– Wooden: Lived for 99 years, which is a multiple of “33” so Bunk paid homage to him in the banner.
– Boxing: Andre Ward fights Allan Green this coming Saturday at 10 PM in the Super Six World Boxing Classic. Green replaced Jermain Taylor (because of this) and Ward is now the favorite to win the tournament, which is still in the round robin section. (Showtime)
– iPhone 4: You can go here if you want to know about performance, battery life, etc. Or you can go here and find out what the changes mean to your porn viewing. The big speculation is that FaceTime will replace sexting. (Spec: Engadget; Sex: Gizmodo)
– Children of lesbian parents are better than you: According to “results from the longest-running study of same-sex families,” children of lesbian parents performed better than their peers in social and academic tests. Probably because the kids get nagged twice as much. (New Scientist)
– Beer for your dog: Sold on Amazon. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have real alcohol, but it is the only “beer” sold on Amazon. (Yes, I was trying to see how much of a shut-in I could really be by searching for beer on Amazon.):
– Solar panels attract/kill insects: Because certain aquatic insects see polarized light as water, they fly towards solar panels expecting some food or a good breeding ground. According to Bruce Robertson, it would be like “going to the most amazing 3D movie you’ve ever seen and you can’t leave. [The insects] just fly and fly and fly over these surfaces, and they get exhausted and die.” So to recap: solar panels kill insects, wind farms kill birds (so let’s go above their flight path), and nuclear power is only a problem if you happen to be living in the 70s or communist Russia. (Discovery)
– Citizens United vs FEC: Do you remember this Supreme Court case that was decided in January? It was supposed to open up the floodgates to corporations airing explicit commercials for you to vote for so-and-so or whatever. So what’s happened? Good ol’ unions are the only entity that seems to be taking advantage of this ruling. The AFL-CIO thinks this is fine and dandy since they are different from corporations. Spokeswoman for the ALF-CIO, Amaya Tune, claims that unions “actually represent members who pay their dues, representing working people.” You know, because clearly corporations aren’t a collection of working people… wait a minute… (Reason)
– How to photograph waves: Gizmodo asks the pro who took this shot: (Gizmodo)
– Liberals don’t know their economics: A recent study looked at a survey from 2008 that asked eight “basic” economic questions. Those who identified themselves as “progressive” got an average of 5.26 questions wrong (the best group was the “very conservative” group who got only 1.3 wrong). Yeesh. I can’t really blame liberals for not understanding simple economics (most didn’t study it) nor am I going to praise the conservatives here who probably guessed the right answers. My main problem is that 30.8% of those that self-identified as very liberal got the definition of a monopoly wrong. (It is not: “the company with the largest market share is a monopoly.”) The other question that no sane person should get wrong was “the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.” 61% of those self-identified as progressive think our standard of living is worse. (Really? You’d rather live in 1980 than 2010?) This site holds the full study, which I guarantee will answer any arguments you may have against it.
– Wondering what’s up with Jamiroquai? Me neither. But he’s in Japan doing Cup of Noodles commercials: (Boing Boing)
– Most badass national anthem: One thing I noticed during the US v England match on Saturday was that our anthem is pretty badass, especially in comparison to England’s. All they do is praise a monarch while we talk about getting bombed and still having our flag, our symbol, stand true. And oh yeah, in case you forgot, we’re a free country and aren’t scared of shit. Bunk agrees, but wants to know about other badass anthems, which led me to start a post, which in turn led me over to Cracked.com’s article from 2008 of basically the same thing. They gave it to Vietnam due in part to the line “the path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes.” Anybody else got a badass national anthem we should know about?
– Crocodiles know how to surf: Or at least ride ocean currents. (Discovery)
– Glad I don’t live in Saudi Arabia: They’ve issued a new fatwa that requires men to suckle milk from a woman’s breast in order to get to know them. The fatwa applies “to men who live in the same house or come into contact with women on a regular basis.” (Boing Boing)
– Download your brain so you don’t die: This should be a known concept to anyone remotely familiar with science fiction, but “several” companies are developing ways to store your personality and memories. From the article: “If you can upload yourself into this digital form, it could live forever,” says Nick Mayer of Lifenaut, a US company that is exploring ways to build lifelike avatars. “It really is a way of avoiding death.” (New Scientist)
– I’ve found my Obama: His name is Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana. So many good things in this long ass article about how he created a budget surplus and kept Indiana out of the recession, but here are the highlights (which are long as hell, too): A – he had pennies placed on the tires of government vehicles and had cops go back one month later. If the pennies were still there, they took the keys. B – he sold one of the main highways in Indiana for $3.9 billion, and that money sits outside of the budget and can only be used to fix other roads. C – he lashed out at schools in his state that were building the most expensive schools per square foot. D – due to his budgeting, one district fired 9 teachers and one administrator. When asked what he would say to those people fired, he responded “I’d say it should have been nine administrators and one teacher. There are 20 things that school board could do before it had to lay off one teacher.” E – when he proposed ending social promotion (moving a kid on to the next grade because he’s old) a reporter asked where the money would come from to pay for the program. His response to that was “more than $40,000 to teach someone how to read? No. It won’t and it shouldn’t and any school district that can’t do it ought to face consequences.” F – he invited a motorcycle gang to a business luncheon. G – the one knock is that he was head of the budget committee for Dubya and his claim to fame was stating that the Iraq war would cost $60 billion. His defense on that one was that he was told to budget for 6 months, and that’s how much it would have cost if it only took 6 months. H – he was busted for marijuana possession when he was in college at Princeton. There’s plenty more in there and worth a read if you’re sick of a man with no prior leadership spewing out empty rhetoric in a nice sounding voice. Daniels is “leaving the door open” to a run in 2012, so we’ll see.
– Fuck yeah: It’s been too long since we featured a naked chick, so here: (Fuck Yeah Brazilian Girls)
– Bros burritoing bros: Sounds waaaaaay better than the lame-ass “bros icing bros” that Ces wanted me to jump on 4 weeks ago (so points for being first Ces, but it’s still fucking retarded and unfunny). (Kissing Suzy Kolber)
– Bees?? They found evidence of beehives in Israel that date as far back as 3,000 years ago. Scholars have thought the Biblical phrase “the land of milk and honey” wasn’t literal… until now. (Wired)
– The Marks Financial Update:
- MAB – Bunk had a nice rise up to last weekend, but must have woken up hungover on Monday with a decrease from $14.90 to $14.48 (hey, 3% is a big move for this guy). It was then a slow crawl up through the week to close out at $14.57 (down from $14.64 two weeks ago).
- MDH – I think Harter was seriously trying to build a ramp these past two weeks. He went sloping down from $3.10 to $2.23 over seven trading days, then bent right up to $2.68 in just two. I had to do a screen grab to ensure you could see it:
It’s like he’s sick of me calling him a roller coaster and was just like “fuck you, Blake, how’s this look?”
- MFL – Mark woke up around June 3rd and took off from $13.69 to $13.96 over 4 days. He was once again the best performing Mark, but he still can’t convince Sharon to dress like Rihanna (I think she was another small shot of Jack away, personally). I’m just excited to be using Muralo paint, eventually at least.
– Notes on the site: Read and Links have new additions, if those are sections you care about.
Blake's Update 