Opinions straight up, turtles all the way down
A couple of links I stole from ML.
Mrs. turtle found out about an amazing store: "Besides serving diners from a menu of inexpensive cafe fare, Hinaka also offers fully clothed massages, and for 9,000 yen ($75) customers can chat with her in a private room cluttered with comic books, character figurines and animation DVDs."
The Washington Monthly:
These kinds of volcanic eruptions in insurance premiums have occurred three times in the last 30 years — in the mid 1970s, again in the mid-1980s, and then again following the year 2001. The cause is always the same: a severe drop in investment income for insurers compounded by underpricing in prior years. Each time, insurers and the health care industry have tried to cover up their mismanaged underwriting by blaming lawyers and the legal system. To buy this position, one would have to accept the notion that juries engineered large jury verdicts in the mid-1970s, then stopped for a decade, then engineered large verdicts again in the mid-1980s, stopped for 17 years and then did it again beginning in 2001 — only to stop once again. Of course, this is ludicrous and untrue.
Steven Seagal is a rebel, a renegade, and he doesn't like to follow directions. But he does like saving lives. As long as he's not told to.
Wikipedia:
In a syllable-timed language, every syllable takes up roughly the same amount of time when pronounced... Spanish and Japanese are examples... This metronomic rhythm is sometimes called machine-gun rhythm...
In a stress-timed language, syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is a given amount time (on average) between two consecutive stressed syllables, and that time is roughly a constant. English, German and Dutch are typical stress timed languages. Stress-timing is sometimes called Morse-code rhythm. When spoken faster, a stress-timed language usually shortens, obscures, or drops vowels to carry more syllables between two stresses without changing its rhythm so much.
Of course these patterns can change over time or be borrowed from other languages. For example, Mexican Spanish, due to close contact with American English, shows a marked tendency towards stress timing. There are reports of Mexican people pronouncing "los Estados Unidos" as two "syllables", which actually means the speaker marks two beats or stress peaks (over /ta/ and /ni/)... Mexican Spanish under this influence shows signs of vowel shortening as well.
Gross! Student finds toilet water cleaner than ice at fast food restaurants.
Hilarious! You need the Google movie drivers to see it, but it's well worth the download.
Fun Facts:
Some seventh graders drew pictures of scientists before and after meeting real scientists at Fermilab. Here, for example, are David's before and after pictures:
It's the Crazy Asian Drink Lads! Be sure to check out what they think of Pocari Sweat. Might not be work-safe, though.
David Lynch (yes, that David Lynch) gives a weather report for the Los Angeles region every day.
Crooked Timber:
I’m offended. Those people, by their actions, have demonstrated the essentially corrupt nature of their society and culture. Their behaviour, which all right-minded people should be offended by, should be universally condemned. If anything shows that we are right and they are wrong, this is it. And I call upon all of those who agree with me to take action, while there is still time. To those who say that our side has also erred, I agree: there have been errors of judgement. But if anything our mistake has been to do too little and too late. We now need to wake up and respond to the danger that confronts us. In any case, to suggest that what we have done bears comparison with what they have done is itself deeply offensive and such sentiments betray the inner corruption of those who utter them. Some principles are absolute and this is one of them.
The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) has some interesting rules. I think these partially explain why certain strategies are better than others in UFC matches.
Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club
Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don't know whether it's a new thing, but it's certainly a current thing, in that it doesn't seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the president because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?
