Paulahmartin

Writes our submitter in Florida: “My husband walked into his office breakroom to find this note. He immediately went back to his desk to write a response, but by the time he made it back to the fridge, he found that someone else had beat him to it.”

related: Coffee, mate?

English and Communication Librarian (University of Arkansas Libraries, Arkansas)
The University of Arkansas Libraries seek energetic, innovative, and public service-oriented candidates for the position of English and Communication Librarian.  Integral to this work are effective teaching, research assistance, creating instructional materials, utilizing technologies, and participating in outreach.  The successful applicant will possess strong analytical, organizational, and communication skills and the ability to work independently and collegially.  Reporting to the Director for Academic and Research Services, the librarian serves as the principal liaison and selector to the English Department and the Department of Communication working in the departments to ensure that the faculty and students have appropriate support. General Duties:  Coordinates with instructional designers to ensure library instruction is infused into department curriculum.  Participates in the Humanities Selectors Group and collaborates with colleagues throughout the Libraries.  Supports interdisciplinary needs and shares knowledge in support of liaison activities.  Works as a member of the Information Commons Team to provide high quality reference services to students, faculty, and other users of the University Libraries.  Participates in on-call, virtual, evening, weekend, and holiday reference services on a rotating basis.  Contributes to cooperative collection development initiatives; maintains awareness of collection development and scholarly publishing trends in research, libraries, and the commercial sector; and assists in monitoring vendors and materials budgets in assigned areas of responsibility. Rank and Salary:  Tenure-track, twelve-month faculty appointment at the rank of Assistant Librarian / Assistant Professor.  Minimum salary: $45,000. For the full posting and application procedures, please see http://hr.uark.edu/jobdetails.asp?ListingID=7008. The University of Arkansas is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity institution committed to achieving a culturally diverse faculty.  Persons hired must have proof of legal authority to work in the United States.  All applicants are subject to public disclosure under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

by Mike Dang

In one high-profile case, the home furnishings and cookware chain Williams-Sonoma matched names from its credit card sales and ZIP codes with a database to obtain addresses and other information for future marketing. One woman sued, saying she provided her ZIP code thinking it was necessary to complete the credit card transaction. In the resulting case the Direct Marketing Association and privacy groups showed sharply different outlooks on the practice. The case eventually made its way up to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in 2011 that stores cannot require patrons to furnish their ZIP code. California later confirmed the ruling in a law that bars firms from collecting personally identifying information during credit card transaction. Courts in other states such as Massachusetts earlier this year have reviewed the issue.

Have you ever wondered why stores ask for you zip code when you’re checking out at the register? I always figured they just wanted to know which areas shoppers came from so they could figure out where to open more stores and didn’t think about it too much. There’s much more to it, of course. Forbes gives a rundown on why we should probably never give stores our zip code.

Photo: Allie Caulfield

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A Texas anti-abortion bill giving new meaning to the word omnibus — one that would, like so several others passed by state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives this year, ban abortions after 20 weeks and, in a drastic move, cut the number of abortion clinics in the state from 42 to five — gained preliminary approval in the Texas House early this morning. The vote arrived after more than 13 hours of debate, during which the bill's sponsor revealed that she had little to no idea what rape kits are, telling everyone in the statehouse they're used so women "can get cleaned out" and prevent pregnancy.

Usually, elected officials have at least some idea about the particulars behind the bills they sponsor. Maybe they don't agree with you, but at the very least a citizen should hope politicians have a basic grasp of the issue at hand. Enter SB 5. The bill, which passed by a vote of 99-73, would not only enact an unconstitutional ban on abortions after 20 weeks but would also make abortion clinics meet the standards of surgical centers. That sounds like a good safety measure, but it's actually an end-around on abortion access: Only a handful of the 42 clinics in Texas would be able to reach those standards, and Planned Parenthood estimates the measure would leave Texas with 37 fewer places for women to go.

SB 5 was introduced by Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (left), a Republican with a history of proposing to remove women's health programs in the state, sometimes under the guise of fiscal responsibility. Laubenberg is, of course, entitled to her views and is representing the view of her constituents in District 89, deep in the heart of Dallas and Plano. But during last night's debate, which lasted until Laubenberg's final appearance at around 3:20 a.m., a Democrat had proposed that there be an exemption made for women who were victims of rape or incest, as so many abortion bills have over the past year when they seem to pop up in statehouses every few weeks. Laubenberg then explained that there was no need for such an amendment, because Laubenberg erroneously believes that rape kits eliminate the possibility of conception through rape and incest. Laubenberg said:

In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out ... The woman had five months to make that decision, at this point we are looking at a baby that is very far along in its development.

