"A tricked-out muscle car on the streets of Baghdad can turn heads, tempt carjackers or anger fundamentalists. What's a gear head to do? Floor it." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Archaeology pushes its history ever deeper in the past; a racing market economy makes Chinese-ness a mutable identity, under continual revision. Art institutions seem caught in the tension between self-images: the sovereign civilization apart on one hand, and the ambitious scrambler in the global game on the other." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Getting an audience to hate a corporation is like shooting really slow fat fish in a really small, well lit barrel that you're standing over with a laser scoped machine gun. Everybody's gotten screwed by a big, uncaring company at some point, either by getting put on indefinite hold by customer support, or by getting downsized, or by installing Windows Vista." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"U.S.-Russian relations are worse today than they have been in 20 years. The relationship includes almost as many serious conflicts as it did during the cold war - among them, Kosovo, Iran, the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia, Venezuela, NATO expansion, missile defense, access to oil and the Kremlin's internal politics - and less actual cooperation, particularly in essential matters involving nuclear weapons." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"President Nambaryn Enkhbayar's decree allowed police to use force in dealing with the thousands of rock-throwing protesters who thronged the headquarters of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and set it on fire. The crowd had not dispersed despite repeated volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
Very strange - some of these solutions, especially the airplane sleeping gas system, seem as scary as the threat. - Jack Norris
Link of the weekend - I'm ordering up my self contained potty bio-hazard suit now so i don't miss a minute of the big game with annoying bathroom runs. - Steve Craft
"The British designer Vivienne Westwood has caused controversy by using Roma gypsies as catwalk models, complete with gold teeth and enormous medallions." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
From a related article: "Mr Berlusconi’s government has also drawn up plans for 10 new “Centres of Temporary Permanence” in which to hold immigrants until repatriation." I assume the immigrants will be held on the outskirts of the Centre. - Jim Norris
Dude is hotttttt!!!! I hope Janine doesn't see this article. - Steve Craft
"In a country where the discussion of some social and cultural issues, like homosexuality, can be all but taboo, drug addiction has been widely acknowledged as a serious problem. It is talked about openly in schools and on television. Posters have encouraged people to think of addiction as a disease and to seek treatment." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"We don't want to fight addicts; we want to fight addiction. We need to manage addiction." - Anne Bouey
So glad to see such progressive and positive measures by the government to treat widespread addiction and co-morbidities (HIV) in Iran. Needle exchange programs and methadone treatment are a good start. I understand Iran now has >40,000 members in NA - there is hope. - Jack Norris
When I click on the link - I get The Beach Boys video "California Girls" - I was tired of that song in the '60's and would like to read the article - help?! Or am I just missing something obvious here? - Jack Norris
"Winemakers in southern France have burned two police cars and vandalized supermarkets during protests to demand government aid." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
Sounds like an average weekend in Napa. - Jim Norris
"The album has made the monks of Heiligenkreuz a crossover hit, the latest example of how Gregorian chant, a 1,000-year-old part of the Roman Catholic liturgy, can be repackaged for a secular society that savors the soothing, otherworldly cadences." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Obama should visit a mosque. He has repeatedly shown his courage during this campaign; Americans have responded to his intellectual honesty. One of the important things about him is the knowledge his Kenyan and Indonesian experiences have given him of Islam as lived, rather than Islam as turned into monstrous specter." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
""The New York City Waterfalls" is a public art project of four man-made waterfalls rising from New York Harbor, some as high as the Statue of Liberty." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Drug traffickers in China's far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan...Traffickers first inject heroin into plastic tubes of 1-2 mm diameter and wrap them with colorful natural or synthetic fibers to make them look like yarn. They then weave them into the carpet along with normal yarn." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Romanians account for 5.7 percent of the prison population. More than a third of all prisoners in Italy are foreigners. Foreigners are charged with 68 percent of rapes, 32 percent of thefts." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"With the slogan, "See ability, not disability," the London-based charity Epic Arts has been challenging the common perception of disabled performing artists. "This is not about sympathy or therapy," said its artistic director and founder, Katie MacCabe. "We want to show that impairment can actually enhance creativity and that virtuosity is not just the domain of the able-bodied."" - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death...By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely. They dress like men, adopt a male swagger and spend their lives in the company of other men." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"Suddenly you couldn't turn on your TV without seeing some guy doing something incredibly retarded and dangerous with a Mountain Dew logo pasted on him." What could be more fun than that? - Jack Norris
"Today, despite it tasting like piss mixed with orange drink, Mountain Dew is the most popular soft drink after Coke and Pepsi." - Anne Bouey
"At 32 Kartashov Street, workers are gutting the building and replacing rotted logs with new ones, using Siberian larch, a sturdy conifer. The interior will be brand-new, including, for the first time, bathrooms. (There is still an outhouse in the backyard - imagine having to use that in the middle of the night during the Siberian winter.)" - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
"At Angkor Wat, the dancers' feet are crumbling. The palatial 12th-century Hindu temple, shrouded in the jungles of Cambodia, has played host to a thriving community of cyanobacteria ever since unsightly lichens were cleaned off its walls nearly 20 years ago." - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
Sounds like Tiger eating away at pieces of petrified salami. - Jim Norris
I'll have nightmares about that spray thing sliding out... The horror. The horror. - Tad Donaghe
the gist of it is, the guest wants to go home to use his lotus toilet seat because it's so awesome. the host gets him to stay because he also has a lotus toilet seat. lotus toilet seats are awesome because as you can see from the graphics, they spray you at just the perfect angle. - Jessie Norris
i have this problem all the time! it's pretty much ended my cocktail partying. - Nick
I seriously think I'd scream and jump out the bathroom window if a spray of water hit me in the ass while I was sitting on the toilet. - Tad Donaghe
I can't decide if that's a toilet or a water-based pleasuring device. - Amy Tureen
"Grand Tower isn't much of anyplace anymore. Its last restaurant closed shortly after the great flood of 1993. There isn't a bookstore. Don't even ask about wi-fi access. "If we get a major flood," he says, "it's all over. A lot of small towns, they've just disappeared. We're going to be next."" - Jessie Norris via Bookmarklet
