firehose

WDSU New Orleans

Ryan calls for both Obamacare repeal and finding 'common ground' in budget fight Washington Post Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that the budget blueprint he plans to unveil this week will promote repealing President Obama's signature health-care law. “Yes, our budget does promote repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a better system,” Ryan ... Paul Ryan to unveil new budget plan on TuesdayCBS News Republicans Plan to Repeal ObamacareMaboot Ryan Says His Budget Would Slow Annual Spending Growth to 3.4%Bloomberg ModernHealthcare.com -USA TODAY -Fox News all 54 news articles »

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

lysistratas:

yes i am girl

yes i play hoop with stick

girl gamer

THAT STICK IS TOTALLY THE WRONG KIND OF STICK TO PLAY HOOP WITH STICK WITH

Clearly she is a fake girl gamer…

Just pretending to be into hoop with stick to try and seduce the few guys left who haven’t died of the plague…

How NOT to use Google Glass.

Scientists Create Automated 'Time Machine' to Reconstruct Ancient Languages:

transliterations:

First, a crash course in “proto-langauges”, also known as common ancestors, or parent languages, are grandmums and granddads of current, known languages, which are descended from them and have evolved from them. One proto-language can result in many languages that form a language family, depending on how promiscuous that proto-language was. (Sorry.) Latin is a proto-language, an exception in that it has been very well documented, unlike others.

The earliest known proto-languages include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Austronesian, which resulted in modern-day languages in modern-day Southeast Asia, parts of continental Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific. Knowledge of proto-languages isn’t, generally, very detailed - these languages are old, and reconstructing them takes time, even for the best linguists. The good folk over at UC Berkeley have gone and done one better, by creating a time machine - or, if you prefer, a “computer program” - that can

reconstruct more than 600 Proto-Austronesian languages from an existing database of more than 140,000 words, replicating with 85 percent accuracy what linguists had done manually.

The model the researchers at UC Berkeley made use of the established theory in linguistics that the evolution of words follows along the branches of the family tree of that language. The method linguists use to find and research proto-languages is called the “comparative method”, which is exactly what it sounds like: finding links and connections between languages, between sounds and their evolution, and if they share similarities to one mother tongue.

“To understand how language changes — which sounds are more likely to change and what they will become — requires reconstructing and analyzing massive amounts of ancestral word forms, which is where automatic reconstructions play an important role.”

Which is where the awesome time machine comes in, I believe.

LONDON — A widow's wish to hear her late husband's voice again has prompted London's subway system to restore a 40-year-old recording of the subway's famous "mind the gap" announcement.

The Underground, also known as the Tube, tracked down the voice recording by Oswald Lawrence after his widow, Margaret McCollum, approached its staff and told them what it meant to her.

Chinese speakers have phonetically transcribed the word "geek" as jíkè 极客, qíkè 奇客, etc., and these transcriptions are fairly widely used and recognized, even among Mandarin speakers (the initials would be velars in many non-Mandarin topolects, so they would sound more like "geek" than do the Mandarin pronunciations). So far, I don't know of any Chinese character transcription for "nerd", certainly none that is broadly circulating.

Although the English word "nerd" is widely known and used in China, it is puzzling that no character transcription has become popular for it, as have jíkè 极客 and qíkè 奇客 for "geek".  One of my hypotheses for the reluctance of Chinese speakers to attempt a transcription of "nerd" is that the final consonant cluster would be very difficult to render or approximate with characters.  But that could just be one of the reasons Chinese have not attempted to transcribe or tanscribe-translate "nerd".  It could also, or simply, be that Chinese have a harder time understanding the meaning of "nerd" than they do the meaning of "geek".

To force the issue, I asked about a dozen native speakers how they would transcribe "nerd" with Chinese characters.  Here are the results (thanks to Gianni Wan, Cheng Fangyi, and Cao Lin for help in assembling this information; note that I usually only give Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM] pronunciations; in most cases the characters are meant merely to transcribe the sounds of the English word, but sometimes they also secondarily convey a meaning that is more or less appropriate, so I also give literal translations of the individual characters):

From a Jin 晋 topolect speaker (age 30) who comes from Yulin, Shaanxi, but is living in Canton:  nè 讷 ("slow of speech; mumble; stammer") or nèdé 讷德 ("slow-of-speech virtue")

From a Hakka speaker (age 17) in Meizhou, Guangdong Province:  nède 讷的 ("one who is slow of speech")

