taylor dahlin

Via Wikipedia’s article on embalming:

Pius XII’s (pope 1939–1958) botched embalming by a charlatan doctor—which only sped up the rate of decomposition—led to his body turning black and his nose falling off while lying in state, and the body disintegrated in the coffin. The Swiss Guards stationed around Pius XII’s body were forced to change shifts every ten to fifteen minutes since the body’s odor caused some guards to pass out. The doctor who performed the embalming had also taken photos of the Pontiff in his death throes and intended to sell them to tabloids. The Italian tabloids refused to buy the photos, and the doctor was banned from entering the Vatican City-State by John XXIII, who furthermore prohibited any photography of a deceased Pope until the body is properly vested and laid out.

And from Slate’s article ‘Why Didn’t They Embalm the Pope?’ (written after the death of John Paul II):

John Paul II will not be the first pope to decompose in public. In August of 1978, the body of Paul VI “took on a greenish tinge,” and fans were installed in the Basilica to disperse the smell. Twenty years earlier, a maverick doctor persuaded the Vatican to let him try an experimental embalming technique on the body of Pope Pius XII, with disastrous consequences—the body turned black and disintegrated in the casket.

Grace Rwaramba, MJ’s employee of 17 years, speaks out:

“Suddenly — I can’t remember now how it came — he received some money. Instead of buying a small house, so that we won’t go from one hotel to another or stay with friends, he told me, ‘Grace, you have to go immediately to Florence to buy antiques.’ He wanted me to spend £1m.

“I flew on my credit card. When I arrived in Florence and saw these antiques, I called him and said, ‘This is not worth anything.’ Michael never listened to me. He said, ‘Buy it. Buy it.’ We didn’t even have a home to live in so we had to put the antiques in some storage.”

Hello my dearest and as for me… I’m from a pretty flower, the opium poppy.
My real name is heroin, I won’t let you down… But because of the stigma, just call me brown.
My sister lives in China, she’s out-of-site… She’s stronger than I, her name is white.
Now that you know me, let’s have our first date… Once you inhale me, it’ll be too late.
It won’t be long and we will be courting… At this point my love, you’ll be tired of snorting.
Starting to smoke, we’re now engaged… Chasing the dragon, He’s now enraged.
When we are married, on our honeymoon… I’ll introduce you to the needle and spoon.
I’ll then take your will, since you’ll be my wife… Stay with me long, I’ll even take your life.
I’m your master now, do what I say… Lie, cheat, and steal for me everyday.
When I’m not around, I’ll share you with friends… Misery and suicide, it never ends.
You’d better be careful, if you love too much of me… Because I’m a widower, from all the O’dees.
If you try to divorce me, I’ll even the score… Plan on being sick, like never before.
Even if you kick me through physical signs… I’ll still be there to play with your mind.
I’ll haunt you with craving the rest of your life… So what ever you do, stay away from Christ.
Through Jesus’ shed blood, I’ll be undone… And then we won’t have all of our fun.
His deliverance is sure, there is no mistake… But to save you the pain, don’t start to date.
Stay a chaste virgin from me and my friends… Because I’m a lie from beginning to end.
I promised you marriage, a beautiful high… But all before you are in prison or die!

Written by Lawrence DuBois, in what inmates call the “God Pod.” From the Yakima Department of Corrections.

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New research shows that there’s a broad range of face-recognition ability, a spectrum ranging from the “face blind” to those on the opposite end with superior powers of perception.

“Super-recognizers actually see faces differently,” says Dr. Richard Russell, a researcher in the Harvard Vision Sciences Laboratory and lead author of the new study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. “They can recognize people out of context, people who aren’t important to them, people who they may have met only briefly.”

Russell and his colleagues were investigating developmental prosopagnosia, a condition in which people have normal vision but are unable to recognize faces, even those of close relatives — an estimated 2 percent of the general population has exceptionally poor face-recognition ability.

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The Case for Working With Your Hands

The television show “Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

So far, scientists here have found little evidence that diet or exercise affects the risk of dementia in people over 90. But some researchers argue that mental engagement — doing crossword puzzles, reading books — may delay the arrival of symptoms. And social connections, including interaction with friends, may be very important, some suspect. In isolation, a healthy human mind can go blank and quickly become disoriented, psychologists have found.

“There is quite a bit of evidence now suggesting that the more people you have contact with, in your own home or outside, the better you do” mentally and physically, Dr. Kawas said. “Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.”

And bridge, she added, provides both kinds of stimulation.

[...]