The Associated Press reports that Laubenberg continued, "comparing the procedure to an abortion." Rape kits, of course, are the set of tools used by medical personnel to determine if a woman has been raped — swabs, combs, evidence-collection sheets, and more. There are stories about how the kits go untested for decades, which is a different kind of outrage on its own. Basically, when the general public refers to rape kits, they're not referring to contraceptives. But Laubenberg implies that a woman who didn't get "cleaned out" by her fictional version of rape kit has waited too long "to make that decision."

"Laubenberg, who has difficulty debating bills, then simply rejected all proposed changes to her bill without speaking until the end of the debate," reads the report from the AP. Huh? Isn't a politician "who has difficulty debating bills" not unlike a doctor "who has difficulty diagnosing diseases?" In 2011, when it was pointed out to her by a budget expert that women's health programs actually save the government money because there would be fewer babies born under the state's Medicaid program, Laubenberg accused the Legislative Budget Board of using "government math."

In 2003, Laubenberg voiced her opinion on an abortion bill that proposed that women wait two hours before obtaining an abortion. That's a relic of the past now that Texas requires a mandatory trans-vaginal sonogram and a 24-hour waiting period for women who want to have abortions, but that 2003 bill would have forced doctors to explain things like the "liability of the father to pay child support, medical assistance for prenatal care, childbirth and neonatal care," the AP reported at the time. Laubenberg said it was an affront to women's intelligence: "A woman in that situation is frightened and confused and not thinking straight," she said. District 89's representative could just as well have been describing herself on Sunday night and Monday morning.

Texas's Senate Democrats have said they will try and stage a filibuster on Tuesday to try and block Laubenberg's bill. Long week down there.

Launched in November 1981, the Soviet Union’s Venera 14 probe carried a spring-loaded arm to test the soil of Venus.

The craft journeyed for four lonely months to reach its destination, descended safely through the hostile atmosphere, and landed securely on the surface.

The spring-loaded arm plunged downward — into a camera lens cap, which had just fallen there.

(Thanks, Merv.)

What would the world be like without murder? Well, there would be more people which means more people on welfare because there wouldn’t be enough jobs for everyone.

I need to try this.
Via

Available here

It is not unusual for a city or county to build statues to important people or events commemorating its past, but Hamilton County, Indiana, may be on the verge of a first.

They're constructing statues of squirrels to mark an event in Indiana history. Dave Heighway knows all about it.



As the Hamilton County historian, he's been educating all who will listen about the 1822 and 1845 stampedes where migratory squirrels destroyed cornfields as they trekked across Indiana.

He told the Hamilton County Leadership Academy and members secured a grant to start work on a mockup for a fibreglass squirrel. The group would like to see half a dozen of these in all eight Hamilton County communities. The fibreglass statues are expected to cost between $500 to $1,000 each to produce.

With news video.

The man threw the bear one piece of meat, then offered another -- and the bear attacked. 

TAX-PAYER funded rhino

The Animal Clinic of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, got a surprise this week when a city worker brought in six squirrels fused together by their tails.
 


Although quite uncommon, the veterinarian community does have a term for it - squirrel kings - since the rodents move together as one giant squirrel when their tails are entangled. “It just doesn’t happen too often,” said Dr. Steven Kruzeniski, who works with the Animal Clinic of Regina. “It’s a pretty rare thing to see but I have seen it happen once before.”





This particular group of six were nesting near a pine tree and sap fused their tails together. A city of Regina worker found the young squirrels and brought them to the clinic. The animals were sedated and the veterinarian team worked to untangle the mess of tails. Their tails were then shaved of the matted fur and they were given antibiotics to prevent infection.



Dr. Kruzeniski says the young squirrels were lucky to keep their tails as in some more extreme cases they have to be amputated. “They were brought in quickly,” said Dr. Kruzeniski, “They all got to keep their own tails, which is not always the case.” The six squirrels have been released back into the city’s green-space.

By now you've no doubt seen the latest hilarious graduation wreck to hit the interwebz. You know, the ol' "mixed up graduation CAP with CAT" routine:

Give it a minute.

Theeeere it is.

 

Now, while I love the fact that Laura's mom Carol wouldn't let the bakery fix it because it was so darn funny, I still feel kinda bad that Laura didn't get her cakey grad cap. So, Laura? THIS ONE'S FOR YOU:

Oops. Wrong year. Hang on...