A second reply from the same Hakka speaker:  nèdāi 讷呆 ("slow-of-speech dolt"), though he admits that the sound correspondence is not as good as his previous suggestion (I've also had this transcription confirmed from other sources)

From a Cantonese speaker (age 31) who comes from Liuzhou, Guangxi, but is living in Shenzhen:  nàdé 纳德 ("accept / admit / pay / offer virtue"), though this transcription is also used for "Nader", as in Ralph Nader (I've also had this transcription of "nerd" confirmed from other sources)

From a Mandarin-speaking graduate student (mid-20s) at Tsinghua University in Beijing who comes from Hunan:  nèdòu 讷豆 ("slow-of-speech bean")

From a speaker of Cantonese and Shanghainese, who comes from the north but is living in Shanghai:  nèdá 讷答 ("slow-of-speech answer")

From a speaker of Cantonese who comes from Xi'an, but is living in Shenzhen:  nède 讷的 ("one who is slow of speech")

And the last one, from a speaker of Shanghainese, who both comes from and is now living in Beijing:  nèdé 讷德 ("slow-of-speech virtue")

It is interesting that, in a separate note, this individual explicitly connects the nè 讷 ("slow of speech") of his ad hoc transcription nèdé 讷德 ("slow-of-speech virtue") with the bookish term mùnè 木讷 ("stiff; dull; sincere and honest but slow of speech").  I also find it fascinating that so many of my informants independently hit upon that rather odd character nè 讷 ("slow of speech; mumble; stammer") to render the "ne-" portion of "nerd".  In truth, however, there are very few characters in Mandarin that are pronounced "ne", though characters pronounced "na", of which there are many, could also have been used.  No matter what, it is serendipitously appropriate that nè 讷 ("slow of speech; mumble; stammer") conveys a meaning that Chinese speakers associate with "nerd".

In my original post on the subject of "nerd" in China, I noted with some puzzlement that èr 二 ("two") had been mentioned by several informants as recently being used in contexts that resemble those in which "nerd" appears in English.  In my latest round of inquiries, it was called to my attention that a fuller form of the expression is èrdāi 二呆 ("two / second dolt").  This still didn't make sense to me until I recalled that that the pronunciation of èr 二 ("two") in Japanese is "ni", and it also has an "n-" initial in older forms of Chinese.  In Cantonese èr 二 ("two") is ji6, so that wouldn't work, and in Taiwanese we have li7 / ji2, but in Shanghainese we have ni2, in Hakka we have [海陆丰腔] ngi6 [客语拼音字汇] ngi4 [沙头角腔] gni5 [陆丰腔] gni6 [梅县腔] ngi5 ng5 [台湾四县腔] ngi5 [客英字典] ngi5 [宝安腔] ngi5 [东莞腔] ngi5, and in Chaozhou (Chiuchow, Teochew) we have no6 (nõⁿ ) ri7 今又音ri6.  Consequently, in many Sinitic topolects, 二呆 ("two / second dolt") would sound something like "nidai", which is roughly within the ballpark for "nerd".

To return to the more direct character transcriptions of "nerd" that I discussed above, I think that the ones which incorporate 呆 are particularly clever, since that both sounds a bit like the final consonant of "nerd" and conveys the sense of "silly, daffy; dullard; dolt" — although that doesn't mean the same thing as "nerd", it is close to it in the eyes of many Chinese.  Meanwhile, again in the eyes of Chinese speakers, nè 讷 ("slow of speech; mumble; stammer") does fairly well for the "ne-" part of "nerd".  Consequently, I vote for nèdāi 讷呆 ("slow-of-speech dolt") as perhaps the best current Chinese transcription of "nerd", though, of course, it doesn't really sound a lot like "nerd", nor does it mean exactly what "nerd" does.  In the Chinese linguistic and social context, however, I suppose that something like nèdāi 讷呆 ("slow-of-speech dolt") will have to do, unless some daring folks simply want to adopt the word "nerd" itself and borrow it into their language.

As for the "r" sound of "nerd", it seems that it has been thrown to the winds.

