council of elderly females

http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/3873808/ww7oy/alternet~New-Racist-Christmas-Carol-quotIllegals-in-My-Yardquot

The holiday spirit apparently means something very different for raging xenophobes.

http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/3872537/ww7oy/alternet~quotThe-Foolish-Symbols-of-Christianityquot-Israels-Religious-Right-Discovers-the-War-on-Hanukkah

Eat your heart out, Bill-O.

http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/3872539/ww7oy/alternet~BREAKING-Marijuana-Legalization-Will-Be-On-Californias-Ballot

AlterNet has exclusively confirmed that the Tax Cannabis 2010 campaign in California has gathered the signatures necessary to make it onto the November ballot.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/nyaIpIDDlI8/top-ten-ways-to-get-your-business-ready.html

A few weeks ago, we jump-started the holiday shopping season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Like us, you probably browsed the shops and sites for the coolest products and best shopping deals for your holiday purchases. But if you're a business or an advertiser, you probably know that some of the biggest shopping weekends of the year are approaching — and you need to get your business ready for the rush!

If you're as geeky as we are, you're probably doing everything you can to figure out how to best use the tools available on the web to find the right customers and effectively measure the results from the money you spent on marketing.

At T-minus ten days before Christmas, its not too late to look over your holiday campaigns and we’d like to share with you our top 10 holiday tips — a quick checklist to help you make use of important data now and improve your holiday campaigns.

Consider it a gift from one geeky data whiz to another!

1. Update your wishlist:
Use the Search-based Keyword Tool to find keywords that you never thought of incorporating into your campaign for the holidays. (Here is a how-to guide for how best to use the tool: Monetize The Long Tail of Search).

2. Know what's hot this season:
Research on Insights for Search to see what the “Rising Searches” are and understand how people are searching for your brand (and your competitors!).

3. Read the wish lists:
Who could be looking for you? Type your website URL into Google Ad Planner to see who is looking for your site, broken down by demographic categories like age and gender.

4. Follow the reindeer:
Where else are they going? Use Ad Planner to find other websites that share the same demographics as yours. Putting display ads on that site might be a great way for you to target that audience!

5. Build new toys:
Create new AdWords campaigns for your holiday lines and products. Incorporate new keywords and keep in mind the trends you found on Insights for Search.

6. Train the elves:
Test your AdWords campaigns by introducing new holiday promotions. Then, test your promotions — a promotion for "30% off" might resonate better with your customers than "Buy One Get One Free."

7. Check your list twice:
Use Google Analytics to better understand where your traffic is coming from during the holiday season. Find out who's coming to your website, when they're coming and where they're coming from.

8. Map out the route:
How long are people staying on your website? Use Google Analytics to understand your purchasing cycle. Which pages have the highest bounce rate? And which pages are people leaving the quickest?

9. Test run on the sleigh:
Run experiments using Website Optimizer on the landing pages you have linked from your ads. Make sure the images are in the right place and that they're not a distraction for your customer. Play around with the size of the image and the image type.

10. Does the chimney work?:
Test different versions of your purchase page to find out what works best. Change the "purchase" button on your webpage. Pick different colors — bright versus dark colors — and vary the button sizes. Try out different text on your button. See which of these variations lead to the most clicks to conversions.

We wish you a happy, data driven holiday season.

Posted by Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/weird-moments-in-zoo-history/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28216

Zoos, or at least animal menageries, have been around since at least Roman times when exotic animals were collected for the purpose of being used in battles in the coliseum. During medieval times, the greatest zoo around was actually contained in the Tower of London. It was opened to the public for the first time during the reign of Elizabeth I. During the 18^th century, guests could visit the zoo for only three half-pence, or they could come for free if they brought a dog or cat to feed to the lions. This animal collection was eventually moved into the world’s first official “zoo,” the London Zoological Gardens.

Over the years, zoos have moved from being collections of caged animals designed to please the public to expansive parks dedicated to maintaining ecological diversity and conservation. While modern day zoos are mostly safe places where the public can go to see wild, exotic animals, this isn’t always the case. Here are some weird stories relating to modern zoos in honor of Visit The Zoo Day on December 27.

Image Via www.theedinburghblog.com [Flickr]

Gaza’s Painted Donkeys

When the only two zebras in the Mara Land Zoo in Gaza Strip starved to death during the Israel-Hamas war, zoo officials knew they needed the popular creatures in order to entertain the crowds. Unfortunately, replacing the expensive attractions through the secret underground tunnels in the area was not an option for the financially strapped zoo. So keepers did what any good zoologists would do and just faked their zebra collection by painting donkeys to look like their stripped cousins. To give them the dye jobs, zoo keepers used masking tape and black hair dye to create “authentic” stripping patterns on the creatures. While it may sound like a bad solution, many of the zoo’s young guests had never seen a real zebra and were equally impressed by the frauds. I guess it is still better to see a mock wild animal than no wild animals.

Source Image Via Associated Press

The Loneliest Pig In the World

What’s exotic to one culture may just be a standard farm animal to another, as evidenced by Khanzir, the only known pig in all of Afghanistan. Because pork products are illegal in the country, the pig is a true rarity in the country, who received Khanzir as a gift from China. As if the poor pig wasn’t lonely enough grazing beside goats and deer, when fear of the swine flu hit the country, he was forced to spend his time in quarantine all by himself.

The zoo director, Mr Saqib explained the zoo’s decision to isolate the animal, despite the knowledge that it would not actually be able to infect the general public, “The only reason we moved him was because Afghan people don’t have a lot of knowledge about swine flu, and so when they see a pig they get worried and think they will get ill.”

Mr. Saqib does have hopes to alleviate the pig’s loneliness though, he says after the swine flu concerns die down, he would like to get Khanzir a female companion. Perhaps then, poor little Khanzir could at least be a member of the only pig family in the country.

