“Each post takedown occurred on a blog hosted by the Google-owned Blogger platform, the publishing system used by the majority of mp3 sites, particularly those founded prior to 2007, when the open-source WordPress software became the vogue. Google, the bloggers believe, has quietly changed the methods by which it enforces its user agreement. Whereas in the past, a blog owner would receive a warning before a post’s removal, Google is now simply hitting the delete button.” via Los Angeles Weekly.
“In January, 24 U.S. soldiers are believed to have committed suicide — seven confirmed cases and 17 more awaiting confirmation.
By comparison, last January there were only five suicides in the Army.
Last month’s total is not just the highest monthly total since the Army started counting in 1980; it is more deaths than were sustained in combat last month by all branches of the armed forces combined. via NPR.
“Laughing about all the nasty shit — or crying about it, kibitzing about it, whining about it, bragging about it, confessing it, writing about it, and most important, exposing it — it’s all the rage. Jezebel, the popular women’s offshoot of the Gawker empire, has been the leader of the oversharing crusade, with vibrant, aromatic and really graphic posts about everything from lodged tampons to yeast infection remedies to bloody period sex to female ejaculation. (The last, in Tracie Egan’s piece, “Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gush,” also includes Egan’s report that “I live my life perpetually suffering between either mild dehydration or a UTI, meaning that my piss is (ab)normally cloudy, stinky, and dark” ).
But Jezebel writers are not the only ones reveling in graphic female self-revelation. Other recent, mainstream expressions of the form have included Elle magazine’s brutal piece last summer by Miranda Purves, called “The Ring of Fire,” about how giving birth to her child tore her vagina asunder. An English translation of Charlotte Roche’s German bestseller Wetlands (“It is difficult to overstate the raunchiness of the novel,” read a story in the New York Times about Wetlands, “and hard to describe in a family newspaper”) is due in April. It opens with the sentence, “As far back as I can remember, I have had hemorrhoids.” And this month, a younger iteration of the lay-it-bare form: the publication of My Little Red Book, an anthology of more than 90 women’s stories of the first time they got their period. It includes contributions from well-known authors Jacquelyn Mitchard and Erica Jong and writers of popular tween novels Cecily von Ziegesar and Meg Cabot, as well as ruby red reminiscences from 1916 to 2007, by women who first began to bleed everywhere from Connecticut to Canada, Paris to New Zealand, India to Istanbul. Unsurprisingly, there’s an accompanying Web site where others can contribute their stories.” — Rebecca Traister via Salon.
Actions like that are no doubt overdue in the minds of organizations like the 30,000-member Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), a Virginia-based advocacy organization that has led the fight to raise awareness about peanut and other food allergies in both children and adults. Go to its Web site and you’ll see some eyebrow-raising points.
• The incidence of food allergies has doubled over the past 10 years.
• Food allergy is believed to be the leading cause of anaphylaxis outside hospitals, causing an estimated 50,000 emergency department visits each year in the U.S.
• Each year in the U.S., it is estimated that anaphylaxis caused by food results in 150 deaths.
Those FAAN numbers get cited in nearly every news report about food allergies. The organization’s founder, Anne Munoz-Furlong, mother of a food-allergic child, is well known in the media as a food allergy expert. She has done her own research and her studies have been published in medical literature. Now major medical groups, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, have recommended that children avoid eating peanuts until age 3. As for consuming other potentially allergic foods (such as strawberries or dairy), the AAP has, until recently, suggested that kids wait until age 2.
But on closer examination, food allergies are not the epidemic we’ve been led to believe. FAAN’s advocacy may have helped to create rules and laws that are based less on sound science than on a significant misrepresentation of facts. Ironically, by accepting these facts, we may be increasing our risk of developing food allergies.” — Rahul Parikh MD via Salon.
“A fresh look at ornate 1000-year-old vases from New Mexico’s canyons has unearthed a surprise: They were used as mugs to drink chocolate. The findings are the first record of the food in North America, long before its introduction in colonial times. They also reveal that chocolate was an expensive delicacy enjoyed by few during elaborate rituals.” via Coelho 2009 (202): 3, ScienceNOW.
Fifty years ago today: On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, United States killed, along with the pilot of the plane, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” (J. P. Richardson). , Twelve years later, Don McLean, in his song “American Pie” dubbed it The Day the Music Died.
However,
‘…The method is not particularly practical at the moment, because it fails almost all of the time. Only 1 of every 100 million teleportation attempts succeed, requiring 10 minutes to transfer one bit of quantum information.
“We need to work on that,” Dr. Monroe said.’ via NYTimes [thanks, abby].
‘Sorry, Michael Steele, but it’s going to be a while before you’re anything more than the figurehead frontman of a shipwrecked Republican National Committee. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh remain the leaders of your party, and most Republicans are happy that way. A Rasmussen poll out today found that fully 55 percent of Republicans polled think their party should be “more like” Palin.’ — Joan Walsh via Salon.
‘Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals of the Irish calendar, celebrated among Gaelic peoples and some other Celtic cultures, either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring. Most commonly it is celebrated on February 2, which falls halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere. Originally dedicated to the goddess Brigid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid’s Day. In Scotland the festival is also known as Là Fhèill Brìghde, in Ireland as Lá Fhéile Bríde, and in Wales as Gwyl Fair.
Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to the North American Groundhog Day.’ via Wikipedia.
“To the extent that those who term themselves liberal consider themselves more open to change than the conservative, it would be within the spirit of their philosophy to open up to the true nature of human language and let liberal drift away as “the L-word.” “Reclaiming” has a good feisty ring to it, but don’t we have more important things to do–and even reclaim–than engage in a conceit so futile as to stop a word’s meaning from changing? Move On, indeed.” — John McWhorter via The New Republic.
Can we ever reencumber the pursuit of affluence with virtue again? via RealClearMarkets.
“Every year, hundreds of words are dropped from the dictionary to make room for new words. Lexicographers spend hours researching word usage and may drop words that have been completely neglected by the society.
To reverse this trend, Oxford University Press has launched an initiative called Save the Words that aims to prevent these lesser-known English words from becoming extinct.
Here’s how. You adopt one such word through “Save the Words” and take a pledge to use that word more often in your daily conversations or written communication.
This will directly increase the chance of that word’s survival because the moment lexicographers see discarded words being used in conversations, they may re-include them in the dictionary. Wheatgrass is one such word that was reinstated after missing from the dictionary for several years.
There are hundreds of “lost” words already – vacivity, plegnic, mingent or primifluous for example – all of them, not surprisingly, failed by the Firefox spell checker as well. So go ahead, adopt bring back a nearly-extinct word. In return, you get this nifty certificate.” via Digital Inspiration.
