WHACK JOBS
Tokyo’s former chief medical examiner claimed that there are approximately 200 cases of people masturbating themselves to death in Japan each year, with 20 to 30 in Tokyo’s 23 central wards alone.In other matters of the heart and hands, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology organized a tennis date for singles looking for a love match. Apparently it’s all “part of a project… to improve the nation through sports.”
A 33-year-old therapist from Kyoto was crowned champion of the Z-1 Grand Prix floor-wiping competition in Ehime Prefecture. Koichi Fujiwara set a new record of 18.23 seconds pushing a wet rag through a 109-meter-long hallway at the Uwa Rice Museum.
A computer armed with the “Akara 2010” system beat the top women’s shogi player, Ichiyo Shimizu, in 86 moves in a match staged at the University of Tokyo.
October 2010 archive
Oct 30 2010
Random Japan
Oct 30 2010
Health and Fitness News
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
Lavash is a flatbread, a staple of meals in Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
When you bake it, lavash becomes crispy on the edges. If you let it go for too long in the oven, it will be crisp all the way through, like a cracker. Despite the texture, lavash makes a great vehicle for any number of healthy toppings.
At Iranian markets, lavash is sold in sheets so big that half the bread dries out before you can finish it. As an alternative, Trader Joe’s now sells lavash in 9-by-12-inch sheets. Half of one makes a perfect serving.
Oct 30 2010
Obama’s Power to Produce Progressive Legislation May Increase Dramatically Tuesday
It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. Nate Silver’s projections of Friday October 29…
…found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.
Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.
Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight’s model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans’ overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.
The forecast also seems consistent with the average of generic ballot polling. Our model projects that Republicans will win the average Congressional district by between 3 and 4 points.
The modeling also suggests that there is a 90% chance that after Tuesday Democrats will control at least 50 seats in the Senate, but that there is a 0% chance that Democrats will control at least 60 seats.
It’s not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.
Oct 30 2010
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Nouriel Roubini : A presidency heading for a fiscal train wreck
What has been the fiscal performance of President Barack Obama? He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as well as a budget deficit that – after much needed bail-outs and a series of reckless tax cuts – was already close to $1,000bn. His stimulus package, together with a backstop of the financial system, low rates and quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, prevented another depression. Mr Obama also deserves credit that the US, alone among advanced economies, currently supports a “growth now”, rather than an “austerity now” path.
But this is but one half of the picture; we must also judge his first two years on his ability to anticipate what the economy will need tomorrow. Here the picture is much less positive. Given the likely path of fiscal policy after next Tuesday’s election – with the expiration of existing stimulus and transfer payments, and even with most of the 2001-03 tax cuts being kept – the US economy will soon experience serious fiscal drag just when it needs a further boost. Problematically, the administration’s failures leave it relying on the Fed, which is bent on further QE, likely to be announced next Wednesday. But studies show this will have little effect on US growth in 2011, so fiscal policy should be doing some of the lifting to prevent a double dip recession.
David Sirota: It’s the Stupidity, Stupid
Redistributionist-as epithets go, the moniker is so mild, so … 2008. Today, we’re hammered by screeds against Democrats’ alleged socialism and President Barack Obama’s supposed Marxism. The class war is clearly on-the paranoids and royalists of the world have united, seizing the means of propaganda production in these waning days of this year’s election campaign.
The onslaught, of course, is predictable. After all, this is an election season-which inevitably evokes Red-baiting crusades by the plutocrats. Less predictable is this crusade’s traction. As Wall Street executives make bank off bailouts, as millions of Americans see paychecks slashed and as our economic Darwinism sends more wealth up the income ladder-it’s surprising that appeals to capitalist piggery carry more electoral agency than ever.
What could cause this intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance.
Michael Moore: A Boot to the Head …from Michael Moore
There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot. You hear her glasses crunch under the pressure. Holding her head down with his foot, he applies more force so she can’t move. Her skull and brain are now suffering a concussion.
The young woman’s name is Lauren Valle, but she is really all of us. For come this Tuesday, the right wing — and the wealthy who back them — plan to take their collective boot and bring it down hard on not just the head of Barack Obama but on the heads of everyone they simply don’t like.