Source #1, #2 Image Via BBC

In Case of Escaped Rhino…

If you’ve ever wondered how keepers prepare for the possibility of an animal escaping the zoo, you’re not alone. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the internet, a Japanese training session to get keepers prepared for a potential rhino escape has been caught on tape and made its way into your home. The “rhino” in this case is pretty darn terrifying, what with its eight legs and all. While the team’s efforts seem effective, you have to wonder if they would work nearly as well when the beast is actually 11 tons and angry as all heck.

Orangutan Escape

Perhaps those zoo keepers should have worked on their plans for escaped primates rather than escaped rhinos. A video seen on Animal Planet (sorry its not embedded, but they don’t offer that service) demonstrates the terrifying things that happened when a four-hundred pound angry orangutan broke out of its cage and chased tourists and charged security guards. During his escapade in the outside world, Blacky also smashed some scooters and took control of a camera tripod hoping to use it as weapon against the guards who shot him with a tranquilizer dart.

In the shot, you see just how long it takes for a two ton animal to fall after getting shot with a tranquilizer dart –meaning the rhino training exercise certainly was optimistic about that part of the procedure.

Nuts About Knut

In nature, it is not uncommon for a mother to abandon her cub. Some environmentalists claim that the best thing to do in these situations is to let nature take its course and let the cub die off. But when the animal is already affected by human intervention because it lives in a zoo, it seems more than a little cold-hearted to just abandon the cub. Zookeeper Thomas Dörflein agreed, which is why he saved a two newborn polar bears that were abandoned by their mother.

One of the bears died of an infection within four days, but the other, Knut, was hand raised by Dörflein, who provided the cub with around-the-clock care. Only a few months into little Knut’s life, a German tabloid carried an article about Knut that featured a quote by animal rights activist Frank Albrecht, who said the bear should have been left to die rather than be subjected to a life as “a domestic pet.” The director of another local zoo agreed with Albrect and said that keepers should have “had the courage to let the bear die.” To be fair, both of the people quoted said they were taken out of context and Dörflein has said that he was making a point about a German court’s decision saying that it was OK for another zoo to have euthanized an abandoned cub in a similar situation.

Naturally, animal lovers everywhere rallied in support of the little bear and the Berlin Zoo vowed to keep him alive and care for him. As a result of the controversy, Knut became a worldwide celebrity and videos of the little cub with his zookeeper were loaded onto YouTube for everyone to marvel at. His fame brought so many visitors to the zoo that it soon experienced its most profitable year out of its entire 163 year history.

As Knut grew older, he continued to be a popular attraction for visitors and he is still living at the zoo. Unfortunately, Dörflein died of a heart attack in 2008, although he remains a hero to many residents of Berlin.

Source Image Via Jean-Luc [Wikipedia Commons]

Human Exhibits

A long time ago (actually as recent as 1958 in Brussels), it wasn’t uncommon for humans of other races to be displayed in zoos alongside exotic animals. While racism in that time is not unusual, having people live in a zoo these days certainly is. But in 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia ran a zoo exhibit where humans were housed in a former ape enclosure (they did get to go home at night). Inhabitants took part in a number of exercises and the amused onlookers were then asked for donations towards a new enclosure for a new exhibit for the chimpanzees.

Source

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/10-years-10-best-science-fiction-films/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28252

We’ve had quite a few sci-fi movies grace our screens these past ten years, and Avatar will cap off a decade of the genre’s efforts this Friday.  But which ones were good enough to make it on Sci-Fi Squad’s top ten list?  Their staff narrowed the winners down to eleven, actually, with two very similar independent films occupying the same entry.

Jacob Hall writes about one of his picks: Minority Report.

The film is an engrossing look at a startlingly realistic future where psychics are used to predict murders and “Pre-Crime” units arrest would-be killers in advance. It is also a rousing, muscular action film in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the only film in recent memory to have a jet-pack chase. A jet-pack chase. It raises fascinating questions about choice and destiny and how even the best intentions can be abused and corrupted. It features oddness not seen from Spielberg since the ’80s, including a cackling Peter Stormare and Cruise pursuing his own rogue eyeball down a hallway.

They did leave some very good titles off their alphabetical list.  I’d have gone ahead and put Avatar on there for how it looks alone.

Link.  (Photo: Dreamworks Entertainment)

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/bigfoot-skeptics-snap-photo-of-bigfoot/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28260

The Kedrowskis are father and sons from Minnesota that don’t believe in the legend of bigfoot.  That’s why they’re scratching their heads over a photo taken from one of their wilderness motion-detecting cameras that they use to gauge deer migration.

They at first suspected each other of a prank, but have decided it wasn’t actually one of them, and nobody else knew about the camera, or its location.  Tim, the father, asked neighbors about the night in question.

(T)hey said they had gone out about 2 a.m. to use the outhouse and had heard strange squealing noises. Tim said he asked them to show him the direction of the sounds. They pointed to the area where the camera had been, although they had no idea of its location.

In spite of such seemingly credible reports, biologists remain unconvinced.

“Personally, I don’t buy the fact this thing exists,” said Blane Klemek, assistant wildlife manager with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in Bemidji.  He also noted than no one has ever found a Bigfoot carcass.  ”All organisms die; they don’t just go away,” Klemek said. “You’d think someone someday would find one.”

Link via The Obscure Store and Reading Room.

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/your-keyboards-secret-life/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28263

Poor Scroll Lock.  Have a look at more like this at AcidCow.  Somebody help me out with On-Pause-Off… I don’t get it, is it a Mac thing?

Link

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/a-compilation-of-science-based-party-tricks/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28261

YouTube link

All of these are quite simple, and most of them are well-known, but there are enough assembled here so that most viewers will find something new to amuse and bewilder children (and drunks) during the holidays.

