:: NYTimes Article via Email {Thanks Pink!} ::

Given how arbitrary and ridiculous college ranking is it’s a bold and perhaps inadvisable move to tell everyone about the fuckup. Probably a better move in the long run though.

Every wanted to see where you should go to get boarded by pirates?

Trees Are Excellent, originally uploaded by cognitive.evolution.

I ordered a sweet new camera about a week ago and it arrived right as spring sprung. It’s the first digital SLR that I’ve owned and I can’t believe the difference. I’m a total noob with it and the photos still look pretty~

This is a public service announcement - buy a camera!

also, this is a amazing article on how the CIA used a fake sci fi movie to sneak hostages out of iran.

:: whoa via wired ::

For those who dont know, it means Holy Land. But the best part is: ITS A JESUS THEME PARK!!! YES! There’s a JESUS THEME PARK in Argentina. It has reenactments of the resurrection AND a 40 ft. animatronic Jesus. If its not raining this weekend, I am totally going. Possibly alone, since no one else seems to think this is funny, except me. Possibly, hilarity will ensue. To learn more:Tierra Santa

I’m pretty sure that the deep nagging fear for everyone in their 20’s is that we will withdraw into a withering personal stagnance that starts in the 30’s and stretches on for the rest of our lives. We see it clearly in the faces of people whove stopped getting epiphanies, simply don’t dance anymore and outright refuse to change their ideas even in the face of ample evidence to the contrary. They are the people who have stopped examining because whatever shimmering ball of vibrance enchanted them as youth has faded under the responsibilities of advanced adulthood and (in some cases childrearing). They are the people doing the exact same goddamn thing that they were doing 10 years ago. We’ve all looked at that and said “sweet fucking christ, i hope that doesn’t happen to me.”

Here’s a couple things (of many) that I’m hoping will prevent such sanity

1. However great, you can’t rest on your past achievements. If you’re getting older, smarter, more wise…you have to do something better, bigger, more complicated. {Sorry, kids don’t count, true they are hard and complex but you have to do something else too}.

{ps tibor kalman said “Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will move away and You’ll miss them forever. ”

2. Challenges are good, if it doesn’t hurt or is at least a little bit uncomfortable, you’re not growing.

3. The future doesn’t count until it happens. Despite being kindof a racist douchebag Henry Ford said it best:

You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do

4. You have to surround yourself with awesome friends that challenge the fuck out of you. by definition we don’t hold ideas that we consciously recognize as inaccurate or wrong but they are in there, lurking. Don’t be a dick when they get rooted out and smashed like the little bastards that they are. remember, you are better off without them anyway and you prolly owe a big thanks to the person who revealed them.

:::: Photo via Jeremy.Plemon ::::

Holy Crapmonkeys!

This is a church website. It is awesome. Make sure your sound is on.

This is not a post about The Munsters, or Fred Gwynne. I just liked the picture. This is about the best fictional literature I’ve ever had the good fortune of laying my hands on.  Chuck Palahniuk wrote the novel Fight Club and the movie did the book justice, although the two are very much separate entities and focus on different aspects of the overall idea. Fight Club is not his only work though. There are seven (soon to be eight) more. And Invisible Monsters is the best. Find it, read it.. pass it around.

Useless trivia from Wikipedia..  A Munsters comic book was created in the sixties during the height of the show. At the time, Vampires were still on the naughty list held by the Comics Code Authority. The appearance of Vampires was not allowed in comic books under the CCA seal. Vampires from The Munsters tv show apparently didn’t count.

The CCA was a top-notch organization, really on top of their game. In 1971, when Stan Lee was asked by the U.S. Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare to do a story on the dangers of drug use the CCA attempted to censor the 3-part Spiderman comic because of the appearance of narcotics in the storyline. The issues (#96-98) were published anyway without CCA approval. The immense popularity of the issues coupled with the socially-conscious anti drug message prompted the CCA to later issue the statement: “Oh.. I guess that was our bad.”

