Quote of the day

"We found it populated mostly by innocent and well-intentioned, if confused, young people. Then again, that's how "Lord of the Flies" began."

- James Taranto regarding OWS

Who knew (St.) Augustine was a Berber?

Language Log has a post focusing on the Berber language as spoken in Libya.  Apparently, there is a sizable (suppressed) Berber minority there.  I think I first heard about Berber in the context of an article I read as a child about the Tuareg (Tuareg is a Berber language), notable because "In Tuareg society women do not traditionally wear the veil, whereas men do."


Apparently, Berber is an Afro-Asiatic language, like Arab, Hebrew, and ancient Egyptian (which survives in daily use only among Egyptian Christians (Copts) who use it in their services like Catholics used to use Greek and Latin).

MR brings home the headline bacon.....

Indeed, these two are more than worthy:

Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts

and
Mongolian neo-Nazis: Anti-Chinese sentiment fuels rise of ultra-nationalism



Click through above for details such as

Their right hands rise to black-clad chests and flash out in salute to their nation: "Sieg heil!" They praise Hitler's devotion to ethnic purity.

But with their high cheekbones, dark eyes and brown skin, they are hardly the Third Reich's Aryan ideal. A new strain of Nazism has found an unlikely home: Mongolia.

Glad I wasn't coaching North Korean kids.....

Apparently losing is very bad:

The broadcast of live games had been banned to avoid national embarrassment, but after the spirited 2-1 defeat to Brazil, state television made the Portugal game its first live sports broadcast ever. Following ideological criticism, the players were then allegedly forced to blame the coach for their defeats.

HT MR

The living Buddha and benefits fraud....

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a celebrity. Records showed that Sogen Kato was, at 111 years, the oldest man in Tokyo. But when officials went to visit him in order to congratulate him, they found (after some resistance from his relatives) only his mummified body. Apparently he had been dead 30 years while his checks were still being cashed.

Mr Kato's relatives told police that he had "confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha," according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000: £70,000) in widower's pension payments via Mr Kato's bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

HT MR

Those exotic Antarctican accents really turn me on!

If you've heard about the recent spy case, the Russians were able to divert suspicion by pretending to have Belgian accents (if you follow the link, there'll be a bit of a rant on how we are not only disadvantaged here in not knowing foreign languages, we are provincially ignorant of the outside world). One spy even convinced a college friend she was from Antarctica (although she came clean later and told her she was actually from Russia - some spy)!

Now Quebec ... THAT makes sense.

It's been a while since I put up an XKCD....

...and they are always so, so good.....

As much as I hate to tolerate assault....

...sometimes I actually find myself cheerleading it.

Almost makes one want to draw Muhammed!

Is it just how submissive the little dears are, then?

I am generally open minded, but for the longest time I have believed that the two areas in which women were simply inferior to men were weightlifting and chess. I concluded the latter back in my chess playing days when I was perusing the ratings tables in Chess Life & Review. If I had been a woman, my rating would have placed me in the top ten women in the United States. As a man, I wasn't even in the top thousand. That doesn't mean NO women could beat me, but it does suggest amazingly few...and there were many men in the "no woman could beat me" category. Yes, I'm sure that women are not encouraged to play chess as much as men are (not that a "nerd" reputation is all THAT prized even among men), but the difference just seemed SO extreme there had to be some sort of biological factor.

Now I see this study. In short: no. Now I'm not saying this study (42 pairs of various skill levels) completely dispels my notion - how many of those pairs were tournament level players? - but it certainly weakens my case...and it would provide another explanatory mechanism if women just like to lose (to a guy - the women apparently played harder if they THOUGHT they were playing against another woman).

Any of you girls want to help me out lifting this heavy package?

OK, I understand....

Courtesy of Marginal Revolution, which also points out that California is the seventh most risky debtor in the world (Venezuela, Argentina, Pakistan, Greece, Ukraine and the Emirate of Dubai are even worse), explains the mathematics of CDOs so YOU can understand it, and how to give somebody crabs.

Planetary news

Despite losing one of its stripes, Jupiter will remain a planet.

Even if Pluto gained one, it still wouldn't be.

Things gone terribly wrong

"You shoot two dogs in front of a seven year old--who could have been killed by a stray round, and at the very least will carry this hideous recollection to the grave. And why? For misdemeanor pot possession?"

- Megan McArdle

Hairdressers and transvestites saving the environment

in a rather unexpected way....

"Remind me to never be the first one who falls asleep in this crowd"

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, riffs on the news that a Chinese man who "died after his friends inserted a live eel into his rectum as a practical joke when the man was asleep". What cards!

As he phrased it, "With friends like that, who needs enemas?"

You must consider daughter-cattle ratios

Always, in my ignorance, somewhat preferred shorter girs, but it turns out tall girls fetch more cattle.

How gay is gay enough?

In a bizarre development, 3 athletes ruled insufficiently gay are suing to have the determination overturned, as well as reinstatement of their standing and money damages.

At one point during the proceedings, the lawsuit alleges, one of the plaintiffs was told: "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series."

Quote of the day

"Iceland's last wish: to have its ashes scattered all over Europe"
- a tweet

Update: Do you know how to pronounce that glacier? Apparently nobody else outside of iceland does, either!

Obama pardons Bernie Madoff!

I wouldn't believe this if it were from any source less reputable than Forbes!

The perils of superstition....

I am sometimes concerned that some of my friends put too much faith into romantic little oddities such as astrology. But at least they don't usually perform human sacrifices in order to improve their product, although I suppose one should admire the dedication....

Church-based pornography

As though Africa didn't have enough problems, there is a movement to make homosexuality a capital crime with previous convictions (also for offenses involving minors or being HIV positive).

What makes this especially newsworthy is that a minister promoting this bill actually tried to persuade people by showing gay porn in his church.

Apparently, g-d indeed works in mysterious ways.