December 2009
Pakistani eunuchs to have distinct gender →
“Pakistan’s Supreme Court says eunuchs must be allowed to identify themselves as a distinct gender in order to ensure their rights. The eunuchs, known as ‘hijras’ in Pakistan, are men castrated at an early age for medical or social reasons. The court said they should be issued with national identity cards showing their distinct gender. The government has also been ordered...
“Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of...”
– Umberto Eco
Dissertations on His Dudeness
Over 100 whales die in strandings →
“Sixty-three whales, mostly cows with calves, beached themselves at Colville Bay, north of Coromandel township…About two thirds were saved by determined locals and holidaymakers who kept the surviving whales wet in the low tide until it rose in the early afternoon and they could be refloated…The 21 dead whales were being watched over last night by local iwi Ngati Tamatera...
Raid Automatic Indoors →
This is pretty much the only thing causing me real culture shock in Kiwilandia.
They swear it’s safe (I’m more skeptical) but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD why not just use screens to keep the bugs out in the first place?!
The 30 Most Important Cats of 2009 →
“Hundreds of worthy contenders didn’t make the cut, but these 30 stand proud as representatives of what may have been one of the most important years for cats on the Internet since 2008.”
“The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested...”
– A.S. Byatt
Smart Girls at the Party →
“Smart Girls at the Party features girls who are changing the world by being themselves. In each episode, Amy Poehler interviews one girl about her particular interests. The conversations are serious, hilarious, and thought provoking. Whether you are a parent, a smart girl, or a smart boy, this show is a fun reminder that you dont have to be famous to be interesting, to matter, or to make...
Livestock & Pets : Sheep →
Properly caring for sheep is a lot of work.
“Te Haahi Tuuhauwiri has been our Maori name since 1993. It is not a translation...”
– Aotearoa Quaker Handbook
Early Quakers in NZ
Quaker Faith and Practice in Aotearoa
“We would entreat those who may establish themselves in newly settled countries to reflect upon the responsibility which attaches to them when they are the neighbours of uncivilised and heathen tribes. It is an awful but indisputable fact, that most settlements of this description, besides dispossessing the natives of their land without equivalent,...
The Curvy Fashionista →
Man, I still can’t believe that a size 12 is considered (too) big.
Blue moons, betrayer moons
Q: “Once in a blue moon” is a rare event. But what does “blue moon” really mean?
“For an example of the importance of the sequence of the moons to daily life, consider Charlemagne’s naming of the months of the year (a solar year, but even so), used for over 700 years after his death:
Wintarmanoth, winter month Hornung, the month when the male red deer sheds its antlers Lentzinmanoth,...
Flagstaff Alpacas: Fibre & Products →
“Our current focus is on products that use the fleece from our own alpacas. We supply raw and carded fibre, and spun fibre yarn (4-ply and DK 8-ply) and boucle for hand and machine knitting/weaving. We partially quilt-card our white and light fawn belly, leg and neck for our own, commercially made 100% alpaca-filled quality quilts/duvet inners.”
“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self....”
– Marcel Proust
"The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart" by Jack...
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for...
Tenure-o-meter →
The Tenurometer is “a cheekily named tool (still in beta phase) designed to measure scholars’ impact on their fields by counting how much they have contributed to the literature and how frequently those articles have been cited … Really, Menczer says the implications of the provocatively named tool as far as comparing the accomplishments of researchers in different disciplines...
Baby-by-Number: Parents’ New Obsession With Data →
“Who wouldn’t want more ways to record their child’s health and well-being?”
Really? And I’m sure that unchecked consumerism has nothing to do with this.
Captain Cook's dietician skills go on display →
“An article written by Cook for the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions journal in 1776 explains how his voyage aboard the HMS Resolution from 1772-75 did not lose a single crew member to scurvy. He discusses the merits of ‘sour kraut’, or sauerkraut, and malt in warding off the disease.”
Impressive.
Manhood: the Rise and Fall of the Penis by Mels... →
“Manhood has no discernible purpose, no thrust. The cover’s (rather funny) promise of a tale of ‘Rise and Fall’ is misleading; the penis, as depicted here, is quite without an arc… [However] I defy anyone, for instance, on encountering a section titled ‘The smell of the scrotum’, ‘Legal action against men without balls’,...
How to Think About Science: Evelyn Fox Keller →
“Evelyn Fox Keller shares…some of her thoughts on how gender, language, model and metaphor have coloured the practice of science.”
New Weird Australia →
“Eclectic & experimental Australian Music.”
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN... →
“$352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions … This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis.”
Zombies and ethics →
“As both alive and dead, the zombie opens a new ontological zone, one which dialectically spills over into its symmetrical category of the neither alive nor dead. In other words, the split living/dead is supposed to exhaust the states of the human being, but if this split is not exhaustive (as in the zombie) we encounter a new category that interpellates human existence. Humans are shot...
“When the founders of the Humanist Union invited me to become a member, I replied...”
– Theodor Adorno, Problems of Moral Philosophy
“I need a reason to be unhappy, but do not need one to be quietly cheerful.”
– Jeanette Winterson
Hominology’s Early Scatology Studies →
As someone with her own coprolite collection, I can’t help but be interested. Cos, you know, trace fossils are cool. Like knowing someone is there because you can see their shadow.
Mogwai Live at Music Hall of Williamsburg on... →
Yes.
Unrepentant
“I watch The Wire because, to paraphrase its creator, David Simon, The Wire is about what happens in a post-industrial society, one in which people are no longer needed, not in the factories, not in the service economy, not anywhere. It’s about institutions such as the police and the media, and cultures such as poverty (drugs) and failing affluence (stevedores). It’s about the fact that we...
Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating... →
“Once the team comes up with the right elixir, it’ll undergo federally mandated safety testing. After that, the zombie vaccine will be sent to the battlefield for human application. Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating...