You know Barack’s going to take some serious heat for this. Read the video comments.
It’s no secret that the nativists in this country aren’t too intelligent. If they had a few more functioning brain cells, they’d realize that expanding your mind’s capacity with additional mental challenges (such as learning a foreign language) when it’s [...]
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Posted on July 9th, 2008 by JM
This is extremely cool. The guy used a lawnchair to build an airship that carried him 235 miles (from Oregon to Idaho) that was lifted into the sky by a bunch of helium-filled balloons. He periodically shot balloons with a BB gun to maintain the right altitude. He landed safely 9 hrs after liftoff.
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Posted on July 8th, 2008 by JM
Did you know that HIV-positive immigrants can not become US citizens? Did you know that the US is one of a handful of countries (including the Sudan and Saudi Arabia) that doesn’t allow visitors, much less immigrants, into the country who are HIV-positive (without special permission)?
I didn’t. But now that I know, I’m outraged.
Upon a [...]
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Posted on July 7th, 2008 by JM
It’s always been amusing to me that Fox News claims to be “fair and balanced”, when it is clearly anything but, but this gun is smoking so badly that there’s an air quality advisory in effect for a full 50 mile radius around their headquarters.
The fact is that the people the network caters to are, [...]
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Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by JM
This is the second installment on a series I’ve started. The crazy BART lady was the first feature.
This guy is pretty old and shabby, but has an unusual relationship with his bushy, sullen cat.
He’s about 60 years old, and would probably be about 5′9″ if he could stand upright. But years of carrying his life-in-a-backpack [...]
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Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by JM
I remember a time when there was no guilt associated with eating ice cream. Or when I was oblivious to the darkness of a black woman’s complexion when estimating her beauty. And when I would happily agree with criticism of the U.S., feeling like I had allies abroad.
Experience gives you wisdom. It also irrevocably destroys [...]
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Posted on July 1st, 2008 by JM
I stumbled upon this popular YouTube video that shows the repetitive lyrics of Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger in a corporeal format. Very clever:
About half the way through, I was totally lost if the guy was actually following the lyrics accurately. I was wondering how many hours, days, weeks, months of practice it took [...]
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 by JM
This was delightful (from the New Yorker, June 23 issue).
People express anger in two different ways. There’s “cold” anger, in which words may be overarticulated but spoken softly, and “hot” anger, in which voices are louder and pitched higher. At first the caller’s anger was cold:
AGENT: OK, sir. I’m gonna go ahead and explain this… [...]
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Posted on June 27th, 2008 by JM
I just read a great article in Wired about efforts to geoengineer a cooling of the Earth, since it’s clear to most that a complete cessation of carbon dioxide production is not feasible. The proposal is to capture sulfur dioxide from power plants, release it into the upper atmosphere (using jets, balloons, etc) where it [...]
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Posted on June 26th, 2008 by JM
I live in an enviable corner of the world, the San Francisco Bay Area. But living in any place for an extended period of time, no matter how great, forces you to confront the inevitable drawbacks to any place. I have separate lists for San Francisco and Oakland, but in general, they could stand to be [...]
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Posted on June 25th, 2008 by JM
