Anyway, the slogan on the flyer was “They’re tanned! They’re rested!” Gimmick or not, surely we can do better than that? “From Daffodil Yellow to Grecian Urn Gray!” “If beauty were truth and walls could talk, ours would be totally honest!” “The external world is fitted to the mind — but let us help you with the interiors!” Any more ideas? And hey, who can tell me, without Googling, whose quote I used for the title of this post?

According to some of the calendars and appointment books floating around this office, Monday, February 19th, is Presidents’ Day. Others say it’s President’s Day. Still others opt for Presidents Day. Which is it? … The answer, strictly speaking, is none of the above. Ever since 1968, when, in one of the last gasps of Great Society reformism, holidays were rejiggered to create more three-day weekends, federal law has decreed the third Monday in February to be Washington’s Birthday. And Presidents’/’s/s Day? According to Prologue, the magazine of the National Archives, it was a local department-store promotion that went national when retailers discovered that, mysteriously, generic Presidents clear more inventory than particular ones, even the Father of His Country. Now everybody thinks it’s official, but it’s not.

And by the way, it’s not Washington’s actual birthday, either — we missed that by nine days.

Okay, fine, click.

Loituma Girl is the most spellbinding thing I’ve ever seen, and the worst part is, I can’t explain why. At least Wikipedia can explain what:

Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) is a flash cartoon set to a gibberish section of the traditional Finnish folk song “Ievan Polkka” sung by the Finnish quartet Loituma, taken from their 1995 debut album Things of Beauty. … The cartoon consists of a 4-frame animation of the Bleach anime character Orihime Inoue twirling a leek (a type of green onion, called a negi in Japan) to a 27-second loop from the song. …

The cartoon uses the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) from the song. Unlike the rest of the song, these two stanzas have no meaning, consisting mostly of phonetically-inspired gibberish that vary from performance to performance and are usually made up on the spot by the singer (compare scat singing in jazz).

The origin of the cartoon is unclear. Within a few days of its appearance, tens of thousands of pages either directed to the possible origin or had the file uploaded on their own server. On 10 July 2006, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that Loituma Girl had caused a resurgence in Loituma’s popularity, and the band had received thousands of fan letters from around the world.

BBC’s The World radio program even covered the animation in a segment, in which they noted the clip’s trance-inducing qualities: “This is basically a joke for someone who spends all of their time staring at a computer, made by people who spend all of their time staring at a computer.”

So many questions! Why the Japanese-Polish fusion? Why a leek? Is this the new Hampster Dance? Will I ever get this song out of my head?

There is no logical reason for this. Why use an Arabic word in English-language news reports when there is a perfectly good English word that means exactly the same thing?

Various Arabic words — jihad and sheikh, for example — have crept into everyday usage because no precise equivalent exists in English, but “Allah” is not of that type. It is simply the normal word that Arabic speakers use for “God” — whether they are Muslims or not. Arab Christians worship “Allah” too, and the first verse of the Arabic Bible informs us that “In the beginning Allah created heaven and earth.”

And there’s a lot more to the argument. Are those who use the word Allah unwittingly “aligning themselves, in effect, with those who view international politics in terms of a clash of civilisations?” Is this an example of “reverse orientalism?” Any thoughts?

via Brainiac

.. the fact that this fantastic blogger took the trouble to photograph and post every single ad in Times Square, or the fact that one of them is for “Legally Blonde: The Musical!”

UPDATE: Just finished reading the blogger’s post. He had the exact same reaction.

At Chain Letters Anonymous, we understand the anxiety of breaking the chain. We want to help you overcome “forward-button addiction” and the superstitious intoxication that brings computer networks to a crawl.

Not everyone has the strength to quit cold turkey, and we fully understand. To help you gradually stop sending chain letters, volunteers at Chain Letters Anonymous are available 24-hours a day in case you “fall off the inbox” and really, really need to send a chain letter to ten of your friends.

