My Socks Don't Fit

talkstraight:

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said she believed that UN resolutions allowed for the “legitimate transfer of arms” to the rebels should any country wish to do so. She added that no decision had been made “at this time” by the US on arming the rebels.

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How is giving more weapons to a group of people who are not trained in their use, (which will mean bullets/rockets being thrown indiscriminately around in populated areas), “preventing the loss of civilian lives”?

this is the answer to the riddle, “Explain the most efficient way to get Americans to supply the Al Qaeda cause in Iraq.”

this is a great album by a very talented musician. it goes beyond his very acoustic first album, Le Bleu, in that it incorporates creative instrumentation and rhythms. he has good vision for what each song could be and executes it well.

“A baby girl has been kept away from her mother for almost five years after she refused to sign a form consenting to a Caesarean section - even though she did not end up needing to have the operation.

The extraordinary case began after staff at a New Jersey hospital claimed that refusal to give permission for the procedure amounted to child abuse.

The agonising decision triggered a protracted legal battle which has led to the mother being separated from her child for five years.

The hospital said that her refusal to give permission for the C-section amounted to child abuse and thus reported her to welfare authorities.

This was despite VM saying that she would agree to the operation if it became necessary and going on to deliver a healthy baby.”

i cannot imagine this.

rhapsodyinj:

Really JoCo residents? You’re really worried about the noise and traffic a Buddhist temple will create in a rural area? I’m guessing if they were putting in a Christian church this wouldn’t be an issue.

the possibility of bigotry notwithstanding, there’s apparently not even a road to this property. many people live in rural areas in order to escape traffic and huge non-residential structures. i’m not going to deny outspoken residents might be making it difficult for the sake of making it difficult, but not everyone in SoJoCo is a bigot.

a more positive (and dare i say, less slanted) take from the Star does a better job of telling the story and not just the perceived problem. same topic, but an entirely different perspective.

this sounds like a fascinating book. simple, yet overlooked (by me, at least) observations like:

“[T]he Chicago Cubs never win the World Series in part because their fans are so long-suffering. You see, the demand for tickets at Wrigley Field is relatively insensitive to the team’s win/loss percentage, so management has less reason to invest in making the team a contender. If there were more fair-weather fans, there might be more fair weather.”

and

“Another big theme of the book is that mental framing matters. Players and referees behave differently when they frame a decision as a potential gain rather than a potential loss. Tiger Woods putts more aggressively when he is putting for par (a loss if he misses) than when he is putting for birdie (a gain if he makes). Controlling for the distance and the ball placement—and a host of other possible influences—the authors show that Woods is not only more likely to make a par putt, but when he misses the shots are more evenly divided between long and short. On similar birdie putts, he is more likely to be short. Even though a stroke is a stroke is a stroke, Woods treats them differently because of the gain/loss frame.

The authors show the same effect in baseball with regard to 3–2 pitches. You might think that there is no natural gain or loss frame for how a pitcher or a hitter would think about a full count. But the authors inventively restrict their attention to full counts that had started as either 3–0 or 0–2. If you are a pitcher and had initially gone down 3–0, then battled back to 3–2, you are likely to frame the next pitch as a potential gain. Conversely, if you had started out 0–2 and then thrown three balls in succession, you’re more likely to think of the next pitch as a potential loss.”

[via freakonomics]

“The Community Cycling Center maintains that “bicycles are a tool for empowerment and a vehicle for change.” Indeed, these organizations are doing more than just providing bikes; they’re building community and empowering the individuals they serve.”

davereed:

Wow. You can’t help but be impacted by this. Entire buildings uprooted by a few feet of water