Did anyone see how AWFUL this episode was, across the board? Weekend update was actually great with Drunk Uncle and Leslie Jones, but even with Trump's screen time limited to 12 minutes, it felt like the whole cast and writing staff was sabotaging.
Maybe it’s because we’re still trying to process how Donald Trump could be a leading GOP Presidential candidate in the first place, but his appearance as host of Saturday Night Live this weekend was nothing short of baffling. In spite of hundreds of protesters gathering outside of 30 Rock a few hours before broadcast, the […]
Here’s a new clip from this week’s episode of Billy on the Street, where Billy Eichner leads guest Amy Sedaris through a very special, exclusively Shonda Rhimes-themed obstacle course. Sedaris must break glass ceilings, scale a wig mountain, and climb through the gays and the “NAACP Image Award Ball Pit” before she makes her way […]
“One can’t go on anymore, she said, electronics seem so clean and yet it dirties, dirties tremendously, and it obliges you to leave traces of yourself everywhere as if you were shitting and peeing on yourself continuously: I want to leave nothing, my favorite key is the one that deletes.”
Houston voters on Tuesday repealed a city law that protected LGBT people and others from discrimination. The decisive vote a was setback to progressive organizations that tried to uphold the ordinance and a victory for Christian conservatives who ran a campaign alleging the law would allow men to attack women in public bathrooms. With nearly all precincts reporting, results showed voters repealing the law by 61% to 39%, according to the Harris County Clerk’s Office. “We are celebrating tonight!” Jared Woodfill, the chief spokesman of the repeal effort, told BuzzFeed News in a phone call from an election night party. “We don’t believe that males... should be able to go into a female restroom, shower, or locker room under the protection of law,” he said.
This argument the haters are making—the argument that carried the day in Houston—sounds familiar...
The haters insist trans women aren't women. They're men. Men who fake being women because they wanna enter women's restrooms to ogle women and girls. So they're saying trans women are actually straight men. Straight men who pretend to be women specifically to enter women's restrooms to ogle (or worse) women and girls because opportunities to ogle women and girls are so scarce in our porn-saturated culture—porn is so hard to come by, and it's not like there are millions women and girls posting pics of themselves to Instagram, so of course straight men will fake being trans women (and risk the violence, discrimination directed at trans women) to get an eyeful of women washing their hands after peeing.
Okay...
So the haters in Houston argued—successfully—that straight men are terrible. Right? They argued that trans women are actually straight dudes who are attracted to women. So the haters won yesterday by convincing a majority of voters in Houston that straight people suck.
Where have we heard this argument before? Oh, right...
The New York Court of Appeals had already recognized, in the adoption case, that same-sex couples were raising children. And in this case, the state had conceded that it would good for those kids for their parents to be married. So then we got to the what I like to call "the slutty heterosexuals" argument. This was the argument that straight couples needed to be allowed to marry because, unlike gay couples, there was the possibility that they could accidentally get pregnant and have children.
That's from an early chapter in Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA, Roberta Kaplan's terrific new book. In that passage Kaplan looks back at her first big marriage equality case, a case she argued before New York's highest court in 2006. Opponents of marriage equality were making what Kaplan calls the "slutty heterosexuals" argument and what I called the "straight people suck" argument. And it carried the day back then. The New York Court of Appeals upheld the state's ban on same-sex marriage by pointing to the fact that only heterosexuals can get pregnant by accident.
In other words, because straight people might accidentally get pregnant, we had better offer them marriage as a way to promote stability. Gay people cannot have children by accident, so they and their planned-for children, much-wanted children don't need the benefits and protections of marriage and are on their own. The whole argument was irrational and absurd. I was deeply disheartened that we had had our chance to make history and had lost, but I was especially disappointed [at the] reasoning behind our loss...
