Apparently there are few photos of Abraham Lincoln and none of him at Gettysburg. But now this image just popped up. A new, never-seen before photo that provides conclusive new photo-evidence of Lincoln at Gettysburg before giving his famous Address. How can this picture be anything else?
And as a bonus, if you look carefully you can see the Lochness Monster behind the stagecoach (driven by Bigfoot).
Been a fan of the non-fiction side of the Onion AV Club for some time…for some reason this DVD review of Nina Hartley’s Guide To The Perfect Orgy got buried in their “blog” section. This review deserves to live!
Tip #12. Know When to Call it a Day when everyone reaches the same level of “pleasurable exhaustion.” then it’s time to consider wrapping up the orgy.
So wait, if everyone’s worn out and ready to go home, but one couple is still totally going at it, everyone has to wait until they’re done? I can just picture a couple in their coats, holding a small duffle bag with their supplies in hand, keys in the other, silently glaring at the remaining participants. “Fucking blow already! We’ve got to get back for the babysitter!”
I give this DVD review a positive review. It captures the essence of Nina Hartley’s Guide To The Perfect Orgy and lets readers know the pros and cons of purchasing said DVD, which in turn lays out the pros and cons of those little nicities that make a friendly orgy so rewarding. Like thank-you notes.
When you sit down and think about it, porn shouldn't turn us on. Noone can mate with a magazine or a raise a family with a jpeg. Yet, turn us on it does. Science says our brains are still hard-wired with Stone Age thinking, when an erotic image meant an erotic actuality. Now the two are independent.
When the environment undergoes rapid change within the space of a generation or two, as it has been for the last couple of millennia, if not more, then evolution can’t happen because nature can’t determine which traits to select and which to eliminate. So they remain at a standstill. Our brain (and the rest of our body) are essentially frozen in time — stuck in the Stone Age.
One example of this is that when we watch a scary movie, we get scared, and when we watch porn we get turned on. We cry when someone dies in a movie. Our brain cannot tell the difference between what’s simulated and what’s real, because this distinction didn’t exist in the Stone Age.
Related: Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?
It may be that the unattractive man has a lot of money, or some other compelling attribute.
Compelling attributes, now they tell me! Something I wish I read in college.
Whether you're a true-blue Pope fan or merely a Pope enthusiast, it's the debate everyone loves talking about...who’s the best Pope, like ever? Any tough guy at the bar can rattle off the blessing stats of Pius IX or cite Gregory I’s impact on liturgy. But for my money, bar none, best pope ever was the late, great John Paul II. He had charisma, he spoke 7 languages and he had doctrine down cold. That’s best Pontiff, pre-Schism or post-Schism. Now check this out:
And there’s the proof. Pope John Paul II just made a breakout move for the Hall of Fame by appearing in freakin’ fire! That kind of showmanship you don’t see anymore and it really gives something back to the fans. That’s what it’s all about people.
And the less said about JPII’s frail successor, the better. Ratzinger sucks. Despite what some deluded people think, he couldn’t sanctify his way out of a brown paper bag. So-called "Pope" Benedict is barely qualified to carry Pope John Paul’s gym clothes, much less carry on the Holy See.
He could appear in 100 clouds, but unless they make egregious sucking a new sacrament, there’s no way Benidict's going to the Hall of Fame.
It’s bothering me that all the colors people have for last names only appear on the camouflage pattern. The most common color-names are clearly White, Green, Black and Brown in that order. Why are others so rare? Why no Mr. and Mrs. Purple?
It’s all here: Drowning, Heart Attack, Blood Loss, Fire, Electrocution, Decapitation, Falling, Hanging, and Explosive Decompression in the Vacuum of Space.
Great interview about the history of the US dollar .
This article will help you make great small talk on your next date. Topics covered include the creation of the Secret Service; how our ancestors were almost all counterfeiters; and the fact that by 1860, over 10,000 types of currency were in circulation including one featuring Santa Claus.