—————–

Just after I finished the draft of this post, I received from one of our senior lecturers in Chinese some additional observations on the matter of "nerd" and "geek".  She suggested that "nerd" could be transcribed as nèdēer 讷嘚儿 and said that she had actually encountered this transcription online.  We've seen the nè 讷 ("slow of speech") character for the first syllable in many of the above listed transcriptions, but dē 嘚 offers a new twist.  On the one hand, because of the mouth radical, we may think of it as just a pure sound, but on the other hand it has a topolectal meaning which may have been subliminally present in the mind of the person who chose it, viz., "chatter" (the more usual meaning of "clatter of a horse's hooves" is irrelevant).  The er 儿 sound is also interesting, since — although it comes at the end — the person who selected it may have intended to represent the medial "r" of the English word.  But the final er 儿 also introduces an entirely new aspect to the conversation on "nerd", it conveys the sense of "young man; fellow; boy", thus raising the issue of gender, inasmuch as er 儿 tends strongly (while not exclusively) to refer to males.  In English, it seems to me that girls can definitely be nerds.  I'm certain that I've heard people talk about "nerdy girls".

Other renderings of "nerd" that our senior lecturer told me she had seen online are nèkè 讷客 ("slow-to-speak guest"), with the kè 客 ("guest") perhaps invoking something of the notion of xiákè 侠客 ("knight errant") (it clearly is not serving any transcriptional purpose here), and nèdēzú 讷嘚族 ("clan / tribe / family / race of nerds" [nèdēs, i.e., mumbling chatterers]).

The gendered conception of "geek" is clearly shown by our senior lecturer's coinage, jípǐnnán 极品男 ("top grade / quality / class / rank male"), which also shows that geeks to her are by no means situated on a low rung of the social scale.

Finally, our senior lecturer told me that her favorite proposal for "nerd" in Chinese is "BBT男", where "BBT" stands for "The Big Bang Theory", the title of a television series, and nán 男, of course, means "man; male; guy".  So "BBT男", i.e., "nerds" to our senior lecturer, are the kind of guys who elaborated the Big Bang Theory!

fuzzycatbutt:

seismogenic:

Tattoo You

This geologic cross section tattoo is one of my favorite pages in Carl Zimmer’s Science Ink.

First we had Rupert “can-dogs-find-their-way-home” Sheldrake peddling woo and antiscience at TEDx Whitechapel, and now, at the very same venue, we see Graham Hancock decrying materialism and spouting woo and pseudoarchaeology. Here’s his 18-minute talk:

I actually agree with Hancock’s argument that we should be allowed to take whatever consciousness-altering drugs we want, but I totally reject as unsupported his arguments about our ancestors’ evolution being triggered by hallucinogenic substances and about ancient cave art clearly reflecting psychedelic trances. And I strongly decry his anti-science rant that begins at 9:50:

“That leads me to ask, ‘What is death?’ Our materialist science reduces everything to matter—materialist science in the West says that we are just meat: we’re just our bodies, so when the brain is dead, that’s the end of consciousness. There is no life after death; there is no soul—we just rot and are gone. But actually, many honest scientists should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science, and we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain is involved in it in some way but we’re not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity. If you hold to that paradigm then of course you can’t believe in life after death: when the generator is broken, consciousness is gone.

But it’s equally possible that the relationship—and nothing in neuroscience rules it out—is more like the relationship of the t.v. signal and the t.v. set. And in that case, when the t.v. set is broken, of course the t.v. signal continues. And this is the paradigm of all the spiritual traditions: that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop. And really, if we want to know about this mystery, the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all! [Audience laughter.] Let’s go rather to the ancient Egyptians, who put their best minds to work for 3,000 years on the problem of death. . . “

Yep, consciousness is a mystery, but if anything will help us solve it, it will be reductionist science—certainly not woo or spirituality!

Hancock then argues that the best minds of the ancient Egyptians showed that our souls do live on after death and that we will be held accountable for our thoughts, actions, and deeds. (They divined this in part through “dream states” experienced from psychedelic plants.)  At the end, he argues that we may be denying ourselves the “next vital step” in our evolution—it’s not clear whether he means biological or cultural evolution—by refusing to sanction the use of psychedelic substances.

This, then, is Sheldrake-ian woo, and an unconscionable denigration of science in favor of  “insights” derived from ingesting drugs. It’s also the denigration of materialism: a criticism that, as the audience reaction shows, is favored by many.  Too many folks of a religious and spiritual bent resent the successes of science (as compared to faith) in understanding our cosmos, and often express this by hooting and jeering, as do Hancock and Sheldrake, at “scientific materialism.”  “There’s a lot more to the world!”, they cry.

