything because of some goat tax.”
“Or maybe it was a cow tax.” He looked out the window and scratched the back of his neck with his thumb. “Anyway, they burned...
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a conversation transcribed as i overhear it,...
60-something with tattoos down his arms, leather jacket, raybands, and a grimace: i'm not talking about what you think, rick, i'm talking about where it came from in general—
rick, a skinny 50-to-60-something wearing asics with high socks and shorts: okay, skip...
okay, "skip," apparently: —listen, i'm saying that country music came down out of the mountains. back in the teens, twenties, thirties—
rick: i don't even know what country music is anymore. you're saying that's the same music that hannah montana plays?
skip: that's not what i'm saying. you're not listening. i'm saying it's a matter of heritage. that music can trace its roots back to appalachia, back to the music that really was from the country, back before the new deal—
rick: so hannah montana and the 20s country music. same thing. right? exact same thing.
skip: you're not fucking listening to me. it's heritage. it has its roots. are ancient romans the same thing as the italians? it's heritage.
rick: are they the same thing?
skip: forget it.
rick: you don't know what you're talking about.
skip: forget it.
rick leans back, rests his right knee on the coffee table and reaches into his pocket where a pack of cigarettes might be. he feels that his pocket is empty and runs his fingers through his hair.
skip: just forget it.
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combination pizza hut and taco bell rapper & new... →
Cartoonist Farley Katz of The New Yorker made fun of Das Racist for “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” Vazquez challenged Katz to a cartoon-off.
I hope that Katz learned a lesson in taken himself seriously.
It’s worth noting that Vazquez formed Das Racist at Wesleyan University.