Later that same summer, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld our state's ban on same-sex marriage using the exact same justification: only straight people can have children by accident and the whole point of marriage is to entice accidentally pregnant straight people into staying together to take care of their children and straight people will be less likely to do that—they'll be less likely to take care of their own children—if we allow gay people to marry because gay people are icky and straight people will abandon their children of we let gay people get their gay ick all over marriage. In other words: straight people suck.
What the New York and Washington opinions share—besides a willful disregard for equal protection clauses in both state Constitutions—is a heartless lack of concern for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples. Even if gay couples who adopt are more stable, as New York found, don’t their children need the security and protections that the court believes marriage affords children? And even if heterosexual sex is essential to the survival of the human race [as Washington state's Supreme Court helpfully pointed out], it’s hard to see how preventing gay couples from marrying increases heterosexual activity....
These defeats have demoralized supporters of gay marriage, but I see a silver lining. If heterosexual instability and the link between heterosexual sex and human reproduction are the best arguments opponents of same-sex marriage can muster, I can’t help but feel that our side must be winning. Insulting heterosexuals and discriminating against children with same-sex parents may score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won’t win the game. So I’m confident that one day my son will live in a country that allows his parents to marry.
"Straight people suck" was an argument—it was the argument—haters used against marriage equality, and it was a successful one... for a decade. But it eventually backfired on them. By 2015 the argument that persuaded a majority of justices in liberal states like Washington and New York was literally being laughed out of courts all over the country and Justice Anthony Kennedy would drive a stake through its heart in Obergefell.
I argued in 2006, which was a dark time in the struggle for marriage equality (those judicial defeats in New York and Washington came hard on the heels of voters approving anti-gay marriage referendums in more than a dozen states), that if "straight people suck" was the best argument the haters had against marriage equality... we were winning. Now, in an effort to block anti-discrimination laws, the haters are once again arguing that straight people suck—and this time they're advancing a dangerous, demagogic argument, an argument that will stoke the already appalling rates of anti-trans violence.
Right-wing assholes keep hammering away about the threat posed by trans people using public toilets. In reality, trans men and women are at higher risk of violent attack, hate crimes, and murder than any other group; trans women of color are at highest risk. (Three trans women of color have been murdered already this year.) And while it's true that cis and trans women are sometimes attacked in public toilets, these attacks are perpetrated by cis men, not trans women. (Want to make the world safer for women? Make it illegal for men to use public toilets.) And this whole revolting idea that a significant percentage of trans women are "male sexual predators [interested in] prowling ladies' restrooms" amounts to an anti-trans blood libel. This belief—that some or all trans women are actually male rapists trying to worm their way into "safe" spaces where they can attack "actual" women (because a male rapist can't walk into a women's toilet dressed as a man?)—results in violent attacks on trans women like this one. Fomenting this belief leads to more attacks on trans women.
Says a trans friend via text this morning...
What concerns me is that the rhetoric used in these arguments (trans women are just predator men there to attack our daughters and wives) frames the existence of trans women as being an ongoing, imminent threat to the safety of others. How long before a trans women gets shot by some dude there to "protect" his wife/daughter/whatever? If they were actually concerned about violence against women, they'd address the fact that cis men go into women's restrooms all the time and assault women (and don't pretend to be trans/don't wear a dress or whatever).
We have to hammer away at this fact: the haters in Houston are not concerned with violence against women. They're no more concerned with violence against women than the anti-marriage-equality crowd was concerned with the safety of children. If the haters in Houston were concerned about violence against women they would be going after straight men, not trans women (not even if they actually believe trans women are really men—it's not "men in dresses" attacking women in public restrooms). And if the haters who opposed marriage equality had actually been concerned about the welfare of children they would've supported marriage equality—they would've been anxious for children being raised by same-sex couples to benefit from the stability and security of marriage.
The argument against equality haters advanced in Houston is equal parts "straight people suck" and "there's no such thing as a trans person." We've demonstrated that we can defeat the "straight people suck" argument in the fight for marriage equality—it was a long fight, and we lost a few battles along the way, but we beat that bullshit argument. And the haters used to argue that "there's no such thing as a gay person." And we beat that argument years ago by coming out and, you know, existing. As more trans people come out, as more cis people come to know trans people (as more cis come to know the trans people they already know), that argument will fall apart too.
I'm not arguing for complacency. We fought like hell to beat the "straight people suck" argument against marriage equality and we're going to have to fight like hell to defeat the "straight people suck" argument against trans-inclusive anti-discrimination laws. But we can defeat it. We did it before, we can do it again.
This is a fun/"fun" troll post slate pitch, enjoyable
If you pulled over one hundred people on the street, and asked them to state a religious belief they hold, I’m not sure you would get any answer more plausible than “the pyramids were built for the storage of grain.” Would you now?
Yet we mock Ben Carson for this, but we do not make fun of those who believe openly in the Trinity, Virgin Birth, ex cathedra, and many other beliefs which are to my mind slightly less plausible claims. It’s not so different from the old prejudice that Mormon beliefs are somehow “weirder” than those of traditional Christians, except now it is secularists picking and choosing their religious targets on the supposed basis of sophistication. The Seventh Day Adventists, Carson’s church, are of course weirder yet.
I doubt the storage claim is true as a dominant explanation, but should there not be some storage — of something — in a profit-maximizing or rent-maximizing model of pyramid supply and inventory management? Maybe Ben’s economic intuition confirmed what he had heard in church. And what about Coase’s durable goods monopoly model? In that treatment the monopolist stores grain, admittedly for the pyramids variable Coase was hermetic in his exposition, perhaps properly so given how much is at stake here. And “remains of storage pests have been found in grain recovered from pyramid tombs.” Further argumentation along these lines can be found in F. Zacher’s classic 1937 article “Vorratsschädlinge und Vorratsschutz, ihre Bedeutung für Volksernährung und Weltwirtschaft” (Cowen’s Second Law), which by now has been cited over nineteen times (twenty in fact).
The Quran notes that the pyramids were made of baked clay, when instead according to many standard accounts much of the pyramids are made of quarried limestone (yet even that question is murky and I would not entirely count out the Quranic exposition). Presumably many Muslims, who ascribe a holy status to the Quran, would defend the baked clay proposition in some manner. How often is that thrown in their faces?
Might Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, possibly hold some views about Joseph which are not literally true? After all, those stories do come from the Torah.
What Ben Carson has done is to commit the unpardonable sin of talking about his religion as if he actually takes it seriously.
Loyal MR readers will know that I am myself a non-believer. But what I find strangest of all is not Ben Carson’s pyramids beliefs, but rather the notion that we should selectively pick on some religious claims rather than others. The notion that it is fine to believe something about a deity or deities, or a divine book, as long as you do not take that said belief very seriously and treat it only as a social affiliation or an ornamental badge of honor.
Bully for Ben Carson for reminding us that a religion actually consists of beliefs about the world. And if you’re trying to understand his continuing popularity, maybe that is the place to start.
From a 2005 post on Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen, an alternate take on the Star Wars movies positing that while the Jedi aren't the bad guys, they are also not to be trusted.
1. The Jedi and Jedi-in-training sell out like crazy. Even the evil Count Dooku was once a Jedi knight.
2. What do the Jedi Council want anyway? The Anakin critique of the Jedi Council rings somewhat true (this is from the new movie, alas I cannot say more, but the argument could be strengthened by citing the relevant detail). Aren't they a kind of out-of-control Supreme Court, not even requiring Senate approval (with or without filibuster), and heavily armed at that? As I understand it, they vote each other into the office, have license to kill, and seek to control galactic affairs. Talk about unaccountable power used toward secret and mysterious ends.