That reminds me of a story that I may have told before.  When I was in college, a friend and I were—as was the custom in the Sixties—spending an evening under the influence of psychedelic substances. Suddenly I had a brilliant insight into the nature of the universe. Knowing I’d forget it, I wrote it down on a scrap of paper. After a while I went to bed, and when I awoke the next day I remembered the paper and reached eagerly into my pocket for it.  On it was scrawled my eternal truth, which turned out to be this:

“The walls are fucking BROWN.”

Many who grew up in the Sixties have a story like this.

I don’t deny that taking drugs can be a valuable way of expanding one’s consciousness. It was for me, for it reinforced my view that each of us is simply a small atom of animate matter in a very large universe, and helped me see the beauty around me that we often overlook. I think Sam Harris has made similar points. But taking drugs is not a substitute for science: it won’t help us understand whether we live on after death, or how consciousness arose, both physiologically and evolutionarily.

Here’s the TEDx blurb on Hancock:

Graham Hancock is the author of The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, Heaven’s Mirror, Supernatural and other bestselling investigations of historical mysteries.

His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have sold over five million copies worldwide. His public lectures and broadcasts, including two major TV series, Quest for the Lost Civilisation, and Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, have further established his reputation as an unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity’s past. Hancock’s first venture into fiction, Entangled, was published in 2010 and his second novel, War God, on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, will be published on 30 May 2013. Hancock maintains an active Facebook presence: http://www.facebook.com/Author.Graham…. His website is: http://www.grahamhancock.com.

Hancock believes that the Ark of the Covenant was real, and his book The Sign and the Seal (a bestseller, of course), is about his search for that Ark.

Over this weekend I’ve pondered whether talks like Sheldrake’s and Hancock’s should be taken down: would that be “censorship”? And then Carl Zimmer called my attention to this stipulation from the TEDx “rules” page:

Speakers must tell a story or argue for an idea. They may not use the TED stage to sell products, promote themselves or businesses. Every talk’s content must be original and give credit where appropriate. Speakers cannot plagiarize or impersonate other persons, living or dead.

Speakers must be able to confirm the claims presented in every talk — TED and TEDx are exceptional stages for showcasing advances in science, and we can only stay that way if the claims presented in our talks can stand up to scrutiny from the scientific community. TED is also not the right platform for talks with an inflammatory political or religious agenda, nor polarizing “us vs them” language. If Talks fail to meet the standards above, TED reserves the right to insist on their removal.

Sheldrake was not only selling his book, but making false claims about science. Hancock does the same thing by insisting that ancient Egyptians tell us things about our consciousness that science hasn’t—and can’t. TEDx has the right to remove talks that abrogate these rules (what is Hancock’s anti-science rant but “us versus them” stuff?), and it should remove Hancock’s and Sheldrake’s videos.  If they don’t, it will simply confirm a growing view that TED and its subsidiaries are moving away from good science and heading toward Deepak and Oprah.

The motto of TEDx is “ideas worth spreading.”  Well, so is manure.

h/t: Carl Zimmer

From a changes to the origin to the recent casting of Megan Fox as April O'Neil, few have been as critical of Michael Bay's "Ninja Turtles" reboot as TMNT co-creator Peter Laird. So what's a fan to do?

hipsterlibertarian:

Homeless mother who sent six-year-old son to better school in the wrong town jailed for five years

A mother who pleaded guilty to fraudulently enrolling her six-year-old son in the wrong school district has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Tonya McDowell sent her son to an elementary school in Norwalk, Connecticut, instead of her home city of Bridgeport.

The 34-year-old, who was homeless when she was charged with felony larceny last year, said she wanted the best education possible for the boy.

Read more here.

There is something criminal going on here, but this woman isn’t the one guilty of it.

Seattle bar bans use of Google Glasses - SlashGear:

“People want to go there and be not known… and definitely don’t want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the internet.”

watchanish:

HB

masterxkiller:

A visual description of my life.

Mar 9th 2013 By: Lauren Davis

There's a definite cute quality to Natali Martinez's artwork, which is filled with button noses and sparkly diamonds in the background. But she harnesses those powers of cute in often unexpected ways, imagining Freddy Krueger and the witchy foursome from The Craft as children's cartoon characters, giving Daria Morgendorfer even greater pathos by adding a doll-like quality to her usually thick-lined character design and mocking Frodo's quest to destroy the One Ring with some light animation.

