The Rat
Saturday, April 30, 2011
      ( 8:47 PM ) The Rat  
THIS IS YOUR LIFE: GENOCIDE EDITION. Yikes. The TAL segment itself is here.

As Silverman goes on to explain, Kohler goes through the usual This Is Your Life series of surprises, although the people she's confronted with are not grade-school buddies or teachers but, for example, the friend with whom she went through Auschwitz...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:47 PM


      ( 7:08 PM ) The Rat  
SPANISH GYM OFFERS NAKED WORKOUTS, via Wait Wait.

Easy Gym has said it does provide towels for comfort and "to prevent slippage."

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:08 PM


      ( 5:49 PM ) The Rat  
WHO NEEDS MOTIVATION? THE REWARDS OF DOING "SOMETHING." Findings from an oddly Onion-esque, yet extremely plausible, new study.

Author Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says she started paying attention to people's different levels of activity in various countries and saw how much busier people are in the U.S. relative to other areas. "People have this inclination to do more, even if what they do is trivial," she says. In recent years, she has been doing research on how people feel about activity, including how easily she could change the level of activity that people aimed for. In one set of experiments, for example, she found that getting people to think about physical activity made them more interested in political activity...

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:49 PM


      ( 5:48 PM ) The Rat  
LIU BOLIN: THE INVISIBLE MAN, via JM.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:48 PM


      ( 5:12 PM ) The Rat  
Our sister chose to get married without any of us, and each photo [of her and her husband] we pass around seems to say, "This is my new life. You're not in it, are you?"
"Frenemies," This American Life

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:12 PM


      ( 12:19 PM ) The Rat  
THE TOLL BROS. BROADCAST of Il Trovatore begins at 1 PM.

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:19 PM



Friday, April 29, 2011
      ( 9:10 PM ) The Rat  
POSSIBLY THE BEST THING to have come out of the royal wedding.

This is also pretty funny.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:10 PM


      ( 8:52 PM ) The Rat  
"I'VE TALKED TO SO MANY PEOPLE WHO COME BACK AND FEEL LIKE THEY'RE GOING TO DIE... AND YET—EVERY ONE OF THEM FEELS LIKE THEY'RE GOING TO DIE WITH A SMILE ON THEIR FACE. AND THAT'S WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT THIS EVENT!" ESPN coverage of the 2009 Krispy Kreme Challenge. Link via Ryan Hall's Twitter feed—yes, that Ryan Hall.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:52 PM


      ( 7:22 PM ) The Rat  
THIS STORY, via IKM, contains the phrase "a porn film featuring a Los Angeles parking enforcement officer."

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:22 PM


      ( 7:20 PM ) The Rat  
THE INTERNET IS FASCINATED BY PRINCESS BEATRICE'S HAT, via WO.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:20 PM


      ( 10:23 AM ) The Rat  
YOU'RE NOT AS KINKY AS YOU THINK, via a source who would prob. prefer to not be credited.

"We just let the data tell us where to go," Ogas says. Though the information sent them to Japanese anime sites (exceptionally popular among straight men) or to "cuckold porn" (in which men are forced to watch their wives have sex with someone else), it unearthed an even more surprising finding: 80% of all Internet searches are composed of just 20 interests.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:23 AM



Thursday, April 28, 2011
      ( 12:30 PM ) The Rat  
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE, via MM (no Russian required).

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:30 PM


      ( 12:12 PM ) The Rat  
WHY THE MIDDLE AGED BRAIN MAY BE AT ITS PEAK, from the latest Health Check. Sadly, "middle-aged" is defined as between 40 and 60, and I was told yesterday that because I'm Asian, aging stops at 29.

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:12 PM


      ( 10:00 AM ) The Rat  
IF FACEBOOK WAS MORE TRUE TO LIFE, via Failbook.

The Friend Zone is also good.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:00 AM


      ( 9:14 AM ) The Rat  
Interviewer. Like you, I fell in love with opera at a young age—although I also fell in love with the Beatles! When I was young, I was self-conscious about being an opera lover. It seemed "uncool" and I hid my opera recordings when friends came over. Was that ever a problem for you?

Levine. No, that was never a problem for me! My love for it was too great. To me, anyone who didn't respond to opera was missing something so fundamental that I sort of felt sorry for them...

—"Asked and Answered," a Q&A with Maestro Levine in this month's Playbill

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:14 AM


      ( 3:11 AM ) The Rat  
MOVIE AGES, via IKM. Shoot me.

Although actually, none of this* is as horrifying as the fact that I've actually seen Revenge of the Sith... and on opening weekend, no less. I don't remember a thing about the movie; all I remember is that the person I was there with overheard a guy a ways down the ticket line from us exclaiming: "Alllll riiight! Let Operation Never-Get-Laid begin!"

*Well, okay—nothing except the moon landing one.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:11 AM


      ( 2:57 AM ) The Rat  
KENYA: CLASS ACT. (Esp. note the last two paras.)

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:57 AM


      ( 2:54 AM ) The Rat  
50 PHOTOS OF BASSET HOUNDS RUNNING, via the SYSK Twitter feed. Wow—I adore bassets, but nearly all of these look kinda psychotic.

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:54 AM



Wednesday, April 27, 2011
      ( 10:46 AM ) The Rat  
From the ramp we went into a short hall. At its end was a sign saying Vykhod (Exit) with an arrow pointing to the left. We turned to the left, and after a few steps met a uniformed army officer in greatcoat and cap who wordlessly pointed us back the opposite way. Why they hadn't simply used a sign pointing the exit to the right to begin with, thus obviating the need for the soldier, I could not grasp. We came down some stairs into a hall leading to Passport Control. On the floor at the foot of the stairs was a large, vividly red spill of liquid—possibly raspberry syrup, possibly transmission fluid. I tried without success to pick up its smell. Instead I was hit by the smell of Russia, one I've encountered often since, all over that country. The components of the smell are still a mystery. There's a lot of diesel fuel in it, and cucumber peels, and old tea bags, and sour milk, and a sweetness—currant jam, or mulberries crushed into the waffle treads of heavy boots—and fresh wet mud, and a lot of wet cement. Every once in a while, in just the right damp basement in America, I find a cousin of the Russia-smell unexpectedly there.
Travels in Siberia

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:46 AM



Tuesday, April 26, 2011
      ( 9:37 PM ) The Rat  
At the top of the steps, Johnson briefly widened the gap. When the course dipped downhill, though, Schultz closed. Ahead was Suicide, a treacherous plummet over dusty trail walled in by shrubs that runners essentially skid and slide down. By the time they bottomed out in Muir Woods, Schultz was only 15 or so feet back.

That changed quickly again on Dynamite, a brutal half-mile ascent through redwood forest where Johnson "flew over every root and step and left me a little dangling," says Schultz. "I was pushing just to keep her in sight."

At Cardiac, Johnson had stretched her lead to 49 seconds. She hammered on—but something was wrong. After rounding a turn a short ways past the summit, she stopped suddenly and threw up. "I was like, It's over, I'm not going to win," says Johnson. "I stood there for a little bit because I was like, Whoa, what just happened? And then I saw Melody come around the corner and I'm like, Gotta go!"

The race was on, and building toward a thrilling finish made all the more dramatic by two facts that, at first glance, don't seem possible: Melody-Anne Schultz was 68 years old. Reilly Johnson was 8.

—"The Little Girl, the Old Lady, and America's Oldest Trail Race," on the 100th running of the Dipsea, in the Spring 2011 RW "Trail" special (unfortunately not available online)

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:37 PM


      ( 6:34 PM ) The Rat  
NUMBER OF 100-YEAR-OLDS IS BOOMING IN U.S.

The rising number of centenarians is not just a byproduct of the nation's growing population—they make up a bigger chunk of it. In 1990, about 15 in every 100,000 Americans had reached 100; in 2010, it was more than 23 per 100,000, according to census figures.

Perls said the rise in 100-year-olds is attributed largely to better medical care and the dramatic drop in childhood-mortality rates since the early 1900s. Centenarians also have good genes on their side, he said, and have made common-sense health decisions, such as not smoking and keeping their weight down.

"It's very clearly a combination of genes and environment," Perls said...


More on blue zones here.

Beyond its natural beauty, its perfect beaches, its uncharacteristic lushness and mineral springs that have been recommended for their therapeutic qualities since the age of Hippocrates, Ikaria is the island whose denizens have no sense of time. Read that to mean that there is no stress. Raches, for example, a loosely connected group of villages on the northern side of the island, where my family is from, is known in Greece as the place where people sleep in the daytime and live all night. Forget punctual. Shops, in the height of summer, open at midday, close around 3, reopen again sometime after 9 and stay open almost all night. It's not uncommon to buy sugar, or even shoes, at the local general store in the wee hours of the morning. I got married in Raches and was two hours late for my own wedding; when I did finally arrive, the priest was still on his way. Life is S-L-O-W, a factor that surely accounts for the lack of stress, which, of course, affects the aging process.

So does diet. Ikaria's traditional cuisine is essentially plant-based; meat, mainly goat, used to be eaten only on festive occasions...


# Posted by The Rat @ 6:34 PM


      ( 5:41 PM ) The Rat  
WOMEN SURPASS MEN IN ADVANCED DEGREES. I'm waiting for the follow-up story, "Men Now Primarily Useful for Firewood."