 

That's better. And really, haven't you always wanted a square fez, Laura? Square fezzes are cool.

 

Or perhaps you've always dreamed of being a melted Stay Puft Marshmallow Man:

All the other kids at Camp Waconda will be so jealous!

("When someone asks if you need refrigeration, you say YES!!")

 

Or if you're feeling especially presidential:

Reverse top hat? No? C'mon, it even comes with a "Congralutations" and an albino ham hock!

 

Ok, ok, I guess you want something that actually looks like a grad cap, huh? Alright, um...

Nooo...

 

Well, we already know what THIS looks like... [evil grin]

 

And I think this is what Lady Gaga wore to her graduation:

 

Huh. Well, you know, Laura, it's not like the baker would have gotten it right anyway. I mean, look what happened when this guy wanted a cap drawn on his head:

I think your problem is less zombies and more levitating head wear. And improper spacing.
("Zombies eat me?")

 

Yep, come to think of it, Laura, you're just never going to win with that cap order. So, here, I got you something even better:

 

Thanks to Elda P., Gideon M., Kort, Jeanne H., John C., Shara S., Liz S., and Stephanie F. for knowing that's not just a car, it's a CAB. Eh? Eh? I'll be here all week! Tip your bloggers!

Fear Not! Ne’er that kind of chain mail. This kind.
Verily, ye shall seek thee noble Guinea Peeg chain mail on eBay. ’Tis most splendid! HUZZAH!

Nikki K., what say you? “You HAVE to see this completely redonk eBay listing my vet’s office shared with me. There are a bunch of photos on the listing! This is a charity auction listing on eBay for a hand-made Guinea pig-sized chain mail and helmet to benefit the Metropolitan Guinea Pig Rescue“: Is your pet guinea pig tired of wandering around the house unarmored and vulnerable? Has your guinea pig ever wanted to go to a Renaissance Faire but had nothing to wear? This hand-made scale-mail and tiny steel helmet will keep your guinea pig protected and secure in all situations. The scale-mail is made from polished steel scales and steel rings. It was painstakingly “woven” by me over several weeks in an effort to better prepare my guinea pig Lucky for the dangers of the modern world. The helmet was purchased at a Renaissance Faire later as it was the perfect finishing touch. (Only 5 4 days left!)

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Guinea Pigs, Pocket Pets

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Perhaps more than any segment of the technology industry, gamer culture has had its fair share of sexism problems, so it's not that surprising that a Microsoft presenter slipped an apparent rape reference into a Monday presentation at Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, the biggest video-game conference of the year. During a demo of Killer Instinct to drum up excitement for its new Xbox One, Microsoft brought out a man and a woman to battle it out on the big screen onstage in Los Angeles. In this scripted event the man, of course, kicks the woman's ass at the fighting game. "I can't even block correctly and you're too fast," she says, playing a video game like a girl. But even more problematic than those stereotypical gender roles was the part when her adversary said this: "Just let it happen. It will be over soon." You know, like a rape:

The audience chuckled. "Wow, you like this," the man continues, as he beats the virtual woman. And the woman, much like someone being sexually assaulted, replies: "No, I don't like this." 

There has been much Internet discussion over whether rape jokes can ever be funny — that is, when coming from professional funny people, not gaming nerds on stage representing one of the biggest gaming influencers and tech companies in the world. Considering the professional setting of this particular "joke," in an industry not exactly known for welcoming women, we'd say this falls under the "not funny" category. Sadly, this marginalization of women isn't unusual for E3 either. So much so that the Devin Faraci, who first spotted the incident over at Badass Digest, added some big-picture context: "what makes this a big deal isn't the fact that it happened," he wrote suggesting this kind of thing is par for the course. Rather, Faraci continued, "it's indicative of a larger cancer eating away at the gaming community (and, to be fair, many other geek communities, but it seems most horrible in gaming). This, basically, is what institutionalized misogyny looks like." 

Xbox One, in case you were wondering, goes on sale in November for $499. You can pre-order it now.

The stand-up is back with another run of his Webby-winning online series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. He tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer the project still feels like a personal outing with friends from the business.

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My label-mate David Graham finds the GOP saying dumb things about women, pregnancy, and rape again:

"Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject -- because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said.

Franks continued: "But when you make that exception, there's usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that's what completely negates and vitiates the purpose of such an amendment."

STUDY DESIGN: A national probability sample of 4008 adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and mental health outcomes. 

RESULTS: The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion. 

CONCLUSIONS: Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization.