They’re not kidding — you can submit chain letters to them, either online or by post, so you don’t have to be the last person the thing comes to. Be warned, though, that CLA “cannot guarantee that you will receive the benefits described in the letter (in fact we think it’s a load of bunk).”

SYDNEY (AFP)—An Australian zoo is putting humans on public display in its orangutang enclosure in a month-long scientific experiment that will also include a popularity contest.

Six humans have already taken up residence in the Adelaide Zoo pen for the experiment, dubbed “the human zoo.”

Groups of humans will spend week-long shifts locked in the enclosure during the zoo’s opening hours, with the public able to observe them through large perspex windows and live webcams.
Visitors are invited to vote for their favourite caged human, who will also be studied by animal behaviourists trying to work out ways of improving living conditions for captive great apes such as chimpanzees.

The project’s website is here if you’re interested in volunteering watching… although, hmm, one thought: Given the historical use of the term, should they really have called it the “human zoo?”

Hands over her eyes and her face gripped with terror, the woman’s fear of death is all too obvious.

The remarkable mummy was found in a hidden burial vault in the Amazon. It is at least 600 years old and has survived thanks to the embalming skills of her tribe, the Chachapoyas or cloud warriors.

Eleven further mummies were recovered from the massive cave complex 82ft down. The vault – which was also used for worship – was chanced upon three months ago by a farmer working at the edge of northern Peru’s rainforest. He tipped off scientists who uncovered ceramics, textiles and wall paintings.

The Chachapoyas were a tall, fairhaired, light-skinned race that some researchers believe may have come from Europe. Little is known about them except that they were one of the more advanced ancient civilisations in the area. Adept at fighting, they commanded a large kingdom from the year 800 to 1500 that stretched across the Andes.

Now, on a completely different note: Who, without Googling, can identify a popular kiddie-lit character who was also from “deepest, darkest Peru?”

Across the sea is the land of Japan. With its ancient shrines, sumo wrestlers, Zen masters, capsule hotels, Laughing Festival, fortunetelling birds, haiku masters, phantom foxes, mania for bathing, musical crickets, tea masters, Living National Treasures, Moon Viewing Night, bowing etiquette, Festival of the Dead, dream-eating Baku, samurai films, Fuji pilgrims, and robots, it is unlike anywhere else in the world. Let me tell you about it.”
—Professor Solomon

At last, the unknown Japan. The traditional Japan. The real Japan.

In this erudite yet entertaining work, the Professor explores a Japan of which few of us are aware.

Better yet, it’s a free download. If Japan isn’t not your thing, the Professor apparently also has books on Coney Island, King Solomon, how to find lost objects (I need this one), and “how to make the most of a flying saucer experience” (not so much).

Teratomas are essentially tumors made of cells that have decided to differentiate into any old thing — teeth, hair, fat. That goes a long way toward explaining their name, which comes from the root word for “monster” (as those of you who participated in our coin-a-new-word contest will know). Normally they tend to arise in the ovaries, testes, and sacra — but in experiments, they also seem to turn up where scientists implant embryonic stem cells. You may know them from season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy, in which a man thinks he is pregnant a la Arnold Schwarzenegger but turns out to be carrying a large teratoma instead. But what interests me most about them (at present, anyway) is their relationship with the aforementioned stem cells. Yes, they present a problem for embryonic research. But they might end up providing a solution to that very same problem:

As clusters of human cells that are not independent organisms, teratomas may prove better test subjects for drugs than lab animals, and they are inspiring ways to grow stem cells without harvesting embryos. …

Teratomas’ most fascinating quality, Dr. Skorecki said, is their capacity to generate a smorgasbord of human tissue varieties, including bones, skin and ligaments. As a result, researchers testing a new medicine on a cancer-seeded teratoma can gauge what effects the drug will have on different cell types without enlisting human subjects. …

Like ordinary embryos, the tumors produce stem cells that have the potential to develop into hundreds of tissue types — raw material researchers may need to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s.

PS: My husband says I’ve written the plural of teratoma incorrectly and that it should be “teratomata.” Well, you say tera-tomata, I say tera-tomahta…