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:41 PM


      ( 3:20 PM ) The Rat  
"A PLAYER WHOSE STROKE IS AFFECTED BY THE SIMULTANEOUS EXPLOSION OF A BOMB MAY PLAY ANOTHER BALL FROM THE SAME PLACE. PENALTY ONE STROKE." How to Golf During a Bombing, via ET.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:20 PM


      ( 11:29 AM ) The Rat  
"SHANON, YOU MIGHT WANT TO EDIT THE TAGGED SECTION," via SJ. Don't miss the one about Libya!

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:29 AM


      ( 7:35 AM ) The Rat  
"HE PUNCHED IN HIS PIN NUMBER LIKE AN EX-PUBLIC SCHOOLBOY DELIVERING AN EFFICIENT SEXUAL EXPERIENCE," via ET.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:35 AM


      ( 7:05 AM ) The Rat  
"IT FELT TOO MUCH LIKE THE OPENING SCENE OF A GAY PORNO," via Failbook.

From the same source: How the Other Half Lives, She Better..., and last but not least, BB Bunny.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:05 AM


      ( 7:01 AM ) The Rat  
INSIDE ZOMBIE BRAINS, again via IKM.

"The zombies themselves represent a kind of commentary on modernity," Schlozman says...

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:01 AM


      ( 6:53 AM ) The Rat  
Running long and hard is an ideal antidepressant, since it's hard to run and feel sorry for yourself at the same time.
—Monte Davis

# Posted by The Rat @ 6:53 AM


      ( 6:49 AM ) The Rat  
HEE! Via IKM, as was this.

Shakespeare's plays, Einstein's theories—and porn queen Jenna Jameson's steamy online sexcapades.

New Yorkers can take their pick at the city's public libraries, thanks to a policy that gives adults the most uncensored access to extreme, hard-core Internet smut this side of the old Times Square.

The electronic smut falls under the heading of free speech and the protection of the First Amendment, library officials say...


# Posted by The Rat @ 6:49 AM



Monday, April 25, 2011
      ( 5:41 PM ) The Rat  
"IT'S BASICALLY TRAYF IN CAMO." The Wait Wait crew eats the Matzo Elvis.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:41 PM


      ( 2:32 PM ) The Rat  
WHY MORE CHINESE SINGLES ARE LOOKING FOR LOVE ONLINE, via IKM.

Power is just one of millions of Chinese people who are turning to online dating as a solution to relationship woes in a society where the social pressure to find a partner can be oppressive. Chinese parents commonly expect their sons or daughters to be married by the time they're 30. There is even a word for those who are "left on the shelf" in their thirties: shengnan and shengnu, literally a "left-over man" or "left-over woman."

The pressure to find a mate at all costs has been blamed for rocketing divorce rates, which reached a new peak in 2010. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, close to two million couples registered for divorce last year, or 1.5 divorces per one thousand people. It's still low compared to, say, the U.S., where there are 5.2 divorces per thousand, but the figure in China is rising fast...

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:32 PM


      ( 11:19 AM ) The Rat  
"VARIOUS SOURCES HAVE ALTERNATIVELY SUGGESTED THAT THE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT OF HER NAME WAS 'THE NAUGHTY ONE' OR 'THE MISCHIEVOUS ONE' WHICH HONESTLY SEEMS LIKE JUST MORE POLITE, BRITISH-Y WAYS OF SAYING 'SLUT.'" 6 Famous Figures You Only Know By Their Insulting Nicknames, via Cracked by way of ET.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:19 AM


      ( 9:33 AM ) The Rat  
NOSTALGIC POLES REBUILD MEDIEVAL CASTLES.

A handful of Polish developers are completely rebuilding medieval castles to house museums, hotels or conference centers that they hope will recapture the enchantment of a time when Poland was a great European power, before centuries of occupation, warfare and foreign rule.

"Why should the Germans have their castles on the Rhine, the French their castles on the Loire, why should the Czechs have so many castles open to the visitors and why should the Poles have only ruins?" said Dariusz Lasecki, a businessman and one of two brothers rebuilding a medieval castle in Bobolice, a town near Czestochowa...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:33 AM


      ( 8:52 AM ) The Rat  
Somtimes in life you meet people that inspire you, sometimes in life you meet people you want to inspire, and sometimes you just want to fucking stab yourself.
—Jamie Oliver

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:52 AM


      ( 8:44 AM ) The Rat  
THE LATEST ON MONTY!

According to Aiken, the idea for Monty to join the library came to him at home one night.

"Librarians should be allowed one potentially brilliant but spectacularly rummy idea every decade or so," he says, "and this was mine"...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:44 AM


      ( 8:06 AM ) The Rat  
STATE LAUNCHES PROBE INTO CAMPAIGN TO PROVIDE SUPERHERO CAPES TO JOBLESS, via Wait Wait.

Dubbed the "Cape-A-Bility Challenge," a $73,000 public-relations campaign by Workforce Central Florida features a cartoon character named "Dr. Evil Unemployment" and includes handing out about 6,000 red superhero capes to jobless Central Floridians...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:06 AM


      ( 8:02 AM ) The Rat  
TELEVISION 'BREAKUPS' CAUSE SOME VIEWERS DISTRESS.

Most people didn't do anything radically different with their free time when their shows went off the air. When asked which of their activities increased since the strike began (participants could name more than one), watching TV reruns was the top choice, cited by half the respondents. About 40 percent said they spent more time on the internet. Only 15 percent said they spent more time exercising, and 18 percent said they spent more time with friends and family.

Women in general reported having stronger relationships with television characters than did men, results showed. As such, one might expect that the loss of their programs would distress women more than it would men—but that was not the case. There were no gender differences in the level of distress caused by the strike.

"That's probably the result of the different coping mechanisms that men and women use to deal with the dissolution of their relationships—both real and with TV characters," Moyer-Gusé said.

In this study, women were more likely than men to say they spent their extra free time in social activities, such as spending time with friends and family, which may have helped them cope.

"We know that men and women cope with real breakups in different ways, and that difference may be translating to these relationships they have with TV characters," she said...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:02 AM



Sunday, April 24, 2011
      ( 8:07 AM ) The Rat  
CALIF. GANGSTER'S TATTOO OF CRIME SCENE HELPS SOLVE MURDER, via IKM. From the "Can't possibly be real" files...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:07 AM



Saturday, April 23, 2011
      ( 7:47 PM ) The Rat  
HEE!

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:47 PM


      ( 5:26 PM ) The Rat  
SATURATED, TRANS FATS MAY INCREASE RISK OF DEPRESSION. From January.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:26 PM


      ( 11:06 AM ) The Rat  
THE TOLL BROS. CAPRICCIO BROADCAST begins at 1 PM!

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:06 AM


      ( 11:04 AM ) The Rat  
ONE-POUND FAT REPLICA. (This is not actually fun to look at, so only click through if you're really curious.) Not sure what to make of the fact that this is the third-most-popular item in its category ("Biology Classroom Supplies") at Amazon?

P.S. Don't miss the reviews.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:04 AM


      ( 9:42 AM ) The Rat  
Running in the morning has me appreciate all the choices that come later in the day. The choices I make after running seem healthier, wiser and kinder.*
—Deena Kastor

*Particularly useful for those of us who tend to wake up feeling more or less the opposite of at least two out of three...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 AM


      ( 9:29 AM ) The Rat  
IT'S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES, via Nerve (from last week). I think I mainly liked this because I wish I could have an argument like that with my mother...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:29 AM


      ( 9:00 AM ) The Rat  
THE MEGABUS EFFECT, via MM. Hey, some of us were doing this before it was cool!

Surprisingly, the initial expectations for Megabus in the U.S. were low. At the 2006 kickoff party, held at Chicago's Navy Pier, Moser's boss, a Scotsman, asked the Pennsylvania native to assess their prospects. "I told him, 'We're Americans, we're attached to our cars. That's our identity. It's going to be a challenge, but let's give it a shot,'" Moser recalls as we sit in the Dunkin' Donuts, watching his buses pull up along the opposite curb and depart.

Gas prices soared, however, and ridership rose along with them. Within six months officials from other Midwestern cities were offering Megabus prime pickup locations and help with promotions if only it would, please, include them on a route. In 2008, Greyhound and Peter Pan formed BoltBus, which says it turned a profit after only three months of service between Northeast Corridor cities. After startup it took Megabus a mere two years to move 2 million passengers to and from New York, and on all its U.S. routes it now handles about 4 million passengers annually.

For bus travel as a whole, the number of daily departures increased by 6 percent in 2010, twice the growth experienced by air travel and 12 times that of Amtrak. The number of curbside passengers rose by at least 33 percent, with Megabus ridership expanding 48 percent. (Amtrak ridership grew by just 6 percent, and the airlines by 5 percent.) The company says growth, including the 20 routes it added last year, is an astounding 65 percent...


# Posted by The Rat @ 9:00 AM


      ( 8:56 AM ) The Rat  
"AMERICANS ARE GENEROUS BUT NOT MAGNANIMOUS, BECAUSE THE GRAND GESTURE IS TOO ARISTOCRATIC FOR COMFORT." Florence King on England and us, via WO.

Being an English-American can be depressing. For years I thought about giving up my American citizenship and becoming a Brit to get my blood and my nationality lined up without the interference of a hyphen, but then something made me change my mind with a vengeance: Princess Diana’s funeral. I spent three stunned days staring at the TV screen and thinking My God, they’ve turned into us!...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:56 AM



Friday, April 22, 2011
      ( 9:35 PM ) The Rat  
MY PITCHES FOR FUTURE CHRISTIAN HOLIDAY ANIMATED FILMS, via WC.