Once the country began moving down the path of a common national currency, people started looking at money differently. Money became a means of cementing people’s allegiance to the United States: by handling it, you were tacitly putting faith in nation.
In this old-time advertisement from 1932, a helpful shaving company explain the real reason for joblessness--in the middle of the Great Depression—was actually facial hair.
This kind of ignorance has been going on for a long time: the war on beards.
It’s been hard out there for men who choose the facial hair lifestyle. The media perpetuates negative stereotypes; bearded men face societal prejudice; and job opportunities are severely limited. For the moustache: cop, fireman, or gay porn actor. No other options exist. Likewise a full beard limits your career options to: the Unabomber, a melancholic professor, or Santa Claus. And there’s not much money in any of them.
The discrimination has gone on long enough. The recent Beard and Moustache Championships is here to challenge that and most of all to bring the pride back.
Previous post of full-body shaving.
Good to Know
Aside from the ill-fated Nutzapper, the Jockey Club's database reveals 131 horses whose names begin with the prefix Nut. The vast majority are of course not titillating. But shouldn't somebody have questioned the precedent-setting Nut Buster way back in 1942? Similarly, Pussy Galore probably should have raised a few eyebrows in 1965. The filly never won a race, but one assumes she was a big hit with the stallions.
You want explicit commands? How about Blow Me (1945), Get It On (both 1971 and 1986), On Your Knees (1977 and 2005), Spank It (1985), or 1963's Go Down, whose sire, of course, was Service. If a clever play on words is your thing, Cunning Stunt (1969) is a decent one. Lagnaf (1978) is a thinly veiled acronym for "let's all get naked and … ." The names Hardawn (1937) and Wrecked Em (1983) have to be said out loud to elicit the desired potty-mouth effect.
...not when that perfect Russian almost beat Rocky in Rocky IV, although that would've been devastating to all Americans. No, September 26, 1983 is when a mid-level Russian officer almost pushed a button...
Russian Guy at the gym approaches a most beautiful woman and spends 10 minutes telling a what she’s doing wrong with her curls. It looks pedantic, but I know what’s really going on here. He’s clearly hitting on her.
Then 15 minutes later he taps me on the shoulder and takes 10 minutes telling me what I’m doing wrong with my rows. And he was absolutely right! I misjudged you and your intentions, Helpful Russian Guy. Thank you.
I almost got creamed on my bike this morning. Car from the left completely blows through a red light. Not a yellow, not a just-red, but a full-bodied mature red. One aged at least 5 seconds and served with a bouquet of gape-jawed horror.
Zombie Pfizer Computers Spew Viagra Spam
Zombie. Spew. Viagra. All of these words contributed to a very misleading headline. Filed under D, for disappointing.
Along with the paperless workplace, remember how like in 1998 Videophones were going to 
revolutionize work so much that you wouldn’t even have to go into the office? That was a great prediction, except that it never happened. Now the same people are predicting that Telepresence is going to revolutionize work so much so you wouldn’t even have to go into the office!
From the Economist:
People in telepresence meetings appear life-sized and the tables and rooms at the two ends to blend together seamlessly. (Rooms, furniture and even wallpaper are often identical, to aid the illusion.) People feel that they are making eye contact, which involves multiple cameras and enormous computing power. The delays in sight and sound must be negligible (ie, below 250 milliseconds, the threshold at which the human brain starts to notice), so that people can interrupt each other naturally. Sounds are perceived to come from the direction of the person speaking.
Bottom line: business people are unlikable. Even to each other. So naturally the world needs an invention that keeps as many of them out of the same room as possible.
I don’t know much about this Andrew W.K. fellow. But from what I hear of his songs, he’s really committed to the cause of partying. Like that song I heard at the gym that contained the word ‘party’ over 50+ times? That song alone could earn him a PhD in Partyology or maybe a Purple Heart after fighting for his right to party.
I’m thinking Andrew W.K. could never just spend a quiet evening at home without fans shouting Judas! Traitor! like they did when Dylan went electric. Deep in this line of thought, standing at my gym locker, an old man calls out to me. He’s wet and of course he’s naked and asks me to get him a towel from the front desk.
It’s distasteful, but I do it out of respect for my elders. It raises questions though. Was he so eager to get naked that he didn’t have a shower exit strategy? Or does he think the gym is his 1920s era country club bustling with towel fetching manservants? And where was he keeping the buffalo nickel he tipped me with?
Of course my first reaction to the whole Senator-Craig-Gay-Bathroom-Stall-Saga was gleeful schadenfreude. When a powerful homophobic Senator gets busted for soliciting sleazy gay sex, that’s just too deliciously perfect! But the more I think about it, why are police officers going into our men’s rooms in the first place? Presumably the socializing going on in the Minneapolis airport bathroom is all victimless and consensual. The whole racket smells of entrapment. And today the ACLU agrees by filing friend-of-the-court brief:
"Sen. Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn't have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, alluding to Craig's history of voting against gay rights. "Sen. Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn't have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, alluding to Craig's history of voting against gay rights.
Hear, hear! You’ve got to admire that the ACLU supports unpopular people and causes who happen to be right with the Mother-Lovin’ Constitution. Our forefathers were pretty explicit that even enormous assholes have the right to privacy, free speech, etc. Also I personally love that even if the ACLU successfully defends the Senator in court, he’s still screwed. And not in the way he was hoping.
An interesting map distorted to show known oil reserves. Notice Europe and Japan have practically shrunk off the face of the earth.
(via Neatorama. click to enlarge)
(Off the coast of Dubai, "The World" is a grouping of 300 manmade islands created as a planned community for the super-rich. Everyone gets their own private beach) 
(At a cost of $4.1 billion, Al Burj will soon be the world's largest freestanding structure of any type at 555 meters. As a point of comparison, the Sears Tower is 442 meters tall. Tower envy?)
(The planned "Dancing Towers". Maybe you think spending gajillions on buildings made out of Jello isn't the best investment. Well you're not a bored sheik) 
The Pitch: Women have unfairly enhanced their beauty for centuries with make-up, shapely undergarments and breast implants. Now it’s time to level the playing field—with science! Fat condoms are like regular condoms, but technology makes them fatter. Nobody has to know your real dimensions, not while wearing spandex bike shorts and definitely not the woman you love!
Again, I walk into the gym locker room and it’s just me and another naked man. But this time, the other man just happens to be a dead ringer for Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips.
I’m going about my locker business and from behind me he says, “Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.”
It took a beat to realize I must be the intended recipient of this and that somehow I have entered a conversation with a naked man.
Me: Sorry…say what?
Him: I said, the bear, sometimes you eat him; but sometimes he eats you.
Me: [turning around enough to be polite, but not enough to see his entire nakedness] uh yeah, I guess so.
Him: You said it! A lot of people just think their gonna get that bear. They chase after it, they join a step-aerobics class; they get a nice car. Doctors and lawyers think they’re so god-damn smart that they can beat it at it’s own game, but it’s not going to matter they’re going to get mauled in the end. You can’t aerobicize your way out of that, Mr. Tough-Guy-Prosecutor, know what I mean?
Me: Yeah …that’s...a good point. OK, goodbye.
Him: See you. It’s good talking with someone who really gets it.
You know people don’t really eat bears these days, so this conversation doesn't make sense on the surface.
Was this man talking in code? Was there a CIA spy microfiche hand-off that I was a party to? On the other hand, maybe it some kind of gay code? There's been a lot in the news lately about tapping your foot under the men's room stall to indicate willingness. Maybe talking about bears is the new code since the old one's been exposed. So to speak.
Or was he really a naked Wayne Coyne and this was some sort of weird social experiment to sing about on the next album? Seems like something the Flaming Lips might do.
Clothes before:
Clothes after:
iOLÉ! Click here for even more fancy clothes that magically fall on the floor into geographic shapes.
[the scene: on the couch, watching The Science of Sleep with G. The end credits start to roll]
G: That was dumb.
