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Black Money
The United States Secret Service is warning about an old scam that's recently popped up again in New England: black money.
Phoenix Jones No More!
Phoenix Jones, the real life superhero who's been in the news (and previously on the blue) for his vigilante work in Seattle, was arrested for pepper-spraying four people outside a nightclub... and his secret identity revealed.
Sleepers
Whenever, wherever, however they can, folks around the world gotta cop a few Zs.
Betty Ford
Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren Ford--model, dancer, feminist, founder of one of the best-known substance abuse recovery centers in the world, and former First Lady of the United States--died Friday, July 8, at the age of 93.
Dude, Where's My Ads?
Brutal!
Reality 86'd. A documentary by David Markey of the last Black Flag tour in 1986. Besides the Flag (Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Cel Revulta, and Anthony Martinez), the tour lineup also included Painted Willie and Gone, which featured two future members of the Rollins Band. Rollins mentioned the documentary on Twitter--actually, his second-ever tweet.
Could Be Awkward
The Washington Post has invited Donald Trump as its guest for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. WaPo writers Ezra Klein and Dana Milbank are not amused, with the latter pointing out that his paper had recently taken Trump to task for his rampant birtherism. No word yet on how the POTUS might react.
Straight Outta Union City
Retrospace (previously) gives us a series of cards from lounge acts that appeared at the Biltmore Motor Hotel in Union City, Tennessee, sometime in the Seventies.
50 Books Every Eleven-Year-Old Should Read
Standing Ovation
The passing of someone who invented the gas-turbine-powered helicopter, or a wildly-popular new type of guitar, or even a guide dog school with over 1,300 graduates would be notable. Charles H. Kaman did all three.
"You killed my president, you rat!"
"You people should spend less time in front of a bloody screen and more time ... reading real things."
Nomen Ludi. Rob Beschizza, gadget blogger for Boing Boing and previously for Wired, writes about his quest for the completion of an eight-bit game that no one else remembers, and the lost programmer who wrote it.
Do you wanna date my avatar, she's a star
The stereotype of people who play a lot of videogames is that they're mostly guys who can't get a good-looking woman to talk to them unless they're paid to do so. GameCrush is not assisting in the refutation of that stereotype.
So, that would make Stephen Colbert John the Baptist, then?
Actually, I find your primitive yet clever Earth technology fascinating. Please, do go on.
A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things, slide show courtesy of New York magazine. Can be divided into two categories: with safety glasses, and without.
He Will Break You
Kyokushin karate champion, master's degree in chemical engineering, awarded a Fulbright scholarship to MIT, speaker of several languages, former lover of Grace Jones [NSFW], Master of the Universe--you already know who I'm talking about, don't you?
It's Dolph Lundgren's world; try not to get in his way.
Strange Bedfellows
Jane Hamsher is a former Hollywood producer who now heads the Firedoglake family of blogs. Grover Norquist is a long-time conservative activist who has had some influence in conservative politics. Together, they fight... Rahm Emanuel!
Pornsec Doubleplusungood!
When the Jessamine* County Public Library acquired a copy of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, two library workers conspired to keep it out of the patrons' hands, checking it out for an entire year. After an eleven-year-old girl put a hold on the book, they removed the hold; upon discovering this, the library director fired them.
Sweet Smell of Success
Getting tired of fail, fail, and yet more fail? SUCCEED Blog chronicles that which is made of win. Leave your schadenfreude at the door.
People (Not) Eating Tasty Animals
Natalie Portman has been a vegetarian for twenty years, but was recently inspired to become a vegan by Jonathan Safran Foer's first nonfiction book, Eating Animals. Portman wrote an essay for the Huffington Post in which she compares the book favorably to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (previously on the blue), and makes this specific criticism of the latter book:
But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).
It's made of people!
The Humanthesizer. Calvin Harris is promoting his new single by using a type of skin-safe conductive ink to "play" his song with the assistance of, ah, several assistants.
"The next morning at 6:30 I'm at Lowe's, haggling over the price of carpet remnants."
The Accidental Slumlord. In 2005, Daniel McGinn, a writer for Newsweek, wrote a story about out-of-staters buying rental properties in Pocatello, Idaho. A year later, Daniel McGinn, who lives 2,450 miles away from Pocatello, bought a rental property there. Why?
J'Accuse a la Highlighter
What Plagiarism Looks Like. William Meehan, president of Jacksonville State University, wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1999. Carl Boening wrote his in 1996. "Jacksonville State says no substance has been found in the charges, and no action by the university will be taken against him", but, well, look at the identical passages highlighted in the first link above (and keep in mind that other parts of Boening's dissertation were paraphrased in Meehan's). Sadly, this is not the first time that this has happened where a college president was involved.
Everybody's hugging!
Of what purpose is a lap dance? Is it about alcohol and leisure? Is it an exercise in objectification? Is it a question that requires a lap-dancing body (phwoar!) to decide? Or Parliament? Should someone hold a seance and ask Paul Raymond? (previously)
Vivisecting the Goddess
The operation was a success, but the patient is now a mere mortal. When she was born, her neighbors considered her a gift from God and lined up to receive her blessing. However, her parents, who wanted her to have a normal life (and refusing an offer to sell her to a circus) , found a doctor and a hospital who would operate on Lakshmi for free.