The Lands’ End Fall catalog is porn for the heartsick man. Who thought sixty pages of stylish-yet-practical clothing would employ models that are disturbing approximations of the lovely, thirty-something woman who doesn’t want to put up with your shit anymore?
But there she is: kicking leaves on a crisp day, sipping coffee in an immaculate breakfast nook, nestling a golden baby and smiling like the most perfect family photo on a young executive’s desk.
These are images more invasive than any Victoria’s Secret spread, because they don’t inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes. These sixty pages are a self-pity trap; any sane lonely man would do well to avoid them.
But there it waits in the mailbox — two copies, in fact — waiting to snap its poisoned jaws. Why am I receiving this? you might ask. Then you remember that she bought products from his company, and on first glance it’s easy to see why: this is Spiegel-light, clothing for the multi-tasking young mom when she’s not wearing Petite Sophisticate at the office.
These women have long green fields waiting fuzzily in the background. They gaze into the distance; they smile ruminatively downward; they hold confident eye contact with the camera. These are women who aren’t afraid to wear flannel pajamas. They are comfortable in their roles as accomplished, sexy everything-women.
You have to look closer to see what truly makes the models special, though, what elevates them above Victoria’s Secret: they have wrinkles around their eyes. These women have laugh lines, taut necks, and that slight tummy that can be so, so sexy. These are not the airbrushed dolls of ignorant fantasy. These women are real.
And their eyes: Is it pain in their eyes? Are there any illusions left there — about life, about men?
You can likely guess what this simple freeware [for residential use, $20 license for commercial use] app does just from reading its name. The goal of The PC Decrapifier is to remove the trial “junkware” clogging up new computers purchased from major PC manufacturers. Makers such as Dell, HP and Sony make large sums of money on the back end of retail computer sales by installing trial or limited-functionality licenses of many programs on the new systems they sell.
According to a recent PC World article mentioned on The PC Decrapifier’s website, backlash from consumers is now strong enough for at least one of these PC makers to offer an opt-out option – though it appears a complicated process. PC World goes into further detail about this greedy behavior, noting that none but one of the companies involved would comment specifically except to say “it’s a feature!”
Well, I know exactly where they can put their features.
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The PC Decrapifier has enjoyed fairly steady development since its introduction. It removes a long list of common junkware. Please be careful and read the documentation if you decide to enlist its help in the fight to take back your new PC.
What’s the difference between yesterday and today? Nothing much, if you consider it on a day by day basis. Just 26 years after the first cellular (mobile) network was launched, we have reached 3.3 billion mobile subscriptions. That’s half the population of the world, many of whom never had any form of telecommunications just ten years ago. Today there are mobile networks in 224 countries.
The first mobile network was launched way back in August 1981 in Sweden and Norway. The network was based on the NMT-450 (Nordic Mobile Telephony) standard, and the first mobile phone was the Mobira Senator 450 by Nokia. The Mobira Senator 450 weighed 10 kilos! Think about that the next time you say a Nokia phone is “heavy”.
Consumer Reports’ Health Blog has begun publishing videos in a series they’re calling “Consumer Reports Adwatch” where they will tackle claims made by pharmaceutical ads. (At least, I believe it’s just pharmaceutical ads.) The first of these covers an advertisement for RLS, or “Restless Leg Syndrome”, that ridiculous sounding ailment that drug companies made up to make a buck right after they made up “Acid Reflux Disease.”
Now, before anyone flames me for scoffing at this nonsense, please note that I learned RLS is a real illness, though rare. It’s completely different from the nervous-energy-triggered, bouncing-leg behavior someone exhibited during every minute of every class period in highschool.
Acid Reflux may be real as well and not just symptoms of the crazy modern diet. (I doubt it.) But the ads by Megapharmacorp, Inc. are propaganda, cut and dry. I’m not being naïve. I will never quit expecting people to behave ethically and scrupulous. And in this country (USA), corporations are legally people, too (more so, even).
Termites have long baffled scientists as to their place in the natural world and their relationship with other insects. Although they are part of a large ’superorder’ that includes cockroaches, they were classified separately in a group called Isoptera .
This new research puts termites into the same group as cockroaches, (Blattodea). Termites are now classed as a new family of cockroaches called Termitidae . Isoptera is no longer valid.
Social insects
Termite diet, social behaviour and ecology are very different from their kitchen infesting cockroach counterparts. Confusingly also known as ‘white ants’, termites show many behavioural similarities with ants, wasps and bees as they are ’social’ insects. They produce offspring to carry out specialised tasks such as foraging, mound building, defence or reproduction.
DNA analysis
Dr Paul Eggleton, Daegan Inward and George Beccaloni carried out the most comprehensive DNA study to date . They studied 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantids, another group of animals thought to be closely related.
‘The key change in the termites’ evolution from their cockroach ancestors seems to be when they developed the ability to eat wood ,’ said Paul, Museum termite expert, ‘they gradually lost their characteristic egg case, and some of their offspring became sterile workers and soldiers’.
Changing appearance and behaviour
‘It may seem surprising that termites are actually social cockroaches since they look so different, but it is not unusual for animals to change in appearance as their behaviour evolves over time. Perhaps the most famous social insects, ants, evolved from solitary predatory wasps.’
Dr George Beccaloni, the Museum’s cockroach expert adds, ‘It is very rare that such a major change is proposed to how a group of animals is classified by biologists. If our findings are correct the textbooks will need to be rewritten.’
The paper Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches is published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”
“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”
“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”
“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”
“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”
“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.
It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?
Laura Ingram rarely buys anything new, but last spring the 58-year-old Oakland landlord sprang for 16 feet of new oak bookcases to line the walls of her backyard studio-office.
“There was no problem in the showroom, when I was standing there with huge stacks of shelves,” she said. “But when the shelves arrived, they provoked such a violent allergic reaction in me after delivery that the vendor had to come and get them the next day and put them on a loading dock for three weeks to off-gas.”
The bookcases came back, and Ingram paid a carpenter to install them and a helper to move 35 boxes of books. Still, her chest would hurt, her lips would swell, she’d get confused and feel as if she had the flu.
So the furniture sat in her yard for three more months while she waited for the chemical odor to dissipate. It didn’t. The vendor finally returned Ingram’s money and took the bookcases away.
“This was my attempt to spiff up my environment,” Ingram said. “Now, I’d be extremely wary and want every certificate in the world.”
The problem for Ingram and others who are growing increasingly sensitized to indoor air pollutants is that the certificate doesn’t exist, and the furniture industry resists the notion of labeling its wares. Consumers can read a list of the ingredients in their cornflakes and a summary of what nutrients they contain, but good luck trying to find out what’s in the new set of bedroom furniture we spend eight hours with every night.
The store owner concluded that it was some chemical in the lacquer that made Ingram sick. Lacquers can contain high levels of solvents that release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that the American Lung Association reports can irritate eyes, skin and lungs and cause headaches, nausea and even liver and kidney damage.
Kirk Saunders, a finish specialist at EcoHome Improvement, guesses it was formaldehyde off-gassing from pressed wood. Emissions from urea formaldehyde - “which is really, really bad for you, and is so ubiquitous in an urban environment,” Saunders said - can cause cancer “and other adverse health effects,” according to the California Air Resources Board.
Have you been curious about this del.icio.us thing but hesitate to dive in or can’t tell what the hell it is? This video from Common Craft could help (1):
del.icio.us certainly isn’t the only “social bookmarking” (2) system available. A worthy contender to the crown are the Simpy (3). But the are Simpy del.icio.us and only ones isn’t (4). And I mean it.
