Manil Suri: Why Is Science So Straight? (NY Times)
MANY years ago, over lunch at our university cafeteria, I came out as gay to a colleague in the engineering department. "I didn't realize you were so unconventional," he said. I tried explaining to him that being gay was innate and had nothing to do with wanting to subvert convention, but he refused to retract his label. Looking back, perhaps he was correct.
Froma Harrop: Heroism, American-Style (Creators Syndicate)
Every country has its heroes, but something in America's cultural sauce makes for a unique and unusually effective variety. The ingredient would be improvisation - the ability to perform without preparation, using whatever is at hand to complete the task.
Froma Harrop: Why Don't We Try Staying Home? (Creators Syndicate)
About dying. The greatest regrets of dying people, according to a famous list, focus on personal ties - for example, neglecting old friends. One, importantly, is wishing they hadn't lived the life others expected of them.
Lucy Mangan: Ashley Madison? Sign me up! (The Guardian)
Thousands are said to have subscribed to the infidelity website in the last week, suggesting the recent leak of client information proved little deterrent for those keen to cheat on their spouses.
In North America, fabric with a pattern consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colors is called plaid. What is it called in Scotland?
The frog genus Mercurana, discovered in 2013 from Kerala, India, was named as a tribute because Mercury's "vibrant music inspires the authors." In addition, the site of discovery is very near to where Mercury spent most of his childhood.
Source
Cirolana mercuryi, a crustacean, is named for Freddie Mercury.
Source
Alan J was first, and correct, with:
Freddie Mercury.
mj wrote:
The front man for the most over educated band ever
Freddie Mercury of Queen. When we stayed in a rather posh hotel in London a couple of years back, the complementary reading was Bang, the Complete History of the Universe a book co-authored by Brian May, PhD in astrophysics. Believe the rest of the band members were also well versed in other disciplines.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
Freddie Mercury
Deborah responded:
Oh, my, I've never heard of those critters, and taking a WAG here, I'm going to guess that they're named after Freddie Mercury.
Man, was Queen ahead of their time or what? I love their music. That it still endures is a testament to how prescient it was/is.
So wordy already and I'm only half-finished with my coffee. Look out, Saturday!
Happy long weekend, people!
Randall replied:
I'm going to guess
one of the true musical geniuses of our time:
Freddie Mercury
DanD wrote:
First impressions ... Freddie Mercury?
John I from Hawai'i says,
"Freddie Mercury."
Marian replied:
Freddie Mercury
Lousy Lois Of Oregon said:
Ever since the Beatles identified themselves with a bad pun, Scientists thought it would be funny to name real bugs after musicians, and Freddie Mercury got not one but two namesakes, so we would remember him always, whenever we scratched at ourselves. For James Brown, they went that extra mile and actually infused his DNA into a South American Wood Chipping Cricket to create the hardest working bug in show business!
DJ Useo answered:
Why, It's Freddie Mercury from Queen. An incredible performer. Not many better than he was.
I really dig Queen. I've been playing my fuzzy box set of them called the Crown Jewels a lot of late.
Here's the link for my mashup album of Beatles vs Queen. Free, & very catchy.
BttbBob, responded:
WLIU, I'll say Freddie Mercury... a philosophical singer of no 'small' measure...
~~~~~
"Get on your bikes and ride!"
~~~~~
BTW, I was highly amused at the innuendo included in some of the answers to my 'Wettest place" question - It was not unexpected. The question was legit, but I knew - just knew - that it would elicit some of that. So, I thought to myself, "Hmmm... let's just see where some go with this" (an informal psych test as it were). Thanks to all who participated!
MAM wrote:
Freddie Mercury, the late singer and lyricist of the British rock band Queen, of an Indian-Parsi origin and spent majority of his childhood in Panchgani, which is located in the northern part of the mountain range from where the frog was discovered.
Dale of Diamond Springs, Norcali on a dazzle day took the day off.
STEPHEN F took the day off.
Joe S took the day off.
Charlie took the day off.
Sally is happily on the road and probably not paying much attention.
Patriot Act NSA Spying Unconstitutional Section 215 National Security Letters Must End
My name is Marc Perkel and I have decided to announce that I will not comply with the so called "Patriot Act" laws requiring me to disclose information about my customers. If I receive a national security letter I will immediately photograph it, post it online everywhere I can, and then make a video of me burning it. I will then await my arrest. If you want to put me in jail then come get me mother fucker.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother', then a RERUN'Madam Secretary', followed by a RERUN'CSI: One Too Many'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'NASCAR Sprint Cup', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
ABC begins the night with a RERUN'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Bachelor In Paradise', then a RERUN'Castle'.
