May 2013
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Slumburbia Is Real →
For years now, affluent (mostly white) Americans have been moving back into our nation’s “inner cities,” those once-scary locations populated only by forgotten minorities and a distinct lack of quality condo development. And poor people, in turn, have been decamping for the suburbs, those once-deluxe bastions of white flight. Slumburbia is no longer our future. It is our present.
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Teens Accused Of Raping Girl, Posting Video On... →
Three Chicago teens accused of gang-raping a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint and posting the video to Facebook will face charges as adults, Cook County prosecutors announced Friday. A judge ordered Justin Applewhite, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Scandale Fritz, 16, each held on $900,000 bond.
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Aimee Copeland Gets Bionic Hands →
Aimee Copeland, the 25-year-old who lost her hands, both feet and her entire right leg to flesh-eating bacteria a year ago, has received two new bionic hands. Copeland spent the week in Ohio at Touch Bionics, where she received two bionic hands free of charge. The hands cost $100,000 a piece, on average, a company spokesperson told ABCNews.com. Aimee Copeland received two new bionic hands this...
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Keep on Truckin' -- The psychedelic cargo haulers... →
The creaking trucks that ply Pakistan’s treacherous highways form a vibrant tapestry in the country’s often bleak and rugged landscape. Showcasing the Pakistani tradition of painting vehicles elaborately, the trucks are covered with everything from detailed arabesques and Urdu calligraphy to portraits of Pakistani pop icons — or some combination of all three. Often, drivers...
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The Health Toll of Immigration →
A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in the United States, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.
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Study: Why Pot Smokers Are Skinnier →
Marijuana users had smaller waists and scored higher across several measures of blood sugar regulation.
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Big Banks Get Break in Rules to Limit Risks →
Lobbyists for the nation’s biggest banks have persuaded federal regulators to soften a proposed Dodd-Frank rule, a move that is expected to protect Wall Street’s control over the $700 trillion derivatives market.
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The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit: Sylvia Plath’s Lovely,... →
A charming cautionary tale about the perils of self-consciousness. Sylvia Plath — celebrated poet, little-known artist, lover of the wor
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“I had made no conscious decision to be single, but love is rare and it is...”
– Emily Witt
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Canada ranked fourth in the world for scientific... →
Canada ranks well in the following areas: clinical medicine; information and communication technologies; physics and astronomy; psychology and cognitive sciences. Canada also punches well above its weight in historical studies and research on the visual and performing arts.
The panel also found found that Canada is a world leader in research on venereal diseases and dermatology, as well as...
“The millennials are the people who’ve inherited the hangover from the baby...”
– Why Time’s Millennials Cover Story Says More About Joel Stein Than It Does About Millennials
(via jumblejo)
Eupraxsophy: Fun Fact About Tumblr →
helloimmrburns:
eupraxsophy:
Has anyone else noticed that Tumblr doesn’t seem to have an obvious revenue stream? There’s no advertizing, pay wall, or membership fees. Yes, there are premium themes that cost money, but these can’t possibly make enough money to run the site.
That’s because Tumblr is not profitable. It’s funded…
But I wonder…
If Tumblr truly is not profitable (and I do not...
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Fun Fact About Tumblr
Has anyone else noticed that Tumblr doesn’t seem to have an obvious revenue stream? There are no advertisements, pay walls, or membership fees, and while there are premium themes that cost money, these clearly can’t bring in enough revenue to maintain the site.
That’s because Tumblr is not a money making entity. It’s funded entirely by investors, a...
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Scientists report first success in cloning human... →
Scientists have made the first embryonic stem cell lines from human skin cells.
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9 Questions That Atheists Might Find Insulting... →
Some questions make atheists feel second-class — and make you look like a jerk for asking them.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever been personally offended per se, but I have been annoyed by encountering the same thoughtless assumptions regularly. Then again, some people genuinely misunderstand the atheist position, and that’s understandable — it’s not exactly a...
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Rumor Alert: Yahoo Is Buying Tumblr for a Billion? →
Yahoo has a problem: it has no idea what it’s doing, or how it’s going to do it (outside of teenage dream hires). Some people who claim intimate knowledge say the company is going to do it by throwing a serious Hail Mary: buying Tumblr for $1,000,000,000. That’s one billion.
Could it be that Tumblr may come under ownership of Yahoo? What do you think of this possibility?
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The ultimate downsizers: Couple give up their home... →
Many couples thinking about downsizing when they retire, but one Baltimore couple have taken the tradition to an extreme.
“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you...”
– Tennessee Williams
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Rush Limbaugh – Proof that Ignoring the Ridiculous... →
As nearly every political writer will attest, it’s nearly impossible to write about a right-wing agitator like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh without someone smugly commenting, “why do you even give them the time of day? If we ignore them, they’ll go away.”
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We need to talk about masculinity →
“The big secret about the golden age of ‘male providers’ is that it never existed. First, women have always worked. Second, and just as importantly, there have always been men who were too poor, too queer, too sensitive, too disabled, too compassionate or simply too clever to submit to whatever model of ‘masculinity’ society relied upon to keep its wars fought and its...
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Why Is Violent Crime So Rare In Iceland? →
First - and arguably foremost - there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland. And with that, tension between economic classes is non-existent, a rare occurrence for any country.
Björgvin SigurðssonSocial Democratic Alliance
A study of the Icelandic class system done by a University of Missouri master’s student found only 1.1% of participants identified...
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Despite Their Wide Differences, Many Israelis and... →
Survey Report: Israelis and Palestinians differ widely in their outlook for a peaceful resolution of their longstanding conflict and in their views about the two-state solution.
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Most U.S. clothing chains did not sign pact on... →
Companies including Wal-Mart, Gap and Target opted out; retailers cited fear of lawsuits over pact’s terms.
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Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima (Warning:... →
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects…
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Some Strange Things Are Happening To Astronauts... →
Here’s what most astronauts will never tell you.
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On this day in 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, because “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” which thereby violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
– Albert Camus
Meet the Chinese ‘censors’ who watch 700... →
Officials in charge of censoring pornography for the southern province of Hunan gave a rare and revealing peek into the strange (and quite possibly libido-numbing) demands of their job in a rare, local TV interview now making the rounds online.
In the space of one week alone, a four-man team in the office watched more than 700 pornographic DVDs from beginning to end, the officials said.
“When...
Repair Her Armor: Clothes I'm forced to wear in... →
repair-her-armor:
[Please take note that the commentary is just for fun. Bunch of sarcasm. Don’t take it too seriously. I am getting tired of these outfits, though.]
1. The classic Bikini Armor. If you’re lucky you might get an actual shoulder-pad! If the designers even bother doing something more than…
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A few days ago, scientists reported that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passed a long-feared tipping point of 400 parts per million — an amount that hasn’t been present since 3 million years ago. During the roughly 8,000 years that human civilization has existed, CO2 levels were stable; it’s only been since the Industrial Revolution, less than 200 years ago, that...
Eupraxsophy: The Amazing Lithuanian Language →
helloimmrburns:
eupraxsophy:
Lithuanian, which is spoken only by around 3.2 million people worldwide (most of whom live in Lithuania), is one of the oldest and most linguistically-pure languages in the world.
In fact, it retains many features of “Proto-Indo-European,” which is the common ancestor of the Indo-European…
Really?
Well, perhaps I should include sources, because that is a big...
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Photos of Children From Around the World With... →
Chiwa - Mchinji, Malawi Shot over a period of 18 months, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s project Toy Stories compiles photos of children from around the world with their prized possessions — their toys. Galimberti explores the universality of being a kid amidst the diversity of their circumstances.
Half Of The Jobs Created During The Recovery Were... →
While the economy has seen decent job growth in recent months, the jobs being created may not pay very well. A new report has found that about half of the jobs created in the last three years have been low-paying, reports the Huffington Postâs Mark Gongloff: Nearly all of the 6.2 million jobs created since […]
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The death toll from the recent collapse of a factory mill in Bangladesh is now over 1,000. It’s been reported that many workers were aware of the risks but went in because they would otherwise be fired.
Regulations and unions are discouraged by international companies, which makes Bangladeshi labor cheap, turning the country into the world’s largest producer of garments. Thus, many...
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The Amazing Lithuanian Language
Lithuanian, which is spoken only by around 3.2 million people worldwide (most of whom live in Lithuania), is one of the oldest and most linguistically-pure languages in the world.
In fact, it retains many features of “Proto-Indo-European,” which is the common ancestor of the Indo-European language family (which includes every major European language plus Hindi, Farsi, Bengali, and...
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Our Very Normal Solar System Isn't Normal Anymore... →
Turns out our solar system â with its medium sized sun, its four small rocky planets, its four big gassy ones farther out â isn’t like the others. We are unusual. Very unusual. Says one prominent astronomer, we are “a bit of a freak.”
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“Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of...”
– Grand Inquisitor Silecio, The Fountain
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What Is It About Bees And Hexagons? : NPR →
Bees could build flat honeycombs from just three shapes: squares, triangles or hexagons. But for some reason, bees choose hexagons. Always “perfect” hexagons. Why?
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Libraries Try to Update the Bookstore Model →
As librarians struggle with the task of redefining their roles in a digital age, many are seeing an opportunity to fill the void created by the loss of traditional bookstores.
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Major Retailers Join Bangladesh Safety Plan →
Under mounting pressure, several companies agreed to a landmark plan to help pay for safety improvements in Bangladesh’s garment factories.
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Associated Press says US gov't seized journalists'... →
fuckyeahmarxismleninism:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and...
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A Map Showing the Country's Sudden Move Towards... →
Gay marriage is suddenly popular. But what our map GIF shows is that this wave of support for gay rights follows two large anti-gay rights wave, first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush.
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Since the 1870s and the 1880s, there had been several local observances honoring mothers in America, including an attempt by Julia Ward Howe to establish a national “Mother’s Day for Peace” (although it was for organizing pacifist mothers against war rather than honoring motherhood in general). In any case, the modern holiday of Mother’s Day stems from 1908, when American...
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