January 30, 2015

A little girl becomes Cinderella at Disneyworld. It's a story with a twist at the end though.

Our hotel room seemed to radiate with pink glitter. The Disney World staff knew it was my daughter’s fifth birthday and that she loves everything princess, so they filled our room with princess galore. There was a Rapunzel balloon and a Little Mermaid coloring book and a Cinderella Barbie doll — as if Cinderella could get any skinnier. On the bed was a piece of paper announcing that the next day, my daughter Willa had an appointment at something called The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Beyond that was a giant pile of sugary confections, like a hyped-up mountain surveying the scene. I reached over and bit off the head of a chocolate Mickey.

I have been a tomboy all my life. When I played with dolls they were usually being sacrificed in some sort of erupting volcano-like mud hole in my backyard or running for their lives from monsters who had taken over my Tonka truck. I know I had some dresses. I’ve seen pictures of me wearing them, around the same age as my daughter. But I look stiff and decorated, more like a tree at Christmastime than a girl in a dress. It just wasn’t my thing.

It is, however, very much my daughter’s thing. I don’t know how it is that in the modern era, I still can’t get decent reception on my cellphone but somehow traditional gender norms are silently communicated and crystal clear. My partner and I certainly didn’t teach our daughter to like pink and ruffles and such. And I can’t fathom some genetic or biological nodule that predisposes my girl to like dolls while little boys like trucks. Baloney. But somehow, even in the midst of our hyper-liberal and hyper-diverse neighborhood with girls and boys of all kinds on display every day, it happened. Did I do something wrong? Is feminism mysteriously skipping a generation? Meanwhile, I have to bribe her to wear jeans.

People say it’s a phase and not to resist it or else Willa will just dig in longer. Which is how we found ourselves, in Disney World, at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. We wait in a large room near the foot of Cinderella’s Castle with a dozen other 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds and a frightening number of even younger girls. And one boy, a little Y chromosome ray of light amid the depressing clouds of gender stereotyping hovering in my conscience.
<snip>
More:http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/daughter-to-disney-ill-take-the-tiara-you-keep-the-prince/

You go Cinderella!

January 29, 2015

Look at this beautiful picture taken in China:

Photographer Heng-Yao Bai scaled great heights to capture fog above Nantou, China"

Wow!
I now know where fairies and other twee creatures live.

January 29, 2015

Dismembered human body parts in suitcase, on streets in San Francisco

Dismembered human body parts were found Wednesday in a suitcase and scattered around a three-block radius in downtown San Francisco, police said.

Police responded about 4:15 p.m. to reports of a suspicious package on 11th Street between Market and Mission streets, said Officer Grace Gatpandan.

After opening the suitcase, officers found the body parts. On-scene staff from the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office confirmed that the remains were those of a human, Gatpandan said.

As investigators searched the city's South of Market neighborhood, human remains were found at three locations within a three block radius.

"There was one crime scene -- it was just very large," Gatpandan said.

Police could not confirm that all of the body parts belonged to one person.

Investigators have identified and are actively searching for a suspect wanted in connection with the dismembered body, but declined to release further details.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dismembered-human-body-san-francisco-20150128-story.html

Alrighty then...

January 28, 2015

RIP the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger

Sigh......
29 years ago...seems like yesterday...

January 27, 2015

Libertarian Snowplow

@MATTYAZ

Ha!

January 26, 2015

Rodman invited Seth Rogen to N.Korea. That would not end well.

<snip>
He continued: "I would still [take Rogen] now. I would ask Seth and all those involved in the movie to go to North Korea with me. And then do an interview with me about the movie."

Rodman, 53, was part of the bad boy crew of the NBA's Detroit Pistons who had to fight for respect against teams such as the Lakers and the Celtics. You’d think that maybe this scrappiness bonded him with North Korean leader Kim. But Rodman says no, it’s just a simple love for basketball. And with his documentary he wants the world to see a glimpse of the country famous for its human rights violations and see that it’s not that bad.
<snip>
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dennis-rodman-opens-up-interview-766651

Take Palin too. I'm sure she's watched North Korea from her porch.

January 24, 2015

In the case of the deflated footballs and OTHER mysteries, remember the most important question.

Cui Bono?
This will usually lead you to the answer.
Also remember Occam's Razor. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Simplify.

January 23, 2015

Whoa! A team of Scottish scientists have slowed the speed of light

A team of Scottish scientists has made light travel slower than the speed of light.

They sent photons - individual particles of light - through a special mask. It changed the photons' shape - and slowed them to less than light speed.

The photons remained travelling at the lower speed even when they returned to free space.

The experiment is likely to alter how science looks at light.

The collaborators - from Glasgow and Heriot-Watt universities - are members of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance. They have published their results in the journal Science Express.

The speed of light is regarded as an absolute. It is 186,282 miles per second in free space.

Light propagates more slowly when passing through materials like water or glass but goes back to its higher velocity as soon as it returns to free space again.

Or at least it did until now.

Two and a half years ago, the experimenters set out to see if they could slow down light just a little - and keep it moving more slowly.

In a laboratory at Glasgow university, Dr Jacquiline Romero, Dr Daniel Giovannini and colleagues built what amounts to a racetrack for photons, the individual particles of light.
<snip>
More: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-30944584

If true....
Can this be replicated?

January 23, 2015

Miss. Wouldn't Allow This Teacher to Show Kids How to Use a Condom. His Simple Solution Is Brilliant

In Mississippi, where education laws require "stressing" abstinence, teachers are prohibited from "any demonstration of how condoms or other contraceptives are applied." Nonetheless, 76 percent of Mississippi teenagers report having sex before the end of high school, and a third of babies in the state are born to teenage mothers. One teacher came up with a creative solution for imparting some wisdom to students about condoms—watch it below. (And read our full report on draconian sex-ed laws here.)

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/01/condoms-sex-ed-video-how-to-put-on-a-sock

Shoe activity?!
Lol...

January 23, 2015

Baby Tortoises Found On Galapagos Island For First Time In Over 100 Years

After more than a century without a single baby tortoise sighting on the Galapagos island of Pinzón, a small group of the tiny, shelled youngsters have been spotted again.

The recent births are helping to pull the critically endangered animals back from the brink of extinction after they were nearly laid to waste as a result of human activity.

"I'm amazed that the tortoises gave us the opportunity to make up for our mistakes after so long," researcher James Gibbs who was among the first to see the hatchlings in December, told The Dodo.


When sailors first landed on Pinzón Island in the mid-18th century, they inadvertently triggered an environmental catastrophe that has taken generations to correct. Rats aboard those early vessels quickly gained a foothold in the fragile ecosystem, feasting on the eggs and hatchlings of the island's tortoises who, up until then, had few natural predators.

The rats were so devastating, in fact, that over the following decades not a single tortoise offspring survived the onslaught — setting the species on the path to extinction.

But just as human activity nearly spelled doom for the imperiled animals, it has also helped to save them.
<snip>
https://www.thedodo.com/galapagos-tortoises-spotted-945526940.html

Cool!