The CW offers a RERUN'Monopoly Millionaires' Club', followed by an old 'Friends', then another old 'Friends', followed by 2½ hours of what passes for local news and other fluffery.
Faux has a RERUN'Bob's Burgers', followed by another RERUN'Bob's Burgers', then a RERUN'The Simpsons', followed by a RERUN'Brooklyn Nine-Nine', then a RERUN'Family Guy', followed by a RERUN'The Last Man On Earth'.
MY has an old 'How I Met Your Mother', followed by another old 'How I Met Your Mother', then an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then still another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
A&E has the movie 'Happy Valley', followed by the movie 'We Are Marshall'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] The Graham Norton Show - Seeason 12 - Ep 2 - Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Of Monsters and Men
[6:30AM] From Russia With Love
[9:00AM] For Your Eyes Only
[12:00PM] Goldfinger
[2:30PM] From Russia With Love
[5:00PM] For Your Eyes Only
[8:00PM] Casino Royale (2006)
[11:00PM] Casino Royale (2006)
[2:00AM] Goldfinger
[4:30AM] Top Gear: At the Movies (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Married To Medicine', followed by a FRESH'Bravo First Looks', then a FRESH'Married To Medicine', followed by a FRESH'Don't Be Tardy ... ', then a FRESH'Manzo'd With Children Social'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Liar Liar', followed by the movie 'Step Brothers', then the movie 'Step Brothers', again.
FX has the movie 'Oblivion', followed by a FRESH'The Strain'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] COMEDY BANG! BANG!-ALISON BRIE WEARS A BLACK MESH TOP AND MINI-SKIRT
[6:15AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-STUPID GIRL
[6:45AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-FORWARDS BACKWARDS
[7:15AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-FORBIDDEN GIRLFRIEND
[7:45AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-MALCOLM HOLDS HIS TONGUE
[8:15AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-BOYS AT THE RANCH
[8:45AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-GRANDMA SUES
[9:15AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-IF BOYS WERE GIRLS
[9:45AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-LONG DRIVE
[10:15AM] MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE-KICKED OUT
[10:45AM] MIDNIGHT RUN
[1:30PM] LETHAL WEAPON 3
[4:15PM] LETHAL WEAPON 4
[7:00PM] HALF BAKED
[9:00PM] HALF BAKED
[11:00PM] DOCUMENTARY NOW!-KUNUK UNCOVERED
[11:30PM] DOCUMENTARY NOW!-DRONEZ: THE HUNT FOR EL CHINGON
[12:00AM] MIDNIGHT RUN
[2:45AM] CRASH
[5:15AM] COMEDY BANG! BANG!-BRIE LARSON WEARS A BILLOWY LONG-SLEEVE SHIRT AND WHITE SADDLE SHOES
[5:45AM] COMEDY BANG! BANG!-AZIZ ANSARI WEARS A CHARCOAL BLAZER (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00AM] Single White Female
[8:30AM] Two for the Money
[11:00AM] Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter-Comedy Showrunners
[12:00PM] The Devil's Advocate
[3:00PM] Law & Order-Violence of Summer
[4:00PM] Law & Order-Sisters of Mercy
[5:00PM] Law & Order-Skin Deep
[6:00PM] Law & Order-Conduct Unbecoming
[7:00PM] Law & Order-Blue Bamboo
[8:00PM] Law & Order-Paranoia
[9:00PM] Law & Order-Aftershock
[10:00PM] Law & Order-Double Down
[11:00PM] Law & Order-Shadow
[12:00AM] Law & Order-Empire
[1:00AM] Law & Order-Turnstile Justice
[2:00AM] The Devil's Advocate
[5:00AM] Rectify-Thrill Ride (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'Back To The Future Part II', followed by the movie 'Back To The Future Part III'.
US actress Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed the original Star Trek character Uhura, leads the Dragon Con Parade in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 05 September 2015. Thousands of attendees crowd downtown Atlanta during the Labor Day weekend for Dragon Con, a science fiction and fantasy convention.