Okay, today officially marks the end of me blogging in secret to a few friends. This shit is officially public. I’ve added some prettyness, recent comments, trackbacks, and a reputedly sick spam filter so that I can spend more time laying out trenchant commentary and less time deleting delightful comments about hot sweaty pregnant italian porn. Give a shoutout if shit isn’t working properly.

In other news, I continue to be bowled over by culture shock from living and attending school in santa cruz. Today is april 20 which corresponds to the police code for marijuana usage. It’s more or less the Saint Patricks day of weed and a defacto holiday around this city. I’ve decided to lay low since I’m not particularly fond of smoking.

Humorous events so far:
*There’s a meadow at school which is the considered the main gathering point for getting high on 420. Police opted to grasp meaninglessly by blocking off the meadow entirely somehow “thinking” that would do something. Word of mouth spread and people simply relocated until authorities realized the absurdity of the whole program.

*Someone distributed pot cookies in my section earlier today. About half the people left with cookie in hand. Not that I care of course. Friends who went to school at oxford said that they routinely drank with their professors. I AM ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDED THAT WEED CULTURE IS SUFFUSED INTO MY UNIVERSITY!!!

++++ UPDATE ++++

420 is not actually police code >> from wikipedia

April 19, 2007 — For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

Officials now suspect this possibility because a second ingredient from China, rice protein concentrate, has tested positive for melamine. So has corn gluten shipped to South Africa. That means there is a possibility for another round of recalls.

The FDA’s top veterinarian, Stephen Sundlof, says finding melamine in so many products “would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it was maybe intentional.”

Melamine, which is used to make plastics in the United States and as a fertilizer in Asia, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen can appear to boost the level of protein in products.

The revelations have led the FDA to expand the number of products it is testing as they enter the United States. So far, those inspections at the border have not turned up any melamine in wheat gluten. Tainted wheat gluten used by Menu Foods is suspected in sickening hundreds, if not thousands of pets.

Some of the tainted pet food has apparently made it into feed for hogs. Federal agencies are trying to determine if it was actually fed to animals and whether it may have reached the human food supply.

via ABC News

—Mr Gordon

:: Creepy Via Email {thanks Jay!} ::

::: Ouch, Dell is bringing XP back :::

Here’s a critical factor that separates good people skills from bad people skills: relevance! When communicating make sure to include only information that is directly important to the person, the backstory can wait.

example: say you’re a diabetic who may die if you don’t get an insulin shot. when you arrive at the emergency room it’s a bad idea to spill an incoherent rant about how your tweaker wife is trying to kill you. Yes, you will get shitty, slow emergency service if you are a jerk…fancy that! In fact, you could come about this close -| |- to being arrested. When the nurse comes to take your blood pressure do not wave a soda can in her face during a nonsensical diatribe about your tweaker wife’s boyfriend breaking into your house. Try to consider adding this information as a quiet afterthought. It may also be worth noting that your insane paranoid delusions are disturbing the hippy and his friend who are trying to watch nature documentaries while waiting for a doctor to put a cast on her broken hand.

—-Jonathan Swift

In the 12th and 13th centuries the church declared a holy war on cats, because….they were ambassadors of the devil. After two years of persecution the cat population in europe was decimated and there followed an explosion in the rat population…bringing the plague! Then the catholic church reversed its decision and anyone caught abusing a cat would be excommunicated.

–TitaniumDreads

ps I read this in a book called The Little Book of Bad Taste, I googled around a bit but wasn’t able to find a source. I did find info that a lot cats were killed because it was suspected that they actually carried the plague…

That’s not good at all.

So it turns out that the government has a “reasonably complete” database of all the prescription drugs people in the US have bought…

VAGINA POWER!!!

Really weird

All via the magic world of email, Thanks P. and thanks M.

—TitaniumDreads

This is sweet, but not worth like 9000$

:::via boingboing:::