Good Reads

[oggbashan]

You can't be borned then. I was borned then!

I was married then! And we thought we were getting on a bit. I had been in a postgraduate post for ten years. She had been a qualified teacher for seven. I had had three previous fiancées, she had had one previous fiancé. We didn't 'get engaged'. We just decided to marry - 41 years ago.

 

[Laurel]

I was married then! And we thought we were getting on a bit. I had been in a postgraduate post for ten years. She had been a qualified teacher for seven. I had had three previous fiancées, she had had one previous fiancé. We didn't 'get engaged'. We just decided to marry - 41 years ago.

Congratulations to you both.

 

[Laurel]

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5465/9819202746_f4fa7206b3_o.jpg

In 1961, immediately after overhearing her parents discuss the possibility of Soviet nuclear tests at the North Pole, 8-year-old Michelle Rochon grabbed a pencil and wrote a letter to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in which she asked him to prevent the tests for one particular reason. Her letter, and the reply she soon received from Kennedy, can be read below.​

- read the full article You must not worry about Santa (from Letters of Note)​

 

[lovetoread]

We just decided to marry.

That is so romantic.

 

[Saint Peter]

So Kennedy got to fuck Monroe AND talk to Santa?



What a jerk.

 

[oggbashan]

We just decided to marry.

That is so romantic.

It also saved money because I didn't buy an engagement ring. Why should I? I had three spares; she had one because her ex had gone to work in Egypt and didn't want the ring back. None of them were worth much secondhand.

The wedding ring cost more than the four redundant engagement rings had done when new.

We used the money I would have spent on an engagement ring towards the deposit on our house.

P.S. When we told her parents, the expression on their faces was priceless. That expression changed when we said we would be marrying in 10 months time.

 

[Laurel]

http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-09-19/feat_honey39__01__300.jpg

On March 24, 2008, von Buddenbrock came to the office around 8:30 a.m., as usual. He was expecting a quiet day: It was a holiday in Germany, and his bosses there had the day off. Giesselbach was on holiday, too; she had returned to Germany to visit her family and boyfriend. Sometime around 10 a.m., von Buddenbrock heard a commotion in the reception area and went to have a look. A half-dozen armed federal agents, all wearing bulletproof vests, had stormed in. “They made a good show, coming in with full force,” he recalls. “It was pretty scary.”

The agents asked if anybody was hiding anywhere, then separated von Buddenbrock and his assistant, the only two employees there. Agents brought von Buddenbrock into a conference room, where they questioned him about ALW’s honey business. After a couple of hours they left, taking with them stacks of paper files, copies of computer hard drives, and samples of honey.

Giesselbach returned from Germany three days later. Her flight was about to land at O’Hare when the crew announced that everyone would have to show their passports at the gate. As Giesselbach walked off the plane, federal agents pulled her aside. She, too, answered their questions about ALW’s honey shipments. After an hour, they let her leave. The agents, from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security, had begun to uncover a plot by ALW to import millions of pounds of cheap honey from China by disguising its origins.​

- read the full article The Honey Launderers: Uncovering the Largest Food Fraud in U.S. History (from Bloomberg Businessweek)​

 

[Sean]

Your Casual Acquaintances on Twitter Are Better Than Your Close Friends on Facebook

 

[thør]

Read the comments section: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130919/jon-krakauer-responds-what-killed-chris-mccandless

And more, here:
The beatification of Chris McCandless: From thieving poacher into saint

Announcing an edit....above..

 

[Aquagal]

Announcing an edit....above..

The comments were interesting. Relevance to the exact cause is still in question, although Kraukauer seems more sure of his findings. What has not changed is that the kid was an ill prepared idiot. I wonder if he's bringing it all back up to bring new readers in.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Physical violence is definitely teh crazy. Period, end of story.

If it weren't for physical violence, the United States would not exist.

 

[Byron In Exile]

I do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but how bad would it be if we all just woke up one day?

It would be... another day.

Except we wouldn't be maroons...

(Not to put a fine point on it...)

 

[RobDownSouth]

Hep me! Hep me! Mah muscles done a-sploded!

Crossfit training makes your muscles grow.
Crossfit training makes your muscles grow huge.
What happens, though, when Crossfit training makes your muscles literally explode?

read more - Crossfit's Dirty Little Secret

 

[Laurel]

If it weren't for physical violence, the United States would not exist.

Doesn't make it any less crazy.

 

[Laurel]

http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/eat-greenpoint.jpg?w=300&h=216

Silence is golden – at least that’s what one Brooklyn eatery is banking on.

