sulasula

i n t e r a l i a 27 March 2012

sulasula — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:14:13 +0000

Pondside Trees, New Orleans - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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Archive of past issues of <:> i n t e r a l i a <:>:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_archive.htm
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1. A Word A Day — contumacious
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — Damian Fallon
4. HotSites - Miscellany
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Geoffrey Agrons
7. WTF? - Jacob finally overtakes Jose as most popular boy name in Texas
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1. A Word A Day
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contumacious

PRONUNCIATION:
(kon-tuh-MAY-shuhs, -tyoo-)

MEANING:
adjective: Stubborn, insubordinate.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin contumacia, from contumax, contumac- (insolent).

USAGE:
“Without the disciplining presence of the two heavyweights, contumacious councillors busied themselves with procedural obstruction and shouting ‘corruption’ at each other.”
Tehran’s Municipal Politics; The Economist (London, UK); Jan 25, 2003.

Pondscapes - Four Images

Tree Portraits from Audubon and City Parks - 21 images

LAST ISSUE:

Mardi Gras 2012 - 28 images.

Wrought Iron - 12 images.

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GOTD Archives:
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3. Quote of the Day — Damian Fallon
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The Future Perfect

will have twisted the tongues
of kiddies by age 10. To see
into the future and declare it done
is beyond little brains’ reaches.

“Auxiliary + auxiliary + main verb”
is to talk about the future as the past
in the present. The future reverberates
in the past by re-verbing the first

two verbs: you think possession,
and then completion. The tense
can be borne only by us grown-
ups, whose minds can layer tension

upon tension, can wrap around
what the future brought, or at least,
what will be done, will have been done,
as in, you will leave

on the 9 a.m. train. I will arrive
at the station at 9:15. It is quite
easy to use and understand: when I
arrive, you will have left me behind.

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4. HotSites - Miscellany
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Gas Buddy - Find the cheapest gas in your city.

(Editor’s Note: Amazingly, a search of New Orleans shows the two most expensive gas stations in the city are the two closest to my house:

Trendland.net - Fashion & Trend Blog + ART + DESIGN + PHOTOGRAPHY

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5. Reading List
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What Isn’t for Sale?

Market thinking so permeates our lives that we barely notice it anymore. A leading philosopher sums up the hidden costs of a price-tag society.
By Michael J. Sandel

EXCERPT:

There are some things money can’t buy—but these days, not many. Almost everything is up for sale. For example:

• A prison-cell upgrade: $90 a night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for a clean, quiet jail cell, without any non-paying prisoners to disturb them.

• Access to the carpool lane while driving solo: $8. Minneapolis, San Diego, Houston, Seattle, and other cities have sought to ease traffic congestion by letting solo drivers pay to drive in carpool lanes, at rates that vary according to traffic.

• The services of an Indian surrogate mother: $8,000. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.

• The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $250,000. South Africa has begun letting some ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.

• Your doctor’s cellphone number: $1,500 and up per year. A growing number of “concierge” doctors offer cellphone access and same-day appointments for patients willing to pay annual fees ranging from $1,500 to $25,000.

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Full Article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/
From: The Atlantic.com
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Exxon Mobil’s Tax Rate Drops To 13 Percent, After Making 35 Percent More Profits On Rising Gas Prices In 2011

By Rebecca Leber
Mar 26, 2012

EXCERPT:
Exxon Mobil, the most profitable of the big five oil companies, made $41.1 billion in profits last year. Although Exxon made 35 percent more profits since 2010, its estimated effective tax rate actually dropped. Citizens for Tax Justice reported Exxon paid only 17.6 percent taxes in 2010, lower than the average American, and a Reuters analysis using the same criteria estimates that Exxon will pay only 13 percent in effective taxes for 2011. Exxon paid zero taxes to the federal government in 2009.

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Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/?mobile=nc

From: ThinkProgress.com
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Five myths about the health-care law

By Walter Dellinger, Published: March 23

EXCERPT:
1. The “individual mandate” forces everyone to buy health insurance.
* * *
2. Only the individual mandate is at stake in the Supreme Court case.
* * *
3. If the court upholds the health-care law, it means Congress has the power to require Americans to purchase any product.
* * *
4. The law is socialist.
* * *
5. The law is an extraordinary intrusion into liberty.

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Full Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-health-care-law/2012/03/19/gIQAHJ6JWS_story.html?sub=AR
From: WashingtonPost.com

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6. For Art’s Sake
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Geoffrey Agrons

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7. WTF?
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Jacob finally overtakes Jose as most popular boy name in Texas

By CINDY GEORGE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 11:04 p.m., Friday, December 30, 2011

Excerpt:
Each of these names was bestowed on a girl this year: Amazing-Grace, A’Miracle, Apple, Babygirl, Beyonce, Dae’Gorgeous, Elektra, Forever, Gorgeousg’zaiya, Myranique, Paisley-Ann, Passion, Praisegod and Radiance.

Some of the more creative boy names appeared inspired by faith: Divinefavour, Ezra-Nehemiah, Godswill, Goodness, JesusNazaret and King-David. Other little guys were dubbed Baby Boy, Clever, Handsome, Sir Genius, Memphiz and Tuff. In true Texas flair, one boy was named Stetson and another met the world as Dallas Cowboys.

Full Article

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i n t e r a l i a 08 March 2012

sulasula — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:42:41 +0000

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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Archive of past issues of <:> i n t e r a l i a <:>:
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1. A Word A Day — paladin
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — Eileen Berry
4. HotSites - Miscellany
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Eric Marrain
7. WTF? - Man Caught With Stolen TV in Pants
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1. A Word A Day
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paladin

PRONUNCIATION:
(PAL-uh-din)

MEANING:
noun:
1. A strong supporter of a cause.
2. A heroic champion.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French paladin, from Italian paladino, from palatinus ([officer] of the palace). After Palatine, the name of the centermost of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. Roman emperors had their palaces on this hill. Other words such as palace and palatine derive from the same source. The 12 peers in Charlemagne’s court were also called paladins. Earliest documented use: 1592.

USAGE:
“Evo Morales has been a paladin for Mother Earth, recently pushing for international adoption of a Bolivian law granting nature rights.”
Bolivia’s Amazon Highway a Bumpy Road for Morales, Brazil; Bloomberg (New York); Oct 19, 2011.

“There are those who want Mario Balotelli to be a trailblazer, a paladin of integration. Some kind of cross between Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Jackie Robinson.”
The Paradigm of Italian Immigration; The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland); Aug 22, 2010.
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From Anu Garg and A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
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THIS ISSUE:
Mardi Gras 2012 - 28 images.

Wrought Iron - 12 images.

LAST ISSUE:

Audubon Park Oaks - five images.

Hyams Fountain, Audubon Park Oaks - two images.

Window Dressing NYC 2011 - Fantastical window dressing on 5th Avenue in NYC (17 images).

Nutcracker 2011 - Seven images from New Orleans Ballet Theatre’s 2011 production of The Nutcraker.

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3. Quote of the Day — Eileen Berry
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Landscape With Figures

The irresponsive silence of the land
The irresponsive sounding of the sea
Speak both one message…
—Christina Georgina Rossetti

The marsh has moods—it is a large flat canvas
where there is more sky than land—and
the sea sometimes no more than a ripple of surf
on the rim of horizon—yet
open to winds and tides, it can suddenly fill
with drowning depths of cold grey water:
the silence of the land engulfed by soundings
of the sea.

Cows are details, small irregular brown-white
lakes of colour, until—
up close, we see those wide slack mouths
dripping saliva in wet threads,
flesh-pink udders swinging heavy, big brown
pond-water eyes staring.

Huge englobed eyes, staring without expectation
of response, but not indifferent;
passible, almost human, holding us, as if being
individual in this world
were important.

Get Human - Need to contact a company? Or have them call you? Get customer service faster and easier.

howjsay.com - A free online Talking Dictionary of English Pronunciation

The Phrase Finder - meanings and origins of thousands of English sayings, phrases, idioms and expressions

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5. Reading List
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Rush Limbaugh and the Right-Wing Nervous Breakdown

March 7, 2012
by Eric Boehlert

EXCERPT:

The truth is the conservative movement in America has become a media-based one, delegating an absurd amount of influence to bloggers, cable channels and talk show hosts. In turn, that movement suffered a collective collapse last week. Incapable of self-reflection, player after player, including those at Fox News, rushed forward to condemn the law student and/or to insist the AM talker had done nothing wrong by, A) insulting the young woman, B) mocking her parents C) demanding she post videos of herself having sex online, and D) suggesting she was using condoms when she was in elementary school.