A spinoff of Ash Wednesday, Lent celebrates the magical time of fasting. We follow an adorable collection of talking Omaha steaks who must wait 40 days until they can be delivered and eaten by the pious and lovable O'Malley family in Montana. But when their gift basket is accidentally shipped to a family of secular Jews on the Upper West Side of New York, the steaks must go on an adventure of a lifetime, trekking across the country to make it to Montana in time for Easter. There's the heroic T-bone (Clooney or Pitt—whoever is cheaper), the alluring fillet (Amy Adams), a cowardly porterhouse (Ray Romano) and a plain-spoken chicken fried steak (Larry the Cable Guy). Special appearance by Sir Ian McKellen as a wise cup of gravy...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:35 PM


      ( 6:58 PM ) The Rat  
A BETTER BOOK TITLES TAKE on Roald Dahl.

This one's also good.

# Posted by The Rat @ 6:58 PM


      ( 6:20 PM ) The Rat  
RUNNING FOR HER LIFE. From last week.

"The first time I heard her full story, I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" says Bobby Balfour, coach of Runners in Recovery. "In my 23 years of dealing with this stuff and being in recovery, I've never run across anybody as dedicated to getting their act together as Jackie."

Or, anybody who has come so far.

Talking to a Boston police officer recently, Balfour mentioned Kenyon. The officer remembered throwing a blanket on Kenyon when she was homeless sleeping in Copley Square. Upon learning that she is nearly four years sober and running the Boston Marathon, the officer had the same initial reaction as Balfour. "You've got to be kidding me," he said.

Kenyon understands why her story prompts disbelief. "When I start to tell people all the bad things that have happened to me, people look at me and say, 'What are you still doing alive?'" And there were times, the months and years when she was incarcerated or too ashamed to contact anyone she knew, that family and friends thought she was dead...


# Posted by The Rat @ 6:20 PM


      ( 5:39 PM ) The Rat  
NEW GEAR TO FIT FEMALE SOLDIERS.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:39 PM


      ( 12:50 PM ) The Rat  
GREEN CONSIDERED FEMININE, via the Onion.

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:50 PM


      ( 11:41 AM ) The Rat  
HOW TO BECOME A RUNNER IN THREE EASY STEPS. Slideshow sent to me by IKM. Hard to pick favorites, but I'm particularly fond of this one, this one, this one, and this one.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:41 AM


      ( 7:14 AM ) The Rat  
MARKING EARTH DAY INC. from 2004. And from last year, Top Five Dumbest Greenwashed 'Earth Day' Gimmicks (they could easily have made this list much longer).

For a more general guide to greenwashing, go here.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:14 AM


      ( 7:06 AM ) The Rat  
5 'UNSPOILED' LOCATIONS THAT ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY SPOILED. None of these were a surprise to me... plus they missed at least two less-obvious-but-at-least-as-depressing ones: Easter Island and the Galápagos. Ratty has long wanted to visit the latter in particular (there was an abortive plan to go with her father back in high school), but is less and less sure tourism of that kind is justifiable for non-specialists.

Btw if you're ever in a place like that (or in the tropics generally), one very small thing you can do is switch to a less-damaging sunscreen.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:06 AM


      ( 7:05 AM ) The Rat  
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
—John Muir

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:05 AM


      ( 6:59 AM ) The Rat  
HAPPINESS IS U-SHAPED. Obviously the view of a 29-year-old. Ratty always thinks of Poirot, glancing around in a restaurant in Death on the Nile (pub. when the author was 47):

A good sprinkling of young people—some vacant looking—some bored—some definitely unhappy. How absurd to call youth the time of happiness—youth, the time of greatest vulnerability!...

# Posted by The Rat @ 6:59 AM



Thursday, April 21, 2011
      ( 9:53 PM ) The Rat  
ACTIVITY MADE UP TO SELL ATHLETIC SHOES. This is so true. Especially of Nike.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:53 PM


      ( 5:50 PM ) The Rat  
RADIOLAB is pretty consistently good, but Ratty particularly recommends the first two parts of Desperately Seeking Symmetry (esp. the hilarious bit in "Mirror, Mirror" on chirality and the guy who became popular after parting his hair on the opposite side), and the second part of Help!. The latter is a bit flaky (look, they talked to freakin' Elizabeth Gilbert); still, the account of Tom Waits's account of his creative process is fun.

[H]e was talking about how every song has a distinctive identity that it comes into the world with, and it needs to be—taken in different ways. And he said, you know—there are songs that you have to sneak up on like you're hunting for a rare bird... and there are songs that come fully intact like a dream taken through a straw. And there are songs that you find little bits of like pieces of gum you find underneath the desk, and you scrape them off and you put them together and you make something out of it.

And there are songs, he said, that need to be bullied. And—where, he said he's been in the studio working on a song and the whole album is done, and this one song won't give itself over, and he said—you know, everyone's gotten used to seeing him do things like this—he'll march up and down the studio talking to the song, saying "The rest of the family is in the car! We're all going on vacation! You coming along or not? You've got 10 minutes or else you're getting left behind!..."


# Posted by The Rat @ 5:50 PM


      ( 1:08 PM ) The Rat  
"WE BOTH GOT REALLY HIGH AND WENT TO THE OPERA FOR MY BIRTHDAY, WHICH SEEMED LIKE A GREAT IDEA—UNTIL IT WASN'T." 15 Stories About Dating Potheads, which can hold their own against some of the stories I could come up with about dating alcoholics...

At the end of the year, he was voted Most Likely to Go to Jail. And now, he's in jail...

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:08 PM


      ( 1:07 PM ) The Rat  
"COLD'S LETTER REMINDS ME THAT WE HAVE VERY FEW REAL PROBLEMS THESE DAYS." Reader comment on this week's Savage Love.

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:07 PM


      ( 12:55 PM ) The Rat  
"GAYLE AND SOME OF THE MOMS IN THE AUDIENCE WERE TOTALLY FREAKED OUT BY THIS."

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:55 PM


      ( 12:07 PM ) The Rat  
PRO TIP: WHEN SOMETHING IS SUBHEADED "THE UNTOLD STORY OF...," never discount the possibility that it's because the story actually wasn't that interesting to begin with...

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:07 PM


      ( 9:00 AM ) The Rat  
THE FRIENDLIEST WHALES.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:00 AM


      ( 8:35 AM ) The Rat  
CHILDHOOD MUSIC LESSONS MAY PROVIDE LIFELONG BOOST IN BRAIN FUNCTION.

The high-level musicians who had studied the longest performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice. The high-level musicians had statistically significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain's ability to adapt to new information.

The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages and more dramatically deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The results "suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age," the study stated...


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:35 AM


      ( 8:34 AM ) The Rat  
BIOLOGICAL LINKS FOUND BETWEEN CHILDHOOD ABUSE AND ADOLESCENT DEPRESSION. Wait, does this mean there are adolescents who aren't depressed?!

Also see Repeated stress in pregnancy linked to children's behavior.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:34 AM



Wednesday, April 20, 2011
      ( 9:23 PM ) The Rat  
CLASSIC KIDS' GAMES LIKE KICKBALL DEEMED UNSAFE BY STATE IN EFFORT TO INCREASE SUMMER CAMP REGULATION, via WC.

Deborah Graham, 51, a mother of two from Harlem, said moving around was less harmful than playing video games all summer.

"You could develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome," she said...


# Posted by The Rat @ 9:23 PM


      ( 5:07 PM ) The Rat  
THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS, via xkcd.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:07 PM


      ( 11:27 AM ) The Rat  
THE CHEESEBURGER EGGSPLOSION, via WC.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:27 AM


      ( 10:51 AM ) The Rat  
"THE EMPEROR OF COLLEGE," via TFLN.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:51 AM


      ( 10:24 AM ) The Rat  
JOAN DIDION, "ON SELF-RESPECT."

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.

I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did not make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:24 AM


      ( 9:59 AM ) The Rat  
HUNGOVER OWLS, via ET of course.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:59 AM



Tuesday, April 19, 2011
      ( 10:37 PM ) The Rat  
BARBIE IRL. Yikes.

"I was at a friend's house and her mom's an artist so there were all these art supplies around," Slayen told TODAY.com. "She helped with the actual proportions."

Slayen brought the life-sized doll to the Today studios Monday to show off her handiwork. The Barbie stands about 6 feet tall with a 39" bust, 18" waist and 33" hips. She is made of wood, chicken wire and papier mache, and is dressed in a size 00 skirt that was a remnant from Slayen’s one-year bout with anorexia...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:37 PM


      ( 10:12 PM ) The Rat  
#IAMLEAVINGYOU, via Nerve.

An OKCupid study of almost a million of their members has found that frequent Twitter users have shorter relationships than those who don't microblog—around five to ten percent shorter. It'd be a conflation of correlation and causality to assume that Twitter actually shortens people's attention spans (a conflation I admittedly made in that headline—though to be fair, "Twitter usage correlates positively with relationship brevity" didn't really pop!)...