Paul: What, c’mon it was weird but it certainly wasn’t dumb. I thought it was visually stunning. Very inventive with flourishes of—
G: --it was utter bullsheet.
P: What, you missed the first half of the movie, how can you judge?
G: Do you need me to kick you in the balls for 90 minutes to know you don’t like it? After 45 minutes, you already know for sure.
P: That’s a horrible analogy. Even if you don’t exactly enjoy the movie it’s not physically painful.
G: It was for me. Like the part with the 1-second time machine, was that for real or was that a dream?
P: You know, it was supposed to be real, but at that point in the film his dreams were bleeding into his waking life. Obviously no one will ever invent a time machine so I think it demonstrated his rich inner life and his desire to achieve much more than his dead-end job.
G: No. It just demonstrated pretentious bullsheet.
P: You have no taste. You hate on films that try something new, yet you love America’s Funniest Home Videos. It’s pathological.
G: Then why are you with me?
P: Definitely not for your taste in movies or books or art; I’d have to say I with you for…[staring obviously at her large breasts] your winning personality.
G: For your sake, I'm going to pretend to accept the answer that came out of your mouth and not your eyes.
[the end]
The Science of Sleep is a simple love story. And all love stories need an obstacle. And the obstacle is that the main character is weird, and the girl he likes, she likes him but doesn't want to be his girlfriend. Everyone has been there. They’re eccentric, yet sweet characters -- you want to fall in love with them both.
And who amongst us hasn’t had nervous conversations like this when trying to woo a girl?
Guy: [searching for an analogy] It's like touching your penis with your left hand.
Girl: I don't have a penis.
Guy: But you have a left hand.
And:
Girl: [after receiving the 1-second time travel machine from the Guy] For what special occasion that I deserve such a nice gift?
Guy: For the occasion of... you're pretty.
TSoS is directed by Michel Gondry, who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Which I also liked, but here he takes it up a notch. “It” being the fantastical quirky. Also it’s in French, English and Spanish but as a viewer you never get tripped up by the language changes. The main character does and gets mocked for his bad French. Its kind of a plot point.
But the movie is mostly about dreams. With the simple story as the skeleton, Grondy can add all the surreal dream melting with reality stuff. I laughed at some of the visuals: like who hasn’t dreamt about taking over their office kung-fu style and bending a shapely co-worker over the copier while being lavishly praised as an artistic genius?
Not one among us.
We always knew that Russians loved chess. The greatest Grandmasters are of course Russian. As is the last human player to ever consistently beat the supercomputers.
When everything else fell apart socially, politically and economically, Russia still had their love of chess. But this might be taking things too far.
The serial killer charted his crimes on a chessboard, attaching a number and a coin to each square every time he struck. By the time he was caught, Alexander Pichushkin had filled in 62 of the 64 squares.
When it comes to commercial-free radio, I‘m kinda a true believer. I like the media of radio because it can engage you while you go about doing other things. But, for whatever reason, the ads of commercial radio are especially jarring; even more so than web pop-ups or TV commercials with all their animated toenail fungus.
College radio, NPR and others fill the void because it should be noted that most radio, like most media, is crap. And when you find a tolerable life raft floating above it all, you cling to it.
KEXP is certainly not crap. It’s excellent. And the have a live streaming webcast. I’m listening to them right now, as I have most mornings for the past 6 years. I’d listen to the morning show from a tiny cubicle in Cleveland and it was my first aural impression of Seattle: it’s fun; it tries new things; it has better concerts. Mainstream music in Seattle is Pavement and the Pixies. Seattle will put a certified nerd on the morning show and he’s a star. Seattle will put a DJ with a speech impediment on weekends, and he’s a star too! It’s just that kind of town.
When me and G got sick of Cleveland we caught I-90 downtown and drove west several thousand miles until the road ended here in Seattle. And when our crap car had crested the Olympic Mountains at barely 25 mph and we started free rolling down the other side, we could suddenly pick up the KEXP FM radio signal and that’s how I knew we’d arrived in Seattle. Seattle is the place where it’s in your car and not just on your computer.
Years later, the station had some fund-raising telethon and we gave them the old car that brought us here. By then it was even more crap, but it was tax-deductible crap. And it helped the organization do mostly good. Being a believer means you overlook some unfortunate flaws like annoying telethons and creeping commercialism.
These days, a lot of non-commercial operations are running “sponsor acknowledgements” that sound suspiciously like commercials and KEXP in no exception as they got "sponsorship" from people selling condos, Hondas and scooters. Old PBS even runs Chuck. E. Cheese “acknowledgements” during its kid’s shows that pay some lip service to “lifelong learning” but then just shows kids jumping in a ball pit in front of a giant mouse. The educational aspect is suspect.
KEXP has changed, but it's still there. Maybe I don’t love them as much as I use to, but I still believe in them.
It’s hard to get a handle on the future when it hasn't happened yet. Everyone wants to know what the next big thing is; yet nobody really knows. That’s why it’s a good thing forecasters can look to Japan for new trends. As with many things, the future has already arrived, and it’s in Japan. 
Full story with video here.
Just accept it now, because you can’t fight the future. Consider this…
Fact #1: Every year people are getting more numerous
Fact #2: The Earth is heating up
Fact #3: Summers get hot, we gotta cool down
Inescapable Conclusion: Crowded pools, very crowded pools. From the Japanese version of Wild Waves. If you want to book your vacation, you can go there yourself.
They say that New York City is where America happens first. Meaning trends start there and spread to the rest of the country. 
Well, Seattle is where America happens first -- in regards to coffee.
Why? Because we seriously loves us some coffee. Starbucks started here and basically defined the American coffee shop experience. Seattle's Best and Tully's are finally making national inroads now too.
Other coffee trends that started in Seattle:
Read about it here: The cups will runneth over at ChickaLatteCheesy joke aside, more and more, the movie Idiocracy predicts the future of American culture. Remember how in the year 3000, the “Gentleman’s Latte” was just a euphemism for handjob? The future is almost here.
Maybe that’s a wildly unproven speculation, but consider this.
Fact #1
In the past 17 years, Thomas the Tank Engine has undeniably become a marketing juggernaut. The videos make hundreds of millions, despite having no original theater release* and the merchandise earns far more.
Fact #2
Rates of autism have skyrocketed since to 90s.
If you’ve known a toddler, you know that for them Thomas runs a powerful personality cult that’d make Jim Jones blush.
Sure the People’s Temple held some sway and convinced 900+ people to make some rather, ill-informed choices, but it could never match the long-term influence of the talking train lurking in every parent's DVD player.
Thomas says he needs a bath; they suddenly need a bath. Thomas needs more coal; and now they want coal for breakfast. Thomas says jump; they say how high?
Children are transfixed. A locomotive charismatic only comes along once in a lfetime -- and nobody has yet denied that he's built an army. An army with malleable minds and small hands. Their only weakness, besides literal weakness, is an early bedtime.
But, did you know for a certain subset of kids, the obsession for all things Thomas extends much deeper into their lives? Autistic children love Thomas well past toddler-hood and late into their childhoods. Here’s a mother talking about her two autistic sons:
My sons are technically teenagers (age 13 and 15), but they're unaware of the implications. They have no interest in fashion, mobile phones, the internet, iPods, parties, alcohol. As far as tastes and interests go, they're still stuck on the Island of Sodor with Thomas the Tank Engine, which is cosy, if a little dull.
For children on the autistic spectrum, a very common problem is “face blindness” or the inability to understand what another person is feeling based on their facial expression. Thomas videos actually help, due to their choppy stop-motion animation with exaggerated facial expressions frozen in place for several seconds. Apparently this helps autistics make sense out of a world that doesn’t make sense, and aids in understanding the alien concept of emotions.
Autistic children respond to this and watch Thomas well past the age that most others have moved on. And that's why autistics will be the elite shock troops in next year's devestating toddler uprising. 
