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Posted at: 2013-04-11 21:53:19
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Submitted by: vukxfiles
Posted at: 2013-04-14 08:30:10
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/7092999

Submitted by: postninegagcom
Posted at: 2013-04-14 02:21:43
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Dedicated to Rajat for his birthday today! Happy b-day!

Here’s more cheese!

We reported earlier on how New Zealand has become the 13th country to legalize same-sex marriage, but felt this speech by Kiwi MP Maurice Williamson deserved a post of its own.

With the new Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill already passed, Williamson opens by attacking opponents of marriage equality. Referring to the words of a local priest who suggested the “gay onslaught will start the day after this bill is passed,” the MP quips:

“We are struggling to know what the gay onslaught will look like. We don’t know if it will come down the Pakuranga highway as a series of troops, or whether it will be a gas that flows in over the electorate and blocks us all in. I also had a Catholic priest tell me that I was supporting an unnatural act. I found that quite interesting coming from someone who’s taken an oath of celibacy for his whole life.”

Williamson follows this with a witty takedown of a letter he received asserting he would “burn in the fires of eternity.” To much laughter in parliament, he says:

“That was a bad mistake, because I’ve got a degree in physics. Using thermodynamic laws, I put in my body weight and my humidity and so on, I assumed the furnace to be at 5,000 degrees and I will last for just 2.1 seconds. It’s hardly eternity.”

There’s also a stirring section where Williamson expresses confusion over people’s anger with the decision to let two adults who love each other marry:

“We are not declaring nuclear war on a foreign state. We are not bringing a virus in that could wipe out our agricultural sector forever. We are allowing two people who love each other to have that recognized, and I can’t see what’s wrong with that for love nor money.

“I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now. I give you a watertight guaranteed promise; the sun will still rise tomorrow, your teenage daughter will still argue back with you as if she knows everything, your mortgage will not grow, you will not have skin diseases or rashes or toads in your bed. The world will just carry on.”

The MP wrapped up his speech by revealing how another letter he received said the marriage equality bill had caused a recent drought in the Auckland suburb of Pakuranga. Williamson, who represents Pakuranga, noted:

“In the Pakuranga electorate this morning it was pouring with rain. We had the most enormous, big gay rainbow across my electorate. It has to be a sign!”

You can watch Maurice Williamson’s superb speech in full below:

New Zealand Minister Delivers Stirring, Hilarious Marriage Equality Speech [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

MY BODY IS READY

Here’s another Roomba, sort of.

Dedicated to Franco in Peru – happy birthday Franco!!

Here’s more Chewbacca.

Submitted by: adel_maiden
Posted at: 2013-04-11 23:42:56
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/7072236

Submitted by:
Posted at: 2013-04-10 20:29:16
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This boxy monstrosity is big for a reason. It lets you play games on the original hardware of fifteen different gaming consoles. That’s right, we said original hardware. One of the main goals of Project Unity was to keep the stock equipment by making any type of emulation — hardware or otherwise — taboo. The size of the case is a function of how much stuff is actually crammed in there. But the final shape was dictated by the available opening in [Bacteria's] living room entertainment center.

The video after the break walks us through each aspect of the build. We’re floored by the quote of 3,500 hours of build time. But as you get a look at the wiring-hell of each different module it’s easy to understand why it didn’t just build itself. One power supply and one controller make for the least complicated user experience possible. We already looked at a giant switching mechanism that selects one console at a time and the singular controller unit. But [Bacteria] has a lot of other tricks up his sleeve which make this gold mine of a hacking reference piece.

The Rain Man (Kim Peek), was the only savant known to science who could read 2 pages of a book simultaneously – one with each eye.

source

The Emmy Award-winning intro is even cooler than you thought.

You know that astrolabe that surrounds the Westerosi sun?

Pictured: that astrolabe that surrounds the Westerosi sun.

Via: artofthetitle.com

Those rotating bands depict major events from the history of the Seven Kingdoms

An early artist's conception of the astrolabe.

Via: artofthetitle.com

First, the Targaryen dragon attacks some cities and towns.

House Targaryen conquered Westeros three hundred years before the first episode of Game of Thrones takes place. The dragons they brought with them from their ancient homeland helped Aegon the Conqueror forge the Iron Throne from the swords of the lords they conquered. For three centuries, those dragons kept the Seven Kingdoms under Targaryen rule -- and then the dragons died out.

The Stark wolf, Lannister lion, and Baratheon stag then defeat the Targaryen dragon together during Robert's Rebellion.

Two decades before the first episode takes place, a Targaryen prince kidnaps Lyanna Stark, the fiancée of Robert Baratheon and sister of Eddard Stark. After Eddard's father and brother are murdered by the Mad King Aerys while petitioning for her release, the Starks and the Baratheons rise up in rebellion against the Iron Throne. House Lannister joins the rebels late in the war, sacking King's Landing and killing the last Targaryen king and his family.

View Entire List ›

I hadn't heard of this term before, but it's an interesting one. The excerpt below is from an interview with Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster:

The term "elite panic" was coined by Caron Chess and Lee Clarke of Rutgers. From the beginning of the field in the 1950s to the present, the major sociologists of disaster -- Charles Fritz, Enrico Quarantelli, Kathleen Tierney, and Lee Clarke -- proceeding in the most cautious, methodical, and clearly attempting-to-be-politically-neutral way of social scientists, arrived via their research at this enormous confidence in human nature and deep critique of institutional authority. It’s quite remarkable.

