This was on the front page of MSN this morning. I’m guessing that “Bush” is Reggie Bush and “Kim” is Kim Kardashian . . . who “Brody” is I have no idea but evidently that’s him in the photo.
Why does anyone need to know what weddings this Brody person attends or doesn’t attend? Isn’t there anything else you could tell us?
R.I.P. America.
An ovulating female chimp, that is. Nearly all female primates advertise their days of fertility with colorful genital swellings.
It seems like a useful indicator for humans trying to have babies or trying not to have babies, but for some reason evolution has seen fit to conceal the reproductive state of human females from observation.
Think about our distant ancestors . . . energy in the form of food was scarce and hard to obtain. Those who survived had a genetic predisposition to not use energy wastefully but rather to store it up for times when it was really needed. This gave them an evolutionary advantage.
And that’s why I slept in and didn’t go to the gym this morning . . .
Via Philip Greenspun:
Amanda Ripley identifies the following major problems with American schools:
- people who are poorly educated are hired as schoolteachers
- teachers have limited autonomy (partly as a result of their low level of knowledge and ability)
- schools have multiple missions, only one of which is education, which leads to a loss of focus
- teachers and administrators dwell on student and family backgrounds so as to build up a catalog of excuses for poor educational outcomes
- parents are complacent regarding the low expectations set for their children
What I want to know is why there are so many people who don’t want me to know things . . .
And that doesn’t even include all the things that people “won’t tell me.”
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
— Plato (@PlatoQuote) July 11, 2014
(HealthDay News) — Add another possible woe to the growing list of consequences of climate change: Kidney stones.
A new study of American cities suggests that rising temperatures may increase the number of people who develop the painful urinary obstructions.
You have to read all the way down to the second-to-last sentence of the article to find this:
The study uncovered a connection between higher temperatures and risk of kidney stones, but didn’t prove cause-and-effect.
The article implies cause and effect only to fess up right at the end and admit that there is no cause and effect. In the absence of cause and effect, what exactly is the point?
In the epilogue of War and Peace, a peasant notices a “connection” between smoke and locomotives and infers cause and effect: the smoke causes the locomotive to move. The point being that it’s easy to infer causality from “connections” in ways that have no grounding in reality.
In other climate news, the Wall Street Journal reports that researchers have, for the first time, counted all the world’s Adélie penguins — a sprightly seabird considered a bellwether of climate change — and discovered that millions of them are thriving in and around Antarctica.
Rather than declining as feared due to warming temperatures that altered their habitats in some areas, the Adélie population generally is on the rise.
Let's just hope these tablets are better at raising our kids than cable.
— Paul Danke (@pauldanke) June 24, 2014
Bad personal ad: Looking for someone to take all of my pain from me. In exchange I will take you to a concert. bi. smoker. serious only.
— eddie pepitone (@eddiepepitone) July 10, 2014
Via VICE:
Yes, the algorithm is
if (isPolitician(x)) {
x.sellout = true;
}
Thus spoke The Programmer.
If I had to single out one piece of advice that’s guided me through life, most likely it would be from my grandmother, Nellie Molonson. She always made a point of making sure I understood that on the road to success, there’s no point in blaming others when you fail.
Here’s how she put it: “Sonny, I don’t care who you are. Some day you’re going to have to sit on your own bottom.” After more than half a century in the energy business, her advice has proven itself to be spot-on time and time again. My failures? I never have any doubt whom they can be traced back to. My successes? Most likely the same guy.
Some behaviors come naturally while others require more effort. For example, there are dozens of bestsellers on finding love, losing weight and creating wealth but no market for books like Ten Steps to Being Fat, Lonely and Broke.
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. — Buddha
Because I changed jobs recently, I want to roll over a 401k into an IRA. I filled out the form, mailed it in to Great West Retirement Services — they manage the 401k — and got this in return:
The enclosed benefit request is being returned for additional and or missing information. We require the following item(s) be completed before processing can take place:
- Please have this request completed on the attached current version of the distribution form. The form this request was submitted on is now discontinued.
OK, first of all, the form isn’t being returned for additional or missing information. I filled out the form I was given and you’re telling me it’s now discontinued. You can’t figure it out anyway? You really need me to fill out ANOTHER 6-PAGE FORM with EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION in a slightly different format?!
And I love this part: “Please have this request completed . . .” I DON’T HAVE SOMEONE WHO COMPLETES FORMS FOR ME! I HAVE TO DO IT MYSELF, YOU FUCKING PRICKS!
As every married person here knows, love is a rotten substitute for respect. — Kurt Vonnegut
Our boy has an internship with Red Bull this summer . . . he’s excited because in addition to getting paid, he gets an iPad and 2 cases of Red Bull a week.
The last time I told someone that, she said, “He gets an iPad a week? Can I have one?”
Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, “Sir, you did not give us enough information.” I would add to that, “All the same, Sir, I’m not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.”
The worst thing you can do to people, aside from physical injury, is give them the idea to blame their failures on vague impersonal forces or the actions of anybody but themselves. It doesn’t promote success or happiness. I don’t know any happy people who think like that.
For example, I read this in a New York Times article about an impoverished area of West Virginia:
John got caught up in the dark undertow of drugs that defines life for so many here in McDowell County.
That is just awful. I live in Southern California, not too far from the ocean . . . I’m familiar with undertows (although I’ve never heard of a “dark” undertow). First of all, sorry to be pedantic but undertows aren’t dangerous . . . they’re just after-effects of individual waves. What’s dangerous is a riptide . . . a concentrated flow of water that can jet you offshore in a matter of seconds.
Maybe John got caught in a riptide of drugs.
Some beaches post signs warning swimmers of riptides on high-risk days, but in general, getting caught in a riptide is an unfortunate but unavoidable event. Drug abuse is optional. It’s a decision you make about your life.
(I’m assuming here that no one sticks a funnel in your mouth and pours drugs into it against your will . . .)