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:12 PM


      ( 8:25 PM ) The Rat  
"NO ONE EXPECTS THEIR DOG TO INSTANTANEOUSLY DEVELOP AN EXTREMELY SPECIFIC FEAR OF HORSE STATUES, AND I WAS UNPREPARED FOR HER REACTION..." The Simple Dog Goes for a Joy Ride, via Hyperbole and a Half. Overall, this isn't one of Brosh's best, but the best parts really do kind of rival the Benjy section in The Sound and the Fury...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:25 PM


      ( 2:16 PM ) The Rat  
"DID YOU KNOW IT WAS LEGAL TO RIDE YOUR HORSE WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK, AS LONG AS YOU DO IT IN MONTANA?"

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:16 PM


      ( 1:57 PM ) The Rat  
U.S. PASSPORT HOLDERS BY STATE, via IKM. "Where does your state fit in? Do you have a passport? Why do so many New Jersians have passports? So many questions."

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:57 PM


      ( 1:54 PM ) The Rat  
YIKES.

Boys, Mr. Finley affirmed, are being humiliated and tortured daily by the sight of T-shirts that say "Girl Power" or "Girls Rule." "The message is, you're not one of them, and you don't rule, and you don't have power"...

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:54 PM


      ( 1:48 PM ) The Rat  
HOW THE BILINGUAL BRAIN COPES WITH AGING.

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:48 PM


      ( 1:33 PM ) The Rat  
THERE ARE TIMES Ratty has her doubts as to whether her people have, in fact, contributed more to civilization than has just about any other race. And then there are times she doesn't. (Full article here. Unaccountably, they left pei dan sau yuk juk [thousand-year egg and pork porridge] out of the slideshow.)

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:33 PM


      ( 9:48 AM ) The Rat  
LAWSUIT: WOMEN BEAT HOMELESS MEN FOR SEX FETISH VIDEOS. Keep it classy, Florida!

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:48 AM


      ( 9:42 AM ) The Rat  
POLAR BEAR AND CUB AWAKE 'IN BUILDING SITE.'

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 AM



Monday, April 18, 2011
      ( 7:02 PM ) The Rat  
"FOR THE 23RD CONSECUTIVE EDITION, MASTURBATING TO A LITTER OF NEWBORN PUPPIES IS CLASSIFIED AS 'WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.'" Ethicists Update List of Acceptable Things to Masturbate to, via the Onion of course.

"This list recognizes our changing cultural attitudes and offers an ethical framework to address all aspects of the current masturbatory climate," said Harvard University philosophy professor Greg Hawkins, the publication's lead editor. "Now, when pleasuring themselves, Americans can determine whether to proceed with a clear conscience, or recoil in self-disgust."

Many changes reflect new realities posed by the Internet, which was barely mentioned in the last edition of the SVAP. For example, the revised guide declares it "permissible" to reach climax while perusing photos from the Facebook profile of a coworker or a spouse's friend; however, masturbating to online hidden-camera videos of a woman using a tanning bed is deemed "troubling, and unfit for self-gratification."

Other revisions simply take into account the passage of time, with guidelines now declaring it acceptable to "freely touch oneself" when thinking about or viewing images of Natalie Portman, a practice that had been explicitly prohibited under rules written in 1994, when the actress was 12 years old.

"And that goes for men and women both, because one of our top priorities this time was to eliminate all bias against homosexual impulses," Hawkins said of the 2011 edition, which for the first time ranks masturbating to a member of the same sex as "entirely ethical." "Arousing himself with thoughts of a naked Jon Hamm brushing past him in a locker room is every man's moral right."


# Posted by The Rat @ 7:02 PM


      ( 6:17 PM ) The Rat  
TERRIFIC SHORT PIECE ON DESIREE DAVILA, whose performance today was spellbinding even if she ultimately couldn't outsprint Caroline Kilel.

Also more here.

As her body's fuel gauge was flashing 'E' for empty, Desiree Davila began to wonder if the most prudent decision would be to cut her engine.

"The last 800 meters, my legs were fried," she said. "I started bargaining with myself. I thought, 'You've done enough. People are going to be happy.' But then I told myself, 'Don't give up, regroup, catch up.' I decided to give it one more go and throw down everything I had."

Just when Caroline Kilel appeared headed to an uncontested victory in the Boston Marathon, Davila surged back to the lead and rekindled hope among the thousands lining Boylston Street that a U.S. woman could win this race for the first time since 1985.

The surge left Davila drained and Kilel ultimately won the race by two seconds in two hours, 22 minutes, 36 seconds. But the gutsy runner-up effort by Davila orchestrated one of the most scintillating finishes in the storied history of the race, the type of performance that may have just stamped her as the new face of American women's marathoning heading toward 2012...


# Posted by The Rat @ 6:17 PM


      ( 6:14 PM ) The Rat  
A GUIDE TO GIVING BLOOD AND WINNING BACK THE WOMAN YOU LOVE. This made me laugh pretty hard.

I warmed to the idea of living inside another person's veins, transmitting glory like some magnificent virus, plus my ex-girlfriend and that doctor she married were working the event. If the note she left me before moving out was to be trusted, a willingness to face fears is a powerful trait in a spouse. So powerful, in fact, that it ruined a great relationship, and with any luck, it could ruin two.

# Posted by The Rat @ 6:14 PM


      ( 5:25 PM ) The Rat  
WHAT ARE THE HARDEST LANGUAGES TO LEARN? via WC.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:25 PM


      ( 2:17 PM ) The Rat  
"THIS SANDWICH IS LIKE A MARRIED COUPLE IN WHICH EACH HALF IS SOMEHOW NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE OTHER." The Wait Wait crew try Subway's new falafel footlong.

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:17 PM


      ( 11:57 AM ) The Rat  
THE 6 MOST RIDICULOUS THINGS EVER TAXED.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:57 AM


      ( 11:26 AM ) The Rat  
DAVILA AND HALL both in the lead! Nobody blink!

Edited to add: OK, somebody blinked. Still, amazing finishes (esp. in the women's race), with world records and PRs left and right. Amby Burfoot totally called it on the effects of today's tailwind.

A tailwind and possible fast times on Monday could also bring another wrinkle to the 2011 Boston Marathon. Boston is not rated a "record-quality course" by most of the statisticians who maintain road race stats. That's because Boston is both a point-to-point course (raising the possibility of a point-to-point tailwind over the entire route) and a net-downhill course. On paper, it should be possible to run very fast at Boston. Especially if you are lucky enough to be in great shape on a day when a strong tailwind propels you over the course.

In reality, this hasn't happened. Boston doesn't dominate the "best marathon times" list, not by a long shot. All the fastest marathon courses in recent years have been run on flat courses like London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Chicago, and similar layouts. (London is also a point-to-point course.) So there have been no big statistical battles over the legitimacy of Boston Marathon race times.

However, that could change if Monday's expected tailwind produces some super-fast times, particularly if one of the runners sets or comes close to a marathon world record performance. If that happens, the debate will reignite moments after the winner breaks the tape.


# Posted by The Rat @ 11:26 AM


      ( 11:20 AM ) The Rat  
INTERESTING ARTICLE on the competitive advantage that may be conferred on athletes after pregnancy. The attendant "abortion doping" (among former East German competitors) is sad but not really surprising.

One of the many physical transformation that occur in a woman's body to accommodate the new resident is an increase in blood volume, since there are suddenly two people in need of oxygenated blood. Once the baby is born, that extra blood hangs around. Extra red blood cells, as any athlete who has used EPO knows, means extra oxygen to the muscles...


# Posted by The Rat @ 11:20 AM


      ( 9:54 AM ) The Rat  
E-BOOK SALES GET THE JUMP ON PAPERBACKS FOR THE FIRST TIME.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:54 AM


      ( 9:27 AM ) The Rat  
NOT RARE ENOUGH, APPARENTLY...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:27 AM


      ( 9:04 AM ) The Rat  
FINALLY, A PERK TO LIVING IN NEW ENGLAND: CBS Boston is live-streaming coverage of the Boston Marathon today. If you're outside New England you'll be stuck with pay-per-view ($4.99).

RW is live-blogging here. Their cheat sheet on the men's field is here; on the women's field, here.

Mobility-impaired competitors are starting momentarily. Elite women begin at 9:32 AM, elite men at 10:00 AM. Having logged a respectable-for-a-novice 11-miler yesterday, I'll be enjoying all this exertion from a horizontal position, swathed in blankets, and with zero guilt. If I'd just planned this out better there would also be dancing girls.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:04 AM



Sunday, April 17, 2011
      ( 7:26 PM ) The Rat  
MENTAL DISORDER POSTERS, via WC.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:26 PM


      ( 5:54 PM ) The Rat  
CATCHIEST MATING SONGS SPREAD THROUGH WHALE POPULATIONS LIKE TOP 40 HITS.

Also from DiscoBlog, check out Polish mayonnaise exhibits non-Newtonian flow—which, in turn, reminds me of this Onion classic.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:54 PM


      ( 5:50 PM ) The Rat  
BARCODE SCANNER FOR ZEBRAS, via New Scientist by way of Wait Wait.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:50 PM


      ( 5:49 PM ) The Rat  
GUESTS EMERGE SHELL-SHOCKED FROM RICH PEOPLE'S WEDDING. Great last line!