Elites tend to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own human nature. I mean, people don't become incredibly wealthy and powerful by being angelic, necessarily. They believe that only their power keeps the rest of us in line and that when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise to the surface -- that was very clear in Katrina. Timothy Garton Ash and Maureen Dowd and all these other people immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn't actually happen; it's tragic.

But there's also an elite fear -- going back to the 19th century -- that there will be urban insurrection. It's a valid fear. I see these moments of crisis as moments of popular power and positive social change. The major example in my book is Mexico City, where the '85 earthquake prompted public disaffection with the one-party system and, therefore, the rebirth of civil society.

Submitted by: Unknown

I’ve received so many great pieces of advice over the years, from family and friends, from great books, and from wise people.

Recently, I sat down to make a list of the key pieces of advice that I wanted to make sure to clearly pass along to my children. Part of my role as a parent is to fill in the gaps that they don’t learn in school, after all.

As the list grew, I found some of the items to be very useful and some perhaps not so useful. A handful of them rose to the top of the list, though.

Here are five really useful pieces of advice that have served me very well in many different aspects of my life. They’ve helped my career, my personal relationships, my finances, and my personal growth as well. May you find some value in them, too.

1. Smile a lot. Be nice, too.
Over the long haul, people gravitate toward others that they perceive as being happy and pleasant and gravitate away from people who are negative. If you make a conscious effort to be kind to everyone and keep a smile on your face regularly, the net benefits will really add up over time in the form of better relationships with people and a stronger social reputation.

I use two little tactics here that work really well. I try to keep several things in mind that naturally make me smile and I think about them regularly, particularly when I see or meet other people. Thinking about a hug from my youngest child brings a smile to my face really quickly and I can draw on that in mixed situations to mask any uncertainty I might be feeling.

Similarly, if I don’t have something nice to say, I don’t say it. I usually try to think of something nice to say, though. Sometimes, when criticism is called for or asked for, I give it, but I include the positive aspects as well. The simple act of having the courage to put yourself up there for criticism deserves respect and a kind word.

2. A daily routine that makes you feel healthy and energetic makes the rest of the day much more productive, making up for the time you invested.
For a long time, I thought the idea of spending half an hour exercising in the middle of my work day was a terrible idea. I viewed it as half an hour of vanishing productivity.

Over time, what I found was that after exercising, I focused really well. I felt better and that made it easier to just bear down on the task at hand. I didn’t get distracted nearly as much and I wound up usually being more productive over the course of an entire day than a day where I didn’t exercise.

Find room for some exercise and for an actual healthy meal. The rest of the day will be more productive because of that break and because you’re treating your body well.

3. Just start doing what you want to do. If you have a job you don’t like, view that job as your “funding phase.”
If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a sportscaster, volunteer to do voiceover work for tapes of high school games. If you want to make films, get out your camera and write a script.

Just do whatever it is you dream about doing. Try to do it at least a little bit each day.

Yeah, most of us have a job that doesn’t revolve whatever it is that we want to be doing. View that job as your “funding phase.” It’s how you’re investing time to finance what it is that you really want to be doing.

Taking this to heart might mean sacrificing some free time. Trust me – it’s well worth it.

4. Good. Inexpensive. Fast. Pick two.
Any task you take on in life is constrained by a lot of factors. How long will it take? How much will it cost? How good is the result? Almost always, you end up having to choose good results with regard to two of those factors and expect a bad result for the third one.

You can fix a good and inexpensive dinner, but it probably won’t be fast. You can get a good and fast dinner, but you’ll probably pay a lot for it. You can make a fast and inexpensive dinner, but it probably won’t be a great dinner. Which do you choose?

You can apply this to work tasks as well. I am constantly making this choice with my professional life and the projects and tasks I take on. The only way I can do something really well and do it quickly, for example, is to hire people to help out, which makes it expensive. Similarly, I can do a task quickly and without help, but it won’t be done with a high level of quality. I can do it myself with a high standard of quality, but it will take a long time. Which do I choose?

Knowing that you’re going to have to make that choice in advance makes it easier to make decisions and plan out your ife.

5. You are the average of the five people you associate with the most.
Make a list of the five other people you associate with most in your life. Consider a particular trait shared by all of those people, and rank the other five. Most of the time, you’ll be right around the middle of that list if you included yourself on it.

In other words, our performance and our life is in many ways dictated by who we spend our time with. We become like the people we associate with the most.

Thus, the best way to improve yourself is to make a conscious effort to associate with people who are strong in a particular area where you want to improve. If you want to read more, hang out with other people who read. If you want to get in shape, hang out with people who make physical fitness a part of their life. If you want to be frugal, hang out with the frugal people, not the big spenders.

They’ll rub off on you.

The post Five Little Pieces of Advice That Changed My Life appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Lol by: Unknown (via Tastefully Offensive)

Well let me tell you, it was quite the pragmatic purchase. It has endless uses in my morning routine.

Such as making the bed:

Making toast:

Getting things off high shelves:

Making coffee:

Reaching the remote when it’s too far away:

And assisting me when I ran out of toilet paper:

I don’t know how I survived life without it.

Uruk-Hai Scimitar by Zoë [tumblr]