"The low-IQ U.S. President and his country's Secretary of State John Kerry speak of the effectiveness of 'the U.S. options on the table' on Iran while this phrase is mocked at and has become a joke among the Iranian nation, especially the children." --Iranian Gen. Masoud Jazayeri
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the "special digestive systems" of "ruminant livestock" such as cattle, sheep, buffalo, and goats produce methane, a more potent "greenhouse gas" than even the carbon dioxide we humans exhale or the exhaust from the SUVs we use to take the kids to soccer practice.
The EPA says "cattle emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions."
One can only imagine how the giant brains at the EPA plan to approach this threat of cow belching and flatulence.
Basilic: adjective: Kingly; royal. From Latin basilicus, from Greek basilikos (royal). Earliest documented use: 1727.
Basil, the aromatic herb of the mint family, is named so because it was used in royal preparations for medicine, bath, etc. A large vein of the upper arm is called the basilic vein due to its supposed importance. The basilisk lizard (and the legendary reptile) are named for their crown-like crest. In ancient Rome, a basilica was a large public court building and the word began to be applied to churches of the same form.
165 out of every 1,000 Indian laborers are injured on the job.
The Pew Research Center's February poll showed the GOP with a 53% to 38% advantage in congressional voting intentions among white registered voters. Pew also found Mr. Obama's job approval among millennials has fallen to 49% in early 2014, down from 70% in the honeymoon months of 2009, his highest rating among any generation. But Rube-publicans do not hold an advantage over Democrats on the two issues that have hurt Mr. Obama most. According to January 2014 surveys, the public has more confidence in Democrats' handling of health care by an eight-point margin (45%-37%). Neither party has a decided advantage on handling the economy, with 42% favoring Rube-publicans and 38% more confident in Democrats.
The Detroit Tigers are planning on paying Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera 292 Million dollars over 10 years.
There is an admittedly loose article in "Poetry" about the nature of language by Slavoj Žižek who points to several poets in different cultures whose poetry preceded and encouraged frightful crimes against others in the culture. "The mainstream tradition ....... idea of language and the symbolic order is that of the medium of reconciliation and mediation, of peaceful coexistence, as opposed to a violent medium of immediate and raw confrontation. In language, instead of exerting direct violence on each other, we are meant to debate, to exchange words — and such an exchange, even when it is aggressive, presupposes a minimum recognition of the other." Žižek says this is not always true. He presents the notion that language is an entity in which we live. What if, he asks, "....humans exceed animals in their capacity for violence precisely because they speak?"
"Language as the “big Other” is not an agent of wisdom to whose message we should attune ourselves, but a place of cruel indifference and stupidity. The most elementary form of
torturing one’s language is called poetry."
Zizek is 65 and seems to have come upon egocentricity, insincerity, savagery and manipulation late.
The Gunfight at the OK Corral was over in thirty seconds.
A new book by Michael Lewis, the bestselling author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball, says the stock market is "rigged" in favor of high-frequency traders. In Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt Lewis says that computer-based high speed trading is set up to benefit these traders at the expense of investors by anticipating orders by a fraction of a millisecond. On CBS' 60 Minutes, Lewis said, "Complexity disguises what is happening. If it's so complicated you can't understand it, then you can't question it."
Who was....Charles Stratton?
The National September 11 Memorial Museum, set to open next month in Manhattan, will feature a quote from Book IX of Virgil's Aeneid: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." The context of the quote may not quite reflect what the museum's builders intended to convey: The "you" refers to Nisus and Euryalus, who, full of "lust for slaughter," sneak up on the sleeping enemy and butcher them until the ground runs with "warm black gore." Unless the quote is meant as a comment on the perpetrators of the atrocity. But it doesn't look like it. Museum officials have since eliminated the word “Aeneid” from the inscription as it appears on the wall, presumably to distance the sentiment somewhat from its literary context. Maybe they got it from a book of quotes but, often, context is all. Caroline Alexander wrote for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in 2011 the line "offers neither instruction nor solace.”
If corporations are people, are bankruptcy courts death panels? (Stolen from Tobias.)
The National Safety Council’s annual report found 26 percent of all crashes are tied to phone use, but noted just 5 percent involved texting.
Martina Hingis, 33, won the doubles title at the Sony Open, playing alongside Sabine Lisicki. The pair entered the tournament in Key Biscayne, Fla., on a wild card granted by organizers. She at one time held the No. 1 ranking for 209 weeks, placing her behind Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf, who holds the record with 377 weeks. She captured her first Grand Slam title in 1996, when she won in women's doubles at Wimbledon at age 15.
Hamid Aboutalebi has been appointed to serve as the Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. He was one of the students who took the U.S. Embassy over in 1979. Fascinatingly, the U.S. State Dept itself will have to approve his visa. Please file under "Boys will be boys."
Golden Oldies:
France's ruling Socialist Party suffered losses Sunday in a local vote marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front. The center-right party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy performed strongly across the country as well. What is going on?
There is a new furthest planet from the sun, 2012 VP113, an object currently over twice the distance of Pluto from the Sun is thought to be a dwarf planet like Pluto. Previously, the furthest known dwarf planet was Sedna, discovered in 2003. Given how little of the sky was searched, it is likely that as many as 1,000 more objects like 2012 VP113 exist in the outer Solar System. Some scientists hypothesize that the reason why objects like Sedna and 2012 VP113 have their present orbits is because they were gravitationally scattered there by a much larger object -- possibly a very distant undiscovered planet. Ooooooo!
AAaaaaaannnnndddd......a picture:
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