Via b3ta.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotYourRightsOnline/~3/tbanY_jPtoo/Supreme-Court-Takes-Texting-Privacy-Case

TaggartAleslayer writes with this excerpt from the NYTimes: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager. The case opens 'a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,' according to a three-judge panel of an appeals court that ruled in favor of the employee, a police sergeant on the Ontario, Calif., SWAT team. ... Members of the department's SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected. The lieutenant eventually changed his mind and ordered transcripts of messages sent and received by Sgt. Jeff Quon. In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 456 of those messages were related to official business. According to the trial judge, many of the messages 'were, to say the least, sexually explicit in nature.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotYourRightsOnline/~3/8dVyxiFfQz0/SFLC-Sues-14-Companies-For-BusyBox-GPL-Violations

eldavojohn writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit accusing fourteen companies, including Best Buy, Samsung and Westinghouse, of violating the GPL in nearly 20 separate products. This is similar to earlier BusyBox GPL suits. The commercial uses of BusyBox must be much more prolific than anyone could have imagined. Having dealt with hundreds of compliance problems and finding an average of one violation per day, the SFLC recommends one thing: be responsive to their requests (they try to settle things in private first) lest you find one of these (PDF) in your inbox."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/bwZdaLBqohM/rewriting-fear-memor.html

We've posted previously about new drugs on the horizon that could enable bad memories to be selectively "erased." Now, researchers at New York University have developed a non-invasive method to block fearful memories from returning. The scientists determined that fear memories can be reactivated and updated with "safe" information. Later, those memories can be recalled without a fear response. The team reported their results in the new issue of the journal Nature. From NYU:

The experiment was conducted over three days: the memory was formed in the first day, rewritten on the second day, and tested for fear on the third day. However, to examine how enduring this effect is, a portion of the participants was tested again about a year later. Even after this period of time, the fear memory did not return in those subjects who had extinction during the reconsolidation window. These results suggest that the old fear memory was changed from its original form and that this change persists over time...

"Our research suggests that during the lifetime of a memory there are windows of opportunity where it becomes susceptible to be permanently changed," said (post-doctoral fellow Daniela) Schiller. "By understanding the dynamics of memory we might, in the long run, open new avenues of treatment for disorders that involve abnormal emotional memories."

"NYU Researchers Develop Non-Invasive Technique to Rewrite Fear Memories"

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/EmEZcXogAvU/mathematics-of-slici.html

(photo by Randy Son Of Robert)

For almost twenty years, mathematicians Rick Mabry and Paul Deiermann have attempted to figure out the perfect way to slice a pizza for sharing. urns out, mathematicians have been pondering pizza slicing problems since at least the 1960s. Mabry and Diermann have recently proved their pizza theorem and are now considering other related problems, like what happens if the pizza is square or, say, a 3D pizza, aka a calzone? From New Scientist:

Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-centre, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-centre cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighbouring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza - and if not, who will get more?

Of course you could estimate the area of each slice, tot them all up and work out each person's total from that. But these guys are mathematicians, and so that wouldn't quite do. They wanted to be able to distil the problem down to a few general, provable rules that avoid exact calculations, and that work every time for any circular pizza.

"The perfect way to slice a pizza"

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/president-lieberman-was-expansion-medic

On Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that he not only wants to strip out the public option, but also the medicare buy in at fifty-five.

"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in. You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the class act which was a whole new entitlement program that will in future years put us further into the deficit," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I want to tell you, we could pass a health care reform bill this week with more than 60 votes and it would be bipartisan if we just took a few things out of the bill as it is today," said Lieberman.

Lieberman wants to pass a Republican health care package which is no plan at all. This bitter man is hijacking the entire health care reform legislation for no other reasons than his petty, narcissistic behavior and who is a traitor to the left wing policies that as once a vice president nominee in 2000 would have never signed on to.

Greg Sargent comes up with video proof which exposes Lieberman of being a bad faith participant in health care negotiations. Holy Joe just three months ago was saying that he supports medicare buy-ins. Oh, my!

What would David Broder say about that?

In the vid, Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:

“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…

“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.

“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”

It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.

It appears that Holy Joe wants to destroy health care reform because his feelings have been hurt by liberals who disagreed with his warmongering behavior. The pettiness he holds dear to his heart is being used to destroy any chance that working class Americans will be getting meaningful health care reform. You can't go lower than that.

And again it also boils down to leadership and President Obama and Harry Reid have not led this fight well from the beginning. They knew they had to deal with Joe so he was bowed down to, The problem is that he felt no repercussions after he threw hes full support to John McCain in the 2008 election. "He's with us on everything except the war,' was what Harry Reid said. How did that work out for ya, Harry? Joe is destined to destroy health care all together.

Digby writes:

People need to send the link to this to all the press and the villagers they can think of to show just how perfidious their favorite "man of integrity" is being on this. Thy won't care about the substance, but this helps expose Lieberman's pettiness which villagers always find uncomfortable. (The exposure, not the pettiness.)

The PCCC has set up another action against Lieberman:

Please sign this petition to progressive Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Sherrod Brown:

PETITION: "Don't let Joe Lieberman win! Americans need you to stand strong and block any 'compromise' without a strong public option. If necessary, demand that Sen. Harry Reid and President Obama support budget reconciliation and pass a bill with just 51 votes -- at which point, Joe Lieberman will be irrelevant and the public option can be made even stronger."

Key Democrats have said they won't support a bill without a strong public option:

Please sign on to it. The more we expose him as a fraud the better.
Joe's wife is also a major player in Lieberman's thinking process and part of his obstructionism that is responsible for Joe's switching of positions and trying to hold health care hostage.

Matt Yglesias writes:

That said, I agree with Chris Bowers that in a lot of ways the real story here is that the Senate leadership has, at every step of this process, underscored that a “reconciliation” path to a health care bill is off the table. That means Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/t4ZwNIvo-2g/use-system-monitor-to-kill-stuck-processes-in-linux

Linux tip: Many users are all too familiar with using Ctrl+Alt+Del (or, on a Mac, Cmd+Opt+Esc) to kill unresponsive processes. There isn't a comparable keyboard shortcut for Linux by default, but there are a number of equivalent methods for dealing with stuck processes.