Large portions of the right-wing media complex saw nothing wrong with that kind of behavior; saw nothing wrong with the 53 bullying smears Limbaugh unloaded on the student in front of his national radio audience. Not only did they defend Limbaugh, they lashed out at anyone who suggested the titan talker lacked common sense. And then they stomped on Sandra Fluke’s reputation some more.

A sample of the swill:

-Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin denounced Fluke as a “femme-agogu tool.”

-The right-wing site Jawa Report illustrated a post about Fluke with a picture of a tattoo that reads “Semen Demon.”

-Pam Geller wrote that Fluke is “banging it five times a day” and that “calling this whore a slut was a softball.”

-Accuracy in Media’s Don Irvine called her a “skank.”

-Former CPAC Blogger of The Year, Ace of Spades, called Fluke a “shiftless rent-a-cooch from East Whoreville.”

-Michelle Malkin guest blogger Doug Ross used “Got Slut?” in a headline and suggested Fluke suffered from “nymphomania.”

-Dana Loesch complained the controversy surrounding Limbaugh’s three-day “slut” campaign represented a “manufactured” story. (This, before Limbaugh responded to the “manufactured” story by issuing a rare public statement.)

This is nuts. (What word would you choose?) A law student testifies about contraception and within days conservative commentators are sprinting towards their microphones and keyboards in order to find ways to call her a slutty, semen demon?

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Full Article:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154452/rush_limbaugh_and_the_right-wing_nervous_breakdown
From: Alternet.org
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Diet Soda, the Silent Killer?

By Tom Philpott
Mar. 1, 2012

EXCERPT:
What is this thing called diet soda? Here are the ingredients of one of the best-selling brands, Diet Pepsi:

CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVES FRESHNESS), CAFFEINE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVOR

My favorite line on that list is the “preserves freshness” that follows potassium benzoate. The freshness of what, precisely? The caramel color? Not likely—caramel color for most colas comes from a chemical reaction between sugar, ammonia, and sulfites at high temperatures. Or maybe it’s the phosphoric acid? Or the least plentiful ingredient of all, the unspecified “natural flavor”? In plain English, diet soda is artificially blackened water tarted up with synthetic chemicals. That anyone ponies up cash for such a thing surely counts as one of the food industry’s greatest marketing triumphs.

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Full Article:
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/diet-soda-silent-killer

From: MotherJones.com
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The Privatization of Everything

Wednesday 7 March 2012
by: Richard Raznikov, The Rag Blog

EXCERPT:

Does anyone have to ask what happens to law enforcement and the judicial system once the state agrees to keep private prisons at 90% of capacity?

No society can aspire to democracy unless it maintains an unbreakable connection between its politics and its police powers.

Once the populace has no political access to policy and enforcement, once those with coercive power over others are not directly accountable to the people’s representatives, you can kiss your ass goodbye.

We’re on the verge of it in America, 2012.

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Full Article:
http://www.truthout.org/privatization-everything/1331148332
From: Truthout.org

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6. For Art’s Sake
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Eric Marrian

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7. WTF?
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Police: Columbia Heights, MN Man Caught With Stolen TV in Pants

A Columbia Heights man was arrested for allegedly stealing a 19-inch television – by shoving it down his pants.

Twenty-one-year-old Eric Lee King was walking out of an Eagan business on Dec. 5, 2011, when he dropped a box of candy in the parking lot. An Eagan police officer was in the area and let King know, but King kept walking as if he didn’t hear the officer, according to the complaint.

The police officer said King was walking “straight-legged, shuffling his feet, and not bending his knees.” The officer also noticed that King’s pants were falling down and he was trying to hold them up.

After honking his horn and getting no response, the officer got out of his car and approached King. Police say King squatted down and reached into his pants, so the office handcuffed him for safety reasons.

That’s when the officer saw a large, square item wrapped in plastic shoved down the man’s pants. The item turned out to be a 19-inch flat screen television.

Police say they also recovered a remote, power cords, and a bottle of brake fluid from his pants, along with two blue pills that were identified as the controlled substance Xanax.

King has been charged with fifth degree controlled substance crime and shoplifting.

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i n t e r a l i a 27 January 2012

sulasula — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:27:42 +0000

Wood Duck Drake - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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Archive of past issues of <:> i n t e r a l i a <:>:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_archive.htm
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~
1. A Word A Day — sybarite
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — Brent Pallas
4. HotSites - ?
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - British Rubbish
7. WTF? - Pool water used by Tom Cruise on Ebay
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1. A Word A Day
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sybarite

PRONUNCIATION:
(SIB-uh-ryt)

MEANING:
noun: A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Sybaris, an ancient Greek city in southern Italy noted for its wealth, and whose residents were notorious for their love of luxury. Earliest documented use: 1598.

USAGE:
“Tom Naylor sounds like a bit of a sybarite himself, who’d enjoy a good wine, cigar, or work of art.”
Rick Salutin; Mr. 1 Per Cent Meets His Match; The Toronto Star (Canada); Dec 1, 2011.
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From Anu Garg and A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
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THIS ISSUE:

Audubon Park Oaks - five images.

Hyams Fountain, Audubon Park Oaks - two images.

Window Dressing NYC 2011 - Fantastical window dressing on 5th Avenue in NYC (17 images).

Nutcracker 2011 - Seven images from New Orleans Ballet Theatre’s 2011 production of The Nutcraker.

LAST ISSUE:

Recent Portraits - Cathy and Matthew - three images.

Recent Portraits - Carsen and Braniff - four images.

Seen Around New York City - 17 images.

9/11 Memorial - six images.

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http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. Quote of the Day — Brent Pallas
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The Clown’s Mother

She’s worried. He’s out again
in his big shoes, confident
as a clear blue sky, radiating
bewilderment like the spring sprung.
That little pinch of disregard popping
its red balloon in him. Every habit
of the inappropriate filling his pockets
concealing doves with endless blossoming scarves.
Look at me, he seems to say.
Some inner ball of faith bouncing
at the precipice of every occasion:
birthdays, picnics, elephants lumbering
toward retirement. He always
comes back. She knows this. Safe
as two hands tucked away into pockets.
His big red nose a moon glowing
over the dark and dishes of every moment,
the playlot bullies, the unswept debts,
whatever refuses to budge.
That’s when he walks in without a breath
of doubt, slipping on peels of disbelief,
a king in his element, grasping reason
through an angry crowd, juggling saws
with the wings of whatever he touches,
resplendent as a leaf blown in
from the rain, carelessness
dripping off his big floppy shoes.
While all her earthly burdens: the would haves,
could haves, should haves snap and snag
in the wind like just-washed pajamas.

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4. HotSites - ?
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Ball Droppings

Bouncy Balls

zesimon

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5. Reading List
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=A=
Death of an Ordinary Housecat
Posted: 01/23/2012 9:08 pm
by Richard (RJ) Eskow
There’s nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing, that is, but this report of a minor incident in Russellville, Arkansas: “Democratic Congressional candidate Ken Aden’s campaign manager returned home to find his family pet slaughtered, with the word ‘liberal’ painted on the animal’s corpse.”

A statement from the Aden campaign describes the cat as an adult mixed-breed Siamese and included a graphic description of the pet’s injuries.

The statement said that the four children of campaign manager Jacob Burris “discovered the gruesome scene as they exited the family vehicle to enter their home” after “the perpetrators scrawled ‘liberal’ across the cat’s body and left it on the doorstep of Burris’ house.”

“To kill a child’s pet is unconscionable,” the candidate is quoted as saying.

I know, I know. It’s not the most important story in the news this week. In a time of war and financial crisis, there are a lot bigger stories to report than the death of a house cat. It was just an ordinary pet like millions of others, a playmate to some children and a companion to their parents.

Nor is this an electoral scandal. The Aden campaign said they “did not believe the Womack campaign to be responsible,” adding that “before Christmas… a (radio) station owned by Womack’s father, actually promoted a toy drive held by Aden’s campaign for children in the Third District.”

People, especially conservatives, will rush to say it’s an isolated incident of random violence that could’ve happened to anyone. They’ve said that before. Lots of times, in fact.

The shooting of churchgoers at a liberal Unitarian church in Knoxville was an isolated incident.

The shooting of police officers in Pittsburgh was an isolated incident.

The shooting of deputies in Okaloosa, Florida was an isolated incident.

The killing of a Tucson man and the shooting of his wife and daughter (the nine-year-old was shot in the head at point-blank range) was an isolated incident.

The murder of an African-American woman and the raping and wounding of her sister, followed by the killing of a homeless man, was an isolated incident.

The killing of an African-American security guard at the Holocaust Museum was an isolated incident.