Like so many of the artists we feature here, Martinez (a.k.a. Natali Koromoto) clearly has a great deal of affection for the subjects of her fan art, one that burst through clearly when she takes on tasks like reinterpreting scenes from The Simpsons opening or creating an otherworldly gif based on Looney Tunes' seminal "What's Opera, Doc?" But it's her original artwork that really stands out, with its strange mix of the sacred and the surreal. Her soft color palette and obsession with geometric patterns serve her well whether she's nestled herself in an animated bed of video games or leading a bearskin-wearing shaman to the secrets of the universe. Martinez designs a t-shirt line called Dream Warriors, though I'm rather partial to her art shop, where she sells her prints as well as oddball items like glow-in-the-dark dinosaur brooches and tooth-pendent necklaces. You can follow her latest artwork on Blogspot and Tumblr.

Data on the monthly number of American drone strikes in Afghanistan has been quietly scrubbed from public records, reports The Air Force Times. Last October, the Air Force began releasing the monthly totals of strikes in Afghanistan in an effort to give the public more detailed information on its overseas operations. But the initiative appears to have been reversed. The February numbers released March 7th just contain empty boxes for the drone strike data, and all of the previous data has also been deleted from older press releases on the site. The Defense Department says it was not involved in the removal of the statistics.

Scrutiny of American drone operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere continues to build. Last month, a United Nations report that the number of drone strikes increased 72 percent in 2012, and last week Senator Rand Paul filibustered John Brennan's CIA confirmation for 12 hours to draw attention to US drone policy.

• Via Gawker
• Source Air Force Times
• Related Items drone drone strike rpa air force data statistics

The newest Star Trek Into Darkness trailer focuses primarily on Captain James T. Kirk’s amusing hijinks, unlike the previous teaser which centered on the film’s mysterious villain. J.J. Abrams‘ latest installment in the Star Trek franchise will premiere on May 17th.

astroengine writes "Decades of searching and a 7.5 billion Euro particle accelerator later, why is everyone so down on one of the biggest discoveries of the century? Well, as the evidence strengthens for a bona fide signal of a 'Standard Model' Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, many scientists are disappointed that the discovery of an 'ordinary' — or 'vanilla' according to Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll — Higgs removes any doubt for more exotic physics beyond the Standard Model. It's a strange juxtaposition; a profound discovery that's also an anticlimax. But to confirm the identity of the Higgs candidate, LHC physicists still need to measure the particle's spin. 'Until we can confidently tie down the particle's spin,' said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci at this week's Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy, 'the particle will remain Higgs-like. Only when we know that is has spin-zero will we be able to call it a Higgs.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

le Bat

San Francisco Chronicle

For One Night, Sequester Becomes a Punch Line New York Times (blog) President Obama has indeed brought change to Washington: in exchange for his white-tied presence on Saturday night, he successfully pressured the journalistic elite at the 128-year-old Gridiron Club to shorten its often interminably long annual dinner roast. Obama Teases Reporters Bob Woodward, Ed Henry At Gridiron Club DinnerHuffington Post Joe Biden for Pope? Obama doles out jabs at annual Gridiron dinnerThe Guardian (blog) Obama the comedianPolitico (blog) New York Magazine -Washington Post -Wall Street Journal (blog) all 46 news articles »

“Hello. This is Jackie Russ, Eddy from the city of summer bell with information about road race related Street cushions this weekend. On Sunday, March 10th beginning at 9 AM. Police in traffic and parking personnel will be. D, torn vehicles in and around the Davis deal and ball square areas. To accommodate the running of the anywho abrasive violent road race. Secondary roads in these areas may also be close to through traffic for a brief time, major roadways, including calling St. Dale with Parkway, Potter house Blvd. Broadway and the ball square area. Cedar Street and Highland out between Cedar Street and Davis Square, will be closed from 11 AM to approximately 1 PM. The Davis Square area will be close to all traffic until approximately 1 PM, and buses to and from the Davis Square area will be re routed down. Elm St, buses along the rest of the route may be delayed for a short time, police and M E T A officials will be stationed throughout these areas to direct traffic and provide other information. If you have any questions, please call 311.”

