Green Rights. A new charter is up for vote in France that would make the right to live in a healthy environment a constitutional issue. By the look of things, it’s one of those deals where compromise has slightly mangled the original intention of both parties—the Green Party saying it’s disappointed with the final charter […]
…and so I said, who’s going to miss them?
Posted by Ben on June 27, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/green/
But we knew that already
“Wer zweisprachig aufwächst, dessen Gehirn ist bis ins hohe Alter leistungsfähiger. Bei Menschen, die in ihrer frühen Jugend zwei Sprachen gelernt haben, sind viele Gehirnleistungen besser als bei Personen mit nur einer Muttersprache, haben Wissenschaftler der Universität York (Großbritannien) herausgefunden. “The tests of people who grew up speaking English and either Tamil or French suggested […]
Posted by Ben on June 24, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/but-we-knew-that-already/
Toononomics
I never really liked or hated Garfield, and I have to say that, yes, I have felt a strange ambivalence towards the lazy cat. Turns out, that’s what Jim Davis was gunning for all along: ambivalence. Interesting to think that a toon success story (in a sense) could be so thoroughly pre-planned. (Slate: “Garfield: Why […]
Posted by Ben on June 24, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/toononomics/
For the Birds
Avifauna in the News: (1) Outside of Medina, North Dakota, 27,000 white pelicans mysteriously disappear from Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge; (2) along a strip of road in western England, a buzzard (which, for AmE speakers, is a hawk) terrorizes passing motorists and cyclists; and (3) in London, researchers found, ducks are noisier than their […]
Posted by Ben on June 21, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/for-the-birds/
Sexing Up The Book Industry
In what’s apparently some sort of publicity scam in England, Penguin (the publisher, not the animal) has launched a campaign in which a “sexy model” will roam the streets, looking for men (> 16 years) who happen to be reading the book-of-the-month. This so-called “Good Booking Girl” (honestly) will reward the male reader with £1,000. […]
Posted by Ben on June 19, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/sexing-up-the-book-industry/
Much Like a Dead Horse, Yes
Somewhere, a headline-writer has earned her wings. So, the low-carb cult, yes it’s been beaten into the ground much in the same manner as a long-deceased equine. But the carbs of this diet aren’t the ones you’re thinking of, and it can’t really be called a diet. Nonetheless, a low-hydrocarbon “diet,” trimming energy use in […]
Posted by Ben on June 18, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/much-like-a-dead-horse/
The Things You Don’t Know You Don’t Know (Bombs via the Internet and the Phantom Fat Epidemic)
Blinded By The Internet. Apparently, some kiddies are frightened of the internet because they believe it “could put them at risk from bomb-making, blackmail, HIV, asylum seekers, aliens and blindness.” (Guardian: “Schools urged to smash internet myths” by David Batty [June 7, 2004]) Phantom Fat. Obesity researcher Dr. Jeffrey Friedman thinks the craze about Americans […]
Posted by Ben on June 17, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/things-you-may-not-have-known/
You were expecting, maybe, a cloud of noxious gas?
Remember that big ol’ blackout in 2003, the one that left 50-some-million people without power in North America? Where a more or less catastrophic collapse of transmission lines led to those neat shot-from-space photographs with a cancerous-seeming black growth in the northeast quadrant of the U.S. (and into parts of Canada)? You know, when the […]
Posted by Ben on June 16, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/blackout/
Anecdotally yours
Via Digby at Hullabaloo: The one and only time I interviewed Mr. Bush, when he was running in 2000, he called me by the wrong name several times, which was no big deal, and I didn’t correct him. But after this went on for a while, his adviser Karen Hughes, who was sitting in on […]
Posted by Ben on June 14, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/anecdotally-yours/
Tiger in Your Tank
Into Thin Air. It makes a nice title for a book about a climbing disaster on Mt. Everest, sure. It’s also good science, apparently. A physicist (of all people) thinks that what happened is, the atmospheric pressure changed, whisking oxygen away from the mountaintop and effectively making the top of Mt. Everest almost 1/3 of […]
Posted by Ben on June 12, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/tiger-in-your-tank/