Each year in the US, 10,000-15,000 abortions occur among women whose pregnancies are a result of reported rape or incest. An unknown number of pregnancies resulting from rape are carried to term. There is absolutely no veracity to the claim that "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." A woman who is raped has no control over ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg (ie, pregnancy). To suggest otherwise contradicts basic biological truths.

The cashless society -- a world where physical money is practically obsolete -- has, in just a few years, gone from a utopian dream to something like an inevitability. In Sweden, a national effort is underway to take the country cashless within two decades. Throughout Africa, it's perfectly common for merchants to accept money through mobile phones by having buyers transfer a specific amount of money to a specific number associated with the merchant.

In the U.S., the road to cashlessness is paved in plastic (glass, too). In the 1970s, fewer than 20 percent of the adult population owned a credit card. Today, between 70 and 80 percent of the adult population does. In some cities, being forced to pay with cash already feels like a precious anachronism ("What do you mean I have to count the money before extending my arm to the register?").

The world of economic research has tried to keep pace with the plastic revolution, producing hundreds of reports on how MasterCard, Visa, and AmEx change our relationship to money and ourselves. The logic of credit is fairly simple. People rarely spend exactly what they earn, exactly when they earn it. With savings, we pass today's earnings to the future. With credit, we pull expected future earnings into today.

The problem is that consumers (and perhaps Americans, in particular) aren't so good at either. We don't save much, and we're awful at projecting future earnings, spending far more than we're able to pay back quickly. Lower-income people, consumers who are worse at math, people who self-report emotional instability, introversion, or materialism, have all been found to get into trouble with credit cards. Here are some more findings from the reams of credit card research -- and few of them are good.

Credit Cards Are Making You Irresponsible
The typical knock on credit cards is that they're too effective at letting us buy stuff. Cash and coins must be considered, handled, counted, organized, re-counted, negotiated into the small space of a palm, and delivered cleanly to a merchant. Each of these verbs represents an inconvenience -- a point of friction. But a card is just a card. Pull, swipe, finished. It's so easy to spend whatever we want.

Too easy, actually. Research has shown that people who own more credit cards spend more over all; more in specific stores; more at restaurants; more on tips at restaurants ... literally, there are hundreds of studies on the effect of credit cards on spending, and the vast majority of them find that, all things equal, we put more on plastic.

In 2001, two business professors from MIT organized an auction for Boston Celtics tickets where one group bid with cash and one group bid with credit. The credit card group offered nearly twice as much for the tickets. "Framing hypothetical purchases as credit card payments may significantly increase likelihood of purchase and willingness to pay," the researchers wrote. They put their cheeky credit card advice right there in the headline: "Always Leave Home Without It." 

Credit Cards Are Making You Forgetful
The downside of counting money is that it takes time and effort. The upside is that it takes time and effort. That makes it more memorable. Cards make us forget we're dealing with money. They create "an illusion of liquidity," wrote Dilip Soman, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, that makes consumers confuse the ability to spend money and the means to spend money. When paying with plastic, buyers have a tendency to outsource their mindfulness to the card. As a result, they were less likely to remember details about their purchases and more likely to buy additional items.

Credit Cards Are Making You Fat
The "pain" of paying with cash has a hidden benefit. It makes it harder to quickly capitulate to indulgences. Credit card "weaken impulse control," Manoj Thomas, Kalpesh Kaushik Desai, and Satheeshkumar Seenivasan found in a 2011 paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food products when they pay by credit card than when they pay in cash." Studying the contents of shopping baskets, the three economists found that shoppers with credit cards bought a larger share of food items they had ranked as unhealthy. In this way, the permissiveness of credit cards weakens consumers' judgment in more subtle ways than total amount spent.

Credit Cards Exacerbate Income Inequality
It's easy to see how credit cards might allow low-income families to spend more than they earn, allowing them to live a more comfortable upper-income life. But there are a few problems with that story. First, families can't outrun their actual earnings, and too often credit cards provide the illusion of a better life followed by the crushing reality of debt and costly penalties. More subtly, credit cards create a transfer of money from the poor to the rich by punishing non-credit-card consumers. In their paper "Who Gains and Who Loses from Credit Card Payments?" Scott Schuh, Oz Shy, and Joanna Stavins pointed out that credit cards incur merchant fees that show up in other prices. Unable to impose a surcharge penalty on credit card customers alone, merchants often raise prices for all customers. This creates higher costs for non-card-carrying (often low-income) shoppers. So, credit cards both mitigate income inequality in the short run and exacerbate it in the long run.