See also Darth Jar Jar and Luke Skywalker, Sith Lord. I also wanted to link to a video I saw within the past year that suggests that instead of a rebel leader, Princess Leia is a petulant child whose father, Vader, is attempting to bring to heel. Ring a bell? The internet is so choked with crackpot theories about Star Wars that it's impossible to search for one in particular. (And now this post is part of the problem.)
By now we’re used to seeing a second trailer for a hotly anticipated movie and being, well, disappointed. Too often there’s very little new tid-bits to actually warrant a watch. Not so with the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And that may have something to do with the fact that this latest trailer comes from Japan.
Feel the force grow stronger, below:
And in case you missed it, or wish to compare, check out the first trailer HERE.
Those of us who spend our days longing for a giant piece of space rock to wipe all human life from the face of the planet will find only disappointment in this list of the objects currently hurtling toward Earth. I understand your chagrin, and I’m frustrated too. But as an optimist I will remind you that Science is often wrong, that the unexpected occurs with some regularity, and that there are plenty of other things we as a species are doing right here, right now, that may result in our extinction without even needing to be eradicated by a massive impact from the skies. Cheer up, it could still happen. We will all die yet!
Just a lot of different flavors of "wait, what" going on here.
Apple has more than $205 billion in cash. What should they do with the money? Apple should buy a university and rebuild it from the ground up.
In recent years, some private equity firms have bought universities and turned them into for-profits. The for-profit model, however, has yet to produce a world-class university. But consider Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, it was only established in 1984 and yet today with its online students it’s the largest private, non-profit university in the United States. Liberty University doesn’t get accolades but it is a technology leader and it shows what is possible starting from a small budget.
Apple is a for-profit corporation not a charity but there are plenty of ways to make money from a non-profit university. Aside from the tax breaks and other deductions, Apple University would be a proving ground for educational technologies that would be sold to every other university in the world. New textbooks built for the iPad and its successors would greatly increase the demand for iPads. Apple-designed courses built using online technologies, a.i. tutors, and virtual reality experimental worlds could become the leading form of education worldwide. Big data analytics from Apple University textbooks and courses would lead to new and better ways of teaching. As a new university, Apple could experiment with new ways of organizing degrees and departments and certifying knowledge. Campuses in Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Berlin, and Sao Paulo could provide opportunities for studying abroad. Apple’s reputation would attract top students, especially, for example, if it started with a design and business school. Top students would lead Apple University to be highly ranked. The more prestigious Apple University became the greater would be the demand for Apple University educational products.
Apple already has the beginning of this model with iTunes U and its own internal Apple University for training in business and design. By buying a university, Apple would commit to a learning process to develop these technologies in entirely new ways.
More than a century ago Stanford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller used their industrial-age fortunes to build some of our best universities. Isn’t it time for another great university built for the information age?
Straight male here. I took a writing course, and some of us students created a writing group. We meet and workshop the things we've been working on. One of the guys in the group is gay, and a while ago, he confessed that he had very strong feelings for me. I didn't have a problem with this, but I told him that I wasn't into guys. The other day, he sent me an e-mail telling me there was something he wanted to discuss. We met for dinner, and he told me that despite the fact that I claimed to be straight, he felt like I had been sending him messages to indicate my interest in him. He said that this was cruel and that he felt like I was teasing him. When I asked him for examples, he told me that when we had originally been in class together, he noticed that I had started to dress like him, and that this was sometimes a way closeted men showed interest in other men. He mentioned that one week he had worn a red sweater, and the following week I had worn a red T-shirt. He also said that he felt like the stories I had been workshopping in our group were secretly about him. I admit I'm not the stereotypical straight guy—I have good taste in shoes and I like art—but I know what I'm into and who I want to get naked with. I never showed any interest in this guy, I never led him on, this entire thing has taken place purely in his head. I told him all this, and now he says he is hurt and doesn't want to see me at the group. He suggested that we share the group, alternating meetings, but I refused. We're both adults who should have the emotional maturity to handle this. Am I being too harsh?
Pulled Into Drama
My response after the jump...
