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"There had fallen upon the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest one of those soothing silences which from time to time punctuate the nightly feasts of Reason and flows of Soul in that cozy resort."
When authorities knocked on the man’s door, they say he jumped out of his sixth floor window, landing on an awning and running from the scene. They say they soon found him with a broken ankle.Did this really happen? I know jumping out of windows onto awnings looks great in movies, but it always strikes me as less than believable that (a) there would conveniently happen to be an awning directly below your window on the occasion that you needed to jump out of it, (b) somebody would actually be confident enough in the awning to take the jump, (c) the awning would be strong enough not to let the jumper just tear through it but soft enough that that the person would survive the impact, and (d) there wouldn't be some kind of supporting frame of, say, metal or wood underneath the awning.
Despite my expertise on the subject, I haven’t paid much attention to this year’s Olympics. I’ve followed the main stories a little bit—Michael Phelps and his eight gold medals, the Jamaicans’ dominance of the sprinting events—but I haven’t been especially drawn in. I don’t know if this says more about the Olympics, professional athletes, or my own curmudgeonly outlook, but I feel like it’s only a matter of time before either Phelps or the Jamaican track team is accused of doping. Anyway, what makes the Olympics interesting to me are the less anticipated stories that tend to occur away from the main events. Remember that swimmer from (I think) Central African Republic in the 2000 Olympics who had to swim a qualifying heat that was the longest distance he ever swam in his life?
Probably my favorite story from these games so far is Francoise Mbango Etone, the Cameroonian winner of the gold medal in the women’s triple jump. Unsponsored and self-coached, the 32-year-old worked her way back to the gold medal despite taking two years off since winning gold in the 2004 Olympics because she was injured and gave birth. But my favorite part was the moment after her first-place finish became official. She ran over to the stands to celebrate with her supporters (her family, I assume) and somebody handed her a Cameroonian flag. Instead of the usual track star routine of prancing around the stadium waving the flag or draping it over her shoulders, she did what virtually every African woman I’ve ever met would do when handed a colorful piece of fabric that size. She wrapped it around her waist like a pagne and went on with her business.
Controversially, the paper contends that social mobility is the key to countries' success at the Olympics. Populations that are better informed and better connected to opportunities, in societies where information and access are widespread "tend to win a higher share of Olympic medals", they said.
People can change, but not that much. Even Angelina Jolie. ... I don't care how many kids she has, how normal she seems and how much good she does, deep down, she's still the crazy woman who wore Billy Bob Thornton's blood around her neck a few years ago.
"All that bull[expletive]-ass calls they had out there. With Mike [Callahan] and Kenny [Mauer] -- you've all seen that [expletive]," Wallace said. "You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that [expletive]. That [expletive] ain't basketball out there. It's all [expletive] entertainment. You all should know that [expletive]. It's all [expletive] entertainment."
Anyway, back to scouring the internet for videos of famous people exploding into fits of anger in front of the camera. But really, tomorrow I'm going to sit down, focus, and really get some things done!I'm here to tell you that it was none of these things. The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I'm lazy. Extremely lazy.
Don't judge, pal—you're lazy, too. It's why you procrastinate. When there's a difficult, disagreeable, or tedious chore that needs to get done, guess what? You don't want to do it. So you don't. Until you have to.
It's just that simple, my slothful friend. And guess what else? The trick to overcoming procrastination is even simpler. Ready? Here it is:
Get off your fat badonk and stop procrastinating. Right now. No, not after the Gilmore Girls rerun ends. Now now.
Will you do this? No. You will not. You will dabble at the crossword for a while. Later, you might get a yogurt. Eventually, you'll start reading pointless crap on the Internet. You see, you're doing it as we speak! Because: You are lazy.
The Constitution gives states the power to decide how to allocate the electors who cast the vote for the president. The National Popular Vote is a campaign to get each state to pass a law entering into a binding agreement to award all their electors to the candidate who wins the national popular vote in all fifty states and Washington, D.C. This provision would only go into effect when states whose electoral votes total a majority of the Electoral College—currently, 270 votes—sign the compact. When that happens, whichever candidate wins the popular vote will automatically garner a majority of the electoral votes. While this arrangement is rather complex, it has the advantage of being fair and utterly nonpartisan—and could take effect as soon as enough large states agree to participate. If that happens, it would force public officials to represent a much broader segment of the populace out of electoral self-interest.That’s from a good piece in the Washington Monthly that explains in greater detail the problems with the current system and this new effort to “dump the Electoral College without changing the constitution”. The most consistent and eloquent advocate of NPV that I know of is Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, whose posts on the subject I always enjoy and recommend. Four states representing 50 electoral votes have already passed laws binding them to the NPV plan.
Sunday, March 16. The drive from
Tuesday, March 18. This morning we met with a group of 20 potential enumerators. We’re expecting to end up with 12, but we expect some attrition and it’s probable that some of those who came won’t have the skills to be able to do what we want them to. The meeting started the typical two hours behind schedule, and we spent the whole day in a hot stuffy room reading through the 2 questionnaires and trying to clarify what information we are after, not as simple a task as it might seem. Abdoulaye, who’s run these kinds of trainings before, was invaluable.
On Sainte Marie, a 60km long island off Madagascar's northeast coast, which bore the brunt of the cyclone, "75 percent of the houses have been destroyed," Styvanley Soa said.
In April, Niger authorities even plan to organise a "National Week of Ethnic Jokes" with radio programmes, conferences, joke competitions and cultural evenings.
Obama is frequently outstanding at giving speeches to large crowds. And that's a great skill for a president to have. Unfortunately, very few people, especially outside the early primary states, get to see Obama giving a speech.So in the interest of encouraging a few more people to watch Obama the Speaker in action, I'm posting a couple more of his recent speeches. This first one was his victory speech in South Carolina last weekend.