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:49 PM


      ( 5:40 PM ) The Rat  
Thanks to Meal Snap, you can now take a picture of your lunch, and get quantifiable, numeric proof that the meal you are about to eat is going to kill you. This amazing app is here to prevent you and those around you from making terrible food decisions, and to make you the most annoying, neurotic person at the dinner table. You know, actually—one of the producers at Wait Wait got this on his iPhone, and he pointed at me and he took my picture, and he submitted it. And it took it about ten minutes of, like, thinking... and then it finally said: "...Not food."
—Peter Sagal, this week's Wait Wait

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:40 PM


      ( 11:01 AM ) The Rat  
"LADIES, IT IS NOT THE SIZE NOR THE WRINKLES THAT ARE IMPORTANT. ACCESS IS IMPORTANT." Reader comment on this.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:01 AM


      ( 10:45 AM ) The Rat  
IT'S NATIONAL CHEESEBALL DAY!

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:45 AM


      ( 9:37 AM ) The Rat  
THE MOTHER OF ALL FRAPES, via Failbook.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:37 AM



Saturday, April 16, 2011
      ( 10:32 PM ) The Rat  
HANDY GIZMO for checking out whether any of your neighbors (or countrymen, etc.—lots of parameters for searching) are running Boston on Monday.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:32 PM


      ( 11:34 AM ) The Rat  
But as wide-ranging as the tone and characters were, there was a common thread—the beating heart of the world Berkeley created, the thing that spoke to me as a boy and still does to this very day.

It's the thing that led Binkley to wake his father up in the middle of the night.

It's the thing that drove Steve Dallas to drink.

It's the thing that gripped Milo when he read the headlines of the day, the thing that sat like an unwelcome guest between Bobbi Harlow and Cutter John, the thing that made the otherwise autistic Oliver question the morality of his hacking escapades, the thing that brought Portnoy to his knees when he turned six years old, and unquestionably the thing that permeated practically every moment of Opus's life.

Sure, said Berkeley, you can shove The Thing in a closet and pretend it's not there, but the world is dangerous, people are small-minded and cruel, love is rare, tragedy is everywhere, first kisses always go wrong, success is an illusion, mothers abandon their children... and above all, wishes don't come true.

Anxiety, my friends.

Bloom County was soaking in the stuff. It didn't matter if Berkeley drew them young or old, human or penguin. Sooner or later, every character was in a state of neurotic fear...

—Craig Mazin's introduction to Bloom County, The Complete Library, Volume Four: 1986-1987

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:34 AM


      ( 11:30 AM ) The Rat  
An event with the word shuffle, trot, or romp in its name is very likely to be accommodating to newbies, costumed runners, and the occasional or not-so-serious runner. This is also true of races with seasonal words like turkey, Santa, or jingle bells. Conversely, a race with the words mountain, pain, hell, or widowmaker is likely to be hard-core.
"The Racer's Field Manual"

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:30 AM



Friday, April 15, 2011
      ( 2:17 PM ) The Rat  
CHOOSE YOUR VICTIMS WISELY. Ha. Link via Josh Clark.

Phillips finds that a defendant is six times more likely to receive the death penalty if the victim is of the highest social status than if they're of the lowest social status. According to the study, if a victim is of the majority racial population, married or widowed, holds a college degree, and has a clean criminal record, his or her social status may increase the chances that the death penalty is sought and imposed in a case...

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:17 PM


      ( 2:14 PM ) The Rat  
A woman I know who modeled nude for an art class gave me some good advice: "When posing, drape something over one breast, because a breast on its own often looks better than a pair." It's only when you see breasts together and notice that they don't match—one is perkier or has a more symmetrical nipple—that you start to think other women's breasts match better and that maybe you need implants and... you see where I'm going with this.
Self, May 2011

# Posted by The Rat @ 2:14 PM


      ( 1:45 PM ) The Rat  
GREAT HEADLINE.

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:45 PM


      ( 1:37 PM ) The Rat  
"WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU PUT THREE WORLD-FAMOUS CONDUCTORS IN A LIFT?" I was kind of hoping the answer was going to be "a reality show"... Maestros: Pappano, Jurowski, Gardner, via the ROH blog.

One asks of another: 'do you have any tips on Mahler's
Das klagende Lied? 'It all depends on which choirs you've got,' is the reply. 'What's it like to conduct?,' says the third.

This improbable, but rather wonderful, scenario was played out last night, here in the Opera House, en route to the Linbury Theatre where the English National Opera's Edward Gardner, Glyndebourne's Vladimir Jurowski and The Royal Opera House's Antonio Pappano prepared to discuss the daily life of the modern-day conductor. Veteran broadcaster Sir John Tusa lead the questions as part of an Insight event...


# Posted by The Rat @ 1:37 PM


      ( 12:47 PM ) The Rat  
YIKES. The Wire's David Simon is this week's "Not My Job" guest! I love both The Wire and Wait Wait, but seems like the smug liberal quotient could well be so high this week as to make the auditorium actually collapse in upon itself.

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:47 PM


      ( 11:57 AM ) The Rat  
"HE COVETS. THAT IS HIS NATURE." Runner's World asked on their Fbk page this morning, "The best thing about running is—." Among my favorite responses thus far, in no particular order:

—You can run practically naked; people already think runners are weird
—the world around you becomes your playground
—The cops being unable to keep up
—being done
—orgasm :)
—ppl don't talk to you.


The "playground" line resonates a lot for me: One of the immediate benefits I noticed, back when I did yoga, was that it made a discernible difference to how I felt, both physically and psychologically, to actually be aware of my connection to the ground—and as has been said, after all, running is meditating for people who can't sit still. I've been feeling much more aware of distances in recent months (far more so than I could ever be on a treadmill, even if they were more accurately calibrated than they are)—at the same time as distances have begun shrinking: Five miles, formerly a long run, is now a medium-length run that I can (sometimes) eke out without a lot of psyching up in advance. The next town over seems less far away.

All of which said, one of my favorite things about running (not the favorite, but up there) is something I'm not sure has been mentioned, even though RW's post has already garnered 900+ responses in just a few hours: Running helps me keep my eyes on my own paper.

There was a period in or shortly after college when I used to like asking people what their favorite was of the Deadly Sins (and/or which they struggled with most); two respondents (one male, one female), I remember, cited Envy. It was, of course, much more self-flattering to claim that one struggled most with Lust (for the purposes of this survey, Pride didn't count, since everybody has THAT problem...); the two who named Envy were unusually honest—since Envy is, I would imagine, the Deadly Sin most of us would least like to cop to. (I would so much rather identify with Inferno XXVI than with Terrace 2 of the Purgatorio, I can't even tell you.)

Anyway, if there'd been a short way to express this on the RW Wall, I might have written that one of the things I love most about running is its, for lack of a better word, equitableness. Yes, of course there are people who can't run at all, and I do feel grateful to be in sufficiently good health that I can—and to have been born to parents who viewed exercise as an irreplaceable part of life.* That said, for the vast majority of us, who can run—once you're out there, it really is just you and the trail. Yes, of course there will always be somebody (in my case, quite a lot of somebodies!) faster than you. But, except among the elites**, distance running isn't a competition against anyone but yourself. No matter how much money you have, you can't pay someone to have done it for you. And whether you're out there or not, on any given day, has little to do with whether you had a happy childhood or an unhappy one, whether you grew up with a lot of privileges or with none***, whether you've been lucky or unlucky in life generally. (I always think of that terrific line in Sabbath's Theater: "...she was still drinking herself to death for her two unchallengeable reasons: because of all that had not happened and because of all that had.")

When you're exposed as a child to trauma or lack of one kind of another (or even of more than one kind, for us double-dippers), one of the hardest things about it is the feeling that you aren't getting to have the things most other kids seem to have—and, indeed, that most other kids seem to take for granted. (This is perhaps especially the case if you grew up in a situation that most people have never heard of, as in my case, or that other people may not know about—as opposed to one that people know about and at least try to sympathize with, e.g., severe illness or addiction in the family. It can also be more of a problem, I think, when you're "grown up"—when it's in adult life that the real handicaps that can come with an irregular childhood start actually showing up and affecting your life—than it was during childhood itself.) I hate to invoke the cliche, but running seems to make it easier for me to both believe and understand that "each of us has a different journey." And I hope each day that I can learn to live more like I run: with less envy and more heart. In this sense, at least, I feel like I know what the respondent meant whose response to RW was: "having my alone time with god" (5 "Like"s).

*Was recently telling IKM about a blurb I read in Reader's Digest (...yeah, I said it) ca. perhaps age 7 or 8. Um, I'd like to believe this wouldn't have made such an impression on me if I'd read it at a later age, but you never know... Anyway, it was one of those anecdote-lets or bits of hoary wisdom RD always loved to run in between longer pieces, and involved someone coming upon an obviously affluent woman accompanied by her son, who's being pushed in a wheelchair. "Can't your poor little boy walk?" the onlooker exclaims sympathetically. "Well, of course he can," huffs the rich lady, "—but thank goodness he doesn't have to!" Yes, I really have thought back to that, in all these decades since, whenever I've walked to save a cab fare (which has been often).

**And sometimes not even among the elites: "We both give a lot of talks, to all kinds of groups, all over the country," Alberto Salazar tells John Brant in Duel in the Sun. "Sooner or later, someone always asks about the '82 Boston. I don't mind—I like talking about it, and so does Dick. That's because we never discuss the race in terms of running a 2:08 or beating the other guy. It took us both a long, long time, but we finally realized that that's not what the marathon is really about. It's not what it's about at all." Or cf. ultrarunner Dean Karnazes: "Covering 100 miles on foot [in the Western States] was more than a lesson in survival, it was an education on the grace of living."