Except…

The man who shot those Knoxville Unitarians had these books on his bookshelf Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by Bill O’Reilly. Michael Savage said the ACLU “will kill us all,” that “the white male has nothing to lose… you haven’t seen him explode… his ugly side,” and that “the radical left and the radical Muslim are blood brothers.” Hannity has a book called Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism. O’Reilly calls liberals “Nazis” and encouraged al Qaeda to attack liberal San Francisco.

The killer said he shot those people because “liberals” are “destroying America.” Hmm. Wonder where he got that idea? “Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate and House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book.” That would be the book entitled The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. (Hint: None of them are conservatives.)

The man who killed those Pittsburgh police officers was afraid that Obama would take away his guns and deprive him of other rights.

So was the man who killed those deputies in Florida.

The accused killers of that Tucson man — including a woman who was identified by the little girl who was shot in the head — were extreme right-wingers in the anti-immigration movement.

The man who killed that woman, raped and wounded her sister, and then murdered a homeless man was a right-wing white supremacist. He was on his way to a Jewish Community Center when he was arrested.

The man who shot that security guard was a right-wing tax protester.

The people who were killed in these acts of are human beings, not pets. Their absence is still being felt every day — by family and friends, by co-workers, by an entire community. Nobody will mourn a little housecat from Russellville, Arkansas — nobody except four children and their parents.

So why does it matter? The Talmud says that destroying a single soul is like destroying “a universe entire.” Who can doubt the living souls inside the creatures that live among us and share our experiences? Killing a pet is a sick act. The dehumanization of psychopathic human beings often begins in childhood with the torture and killing of animals.

The same gradual dehumanization can take place in a society, too. After Gabrielle Giffords was shot I refused to raise the volume or turn up the heat on our rhetorical divide, and opted for a “moment of silence” instead. But just as there’s a time for silence, there is also a time to speak.

Even if it’s about a cat. If we don’t speak now, when will the dehumanization stop? But if people can’t see the common thread of life that binds human beings together — liberal and conservative, immigrant and native-born, black and white — how can they see the force that binds us to other life?

Of course, the cat’s killers don’t represent an entire movement. But where’s the outrage within the right over the violent and extremist rhetoric? Where was the outrage when people died, over and over?

Here are the kinds of statements that are still tolerated by the conservative movement without censure or criticism:

Ann Coulter said “the only way to talk to a liberal is with a baseball bat,” that “We need to execute people like John Walke… to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too,” and “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.” (That last comment’s a two-fer: She wanted him to kill journalists and that’s her “only regret,” meaning she doesn’t regret the murder of Federal workers, other people visiting the Federal building that day, or the children in the onsite day-care center in that Oklahoma Federal building.)

“Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do,” said Coulter. Sure, she’s getting increasingly strident as her star continues to fade. But she’s got plenty of company.

Leading conservative publication Human Events has a regular “Guns & Patriots” section.

Andrew Breitbart said “We outnumber (liberals) in this country, and we have the guns… I’m not kidding.”

Rush Limbaugh said “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils…”

Rep. James Hansen said of President Bill Clinton, “Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.”

Michele Bachmann said she wanted her supporters “locked and loaded” and “on the front side of the political battle.”

CNN commentator Erick Erickson suggests that “mass bloodshed” might be appropriate if the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion aren’t to his movement’s liking.

Glenn Beck says liberals are “the enemies of God,” coming “for the kill on religion,” and are “enemies of freedom.” He also said he was “thinking about killing Michael Moore… I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it… No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong?”

If liberals are Nazis, fascists, mass murderers, enemies of freedom, if they should be shot, hanged, choked, beaten, killed, then what’s wrong with killing a liberal’s cat?

It’s true that not all the violent rhetoric is on one side, but it’s vastly greater on the right. And the violence has been directed against the left. Coincidence? We report, you decide.

Full disclosure: When I wrote about bank crimes a while back one or two commenters began mentioning violent acts against Wall Street executives. But they’re commenters, not leading voices. And I immediately toned down my rhetoric, which wasn’t violent but was strong.

Here’s what I keep thinking: If someone were ever hurt by anyone who’d read something I’d written I’d be devastated. I’d devote a large part of my life to reflecting on what role I might have played in the violence, and to helping reduce the violence from that moment on. I think bankers should be investigated, and the lawbreakers among them should be prosecuted. But if one were hurt, especially because of anything I’d done — however unintentionally — I’d be heartbroken.

Wouldn’t you?

But there wasn’t a single moment of reflection, much less remorse. Not from Hannity. Not from O’Reilly. Not from Savage or Goldberg. On the contrary, Hannity was outraged when I laid some of the responsibility for the Unitarian killings at his feet. (A true totalitarian to the end, he raged and screamed on the air and said I should be ‘fired’ from the Huffington Post.)

Now a cat is dead. Not a first responder or a churchgoer or a toddler in an Oklahoma day-care center. Just a cat. We don’t know if it was male or female. We don’t even know its name.

If there wasn’t any remorse or reflection after those deaths and injuries in Knoxville, there certainly won’t be any over the death of a tiny creature in a little Southern town. The town was Russellville, Arkansas, in Pope County, population 27,000 or so. Bet you didn’t know it’s the county seat.

They’ll probably arrest some teenagers sooner or later. Just kids. Just kids who learned this behavior somewhere.

And it was ‘just’ a cat. It was just a companion for an Arkansas family and a playmate for its children. The kids will cry but life will go on. The rhetoric won’t change and the incident will be forgotten by tomorrow.

There’s nothing to see here. Move along. It was an isolated incident.

* * *
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/media-violent-rhetoric_b_1225552.html
From: Huffington Post
= =
=B=
In Search of Serendipity
It means more than a happy coincidence. And it’s under threat from the internet. Ian Leslie explains …

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2012

EXCERPT:
One day in 1945, a man named Percy Spencer was touring one of the laboratories he managed at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts, a supplier of radar technology to the Allied forces. He was standing by a magnetron, a vacuum tube which generates microwaves, to boost the sensitivity of radar, when he felt a strange sensation. Checking his pocket, he found his candy bar had melted. Surprised and intrigued, he sent for a bag of popcorn, and held it up to the magnetron. The popcorn popped. Within a year, Raytheon made a patent application for a microwave oven.

The history of scientific discovery is peppered with breakthroughs that came about by accident. The most momentous was Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928, prompted when he noticed how a mould that floated into his Petri dish killed off the surrounding bacteria. Spencer and Fleming didn’t just get lucky. Spencer had the nous and the knowledge to turn his observation into innovation; only an expert on bacteria would have been ready to see the significance of Fleming’s stray spore. As Louis Pasteur wrote, “In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.”

The word that best describes this subtle blend of chance and agency is “serendipity”.

* * *
Full Article:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/ian-leslie/search-serendipity

From: More Intelligent Life
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=C=

5 Republican Lies About Income Inequality
The Republican position on inequality rests on five statements, all false.

By David Morris
January 24, 2012

EXCERPT:

Recent comments by Mitt Romney, the probable Republican nominee for President all but guarantee the inequality issue will remain front and center this election year.

When asked whether people who question the current distribution of wealth and power are motivated by “jealousy or fairness” Romney insisted, “I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.” And in this election year he advised that if we do discuss inequality we do so “in quiet rooms” not in public debates.

A public debate, of course, is inevitable. And welcome. To help that debate along I’ll address the five major statements that comprise the Republican argument on inequality.

* * *
Full Article:
http://www.alternet.org/story/153874/5_Republican_Lies_About_Income_Inequality/
From: Alternet.org

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6. For Art’s Sake
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Tim Noble & Sue Webster’s British Rubbish

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7. WTF?
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Bid on 4 oz. of water from a pool used by Tom Cruise.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/11/drinking-tom-cruise-ebay-offers-bottles-of-pool-water-used-by-tom-cruise/#more-43816

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i n t e r a l i a 16 December 2011

sulasula — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:09:02 +0000

Horse and Hay (window dressing), NYC - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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Archive of past issues of <:> i n t e r a l i a <:>:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_archive.htm
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~
1. A Word A Day — paralipsis
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
4. HotSites - Eclectic blogs I keep returning to.
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Voices of Music
7. WTF? - Two students suspended for “Tebowing”!
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1. A Word A Day
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paralipsis

PRONUNCIATION:
(par-uh-LIP-sis)

MEANING:
noun: Drawing attention to something while claiming to be passing over it.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin paralipsis, from Greek paraleipsis (an omission), from paraleipein (to leave on one side), from para- (side) + leipein (to leave). First recorded use: 1550.

