Insomnia

Alternative title: No sleep till Brooklyn.

Have you guys heard about Sark? It was on the news lately, as they were having their first elections.

Interesting bits from the artcile:

":One-person invasion attempt

In August 1990 an unemployed French nuclear physicist named Andr? Gardes attempted a singlehanded invasion of Sark, armed with a semi-automatic weapon. The night Gardes arrived he put up signs declaring his intention to take over the island the following day at noon. He was arrested while sitting on a bench, changing the gun's magazine and waiting for noon to arrive, by the island's volunteer Constable.:"


"Clameur de Haro

Among the old laws of the Channel Islands is the old Norman custom of the Clameur de Haro. Using this legal device, a person can obtain immediate cessation of any action he considers to be an infringement of his rights. At the scene, he must, in front of witnesses, recite the Lord's Prayer in French and cry out "Haro, Haro, Haro! ? mon aide mon Prince, on me fait tort!"[11] ("Haro, Haro, Haro! To my aid, my Prince! I am being wronged!") It should then be registered with the Greffe Office within 24 hours. All actions against the person must then cease until the matter is heard by the Court. The last Clameur recorded on Sark was raised in June 1970 to prevent the construction of a garden wall.[4]"

That is a cooky little island.

Did you know that Taiwan and Germany have no minimum wage set? Odd, I always thought it was really important, but apparently economists sort of disagree.

'?Your map showing the electoral divide in Ukraine (#343) is quite interesting, and put me in mind of a similar one that I saw last year, that prompted me do a bit of map research,? writes David G.D. Hecht. ?If you look at the Wikipedia article on the Polish legislative elections of 2007, there is a map there similar to the Ukrainian one. I looked at this map and thought, hmmm?where have I seen this divide before? Looks very familiar. This isn't just some urban/rural, professional/worker, white-wine-and-brie/beer-and-sausages thing!?

Mr Hecht did some overlay work, and came up with this remarkable fit: ?The divide between the (more free-market) PO and the (more populist) PiS almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, as it ran through Poland! How about that for a long-lasting cultural heritage?!?? How about: amazing, bordering on the unbelievable?'

More here.

I hope he outfitted her with lasers or something. If you're going to teeter over the edge of insanity you might as well do it with class.

"Her"? Gods.

Bling will like this.

"When one of the monkeys refused to ride on a child's bicycle in a street performance in Sizhou, in eastern China, their owner beat it with a stick.

Although they were tied to the man with ropes attached to their collars, the monkeys appear to have decided to fight back.

The two animals came to the defence of the third monkey, grabbing the stick from the man, pulling on his ear and biting his head.

When he dropped his cane, on monkey snatched it up and began beating the trainer on the head until he broke the stick, witnesses said.

The dazed trainer told his audience: "They were once wild and these performances don't always come naturally to them. They may have built up some feelings of hatred towards me."

Local police are apparently investigating allegations of animal cruelty and may confiscate the monkeys from the man.

Performances with monkeys are a common sight in markets and squares in China, but the treatment of the animals is frequently criticised by animal rights organisations. "

No, I did not know that. Now I feel oddly self-conscious for not having eaten any spider.

I mean, what if people bring it up in conversations?

Random Dude: "Yeah it was pretty gross, but not as gross eating spider, huh"?
Yum: "Uh...yeah, spider sure taste nasty"
R😱 "Hmmm...so how exactly does a spider tastes like, Yum?"
Yum: "Like a...a...look over there! Those three monkeys are hitting a Chinese dude!"
*makes his escape*

You know how when you were young staying up late doing fuck all was the raddest thing, but later on you'd be trying to avoid that, so you wouldn't be a zombie at school/work/whatever? I think that's probably the moment when you're finished with your childhood.

We've entered the Gaza strip today. That's worth a mention. Not sure whether I'm for or against, to be honest. Those sort of things just never seem to help any. Though maybe they do by keeping the situation from getting even worst. Who knows. That whole situation is just really odd.

"That was sad...is it past your bedtime now, Y? It's dinner time where I'm at....