The closest thing that mimics the Windows task manager in Ubuntu is the System Monitor application. Under the Processes tab, you can get all sorts of information on things that are currently running, including which programs might be stuck or using too much CPU. It also allows you to kill these processes by right-clicking on them. Notice that "stop" and "kill" process are two very different things—kill is most likely the command you want, being the Windows equivalent of "end task".

There is no keyboard shortcut to open the System Monitor, but you can easily create one by going to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and creating one for the command gnome-system-monitor. Just make sure you don't use one that's already in use by the system (such as Ctrl+Alt+Del—you could use that if you wanted to, but you'd have to disable it from its default action, Log Out).

System Monitor is, in our opinion, the easiest way to kill an unresponsive program, but there are a few other ways in Linux, most of them command line based (which is nice if you are stuck in a situation where you can't use a GUI). Hit the link to brush up on your process-killing UNIX commands. If you're new to Linux, it's a great bit of info to learn.

W.I.P

i was invited by coworkers to tag along to an airsoft event last saturday, but i decided not to go AND INSTEAD this came out. my very first pop hit, baby

BUT i accidently recorded a blank over a few seconds of it :(

1. 
   LAFINJACK SEZ TAHT THEIRS NO GLOBULL WRAMING AND THIS IZ PROOFF!!!1!!

2. ( NSFW Pictures are NSFW )

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/C5l0X7QqT3o/

http://torrentfreak.com/?p=19840

To protect its intellectual property, Microsoft recently sued four software pirates who allegedly used the company’s software without permission. However, the outcome of this action was quite unexpected.

The Delhi High Court decided to fine the software giant, after it found out that the cases the company had initiated in India’s capital were related to alleged copyright infringements that occurred in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Mumbai.

According to the Court, Microsoft is needlessly abusing its unlimited cash flow as a power tool to financially hurt the defendants, who will have to travel all across the country in order to defend themselves. This abuse of “money power” to “harass” defendants is unacceptable according to the Court.

“When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power,” Judge Dhingra commented on the case.

Aside from the harassment angle, the Court found that Microsoft chose Delhi because the High Court can order compensation up to $40,000 for the alleged crimes.

However, instead of taking on the case directly, the court chose to fine Microsoft $4,000 for each of the four defendants instead. If it turns out that the software piracy claims are unfounded, this money will go directly to the accused. In addition, Microsoft was ordered to pay a local commissioner who will investigate the piracy claims.

Although it was not illegal for Microsoft to file the four cases in the national capital where the company is headquartered, the Court found that something had to be done to prevent shear abuse of power by the software giant.

“On the strength of its money power it [Microsoft] has the added advantage of choosing a court of its own liking which is so far away from the defendant that it becomes problematic and a harassment for the defendant to contest the suit itself,” the Delhi High Court ruling read.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/BJp39RvNrGg/deep-dive-on-display-advertising.html

2009 has been a busy year for Google in the area of display advertising — that is, the image, video and interactive ad formats that run across the web.

Our goal is to improve display advertising on the web for everyone. We're working to help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns, enable publishers to make more money from their ad space and deliver better, more relevant ads (and, ultimately, more ad-funded web content) to users.

To achieve these goals, in 2009 we released a host of new features for display advertisers on the Google Content Network and on YouTube, launched the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange and made significant enhancements to our ad serving products.

On Tuesday December 15 at 10am PT, we're hosting an educational webcast for analysts, investors and press about our display advertising business. This is our second educational webcast — the first, on search advertising, was held in September.

The webcast will be available at investor.google.com, and a replay will be available on the same website. If you're interested in hearing about our efforts in this space, please feel free to tune in.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management

http://drtenge.tumblr.com/post/283618965

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/WldKmaauRaM/google-search-for-i.html

I am informed that exactly four years has passed since the brilliant Kottke wrote: 'Google search for "i don't read kottke" versus a search for "i don't read boing boing". Nottke** wins, 39 to 37! Sit on it, Cory!' Well, it would now appear that Kottke is the one who must be seated!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/UQnAIslJfFo/epic-disneymarvel-ma.html

T Campbell sez, "The last word in Marvel/Disney satirical mashups. 50+ characters attempt corporate synergy, with hilarious results."

"Epic Misney" by T Campbell and John Waltrip (Thanks, T!)

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/george-will-quotes-milton-friedman-defend

George Will quotes free-trader Milton Friedman to trash the idea of "shovel-ready" projects while continuing his defense of George Bush's economic policies. I'm guessing that George Will has refused to go within fifty feet of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine since he holds Friedman in such high regard.

And Ed Gillespie, when even Murdoch's Wall Street Journal disagrees with your assertions, you're in trouble. From Jan. 2009--Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record.

PODESTA: I want to come back to Eric Cantor, which is no cost, no jobs, no ideas. I mean, it seems to me that the Republican Party on the Hill has become the party of no.

Maybe I'd say that it looks, a little bit from his defense of no regulation that it's become the party of Bush, that we've seen how that movie played out. It ended in the in financial meltdown and the great recession. It seems that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is Ed Gillespie right that it's no risk?

WILL: What?

STEPHANOPOULOS: This strategy?

WILL: I think there is no risk at this point because I think the American people understand that the greatest job creation machine in the history of the world is a reasonably lightly taxed and lightly regulated economy. But one idea, John, that, happily, we're not hearing. When we began this year with...

PODESTA: George Bush had the lowest job creation since World War II, lightly taxed, lightly regulated...

GILLESPIE: Fifty-two months of uninterrupted job creation, the longest in the history of the United States of America.

PODESTA: ... major recession.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What's the one idea?

WILL: The one idea that we seem to have dropped, happily so -- remember the phrase was "shovel-ready"? We were going to create government jobs.

It put me in mind of a great story Milton Friedman used to tell. He went to Asia in the 1960s and was proudly taken by the government to see a public works project. They were building a canal. He was struck everyone was digging the canal with shovels. Friedman says, why no heavy earth-moving equipment?