***Of course, those who really are growing up without privileges can use help in this department—for more info, check out groups like Soles4Souls and Sports Gift.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:57 AM


      ( 10:46 AM ) The Rat  
A VICTORY FOR BOOBIES, arguably.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:46 AM


      ( 8:50 AM ) The Rat  
MONTANA, IDAHO WOLVES DELISTED BY CONGRESS. Money quote, Sen. Jon Tester (D.): "And it's what's right for the wolves themselves."

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:50 AM


      ( 8:45 AM ) The Rat  
John. First time we met, what was your first thought?
Jane. You tell me.
John. I thought... I thought you looked like Christmas morning. I don't know how else to say it.
Jane. And why are you telling me this now?
John. Guess in the end you start thinking about the beginning.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:45 AM



Thursday, April 14, 2011
      ( 3:24 PM ) The Rat  
DO TEXTING AND FACEBOOK CHATTING EASE THE WAY TO SEX? Hmm. (From January.)

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:24 PM


      ( 12:37 PM ) The Rat  
FACEBOOK ENVY. Heh!

The study had nothing to do with Facebook, but it quickly became associated with the coinage "Facebook envy," largely because the lead researcher, then a doctoral student in psychology, reportedly got the idea from watching his friends' interactions with the social network.

The more time they spent clicking through joyful announcements and photos depicting happy events, the worse they felt about their own lives.

It's not hard to see how Facebook might chip away at a person's self-esteem. Though celebrated—breathlessly revered, in fact—as a way to bring people together, anyone who's poked around the site for more then 10 minutes knows it's also the ultimate performance space. Like holiday newsletters in which families pay unsubtle homage to their own achievements—"Dakota won 57 taekwondo trophies!" "Sophie took summer courses in cheese making!" "Bob passed an impressive kidney stone!"—Facebook reminds us that there can be a fine line between sharing and gloating.

Sure, some of us manage to leave our egos out of it, limiting our posts to YouTube videos of dogs riding skateboards or birthday wishes to friends whose birthdays we'd be totally unaware of if Facebook didn't automatically remind us. Most of us, though, are just hungry for admiration. We post videos from family outings in the hope that people will notice what a functional, loving and attractive clan we are. We chime in with faux self-deprecating quips about the supposedly quotidian details of our lives: "Note to self: When skiing double black diamond runs, do not simultaneously attempt stock transaction over cellphone. Reception is dicey!"


# Posted by The Rat @ 12:37 PM


      ( 12:22 PM ) The Rat  
WILL 4 KATE 4 EVA and other designer royal-wedding plates, by KK Outlet.

Also check out the Crown Jewels Condoms of Distinction ("not suitable for contraception or protection against STDs").

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:22 PM


      ( 10:49 AM ) The Rat  
HUNGRY JUDGES DISPENSE ROUGH JUSTICE, via Josh Clark. Unsurprising, surely, to anyone who's ever been required to evaluate another person or their performance—and incidentally, this is a significant part of why I hate grading so much (my guess is that many/most INFJs do as well, and for the same reason). Also see Radiolab's excellent episode on Choice.

Jonathan Levav of Columbia Business School in New York and his colleagues analyzed 1,112 parole hearings for inmates of four Israeli prisons, made by eight judges over a ten-month period.

Judges' days were divided into three sessions broken by two meal breaks—a morning snack and lunch. Judges decided when to break, but had no control over the ordering of cases, which was determined by when a prisoner's attorney arrived.

At the beginning of a session, a prisoner had a 65% chance of being paroled, the authors found. This declined to almost zero by the end of a session, and leaped back to 65% after a break.

The severity of the crime, the time served in prison, any previous incarcerations, and the availability of rehabilitation programs were not enough to explain the effect on the probability of parole, and the nationality or sex of a prisoner made no difference. The findings are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:49 AM


      ( 9:53 AM ) The Rat  
RATTY IS FINDING THE "ONE DAY YOU WILL" CAMPAIGN for Glenfiddich hilarious. (Another ad from the series here.) Exactly the same operating principle as in the beer ads featuring attractive women way out of the league of the men to whom said beer is being marketed—just with the extra snob element of its being single-malt scotch and not, you know, Bud or something.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:53 AM


      ( 8:54 AM ) The Rat  
IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT THESE TWO BUSINESSES WOULD SOMEDAY END UP NEXT TO EACH OTHER, via WC.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:54 AM



Wednesday, April 13, 2011
      ( 10:55 PM ) The Rat  
IS SUGAR TOXIC? via WC. Don't miss the graphics!

Most of the researchers studying this insulin/cancer link seem concerned primarily with finding a drug that might work to suppress insulin signaling in incipient cancer cells and so, they hope, inhibit or prevent their growth entirely. Many of the experts writing about the insulin/cancer link from a public health perspective—as in the 2007 report from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research—work from the assumption that chronically elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance are both caused by being fat or by getting fatter. They recommend, as the 2007 report did, that we should all work to be lean and more physically active, and that in turn will help us prevent cancer.

But some researchers will make the case, as Cantley and Thompson do, that if something other than just being fatter is causing insulin resistance to begin with, that's quite likely the dietary cause of many cancers. If it's sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer—some cancers, at least—radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. For just this reason, neither of these men will eat sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, if they can avoid it.

"I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can," Thompson told me, "because I believe ultimately it's something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer." Cantley put it this way: "Sugar scares me."

Sugar scares me too, obviously. I'd like to eat it in moderation. I'd certainly like my two sons to be able to eat it in moderation, to not overconsume it, but I don't actually know what that means, and I've been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that's one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can't see—fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:55 PM


      ( 9:26 PM ) The Rat  
TWIN LESSONS, from the WSJ.

Once I became a dad, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture. I saw them turning parenthood into a chore—shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn't enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents' main rationale is that their effort is an investment in their children's future; they're sacrificing now to turn their kids into healthy, smart, successful, well-adjusted adults. But according to decades of twin research, their rationale is just, well, wrong. High-strung parenting isn't dangerous, but it does make being a parent a lot more work and less fun than it has to be.

The obvious lesson to draw is that parents should lighten up. I call it "Serenity Parenting": Parents need the serenity to accept the things they cannot change, the courage to change the things they can, and (thank you twin research) the wisdom to know the difference. Focus on enjoying your journey with your child, instead of trying to control his destination. Accept that your child’s future depends mostly on him, not your sacrifices. Realize that the point of discipline is to make your kid treat the people around him decently—not to mold him into a better adult. I can’t say that I completely convinced my wife on any of these points, but we made reasonable compromises—and we found that raising twins was a lot of fun.

I freely admit there are some sacrifices that parents can't responsibly avoid. Someone had to feed our infant twins in the middle of the night, and that someone was me. The key point to keep in mind is that twin research focuses on vaguely normal families in the First World. It doesn't claim that kids would do equally well if they were raised by wolves or abandoned in Haiti. But look on the bright side: If you are a vaguely normal family in the First World, the science of nature and nurture shows that you can lighten up a lot without hurting your kids...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:26 PM


      ( 8:14 PM ) The Rat  
READER COMMENT on this story about Ryan Hall and Boston (only five more days!):

Bet he could take a minute off his time if he shaved his head.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:14 PM


      ( 5:43 PM ) The Rat  
'STAYIN' ALIVE' VS. 'ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST.' Heard about this via Radiolab, of course.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:43 PM


      ( 5:25 PM ) The Rat  
ALL HAIL THE IRON NUN! 44 Ironman triathlons since 1999. I have no words.

RW
. Tell us about how you started running, that fateful run on the beach.

MB. The priest that was going to give a workshop the following morning was just talking to us at a roundtable the night before, and all of the sudden he started expounding on the benefits of running and how it harmonized mind, body, and soul. When he got to that point I thought "well, that sounds good" because I think holistically anyway in compartments. I said "I'm the type of person that needs a goal. I can't just get out there and run for no good reason." And he said "well, there are two eddies out there [on the beach]. You can run between them." I thought "I've been doing that all the time." I'd walked, but what's the difference?

When it got dark, I slipped on a hand-me-down pair of thin-soled tennis shoes and some shorts and did that little stint and as I was coming in the side door, he (the priest) was present and he said "what did you do? Where have you been?" I said "oh, out running where you said." He said "oh, you did. How long did it take you?" I said "just about five minutes." I was about a half a mile. He said "you've got to keep doing this. And you might not feel the 'runner's high' until five weeks later, or two months later." I still don't know what the runner's high is. [Laughs.] I know what the lows are, for sure.

RW. Why do you think running caught on with you, though?

MB. Because it was so freeing. And I love being out in nature anyway. It was just like a new prayer stance, running along and praising God's nature, and putting the people that flashed in my mind and my heart up to God for his assistance. It's wonderful.

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:25 PM


      ( 5:12 PM ) The Rat  
STATE OF PLAY, via WC. Yikes.

Studies show that kids in the tween bracket, bang in the middle of KidZania's target audience, are spending substantially less time engaged in free and unstructured play. The amount of time that 9- to 12-year-olds spend doing creative play has declined by 94 percent in a decade, according to data gathered by Sandra L. Hofferth, University of Maryland, for a study about changes in how children spend their time.

At KidZania, there is little that's pretend, and the play revolves around following instructions from the adult "Zupervisors." It is not make-believe but real, and it is not pretend, but branded. Dr. Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, told me that "child-driven, hands-on creative play is the foundation of learning, creativity, constructive problem-solving. When adults drive children's play, those benefits are removed"...

