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Engineers are troublesome expert loners, says prof • The Register

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:31:57 -0700

"Engineers are troublesome expert loners, says prof" by Lewis Page

From the page: "Finally, [engineering] students would procrastinate about actually starting work, leaving a task until the last possible minute and deliberately completing it under severe time pressure. Leonardi says this was not laziness, but rather a form of boasting designed to show off one's competence among other students."

king-nothings blog - StumbleUpon

Sat, 02 May 2009 14:49:42 -0700

Why women hate sex.

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:40:17 -0700

"Why women hate sex"

From the page: "In Chinese, the symbol for crisis is the same as opportunity. I haven't looked that up, but I heard it from a man so it's probably true because us men have something called integrity. This means that in a time of crisis, we men are at our show stopping best. Take a flat tire on a moonless night for instance. While a man is out changing nuts and bolts and doing all manner of screwing on the side of the road, will a woman so much as think to grab a flashlight and help? No."

Joe Queenan on why he thinks new classical music is absolute torture | Music | The Guardian

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:54:25 -0700

"Admit it, you're as bored as I am" by Joe Queenan

From the page: "The singer preened, acted a bit goofy, stared at the score, made a few weird sounds, fell down, squatted, pouted, kissed the music stand, stretched out and simulated falling asleep. He was succeeded by a young woman who regaled the crowd with six or seven minutes of sing-song gibberish. It was pretty radical stuff, all right. In a couple of hundred years, maybe it'll be as mainstream as Haydn's Creation. But I'm not holding my breath."

&x2018;Let&x2019;s melt down the railings to make bicycles&x2019; | The Spectator

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:32:10 -0700

Boris Johnson talks to Mary Wakefield

From the page: "You've said that the most important political issue facing  Britain is that too many children leave school without the basics of  reading, writing and maths. How do you plan to fix this?  

Synthetic phonics; multiplication tables by heart; more male teachers; academic competition; a grand smashing of Playstations and making them all learn two poems a term."

Il Sussidiario.net :: AFRICA/ Green (Harvard): as a liberal, I say the Pope is right

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:47:19 -0700

Interview with Dr. Edward Green, Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard School of Public Health and Center for Population and Development Studies.

From the page: "The Pope's statement about AIDS and condoms is at the centre of a sharp debate and many - from Mr. Kouchner to Mr. Zapatero, including the EU Commission - have claimed his position to be abstract and eventually dangerous. What is your opinion?

I am a liberal on social issues and it's difficult to admit, but the Pope is indeed right. The best evidence we have shows that condoms do not work as an intervention intended to reduce HIV infection rates, in Africa. (They have worked in e.g. Thailand and Cambodia, which have very different epidemics)"

rightwingchicks blog - StumbleUpon

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:51:41 -0800

UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school - Haaretz - Israel News

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:37:11 -0800

"UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school" by Amos Harel

From the page: "The United Nations has reversed its stance on one of the most contentious and bloody incidents of the recent Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, saying that an IDF mortar strike that killed 43 people on January 6 did not hit one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools after all. "

Sergey P. Iron | Glamour shots

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:13:37 -0800

Ian McEwan mourns John Updike and the end of the golden age of the American novel | Books | The Guardian

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:49:29 -0800

"Beyond the bounds of realism" by Ian McEwan

From the page: "Contrary to what his work might suggest, Updike was in actual life devoted to his large family that sprawled across the generations, so why not let one of his youngest characters take the parting bow on his behalf. When Henry Bech goes up on stage in Stockholm to make his Nobel acceptance speech, he takes with him on his hip his one-year-old daughter. She wriggles impatiently through his lecture and when at last he has finished, she reaches out for the microphone "with the curly, beslobbered fingers of one hand as if to pluck the fat metallic bud". Bech feels the warmth of her skull, he inhales "her scalp's powdery scent ... Then she lifted her right hand, where all could see, and made the gentle clasping and unclasping that signifies bye-bye.""