Eat, a restaurant in Greenpoint, is planning on running a monthly event where all diners must chow down in complete silence.

Nick Nauman, Eat’s managing chef and events curator, came up with the idea in a bid to address the “alienation” caused by the countless distractions people encounter while eating.

Mr. Nauman told The Observer last Sunday’s 90-minute pilot run was “strange in a very good way.”​

- read the full article Greenpoint Restaurant Debuts Silent Suppers for the Not-So-Loud Crowd (from The New York Observer)​

 

[Laurel]

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/056/914/iFF/bad-wine.jpg?1379357330

A buttery flavor with notes of raspberries, chocolate and … wet dog?

Open enough bottles of wine, and eventually, one will smell a bit "off." Corked wines have been contaminated by a chemical carried in the cork that produces a musty, unpleasant smell often described as soggy cardboard or wet dog.

Now, researchers have found corked wine may smell so bad because the chemical culprit, rather than producing a yucky odor, actually suppresses the drinker's sense of smell.

"The present findings not only reveal a likely mechanism of flavor loss, but also suggest certain molecular structures as possible olfactory masking agents," the researchers write in their study, detailed today (Sept. 16) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.​

- read the full article Secret to Bad-Smelling Wine Revealed (from LiveScience)​

 

[trysail]

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/chillingham-cow.jpg?w=640&h=482​

...Wild cattle in England? That’s what I said. Well … it turns out that somewhere around the year 1200, the local ruler in Chillingham Castle put a stone fence around several thousand acres, put in a herd of cattle for sport hunting, and since then … well, other than being given a bit of hay in the depths of the winters, and being hunted back in the day, they’ve been left totally alone since. No veterinarian visits. No injections. No castration. No ear-tags. No branding. In fact, they are untouched by any human hand throughout their entire lives, and they are indeed very wild.

And they’re not kidding. Now, I grew up on a cattle ranch, I’ve seen most all of the breeds, and I have a reasonably good eye for cattle … and these are not your average brain-dead moo cows. They are awake and alert, and unlike regular cows, you definitely get the sense that there is a wild and wise creature looking back at you from the other side of the horns...

Link to:
It Wasn't A Good Britain, It Was A Great Britain
Being the further adventures of the autodidact polymath, Willis Eschenbach, on his tour of BritLand. (from the blog Watts Up With That)

 

[Laurel]

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/chillingham-cow.jpg?w=640&h=482​

Link to:
It Wasn't A Good Britain, It Was A Great Britain
Being the further adventures of the autodidact polymath, Willis Eschenbach, on his tour of BritLand. (from the blog Watts Up With That)

Gorgeous pics there

 

[Laurel]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/69907000/jpg/_69907522_115885760.jpg

Moving in time to a steady beat is closely linked to better language skills, a study suggests.

People who performed better on rhythmic tests also showed enhanced neural responses to speech sounds.

The researchers suggest that practising music could improve other skills, particularly reading.

In the Journal of Neuroscience, the authors argue that rhythm is an integral part of language.

"We know that moving to a steady beat is a fundamental skill not only for music performance but one that has been linked to language skills," said Nina Kraus, of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Illinois.​

- read the full article Moving to the rhythm 'can help language skills' (from The BBC)​

 

[thør]

The comments were interesting. Relevance to the exact cause is still in question, although Kraukauer seems more sure of his findings. What has not changed is that the kid was an ill prepared idiot. I wonder if he's bringing it all back up to bring new readers in.

I like what Medred said: that the kid was a thief, poacher and scofflaw.

 

[lovetoread]

I like what Medred said: that the kid was a thief, poacher and scofflaw.

I've read all of his articles, and I agree with him.

I don't understand why the man who died of idiocy has been made into a martyr.

 

[Sean]

I've read all of his articles, and I agree with him.

I don't understand why the man who died of idiocy has been made into a martyr.

Americans do that all the time with criminals. To be fair, so do the Brits, Nov 5th celebrates a massive terrorist attack.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Doesn't make it any less crazy.

But aren't we just the most awesome bunch of nuts ever?

 

[Byron In Exile]

Americans do that all the time with criminals. To be fair, so do the Brits, Nov 5th celebrates a massive terrorist attack.

And you're yet posting on this awful American board.

Why don't you go and see if there's a British one you can annoy?

 

[oggbashan]

Americans do that all the time with criminals. To be fair, so do the Brits, Nov 5th celebrates a massive terrorist attack.

We celebrate the FAILURE of that attack - by burning effigies of people we don't like at the moment.