Photo by Erik S. Lesser
Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian has said she will donate part of a 100,000-euro ($112,000) Dutch award to charity, including Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
"It is hard for me to enjoy this prize as much as I would like to, seeing the region where I work and live in flames and tens of thousands seeking refuge in faraway lands," Tavakolian said on her Facebook page.
The 34-year-old self-taught photographer considered as one of the first professional female photojournalists in Iran, said she would be donating 15,000 to an organisation helping Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
"I have worked in both their countries and want to give back to all the kindness Iraqi's and Syrians always welcomed me with, despite the dire circumstances they live in," she said.
The Amsterdam-based Prince Claus Fund dedicated to culture and development said on its website Thursday that it had awarded its Principal 2015 prize to Tavakolian.
US actor Robert Redford and his wife German artist Sibylle Szaggars arrive for the 2015 Princess Grace Awards Gala held at the Royal Palace in Monaco, 05 September 2015.
Photo by Arnold Jerocki
Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Saturday criticised Russia -- the country that has granted him asylum -- calling its crackdown on human rights and online freedom "fundamentally wrong" and said he would prefer not to live in exile.
Snowden said Moscow's restrictions on the web were "a mistake in policy" and "fundamentally wrong" as he accepted a Norwegian freedom of expression prize by videophone from Russia.
Pushed on Moscow's deteriorating human rights record, the whistleblower said the situation is "disappointing, it's frustrating" and described restrictions on the Internet as part of a wider problem in Russia.
Snowden said he had "never intended to go to Russia, that was never my plan" and that he had been transiting the country en route for Latin America when US officials cancelled his passport.
"I applied for asylum in 21 countries," he told the audience at the ceremony for the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression's Bjornson Prize. "They were all silent. Russia was actually one of the last countries in that sequence that I applied for."
It's a centuries-old language heard only in a pocket of the Middle East, passed down from generation to generation solely through the spoken word - and a Canadian couple is playing a key role in sustaining it.
Erik Anonby and Christina van der Wal have dedicated nearly a decade to comprehensively documenting the language of Kumzari in a way no one appears to have done before.
Their efforts have seen them spend nearly two years living in the remote village of Kumzar, located on the tip of the Musandam peninsula in northern Oman, immersing themselves and their three young children in the community to study the language now spoken by about 5,000 people.
They've since developed a script for the oral language, compiled a dictionary and written a book on the grammar of Kumzari in an effort to help the language thrive in the future.
French actresses Lou de Laage (L) and Juliette Binoche attend the red carpet event for the movie "L'Attesa" (The Wait) at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, northern Italy September 5, 2015.
Photo by Stefano Rellandini
It's hard to imagine that two wildly successful, modern-life phenomena would have anything less in common than Uber, the popular ride-sharing service, andThe Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, Amy Chua's best-selling book that defined the stereotype of Asian American mothers willing to browbeat their children into academic success.
Yet a new study and a follow-up investigative report have found that The Princeton Review, the venerable college-prep service, is using an Uber-like zip code-based pricing system for its online tutoring courses. But Asian American families, who tend to outpace whites as well as other minorities when it comes to scholastic achievement, are nearly twice as likely as whites to be charged top dollar for the service-a disturbing conclusion that smacks of discrimination predicated on the education-at-all-costs tiger-mom stereotype.
In a statement given to ProPublica, the investigative website, the tutoring service insists its pricing is based solely on the cost of doing business: The more expensive the location, the higher the overhead for its business, a cost it, like most businesses, passes on to the consumer. "This is an ubiquitous practice across all commerce, both online and offline," reads the statement.
The study and report confirm the differential: Some zip codes entered into the company's website are offered The Princeton Review's Premier course for $8,400, but other zips get the same course for as little as $6,600. The tutoring service says the gap is because of income; the zip codes with higher prices tend to have an outsize number of financial services headquarters and other businesses that drive up The Princeton Review's prices.
Marion County Judge Vance Day is being investigated by a judicial fitness commission in part over his refusal to perform same-sex marriages on religious grounds, a spokesman for the judge said.
When a federal court ruling in May 2014 made same-sex marriage legal in Oregon, Day instructed his staff to refer same-sex couples looking to marry to other judges, spokesman Patrick Korten said Friday.
Last fall, he decided to stop performing weddings altogether, aside from one in March that had long been scheduled, Korten said.
