“We wish to inform new immigrant arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” a declaration on the Canadian village of Herouxville’s website reads. “We consider it completely outside norms to… kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc.” (Those Canadians and their crazy laws.)

The annoucement also points out that women are allowed to drive in our neighbor to the north, as well as dance, vote and own their own homes, and it bans Sikh children from carrying ceremonial daggers to school (even though Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that they can). Naturally, Canadian Muslims are offended. They can take some cold comfort, perhaps, in the knowledge that there are plenty of other crazy laws on the books in Canada (besides those banning the ritual murder of women), like

• Comic books which depict illegal act are themselves illegal.
• You may not pay for a fifty-cent item with only pennies.
• In Alberta, if you are released from prison, it is required that you are given a handgun with bullets and a horse, so you can ride out of town. (This one might be a little outdated.)
• It’s illegal to climb trees.

Let me start off by saying that I’m terrified of guns. On my list of fears, number 1 is snakes (obviously) and number 2, guns. That said, I saw this posted on the Presurfer and found it thoroughly gripping. The volume, Armed America by Kyle Cassidy, is an attempt to figure out who exactly is buying these weapons. From his artist statement:

Whether it’s 39% or 50% of Americans, it’s still an awful lot of people. I started wondering just who they were, what they looked like, and how they lived. Such was the genesis of Armed America: Portraits of American Gun Owners in Their Homes. The idea was to photograph a hundred gun owners, in their homes, and do a gallery show.

From a kid who just wants to own them, to the daughter of a cop, to a sculptor who uses his broken gun for molds and keeps it in a bag in his closet, to an elderly cancer patient who just bought his first firearm because he can’t move or scream, the reasons are diverse, and the photos eerily compelling. The corresponding photos are posted in that order below, but you can see more via the Presurfer.

Editor’s Note: This YouTube Tuesday post was sent in shortly before game time, but due to computer problems, didn’t make it up in time for tipoff. Kobe, in fact, did not play, and the Lakers lost 99-94 to one sorry sack franchise. It hurts. It hurts so bad. If this post changes just one person’s life, though, it’ll all have been worth it… 

Don’t try to talk to me about anything else right now, because you, friend, will be rebuffed. Two months back, I bought tickets to see the Lakers play the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. My beloved Lake Show makes it to NYC but once a year, and I was looking forward to Kobe dropping at least 60 on the lowly Knicks, maybe even breaking Jamal Crawford’s spindly little ankles. I could brag to friends and blog readers that I was there. Men would want to be me, ladies would want to be with me, and etc. Well, turns out, Kobe just got saddled with a one-game suspension for a totally nothing elbow throw against noted foreigner Manu Ginobli. What does that mean? More Smush Parker than I can get my hands on. Know what that feels like? Something like this:

Kobe’s personally appealing the suspension to commissioner David Stern right now, and if history is an indication. Stern will probably let him play, because, haven’t you heard, the NBA is totally rigged. Anyway, even if some people disagree, here’s hoping that it’ll be rigged just for one night—these are the NBA’s top two markets after all!—so I can get my Kobe fix. In case he doesn’t play, here’s some assorted Kobe excellence.

This is what I feel like doing right now, except not to Kobe:

New Scientist is reporting that Portuguese researchers have discovered that small doses of carbon monoxide may hinder multiple sclerosis in mice. The scientists injected MS into their test subjects, and then placed some of the rodents in an environment where they were exposed to a limited amount of the monoxide. At the end of the experiment, the mice with CO exposure had much better mobility than the ones without. Apparently, the carbon monoxide aids in binding iron to certain molecules in the brain, which impedes the MS’s progress. In any case, while the experiment seems revolutionary, scientists are quick to warn the public that in no way does this mean you should try to inhale some CO on your own, since the effects can be lethal. Click here to read more at New Scientist.

Today, British autistic savant Daniel Tammet is 10,220 days, or 245,280 hours old (that’s 28 years for you non-savants out there). He is blessed/cursed with the kind of savantism made famous by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (formerly known as “idiot” savantism), but Daniel manages to sustain relatively normal social interaction with others. (He credits growing up in a family of nine children, and thus being forced to socialize, for his normalcy relative to other savants, of which there are only about 50 known in the world.)

A lot of savants can do things that no normal person can do, like tell you what day of the week August 18, 1876 was without consulting an almanac, in about five seconds (it was a Friday), multiply 27 to the power of four in his head (531,441) or memorize and recite long strings of numbers with ease. But there are a few things he can do that even most savants cannot. For instance, he once learned functional Icelandic in a week, and recited pi to several thousand places from memory (without errors — it took more than five hours).