Closeted gay men don't use colored T-shirts to send messages to out gay men. They use Craigslist.
Look, PID, Jeffrey Dahmer—aka the Milwaukee Cannibal—ate a friend of mine. By which I mean to say: Some gay people are insane. I'm not saying you're in danger of being drugged, raped, butchered, and eaten by this guy from your writing group. But the guy is—if your account is accurate—more than a little unpleasant and a whole lot batshit. Confide in some friends in your writing group about what's going on and be prepared to leave the group and/or form a breakaway group if Mr. Red Sweater continues to detect clues in your wardrobe. Also: Do not spend any more time alone with this guy. Someone who would accuse you of making super-secret passes at him via red T-shirts is capable of making baseless accusations about much worse.
And finally, PID, a bonus pro tip: Writers don't need a writers' group to write. They just need to write.
They say you hate in other people what you see in yourself, and in my case, that has always been true. I get annoyed when people can’t keep a conversation going even though I constantly find myself struggling to think of what to say. I’m agitated when people merge into my lane without using a signal even though that’s been my modus operandi ever since I started my long commute to Los Angeles. And I especially loathe when people take the last of something even though I was talking about how much I wanted to have it behind them in line.
I’m sorry, guy who also wanted a honey bran muffin! I know your pain.
I think the adage is also true of other people’s spending. I’m prone to buying the most ridiculous stuff: expensive food from food trucks, saltwater spray in a bid to get wavier hair (sidenote: there is literally no saltwater spray that will actually give you wavy hair if yours is straight), lipstick colors in varying shades of reddish pink that already look exactly like my natural lip color.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend is also prone to ridiculous purchases.
He tells me he has $20 in his checking account and receives exactly 10 minutes of pity from me before he reveals that it’s because he bought a new, ultra-slim wallet he saw in GQ or a new watch even though he already has a bunch or, my least favorite, gun parts that he doesn’t actually need. At which point, all of my sympathy recedes to reveal pure irritation. He then refuses to eat food for two weeks to preserve that $20, only to spend his next paycheck on something I consider equally ridiculous.
Of course, in that same timeframe, I’ll probably get a new pair of shoes or a bag or a genuine leather passport holder for no apparent reason. It doesn’t stop me from getting annoyed, though.
“Let me pay for your food,” I say. “OK, let’s split the check,” I say after he refuses that initial offer. (That’s another thing: we’re both stubborn, so he refuses to let me pay even when he hasn’t eaten the entire day.)
“I’ll just pay for yours so you can eat and then I’ll watch you,” he replies, which is absolutely ridiculous and slightly creepy. Sometimes I even sneak food in his backpack just so he’ll eat something that isn’t his customary ultra-cheap lunch of Mountain Dew and peanuts or—even worse—nothing.
This came to a head recently in, of all places, a Wingstop which, sidenote, is absurdly expensive for wings.
“I’m thinking of selling off some of my stocks to pay off my credit card debt,” he told me. (Another sidenote: he has quite a bit invested, while having nothing in his savings account. I don’t judge, as I just opened my own savings account approximately two weeks ago.)
“That sounds like a great idea!” I said.
“Yeah, but actually I might just sell of a quarter of it and then use half of that to pay off some of the debt.”
I paused. “What will you do with the other half then?”
“Oh,” he said, and smiled. “Probably buy night vision goggles!”
And that’s how we began fighting in a Wingstop. I pleaded with him to just pay off his debt. He had enough to do so with plenty left over and it was accruing interest.
“But,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice, “I really want night vision goggles.”
In the end he did sell off his stocks and intends to pay off his debt – although, in truth, he hasn’t yet. “I’m waiting for the transaction to go through,” he tells me every time I ask. Time will tell.
If I see night vision goggles in his room, I will know. And I will pick another fight in a Wingstop if I have to.