Lego figurines are increasingly being designed to look full of "anger" and "disdain," according to a group of New Zealand researchers. But before you throw the building blocks out with the bathwater and lose all faith in humanity over a long-time childhood staple, there's a logical explanation for why Legos are bringing out the bad in people. And it involves Harry Potter.

The study comes from Christoph Bartneck and Mohamad Obaid from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and from Karolina Zawiesk, who works at the Industrial Research Institute for Automation in Poland. The three scientists studied, cataloged, and photographed over 3,600 Lego figurines that the Denmark-based Lego Company released between 1975 and 2010. The researchers showed the toy faces to study subjects and asked people to judge what kind of emotion they interpreted as emanating from the inanimate toys.

Turns out, the number of happy Lego faces got smaller as the Lego brand grew up:

The two most frequent expressionsare happiness and anger and the proportion of happy faces is decreasing over time.

The evidence of the study is perhaps best summarized in this graph, which shows the dominance of "happy" Lego faces waning: 

Here's the full breakdown of Obaid, Bartneck, and Zawieska's six key clusters of Lego face emotion: 

On a philosophical level, those results can be interpreted as a bit sad. After all, Legos are supposed to encourage fun, creativity, and excitement in the brains of elementary school engineers. So are the famously yellow — and famously simple-faced — figurines reflecting our own "fear" and "anger" back at us? Well, not exactly. 

The first thing you have to remember is that back in the 1970s, smiley faces were the only Lego faces that even existed. Case in point: this Lego Family from 1974....

Or, as the blogger at Toys2Remember reminded us, sometimes Lego people didn't have faces at all, like this 1977 Rescue Lego set:

The Astronaut Lego looks pretty happy next to this 1979 space radar truck:

And look how happy these knights are from the 1980s castle set:

They're almost as happy as the 1980s Starfire Lego dude:

Those are definitely little smiley faces staring back at you, because for a long time in Lego world, smiley-faced figurines were all you could buy. So if you're researching reactions to faces over time, the introduction of not-smiley faces would inherently bring down the proportion of "happy" reactions from the study group. And the New Zealand study even notes that new faces weren't fully introduced until the 90s — and that introduction made their study more difficult to map:

Only in the early 90s did the LEGO company start to produce a greater variety of faces ...  This scatter makes it very difficult to create a model that would adequately represent the development of faces over time.

Plus, it's not like the Lego Company was trying to mimic life as super violent or angry. As the authors of the study note, there is no Lego D-Day, Lego Desert Storm, or Lego Seal Team Six. But there are toy sets inspired by Harry Potter and Star Wars, and you kinda need sad faces to tell those stories. "Often a good force is struggling with a bad one. May it be the goodknights against the skeleton warriors or the space police againstalien criminals," the study states, explaining the necessity for those angry faces. Basically, Lego Harry fighting Voldemort wouldn't be the same if both them were grinning wildly. Blame pop culture, not your disdainful old self.

Obaid, Bartneck, and Zawieska note that even though they're concerned with the number of "angry"-inducing faces being produced, there's still no hard evidence on how these not-smiley affect they children (and adults!) who play with them — if they do it all. And there are bigger concerns here, people; for starters: Lego hair. 

If you’ve played just about any of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. games then you’ll be all too familiar Bowser, fearsome “King of the Koopa” and Mario’s spiky antagonist. But did you ever stop to consider him as something cute? Nope, neither did we. At least, not until we saw this awesome crocheted sweater, made by craft maven Jennifer Olivarez of Squirrel Picnic.

Jennifer was challenged by Lisa Egolf to crochet a sweater for her pet turtle, named Myrtle: “so that he would be easy to spot when she lets him loose to play in the courtyard of the school where she teaches science. ‘I think bright yet manly colors would be best,’ she said, because after all this Myrtle is male (don’t judge). So I set out to design the most masculine turtle sweater I could.”

When considering tough chelonians, Jennifer immediately thought of Bowser the video game villain. We love that this sweater makes Myrtle look terrifically tough and yet also incredibly cute. It’s a winning combination and Myrtle looks ready to take on the world or at least seriously menace some fresh veggies.

But the best part is that Jennifer also shared a thorough step-by-step guide for making this awesome turtle sweater over on her website. So now anyone else make one too, and that includes you.

[via Kotaku and Laughing Squid]

Jimmy Fallon pieces together footage of NBC news anchor Brian Williams to make him rap Snoop Dogg's Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang.


Also, from rap anchor Brian Williams: Ice Cube's Straight Outta Compton, Warren G.'s Regulate

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon