Noonan agonistes — or, journalists should write what... (1)
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Mirrors as a means of reducing (increasing?) bias (3)
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Tyler Cowen (239)
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Marginal Revolution (295)
3 days, 13 hours
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People exhibit less prejudice when they're in the presence of a mirror, Dutch researchers have shown. Carina Wiekens and Diederik Stapel said this effect occurs because mirrors make us more aware of our public appearance, and therefore remind us of the need to fall in line with social norms.Here is more. Perhaps I have seen too many vampire movies, but in general I am of the opinion that mirrors have a real influence on our ...
Hasidim: This ad is anti-sign-metic? (1)
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Administrator (208)
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Polymeme frontpage feed (10)
4 days, 2 hours
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WWW.BROOKLYNPAPER.COM : A billboard hyping the sexy teen drama “90210” has some members of Williamsburg’s Hasidic Jews all worked up. The ad, which is visible from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, depicts a handful of swimsuit-clad actors and actresses lounging in a pool ... READ MORE
South Carolina sheriff buys tank to conduct raids (26)
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Mark Frauenfelder (1202)
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Boing Boing (4508)
4 days, 7 hours
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Don't even think about running an illegal bingo game in Richland County, South Carolina. The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff's Department (that's them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle "The Peacemaker," and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it's generally reserved for use against armored ...
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Haltse said:
Protect and serve ? sure.
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Drewcipher said:
I used to live in South Carolina and all I can say is that NONE of the local law enforcement should be allowed to have this kind of firepower.
Calligraphic manga featuring famous samurai Musashi (7)
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Lisa Katayama (145)
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Boing Boing (4508)
4 days, 9 hours
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Musashi Miyamoto is the famous 17th century samurai who wrote The Book of Five Rings, a classic text on martial arts and military strategy. Takehiko Inoue is the genius manga artist behind Slam Dunk, a 90s manga series about a goofy basketball player that sold 100 million copies and got an entire generation of Japanese boys hooked on the sport. Inoue's latest endeavor has been to chronicle the life of Musashi in a comic book ...
Tune Instructor Brings Advanced ID3 Editing to Your Mac [Featured Mac Download] (9)
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Adam Pash (2842)
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Lifehacker (7734)
4 days, 10 hours
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Mac OS X only: Free application Tune Instructor adds advanced ID3 tag editing for your iTunes library through a smart third-party utility. The iTunes helper boasts features like search and replace for your tags, or it can set ID3 tags from a filename or set filenames from ID3 tags. It can automatically search and embed album art or lyrics—though I ran into issues with German-language lyrics sometimes showing up rather than English. The application has ...
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Graeme said:
Nice. Can't take advantage, tho.
Japanese wives wanting a divorce hire professional seducers (20)
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Mark Frauenfelder (1202)
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Boing Boing (4508)
4 days, 13 hours
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The Times Online reports on a company on Japan that uses professional seducers to help unhappy wives build a case for divorcing their husbands. 3.30pm. Mr A is outside a bank in a busy part of Ikebukuro, a faintly seedy area of Tokyo, waiting for his date. He beams as she teeters across the road on high heels. Kyoko, 20, is half his age. She has a mane of black hair, sloe eyes, a fetching ...
Disturbing Facts About Eugenics (5)
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Alex (659)
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Neatorama (672)
4 days, 13 hours
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Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference in 1921 Eugenics is the pseudoscientific belief of improving the human race through selective breeding. Though forms of it still exist today (proponents focus on prenatal genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering), its association with Nazism and the use of eugenics to rationalize the Holocaust have caused it to become thoroughly discredited. Max-Bro blog has a fascinating post about the 33 disturbing but true facts about ...
Steven Pinker on Swearing and Violence (2)
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Seed Magazine (12)
4 days, 16 hours
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My new book, The Stuff of Thought, has a chapter on swearing. In my next book I will discuss historic declines in violence. To my surprise, the two topics may be connected. In all languages, taboo words refer to emotionally fraught concepts: the supernatural, disease, bodily secretions, sexual depravity, and social outcasts. But the particular curses vary. In traditional Catholic societies, swearing is religious: the standard profanity in Québecois French: is Accursed tabernacle! With the ...
Dilbert on Relativism (1)
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More clbuttic idiocy from lexical censors on the web (2)
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Geoffrey K. Pullum (11)
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Language Log (62)
4 days, 17 hours
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According to Matthew Moore in the Daily Telegraph: Google searches turn up 3,810 results for "clbuttic", 5,120 for "consbreastution", and 1,450 for "Buttociated Press". Well, Language Log readers who had already read about the athletic feats of Olympic star Tyson Homosexual will immediately recognize the clbuttic symptoms, and will know what has gone on here. Surely, I was moved to think (but see the update below), surely someone who is being paid for writing filtering ...
Washington's Rules (2)
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Greg Ross (24)
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Futility Closet (24)
4 days, 19 hours
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As a teenager, George Washington copied out "110 rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation," probably as an exercise in penmanship. Samples: "Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present." "Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive." "Be not hasty to believe flying Reports to the Disparagement of any." "Eat not in the Streets, nor in the House, ...
#108 Appearing to enjoy Classical Music (16)
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clander (159)
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Stuff White People Like (168)
4 days, 20 hours
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There are a number of industries that survive solely upon white guilt: Penguin Classics, the SPCA, free range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market. Yet all of these pale in comparison to classical music, which has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance. Though white people do not actually listen to classical music, they like to believe that they are the type of people who would enjoy it. ...
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Bill said:
Oh man...I love John Williams! What does that say about me???
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Justin said:
One of the best posts from Stuff White People Like --JB
Logic tells us we’re Simpsons not Spocks (1)
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On-going human evolution for spoken language? (1)
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Mark Liberman (27)
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Language Log (62)
4 days, 21 hours
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According to Bruce Bower, "Evolution's Ear", ScienceNews, 8/30/2008 In a new study, anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that eight hearing-related genes show signs of having evolved systematically in human populations over the past 40,000 years. Some alterations on these genes took root as recently as 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. “Hawks makes a compelling case that not only is human evolution ongoing in the past 10,000 years, but it has sped ...
Goodnight Burbank! - Reading the News Was Never This Fun (1)
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Jimmy Rogers (81)
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[Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News (157)
4 days, 22 hours
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By Jimmy Rogers Contributing Writer, [GAS] Where Anchorman left off, Goodnight Burbank picks right back up and keeps rolling. In the show, a bunch of ornery, crazy, and sometimes lovable news anchors try to keep it all together while just barely reporting the news. Goodnight Burbank’s quirky style and entertaining banter has built it into a solid online show with a full cast of characters. One of the recurring themes of the show is the ...
Anybody can learn a language (1)
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Simon (67)
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Omniglot - the blog (4)
4 days, 23 hours
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I came across an interesting article on Michel Thomas and his methods for teaching languages in the Guardian today. Thomas believed that “there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher” and that with the right teaching method, anybody can learn a language quickly and easily. However was very reluctant to explain his teaching methods with others. He believed that people would only take parts of his ideas if he shared ...
Scruples and Stones / A pebble for your thoughts (1)
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Joe Kissell (8)
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Interesting Thing of the Day (12)
5 days, 1 hour
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You may think of yourself as a scrupulous person—you may have even said indignantly when accused of some fault, “I have scruples!” But exactly how many scruples do you have? If you’ve recently finished a meal or taken a stroll down a gravel-covered path, chances are you have more scruples now than you did an hour ago. The calculation is quite easy to make: there are 4,900 scruples in a stone, though a single stone ...
kottke.org (904) permalink
Footnotes, Endnotes, and Parentheticals That Cost Me Marks on My Thesis. 3 Who, although a gifted academic, is still a douche. 10. http://en.wikiped... (link)Shared by Crutcher D (48) ekaye (13) g b (39) gizmo (23) Jake (1) Jay Andrew Allen (22) John (13) John-Michael Oswalt (10) Jon (22) Josh (26) Jrod (68) munir (12) Svitlana (22) Yerameyahu (21)Semantics etc. (2) permalink
Bonus points are offered to any semantic relativist for a complete analysis of this example.Shared by Yerameyahu (21)Contribute comment