The one bonus is that his spending has made me take a look at mine. I’m no longer receiving a weekly package containing something I don’t really need: goodbye, fancy day planner! I bring my lunch instead of buying overly expensive food. I heavily research things I’m thinking of getting to make sure they’re worthwhile products: no more spontaneous mascara buying or trying out weird and random snacks at Trader Joes.
I’ve also learned to understand other people’s seemingly whimsical purchases more. To him it’s worth it to eat peanuts to get something he wants. I don’t have to like it, but I do have to let it go. And, in the meantime, slip him some healthier snacks to offset all that Mountain Dew.
Ashley Burnett is a writer living in California. You can see both her short stories as well as other articles she’s written on her website ashleyburnett.net.
New York City’s last great local gossip item, the “Page Six Team”-bylined story “Marc Jacobs hosts a wild, 10-person orgy,” really delivers the goods right in the headline. Ten men! An orgy, it seems safe to say, is definitely an orgy if it contains double digits. But those are not the facts: The digits in this orgy were at minimum eleven, as the text clearly indicates that “the single designer hosted an orgy over the weekend with up to 10 people, whom he invited via Grindr.” Bless! That’s so much work on a little iPhone keyboard.
Where does an orgy stop and start? Two is a mating and three is a threeway. Because four is a fourgy, you would think that five is logically an orgy, but no, five is two couples who keep forgetting about the creepy guy cranking it in the corner. Six is an accident, you didn’t get enough for a gangbang but you got too many for something more innocent and lovely. Six is gross. Seven is probably a really mild semi-orgy, an afternoon tea time of group sex. Seven is your grandmother’s orgy, polite and manageable, with people ducking out for treats when winded. Eight is certainly enough to hide from someone with bad pheromones or gross genitalia. Nine, though: nine is when we create the bare underpinnings of an orgy. The gross orgy about to break out in Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progresshas ten at the table. Couture’s Romains de la décadenc has a whole passel, more than a dozen; a Tom of Finland orgy never has fewer than eleven. In the Dutch engravings for de Sade’s Juliette from 1789, each panel seems to get more and more participants, and sprinkled throughout are highly unlikely and McMartin preschool-style sky-high pileups, but it ends, as far as we can tell, with an even dozen. If you have twelve people of any gender, you always have an orgy. And if you can’t quite remember how many there were, you’re definitely on your way.
Coupled with an very lengthy premature obituary for the career of Marc Jacobs published over the weekend, the Post seems to be trying to tell the world that Jacobs is off the wagon and back on the sauce. (“Jacobs is reportedly sober,” goes the orgy item; he’s plagued by a “mystery” goes the obit.) Like a trial lawyer, whenever the Post refers to a mystery, they always have an answer at hand.
Jacobs doesn’t address that text, and also doesn’t do himself any favors by aggressively clapping back to both items on Instagram. But would you have the willpower to resist? I certainly wouldn’t. Defensiveness never plays, but it does get you a million comments, most of which involve some variation of “yaassss” and “slayyyy” and various nail-painting + praise-hands emoji stringlets. Do those folks buy handbags? I’d say they do not. Still, lots of people think if you live like a diva you somehow won’t also die alone and afraid and regretful in a cold bathroom with a needle in your arm.
Ricky Gervais just can’t get enough of the Golden Globes. According to Deadline, Gervais has officially signed on to host next year’s Golden Globes on Sunday, January 10th. Gervais hosted the ceremony from 2010-2012, followed by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey from 2013-2015. “Tina and Amy are a hard act to follow but Ricky is […]
I watched the first 5 episodes of this on the plane, it's pretty good! Does anyone else watch it? Should I prioritize? I feel like Nate either loves or loathes.
The easiest way to explain You’re the Worst, FX’s anti-romcom romcom, which entered its second season earlier this month, would be to say that it’s a show about two awful, self-centered 30-somethings who don’t “do” relationships ending up in a relationship, united by their mutual awfulness and maybe a shared love of cocaine. The reluctant […]
Who watched? Larry David obviously murdered everything and everyone. Demi Lovato surprised me with how great her performance was. But this episode made me feel kind of sad, because all of the good parts were either happening in spite of Tracy or when he was offscreen.