NOTES:
Paralipsis is especially handy in politics to point out an opponent’s faults. It typically involves these phrases:
“not to mention”
“to say nothing of”
“I won’t speak of”
“leaving aside”

USAGE:
“Political correctness has breathed new life into the paralepsis, the rhetorical device whereby we make a statement by first announcing that we are not going to make it. When pundits write ‘No one is suggesting…’ the American eye reads ‘I’m suggesting.’”
Florence King; If ‘Words Mean Things’, Then All is Lost; Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia); Feb 19, 1995.
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From Anu Garg and A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
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THIS ISSUE:
Recent Portraits - Cathy and Matthew - three images.

Recent Portraits - Carsen and Braniff - four images.

Seen Around New York City - 17 images.

9/11 Memorial - six images.

LAST ISSUE:

French Quarter Facades - 11 images.

The Big Apple - five images.

New York Public Library - eight images.

Small Hours in City Park - eight images.
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GOTD Archives:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. Quote of the Day — Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
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Old Boys

I would’ve never believed that I’d forget you:
the sound of your laugh, the size of your hands,
that one day I’d have to rub my forehead
like a genie’s lamp to pull out your last name.

I would have slit my tender paten to pulp
to shake bloody and swear that one day
we would share a last name, or at least
a flamboyantly oversized prom picture.

But now, I could form a terrible band
with all the boys I thought would pant
their presence forever on my heart, but
instead evaporated almost completely,

leaving only the tease of our nicknames,
the soft ghost of their favorite tee-shirt,
and the dusty ordinary ellipse of what
could have been.

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4. HotSites - Eclectic blogs I keep returning to.
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The James Kalm Report - Vlog from artist, James Kalm, who cycles to various art openings in Manhattan and videos and critiques the art while trying to avoid being asked to leave.

The Noumenon Revelation - Traci Lynn Matlock’s life exposed in images and writings.

The Sartorialist - pics of high fashion of the street from Paris, Milan, NYC, etc.

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5. Reading List
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=A=
Who Runs the Internet?

By Sarah Stankorb
December 9, 2011
EXCERPT:
Most of us leave breadcrumbs behind us online. Say you’re shopping online and a pair of leather boots catches your eye. You zoom in, reading reviews. Finally, you refocus and click a link to a Washington Post article. There, in an ad box to the right, are those boots. It’s like they are meant for you, calling out to you.

Of course, what happened is that cookies on your browser have allowed third-party companies to target advertising and follow you into other virtual space. You are being watched, anonymously. It’s creepy, but as harmless as a roadside billboard.

But there may be new reason to wonder about your virtual trail. Last week, an Android developer alleged publicly that a clandestine smartphone app called Carrier IQ automatically included in some phones with no opt-out, records all keystrokes — that means text messages, web browsing.

DeNardis grants that for network management, monitoring, and diagnostics, some personal information needs to be sent back and forth between devices and carriers, “but it should be very, very limited.” In the case of Carrier IQ, she adds, “If it’s true that all of the text messages and keystrokes are being logged — it’s outrageous. There is no rationale for that kind of extensive network logging for any network management reason.”

Flipping the Kill Switch

If information is always being sent from your device to your carrier, DeNardis asks what feels like a trick question. “Is anything you do on the Internet anonymous?”

The answer is no, not really.

* * *
Full Article: http://www.american.edu/americantoday/campus-news/20111209-internet-control-DeNardis.cfm
From: American University
= =

=B=
You Say You Want a Devolution?
For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.

By By Kurt Andersen
Vanity Fair Magazine
January 2012
EXCERPT:

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE From the fedora to the Afro, styles have changed with the times. Unless you’re living in the 21st century.

The past is a foreign country. Only 20 years ago the World Wide Web was an obscure academic thingamajig. All personal computers were fancy stand-alone typewriters and calculators that showed only text (but no newspapers or magazines), played no video or music, offered no products to buy. E-mail (a new coinage) and cell phones were still novelties. Personal music players required cassettes or CDs. Nobody had seen a computer-animated feature film or computer-generated scenes with live actors, and DVDs didn’t exist. The human genome hadn’t been decoded, genetically modified food didn’t exist, and functional M.R.I. was a brand-new experimental research technique. Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had never been mentioned in The New York Times. China’s economy was less than one-eighth of its current size. CNN was the only general-interest cable news channel. Moderate Republicans occupied the White House and ran the Senate’s G.O.P. caucus.

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Think about it. Picture it. Rewind any other 20-year chunk of 20th-century time. There’s no chance you would mistake a photograph or movie of Americans or an American city from 1972—giant sideburns, collars, and bell-bottoms, leisure suits and cigarettes, AMC Javelins and Matadors and Gremlins alongside Dodge Demons, Swingers, Plymouth Dusters, and Scamps—with images from 1992. Time-travel back another 20 years, before rock ’n’ roll and the Pill and Vietnam, when both sexes wore hats and cars were big and bulbous with late-moderne fenders and fins—again, unmistakably different, 1952 from 1972. You can keep doing it and see that the characteristic surfaces and sounds of each historical moment are absolutely distinct from those of 20 years earlier or later: the clothes, the hair, the cars, the advertising—all of it. It’s even true of the 19th century: practically no respectable American man wore a beard before the 1850s, for instance, but beards were almost obligatory in the 1870s, and then disappeared again by 1900. The modern sensibility has been defined by brief stylistic shelf lives, our minds trained to register the recent past as old-fashioned.

***
Now try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference—and Jay-Z and Wilco are still Jay-Z and Wilco. Except for certain details (no Google searches, no e-mail, no cell phones), ambitious fiction from 20 years ago (Doug Coupland’s Generation X, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow) is in no way dated, and the sensibility and style of Joan Didion’s books from even 20 years before that seem plausibly circa-2012.

* * *
Full Article: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201
From: Vanity Fair
= =
=C=
The Making of the 99%

Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich
December 14, 2011
EXCERPT:
“Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.” —E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

The “other men” (and of course women) in the current American class alignment are those in the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution—the bankers, hedge-fund managers and CEOs targeted by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have been around for a long time in one form or another, but they began to emerge as a distinct and visible group, informally called the “superrich,” only in recent years.

Extravagant levels of consumption helped draw attention to them: private jets, multiple 50,000-square-foot mansions, $25,000 frozen hot chocolate embellished with gold dust. But as long as the middle class could still muster the credit for college tuition and occasional home improvements, it seemed churlish to complain. Then came the financial crash of 2007–08, followed by the Great Recession, and the 1 percent—to whom we had entrusted our pensions, our economy and our political system—stood revealed as a band of feckless, greedy narcissists, and possibly sociopaths.

Still, until a few months ago, the 99 percent was hardly a group capable of (as Thompson says) “articulat[ing] the identity of their interests.” It contained, and still contains, most “ordinary” rich people, along with middle-class professionals; factory workers, truck drivers and miners; and the much poorer people who clean the houses, manicure the fingernails and maintain the lawns of the affluent. It was divided not only by these class differences but most visibly by race and ethnicity—a division that has deepened since 2008.
***
And here was another thing many in the middle class were discovering: the downward plunge into poverty could occur with dizzying speed. One reason the concept of an economic 99 percent first took root in America rather than, say, Ireland or Spain is that Americans are particularly vulnerable to economic dislocation. We have little in the way of a welfare state to stop a family or an individual in free fall. Unemployment benefits do not last more than six months or a year, though in a recession they are sometimes extended by Congress. At present, even with such an extension, they reach only about half the jobless. Welfare was all but abolished fifteen years ago, and health insurance has traditionally been linked to employment.

In fact, once an American starts to slip downward, a variety of forces kick in to help accelerate the slide. An estimated 60 percent of American firms now check applicants’ credit ratings, and discrimination against the unemployed is widespread enough to have begun to warrant Congressional concern. Even bankruptcy is a prohibitively expensive, often crushingly difficult status to achieve. Failure to pay government-imposed fines or fees can lead, through a concatenation of unlucky breaks, to an arrest warrant or a criminal record. Where other once-wealthy nations have a safety net, America offers a greased chute, leading down to destitution with alarming speed.

* * *
Full Article: http://www.thenation.com/article/165167/making-99

From: The Nation

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6. For Art’s Sake
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Voices of Music performs both renaissance and baroque music, drawing upon the many and varied sources for historical performance practice. Based in San Francisco, our venue in St. Mark’s Lutheran provides one of the finest concert experiences in the Bay Area. Performances are one on a part, with an emphasis on combining both instrumental and vocal styles of interpretation and ornamentation. Our ensemble is the first Early Music Ensemble in America to broadcast highlights from our performances in High Definition Video. In addition to the concert series in the San Francisco Bay Area, Voices of Music sponsors the Young Artists Concerts, which are specifically designed to work with the next generation of singers and musicians. Voices of Music is a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) with a wide range of educational and performance outreach programs.
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7. WTF?
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Riverhead students suspended for ‘Tebowing’
Originally published: December 15, 2011 9:23 PM
Updated: December 16, 2011 12:11 AM
By STEVEN MARCUS steven.marcus@newsday.com

Two Riverhead High School football players were suspended for a day because the school said they created a potentially dangerous situation by leading other students in a re-enactment of NFL quarterback Tim Tebow’s kneeling in prayer.

