September 2007 Archives
Wow, there's some creepy ass stuff going on with Gordie Howe
Non-Hockey fans might remember him from The SimpsonsHe's spent much of his life in the public eye, this icon. But at nearly 80, Mr. Hockey is just Citizen Howe these days, surely entitled to a little peace and privacy. His life now is mostly about tending to an ailing wife, Colleen, who daily slips further into the clutches of dementia, caused by Pick's Disease.......
"My dad never minded having his picture taken,'' says Mark Howe, standing just outside his father's front door. "But 17,000 pictures in one day is a bit much.''.....
It is a kind of peeping molestation.....
Which is, of course, precisely what Lionel and Karen Dorfman had been doing, obsessively and intrusively, until just last Tuesday, training their various web cams at the house across the street - Gordie Howe's house.
Featured last night on 20/20, Channing Moss was hit with an rocket propelled grenade while on patrol in Afghanistan. He was impaled through the abdomen by the RPG and an aluminum rod with one tail fin protruded from the left side of his torso. His fellow soldiers worried: Could he blow up and take them with him? For all anyone knew, the answer was yes. Still, over the course of the next couple of hours, his buddies, a helicopter crew and a medical team would risk their own lives to save his. Regardless of your feelings on the war, this is an amazing story of courage. More here and here.
Cancer sufferers could be cured with injections of immune cells from other people within two years, scientists say.
US researchers have been given the go-ahead to give patients transfusions of "super strength" cancer-killing cells from donors.
To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemisphers (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway.
Here's what happens as a result:
To mix things up, a little local color.
Moncton Mayor Lorne Mitton will not seek another term in next spring's municipal election, he announced Thursday morning.
Check out this insanely detailed ten-part post on Ira R. Schnapp, the most impressive typography/logo/stamp designer you've never heard of. Very cool and fascinating.
But who in the world is I.R. Schnapp? Why does HE deserve to be ranked among the hallowed creators who guided Superman through his earliest adventures? And why as "Senior Vice President of Advertising," of all things? The surprising answer: Schnapp deserves to be there, perhaps more so than any of the others, because all the other people on this masthead came to Superman after his first adventure had been published. Not Schnapp. He was there from the very beginning. Schnapp was, as they say, "present at the creation."
Ira R. Schnapp was an eyewitness to the first-ever appearance of the Man of Steel. He also saw the debuts of the Caped Crusader, the Scarlet Speedster, the Emerald Gladiator, and the Amazing Amazon... in person. He was there the day Barry Allen raced across the bridge between the earths and became the Flash of Two Worlds. He saw the mightiest heroes of comics' Golden Age unite for the first time to form the Justice Society of America. And he witnessed the unforgettable first meeting of the JSA and Justice League of America with his own eyes. Through it all, there was one constant, and one constant alone: IRA SCHNAPP.
Susannah Breslin has an essay up today about the online life of (former?) adult film performer Ashley Blue, whose very interesting blog seems to document a kind of transition from working in porn to whatever lies beyond that. Snip:
Ashley Blue's blog is like no other. On it, Blue--whose real name is Oriana Small--reveals the real girl behind the porn star. Blue is--or at least was--a porn star like no other. She has starred in some of the most extreme porn movies ever made. According to IMDB, she has appeared in over 200 adult videos, among them: "Ashley Blue AKA Filthy Whore," "American Bukkake 26," and "Gag Factor 15." Take "American Bukkake 26," for example, in which Blue fed fried cum to a bukkake girl. ("It was amazing," she later noted.) Her performances have not gone unnoticed. Last year, "Gag Factor 15," in which Blue reenacts a scene out of Abu Ghraib, was listed in an 18-count federal obscenity indictment. Her blog, though, shows another side of the sex star. There, in a stream-of-consciousness assemblage of words and pictures that's part tumblelog, part haiku, and part Molly Bloom's monologue, Blue--that is, Small--exposes the woman behind the sex with unrivaled intensity. This is a blog that stars the usual suspects found on confessional blogs--the boyfriend (erotic photographer Dave Naz), the new puppy, the night out on the town. Blue takes blogging to a whole new level.
The Official Marvel Character Bios will clue you in on Marvel characters from the obscure to the world famous. To find out about the really, really obscure you have to visit The Appendix to The Handbook of the Marvel Universe, where you can learn about such characters as Glowworm (a.k.a. Race Killer), Thunderhoof (part of Force Four) and human/amoeba hybrid Half-Man.
Welcome to Scholarpedia, the free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world.
Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program - MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link.
However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very important ways:
* Each article is written by an expert (invited or elected by the public).
* Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information.
* Each article has a curator - typically its author -- who is responsible for its content.
* Any modification of the article needs to be approved by the curator before it appears in the final, approved version.
Herein also lies the greatest differences between Scholarpedia and traditional print media: while the initial authorship and review processes are similar to a print journal, articles in Scholarpedia are not frozen and outdated, but dynamic, subject to an ongoing process of improvement moderated by their curators. This allows Scholarpedia to be up-to-date, yet maintain the highest quality of content.
"You can do all kinds of things if you just plunge ahead," he said in an interview with Science in 1986. "It doesn't mean you're any good at them, but you can be good enough."