Homemade chicken fajitas and dandelion greens....mmmmmmmmmmm"

3:47. Bon appetite(do you speak French, by the way, being Canadian?)

Or appetit, rather.

"Only ambivalence?"

Yeah. Everyone seems to be for it, though(well, for the air-strikes, anyway, I guess the support for the incursion isn't as wide). It's seems like some pretty shitty thing, which the Hamas has brought upon itself...But I doubt those people getting hurt really give a fuck about the Hamas' culpability.

Can't think of a better solution. Unless you call ignoring those people a solution. That wouldn't fly here, though. Even though they don't kill as many people as, say, car accidents do(they aren't even close), people lose their shit when it comes to premeditated attacks.

If I find one ahead of time I think I just might. Ugly things, those protests, but pretty interesting nonetheless.

I like coincidences. I just visited www.anecdotage.com and got this one:
'Bill Clinton & Yasser Arafat

"President Clinton, and others who participated [in the failed Camp David negotiations], put the blame for the failure of the talks [in 2000] squarely on Arafat and the Palestinian negotiators [who, incredibly, rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer of Israeli redeployment from 95% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian control over East Jerusalem (including most of the Old City), and the creation of a Palestinian state].

"In 2001, Clinton told guests at a party at the Manhattan apartment of former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke that Arafat called to bid him farewell three days before he left office. 'You are a great man,' Arafat said. 'The hell I am,' Clinton said he responded. 'I'm a colossal failure, and you made me one!'"
'

Unless they used my location to determine what sort of anecdote I'll get. Sort of like how I keep getting "Arab dating" ads.

(that was a bs offer by Barak, btw, or at least that's what I've heard).

(that was a bs offer by Barak, btw, or at least that's what I've heard).

Yes, I agree -- I remember when the media made a huge deal about Bill Clinton meeting with Arafat and Barak. I'm not sure what it accomplished but it got tons of media attention.

"Why do you think this grudge won't die, Y?"

It'll die someday, I hope. It'll take some time, as there are assholes on both sides that keep fanning the flames. I don't really know if their leaders really want to get peace(not at least the sort of peace they're likely to get), because that would mean suddenly becoming much less important. Instead of a heavenly army fighting the foreign aggressors they would become just another political body. There might be some more concrete reasons, such as control of water, but I hope this will become less important as water purification technology advances.

"I like your style , Y.....War is not only 'good business' (at times), but also a nice way to manipulate the general population politically. It all comes down to control, and the inability of some people to relinquish it"

Yup. Might be true for my side of the fence as well, but I can't really think of anyone specific who benefits from the conflict, as pretty much all political figures are despised.

Possibly my favorite quote:

"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague
Swiss (Austrian-born) physicist (1900 - 1958)

Austrian powah!(I'm on a quarter, but still...😛)

*only.

Alright...those smilies are seriously starting to bug me.

Journalist: - "It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?"
Tal: - "Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".[17]
I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh ? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.
After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it."
Journalist: - "And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately-calculated piece sacrifice".

? Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.




...And I'm through. I don't know how DK does it.

"Utah's so pretty. Why the hell do we want to do that for?!!!!

Most people who come to America have a hard time leaving it. Just look what happened to the English. "

Pfft. We all know you wouldn't let us leave when it's over. You'd pretend the roads are all snow-blocked, or that the middle-east has been destroyed by the large hadron collider, and when we finally get to the airport you'd try to trick us into boarding the planes that are going to Atlanta, or Quebec, or some other American city. The trick would be uncovered, a tearful conversation would commence, and we will all have learned the true value of friendship.

That, is, if after our stay in the US we wouldn't all be rendered inert by Ronald MacDonald and the colonel.

"I like how no-one helped that dude as he was getting a stick from the monkey...."

You gotta let nature take its course.🙂

"and complaning about small portions in the restaurants."

I have heard stories. Tell me, Xun, have you ever, with your own two eyes seen a "doggie bag"?

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

Did you guys know there is a supermassive(scientific term!) black hole in the center of our galaxy? I did not know that.

Also, a dude on death-row plucked out his eye and ate it. Odd, that.