Rinku Sen: The Most Racist Campaign in Decades, and What It Demands of Us
If the election of 2008 was a referendum on race, the midterms are feeling like a recount. The dominant political discourse of 2008 centered on an improbable question: Could a black man overcome decades’ worth of conservative fear mongering about scary, criminal, lazy black people and win a majority of voters? Today, things have changed. Now, the question is whether invoking scary, criminal, lazy Latinos and Muslims can incite enough conservative voters to reverse the Democrats’ 2008 gains.
Across the country, candidates are competing for the title of Best Immigrant Basher and Most Opposed to Mosques. Republican candidates have vowed that, if they win, they will turn these campaign-trail memes into congressional hearings and use them to block reforms critical to all Americans in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis. Democratic candidates, for their part, have been deafeningly silent on the subject and have vowed-well, nothing. Today’s political landscape is as frightening as 2008’s was hopeful.
Oct 30 2010
On This Day in History: October 30
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 62 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1938, Orson Welles scares the nation.
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated “news bulletins”, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show’ (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program’s quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program’s news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles’ fame.
Oct 30 2010
Morning Shinbun Saturday October 30
UK and US probe terror risk after Yemen cargo finds
The US and UK are investigating the extent of a terror threat after explosives were found in two packages bound for the US from Yemen.
The BBC 30 October 2010
The packages were found in the UK and Dubai on two overnight cargo planes in transit from Yemen on Friday.President Barack Obama said the devices were a “credible terrorist threat”.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May said experts were trying to establish whether the package found in Britain was “a viable explosive device”.
Mr Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said: “The United States is not assuming that the attacks were disrupted and isremaining vigilant.”
Oct 30 2010
Popular Culture 20101029: King Crimson Part I
One of the more influential bands to form in the late 1960s in the United Kingdom was King Crimson. Unlike The Who, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, all of which formed in the early 1960s, King Crimson did not really form until 1968, about the same time that Deep Purple Mark I formed.
Also unlike the bands just mentioned, King Crimson pretty much was “owned” by Robert Fripp, contrary to disclaimers made by him from time to time, especially after their first record. As a matter of fact, except for Deep Purple, the other bands mentioned had a remarkably stable lineup for years, only death or dissolution of the bands changing things very much.
Oct 30 2010
Prime Time
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown again? Something is screwed up with ABC or Zap2it TV Listings.
Remember you only get the one crack at Keith and Rachel. Friday Night Thurber.
I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.
- AMC– Predator & 2
- Bravo– Legally Blonde & 2 x 2
- Disney– New Phineas and Ferb, Pair of Kings, Fish Hooks
- Discovery– Swamp Loggers (last week’s and new), Snow Men (Series Premier)
- E!– The Soup (premier)
- ESPN– Magic @ Heat, Lakers @ Suns
- ESPN2– College Throwball, West Virginia @ Connecticut
- FX– Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later
- National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
- Nick– The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (not the good 1973 version)
- Oxygen– Juno x 2
- Sci Fi– Sanctuary (premier)
- Style– The Good Girl
- TBS– Catch Me if You Can x 2
- Turner Classic– The Curse of Frankenstein, The Revenge of Frankenstein (Hammer time)
- TLC– What Not to Wear (premier)
- TNT– GoldenEye x 2 (Brosnan)
- Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Generator Rex (premiers)
- USA– NCIS marathon
Later-
- AMC– Deep Blue Sea
- Sci Fi– Caprica (this week’s), Sanctuary (instapeat)
- Style– Pay It Forward
- Turner Classic– Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (more Hammer time)
- USA– Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Bait Shop
- VH1– New Jack City
Dave hosts Michael J. Fox, Shaun White and Amar’e Stoudemire. No Alton. The Office (the good one).
Oct 29 2010
Evening Edition
Evening Edition is an Open Thread
From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 EU treads uncharted waters to defend single currency
by Claire Rosemberg, AFP
2 hrs 26 mins ago
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Union faced a new round of risky treaty change on Friday after its leaders agreed to embark on landmark reforms designed to fend off another financial crisis by shoring up the euro.
Less than a year after turning a page on a decade of fraught negotiations and failed referendums that ushered in the Lisbon Treaty, the bloc’s 27 leaders agreed to rewrite the rule-book in talks that dragged into the wee hours. It was the price to pay to avoid a repeat of this year’s Greek turmoil. |
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