They said, oh, this is a jobs program. So Friedman says, why don't you give them spoons instead of shovels? I think we understand, now, the sterility of government trying to create jobs.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/obama-talks-tough-bankers-re-regulat

Today President Obama had a meeting with a group of leading bankers -- CEOs from firms like Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs -- to talk about the need for banks to start getting the money that's going into banks' reserves right now start flowing into the economy in the form of lending activity.

But Obama also talked about the bigger picture -- namely, the absolute need to reinstate many of the financial-sector regulations that were torn down in the past decade and more, which led to the economic disaster we're now trying to recover from:

We also discussed the need to pass meaningful financial reform that will protect American consumers from exploitation and American -- the American economy from another financial crisis of the kind which we just came out of.

I noted the resistance of many of the financial sectors to these reforms -- the industry has lobbied vigorously against some of them -- some of these reforms on Capitol Hill. So I made it clear that it is both in the country's interest -- and ultimately, in the financial industry's interest -- to have updated rules of the road to prevent abuse and excess. Short-term gains are of little value to our banks if they lead to long-term chaos in the economy.

And I made very clear that I have no intention of letting their lobbyists thwart reforms necessary to protect the American people. If they wish to fight common-sense consumer protections, that's a fight I'm more than willing to have.

The way I see it, having recovered with the help of the American government and the American taxpayers, our banks now have a greater obligation to the goal of a wider recovery, a more stable system, and more broadly shared prosperity.

So I urged them to work with us in Congress to finish the job of reforming our financial system to bring transparency and accountability to the financial markets; to ensure that the failure of one bank or financial institution won't spread throughout the entire system, and to help protect consumers from misleading and dishonest practices with products like credit and debit cards, with mortgages and auto and payday loans.

Now, I should note that around the table all the financial industry executives said they supported financial regulatory reform. The problem is there's a big gap between what I'm hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they're a member up on Capitol Hill. I urged them to close that gap, and they assured me that they would make every effort to do so.

In the end, my interest isn't in vilifying any one person or institution or industry; it's not to dictate to them or micromanage their compensation practices to ensure that consumers and -- my job is to ensure that consumers and the larger economy are protected from risky speculation and predatory practices, that credit is flowing, that businesses can grow, and jobs are once again being created at the pace we need.

Susie already pointed out the latest Paul Krugman column on this very subject, complete with a history lesson:

America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.

The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.

But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. In a memorable 2003 incident, top bank regulators staged a photo-op in which they used garden shears and a chainsaw to cut up stacks of paper representing regulations.

And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.

But the financial sector -- and their friends in the Republican Party and the conservative movement -- are in complete and utter denial about this, as Krugman went on to explore vividly. Apparently, they're willing to completely wreck the economy all over again just for the sake of hanging onto one of the remaining scraps of conservative dogma -- namely, that deregulation is innately good, because government is innately bad.

The fact is that the financial sector, particularly these big banks, have been flooding the Hill with lobbyists working hard to knock down any attempts to reinstate post-Depression regulations. Just ask Rep. Peter DeFazio, who is trying get the Glass-Steagall Act reinstated.

But because it is so intellectually and ethically bankrupt and so desperate to retain some semblance of power, the American Right is completely in the throes of denialism, which is best defined as "the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none."

So we get nonsense about the Community Reinvestment Act and how lazy shiftless minorities were the reasons for the Bush Recession.

At some point, the right-wing obfuscation has to stop. You'd think they'd realize it's in their own economic self-interest to stop. But that's like expecting a scorpion not to sting a dog on whose back it's crossing a river.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/-HERnmMqpoQ/019311.html

Check out our awesome interviewer extraordinaire Chloe Angyal's piece in the Huffington Post about the Washington Post Pundit contest and what's not so new about new media.

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect looks to the future of the criminal justice system as the era of mass-incarceration comes to a close.

On Sunday Congress approved a huge bill, that among many things, would increase funding for needle exchange programs. According to Reuters, it also would reverse a ban on Washington DC's ability to use local funds to pay for abortion.

Erma Henderson, the first African American woman to serve on the Detroit City Council, died today at age 92. She was elected to the City Council position in 1972.

Nevada has legalized male sex work. Anyone else not know until now that it was only female sex work that was legal in NV? According to Salon's Kate Harding, it was a technicality regarding cervical exams that kept men out of the business.

A writer confesses she's been using a men's pen name for years and explains why she made that choice and how it helped her to feed her family and be more successful.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/YczY4QbT6_E/make-your-own-throat+soothing-cough-drops

If you don't like the additives in store-bought cough drops or just want to save a little money while soothing an aching throat, it's easy to make your own drops right in the kitchen with ingredients you probably already have.

Photo by Doonvas.

WikiHow has a great recipe for DIY cough drops that requires little more than corn syrup, sugar, and some food coloring (if you want them in pretty colors). You'll need to get your hands on some loose medicinal herbs like comfrey leaf or slippery elm, which—okay, you may not have on hand—but you can easily find them in most large health food stores or online.

Once you've gathered your ingredients, it's just a matter of boiling them together and dropping small blobs of the mixture on a greased surface to cool. Roll the drop in powdered sugar so they don't stick together, store them in a small tin or bag, and you're good to go.

Hit up the recipe at WikiHow for exact ingredient measurement and tips on how to combine herbs. If these homemade cough drops make you want to expand your horizons and try your hand at making other cold remedies, check out our post on how to brew your own cold and flu elixir using olive oil, lemon, ginger, and (woo!) Southern Comfort. We aren't doctors, so we can't vouch for the effectiveness of homemade health remedies but if you drink enough of your DIY cough syrup, at least you won't care that you're sick.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/CiXCujQeEA0/boxee-beta-available-via-bittorrent

If you liked what you saw when Boxee previewed their new private beta release and don't quite have the patience to wait for the beta to officially open up to the public in January, you can now grab Boxee Beta from BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay. [Boxee Beta BitTorrent Download via Gizmodo]

http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/3869244/wvt68/alternet~BREAKING-Marijuana-Legalization-Will-Be-On-Californias-Ballot

AlterNet has exclusively confirmed that the Tax Cannabis 2010 campaign in California has gathered the 650,000 signatures necessary to make it onto the November 2010 ballot.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/wwoy-sKvU6I/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html

This morning, we launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the Google URL Shortener. We mentioned our URL shortener as a feature in both announcements, so we wanted to say a little more about how this product works and why we're offering it.