Also armbutts
Also Tracy said Jane Krakowski's name wrong in the goodbyes.
This weekend marked former Saturday Night Live cast member Tracy Morgan’s triumphant return to Studio 8H after recovering from the horrific car accident that severely injured him and took the life of his friend James McNair. The third episode of the 41st season followed a strong show by host Amy Schumer and served as a fitting […]
A recent paper found that the time it takes for an animal to move the length of its own body is largely independent of mass. This appears to hold from tiny bacteria on up to whales -- that's more than 20 orders of magnitude of mass. The paper's argument as to why this happens relies on scaling laws. Alex Klotz explains.
A well-known example is the Square-Cube Law, dating back to Galileo and described quite well in the Haldane essay, On Being the Right Size. The Square-Cube Law essentially states that if something, be it a chair or a person or whatever, were made twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as deep, its volume and mass would increase by a factor of eight, but its ability to support that mass, its cross sectional area, would only increase by a factor of four. This means as things get bigger, their own weight becomes more significant compared to their strength (ants can carry 50 times their own weight, squirrels can run up trees, and humans can do pullups).
Another example is terminal velocity: the drag force depends on the cross-sectional area, which (assuming a spherical cow) goes as the square of radius (or the two-thirds power of mass), while the weight depends on the volume, proportional to the cube of radius or the first power of mass. As Haldane graphically puts it
"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
When the Incredible Shrinking Man stops shrinking, he is about an inch tall, down by a factor of about 70 in linear dimensions. Thus, the surface area of his body, through which he loses heat, has decreased by a factor of 70 x 70 or about 5,000 times, but the mass of his body, which generates the heat, has decreased by 70 x 70 x 70 or 350,000 times. He's clearly going to have a hard time maintaining his body temperature (even though his clothes are now conveniently shrinking with him) unless his metabolic rate increases drastically.
Luckily, his lung area has only decreased by 5,000-fold, so he can get the relatively larger supply of oxygen he needs, but he's going to have to supply his body with much more fuel; like a shrew, he'll probably have to eat his own weight daily just to stay alive. He'll also have to give up sleeping and eat 24 hours a day or risk starving before he wakes up in the morning (unless he can learn the trick used by hummingbirds of lowering their body temperatures while they sleep).
A Saudi Arabian prince is accused by three female staffers of acting like a bizarre party boy — engaging in a gay-sex act in front of them, threatening a woman’s life, demanding that an assistant fart in his face while others watched and declaring, “I am a prince and I do what I want,” according to a report.
Prince Majed bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the son of the late King Abdullah, allegedly engaged in the lurid behavior at his $37 million mansion in Beverly Hills, according to a lawsuit flied by a trio of women who worked for him there.
The lawsuit accuses Al Saud, 29, of being drunk and on drugs — and of making crude sexual advances on men and women alike.
Apple is a for-profit corporation not a charity but there are plenty of ways to make money from a non-profit university. Aside from the tax breaks and other deductions, Apple University would be a proving ground for educational technologies that would be sold to every other university in the world. New textbooks built for the iPad and its successors would greatly increase the demand for iPads. Apple-designed courses built using online technologies, a.i. tutors, and virtual reality experimental worlds could become the leading form of education worldwide. Big data analytics from Apple University textbooks and courses would lead to new and better ways of teaching. As a new university, Apple could experiment with new ways of organizing degrees and departments and certifying knowledge. Campuses in Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Berlin, and Sao Paulo could provide opportunities for studying abroad. Apple’s reputation would attract top students, especially, for example, if it started with a design and business school. Top students would lead Apple University to be highly ranked. The more prestigious Apple University became the greater would be the demand for Apple University educational products.
