November 20, 2011
Lily shreds tailside.
Dog chasing mountain bike. That is all.
1h
1h by Hans-Christian Schink.
Let's take for granted that they had it to begin with
David Frum asks When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?
påske-krim
How do you write crime fiction in the wake of a massacre? The mass slaughter on Utøya in July shook Norway to its core. Now the country's crime writers must come to terms with what happened…
Your resume was thrown out in the first 10 seconds
Sociologist Lauren Rivera of Northwestern spent two years researching the way elite financial and law firms really select their new hires. The original paper is behind a sciencedirect paywall, but Bryan Caplan has a nice write-up about the results. You're much better off with a degree from a tippy-top school than just any Ivy -- but they don't actually care about what you learned there. Your grades don't matter that much as long as they're not bad. Climbing a famous mountain or making a varsity team, especially if you're nationally competitive, would be wise. And oh yeah -- they do care what you got on your SATs. More reax from the Chronicle of Higher Ed and physicist Steve Hsu.
There's Always Money in Quikster, I mean the Banana Stand
Now the story of a wealthy new media company that nearly lost everything and the one TV series that had no choice but to keep it all together. It's Arrested... Development... on Netflix. [more inside]
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today, November 20, is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember all the people who've been killed in the past year out of transphobia. As before, the vast majority are poor trans women of color. Also as before, the true numbers are almost certainly far higher than the reported numbers.
Ceremonies are being held around the world; see the website for details.
Harry Sisley, aged 10. Drowned in attempting to save his brother after he himself had just been rescued. May 24th, 1878
Hidden away in central London, The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice is a small public monument in Postman's Park, commemorating ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten. It was unveiled in 1900 with plans for 120 memorial ceramic tiles, but by 1931 only 53 had been laid down. In 2009, the first new tablet in 78 years was added.
Individual collection of the tiles. A blog post about the memorial. [more inside]
RIP Gary Garcia
Gary Garcia, half of the musical duo Buckner & Garcia, died on November 17, 2011 at his home in Florida. The duo is best known for their 1982 top ten hit Pac Man Fever. [more inside]
"We’re allowing a whole new level of intelligence in the networks...We can take a copy of everything coming through our switch and dump it off to the FBI."
The Surveillance Catalog: Where Governments Get Their Spying Tools The Wall Street Journal has obtained a "trove" of documents from the secretive retail market in surveillance technology sold to world governments, and has created a searchable database for your enjoyment. "Among the most controversial technologies on display at the conference were essentially computer-hacking tools to enable government agents to break into people's computers and cellphones, log their keystrokes and access their data..." E.g., FinFisher installs malware by sending fake software updates for Blackberry and other devices; VUPEN's Exploits for Law Enforcement Agencies "aim to deliver exclusive exploit codes for undisclosed vulnerabilities" in software from Microsoft, Apple and others. [more inside]
On a Throne Made of Vanishing Ink
Makes very little difference what happens, the next ten years, because the main thing in the universe isn’t at all affected by these little shifts of anthills, musics, nations, marriages. Let Allen Ginsberg inform your Sunday afternoon. [more inside]
Basil D'Oliveira
Cricketer Basil D'Oliveira Has Died. "In 1968 he was named in England's squad to tour South Africa which was then cancelled as the ruling National Party refused to accept his presence." [more inside]
"Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
"Of course water hydrates." or does it? EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration. Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. And hysteria over the EU's ruling on water and dehydration ensues. You can read the EU's ruling here (PDF). Highland Spring vows to defy EU rule on water labelling.
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