People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity. If you're not familiar with them, URL shorteners basically squeeze a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what's on your mind — and that's why people use them.

First, we think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links. Second, we've built this on Google's global infrastructure to offer the following benefits:

• Stability: Google's scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
• Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
• Speed: At Google we like fast products and we've worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We'll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.

Google URL shortener is not a stand-alone service; you can't use it to shorten links directly. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.

We're excited about enabling this functionality — try it for Toolbar and FeedBurner!

Posted by Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D'Angelo and Devin Mullins, Software Engineers

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/F9lNcwLkw2w/share-any-web-page-from-your-toolbar.html

Hello from the Google Toolbar team! Before we head off for the holidays, we wanted to give you some new features to play with.

We've been busy working on even more ways to make web browsing easier and more fun. First off is our new Share feature in Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. This makes it easy for you to share any page on the web with your friends over various social networks, blogs or email.


For example, I love Top Chef and have been following it all season. Last week was the season finale and I wanted to share head judge Tom Colicchio's great write-up with my friends. Using Toolbar, I just clicked on the Share button and selected Twitter. Toolbar created a new window with the page's title, space for my comments and a link to the page (automatically shortened by Google's new URL shortener, goo.gl).


You can just as easily share to Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Gmail or other services. For those you use frequently, you can save a step by adding them as buttons in the settings option in the Share menu. We've also integrated with more local social networks — for example, if you're in Japan, you can share with your friends on Hatena.

With this new release, we've also "graduated" the My Location feature from Toolbar Labs. It's now available in Toolbar for Internet Explorer (Firefox already has a similar feature built in to the browser). After you authorize Toolbar to detect your location, you can simply search [coffee] and Toolbar will return search results targeted to your location. This is done without associating location information with your Google Account. Thanks to everyone who helped us test it!

Here's a video demo of these features.

Last but certainly not least, Google Sidewiki is now available in nearly all Toolbar languages, and as a Chrome extension.

Has anyone here ever attempted to submit material to Crimethinc for possible publication? And if so, how was the experence?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Ro47mu81-SE/tool-using-animals-n.html

Warning: This video contains footage of an octopus hiding under a coconut shell that it has carried around just in case it needed to hide from something. Watching this footage may contradict your previous assumptions about animal tool use, and may be too adorable for some viewers.

National Geographic: Octopuses Carry Coconut Shells as Instant Shelters

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/vyzXBZ9zosU/change-blindness-exp.html

Dinotopia artist James Gurney posted this video about a "change blindness" experiment. 75% of the participants didn't notice that the experimenter who bent under a counter was replaced by a different person. Says Gurney: "Here's proof that most of the time we look but don't see." I think Matisse said something to the effect that he didn't really see things unless he was painting them.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/yZI0CTXObSc/the-forgery-of-venus.html

Michael Gruber's The Forgery of Venus combines art history, criminal mischief, and the sleaziness of the contemporary art gallery business to deliver a terrifically fun thriller-esque novel.

The main character, Chaz Wilmot, is an extremely talented but frustrated and depressed magazine illustrator. For no special reason, he volunteers as a human guinea pig in a medical research study to test the effects of Salvia divinorum, a powerful, short-duration psychedelic drug that causes him to imagine he's living the life of Velásquez, the famous 17th century Spanish painter. These episodes cause all sorts of problems in his real life, and when he wakes up one morning in a strange apartment and discovers that he is actually a successful gallery artist, he flips out and lands in a mental ward.

When he's released (and learns that he's back to being the hack illustrator he started out as) Wilmot is eager to clear his head by taking on a lucrative commission to restore the fresco on the ceiling of an Italian mobster's palazzo. Here, he meets a sleazy German art dealer who specializes in paintings plundered by the Nazis in World War II. The dealer gives him an offer he can't refuse: to forge an "undiscovered" Velásquez painting. When he accepts, the strange events that have been happening to him intensify, and he finds himself wonder whether he's completely crazy or if powerful characters behind the curtain are pulling strings.

This is the kind of book that could easily become ludicrous and boring if it had been written by an author less talented than Gruber. His richly developed characters and engaging prose keep the story crisp and believable. The ending is satisfying, too, which is important to me. As soon as I finished the The Forgery of Venus I got started on another one of his novels, The Book of Air and Shadows, which is great so far, as well.

The Forgery of Venus, by Michael Gruber

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iKoNZuM_InY/flame-thrower-and-po.html

William Gurstelle, a contributing editor at MAKE, has produced a series of project posters, measuring 36" x 24". The first two in the series are available on his web site, Ballisticom.

Potato Cannon: This device fires a potato at speeds approaching 100 mph. The poster includes information on a variety of ignition options including taser, piezo, and flint/steel systems. Clear and concise directions; outstanding performance!

Flamethrower: Technically, this is a propane cannon, as it runs on as it uses commonly available propane as opposed to the much more dangerous type using gasoline or kerosene. Complete information including key parts and supplies, dimensions, safe operating instructions, and more.

