A good article on the benefits — and perils — of self-deception.
Obvious Answers To Stupid Questions
Q: Can you clean a computer keyboard by putting it in the dishwasher, without ruining it?
A: No:
Studies show that computer keyboards have more bacteria than toilet seats. But it’s hard to clean all those keys. So some people advocate an extreme solution: Throw your keyboard in your dishwasher.
At first glance, this seems insane. But the computer-keyboard-in-the-dishwasher advice is all over the Internet. And don’t we wish it were true?
Yes, but (as the article goes on to say), it’s probably not. Unless you have a specifically-designed dishwasher safe keyboard.
New Words
The folks at wordspy.com are always on the lookout for new words and phrases popping up in the English language. Here are some of the latest:
- password fatigue n. Mental exhaustion and frustration caused by having to remember a large number of passwords. (Citations)
- Streisand effect n. The widespread dissemination of information caused by an attempt to suppress that information. Also: Barbra Streisand effect. (Citations)
- exergaming n. An activity that combines exercise with video game play. —adj. Also: exer-gaming. —exergame n. —exergamer n. (Citations)
- ungoogleable n. A person for whom no information appears in an Internet search engine, particularly Google. —adj. Also: unGoogleable, ungooglable, unGoogle-able.
- microblogging pp. Posting short thoughts and ideas to a personal blog, particularly by using instant messaging software or a cell phone. Also: micro-blogging. —microblog v., n. —microblogger n. (Citations)
- bullycide n. The suicide of a child that occurs after that child has been bullied or harassed. (Citations)
- hypermiler n. A person who attempts to maximize gas mileage by using driving techniques that conserve fuel. —hypermiling pp. —hypermile adj (Citations)
- eco-anxiety n. Worry or agitation caused by concerns about the present and future state of the environment. (Citations)
- ecosexual n. A single, environmentally conscious person with a strong aesthetic sense. Also: eco-sexual. —ecosexuality n. (Citations)
People Magazine Commits A Gross Oversight For, Like, The 20th Year In A Row
It names the Hottest Bachelors, and I don’t make the list (again!):
(Psssst, ladies — McConaughey is soooo not into you, if you know what I mean)
The Singing Phone Salesman
This video is getting a bit viral, so you may have seen it by now. If not, you’re in for a treat.
It comes from a TV competition show from across the pond called "Britain’s Got Talent". Yes, it’s basically the same as "America’s Got Talent" and "American Idol". A bunch of contestents, three judges, etc.
In fact, one of the judges is Simon Cowell himself. The popular British show ends with the finals this coming weekend, and the odds-on favorite — er, favourite — is a guy named Paul Potts.
Potts is a mobile phone salesman, a Welsh nobody who lacks looks and confidence. His one dream is to sing opera.
He waddles out on to stage, and you think it’s going to be one of those crash-and-burn talent show auditions…
…but then he opens his mouth and starts to sing.
You don’t have to be an opera fan to be moved by this:
I Guess Now I Have To Gay Marry A Dude?
Massachusetts legislature votes to defeat vote on same-sex marriage ban:
A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was defeated today by a joint session of the Legislature by a vote of 45 to 151, eliminating any chance of getting it on the ballot in November 2008. The measure needed at least 50 votes to advance.
The vote came after House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, Senate President Therese Murray, and Governor Deval Patrick conferred this morning and concluded that they have the votes to kill the proposal. Cheers echoed in the State House when the vote was tallied.
Wingers are already decrying the vote, claiming (as per usual) that this means that straight marriages are dooooooooooomed.
But here’s the thing — the state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.
But don’t take the US government’s word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.
The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
AG AG Under Another Investigation
Not only was a knee-deep in the whole attorney firing issue, but now it looks like he may have obstructed justice in the attorney firing investigation:
The Justice Department is investigating whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to influence the testimony of a departing senior aide during a March meeting in Gonzales’s office, according to correspondence released today.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the two officials who are leading an internal Justice Department investigation of the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys last year said their inquiry includes the Gonzales meeting, which was revealed during testimony last month from former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling.
The Post reports, "The disclosure could represent a serious legal threat to the embattled attorney general. [Inspector General Glenn] Fine’s office is empowered to refer matters for criminal prosecution if warranted."
It must be pretty bad for the Attorney General to be investigated by his own Justice Department.
Surge Report Card
“Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.”
***
“Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven ‘uneven’ in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.”
So it’s a "D-minus".
Exactly how long are our nation’s soldiers expected to play this deluded game of whack-a-mole, risking life and limb for George Bush’s ego?
The Jesus Diet
No comment:
Religion And Black-Vs-White Thinking
I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. The greatest threat facing the world isn’t Islam, but religious extremism. Any extremism. Reuters:
Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil" and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters.
It said extremists from each of the three faiths often have tangible grievances — social, economic or political — but they invoke religion to recruit followers and to justify breaking the law, including killing civilians and members of their own faith.
The report was commissioned by security think tank EastWest Institute ahead of a conference on Thursday in New York titled "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization." The report will be updated and published after the conference.
The authors compared ideologies, recruitment tactics and responses to violent religious extremists in three places — Muslims in Britain, Jews in Israel and Christians in the United States.
"What is striking … is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence," the report said.
It said that while Muslims were often perceived by the West as "the principal perpetrators of terrorist activity," there are violent extremists of other faiths. Always focusing on Muslim extremists alienates mainstream Muslims, it said.
The report said it was important to examine the root causes of violence by those of different faiths, without prejudice.
"It is, in each situation, a case of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’" it said. "That God did not intend for civilization to take its current shape; and that the state had failed the righteous and genuine members of that nation, and therefore God’s law supersedes man’s law."
For The Ultimate In Lazy
Is rock, paper, scissors really so difficult that we need an electronic version of the game?
Spoof Of The Dove Real Beauty Campaign
First, the real ad campaign (which I’ve posted before):
Now, the spoof:
RELATED: Is your dog fat? This gadget will tell you.
Bug
CNN:
Cockroaches have a memory and can be taught to salivate in response to neutral stimuli in the way that Pavlov’s dogs would do when the famed Russian doctor rang his bell, Japanese researchers say.
Such "conditioning" can only take place when there is memory and learning, and this salivating response had only previously been proven in humans and dogs.
Now, cockroaches appear to have that aptitude too.
Ya know, I could have gone my whole life without having the image of clever drooling cockroaches. Thanks, CNN.
I Largely Agree With Lesbians
A list of the "Hottest 100 Women" is nothing new, but this list was selected and voted on by lesbians.
With the exception of their #1 (UPDATE: okay …and #31), I really have no major disagreements.
However:
Let’s face it: Maxim doesn’t cater to lesbians. In fact, you could say it flies in the face of all that we hold dear, especially when it declares Lindsay Lohan the hottest of them all, as it did when it published The Maxim Hot 100 List last month. So we asked you, our readers, to create your own list of hotties, and you came out in droves to nominate the women you think deserve to be on the AfterEllen.com Hot 100 List. Thousands of votes later, we have the results.
How is our list different from Maxim’s? Eight of the top 10 women on our list aren’t mentioned anywhere on the Maxim list (Angelina Jolie and Lena Headey are the exceptions), and only four of the women who made Maxim’s top 10 (Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and Lindsay Lohan) appear somewhere on the AfterEllen.com list.
Clearly, what straight men and lesbians find sexy in a woman is a little bit different.
Yeah, but only a little.