School officials said an estimated 40 students had gathered in the hallway this week to make the gesture, which is called “Tebowing” and is named after the Denver Broncos player.

Tebow has received national attention this season because of his strong religious beliefs and fourth-quarter comebacks. Tebow, who is Christian, has turned around the Broncos’ season with a 7-1 record as the starting quarterback.

His popularity has led to the “Tebowing” fad, where people kneel like Tebow in random places and then post the photos on the Internet.

Superintendent Nancy Carney said the suspensions had nothing to do with the religious nature of the gesture.

“It causes a potentially unsafe situation with 1,500 people in the building,” Principal David Wicks said Thursday. “If you have 40 kids kneeling down in the middle of a hallway, and God forbid a fire alarm goes off, they could potentially stop someone from getting to safety.”

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i n t e r a l i a 02 December 2011

sulasula — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:16:31 +0000

Window Dressing (NYC) - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_archive.htm
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~
1. A Word A Day — defalcate
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — David Kirby
4. HotSites - Oldies but goodies
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - David Halliday
7. WTF? - Man accused of burning wife with iron claims she assaulted him with sex toy
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1. A Word A Day
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defalcate

PRONUNCIATION:
(di-FAL-kayt)

MEANING:
verb intr. To misuse funds; to embezzle.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin defalcare (to cut off), from de- (off) + falx (sickle). Earliest documented use: 1541.

USAGE:
“Prakash hit upon a more daring method to defalcate the company.”
Samsung Official Dupes Company of Crores; The Economic Times (New Delhi, India); Dec 2, 2005.
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From Anu Garg and A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
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THIS ISSUE:

French Quarter Facades - 11 images.

The Big Apple - five images.

New York Public Library - eight images.

Small Hours in City Park - eight images.

LAST ISSUE:

LaSalle Elementary/NOCCA (Abandoned) (28 images)

Skull

Rotunda

Tree at Dawn

Parkview Guest House
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GOTD Archives:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. Quote of the Day — David Kirby
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My Favorite Foreign Language

“What’s your favorite foreign language?” asks the cabbie,
and when I ask why, he says he knows “butterfly”
in 241 of them, so I say, “Okay, French!” and he says,

“Papillon!” and I say, “German!” and he says, “Schmetterling!”
and I’m running out of languages I know, so I say,
“Uh, Wolof!” because I’m reading a short story

where a woman speaks Wolof, and he says something in Wolof,
and the professor-y part of me wants
to say, You shouldn’t call them foreign languages, you know,

because that means there’s only one real language, but
I’d be saying that to him in our common
tongue, so it really wouldn’t make sense unless I were chiding

him in, say, Wolof, a language in which he knows only
one word and I none. What’s the best country?
Heaven, probably: as everyone knows, the cooks are French,

the mechanics German, the police English, lovers Italian,
and it’s all organized by the Swiss, whereas
in Hell, the cooks are English, mechanics French, police

Germans, lovers Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians,
which leaves out the Spanish,
though perhaps not, for the ancients say a man should speak

French to his friends because of its vivacity,
Italian to his mistress for its sweetness,
German to his enemies because it is forceful, and Spanish

to his God, for it is the most majestic of languages.
Hola, Señor! Okay if I put my suitcase
over here? Thank you for having me! Yes, I would

like to hear what they’re saying in the other place, like “Dictators
over here” and “Corporate polluters
in this area” and “Aw, come on—another boring poet?”

David Kirby

Hanging Loose 98

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4. HotSites - Oldies but good
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Today’s Front Pages - of 800 newspapers with links to content, from Newseum.org.

Rx List - Drugs.

Innerbody - Human anatomy online.

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5. Reading List
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=A=
Why our brains make us laugh
From a Tufts term paper to a new book on the cognitive origins of humor

By Chris Berdik
November 20, 2011
EXCERPT:
The basic, most simple humor is first-person humor. It’s when you
catch yourself in an error, like looking for the glasses that happen to be
on the top of your head. You’ve made an assumption about the state of
the world, and you’re behaving based on that assumption, but that
assumption doesn’t hold at all, and you get a little chuckle.

But we’ve become complex social creatures, and as we grow, humor
takes on all the aspects of our complex social life. For instance,
here’s a joke we tell in our book: A man and a woman who have never
met before find themselves sharing a sleeping car on an overnight train.
After some initial embarrassment, they both go to sleep in their
bunks. . . .But in the middle of the night,
the woman leans over and says to the man: “I’m sorry, but
I’m a little cold. Could I trouble you to get me another
blanket?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” the man
replies with a glint in his eye. “Just for tonight, let’s
pretend we’re married.”
“OK, why not,” giggles the woman.
“Great,” the man says. “Get your own damn
blanket!”
The woman and the audience both make the same
mistake by assuming something about what the man said. Punch lines make us
aware of these automatic covert inferences. Humor rewards the discovery of
our mistakes.

* * *
Full Article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2011/11/20/why-our-brains-make-laugh/l0OWxVcnRpzfyIheFgab5N/story.html
From: The Boston Globe
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=B=
Take Two Hookworms and Call Me in the Morning
Researchers are giving parasites a second look.

By Jennifer Fisher Wilson
EXCERPT:
Hookworm infection certainly provided an excellent argument for shoes. The invasion by tens of thousands of squirmy, blood-sucking worms was not only nauseating, it also had damaging effects such as delayed growth, anemia, and lethargy. Once known as the “the germ of laziness,” hookworm contributed significantly to school absenteeism and adult unemployment. The deworming campaign saw such positive effects as improvements in literacy, agricultural output, and income.

And yet. Today, growing evidence points to a significant downside to life without hookworm. Lately scientists have hypothesized that such parasites may play a critical health role by helping the immune system adjust to everyday environmental irritants without overreacting and producing excessive inflammation. The idea falls in line with the well-known “hygiene hypothesis.” First officially presented a dozen years ago, the hygiene hypothesis proposes that without prenatal or early life exposure to microorganisms and parasites — with which we coexisted throughout much of our evolutionary history — we have become prone to an imbalanced immune response later in life.

While modern medicine and improved cleanliness practices have eliminated many dreadful afflictions from the United States, others have escalated. Initial research on the hygiene hypothesis focused on asthma, allergies, and eczema, all of which have increased in prevalence dramatically in developed countries over the past 150 years. Research has expanded in surprising ways to consider other big-time chronic diseases linked to excess inflammation, including heart disease, depression, and obesity.

In an ironic twist, it appears that humans may actually benefit from limited, controlled exposure to some microorganisms and parasites. In particular, researchers have begun testing the effects of controlled exposure to hookworm and other intestinal parasites. Early research at University of Iowa showed that exposing mice to parasitic worms helped prevent inflammatory bowel disease. Additional studies demonstrated that the therapy could protect the mice from colitis, encephalitis, Type 1 diabetes, and asthma.
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Full Article: http://thesmartset.com/article/article05061101.aspx
From: The Smart Set
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The GOP’s War on Voting Comes to Washington
House Republicans want to kill the federal agency charged with making sure voting machines work.

—By Siddhartha Mahanta
Thu Dec. 1, 2011
EXCERPT:
Republicans in state legislatures across the country have spent the past year mounting an all-out assault on voting rights, pushing a slew of voter ID and redistricting measures that are widely expected to dilute the power of minority and low-income voters in next November’s elections. Now that effort has come to Capitol Hill, where the House* will vote Thursday on a GOP-backed bill to eviscerate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country.

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Full Article: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/war-voting-comes-washington

From: Mother Jones

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David Halliday

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7. WTF?
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Man accused of burning wife with iron claims she assaulted him with sex toy
By Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Nov. 30, 2011

GEORGETOWN — A Hutto man accused of burning his wife with an iron brought court to a brief standstill Wednesday when he testified that his wife attacked him with a sex toy.

