Why some people don't want birthday greetings on Facebook Some people say Facebook birthday messages are pale substitutes for more meaningful interactions. Spreading birthday wishes on Facebook has become an automatic impulse for manyBut some people avoid the digital greetings, which they believe aren't always heartfeltPeople who want to be popular are more likely to post on others' wallsFacebook's calendar can be useful since some admit to not recalling friends' birthdays (CNN) -- For most people, logging into Facebook on your birthday means feeling like the most popular person in the world. Notifications flood your inbox, new wall posts appear with each page refresh and everyone seems to "like" anything you say. But there's another group of users who have little use for Facebook birthday celebrations. Some feel overwhelmed by the repetitive flood of "Happy Birthday!" A few, such as H. The Arcadia, California, man's birthday is July 14, but at the beginning of each year, he moves it to an arbitrary date in October.
The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses Boing Boing I'm really digging the look of Dr. Paul Koudounaris' new book, The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses Don't yet have a copy in my hands (it's not out 'til October), but I've pre-Amazonned one for myself. The book is packed with hundreds of gorgeous color photographs of these sites throughout the world, many of which are usually inaccessible to outsiders. Here's the project website, and here's the publisher's feature page. Here is the author/artist's statement, and here is a collection of related essays by Dr. Advance order here for $31.50. From La Luz de Jesus: In 2006, Dr. (Thanks, Julien Nitzberg!)
With .163 Average, Adam Dunn No Longer Considered A Baseball Player | The Onion - America's Finest News Source CHICAGO—After his batting average slumped to a historically low .163 this week, White Sox DH Adam Dunn received an official notice from Major League Baseball Thursday informing him that he no longer met the minimum requirements to be labeled an official baseball player. "He's certainly allowed to continue playing baseball, but he cannot legally refer to himself as a 'baseball player,'" an MLB spokesperson said in a statement, adding that Dunn would now be called what the league refers to as a ‘baseball participant.’ “We are confident Adam will eventually regain his abilities. For now, however, we think it's best to disassociate his horrible hitting from the great game of baseball."
Vladimir Putin's Greek urns claim earns ridicule | World news Vladimir Putin carries his archaelogical trophies which - despite their cleanliness - were purported to have languished at the bottom of the Black Sea for centuries. Photograph: Alexei Druzhinin/AP When a scuba-diving Vladimir Putin found two ancient Greek urns on the floor of the Black Sea this week, it seemed a startling discovery. In his latest spurt of televised heroics, the Russian prime minister raised a triumphant thumb as he circled the pair of amphorae in shallow waters off the Taman peninsula near Ukraine. The find came to "everyone's utter surprise", claimed the slavishly devotional Russia Today and other state-controlled TV channels. But independent media and Russia's lively blogosphere are now ridiculing the incident, in a sign of increasing weariness of Putin's macho photo ops – such as bare-chested fishing, piloting a "water bomber" over forest fires and diving to the bottom of lake Baikal in a mini-submarine.
Penn State Players All Worried They're Going To Be The One Who Accidentally Kills Joe Paterno | The Onion - America's Finest News Source STATE COLLEGE, PA—Hospitalized after a receiver crashed into him on the field last Sunday, Joe Paterno’s return to practice Wednesday came as a vast relief to Penn State players, all of whom live in constant fear of being the one who inevitably kills the 84-year-old head coach. “Every day we go to the field worried about which one of us will accidentally bump into Coach, cause his entire body to fall apart, and kill him,” senior defensive end Jack Crawford said. “There’s no doubt we are going to be the ones responsible for his death. That’s inevitable. It’s just a question of who and when." “At this point, it’s part of the Happy Valley tradition," Crawford added. Paterno, who suffered minor fractures during Sunday’s accident, also had his leg broken during a 2006 game against Wisconsin and injured himself in a 2008 practice while demonstrating an onside kick. “There are just so many ways we could potentially kill this man,” Drake added.
New GOP Strategy Involves Reelecting Obama, Making His Life Even More Miserable | The Onion - America's Finest News Source WASHINGTON—Calling a GOP victory in the 2012 presidential election antithetical to the party platform, top Republicans revealed a new long-term political strategy Tuesday: reelecting Barack Obama and making his life even more of a living hell than it already is. "For three years, the Republican Party has coalesced around the single goal of making President Obama's every waking moment sheer and utter torture," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "But we can't continue to do that if he's not in office." "If we are going to make the president a haggard shell of a human being by the time he leaves the White House, we need four more years of never compromising, four more years of miring every piece of legislation in unnecessary procedural muck, four more years of pretending we want to work with the president and then walking away from the table at the last second," McConnell added.
Appeals Court: Obamacare Mandate Is Unconstitutional Philip Klein reports: A federal appeals court has ruled that the national health care law's individual mandate is unconstitutional, calling it "an unprecedented exercise of congressional power." Klein notes that "The three-judge panel that made the ruling was comprised of two Democrats, so this will be hard for the Obama administration to dismiss as the work of a lone activist conservative judge. Reuters reports: The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.The legality of the so-called individual mandate, a cornerstone of the 2010 healthcare law, is widely expected to be decided by the Supreme Court. And, via Klein, here's the court's conclusion: that the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power.
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Are Smart People Getting Smarter? | Wired Science The Flynn effect has always been tinged with mystery. First popularized by the political scientist James Flynn, the effect refers to the widespread increase in IQ scores over time. Some measures of intelligence — such as performance on Raven’s Progressive Matrices in Des Moines and Scotland — have been increasing for at least 100 years. What’s most peculiar is how scores have increased: 1) Scores have increased the most on the problem-solving portion of intelligence tests. 2) Verbal intelligence has remained relatively flat, while non-verbal scores continue to rise. 3) Performance gains have occurred across all age groups. 4) The rise in scores exists primarily on those tests with content that does not appear to be easily learned. What’s puzzling about this increase in general intelligence is that it appears where we’d least expect it. There is, of course, no unseen hand. In other words, the Flynn effect doesn’t appear to be solely caused by rising scores among the lowest quartile.
Will the US lose Pakistan to China? NEW DELHI , India — With a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the horizon, India has been caught between cheering Washington's moves to rein in Pakistan 's military and bewailing the possible fallout if America "loses" Pakistan to China . Unlike the United States , which can take its guns and go home, India will have to deal with the fallout of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistani radicalism for the next decade. A resurgent Taliban and the return of a radical Islamic regime in Kabul could create a new safe haven for anti-Indian terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba — the Pakistan-based terrorist organization responsible for the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai. More from GlobalPost: State-sponsored killings plague Pakistan “Washington could save billions of dollars a year and stick Beijing with the bill at a single stroke.” But let's play what if. More from GlobalPost in Kabul, Afghanistan: Why is Pakistan bombing Afghanistan?
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New pipeline to challenge Obama's promises It took some serious digging in the sock drawer, but eventually I found my 'Environmentalists for Obama' button left over from the '08 campaign. I needed it because I'm headed to Washington in a couple of weeks to get arrested in front of the White House, and I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be misunderstood. I'm not alone - as many as a thousand people will risk arrest in daily protests at the White House over the last two weeks of August, making it the largest outbreak of civil disobedience in recent environmental history. The target: a proposed 2,400 km pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. Those tar sands are the largest pool of carbon on the continent; the federal government's pre-eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, said recently that if we begin burning it in large quantities, it's "essentially game over" for the climate. The politics Still - the ultimate decision will rest with President Obama. Not keeping promises