Mirror therapy for phantom limb pain

Click here for the BBC video on how U.S. amputees returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are treating their phantom limb pain by using mirrors.

Owning pets can make you healthier

From E.O. Wilson's The Future of Life:

[T]he popular notion that owning pets reduces stress-related problems has been well supported by research conducted independently in Australia, England, and the United States. In one Australian study, which factored out variation in exercise levels, diet, and social class, pet ownership accounted for a statistically significant reduction of cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure. In a parallel U.S. study, survivors of heart attacks (myocardial infarction) who owned dogs had a survival rate six times higher than those who did not. The same benefit was not, I am sorry to report, enjoyed by cat owners.

Edit, 5/28/19: Thanks to a reader who pointed out that the previous link was broken and sent me a new one.

Goulash

Goulash is a dish, originally from Hungary, usually made of beef, red onions, vegetables, spices and ground paprika powder. In the U.S. and Canada, the goulash bears little resemblance to that of Hungary. Peppers and paprika might not be even added and ground beef replaces the stew beef. Noodles, pasta, or elbow macaroni is also the main attraction of the American version.

American goulash

Monty Roberts

Monty Roberts is a horse trainer who "listens" to horses. At the age of 13, he observed wild mustangs in Nevada interacting with each other and learned their language by the way they communicate, set boundaries, and express emotions.

Now Roberts gathers disobedient horses from around the country and uses Join-Up, the training of horses using their language to establish trust. He calls this language "equus."

Van Halen's beef with brown M&Ms

Ever sign a contract without reading the fine print? Chances are that you have. If you've tried to download something from the Internet and didn't even look at the EULA before checking the box at the bottom, you probably missed a few things.

Such is the case involving the rock band Van Halen. As David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography:

Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors -- whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."

So the "no brown M&Ms" clause was simply a way to see if the people getting the staging and equipment ready were indeed reading the contract rider. Van Halen did have outta-this-world equipment that might have seriously harmed or killed people if the instructions weren't precisely followed.

And what would happen if there were brown M&Ms in a bowl backstage?

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl... well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.

And that's exactly what happened once. The media got the story wrong and blew the wrong part of the story completely out of proportion. They made it seem like the members of Van Halen were some spoiled children who kicked and screamed over petty things. Roth will tell you the real truth:

The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn't read the contract, and weren't sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.

I came backstage. I found some brown M&M's, I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before me?"... you know, with the skull in one hand... and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars' worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn't bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M's and did eighty-five thousand dollars' worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?

Michigan left

Ever get tired of making left-hand turns at intersections because of all the congestion at the traffic light? You have to wait for the light to go green and even then it's not a guarantee that you can safely make a left, unless the green arrow comes on. It's not like right-hand turns where you can stop at red. Michiganders had the same thing in mind in 1960 when they came up with the Michigan left. Basically, there's no need to make left turns at all.

Let's say we have two roads: Preston, running north-south; and Legacy, running east-west. (These are the names of the two roads where the first Michigan left will be constructed in Texas. It's in my town of Plano.) Rather than going north on Preston to make a left on westbound Legacy, you'd have to first make a right turn (eastbound on Legacy), then make a U-turn to go westbound (this is represented by the green line below). The same would be true for southbound traffic on Preston wanting to travel east on Legacy. Similarly, when traveling eastbound on Legacy and wanting to go north on Preston, you'd make a U-turn to go westbound, then make a right on Preston (red line). Again, same thing for westbound on Legacy and south on Preston.



Seems confusing, especially to outsiders, but I've actually been doing the first maneuver all this time at the traffic light near my house. Damn thing never turns green when you're trying to make a left.

Here's an animation for the Michigan left.

Bombing of Guernica

The bombing of Guernica took place on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, which pitted the right-wing Nationalists against the left-wing Republicans.