Hugo Alquicira, charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, told a Williamson County jury that he never struck his wife, Maria Isabel Puente, with an object but he did push her onto a bed after she penetrated his buttocks with a plastic sex toy.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/man-accused-of-burning-wife-with-iron-claims-2005352.html

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i n t e r a l i a 01 November 2011

sulasula — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:49:58 +0000

Three Sinks - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

In Today’s Issue
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1. A Word A Day — captious
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — by Stephen Dobyns
4. HotSites - Get Smart
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Jack Spencer
7. WTF? - Horse-faced Hooker?
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1. A Word A Day
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captious

PRONUNCIATION:
(KAP-shuhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Having an inclination to find faults, especially of a trivial nature.

ETYMOLOGY:
Via French from Latin capere (to seize). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kap- (to grasp), which is also the root of captive, capsule, capable, capture, cable, chassis, occupy, and deceive. Earliest documented use: 1380.

USAGE:
“Simon Cowell, the breathtakingly captious judge on American Idol, has dashed more dreams than an alarm clock.”
David Hiltbrand; ‘Idol’ Hands are This Devil’s Workshop, As He Rakes Teen Dreams Over the Coals; The San Diego Union-Tribune; Aug 4, 2002.

LaSalle Elementary/NOCCA (Abandoned) (28 images)

LAST ISSUE:

Going Fishing - Bayou La Loutre - two images.

Bourbon Street (six hours before Saints - Texans Game, 2011) - 24 images.

Small Hours in Audubon Park - 11 images.

–
GOTD Archives:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. Quote of the Day — Stephen Dobyns
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Pursuit

Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass -
a blend of stock car racing and the never
ending building of a gothic cathedral.
Through the windows of my speeding car, I see
all that I love falling away: books unread,
jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. And why?
What treasure do I expect in my future?
Rather it is the confusion of childhood
loping behind me, the chaos in the mind,
the failure chipping away at each success.
Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape
and so move forward, as someone in the woods
at night might hear the sound of approaching feet
and stop to listen, then, instead of silence
he hears some creature trying to be silent.
What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly
down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;
the other ever closer, yet not really
hurrying or out of breath, teasing its kill.

Stephen Dobyns

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4. HotSites - Get Smart
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Khan Academy - With a library of over 2,600 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 225 practice exercises, they’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
Open Yale Courses - Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.
Smart History - Smarthistory.org is a free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook. Part of the Khan Academy, we use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art.

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5. Reading List
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=A=

Why the SEC Won’t Hunt Big Dogs

by Jesse Eisinger
ProPublica, Oct. 26, 2011, 12:56 p.m.

Excerpt:

Back when the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was doing its work, I would check in periodically with someone who worked there to find out how it was going.

“Good news!” my source would joke. “We got the guy who caused it.”

That is the way I felt last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had, well, agreed to a measly $285 million settlement with Citigroup over the bank having misled its own customers in selling an investment it created out of mortgage securities as the housing market was beginning its collapse.

In addition, the S.E.C. accused one person — a low-level banker. Hooray, we finally got the guy who caused the financial crisis! The Occupy Wall Street protestors can now go home.

After years of lengthy investigations into collateralized debt obligations, the mortgage securities at the heart of the financial crisis, the S.E.C. has brought civil actions against only two small-time bankers. But compared with the Justice Department, the S.E.C. is the second coming of Eliot Ness. No major investment banker has been brought up on criminal charges stemming from the financial crisis.

To understand why that is so pathetic and — worse — corrupting, we need to briefly review what went on in C.D.O.’s in the years before the crisis. By 2006, legions of Wall Street bankers had turned C.D.O.’s into vehicles for their own personal enrichment, at the expense of their customers

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Full Article
From: Pro Publica
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Why inequality in America is even worse than you thought
A new study shows economic and social conditions in the U.S. rank near the bottom of the developed nations

Saturday, Oct 29, 2011
By Justin Elliott

Excerpt:
There has been no shortage of headlines this week about the growing income and wealth inequality in the United States. A new study from the Congressional Budget Office, for example, found that income of the top 1 percent of households increased by 275 percent in the 30-year period ending in 2007. American households at the bottom and in the middle, meanwhile, saw income growth of just 18 to 40 percent over the same period

But less attention has been paid to the fact that not only are the numbers bad in America, they’re particularly bad when compared to other developed nations.

A new report (.pdf) by the Bertelsmann Foundation drives this point home. The German think tank used a set of policy analyses to create a Social Justice Index of 31 developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The United States came in a dismal 27th in the rankings. Here, for example, is a graph of one of the metrics, child poverty, in which the U.S. ranked fourth-to-last.

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Full Article
From: Salon.com
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Worst Food Additive Ever? It’s in Half of All Foods We Eat and Its Production Destroys Rainforests and Enslaves Children
The production of this ingredient causes jaw-dropping amounts of deforestation (and with it, carbon emissions) and human rights abuses.

By Jill Richardson
October 24, 2011

Excerpt:
On August 10, police and security for the massive palm oil corporation Wilmar International (of which Archer Daniels Midland is the second largest shareholder) stormed a small, indigenous village on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They came with bulldozers and guns, destroying up to 70 homes, evicting 82 families, and arresting 18 people. Then they blockaded the village, keeping the villagers in — and journalists out. (Wilmar claims it has done no wrong.)

The village, Suku Anak Dalam, was home to an indigenous group that observes their own traditional system of land rights on their ancestral land and, thus, lacks official legal titles to the land. This is common among indigenous peoples around the world — so common, in fact, that it is protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Indonesia, for the record, voted in favor of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Yet the government routinely sells indigenous peoples’ ancestral land to corporations. Often the land sold is Indonesia’s lowland rainforest, a biologically rich area home to endangered species like the orangutan, Asian elephant, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger, and the plant Rafflesia arnoldii, which produces the world’s largest flower.

So why all this destruction? Chances are you’ll find the answer in your pantry. Or your refrigerator, your bathroom, or even under your sink. The palm oil industry is one of the largest drivers of deforestation in Indonesia. Palm oil and palm kernel oil, almost unheard of a decade or two ago, are now unbelievably found in half of all packaged foods in the grocery store (as well as body care and cleaning supplies). These oils, traditional in West Africa, now come overwhelmingly from Indonesia and Malaysia. They cause jawdropping amounts of deforestation (and with it, carbon emissions) and human rights abuses.

* * *
Full Article
From: Alternet.org
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6. For Art’s Sake
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Jack Spencer

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7. WTF?
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Hooker ‘turns into donkey’, court hears

A MAN caught having sex with a donkey stunned a court on Monday by claiming that the animal was in fact a hooker he pulled from a nightclub. News Article

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i n t e r a l i a 14 October 2011

sulasula — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:50:35 +0000

Marsh Sunrise at Bayou La Loutre - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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To subscribe to <:>i n t e r a l i a<:> click here.
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In Today’s Issue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~

1. A Word A Day — adjure
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — by Ellen Bass
4. HotSites - Miscellany
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - David Burdeny
7. WTF? - Man, 81, ‘posed as doctor and performed fake door-to-door breast exams’
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1. A Word A Day
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adjure

PRONUNCIATION:
(uh-JOOR)

MEANING:
verb tr.:
1. To command solemnly.
2. To request earnestly.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin adjurare (to put under oath), from ad- (to) + jurare (to swear), from jus (law). Ultimately from the Indo-European root yewes- (law), which is also the source of jury, judge, just, injury, perjury, conjure, and de jure. Earliest documented use: before 1425.

USAGE:
“If you go to Las Vegas — and so many do — please pay mind to the signs in the park. They don’t adjure you from feeding the pigeons. They forbid feeding the homeless.”
Jacquelyn Mitchard; Please Do Feed the Unsightly Homeless; Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin); Oct 1, 2006.

“‘Use Absolut,’ he adjures a waiter at the restaurant.” Amanda Vaill; A Story of Reckless Passion and Race; Chicago Tribune; May 25, 2003.

Going Fishing - Bayou La Loutre - two images.

Bourbon Street (six hours before Saints - Texans Game, 2011) - 24 images.

Small Hours in Audubon Park - 11 images.

LAST ISSUE:

Flying Horses of Antique (1906) Carousel of City Park - sixteen images

Green Anole in Repose - five images

Bubbleboy

Untitled (rhsc)

Audubon Oaks - two images

The god of atheists won’t burn you at the stake
or pry off your fingernails. Nor will it make you
bow or beg, rake your skin with thorns,
or buy gold leaf and stained-glass windows.
It won’t insist you fast or twist
the shape of your sexual hunger.
There are no wars fought for it, no women stoned for it.
You don’t have to veil your face for it
or bloody your knees.
You don’t have to sing.

The plums that bloom extravagantly,
the dolphins that stitch sky to sea,
each pebble and fern, pond and fish
are yours whether or not you believe.

When fog is ripped away
just as a rust red thumb slides across the moon,
the god of atheists isn’t rewarding you
for waking up in the middle of the night
and shivering barefoot in the field.