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:12 PM


      ( 11:25 AM ) The Rat  
PULP COVERS. Tags conveniently available for "Temptress," "Babes," and "Helpless Women."

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:25 AM


      ( 11:20 AM ) The Rat  
SKIN BLEACHING A GROWING PROBLEM IN JAMAICAN SLUMS. "Felicia James, a 20-year-old resident of the Matthews Lane slum, said skin bleaching just makes her feel special, like she's walking around in a spotlight."

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:20 AM


      ( 10:47 AM ) The Rat  
"VINCENT VAN GOGH WAS AN OPERA WAITING TO HAPPEN."

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:47 AM


      ( 10:32 AM ) The Rat  
WORLD'S HOTTEST CHILI REQUIRES PROTECTIVE GEAR. Here's the full Scoville scale.

Registering a mighty 1,463,700 Scoville heat units, the Butch Taylor easily eclipses the Naga Viper's score of 1,250,000. By comparison, jalapenos measure below 5,000 and Tabasco, 30,000...

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:32 AM


      ( 10:22 AM ) The Rat  
IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC A PEN STEALER? OK, the video clip on this really is funny.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:22 AM


      ( 9:59 AM ) The Rat  
JUST LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS IN THIS kind of makes my head hurt.

A fanatical fundraising runner has become the first person to complete a marathon inside a capsule of the London Eye.

Noel Bresland ran 26 miles non-stop on a treadmill, as part of his attempt to complete 223 marathons in 10 years. He set himself the challenge following the death of his nephew, Ethan, who was born prematurely weighing just 1lb 10oz...


# Posted by The Rat @ 9:59 AM


      ( 9:15 AM ) The Rat  
EGGPLANT, 1993. What, no beets?

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:15 AM



Tuesday, April 12, 2011
      ( 10:31 PM ) The Rat  
'EINSTEIN'S PEDOMETER' APP MEASURES HOW SPECIAL RELATIVITY AFFECTS YOUR DAILY ACTIVITY.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:31 PM


      ( 10:12 PM ) The Rat  
WORLD'S SMALLEST WEDDING RINGS: INTERLOCKING RINGS OF DNA VISIBLE THROUGH SCANNING FORCE MICROSCOPE.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:12 PM


      ( 10:06 PM ) The Rat  
YET MORE STUFF to blame on your mom!

[R]esearch conducted at the University of Minnesota and Georgetown University suggests that a mother's nutritional or psychological stress during pregnancy and lactation may create a signature on her child's genes that put the child at increased risk for obesity later in life, especially if the child is female...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:06 PM


      ( 9:42 PM ) The Rat  
BLOOD BUDDIES. Fun RadioLab short on Gerald Wilkinson's work on reciprocal altruism among vampire bats.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 PM


      ( 9:31 PM ) The Rat  
"EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR PROTESTOR—FROM THE FACT THAT HE SO ACCEPTED BEING TEAR-GASSED THAT HE BROUGHT HIS OWN MASK, TO HIS BATTLE-CORDUROYS, TO HIS PLAIN RED FLAG APPARENTLY PROCLAIMING HIS LOYALTY TO BERSERKER BLOOD RAGE—TESTIFIES THAT HE HAS SIMPLY RUN OUT OF FUCKS TO GIVE." The 8 Most Ridiculously Badass Protestors Ever Photographed, via (of course) Cracked.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:31 PM


      ( 9:07 PM ) The Rat  
WIN DIANA DAMRAU!* Wouldn't it be more to the point to bid on an hour's lesson with her teacher...?

And you thought they were just a bunch of corporate sh1tbuckets. EMI show their human side with a an Ebay auction which benefits an incredibly good cause—Red Cross Japan Relief. A full 100% of proceeds will be passed to the charity.

On offer are a collection of very special items donated by EMI and their artists, ranging from Katy Perry's cupcake-shaped trampoline (condition—used) to Daft Punk's rare Ferrari (bidding starts at £15,530).

Of more interest to classical fans might be an hour's private singing lesson with the goddess of the very high C's, Diana Damrau...


# Posted by The Rat @ 9:07 PM


      ( 9:01 PM ) The Rat  
"TRY THROWING A BALL, OR A SMALL OBJECT, AT HIM. IT'S A GREAT EXCUSE TO START A CONVERSATION, LIKE 'HEY, WHERE DID THAT BALL COME FROM?'" How to Get a Guy to Notice You While You're Having Sex With Him, via the Onion.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:01 PM


      ( 9:42 AM ) The Rat  
SWEDISH FLAMINGOES MASSACRED IN FRENZIED ANTEATER ATTACK.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 AM


      ( 8:27 AM ) The Rat  
SENSELESS MURDER, CRIMINOLOGIST BLAMES FORCED PIANO PRACTICE IN CHILDHOOD. Heh!

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:27 AM



Monday, April 11, 2011
      ( 11:59 PM ) The Rat  
THE GIFT OF TIGER WOODS. Really nice column, whether or not you watched the Masters this year. (Read the whole thing.)

I am supposed to think that he's a poor role model—that he's an adulterer, that he's selfish, that he's a phony, that he behaves badly on golf courses, that he's someone I wouldn't want my son to emulate some day. That's horses---. I want my son to know that people screw up, that nobody is perfect, that you can learn from your foibles. I want my son to watch "The Natural" someday, hear Roy Hobbs say, "Some mistakes you never stop paying for," and know that it's not just words in a movie. I want my son to know that you haven't lived until you've fought back, that you haven't won until you've lost, that you can't understand what it's like to relish something until you've suffered, too. I want him to understand that it's the 21st century, that we sit around picking our heroes apart all day, that we expect them to be superhuman at all times, that we get pissed off when they aren't, that it's hypocritical if you really think about it.

I want my son to know that great athletes are meant to be appreciated, not emulated. He can steal Tiger's fist pump without wanting to become him. He can play Tiger's video game without feeling like Tiger is his best friend. He can imitate Tiger's swing without getting the urge to bed every cocktail waitress and model he meets. We should have learned by now that athletes aren't role models in the traditional sense—they exist to entertain us and inspire us, and that's really it.

If my son needs a role model, and he will, that person should be me. I don't need Tiger to teach my child how to behave. I need him to teach my son that it's fun to watch golf. Yesterday was the first lesson. There was a putt, and a roar, and a fist pump, and then my son screaming "Again!" Only Tiger Woods could have made it happen. It's a gift.


# Posted by The Rat @ 11:59 PM


      ( 5:40 PM ) The Rat  
PEOPLE CONTROL THOUGHTS BETTER WHEN THEY SEE THEIR BRAIN ACTIVITY. Infinite loop!

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:40 PM


      ( 12:08 PM ) The Rat  
THAT NOISY WOODPECKER HAD AN ANIMATED SECRET.

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:08 PM


      ( 10:46 AM ) The Rat  
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT happy people are cheap dates! (Study is from late 2007.)

The survey contrasted cost-free activities, such as walking and snoozing, with expensive ones like overseas holidays. It asked how frequently they might purchase 'staying in treats'—like a bottle of wine—and how often they bought themselves items like shoes, mobile phones and DVDs.

The research found that happy people—whether lottery jackpot winners or not—liked long baths, going swimming, playing games and enjoying their hobby. Those who described themselves as less happy didn't choose the cost-free indulgences. They rewarded themselves with CDs, cheap DVDs and inexpensive meals out instead...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:46 AM


      ( 10:22 AM ) The Rat  
HOW MUCH IS A DRAGON WORTH? This is made of awesome.

Dragons are long and narrow, so we can safely assume that Smaug can curl comfortably up on a treasure mound with same diameter as his body length—19.2 feet.

How high is the mound? Well, at one point in
The Hobbit, Bilbo climbs up and over the mound, and we know that Hobbits are approximately three feet tall. Assuming the mound is twice the height of Bilbo, we can say that the mound has a height of approximately 6 feet—like a six foot tall man climbing over a 12 foot mound of coins; substantial but not insurmountable.

To keep the math relatively simple and to avoid complications like integrating the partial volume of a sphere, we can approximate Smaug's bed of gold and silver to be a cone, with a radius of 9.6 feet (1/2 the diameter) and a height of 7 feet (assuming the weight of the dragon will smush down the point of the cone by about a foot).

Now we can calculate the volume of Smaug's treasure mound:

V= 1/3 π r2 h = 1/3 * π * 9.62 * 7 = 675.6 cubic feet

But, obviously, the mound isn't solid gold and silver. We know it has a "great two-handled cups" in it—one of which Bilbo steals—and probably human remains, not to mention the air space between the coins. Let's assume that the mound is 30% air and bones...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:22 AM


      ( 10:18 AM ) The Rat  
DEER, GOOSE MAKE UNLIKELY PAIR IN BUFFALO CEMETERY. The goose-in-an-urn pics are alone worth clicking through for.

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:18 AM


      ( 8:08 AM ) The Rat  
SO APPARENTLY THE PHRASE 'NSFW' also applies if you're a parliament member. Well, in Indonesia it does.

A member of parliament from an Islamic party which promoted anti-pornography legislation has resigned after being caught watching porn in parliament...