Guernica is a city in northern Spain, a cultural region that houses the Basque people. The city kept to its own during the civil war but that didn't stop the Nationalists from conducting an experiment with its citizens: to see how much they could annihilate a town implementing the relatively new technology of air strikes. They also wanted to capture the neighboring city of Bilbao and debilitate the morale of the Basques. The Nationalists aligned with the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy to carry out the attack. Germany at this time was barred from having a military following the conditions of the treaty that ended World War I.

The bombing happened on a Monday, the traditional market day, which was used to maximize the number of innocent casualties. Several waves of planes carpeted the city with bombs, leaving somewhere between 300 and 1,500 people dead. Guernica was all but destroyed.

This incident was the inspiration for Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica that same year.

Tokyo Rose

"Tokyo Rose" was the name given by Allied forces to a number of English-speaking women who made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Japanese during World War II. One of these women, and the most famous, was Iva Toguri d'Aquino.

Toguri was born in Los Angeles on July 4, 1916. She attended schools in southern California and graduated from UCLA in 1940 with a degree in zoology. During her school years Toguri was a popular student and was considered a loyal American.

In 1941 she sailed to Japan without a U.S. passport, supposedly to visit a sick aunt and to study medicine. A few months later Toguri went to the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan to get a passport, saying that she wanted to return to America for permanent residence. Because she had no passport, her application was forwarded to the State Department for consideration. But before anything would happen, Japan attacked the U.S. and war was declared. Toguri dropped her request and stayed in Japan, landing jobs as a typist in news organizations, one of which was Radio Tokyo.

In November 1943 she became a broadcaster for Radio Tokyo on a show called The Zero Hour, where she was introduced to the program as "Orphan Anne." During her tenure she played the popular music of the day and announced a summary of the news. The Army stated that the program had no negative effects on troop morale, and that it might have even raised it a bit. They did, however, express concern that Annie knew a little too much about American ship and troop movements. It was during this time that she married Felipe Aquino, a Portuguese citizen of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry.

In September 1945 the Army arrested Toguri after she had been outed by the press as "Tokyo Rose." The FBI and the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps conducted an investigation but decided there was not enough for prosecution, and released her a year later. Toguri again asked for a U.S. passport. This created a media frenzy which put pressure on the Justice Department to take matters further. To make a long story short: the trial was a sham. The U.S. government forced Toguri's former bosses at Radio Tokyo to lie under oath against her. The costliest trial in American history at that time (over $500,000), Toguri faced eight "overt acts" of treason in the Federal District Court in San Francisco on July 5, 1949. On September 29 she was found guilty of one act. The jury ruled that

...on a day during October, 1944, the exact date being to the Grand Jurors unknown, said defendant, at Tokyo, Japan, in a broadcasting studio of the Broadcasting Corporation of Japan, did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships.

On October 6 Toguri was sentenced to ten years in prison and fined $10,000. She served six years and two months, then moved to Chicago. On his last day in office in 1977, President Ford pardoned her.

Iva Toguri died on September 26, 2006, at the age of 90.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. is a renowned Harvard professor, director of the university's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and one of the nation's most prominent black intellectuals.

Last week he was arrested outside his home in Cambridge, MA. After returning from an overseas trip, he and his driver tried to force their way through Gates' front door, which was jammed. A panicky neighbor called the police, in the broad daylight of 12 pm, on the count that she saw two "large black" men attempting a break-in. (Gates, by the way, is slight and uses a cane.) The cops arrived and Gates showed them his ID with the name, picture, and address to prove he lived there. The professor yelled at one of the cops, accusing him of racial profiling, and demanded he know the name and badge number of the officer. That was enough for the douche to arrest Gates and charge him with disorderly conduct for "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior." That, however, has been dropped.

And that's how I learned about Skip Gates.

New 7 Wonders of Nature

The New 7 Wonders of Nature is a project that attempts to list the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, following the same concept used for the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The winners are chosen by a worldwide vote, either by internet or by phone, and 28 finalists have been selected. Some of the most famous ones are the Grand Canyon, the Amazon Rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Dead Sea. Over 1 billion are expected to vote, and the winners will be announced in 2011.

