Avoid Swedish Operations

Woman catches fire during hemorrhoid operation.

Ugh, yuck, and ouch.

Stinkiest Onion Piece Ever

Horrible. It would only have been horribler if they worked in a Christmas-spirit angle:

ALBANY, NY—In one of the most merciful disasters in recent years, a Greyhound bus traveling from Rochester to Albany, NY skidded into a ditch Tuesday, killing a dozen deadbeat fathers and penniless addicts, and putting nearly 20 more hapless bastards out of their misery.

According to Greyhound officials, the fatal crash occurred less than an hour after passengers gathered their pathetic belongings and dragged what little hope they had left onto the despair-soaked bus. Emergency crews called to the scene described the remains of the victims as "slightly more lifeless than they were before the accident."

"This is by far the saddest thing I've ever witnessed," said head rescue worker Charles Rabnett, referring to the sea of fast-food wrappers, losing lottery tickets, and scorched corpses that littered the crash site. "We've done our best to contact family members and loved ones, but so far we've only been able to reach four parole officers and 10 AA sponsors."

Added Rabnett: "Dear God, what a terrible waste of my time."

...

No survivors were reported following the accident. In addition, initial surveillance of the wreckage seems to indicate that those who managed to pull their world-weary bodies out of the overturned bus, gave up on their wretched existence within minutes. According to paramedics, it is likely that many of the casualties had suffered during the crash, and, if not then, for years earlier...

"It's hard to believe that something like this could even happen," said Albany resident Carl Robinson, who, since losing his home to a fire earlier this month, has been sleeping in the city's dilapidated bus station. "To know that life, no matter how dreadful or hopeless, always has a chance of coming to an end—it's so inspiring."

Fjuckby

Readers have surely been waiting to hear more about the Swedes who have to live in the town of Fjuckby:

The hapless inhabitants of Fjuckby have lost the last chance they had of changing the name of their village to something less suggestive of sexual intercourse.

On Thursday, the National Land Survey of Sweden - the government agency responsible for the handling of place names - announced that it was following the recommendation of the Institute of Language and Folklore to preserve the name Fjuckby.

"Preserve" here meaning, "to saddle the townspeople with." More:

Fjuckby is saddled with the dual misfortune of containing both the rude Swedish word 'juck' and its more internationally recognizable English equivalent.

Speaking to The Local in February, Flensburg said she was surprised by the folklore institute's resistance to a name change since the alternative, Fjukeby, was "pretty and nice".

Fjuckby and Fjukeby both translate roughly as 'Windy Village'.

Bless You!

All about sneezing,, which can expel snot and spit at up to 100 mph.

Getting the Skinny

An interesting new website, ZipSkinny, lets you get basic demographic information on any zip code and to compare up to 20 zip codes. Here's part of the data on mine:

Finnegan's Wake, the Picture

Envisioning works of fiction as images is a challenge (unless they're graphic novels, I suppose). But here is a fascinating attempt by Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy to represent Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. I guess Ulysses was too easy.


The Guardian has much more on Moholy-Nagy, a brilliant designer and artist who could also toss off some good lines: "It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future."

No Really

Someday soon, I'll blog more frequently again, and choose a topic other than Radiohead, but for now, check out Pitchfork's review of In Rainbows, paying particular attention to the rating.

RNC Logo

As City Pages said, "Worst. Logo. Ever." Say it with me, everyone: "Wide stance."

Surely this is a comment on how the party will give it to the country elephant-style if they're put back in power in 2008.

Guns Don't Kill People

Lesson: don't shoot Swedish elk.

The elk knocked Rådlund to the ground and aimed its antlers at his face. Fortunately, the hunter managed to grab hold of the antlers and steer the animal's head away.

But he was not out of danger yet. In a strange reversal of the usual order, the elk's hind legs came into contact with the rifle trapped under Rådlund's body and a shot was fired.

Compare & Contrast

From A Word a Day:

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999)

and from Velonews:

Oscar Pereiro was formally named the winner of the 2006 Tour de France on Thursday after American authorities ruled against Floyd Landis's appeal for failing a doping test, the sport's world governing body, the UCI, said.

Pereiro finished the 2006 race in second place, 57 seconds behind Landis but the American tested positive after the race following his 17th stage win at Morzine, three days before the end of the race.

"We can right now say that Pereiro is the winner of the Tour without waiting for a possible appeal by Landis to the Court of Arbitration for Sport," UCI president Pat McQuaid said.

Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said the decision to strip Landis of the 2006 title was too long in coming.

"We have waited a long time, too long. We said since the beginning that we were confident in the laboratory (AFLD) at Châtenay-Malabry," Prudhomme said. "Now it is proven and confirmed that Landis cheated. As far as the Tour de France is concerned, Landis was no longer the winner after the positive test of the second sample."

"According to the rules, the second-placed rider (Oscar Pereiro) will be promoted to first place," he added. "Landis did everything he could in his defense, for which he cannot be reproached. But it is clear that the process has been far too long."

Smash and Grab

From the Morning News:

Martin Klimas destroys a lot of clay to make his art. Combining the silence of Eadweard Muybridge’s horse pictures with the association-rich composition of a still life, Klimas breaks recognizable objects so they become something else, and stops us just at the moment of transformation.

Norwegian Youngsters

I wonder what would happen to the mother of an American kid who did this:

Toddler went hiking alone, in the middle of the night
Donning a backpack and going for a hike is deeply engrained in the Norwegian culture. A little girl up north took the national pastime to heart, much to her mother's dismay.

