“ The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran.
Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Shmobal
...to share those rare and awesome Yes! Huh! Wow! moments, those news and magazine articles worth your precious time, and some of my writings, but no personal bullshit or top five lists.
And because I just keep lying to myself: Global Warming, Shmobal warming.
Mike Smith runs Nothing But Green Lights: a UK music blog and is an intern with The Morning News
And because I just keep lying to myself: Global Warming, Shmobal warming.
Mike Smith runs Nothing But Green Lights: a UK music blog and is an intern with The Morning News
“ On Monday nights you’ll try and get me to drink. You’ll think I won’t because I have an adult job. But I won’t because I want to be lucid for this week’s episode of The Hills.
Banker looking for hipster @ craigslist
Philosophy: what is application? What are fields? Are you sure? Let’s discuss it until you realise that you don’t know what you are talking about.
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
Ithkuil
inky:
Ithkuil is a constructed human language marked by outstanding grammatical complexity and an innovative system of writing […] designed to express deeper levels of human cognition overtly and clearly, yet briefly.
The writing system is a bit bizarre, but the concept behind this language is fascinating. The example phrase given takes two seconds to say aloud, and translates to: ‘On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point.’
Also interesting is this quote, which has me reconsidering a theory I’d previously dismissed as nonsense:
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis assumes it compulsory that a person’s language define their way of thought. Stanislav Kozlovsky proposed that a fluent speaker of Ithkuil, accordingly, would think ‘about five or six times as quickly’ as a speaker of a typical natural language.
Where do I sign up?
“
Every other site is trying to break the world’s greatest new band every day.
We’re just trying to find the greatest next three minutes of your life.
Sean Michaels, creator of the Said the Gramophone music blog. Amazingly put.
Read a slightly old but great Observer story on music blogs here.
(via fascinated)
Discovery News : Discovery Channel: Lost Tribe Revealed in Brazil
What exactly are they lost from?
“ Any dirt and ice it scoops up will be shovelled into several small ovens to be heated. The resulting gases will be analysed by various instruments.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mars lander uncovers signs of ice. Ovens!
“ She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan woman lived in man’s closet [he didn’t know]