Kamilah Gill

"On Tuesday's letters page, reader reaction to California's historic wildfires...Writes Lawrence L. Graham, of Dunwoody, Ga.: I am a Bible-believing Christian and I am here to tell you that the wildfires are a judgment on the bigots of California who passed Proposition 8 in order to deny a minority of Californians their human rights." - Jason Toney via Bookmarklet

Yeah. This isn't helpful. - Kamilah Gill

YES!! I need a copy of this because I totally called it! I knew someone was going to turn the wildfires into some "Sign From God" thing...I just thought it would be the other way around. - Katie

Lego-like furniture ... human sized! edit: you design/build it yourself :) - सत्याग्रह [Bren] via Bookmarklet

@Kamilah: they have differnet types, ranging from very hard to pillow-soft foam, according to what I read. - सत्याग्रह [Bren]

cool, thanks for the info, Bren - Kamilah Gill

"In Las Vegas, the comedian Wanda Sykes surprised a crowd of more than 1,000 rallying outside a gay community center by announcing that she is gay and had wed her wife in California on Oct. 25. Ms. Sykes, who divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, had never publicly discussed her sexual orientation but said the passage of Proposition 8 had propelled her to be open about it. “I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked — our community was attacked,” she told the crowd." - Cecily via Bookmarklet

This makes me ridiculously happy. We need MORE African-American LGBT folks to stand up and come out. Yay, Wanda! - Cecily

Liked because I'm tired of too many people assuming that most black people are anti-gay. Might need to start a Straight blacks for gay rights room or something. - Kamilah Gill

I can't believe I just read this: "3. If you are divorced, get plastic surgery. I am convinced that a lot of the reason women are happier earlier in life is that women have more control over their destiny when they are better looking. We know that people who are better looking get treated better throughout life, and we know that younger women do better remarrying than older women. So women should get plastic surgery if they get divorced so that they can remarry faster." - Daniel J. Pritchett

I couldn't take a word of the author's article seriously. - Mike

I've enjoyed several of her past articles - she is not afraid to take unpopular positions if she thinks it's pragmatic. I'm just amazed she recommened plastic surgery in a public forum. Oh well, blogs love controversy. - Daniel J. Pritchett

""From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"" - Geoff Schultz via Bookmarklet

My female CS major friends all claimed there was a hostile environment in their classrooms. Women students physically in the room were usually ignored and women as a general topic were dismissed, mocked, and overtly, often crudely sexualized. Of course this particular institution was twice marched on by the rest of the Consortium student population in hopes of having it closed, so perhaps it was a particularly bad enviroment - Soup

Part of me wants to attribute the hostile environment to the clustering of the socially immature men in IT. That is not to say that all men in IT are socially immature but that it could be a higher concentration. *whistles innocently while fanning the flames* - Geoff Schultz

Yeah, I've noted this new look on a number of local high school students. It's sort of a cross between 80s skinny jeans and the hiphop boxer-peeks. totally unflattering - the opposite of sexy. - V for Veselka

Emo gangsta was the firs thing I thought of when I saw him. I've been over the emo look for 5 years now, hell I was over in '86 when it was the metalheads who dressed like that. But this crossover with hip-hop is so jarringly stupid. A simple case of two wrongs don't make a right. - Anika Malone

HAHA - Mona N.

Look out the window. - Reto Meier via fftogo

Check trash cans. - John Mueller

Hide behind the trash cans and monitor who is the person. - kartik vaithyanathan

Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not prepared for that, but I should have known better. NSFW - RAPatton

Yeah,, I saw that yesterday, Ouch is all I can say. - Derek Coward

I've had permanent brain damage from a manga that Warren Ellis posted before. How much more harm can it do? As long as it's not something like that goatse that I refuse to ever see. - Kamilah Gill

We will be here forever once we can finally work. I'll miss you, outside world. - Kamilah Gill

These are making me laugh. Maybe I'm just jaded now, but #93? Whisper to him, "If you could picture what's going through my mind right now, you'd be totally, and I mean totally, turned on." And what's with that chick in the picture looking at the camera? She's not very "in the moment." - Trish R via Bookmarklet

Ladies relax. You already got *everything* on you to turn a guy on. Doesn't take anything else - seriously. - Kamath ॐ

Bring back mood rings. :) - Jason Shultz via twhirl

One of my favorite things to do with a chef’s knife is to chop fresh herbs. To me, it’s very relaxing and satisfying to attack a huge pile of leafy parsley and end up with a much smaller pile of finely chopped herbs. And what better way to get a feel for this knife than some nice, soothing, rhythmic chopping. - Mahdi Ebrahimi via Bookmarklet

hmmmm! :D tanx for great feeds in persian: bahhhhh - pepella

You are welcome dear Peppella. - Mahdi Ebrahimi

I want to try persimmons... - Kamilah Gill

hmm... kind of a personal question... ;) - edythe

Laputa - Shevonne Polastre

Spirited Away FTW :) - zoblue (Zulema)

My apartment block's lift... eeek! Luckily the lift is working fine, only the display failed. - BeeLing

What you really don't want is a crash... - mikepk

Stairs... yes good for the heart but bad for my knees. Anyway there are 3 lifts for my block. And the other 2 are working fine as well. Heh - BeeLing

