Chaos Theory

And you thought your job was bad.

"58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago."

FARK said it first:

"Plane hits house in Compton, CA. American Airlines shrugs, says "you know it wasn't us"

Ass-covering ahoy

NPH, or the AP reporter, or both, got in trou-ble.

A three-hour tour

Er, finale. Oh lordy.

I want pictures of this.

"My girlfriend and I are going to a wedding where everyone is being asked to dress as a superhero of some kind."

That's why we have so much money for Greek and nothing else.

Oh, you wacky rich private schools and your endowments! (NYT)

"When Stanley J. Seeger gave Princeton $2 million for Hellenic studies nearly three decades ago, the gift’s income paid for two courses in modern Greek and trips to Greece for five.
But the Seeger money, which must be spent only on matters Greek, is now worth $33 million, multiplying through aggressive investing like the rest of Princeton’s endowment. So the university offers Greek, Greek and more Greek — 13 courses this semester, including “The Image of Greece in European Cinema” and “Problems in Greek History: Greek Democracy,” as well as trips to Greece and nearby areas for more than 90 students and faculty members last year. The history department recently hired its second Byzantine specialist. And the fund paid half the cost of a collection of 800 rare coins from medieval Greece.
“Institutions do get shaped by the interests of donors,” said Robert K. Durkee, vice president and secretary of Princeton.

Gifts can become unworkable in many ways. Consider the Dudley Professorship of Railroad Engineering at Yale. The chair was created in 1923 with a $152,679 gift from Plimmon H. Dudley, an engineer who worked for the New York Central Rail. His express desire, he said, was that his research into railway safety be continued, “in particular the work in connection with the development and improvement of designs of rails, roadbeds and crossties.”
But over the years, railway engineering lost its luster as a hot academic topic. And the professorship sat vacant for more than 70 years.
“I was kind of stumped as to what to do with this chair,” Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin, admitted.
Then Yale realized that the steam engines and wood ties of yesterday had been replaced by today’s magnetic levitation and superconductivity. So since 2002, A. Stephen Morse, an engineer who has studied urban transportation and switching strategies for the control of uninhabited vehicles, has been the Dudley Professor of Engineering at Yale.

Edwin Webster Sanborn, a Dartmouth graduate, gave the college money to build Sanborn House for the English department, hoping to foster the kind of close student associations his father had had as a popular English professor. As a condition of the gift, the department was to serve tea daily to its faculty and students at a nominal charge.
Tea is served in Sanborn today, daily at 4 p.m., for 10 cents a cup, open to anyone. Sophia Yuan, the sophomore who hands out the tea as part of work-study, said the practice was charming but drew few takers.
“I think it used to be a big tradition,” Ms. Yuan said. “But as it got more modern, it got washed out.”

World's craziest houses.

Here.

10 Sex Toys That Are Confusing and Wrong

Whee!

• If I were a dude, I would not want to put my dick in that or that.
• Kama-Sutra-Cookie-Cutters. Okay, I'd want that.
• This would probably go over well where I live.
• "Getting caught masturbating is one thing. Getting caught screwing a plastic vagina foot is quite another."
• Oh lord.

The meaning of "Stuff White People Like."

"I guess one simple answer is that it names, marks and makes visible the assumed invisibility of white culture. I grew up hearing, "you are so lucky to have a culture," and I remember thinking, dude you have a culture too. So on a basic level the calling out of white culture for what it is, is in fact powerful and will get you a lot of unexpected fans.

For me, despite the humor (and yes, I see the humor and LMAO to different entries all the time) I don't see how marrying the concept of white-ness to the concept of material is actually helping us get to a new place. And as a friend of mine pointed out, the opposite effect of this is that the underlying assumption of stuff white people like is that the stuff they like is not cool, so then is everything that people of color do totally cool? Does that mean that we should look to people of color for what is cool (insert "wow you are such a good dancer!")? So in a way it is perpetuating that same thing we are trying to get away from. A hyper fascination with the things that white people like.
What sealed the deal for me was when I heard the author got a $300,000 dollar book deal. That is fucking crazy. If he had been a person of color he would have never gotten so much attention or such a hefty book deal. People would have said, omg, that is racist! They wouldn't have given it so much cred. My point being, there are a lot of people that call out racism and whiteness, but they don't get huge book deals for it because they are not white. So despite the potential transformative nature of calling out whiteness for what it is, the author is still getting rewarded for being white, even though he is making fun of white people."

Bad Jewish men

                                                                                               

"I’ve been told over and over again that there are no good Jewish men out there. I’ve read it in Jewish newspapers, heard it at Jewish singles events and seen it on the Web. Usually when I read the “no good Jewish men” complaint, I get mad and sometimes even write letters to the editor full of arguments like, “Whaddaya mean, no good Jewish men out there? I’m a good Jewish man, and I’m out here, dang it!”
But the hell with all that. I’m done with arguing. I’m uncloseting myself and declaiming to the world: I am a bad Jewish man.
Not bad like torturing kittens or using my tallit to net shrimp and hogtie pigs. And not bad in the rebellious-bad-boy, take-no-guff-badass, wow-he’s-sexy way. Just bad in dateability.
I’m short. I don’t make a lot of money. At 49, I’m too old for much of the Planet of the Jewish Single Women. And — this will be a shock, coming from a Jew — I’m neurotic and insecure.
Is it unfair or sexist to say that these traits seem to cool the desires of most women? Maybe. Nevertheless, the fact still stands: I am bad.
Now, at this point in the confession, you might expect the next sentences to be, “But I’m a really nice guy if you get to know me,” or “Don’t I deserve love like everyone else?” But comments like those are a way of saying, “Treat me like I’m good” — and I told you, I’ve quit arguing that case.
I don’t expect to talk women into changing their desires and standards. Women are what they are."

Well, he certainly gets it all out there, doesn't he? Points for honesty!

"Or there’s, “Why don’t you try speed dating (or JDate, or matchmaking service, or any number of other resources)?” Most of us grown-up singletons have been seeking Mr. or Miss Rightstein for a long time. We know the checklist of strategies, and we’ve tried most or all of them. If we’re still single, assume that they haven’t worked for us."

Duh!

                               

"And of course there’s, “Don’t worry, everyone has a bashert.” I once heard a bit of Jewish folklore that asked what God’s been doing since he finished creating the universe, and the answer was, “He’s been arranging marriages.” He should go back to creating universes. My bashert must have missed her train — or maybe she got hit by it and is in no condition to date.
My friend Bill married a terrific woman, and they lived happily ever after. But “ever after” didn’t last long; she died young. After mourning his loss, Bill found another terrific woman, married her, and is living a happy life. Was his bashert the first woman or the second one? And what if he had met the second one while still married to the first?"

You know, I have always wondered about that one. (But then again, I believe that some people just don't have a bashert, and some apparently stole a bunch of other people's. That's life, it sucks!)

Go back to creating universes. HEE!