"He made a decision nearly a year ago to stop doing weddings altogether, and the principal factor that he weighed was the pressure that one would face to perform a same-sex wedding, which he had a conflict with his religious beliefs," Korten said.
Day, a former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, was appointed to the bench in 2011 by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat.
Canadian actor Keanu Reeves poses for the photographers during the photocall for his movie 'Knock Knock' at the 41st annual Deauville American Film Festival, in Deauville, France, 05 September 2015. The festival runs from 04 to 13 September.
Photo by Etienne Laurent
Pope Francis' apology for the Roman Catholic Church's crimes against indigenous peoples has not softened opposition among some California Native Americans to his decision to canonize 18th-century Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra.
Serra is extolled by the Vatican as a great evangelizer, but denounced by some tribal officials as a destroyer of Native culture.
Francis made a sweeping apology for the church's sins and "crimes" against indigenous peoples during a visit to Bolivia in July, "humbly" begging forgiveness in the presence of Bolivia's first-ever indigenous president and representatives of native groups from across South America, who wildly cheered the pope and said they accepted the apology.
Norma Flores, a spokeswoman for the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians, Kizh Nation, said the pope's apology is meaningless if he doesn't halt the canonization of Serra on Sept. 23 at Washington's National Shrine.
"Pope Francis has gone to South America and apologized," she said. "Yet he is going to canonize the individual responsible for the genocide of Native people."
A fire that badly damaged a Planned Parenthood building in Washington state early on Friday was caused by arson, local officials said.
The blaze was set around 3:30 a.m. local time and caused extensive damage to the front of the structure in Pullman, the Pullman Fire Department said in a news release. No one was injured in the fire.
Fire officials in Pullman, a city of about 30,000 people close to Washington's border with Idaho, have not speculated on a motive for the arson and said the investigation was ongoing.
A flaming piano is launched from a trebuchet during the Burning Man 2015 "Carnival of Mirrors" arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, September 5, 2015. Approximately 70,000 have come to the sold-out festival that ends Sunday evening.
Photo by Jim Urquhart
Scientists are using submersibles to explore a German U-boat sunk 7 miles off the Rhode Island coast the day before Nazi Germany surrendered in World War II, and they're streaming the attempts online as they work to learn more about shipwrecks and how they affect the environment.
The submarine, U-853, was sunk in the Battle of Point Judith by Coast Guard and Navy ships on May 6, 1945, the day after it took down the SS Black Point, the last U.S. merchant ship sunk in the Atlantic during the war.
The scientists from the University of Rhode Island's Inner Space Center, Connecticut's Ocean Exploration Trust and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy hope to explore both wrecks during the five-day trip that lasts through Sunday. By Friday, they had so far made several attempts that were hampered by the conditions and technical challenges, but they planned to keep trying over the weekend.
They are using the National Science Foundation's research vessel Endeavor as a base and working 24 hours a day to get access. In addition to streaming online, the scientists are broadcasting three times a day on the local PBS station.
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. The Rolling Stones; $7,836,716; $174.50.
2. U2; $7,618,637; $117.10.
3. Taylor Swift; $4,752,793; $109.05.
4. Fleetwood Mac; $2,831,516; $122.18.
5. Kenny Chesney; $2,280,488; $86.28.
6. Luke Bryan; $1,440,211; $61.94.
7. Neil Diamond; $1,375,616; $105.85.
8. Bette Midler; $1,262,788; $127.37.
9. Shania Twain; $1,187,202; $96.40.
10. Ed Sheeran; $1,179,473; $64.10.
11. Maná; $1,138,505; $101.43.
12. Rush; $1,134,603; $85.80.
13. Dave Matthews Band; $1,009,635; $57.83.
14. Herbert Grönemeyer; $958,492; $57.49.
15. Phish; $853,524; $56.42.
16. Maroon 5; $783,712; $57.73.
17. Romeo Santos; $717,996; $87.91.
18. Sunrise Avenue; $683,751; $46.73.
19. New Kids On The Block; $673,195; $61.06.
20. Barry Manilow; $641,050; $71.78.
Mona, a 1-year-old Western Lowland Gorilla, bottom, holds onto her mother Asha as they eat carrots in the Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, in Cincinnati. With the most recent birth, the Cincinnati Zoo is celebrating their 50th captive bred Western Lowland Gorilla since 1970.
Photo by John Minchillo
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, responded:
wrote:
took the day off.