This god is not moved by the musk
of incense or bowls of oranges,
the mask brushed with cochineal,
polished rib of the lion.
Eat the macerated leaves
of the sacred plant. Dance
till the stars blur to a spangly river.
Rain, if it comes, will come.
This god loves the virus as much as the child.

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4. HotSites - Miscellany
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National Archives

GRIN - Great Images in NASA

Gas Buddy — lists lowest and highest prices of gas by location. (The two highest prices on the New Orleans list are the two stations closest to my house. Tell me something I didn’t know.)
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5. Reading List
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=A=

Revolution in a Can
Graffiti is as American as apple pie, but much easier to export.

BY BLAKE GOPNIK | NOVEMBER 2011

Excerpt:
That thing called “art” in the West is essentially an insider’s game, thrilling to play but without much purchase on the larger reality outside. We have to look at societies that are truly in crisis to be reminded that images — even images we have sometimes counted as art — can be used for much more than game-playing. In a strange reversal, the closer graffiti comes to being an empty visual commodity in the West, the better it serves the needs of the rest of the world’s peoples, who eagerly adopt it to speak about their most pressing concerns. It is as though Coca-Cola, as it spread across the globe, turned out to be a great nutritional drink.

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Full Article

From: Foreign Policy
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To the Devil
The Devil’s Dictionary at 100.

By Stefany Anne Golberg

Excerpts:
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
- -
SATAN, n. One of the Creator’s lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. “There is one favor that I should like to ask,” said he.

“Name it.”

“Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws.”

“What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul — you ask for the right to make his laws?”

“Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself.”

It was so ordered.
- -
HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

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Full Article
From: The Smart Set
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It’s 2011 — Why Is God Still Involved In American Politics?
The Mormon-bashing directed at Mitt Romney should concern everyone for what it reveals about the undue influence of religion in American elections.

by Amanda Marcotte
October 12, 2011

Excerpt:

As an atheist and a liberal, it’s been tempting for me to simply laugh at Republicans fighting each other over the issue of whether or not Mitt Romney, a Mormon, gets to consider himself a Christian. From the non-believer point of view, it’s like watching a bunch of grown adults work themselves into a frenzy over the differences between leprechauns and fairies. But watching the debate unfold, I’ve become concerned about what it means to make someone’s religious beliefs such a big campaign issue, because it’s indicative of a larger eroding of the separation of church and state, which concerns not just atheists but all people who understand the importance of maintaining a secular government.
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Full Article
From: Alternet.org
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6. For Art’s Sake
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David Burdeny:

David Burdeny

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7. WTF?
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Man, 81, ‘posed as doctor and performed fake door-to-door breast exams’

An 81-year-old man who posed as a doctor so he could con his way into women’s homes and perform fake breast examinations has struck a plea deal with prosecutors, narrowly escaping spending the rest of his lief in prison.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048292/Man-81-posed-doctor-performed-fake-door-door-breast-exams.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~

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i n t e r a l i a 30 September 2011

sulasula — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:35:06 +0000

Green Anole in Repose - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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To subscribe to <:>i n t e r a l i a<:> click here.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

In Today’s Issue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~

1. A Word A Day — etiolate
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — by Stephen Dunn
4. HotSites - Miscellany
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Alex Cherney
7. WTF? - Soccer fanatics brought the body of a murdered teenager into a stadium in Colombia
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1. A Word A Day
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etiolate

PRONUNCIATION:
(EE-tee-uh-layt)

MEANING:
verb tr.:
1. To make pale by preventing exposure to sunlight.
2. To make weak by stunting the growth of.
verb intr.:
3. To become pale, weak, or stunted.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French étioler (to make pale), from Latin stipula (straw). Earliest documented use: 1791.

USAGE:
“America itself was a stunted universe where men etiolate and shrink.”
Herb Greer; Down With the Yanks! (Book Review); The World & I (Washington, DC); Feb 2004.

“Convinced republican that I am, and foe of the prince who talks to plants and wants to be crowned ‘head of all faiths’ as well as the etiolated Church of England, I find myself pierced by a pang of sympathy. Not much of a life, is it, growing old and stale with no real job except waiting for the news of Mummy’s death?”
Christopher Hitchens; Beware the In-Laws; Slate (New York); Apr 18, 2011.

“If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.”
Adam Haslett; The Art of Good Writing; Financial Times (London, UK); Jan 21, 2011.

Flying Horses of Antique (1906) Carousel of City Park - sixteen images

Green Anole in Repose - five images

Bubbleboy

Untitled (rhsc)

Audubon Oaks - two images

LAST ISSUE:

Vista Verde (37 images)
For the third time in 12 months, Denise and I found ourselves in Roatan, Honduras. A Rhode Islander who owns a ten-acre estate on Roatan saw the images I produced for Fuego del Mar, and wanted me to produce images for a re-make of the website of his Honduran estate. All staging by Denise L’Hoste. Here are 37 images of Vista Verde

Diving in Roatan — 38 images from the eight dives I made on this trip to Honduras.

Impatient with but careful of life’s hazards,
and in regular negotiations with courage,
there, ahead of me, I’d see a landscape,
say, meadow grass with patches of bluebells—
in other words, a facade—and beyond it
would be a forest also with its concealments,
which I’d feel no need to investigate.
It was pleasure enough to have read about
all those animals and insects and their
acceptable murders and subterranean labors,
and how the trees and flowers nicely cover
it all up, leaving what we call beauty.

And though I admired those whose breadth
of fascination included the just-found path,
traces of deer scat, or sudden flourishes
of bright color in swampland, I would stay put
on the edges while they went in. And when
they’d return, fresh-faced, without any
nonsense about bettering their souls, I’d praise
how undaunted they’d been by the prospect
of ticks and those spiders that watch
from the sticky architecture of their webs.

And they in turn would allow me my distance
because, after all, we were friends, each of us
quite sure, after many mistakes and infringements,
a person’s pleasure must be his own serious business.

Stephen Dunn

The Georgia Review
Summer 2011

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4. HotSites - Miscellany
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The Encyclopedia of Earth

WordReference.com - Online Language Dictionaries

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
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5. Reading List
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=A=

Words of America: A Field Guide

by Michael Adams

Excerpt:
Touring the Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind from sea to shining sea. Picayune, from French picaillon, meaning ‘old copper coin,’ originally referred to a coin of little value in Louisiana, especially New Orleans. The word is first recorded in 1804. “Near the green,” the dictionary quotes from 1819, “is a horizontal fandango of four wooden horses. . . . Upon these, children canter and circulate for exercise, by paying a half-bit, here called a pécune.” Picayune “belonged” to Louisiana throughout the nineteenth century, but by now, of course, picayune is a more common adjective meaning ‘of little or no account or value.’ It has spread across the country, and the Dictionary of American Regional English locates it in Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Maine at various points in the twentieth century. Words start out local and, e pluribus unum, sometimes they go national.

In March 2012, the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press will publish the fifth and final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English, familiarly known as DARE, providing an excellent opportunity to reflect on its contributions to dialect research and lexicography. It does not go too far to say that DARE has refined and renewed both disciplines. Its approach has been unusually adventurous. It speaks with authority about American regional speech and has also captured the popular imagination. It is a peerless resource for scholars, but at the same time delivers accurate information about regional vocabulary to laypersons who, until DARE, could not count on access to it. In the twentieth century, DARE was so far ahead of practices in both dialectology and lexicography that it sometimes seemed futuristic.

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Full Article

From: Humanities
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=B=

Why They Hate Warren Buffett

Thursday 29 September 2011
by: E.J. Dionne Jr. , The Washington Post Writers Group | Op-Ed

Excerpt:
Maybe only a really, really rich guy can credibly make the case for why the wealthy should be asked to pay more in taxes. You can’t accuse a big capitalist of “class warfare.” That’s why the right wing despises Warren Buffett and is trying so hard to shut him up.

Militant conservatives are effective because they are absolutely shameless. Many of the same people who think the rich should be free to spend unlimited sums influencing our politics without having to disclose anything are now asking Buffett to make his tax returns public. I guess if you’re indifferent to consistency, you have a lot of freedom of action.

Buffett has outraged conservatives by saying that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. He’s said this for years, but he’s a target now because President Obama is using his comment to make the case for higher taxes on millionaires.

Thus did The Wall Street Journal editorial page call on Buffett to “let everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns.”

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Full Article
From: Washington Post
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Phony Fear Factor

September 29, 2011
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Excerpt:
The good news: After spending a year and a half talking about deficits, deficits, deficits when we should have been talking about jobs, job, jobs we’re finally back to discussing the right issue.