The rhythm of bidding and taking tricks, the easy conversation between hands, the daily game — after almost a century, even for the luckiest in the genetic lottery, it finally ends.

“People stop playing,” said Norma Koskoff, another regular player here, “and very often when they stop playing, they don’t live much longer.”

Babies switched at birth at Labasa hospital

Asif is Fijian and Filimone is Indian.

Asif and Filimone were mistakenly exchanged at birth at Labasa Hospital on the 1st of August, 1994. They were born three hours apart. The Indian baby, now Filimone, had a normal delivery, while the Fijian baby, now Asif, was delivered through a caesarean procedure.

In a twist of fate, the Indian baby (Filimone) was given to Catholic Fijian parents Tevita and Sofia Maleti while the Fijian baby (Asif) was given to the Muslim couple Farida and Azim Khan.

“I saw the forceps mark on the baby’s head (meaning he had been delivered normally),” says Fijian mother Sofia. “But I was too weak from the caesarean operation to inquire.”

[...]

“Three months my husband fight with me. Me fight back because I had enough,” Farida says.

She says she was denied food for one whole week and forced to sleep in their fertilizer shed with Asif as her husband started accusing her of having an affair with a Fijian man.

Incidentally the man she was accused of having an affair with is directly related to Filimone’s father, Tevita.

[...]

According to Sofia, it was in late 1995, almost 18 months after the birth, when a family member told her of an Indian couple living in Seaqaqa who had a baby that looked Fijian.

“Na kena moniti tarava au sa gole sara ga meu laki raici rau mada na veitinani kai Idia qo. Na gauna oya keitou se tiko kina mai Koronivuli. Na noqu gole yani, keirau sota sara ga kei Farida, ni duri tu e tautuba. Na gauna ga keirau veiraici kina, keirau sa dui raica sara tu ga na matadrau na dui luvei keirau vei keirau (The following Monday I went down to Seaqaqa to see the Indian lady and her son. At that time we were living at Koronivuli village. I saw Farida holding the baby outside as I approached their house. The moment our eyes met, we saw our sons’ eyes in each other’s faces),” Sofia says.

[...]

In a quirk of religious and cultural doctrines, Azim’s family also could not take Filimone back because he had eaten meat that contradicted their Muslim faith.

Mick Wall on Axl Rose, Wired Magazine, 2008.

MW: No, I don’t believe that for a second. Having said that, he does believe in some crazy stuff — past lives, crystals — don’t get me wrong, I believe in karma, I believe that there is a world beyond the five senses, I do believe in energies you can give out, positive and negative, but Axl goes beyond that. He told Erin [Everly, his ex-wife] that in a previous life they’d lived as native Americans on an Indian camp. There was a personal assistant that his guru told him had lived 50 thousand previous lives in which he tried to kill him [Axl], so he fired her. I mean he’s into some really crazy shit. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was an insane reason why those days are chosen.

But in the real world, my understanding — I have no factual evidence I can give you on this — my understanding… is that he needs the money. When Irving Azoff and Andy Gould took over as managers, these are guys, as I’m sure you know, that have very impressive track records. Super-duper veterans of the rock industry. They are not going to get involved with a crazy man who’s not going to release his album. My understanding is they came in, and the deal was done, and monies were advanced in exchange for bits of paper being signed that essentially gave them enough power to ensure they could release this record this year. And to me, that makes a lot of sense, because I know from lots of other sources that he has been hurting for money for a while.

There is a lot of other royalties coming in, but the guy spends money like water. On one day on the 2006 tour in Italy, he spent $200,000 clothes shopping, which he tried to charge back to the record company and they refused to pay the bill. As far back as 2005, Interscope pulled the plug on paying for the album, and sent him a letter that the New York Times reported, telling him, “It’s over. Unless you deliver this album, there is no more money. It’s finished. From now on, if you need to continue working on this, you pay the studio bill. And we’re talking about a monthly bill that at times was hitting $150,000 a month. So it’s a lot of money continually going out the door. And I don’t think releasing a record for money is a bad reason — I think it’s a good reason.

But my understanding is it came down to something as prosaic and as pragmatic as that: the dude needs the dough. And there is no more dough until this album is in the stores.

Bill Maher’s op-ed for the LA Times last week:

If conservatives don’t want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because … well, nobody knows. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Even though they’re not quite sure what “it” is. But they know they’re fed up with “it,” and that “it” has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here’s the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

Read the rest.

His real name is Edward Muscare and he’s a registered sex offender.

Read more »

“Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn’t. The fact that they’re cutting out now should be a lesson for us.”

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