Flame thrower and potato cannon project posters

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/iJP57XYOUKM/najmetender-plays-po.html

Here's NajMeTender playing ukulele version of "Pokerface." She says, "In my head I'm constantly thinking that the song is called Pokéface and honestly it'd be much better if it was." (Thanks, Gever!)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/h_7IQeC9o4s/biographies.html

A quick housekeeping note: We have improved the biography field in your profile, which now permits biographies to be longer than 30 words or so. We have also taken the liberty of accidentally wiping your old bios. Sorry about that. No, profile pictures do not yet work. Shut up.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/t2Sb9g9xtU0/how-a-japanese-scien.html

This short BBC video explains how Ukichiro Nakaya, a mid-20th century scientist in Hokkaido, Japan, created the first artificial snowflake in his lab. It was 1933, and he did it by building a chamber with adjustable temperature, air pressure, and humidity that could mimic the weather condition in clouds that produce snow.

[via Neatorama]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/6KCrc7d6LDo/woman-98-charged-wit.html

Laura Lundquist, 98, was indicted on a murder charge for allegedly suffocating and killing her nursing home roommate, Elizabeth Barrow, age 100. Lundquist, who apparently has dementia, was angry because Barrow was "taking over the room." From The Telegraph:

She is believed to be the oldest murder defendant in the history of Massachusetts but might never go to trial because of her mental health issues...

Miss Barrow's son, Scott Barrow, has said Lundquist complained to nursing home officials about the number of visitors his mother received. He also has said Lundquist had made "threatening" and "harassing" remarks to her.

The two women had been room-mates for about a year. Scott Barrow has said he asked nursing home officials to separate the women, but they assured him the two were getting along.

In a statement, the nursing home said the room-mates acted like sisters, walked and ate lunch together daily and said, "Goodnight, I love you," to each other every night.

"Woman, 98, accused of killing 100-year-old room-mate" (via Fortean Times)

http://crooksandliars.com/jason-sigger/repub-generated-nuclear-terror

Bad enough when terrorists bluff about their intent to obtain nuclear weapons to frighten the general populace - now we have Republican politicians doing the terrorists' work for them.  From Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) was troubled by what might happen when waterboarding and the American right to a fair trial met in a U.S. courtroom. She worried what might happen if terror suspects argued they'd been given "cruel and unusual" punishment at Gitmo.

"This is what scares me because they're in a U.S. court now and the rights are different," she said. "What will they say [about their detention] and what could happen and could they be out among the people again? It's very frightening."

How frightening? Mushroom cloud frightening, according to [Rep. Trent] Franks [R-AZ]. He said that a federal trial would give the suspects "a megaphone to speak to the planet," which he said "only hastens the danger" of, literally, a nuclear terrorist attack.

Yes, we certainly don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, do we? The only thing we need to fear are the fearmongers themselves. Better to dig a nice deep hole at Gitmo, and throw all these Republicans  terrorists into it and forget about them. Also present at the Dec 10 event were Rep. Michelle "Kill the Socialists" Bachman (R-MN) and Frank "Crazy Eyes" Gaffney (Center for Security Policy).

I'm going to create a new variant of Godwin's Law.

• Sigger's Law: "As any discussion on terrorism grows longer, the probability of attributing terrorists with nuclear weapons (or similar destructive capabilities) approaches 1."
• Corrolary to Sigger's Law: "Once such an observation is made, the discussion is finished and whoever mentioned terrorist possession of nuclear weapons has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Feministing/~3/xbNGBBqBIwo/019307.html

**Spoiler warning!**

So I saw the latest Twilight movie, New Moon, this weekend.*

I was prepared for the manipulative relationship between the protagonist Bella and her sparkly vampire bf Edward. I was prepared for not-exactly-feminist messages about centering your life around men. I was prepared for seriously awful acting and dialogue (the Academy really needs to institute a "Best Unintentional Comedy" Oscar category -- it would be a tight race between New Moon and Terminator Salvation).

However, I was not prepared for the way the movie portrays physical relationship violence, particularly in Native communities. For all the talk of Edward's abusiveness throughout feminist blogworld, I've seen much less written about domestic violence as it relates to the film's competing love interest, Jacob Black -- a 16-year-old Quileute boy who can turn into a werewolf.

At one point in the movie, Bella meets Emily, the fiance of one of Jacob's fellow werewolf-men. As she turns to put a plate of giant muffins on the table, we see that she has a massive scar on one half of her face:

After breakfast, once Jacob and Bella are alone in the car, Jacob explains that Emily's soon-to-be husband lost his temper "for a split second," became a werewolf, and mauled her. (Earlier in the film, he has told Bella that this whole turning-into-a-werewolf-when-you-get-angry thing is actually a genetic trait carried by many men in his community.) He explains that he's worried that he's bad for Bella because he doesn't know if he can control his own anger.

It's more than a little problematic for New Moon to portray violence as an endemic trait among Native men. Yes, domestic violence is a very real problem in American Indian communities. According to Sacred Circle, Native women are more likely to experience violence than any other U.S. population. A full 64 percent of American Indian women will be physically assaulted in their lifetime. They are also stalked at more than twice the rate of other women. But to imply that this is a result of Native people's genes rather than related to other issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, or centuries of racism and marginalization, is inexcusable. (See Latoya's post on Jacob Black for more on Twilight's treatment of Native communities.)

This theme of uncontrollable tempers and violence is also disturbing in the context of the film's Edward vs. Jacob set-up. Bella's options, as New Moon portrays them, are essentially to become a blood-sucking monster by marrying the patronizing, emotionally manipulative Edward or to risk her safety by choosing the patronizing, possibly physically violent Jacob. Oh how I wish for a third option: Emily and Bella bake muffins for each other and find fulfilling lives that are centered on them, not men with fangs. Sadly, I'm guessing that's not where Eclipse, the next book/movie in the series, is going to go. Maybe I need to start writing feminist fan-fic.

* Yes, I knew going in that this was not a triumph of feminist cinema. But given what a major pop-culture phenomenon Twilight is, especially among tween girls, I do think it's important for feminists to engage with it, not bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Zmuj52ENJOI/google-wave-desktop-notifier-keeps-you-on-top-of-your-wave-inbox

Windows only: Google Wave has a lot of potential, but it's also another inbox to keep track of. Google Wave Desktop Notifier is a small system tray application will let you know when you've got new messages in your inbox.

