Oddities and Humor

ed, I can't get this story out of my mind after reading it last night...

this is part of what is wrong with us as a society, I think.

we are willing to be spectators.

some actually indulge in it...

It pisses me off that no one had the courage or desire to swim out there and try to pull the guy back.

or try to talk him back.

or something...

makes me sick thinking about it.

I am a weak swimmer. But I would have tried to do something, job or no job.

It's shameful, could they not have tied a line to a couple of guys and gone out and got him,
had the fire brigade not got a rope. 75 people watched, sure you could have made a human chain out of that many people.
It wasn't policy killed this man, although it didn't help, it was indifference.
It's a sad state of affairs.

Er.... I think this may be a case of 20/20 hindsight. We know, now, that the guy died. But in the moment, watching someone just stand out in the water, how certain could they be that the guy wouldn't just swim back to shore?

Fair enough, but if the fire brigade, the police and the coast guard were at the scene, they must have realised something was wrong with the guy.

I don't think anybody thought he was just out wading around.

That is really weird and sad, edgar.



Another oddity

Hackers took over PBS’ website this past weekend, posting a bogus story that Tupac Shakur was alive and well and residing in New Zealand 15 years after his death. Shortly after the article was posted and the news went viral, PBS NewsHour’s Teresa Gorman dismissed the story on Twitter, revealing that the website was hacked.

The story purported that Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. resided in a small town in New Zealand that was left unnamed for “security risks.” The culprits behind the story are The Lulz Boat, otherwise known as LulzSec, who were seeking revenge for a “Wikisecrets” episode on Wikileaks, conveyed in a unfair light.

“Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed,” said the group in a statement. “We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further... perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside... wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they're sailing next time.

Remember Hitler is alive and well and living in Argentina?

It's true, letty. He was hiding under the name Sixpack Shakur.

Just as soon as V.S. Naipaul closed the book on one of literature's juiciest spats, he opened his mouth and started another one. This time the Nobel Laureate for literature said no woman writer could ever be his literary equal. He said that on Tuesday, but his comments are just now starting to echo on the Web.

The Guardian reports today:

In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of [Jane] Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".

He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."

The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.

Naipaul had just come off a reconciliation with fellow novelist Paul Theroux. The two buried the hatchet this past weekend, 15 years after Theroux published a scathing memoir about their friendship. The New Yorker posted a video of the handshake and called it "a magical moment."

Too bad the good vibe didn't last.

That Naipaul made those comments should come as no surprise. The spat with Theroux came after he depicted Naipaul in unflattering terms. Take this 2008 piece Theroux wrote for The Sunday Times. In it, he revisits his memoir in light of an authorized biography that confirmed Naipaul was violent, unstable, a racist and a misogynist. Theroux laments that he had been forced to be kind in his book:

I wanted to write about his cruelty to his wife, his crazed domination of his mistress that lasted almost 25 years, his screaming fits, his depressions, his absurd contention that he was the greatest writer in the English language (he first made this claim in Mombasa at the age of 34). "I am a new man," he assured me once, "as Montaigne was a new man." But did Montaigne frequent prostitutes, insult waiters and beat his mistress?

Slash, change; slash, change. Even so, when my book appeared the reviewers howled at me for my audacity. "An unfair portrait", "a betrayal" and the usual jibes – all of them portraying me as an envious upstart. Just a few weeks ago, in a sycophantic piece about Naipaul by a rival newspaper, my book was described as an example of "literary pique" because I had suggested that Naipaul was a monstrous egotist.

Of course, Naipaul's remarks in England have also brought him plenty of renewed criticism. Here's The Telegraph with a slice of literary reaction:

His latest comments were criticised as showing he was out of touch with the modern world. Alex Clark, a literary journalist, said: "It's absurd. I suspect VS Naipaul thinks that there isn't anyone who is his equal. Is he really saying that writers such as Hilary Mantel, A S Byatt, Iris Murdoch are sentimental or write feminine tosh?"

Helen Brown, literary critic for The Daily Telegraph, said: "It certainly would be difficult to find a woman writer whose ego was equal to that of Naipaul. I'm sure his arrogant, attention-seeking views make many male writers cringe too. He should heed the words of George Eliot – a female writer – whose works have had a far more profound impact on world culture than his.

"She wrote: 'Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.' "

Having a little fun, The Guardian has put together a little quiz that lets you test Naipaul's theories. Can you tell, they ask, if a writer is a man or a woman by reading one paragraph?

What an ego, edgar. I hope he gets his just desserts.

More oddities and a bit of humor.



A newly discovered nematode (roundworm) species has set a new record for a known animal life form living naturally at the greatest depth beneath the Earth’s surface. The worm—named Halicephalobus mephisto by scientists, and nicknamed the “devil worm”—occurs at depths where only microorganisms like bacteria were previously known to live. At 0.5 millimeters long, it is the largest life form known to thrive this deep underground.

Now, the humor. Hope he doesn try to eat that one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zxIbL8ggDc

A tabloid once did a story claiming 20 foot long earthworms are living under NYC.

Funny song, letty.

For your reading pleasure, here are some unusual true stories. Can't verify though.

Here's a sample:

A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy in 1983. He managed to break out a window, climb out, and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.


More stories:
http://www.lessmith.com/other_htm/sbt.htm

I don't know how many of the stories to believe. Don't they embalm a person before putting them in a coffin?

I thought that was usually the custom, but maybe not in other cultures?

No, not always.

Muslims do not embalm their dead, nor do Jews except under unusual circumstances. Members of the Baha'i and Zoroastrian faiths do not embalm. Many Hindus do not, and some Eastern Orthodox do not, either.

There is also a growing movement in the U.S. of "green cemetaries" in which unembalmed bodies are buried in such a way as to promote quick decomposition.

I punted on Theroux/Naipaul years ago without scouring to find out the wherefores and whys.
I like Theroux and his brothers and assume they have myriad faults.

Eva deserves a star for her answer. She is wise.

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

She knows when to use Wikipedia.

That is truly awful, edgar. It's hard to believe that feeding the hungry could ever be unlawful...anywhere.