The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what’s blocking job creation that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy backers, but bears no relationship to reality.

Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy.

The first thing you need to know, then, is that there’s no evidence supporting this claim and a lot of evidence showing that it’s false.
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Full Article
From: The New York Times
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6. For Art’s Sake
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Watch this simply stunning clip in full screen mode:

Alex Cherney

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7. WTF?
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Friends bring murdered teen’s coffin to soccer match

Soccer fanatics brought the body of a murdered teenager into a stadium in Colombia’s Norte de Santander department.

The body of 17-year-old Christopher Jacome was brought in a coffin to the General Santander Stadium in Cucuta, the capital of Norte de Santander, during the Sunday match between Cucuta Deportivo and Envigado.

The boy, a loyal fan of Cucuta who belonged to the fan group “Barra del Indio” — a group known in Colombia for their aggressive antics at soccer matches — was shot several times Saturday while playing soccer in a local park.

After his wake, friends from “Barra del Indio” took the cadaver from the funeral home and paraded it around and then into the stadium in an attempt to pay homage to the slain soccer fan.

The medic for the soccer club, Julio Rivera, told the press, “They don’t let in the “barras” (fanatics) but yes, a cadaver. This is the only part of the world where this has happened.”

Colonel Alvaro Pico, a local police said that the boy’s death had nothing to do with his love for the soccer team rather it was a consequence of criminal actions in the area where he lived.

The event has generated controversy in Cucuta and stadium officials will hold a meeting to find out who permitted the entry of the cadaver and what punishment will be given.

Colonel Pico said they have identified some individuals who took the body from the funeral home.

Source: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/15202-fans-bring-cadaver-to-colombian-soccer-match.html

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i n t e r a l i a 18 August 2011

sulasula — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:17:15 +0000

Barracuda - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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To subscribe to <:>i n t e r a l i a<:> click here.
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In Today’s Issue
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1. A Word A Day — prius
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — by Ellen Bass
4. HotSites - Miscellany
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Desiree Dolron
7. WTF? - Portland mom is accused of performing a home circumcision

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1. A Word A Day
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prius

PRONUNCIATION:
(PRI-uhs, PRAI-)

MEANING:
noun: Something preceding, especially a necessary prior condition.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin prius (something preceding). Earliest documented use: 1882.

USAGE:
“This definition identifies God as the prius of everything that has being.”
Paul Tillich & Michael Palmer; Writings in the Philosophy of Culture; 1990.

–
From Anu Garg and A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
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THIS ISSUE:
Vista Verde (37 images)
For the third time in 12 months, Denise and I found ourselves in Roatan, Honduras. A Rhode Islander who owns a ten-acre estate on Roatan saw the images I produced for Fuego del Mar, and wanted me to produce images for a re-make of the website of his Honduran estate. All staging by Denise L’Hoste. Here are 37 images of Vista Verde

Diving in Roatan — 38 images from the eight dives I made on this trip to Honduras.

LAST ISSUE:
Beach Abstracts - 12 images.

Tour de Louisiane - The oldest cycling stage race in the United States. The race is composed of three stages over two days: a road race, a time trial, and a criterium. (35 images)

Marsh Wildfire

Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus) - An aptly named bird, fully half of the depicted bird’s legs are submerged in the shallow water, its typical foraging habitat. They breed in the coastal marshes of Louisiana, and when disturbed, especially near a nest, commence a loud, incessant yip,yip,yip.

Oakridge - Roatan, Honduras - two images

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

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4. HotSites - Miscellany
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Google Sky

Life Magazine: 2010 Pictures of the Year

Library of Congress: Everyday Mysteries
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5. Reading List
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=A=

Must-Reads: The Late, Great Molly Ivins on Rick Perry

A collection of some of the liberal humorist’s sharpest jabs at “Governor Goodhair.”

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From: MotherJones.com
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America in Decline

Friday 5 August 2011
by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed

Excerpt:

Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society – by now mostly financial – has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending – though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”

The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House.”

The final “compromise” – more accurately, capitulation to the far right – is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

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Full Article
From: Truth-out.org
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BPing the Arctic, Again — Fast Tracking Shell’s Dangerous Drilling

by Subhankar Banerjee
Published on Monday, August 15, 2011 by ClimateStoryTellers.org

Excerpt:
One of the riskiest and most destructive extreme energy oil exploration projects on the planet is moving toward implementation without scientific understanding or technical preparedness — Shell’s oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean of Alaska.

On August 4, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) conditionally approved Shell’s plan to drill up to four exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea of Arctic Alaska starting July 2012. A Los Angeles Times editorial correctly opined, “Shell Oil’s conditional permit to drill exploratory wells off Alaska should not have been granted. The hazards of drilling in such waters are in some ways worse than operating thousands of feet underwater. … It’s too early for any approval, conditional or otherwise.” Shell still needs several more permits including an air quality permit from the Environmental Protection Agency before they can do any drilling in the Arctic seabed. We must stop it.

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Full Article
From: CommonDreams.org
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Desiree Dolron

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7. WTF?
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Unkindest cut: Woman charged in home circumcision (Oregonian)

A 29-year-old Portland mom is accused of performing a home circumcision on her 3-month-old.

She allegedly performed that procedure at midnight, using a box cutter for a scalpel and a pair of pliers as a tourniquet, the Oregonian reports.

Her “training” allegedly came from YouTube videos on circumcision. And her inspiration to perform the operation was reading the Old Testament. She told police that she decided to do the cutting herself because she knew a hospital wouldn’t circumcise her son because he was too old.

Source: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2011/04/08/unkindest-cut-woman-charged-in-home-circumcision-oregonian/

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i n t e r a l i a 20 June 2011

sulasula — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:29:04 +0000

Beach Abstract - All reproduction rights reserved David L’Hoste

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To subscribe to <:>i n t e r a l i a<:> click here.
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In Today’s Issue
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While using this post as a template to create a new post, I’m afraid I deleted most of it. Rookie mistake. I’m not sure if it was included in my most recent back-up. If it is I’ll replace it. If not, live and learn.

1. A Word A Day —
2. Graphics of the Day — by David J. L’Hoste
3. Quote of the Day — by Ellen Bass
4. HotSites -
5. Reading List:

6. For Art’s Sake - Valentina Lisitsa
7. WTF? - A Maryland man who was charged $1 more for a manicure than women has filed a lawsuit for $200,000 claiming sex discrimination.

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1. A Word A Day
““““““““`
prius

PRONUNCIATION:
(PRI-uhs, PRAI-)

MEANING:
noun: Something preceding, especially a necessary prior condition.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin prius (something preceding). Earliest documented use: 1882.

USAGE:
“This definition identifies God as the prius of everything that has being.”
Paul Tillich & Michael Palmer; Writings in the Philosophy of Culture; 1990.

Tour de Louisiane - The oldest cycling stage race in the United States. The race is composed of three stages over two days: a road race, a time trial, and a criterium. (35 images)

Marsh Wildfire

Oakridge - Roatan, Honduras - two images

LAST ISSUE:
Sandy Key Surf - 14 images.
As unique as a snowflake, no wave is like another. Using a slow shutter in early morning or late afternoon, as the wave plunges, spills, and crashes, its individual personality, its character, even its carried secrets are revealed.

Speckled Trout

Big Bend National Park, 2005

Small Hours on Oak Street, New Orleans - six images.

–
Photo Archives:
http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. Quote of the Day — Ellen Bass
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Gate C22
by Ellen Bass
At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching–
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after–if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

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4. HotSites -
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5. Reading List
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From:
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Excerpt:

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Excerpt:

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From:
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Valentina Lisitsa

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7. WTF?
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Maryland Man Files Lawsuit Against Nail Salon After Being Charged $1 More Than Women For Manicure

Updated: Thursday, 16 Jun 2011, 9:01 AM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 15 Jun 2011, 10:41 PM EDT

By WILL THOMAS

LANDOVER, Md. - A Maryland man who was charged $1 more for a manicure than women has filed a lawsuit for $200,000 claiming sex discrimination.

Norris Sydnor III of Mitchellville said he was humiliated at Rich’s Nail Salon in Landover, Md., when they charged him the extra dollar after his December 16, 2010 manicure.

“I feel I’m being discriminated against based on my gender. There’s nothing to say my hands or my nails are any different than a woman’s nails,” Sydnor told FOX 5’s Will Thomas.

Attempts to reach the owner of Rich’s Nail Salon by phone and in person were unsuccessful. The case is set for trial on July 21.

Source: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/maryland/maryland-man-files-lawsuit-against-nail-salon-after-being-charged-1-more-than-women-for-manicure-061511#ixzz1PonOgpkz

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