We've featured a Google Wave notifier before in the form of a Firefox extension, but if you prefer a non-browser alternative, Wave Desktop Notifier will do the trick. This handy little program gives you some pretty detailed notifications when you receive new waves—it checks your inbox every two minutes, and then shows you your last received reply in a notification (as well as how many unread waves you currently have in your inbox). In addition, you can access your 5 latest unread waves from the system tray icon, or just navigate directly to your inbox. I'd love to see it give the option of using Growl for Windows instead of its own dedicated notifications, but it's certainly a great addition to any Wave user's system tray.

Google Wave Notifier is a free download, Windows only.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/DIBdfmUwSOo/avoid-overdraft-fees-with-low-balance-alerts

I recently opened a new checking account for ATM withdrawals because my bank had no nearby ATMs in my neighborhood. What I forgot was to set up low balance alerts on my new account. I've now paid for it in overdraft fees.

Low balance alerts (and other transaction notifications) are available from most banking institutions through their online portals, and they have been available for quite some time now. I expect that most of you are already aware that you can set up low balance, insufficient funds, deposit confirmation, and other notifications that'll go straight to your email (and sometimes cellphone) when you've tripped an important alert, so consider this a reminder:

Log into your online bank now and make sure you've set up alerts for important thresholds—particularly for a low balance. It's embarrassing to admit, but for no good reason other than not paying close enough attention, I'm paying over $100 in overdraft charges this month. A simple low balance alert could've easily taken care of this.

If your bank doesn't offer low balance alerts, you're still not out of luck. If you're using personal finance webapp Mint, for example, you can set up all kinds of alerts (email and/or SMS) that push out from Mint regardless of whether or not your bank has their own notification system. The low balance alerts are one of the features that helped Gina stop being paranoid and start using Mint.

Got your own advice on the matter—or your own overdrawn embarrassments? Let's hear about it in the comments.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/37dhsPKU9_8/

Christmas is less than two weeks away, and if you're inclined to celebrate the holiday season—Christmas or otherwise—it's time to swap out your winter wallpaper for a holiday-themed one.

Note: The "Full Size" link directly under the picture only shows you the sample image we uploaded for this gallery. You need to click on the name of the particular wallpaper in the right hand column to access the full range of sizes at the source site.

Not keen on the gallery layout? See all the larger images on one page here.

Merry Christmas by love1008



Where Snow Flakes Are Born by Vladstudios



Merry Christmas by sounddevil13



NOEL New Year Wallpaper by Vladstudios



Simple Po Christmas by PoSmedley



Glass Snowmen by 1680



Frosted by Vladstudios



White Christmas by Juggernaut-4



Christmas Green by JackieW



Adorable Snowman by Pockets1987



Snow Puppy 2004 by HybridWorks
Visit site, click on Xmas Gifts in the right hand navigation column. Click on the 2004 set, download.



Merry Christmas by Deeo-Elaclaire



Merry Christmas by chopeh



Holiday Spirit Dual Display by DigitalPhenom



Merry Christmas by ~Teadux



Happy Holidays by MikeyStudios

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/man-suing-world-of-warcraft-for-being-too-slow/

California man, Erik Estavillo, is suing Activision Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, for one million dollars because he claims the slow game pace is designed to take the player longer to get where he needs to go. He says the slow game pace is causing him anxiety, agoraphobia, depression and Crohn’s Disease.

Lest you think that was the highlight of the suit, just wait until you hear the witnesses he is calling on his behalf: Winona Ryder and Martin Lee Gore, the founder of Depeche Mode. He thinks Winona’s interest in Catcher In The Rye makes her qualified to discuss alienation and that Gore’s songs make him an expert in alienation because he is “sad, lonely and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes.”

Link

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/aging-related-changes-in-agatha-christies-vocabulary/

http://www.neatorama.com/?p=28256

In a recently-presented scientific paper, Ian Lancashire and Graeme Hirst from the University of Toronto’s Department of English and Department of Computer Science demonstrate changes in the vocabulary used in Agatha Christie’s later novels.

The professors digitized 14 Christie novels (and included two more available in the Gutenberg online text archive), and then, with the aid of textual-analysis software, analyzed them for “vocabulary size and richness,” an increase in repeated phrases (like “all sorts of”) and an uptick in indefinite words (”anything,” “something”) — linguistic indicators of the cognitive deficits typical of Alzheimer’s disease. The results were statistically significant; Christie’s lexicon decreased with age, while both the number of vague words she employed and phrases she repeated increased.

Further studies are planned for the works of P.D. James and Ross Macdonald.

Link, via Language Log, where there is an informed comment thread.

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/paint-chip-mosaic/

Take 3,074 paint chips in 36 colours, a few glue guns and a bit of elbow grease. And what do you get? A cool mural, that’s what. Oh, and glue all over your clothes. 

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by spav.

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/14/a-life-sized-stagecoach-made-of-toothpicks/

72-year-old Terry Woodling of Warsaw, Indiana spent 15 years creating this gorgeous stagecoach from 1.5 million toothpicks! Sadly, it was rejected by the Guiness Book of World Records.

The reason behind the rejection was the use of glue in the process of making the stagecoach. Mr. Terry Woodling, also referred to as Mr. Toothpick, was undaunted by this failure and graciously donated his creation to the local Warsaw museum. Later on it was recognized by the Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not hall of fame.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Crni.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotYourRightsOnline/~3/ZMTw_oPCSe8/Cybersecurity-Czar-Job-Is-Useless-Says-Spafford

Trailrunner7 writes "It's been about seven months since Obama announced his plan to hire a cybersecurity coordinator, and the job is still vacant. Several prominent security experts have turned the position down, and in an interview on Threatpost, Purdue professor Gene Spafford says that the position is pointless. 'It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn't take it, I'm not surprised. It's not a winning position. I'm not at all surprised by the fact that it's empty. That position is a blame-taking position,' Spafford said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.