*Same business model as the direct-to-video porn industry, with much more success. Maybe they just need more trains.
Newish Human Evolution Theory: Our big brainy brains have many uses, but they're bigger than they have to be because they're mostly for show. Showy brains, like excessive antlers, help get potential mates interested.
Like when you see caribou, first thing you notice is it's amazing rack.
The science money shot:
His idea is that the human brain is the anthropoid equivalent of the peacock's tail. In other words, it is an organ designed to attract the opposite sex. Of course, brains have many other functions, and the human brain shares those with the brains of other animals. But Dr Miller, who works at the University of New Mexico, thinks that mental processes which are uniquely human, such as language and the ability to make complicated artefacts, evolved originally for sexual display.
But for the human animal, it goes both ways:
One important difference between peacocks' tails and human minds, of course, is that the peahen's accoutrement is a drab affair. No one could say the same of the human female psyche. That, Dr Miller believes, is because people, unlike peafowl, bring up their offspring in families where both sexes are involved in parenting. It thus behoves a man to be as careful about choosing his wife as a woman is about choosing her husband.
This Dr. Miller sounds pretty smart. And therefore sexually desirable.
David Hahn is back in the news again. Who? You know the American teenager who almost built a working nuclear breeder reactor by himself, that’s who.
What big science work were you doing in your teen years that was so important? Most teenage science projects are no more ambitious than building the gravity-assisted beer imbiber or mentally de-scrambling Cinemax After Dark programming.
Not Hahn—he was a mild-mannered Boy Scout who earned a merit badge in atomic energy -- but went beyond what was necessary. His obsession and curiosity took him well beyond necessity, rationality and safety. To the public, he’s a certified genius and a certified nut – guess you could say the same thing about the Curies who also sacrificed their health to advance human knowledge.
Unlike his predecessors, however, David did not have vast financial support from the state, no laboratory save for a musty potting shed, no proper instruments or safety devices, and, by far his chief impediment, no legal means of obtaining radioactive materials. To get around this last obstacle, David utilized a number of cover stories and concocted identities, plus a Geiger-counter kit he mounted to the dashboard of his burgundy Pontiac 6000.
Read the whole story here.
How did his obsessive quest end? His backyard got named a Superfund site. He’s not allowed near nuclear reactors of any type, and experts suggest he may have already exceeded the lifetime dosage for thorium exposure.
Has he given up? Now 12 years later, he’s stealing smoke detectors (again), and look at his face. That's a telling face. A clean-cut Midwestern kid forever bears the mark of his literally burning ambition.
The mugshot's almost poetry.
More typo-laden science articles? here
What is there was like this guy and he had amnesia, but since he couldn’t remember the past, he remembered the future instead?
Man, I bet a guy like that would be so messed up in the head.
There’s no way he could get a job or go on a normal first date. Like, he'd remember the time they had S&M freestyle sex after the third date, but she doesn't remember that because it hasn't happened yet! And he starts telling her about it over appetizers and she's all freaked out because she hardly knows this guy.
So there's no way she'd ever have sex with this nuttering lunatic -- yet -- in the future they've already had the sex.
mind=blown
There are two types of people in the world. Those, that when a romantic situation calls for it, can quote a little Star Wars dialogue. And those that can’t.
These are only for the Don Juan’s out there. Who don’t have cable and can't watch Robot Chicken.
Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Part 3 or 3
[Link via Tom - thanks]
To celebrate the official Barry Bonds Day, a thought experiment: What if drugs were perfectly legal for all athletes? What would our favorite sports look like? Assuming everyone's favorite sport is baseball. And that it mattered.
An economist's take on perfomance enhancing drugs.
Apparenlty professional cycling started the practice of athletic doping in the first place.
[T]he history of modern doping began with the cycling craze of the 1890s and the six-day races that lasted from Monday morning to Saturday night. Extra caffeine, peppermint, cocaine and strychnine were added to the riders’ black coffee. Brandy was added to tea. Cyclists were given nitroglycerin to ease breathing after sprints. This was a dangerous business, since these substances were doled out without medical supervision.