So how does he do it? As a recent profile of Daniel on 60 Minutes revealed, the answer may shed light on the abilities of all savants: he is a synesthetic. That is to say, he associates numbers with colors, just as composer Franz Liszt claimed to have associated music with color. (Hip-hop artist Pharrell Williams also claims to have synesthesia.)

Interesting note: one man who has done some crucial research in this area is Oxford professor of developmental psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen, cousin of Borat star Sascha Baron-Cohen.

So you might recall the quasi-controversial post I threw up last year about super-skinny models and how Spain had barred models below a certain weight from fashion shows. A month ago, I heard Italy was drafting new laws, as well, and possibly New York.
But not the French. No. Recently, Didier Grumbach, the head of the French fashion federation decided the French will not place similar restrictions on skinny models, justifying the action by explaining that their rules on health are already strict. He also explained there had been both round and very skinny models in the history of fashion.

If you don’t believe him about the round models, just take a look over at judgmentofparis.com. As the Rubenesque name implies, they are all about celebrating plus-size models as living embodiments of the Classical ideal of beauty, and even have a survey you can take asking who you think is the most attractive of them all.

From the website: “After all, the plus-size female figure was the acknowledged ideal of beauty in every century prior to the twentieth, and femininity was revered as the essence of womanly allure throughout human history.”

We’ve blogged about the Mona Lisa before. Who can blame us; some 500 years after she was painted, they’re still uncovering the secrets Da Vinci embedded in his masterpiece. (Secrets like this.) Now, scientists have discovered the reason why Lisa’s wan smile seems to disappear when you look at it: because we see it better with our peripheral vision.

It’s thanks to the way our eye sees. We’ve got two types of vision: foveal — what we use when we stare at things dead-on — and peripheral — which isn’t so good at picking up detail, like foveal is, but is great at detecting the nuances of shadowed areas. “The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa’s smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision,” Harvard Prof Margaret Livingstone said.

The same principle is at work when you stare at a single letter of text; it makes it tough to see the letters around it. The Mona Lisa’s smile becomes obvious only if you stare at her eyes, or elsewhere on her face. Interesting, yes, but we’re still left with one lingering question: why, Leonardo?

I just spotted these photos on TheCellar, and the things were too cuddly not to post about. When I initially looked at the photo, I assumed the guy was nuts– obsessed with stuffed animals of the panda variety. But apparently, those fluffballs are 100% real! According to the site, the Sichuan Wolong Panda Protection and Breed Center has run into a bit of luck with their artificial insemination program as 16 baby pandas have been born since July. Even better? With 38 females impregnated, more pandas are set to hit the scene in February. Of course, I’m a little confused as to why the last little bear has found himself in a tupperware container (I’m guessing it’s to keep the young pandas fresh until the next litter arrives), but I’m not asking questions. More great photos here at TheCellar.

Actually, Untitled isn’t really hanging in a gallery; it’s a digital mock-up by David from the Ironic Sans blog. He writes, “If I had the time, the means, and the resources, I’d make a series of large paintings of those little cards that describe paintings in museums. They would be paintings of the cards that describe themselves.” We think this image is just as good, and we didn’t have to pony up no “suggested donation” to see it. Kudos!

Like George Washington
“I cannot tell a lie.” Except, of course, for that one. We’ve all heard the story about how young George Washington was bad enough to chop down a neighbor’s cherry tree, but not bad (or, perhaps, smart) enough to lie about it…but it turns out that the story itself is a big, fat fabrication. Washington’s first biographer, the questionable Anglican minister “Parson” Weems, cut the tale from whole cloth. It’s the most famous story from Weem’s saintly 1799 biography, conveniently published right after Washington died and could no longer defend himself.

Like Sherlock Holmes
”Elementary, my dear Watson.” Famous words, but not ones Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have recognized. Doyle never quoted his literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, as saying that famous line. Instead, it came from a series of Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone. Which just proves what you learned in high school English class, watching the movie isn’t the same as reading the book.

Like the Bible
“Spare the rod and spoil the child.” You’ll be happy to know that the maxim cited by your parents right before they turned you over their knees is not Biblical in origin. In fact, its source is rather scandalous. Like a T.V. preacher caught in a seedy motel, “spare the rod” actually leapt from the brain of Samuel Butler, an English playwright who’s also known for his long poem Dildoides, which holds the distinction of being the only book-length poem written about a shipment of French dildos. In the poem, the dildoides are destroyed by British customs, but not before Butler can describe them in somewhat painful detail. Painful, like your bottom after a good spanking.