Title:	Upper Case
Author:	snopes_dot_com
Date:	2009-11-10 15:00
Security:	public

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/carter.asp

Title:	Raise Your Hand If You're Gonna Start Using That
Author:	overheardnyc
Date:	2009-11-10 00:00
Security:	public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020889.html

Woman on bus: Hey, when are we gonna leave here--Christmas?
Driver: Lady, hold on.
Man on bus: He's probably watchin' porn.
Woman on bus: Yeah, stop beatin' your meat.
Driver: I'm waiting for my supervisor to give me the go-ahead.
Woman: Well, I'm gonna miss the ferry, so tell your stupidvisor I don't want to miss the ferry.
Driver: Did you just call him a stupidvisor?

--Chamber St. Shuttle to South Ferry

Overheard by: Jon

Title:	If I could find a souvenir, just to prove the world was here
Author:	austin_dern
Date:	2009-11-10 13:10
Security:	public

I'm fairly sure I know where I was when I heard the Berlin Wall had fallen, at least in the metaphorical sense that East Germany was giving up on this whole ``keep people inside'' concept. If I sound unsure it's because I think I'm getting my memories of it mixed up with memories of hearing about Nelson Mandela was freed and South Africa was liberated without the revolution or terror I had feared was unavoidable, just a couple months later, in that strange season of the fall and winter of 1989-90. I'm really sure that either way I was in bed, getting the news as I woke up, because back in those days I left the news radio on all the time, reflecting some primordial fear that if I left the news off for a minute I might miss something important. This was one of the few times I actually did catch something important. The news radio hadn't tumbled onto the idea of declaring every slight variation in anything as Breaking News, with a prerecorded tune heavy on brass for the introduction and strings for the continuation, and I listened to it a lot more.

The time feels odd since it would have to have been at least early afternoon on a Friday when the news came through, and you'd think I would have been in school. But looking at the calendar I think it's plausible I would have been home, and so sleeping well into the afternoon, since it was that sweetest, shortest week of the school year --- the one with classes on Monday, then a day off for Election Day, then back to school Wednesday, then two days off for the state teachers' convention, and the only disappointing part of this is that we wouldn't get Veteran's Day off separately. Between all those days off November was the shortest month. I'd have been close to the floor, since I was a teenaged male and going through that ``putting the mattress directly on the floor'' thing that we seem to go through for no reason that can be articulated once one isn't a teenaged male any longer.

I remember the strange feeling of how one of the things I had always known and had always counted on existing was suddenly changed; finding out the news as I was going from sleep to wake was probably more fitting than could have been planned. The Cold War had been receding, certainly, and changing for years and it wasn't as scary as it had felt when I was younger still, but there were still some things that I couldn't imagine changing, and the division of Germany was one of them. It might change, particularly with the numbers of people who were rushing out over the season leading up to that, but that there might no longer be a separate East and West Germany was unimaginable. I didn't even have the real idea that nations could dissolve, not outside the aftermath of wars. I remember that feeling of nobody knowing just what it meant, or just how the world was changing, and in unpredictable but good ways. I'd been through big good changes before, but they were slow to develop and not obvious as they were happening, as with Gorbachev's Glastnost; or sudden things that were clearly historic but bad, as with the Chernobyl explosion or the Challenger accident, but ... big, shocking, certainly good? This was new. Maybe there's always an odd little selfish thought accompanying historic events: it happened that I was planning to visit West Germany the next summer, and I realized I'd be there in the last days of its existence as a separate nation, something that not long after I was there nobody could do again.

I wonder how it is someone could have lived through that winter of 1989/90 and not realize how sometimes the world does suddenly get a lot better.

Trivia: The legal status of postwar Germany remained unsettled between the four occupying powers and the German Federal Republic until the signature of a treaty in Versailles in October 1990; the Paris Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in November 1990 formed the legal end of the Second World War. Source: 1945: The War That Never Ended, Gregor Dallas.

Currently Reading: Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking, and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Michael Diamond. On a more frivolous note all the descriptions of things which shocked Victorian sensibilities leaves me with a faint urge to create a story that combines all the elements possible, you know, murderous servants, adultery, gambling debts, Irish home rule fanatics, arsenic, railroad coach crimes, nuns trying to leave an oppressive convent, the Prince of Wales, bigamy, Chartists, German child-brides, Middle Eastern royalty, public hangings and letters of confession, a leering gorilla in a purple cape asking why he must kill Superman, the works. But then I realize that it's probably already been written, and it's so thoroughly unreadable and forgotten that even ratmmjess couldn't find it interesting enough to categorize.

Title:	Multiple Galleries Updated
Author:	tursi
Date:	2009-11-10 00:09
Security:	public

Just a quick automated post to note that there are new pictures in the gallery!

Updated Tursi's Gallery - Projects on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 at 16:15:33.

Various projects that I've undertaken and photographed

Updated Tursi's Gallery - TI-99/4 on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 at 16:35:58.

Title:	Like we’re going to wait to Mother’s day to post this
Author:	cuteoverload
Date:	2009-11-10 04:05
Security:	public

http://cuteoverload.com/2009/11/09/like-were-going-to-wait-to-mothers-day-to-post-this/

http://cuteoverload.com/?p=34723

Starting right meow, we’re posting kittens whenever we like. We’re not waiting for special holidays or Caturdays to roll around. It’s meow or never Mother’s Day! Hurry up meow!

Not so funny meow is it Amy S.?

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Kittens

Title:	"And this room is where I keep all my soft stuff..."
Author:	dailybunny
Date:	2009-11-09 22:43
Security:	public

http://www.dailybunny.com/daily_bunny_d8/2009/11/and-this-room-is-where-i-keep-all-my-soft-stuff.html

Where does the plush rug end and the velvety-soft bunny begin?? ...not to mention the shaggy blanket!!

This very handsome bun is Rupert, who is adoptable with the Upstate New York Chapter of the House Rabbit Society, and he sounds like a sweetie!  You can read more about him (and some other buns) here... good luck, little softie!!  :) 

Title:	The Saga of Beewolf
Topics:	blobs with no bones in, the sexxors
Author:	drhoz
Date:	2009-11-10 11:40
Security:	public

"...if robber-flies had a sense of humour, they would certainly tell jokes about beewolves."

Female Philanthus : Mmmmm... What a big healthy male you are. I want you to have my babies.
Male Philanthus : Er... Aren't I the one who's supposed to say that?
Female Philanthus : *grins evilly, pounces, stings him until he's paralysed, and stuffs him into a burrow with one of her eggs, to be slowly eaten alive by someone else's kid*
Male Philanthus : Bugger.

Title:	Another of those polls that should be 100%:0%
Author:	pharyngula
Date:	2009-11-09 21:35
Security:	public

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/MwjNHCtLlKY/another_of_those_polls_that_sh.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/another_of_those_polls_that_sh.php

Atheists are putting up a billboard in Lakeland, Florida that says, "Don't believe in god? You aren't alone." This is, apparently, controversial, and the newspaper article has an accompanying poll.

Does an atheist group have a right to display their own billboard?

Yes  77.7%
No  22.3%

I'd say that's a really stupid poll question, except that it reveals that 22% of the respondents don't think a number of their fellow citizens don't have the same privileges they do.

Title:	I Blame Niel Simon
Author:	overheardnyc
Date:	2009-11-09 21:00
Security:	public

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020888.html

British mother to young son: No, I want you to wear shoes on the subway.
British son: But I'm already barefoot, so what does it matter?

--American Museum of Natural History