Staying up for 6 days while on the road taking cocaine mixed with brandy, rat poison, and nitroglycerin. What could possibly go wrong?
The title just grabs you. Baby Dumbfuck
Related: Baby Einstein smackdown
According to this CNN culture story, there’s a hot new romantic trend of “dating out” and here’s why:
Black women around the country are reconsidering interracial relationships. They're taking cues from their favorite stars, movies, books, as well as blogs.
No doubt relationships are transcending race as never before in this country. But the article’s wrong on the root causes, suggesting that it’s because of the media. The media like CNN would say something like that in the media, because they love the media.
Breaking it down: What kind of movies are increasing the prevalence of interracial dating--the entire film oeuvre of Sidney Pottier? Maybe when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the mid-60s. Perhaps it's more modern mainstream movies like like Do the White Thing? Or Black to the Future? Or All the White Moves? Maybe those that break a double taboo like Brokeblack Mountain?
Books make even less sense. Less people read than look at moving things and is anyone taking relationship or sex advise from famous authors? No!
Exhibit #1,2 & 3...
How to pitch a screenplay to Steven Spielberg
The first pig in space getting fuelled up for his mission. (click for more stills)
It's the summer of 1914, with hostilities declared, Britain had a problem. Hardly anyone was in its army, yet it was in a World War, which they didn’t even have the foresight to call World War I.
What they needed was some way to get hooligans out of the pubs and into the killing fields. Many did not seem keen on the idea. So how?
Posters.
Today, there’s this guy working out with his attractive girlfriend and I could not stop staring at him. Because their attractiveness differential was so impressive.
The girlfriend was traditionally pretty, quite fit, a real looker.
This guy on the other hand had a pudgy ogre-type physique: imagine Kevin James mating with Shrek; now stop imagining that. Additionally, he’s unevenly bald and not exactly making up for it in the face department. Guy’s not hideous exactly, but he doesn’t have that jovial big-guy face that could redeem the situation.
The mystery here, how did this couple ever become a couple?*
Regardless of how, the inescapable conclusion is that this guy should be president. Gym Guy in ’08.
*In the name of science, I tried to casually check him out in the locker room. But it started to get awkward.
Watched Woody Allen’s latest on DVD last night. It’s good film; the old man still makes very good films. And it’s entirely comedy free (on purpose). Like Annie Hall (1976), the setting is the world of educated, yet neurotic; financially comfortable, yet wanting social urbanites. Match Point (2005) happens to be set in London instead of Allen’s beloved NYC but he still absolutely nails the posh dialogue.
Match Point also has Annie Hall’s quirky meet-cute scenario; relationship navel-gazing; and a love that initially blossoms but ultimately fades. Unlike Annie Hall, there’s a gruesome shotgun blast double homicide.
Apparently, day-of-week matters when you’re buying certain things. If you must buy things, and many of us do, then read the article to know when.
You probably didn’t know this, but Seattle has the highest rate of Multiple Sclerosis in America. It’s about 3 times the rate of southern states and the reasons are somewhat of a medical mystery.
Kurt Vonnegut: AV Club remembers the man
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Related.
Eloquent informed anti-endorsement of bottled water called Bottled Water Is Still A Scam. And it is.
A little ironic, but Google Ads attached these 2 ads...
Another distressing trend, the US is losing its leadership in a field where it's traditionally led the world: misinformed backwoods hijinx. Chinese peasants have inadvertently been eating fossils.
Villagers in central China spent decades digging up bones they believed belonged to flying dragons and using them in traditional medicines. These were dinosaur fossils, which were boiled with other ingredients and fed to children to treat dizziness and leg cramps.
So we have rural folks with some wildly misinformed beliefs; a distrust of doctors with their fancy doctorin'; and a willingness to put anything whatsoever in their mouths.
This is China, but could've just as easily been Georgia. Let’s bring the pride back home.