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:08 AM



Sunday, April 10, 2011
      ( 11:56 PM ) The Rat  
"I CAN'T DO MANY CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF LONG RUNNING, AS I DID IN MY MID-70S, BUT..." A Brief Chat with Ed Whitlock, who ran 3:25:43 at the Rotterdam Marathon today, shattering the 3:39:18 world record for marathoners in the 80-84 (!) age group.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:56 PM


      ( 9:58 PM ) The Rat  
ELEVATION PROFILE for the Western States 100. For the wacky story of its origin, go here.

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:58 PM


      ( 9:42 PM ) The Rat  
JUAN DIEGO FLÓREZ IS A DAD! And apparently one with impressive powers of concentration.

Flórez helped two midwives in the birth of his son, Leandro Flórez, at 12:25 p.m. Saturday. The tenor had stayed up all night with his wife, Julia, after she went into labor at their rented apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Flórez held his new son for a minute before rushing to the nearby Metropolitan Opera, where the 38-year-old Peruvian sang the tenor lead in Rossini's comic opera "Le Comte Ory" starting at 1 p.m. The show was broadcast across the world in movie theaters and the radio...


# Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 PM


      ( 7:59 PM ) The Rat  
DR. MIX-A-LOT, PH.D., via Failbook.

Also see "Thanks, mom!" And: Ow.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:59 PM


      ( 7:40 PM ) The Rat  
THIS is why you don't write down your secrets, people! (Or at the very least, don't leave them in your purse!) Sheesh.

I'm also still trying to guess whether this one was sent in by a man or a woman.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:40 PM


      ( 7:37 PM ) The Rat  
"I AM AN ANGRY BLACK MAN!" Perky Canada Has Own Government, Laws, ibid.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:37 PM


      ( 12:16 PM ) The Rat  
ZIP-LINING DAY TRIP TO FINALLY SAVE MARRIAGE, via the Onion. Ouch.

First conceived after a vicious, 15-minute-long fight over who would walk their dog—a golden retriever purchased by the Byers in 2008 as a desperate attempt to fill the void between them—the Saturday trip will begin with a leisurely drive up I-93, two hours on the open road that will reportedly erase in one fell swoop the deepening communication gap that has plagued their relationship for years.

Including gas, meals, and admission fees, the zip-lining trip will cost the couple $500 they had put aside for much-needed repairs to their home, and take up time during which Gina had hoped to work on her resumé so she can eventually leave the dead-end job that has become the second-most miserable thing in her life.

"There's one section where you start on the edge of a cliff and it's 150 feet to the other side—can you believe that?" Dale said as if expecting a half-minute, high-altitude rush to suppress his almost unbearable desire to sabotage his marriage by having an affair. "And the deal they've got is fantastic, considering your ticket gets you a full day of zip-lining plus unlimited access to their rope bridges."

The couple's overwhelming trust issues, disagreement over whether to have children, tendency to criticize each other's appearance, and opposing views on whether Gina's ailing parents should move in with them or reside in a nursing home will reportedly be erased by a mechanism consisting of nothing more than a cable, a slope, and a pulley...

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:16 PM


      ( 1:24 AM ) The Rat  
OPPONENTS OF GUN-FREE ZONES AT UNIVERSITIES FIND UNLIKELY HERO IN NEVADA WOMAN, via JM.

Amanda Collins, 25, is a wife and new mom, and a concealed weapon permit holder for years. At her father's law office in Reno, she showed us the 9-mm Glock she carries for her safety.

"It's got a pretty standard magazine," she said, "and night sights so you can see in the dark when you're aiming."

However, Collins couldn't aim her gun at the serial rapist who attacked her at the University of Nevada at Reno, where she was a student. That's because, like most public colleges outside of Utah and Colorado, UNR is a "gun free" zone. The rule required her to leave her gun at home, leaving her defenseless the one time she needed its protection most.

In October of 2007, while walking to her car after a night class, Collins was grabbed from behind in a university parking garage less than 300 yards from a campus police office. The school's "gun-free" designation meant nothing to James Biela, a serial rapist with a gun of his own, who saw Collins as an easy target. "He put a firearm to my temple," she recounted, "clocked off the safety, and told me not to say anything, before he raped me"...

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:24 AM



Saturday, April 09, 2011
      ( 10:03 PM ) The Rat  
HEY, LOOK—ANNOYING PEOPLE APPARENTLY LIVE LONGER!

"Most people who live to an old age do so not because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or lung disease; rather, the long-lived have mostly avoided serious ailments altogether," according to Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, in their recent book, "The Longevity Project."

"The best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness—the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well organized person," according to the two professors (he at the University of California—Riverside, and she at La Sierra University). "Conscientiousness... also turned out to be the best personality predictor of long life when measured in adulthood."

Their book chronicles research begun in 1921 by Lewis Terman, a Stanford University psychologist who selected 1,500 bright and generally high performing children and began amassing detailed information about their personal histories, health, activities, beliefs, attitudes, families, and other variables.

Over the next eight decades, other academics maintained the Terman Project and assembled exhaustive details on all facets of the original subjects' later lives. It is this unique depth of detail that has permitted Friedman and Martin to reach what they feel are scientifically sound conclusions about what it takes to live a long life...


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:03 PM


      ( 8:42 PM ) The Rat  
WOMAN RUNS TO COPE WITH GRIEF, NOW HEADED FOR BOSTON MARATHON. Adding this to the fund of stories I've found already of people running to cope with bereavement, loss, etc. (That last link, Steve Friedman's article on Zola Budd, remains one of my favorite shorter reads of all time, on any subject.) Girlfriends and wives of deployed military/paramilitary men often find that a regular exercise program helps give them a sense of control at a time when they feel otherwise helpless (this was definitely the case for me back in '04-'05, when my then-boyfriend was stationed in Afghanistan). And there is, of course, plenty of material out there on yoga's effects on PTSD among combat veterans (here, for instance)—but it turns out that aerobic exercise may also help ease childhood PTSD. There are so many races out there to raise "awareness" about child abuse; I'm a little surprised there aren't more organized efforts to encourage abuse survivors themselves to explore this form of healing. Is it just because running tends to be a more solitary activity?

One last link, from a 2009 WaPo: When Drugs and Therapy Didn't Cure Depression, Woman Finds That Running Did.

Much of what came next is a blur. Mostly, I don't dare think about it. The reckless behavior—little things such as balancing in high places, playing chicken with trains and cars, and careless use of drugs—grew more serious, more intentionally destructive and was accompanied by physical abuse, self-inflicted and from others. There were many close calls. There were ambulance rides and quiet talks from well-meaning police officers. There was family support, and more therapy, and medication off and on.

But what started me back on the path to health, what I remember the most vividly, were long, quiet walks, then runs, often in the woods. I found it helped clear my thoughts and made me feel more in control. I still hadn't put together how dramatically it was affecting my brain chemistry.

Slowly, I began the climb back. I re-enrolled in school and got a degree. I got married. I weaned myself off all the depression medication, a slow and often painful process. I sought to create a support system. People were there for me, but sporadically, much as they had been throughout my life. And their support didn't always help despite their good intentions. Depression is an isolating disease. But I found that when I ran, I could be my own support system...


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:42 PM


      ( 8:22 PM ) The Rat  
With the cheesecake stacked on top of the pizza, I started running again, eating as I went. Over the years I'd perfected the craft of eating on the fly. I balanced the box of pizza and cheesecake in one hand and ate with the other. It was a good upper-body workout...
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:22 PM


      ( 3:07 PM ) The Rat  
HEARING A HEARTBEAT HAS THE SAME EFFECT AS LOOKING EACH OTHER IN THE EYE, also via ScienceDaily.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:07 PM


      ( 2:54 PM ) The Rat  
DAMN, some of the Girl Scout badges in this sound way worse than anything available back in my day. (If I ever have a daughter, maybe I can see about enrolling her as a Boy Scout.) Maybe all just part of the overall pinkification of girlhood?

Denny also found that the names of Scout badges convey strong messages about gender. Stereotypical ideas about "embellished femininity and stoic masculinity" are communicated in the level of playfulness (and the lack thereof) that characterize the different badge titles.

Some 27 percent of girls' badge titles use playful literary techniques such as alliteration and puns, while 0 percent of boys' badge titles do so.

All 20 boys' badges (100 percent) have descriptive titles without using any playful wording, while only 73 percent of the girls' badges have descriptive titles. The boys' badge dealing with rocks and geology, for example, is called the "Geologist" badge, while the comparable girls' badge is called the "Rocks Rock" badge.

Denny found boys' badge titles use more career-oriented language (such as Engineer, Craftsman, Scientist), whereas girls' badge titles consistently use more playful language with less of a career orientation. (Instead of the boy's "Astronomer," the comparable girls badge is called "Sky Search." Instead of "Mechanic," a similar girl badge is called "Car Care.")


# Posted by The Rat @ 2:54 PM


      ( 7:00 AM ) The Rat  
SHIT MY STUDENTS WRITE, via ET.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:00 AM



Friday, April 08, 2011
      ( 4:24 PM ) The Rat  
WHY ARE WE MOVING? via the Onion.

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:24 PM



Thursday, April 07, 2011
      ( 10:18 PM ) The Rat  
We all are patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
—Montaigne

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:18 PM


      ( 3:12 PM ) The Rat  
HMM...

Also see Men's Preferences for Women's Breast Morphology in New Zealand, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea and What the f**k is a 'placebo bra'?

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:12 PM




A page I'm starting to get the overlords at EveTushnet.com to stop $#@! bugging me


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