National Junk Food Day

For some reason, today is National Junk Food Day -- it always comes on the 21st of July. No one quite knows the origin of this holiday, but here are some quick facts that make elitist health nut liberals like me want to puke:

-- The average American eats about 24.5 pounds of candy per year, with 11.6 pounds being chocolate candy.
-- There are 3,961 confectionery and nut stores in the U.S.
-- Not into candy or desserts? The U.S. has 12,804 McDonald's restaurants.

Bliss

Bliss is the name of the image of the Windows XP wallpaper. The original photo was taken by professional photographer Charles O'Rear, in Sonoma County, CA.

Bliss as seen on the XP desktop

The same location as of November 2006

Bethlem Royal Hospital

Bethlem Royal Hospital of London is the world's first and oldest psychiatric hospital, established in 1330. For much of its history it was notorious for its brutal treatments of the mentally ill. Notable patients of Bethlem Royal Hospital are James Hadfield, the man who attempted to assassinate King George III; and Hannah Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's mother.

Extreme DUI

Arizona's legal blood alcohol content when driving is .08%. There is another category called "extreme DUI," when one's BAC is over .15%. For that the punishment is a 30 day minimum to 6 month maximum jail sentence.

Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi is facing three drunk-driving charges for having a BAC of .17%. She was definitely over-celebrating her 22-point performance in a victory over the Seattle Storm the night before.

Men can get breast cancer, too

Women are a lot more likely to get breast cancer than men but since we all have breast tissue, men can also get the disease. About 2,000 men a year are diagnosed with breast cancer.

Crayola's race-based crayons

Flesh, Prussian Blue, and Indian Red. These were the names of the colors that Crayola eventually fazed out, mainly because of allegations of on-the-edge racism (except in the case of Prussian Blue).

In 1949 the company added the color Flesh, which supposedly represented the color of a white person's skin. It renamed it to Peach in 1962 partially in response to the Civil Rights movement.

Also in 1949, they added Prussian Blue to the list. The name referred to the deep-blue uniforms worn by Prussian soldiers. It got renamed to Midnight Blue in 1958, however, because teachers knew their students no longer had any sense of Prussian history.

The same year Crayola did away with Prussian Blue, they made the same mistake of naming a color after a race. This time it was Indian Red. Although one may think the name pertained to a Native American's skin color, the company stated that Indian Red actually referred to a reddish pigment from India used in oil paints. In 1999 they held a contest to replace Indian Red with a new name. The winner was Chestnut.

World record for notes played in a single second

David Garrett has broken the world record for most notes played on the violin in a single second: 13, playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He sat down with a CNN reporter who asked retarded questions and didn't know much about music.

Grant Study

The Grant Study is one of the longest running longitudinal studies of mental and physical health in history. It began in 1937 as it followed 268 well-adjusted Harvard students (including President Kennedy) on into their 80s. Here are the findings.

Pro se

Pro se refers to when a person represents himself in court without the help of a lawyer.

Pro se statistics.
Want to represent yourself? Read the Pro Se Handbook.

Domicile

Domicile means "a legal residence; home."

Jonnycake

Jonnycakes are thin flatbreads made of cornmeal, salt, and water. They originated in Rhode Island during the colonial days and were called "journey cakes" at the time, because people found them easy to pack when traveling long distances. That's probably where the name "jonnycake" comes from, since New Englanders can't pronounce the "r" in the middle of a word.

Don't come between Rhode Islanders and their jonnycakes. Every year they have baking and eating contests.

And all this is making me hungry. I'd love to have a couple of jonnycakes for breakfast every now and then.

Han Chinese

The Han Chinese are an ethnic group in China that make up 92% of China's population as well as large portions of other nations, and are therefore the largest ethnic group in the world, making up about 20% of the global population. The Han Chinese take their name from the Han Dynasty, which succeeded the Qin Dynasty and lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD. The Han Dynasty is considered one of the greatest periods in China's history.