The four-year-old girl apparently woke up in the middle of the night, climbed out of bed and decided it was time for a midnight stroll. She put on her playclothes (pink), slung a backpack over her shoulders and set off into the newly returned darkness of a late summer night in Tromsø, northern Norway. Police got a call shortly after 5am that a little had been spotted out wandering alone near the Tromsdalen campground. They sent a patrol car to the spot and found the little hiker, who told them her name. She also could tell them her mother's name. The police called her, and then took the intrepid little girl home. "It was, of course, quite a message for her mother to get, but it went well," Trond Amundsen of the Tromsø Police Station told web site iTromso.no.

Don't Mess with Texas

How many spiders live in a spider web big enough to "encase several mature oak trees and thick enough in places to block out the sun"?

Lots.

Location, Location, Location

15 Badly Placed Ads:




On Oddee, via AdFreak.com.

Ah, Academe

It must be almost fall on campus: the grounds crews here at Carleton are sprucing everything up, the sports teams are back and practicing, and the college guides are hitting the bookshelves.

The big one, America's Best Colleges from US News & World Report, came out on Monday, and though everyone says they don't care about the rankings, that the ranking methodology stinks, that rankings are meaningless, etc. etc., everyone here at Carleton got an email last week - before the magazine was even for sale - bragging about Carleton's ranking in the national liberal arts college list. Being the quiet, unassuming type, I won't state that number, though it rhymes with "hive." And far be it from my to libel other schools, but c'mon: who couldn't rank number #1, 2, 3, or 4 with a billion-dollar endowment?

And but so, the Best 366 Colleges, from the Princeton Review, just came out, too. This guide provides a more nuanced or idiosyncratic look at colleges, one which never fails to be interesting. Here are the takes on my current employer and my undergrad alma mater:

Carleton College
#13 School Runs Like Butter (quality of administration) (#1: Princeton University)
#18 Their Students Never Stop Studying (#1: Reed College)
#11 Best College Radio Station (#1: St. Bonaventure University)
#13 Everyone Plays Intramural Sports (#1: University of Notre Dame)

Macalester College
#13 Diverse Student Population (#1: Temple U.)
#1 Gay Community Accepted (#1!)
#5 Lots of Race/Class Interaction (#1: Wesleyan College)
#15 Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis (#1: Lewis & Clark College - this whole category owned by liberal arts colleges)
#3 Most Politically Active (#1: The George Washington University)
#13 Students Most Nostalgic For Bill Clinton (#1: Warren Wilson College - who?)
#19 Best Campus Food (#1: Virginia Tech)
#1 Best Quality of Life (#1!)
#19 Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians (#1: Hampshire College)
#9 Great College Towns (#1: Eugene Lang College--The New School for Liberal Arts - duh, it's in Manhattan)

I'd be interested in seeing what readers' searches turn up for their schools. (You have to register to search, but it's a painless registration process and searching is easy.)

Roll Me Another Tea

Watch a pilot pour iced tea while barrel-rolling his airplane!


(Clip seen on James Fallows' blog, where he talks mostly about China but has recently talked a bit about flying and aeronautics - specifically, how and why JFK Jr. lost his bearings and crashed)

Smarten Up

Running in the rain wasn't perhaps the most obviously intelligent way I might have spent time this weekend, but Monday morning I found that in fact, it might have been just the thing the brain needed:

Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain.

The neuroscientists don't yet understand how exercise causes "neurogenesis," the growth of new brain neurons, or for that matter if it's really happening, but they have some interesting hypotheses, described in the article. Even better is a neatly interlocking list of other behaviors and substances that can improve brain functioning: alcohol, social interaction, a good diet, chocolate, reduced stress - even marijuana. Sounds like a good weekend!

Shepard Tone Deafened

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.

Listen to it. It's like the sound of a plane coming in low for a landing, but never actually passing overhead. It'll drive you batty.

(Via Defective Yeti, which accurately describes it as "a color that shouldn't exist or an angle that doesn't add up.")

Keeping Time

Terrible news for jazz fans or for anyone who's admired a good beat:

Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940's and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners' expectations, died early Thursday in New York. He was 83.

Roach played with everybody who was anybody in postwar jazz, and had the chops to match even the Miles Davises and Charlie Parkers. Pick up Money Jungle by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach if you want to hear Roach near the height of his powers.

If there's a god, she'll welcome Max to paradise with the best kit ever.

(UPDATE: If you're interested in hearing Roach's playing, go check Destination: Out!, a great MP-free jazz blog that's featuring the late great right now. Click on the track names (right under the photos) to hear the tunes in your browser, or download them to savor later.)

Idiots Getting Some on the Side

A Texas man is suing 1-800-Flowers for $1 million after a thank you note from the web florist outed him as an adulterer. Leroy Greer specifically asked 1-800-Flowers not to send him a receipt for the cuddly stuffed animal and dozen long stemmed roses he ordered for his mistress. Despite his request, 1-800-Flowers sent a thank you note to his house several months later, prompting his wife to ask who the hell got flowers. She called 1-800-Flowers, which gladly faxed her a copy of Leroy's order form that included the following message meant for his mistress: "Just wanted to say I love you and you mean the world to me! -Leroy."

Leroy, you are an idiot. And a scumbag.