The Boston Globe today broke the news that administrators at Harvard University secretly searched the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans last fall, in an attempt to determine the source of "a leak to the media about the school’s sprawling cheating case." [The Boston Globe]

Dreambox is a 3D printing vending machine that provides easy access to rapid manufacturing without the hassles of owning and operating a 3D printer. The machine is fully automated: users upload their design at the Dreambox website or at a Dreambox machine, the design is sent to the nearest vending machine, and once the object is printed it is stored in a locker until pickup. The machine is available 24/7 and prints have a same day turnaround time. The Dreambox team is based in Berkeley and the first machine will be launched at University of California, Berkeley on March 25, 2013.

via PSFK

Artist Bill Plympton has animated a couch gag opening sequence titled “Film Noir” for the March 10th, 2013 episode of The Simpsons, ”Black Eyed, Please.” Plympton previously animated a couch gag for the episode “Beware My Cheating Bart.”

via Cartoon Brew

Mike Moen of Crranky has developed and released a Skull Bottle Opener that comes complete with a 6 inch steel cable keychain. It is a “deathly cool way to open your beer.” The Skull Bottle Opener is available to purchase online.

images via Crranky

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

The Boston Festival of Indie Games submission process is now open for the September 14 event. The early registration fee is $20 until May 1 - after that, and until the deadline on June 20, fees are $25 for standard showcase entries, and $20 for student entries.

This is the second year the event is being held at various locations on the MIT campus. The showcase isn't just limited to digital games, as tabletop games form a new showcase category this year and include board and card games. Submissions for analog games will open on March 20.

Continue reading Second annual Boston FIG now accepting entrants

Second annual Boston FIG now accepting entrants originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ABC News

Storm that won't quit hits New England with surprising amount of snow, coastal ... Washington Post WHITMAN, Mass. — The late-winter storm that buried parts of the country was forecast to be little more than a nuisance for most of New England. Try telling that to Connecticut and Massachusetts residents who spent two days shoveling as much as 2 feet of ... Why was there so much more snow than predictedBoston.com Western Massachusetts catches a break, dodges worst of storm that slammed ...MassLive.com Late winter storm hits weather-weary N.J., causing wind damage and floodingThe Star-Ledger - NJ.com NBCNews.com (blog) -NorthJersey.com -The Republic all 227 news articles »

Young Daniel Bradman was a fan of the Man of Steel, and so for his bar mitzvah in 1988, his father Godfrey did what any real estate magnate would do: He commissioned DC Comics to create a custom Superman comic to serve as a party favor for guests.

But this wasn’t just any comic book. No, “This Island Bradman” was penciled by the legendary Curt Swan and inked by Angelo Torres, and followed Daniel, his half-brother Andrew Hunt and the rest of the family as they’re transported with their home — and Superman, naturally — to an alien world, where they’re to serve as entertainment. Superman is rendered powerless by kryptonite rays, leaving it up to the boys to rescue the superhero and return them home.

The issue, which Recalled Comics contends cost Bradman $18,000, is what Mark Waid has called “probably the rarest Superman comic in my lifetime,” as the print run was no more than 200; that figure comes from Paul Levitz’s 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, though other sources put it much lower. Needless to say, seldom does one crop up for sale. (Waid, who sold his own copy last year, talks about it in the video below.)

But Patch.com reports Blastoff Comics in North Hollywood, California, was contacted by Godfrey Bradman offering to sell a copy of “This Island Bradman.” Owner Jud Meyers purchased the comic, and then recently sold it to a French collector for $5,000. According to Recalled Comics, five were sold in 2011, with a CGC 9.6 copy fetching $2,600.

“It’s stuff like that that is fun and different,” Meyers told Patch. “Sure you can have an X-Men #1 or an Avengers #1, but there are other people who have it. I don’t know of any store I’ve seen [the Bradman issue] in.”

David Levin, who wrote the issue, has shared some of the pages (and his memories) on his blog.

Wall Street Journal

Fire Damages Famed Restaurant Chez Panisse Wall Street Journal Berkeley, Calif.'s renowned Chez Panisse restaurant will likely be closed for weeks following a small fire that broke out early Friday, although its upstairs cafe may reopen as soon as next week, said founder Alice Waters. Enlarge Image. image. Close. image ... The Porch Is Gone, the Memories RemainNew York Times (blog) Photos: Fire at Chez Panisse damages front of restaurantSan Francisco Chronicle (blog) Small fire damages Chez Panisse restaurant in BerkeleyLos Angeles Times The Daily meal -KSWT-TV -East Bay Express (blog) all 38 news articles »