The Han are in the news nowadays because of the recent strife between them and the Uighurs, the Turkic speaking Muslims who occupy the far western regions of China.

Poison dart frog

Poison dart frogs (or dart poison frogs) are some of the most brilliantly colored frogs in the world. Found in Central and South America and measuring about the size of a paper clip, their most famous characteristic is perhaps the toxin secreted from glands on their backs. Indian tribes in the Andes region of Colombia rub the tips of their blowgun darts over the backs of the frogs for hunting, hence the creature's name. It is said that if the frog is strikingly beautiful then it's probably poisonous, and if it's beautiful and also easy to catch then it's probably deadly.

In the 1970s it was discovered that the poison of one species was 200 times more lethal than opium.

How to halve an apple with your bare hands

Jack Kilby

Jack Kilby is the inventor of the microchip (also called the integrated circuit).

The Texas Instruments laboratory was almost empty in July 1958 -- everyone took the traditional two-week vacation. Kirby, the new hire, had to stay behind to man the shop. There he enjoyed his solitude but also worked on something that would revolutionize the world. He had grown tired, as had many of his colleagues, of the miles of wiring inside a room-filled computer. So he did some shit and put everything on a single chip. In 1967 he co-invented the handheld calculator using the integrated circuit. At the time it could only add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

The impact of the microchip cannot be overstated. Without it we would not have gone to the moon in the '60s, used personal computers, listened to music on iPods, or any of that good stuff.

The day the clowns cried

The Hartford circus fire is one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the U.S. On July 6, 1944 in Hartford, CT, the Ringling Brothers Circus tent caught on fire. Long story short: people panicked, tried to rush through an exit but couldn't, and in the end 168 of the almost 7,000 attendees died, all in a matter of six minutes.

Ringling management accepted responsibility for the financial damages and paid for the suits filed by the families of the victims, which totaled over $4 million. That decision seriously helped them save face -- they survived as one of the world's most famous circuses.

And it turned out that some dumb pyromaniac started the fire.

Why do they refer to Saddam Hussein simply by his first name?

"Saddam Hussein" isn't even his full name; it's "Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti." The first name is his given name, the second is his father's name, the third is his family name, and the fourth is the name of his extended family who comes from the Tikrit region.

In 1968 when the Baath party took over with Saddam as vice president, it outlawed the use of tribal names. The government told its people that they (the citizens) owed their allegiance to the state rather than to a local tribe. So Saddam was left with "Saddam Hussein." Later, he chose to be referred to simply as "Saddam," since he wanted to be considered the Iraqi people's Grand Uncle. Now, virtually every Middle Easterner mentions him by just his first name. That is also the primary reason why news organizations print and say "Saddam."

When President George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq in 1991, newsrooms argued over which name they should use for Iraq's president. The problem was that King Hussein of Jordan had the same last name, and no one wanted to confuse that country's leader with the brutal dictator Saddam was. So some just referred to him as "Saddam," including the AP, Reuters, and the BBC, since that's what Arabs called him anyway. Those same organizations still mention him by his first name. Others, like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times use "Hussein." The New York Times uses "Mr. Hussein," following its obsessive tradition of honorifics. The Wall Street Journal printed "Saddam Hussein" in every reference to him until the king's death. Now it also uses the honorific.

Spousal privilege

Spousal privilege is where a man/woman can exercise the legal choice not to testify against his/her spouse. A court cannot compel the spouse to testify against the other when the couple had a private conversation (no third person involved) concerning the matter at the time of their marriage.

Pantanal

The Pantanal is one of the world's largest continuous wetlands. It is spread out about 60,000 square miles in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, making it ten times larger than the Everglades. It's believed to contain more species of birds than all of Europe, 50 different types of reptiles, and hundreds of species of fish.

Now the Pantanal, like with many other wetland regions, is under threat from careless farming practices and poor sewage treatment.

Cholo

A cholo is a Mexican gangster.

Here are some gay cholos:

Thought identification

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