BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | NZ recognises same-sex unions Short, simple, and to the point. How refreshing, eh? However, not without controversy. The radical religious fringe chose to send “gifts” to a couple of MPs: a jar of poop and a castration kit. That’s living your faith.
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“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmour our vehicles?” Army Spc Thomas Wilson asked. Why, indeed? Good for you, Army Spc Wilson.
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The four lead teams start off with a colossal blunder in which they learn the lesson that you never know the operating hours until you look at them. Fortunately (because some of them are teams I like), they hit the airport bunch, at which point we’re off to Dakar, where things look a little different than they do in Scandinavia. Kendra adjusts not-so-nicely to her surroundings, while Kris and Jon, predictably, think it’s kind of cool. The Detour offers a choice between catching fish and arranging fish, and for some reason, Gus and Hera and Don and MJ conclude that…
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The Big House O’ Inflatables is slowly ramping up the holiday spirit – it’s hard to tell here but there are “only 6” inflatables thus far. The trend in the neighborhood (oy, an inflatables trend) this year is for bigger, multiple-unit tableaux (such as Santa/sleigh/Rudolph or a snowperson family unit). Also, the BHOI is using lower-wattage bulbs than they have in the past, so there’s not as much light (thus cutting down on the garishness factor). Mornings in Burbclavia are very tawdry – all the white-plastic deer and spiral Xmess trees look cheap and nasty, and the inflatables get turned…
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StudyAbroad.com Launches World’s First Online Interactive Reality Show Here we go. It’s billed as a mixture of Amazing Race and blogging – 3 college students are actually studying abroad, but they are given tasks to complete and they blog about their experiences. The blogging software is Mindsay.com‘s, which as it happens I’ve used off and on. Currently, half of the Gus Overshaw whale-killing journal crew have blogs there, since it’s a little more fun and interactive than Tripod, Gus’ main provider. Also, you have to log in to read Mindsay blogs, and you can set your posts to be read…
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It’s the time of year when sales reps for various travel vendors bring treats and meals in, and the time of year when some people start to trot out their holiday decorations, and the time of year when people are selling crap for fundraisers. For example, right now we have one of the most annoying types of salespeople evarrrr in our break room. In order to pump up enthusiasm for his hotels’ breakfast-pizza-and-sales peptalk, he bellows “welcome to the break room! yeah!” and claps his hands enthusiastically EVERY TIME SOMEONE WALKS IN. Also, they’ve got a boom box playing bad…
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It means “a society without children.” Supposedly it means economic disaster. A former prime minister who is in charge of the governing party’s committee on population famously told women to stay at home and breed. Fightin’ words, dude. Your economy would be better served by more working-age adults in the workplace, not by sending half of them home to make babies and letting the other half stay out til all hours “working” (actually, drinking with their cow-orkers).
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A Southern Utah bank failed because they put too much faith in their neighbors’ ability to pay back loans. Turns out their neighbors had no intention of making good on their financial committments, because they expected either the world to end, or to move lock, stock, and barrel to Texas. The Bank of Ephraim had profited for many years from higher-interest loans to the sect, whose members live in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City astride the Utah-Arizona state line. But eventually the bank “got in too deep,” investing heavily in increasingly risky ventures with sect members who…
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I always knew my old school was just a little cooler than the other places I considered for my not-so-brilliant college career. They just bought 250,000 scifi “zines” from a long-time collector. As it happens, a good deal of my time at UO was spent reading science fiction… probably one reason why my academic career wasn’t so brilliant. Via BoingBoing
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Rance checks in… or has been checked in involuntarily… from an asylum for the severely mentally disturbed. His physician grappled with the Dx; at first he was suspecting multiple personalities, animal-related disassociative disorders, and (possibly) schizophrenia. This changed when Rance received a supervised visit from one of the “imaginary” characters. Medication was reduced, increased, and reduced again. Finally, a breakthrough: 12/5 Evening. Patient finally awoke. For the first time in several weeks, he was calm and lucid, answered only to the name on his medical records and driver’s license, and purported to be no one else. Patient also proposed to…