How could this movie come into existence? What is wrong with people?? Any other artists out there feel my pain? Discuss. - Kamilah Gill

Just noticed that Kottke got this, too. Watch him get a lot more buzz for it than I did :( - Kamilah Gill

Alebrijes are carved wooden figures created by Oaxacan artisans. They have become so popular that even the world’s most respected Spanish language authority, the La Real Academia de la Lengua Española, Spanish Royal Academy, has included the term “Alebrijes” in its official Spanish language dictionary. The term “Alebrijes” originated from the name that Mr. Pedro Linares, of Mexico City, gave to his fantastic creations of paper maché; which are internationally recognized. Most Oaxacan artisans simply call them figuras "wooden figures", naming them after the animal which they carved, such as the deer, raccoon, leopard, etc., but when a fantastic figure is elaborated, the artisan is compelled to say he has created an "alebrije." - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet

I've seen several of these around and I need to go ahead and get one for myself. My mom loves bright colors and would enjoy one of these, too. - Kamilah Gill

i love these. they're relatively inexpensive in mexico compared to what you would find in an specialty "ethnic" art gallery here in the us - Cee Bee

I'll have to ask my dad to see if these show up in Cancun when he's down there in a couple of weeks (though I bet that's not near Oaxaca; I'll have to check a map). - Kamilah Gill

"Who would have thought wearing a bug round your neck would be so appealing. Jewelled beetles, diamanté spiders and silver scorpions are just some of the glittering accessories of the moment and they surely must be the type of insects the celebrities on ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’ would prefer, rather than the real creepy crawlies they are having to endure in the Australian jungle. Fashion's bug-fest goes all the way from £6 moths at Monsoon to £587 stag beetles from Philippa Holland." - RAPatton

I used to have a dragonfly brooch back in the mid-80s. I wonder what happened to it. - Cecily

I have an aunt that collects dragonfly pendants - RAPatton

"Vera, Vera. How could you even contemplate launching a Barbie wedding dress - for human beings? This is Vera Wang by the way, an alumna of the Sorbonne in Paris, a history graduate of the academically rigorous Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County, New York State, the erstwhile fashion editor of American Vogue and the designer behind a hugely successful bridal line, oft worn by such luminous marrying types as Uma Thurman and ... J-Lo, Mariah Carey, Sharon Stone. Hmm, perhaps therein lies the answer. Mattel, the toy company that sells a Barbie every two seconds, has deep coffers, especially when it comes to commemorating the 50th anniversary of its “iconic” cash cow. End of mystery." - RAPatton

"Nippleless breasts aside, there are other anatomical defects. Detailed research has been carried out to ascertain precisely what that anatomy would be if scaled to human dimensions: 6ft tall and 39-18-33? 6ft5in and 32-24-33? 7ft tall, 44-17-40? No one can agree, which proves that the only thing more ludicrous than Barbie's body is a “serious study” devoted to debunking it. One fact on which the serious studies have reached consensus however, is that Barbie, were she human, would be unable to stand up. Aha, the ultimate male fantasy. Except that men, on the whole, are not Barbie's core customer; malleable four to nine-year-olds are." - RAPatton

I think what may be a little more distressing is kids modelling themselves after Bratz... Barbie is unrealistic but often a bit less slutty... - Kamilah Gill

Pecans rule. I didn't know this: "Pecans were one of the most recently domesticated major crops. Although wild pecans were well-known among the colonial Americans as a delicacy, the commercial growing of pecans in the United States did not begin until the 1880s. Today, the U.S. produces between 80% and 95% of the world's pecans, with an annual crop of 150–200 thousand tons." - Ginger Makela via Bookmarklet

neat picture - Kamilah Gill

What do you think? I've been contemplating getting this game too. - Nathan Johns

So bummed this isn't available for Wii. Then again, maybe that's a good thing :) - Adam Lasnik

Ginger, that's the way it looks to me in the videos... I'll have to wait a few years for when the PS3 is getting old and outdated and seriously discounted to get the system and the game, the same way I did for the PS2. - Kamilah Gill

Might have to do this tonight - Shevonne Polastre via Bookmarklet

رونوشت به میلاد که بره این یارو رو تو فیس بوک اد کنه :D - Maryam Ardakani

مریم :))))))))))))))) - Mil∂d

I guess he should be glad it wasn't a mortar shell! Wow... - Tad, Fool

Darwin candidate. That is all. - Cyndy

ditto, Cyndy. - Kamilah Gill

*frowny face* That's very not cute... - Kamilah Gill

At least it doesn't taste like turkey - that would be awful. - Ryan Twomey

Maybe not opossom. But I would also eat ice cream that looks like mashed potatoes! I'm just being festive. - Mike L

Awesome! One of my first gifts to Scott was a set of stuffed emoticons from ThinkGeek. He loves them... and does, in fact, throw them at me. :-) - Ladybug Heather

I took a screenshot. It's GIZMODO! And from my FAVORITE writer - Jesus Diaz <--he's the LEGO dude! - Mona N.

I need many, many WTF pillows. Can I get them in all of the colors? - Kamilah Gill

Bet my mom might love this. Gotta pass it on... - Kamilah Gill