CSI: WTF

Cell phone battery explodes, kills man.

An exploding mobile phone battery is thought to have killed a South Korean worker...

"We presume that the cell phone battery exploded," the police official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.

Kim Hoon, a doctor who examined the body, agreed.

"He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying. "It is presumed that pressure caused by the explosion damaged his heart and lungs, leading to his death."

Meanwhile, a New Zealand man said the battery in his Nokia mobile phone exploded while he was recharging it last night... A loud bang woke Norman Sievewright, from Auckland, in the middle of the night, the website said. He found that his Nokia mobile phone, which had been charging next to his bed, had exploded.

non-Clintobamwards Election Coverage

I rarely post items about national politics but I've been thinking about making an exception for items that are not about "Clintobamwards," as one blogger termed it . I encourage other bloggers to do the same.

Here is the NewsHour interview with Chris Dodd. You can read the transcript, download the mp3, or watch it via stream. It's a chance to inform oneself in a way that is rarely possible in a corporate media environment.

Ten Little Nincompoops

The National Association for the Advancement of Political Correctness has another, ahem, feather in its cap, thanks to Gary "you can call me Al Sharpton" Hines.

Ohio Dave posted a thoughtful perspective on the matter and points out the difficult position the school was in. But one thing he didn't mention was the Hines factor, which, to me, is clearly at the center of this manufactured controversy. This is apparent from both the Enquirer and Pulse-Journal articles. And check this out from the comments on Ohio Dave's post:


I am a student at Lakota East. I am very involved in the theater program there...

...the school did try very hard to work with the NAACP to create a "teachable moment" out of this situation. It could have been a great step forward for diversity in West Chester. An essay on the racial content of the original title was written by cast member Alicia Frost to be included in the program, and the NAACP was invited to help in a dialogue about the play. However, they refused this course of action and instead filed for a permit to protest the play.

The school then caved under this increased pressure. Gary Hines does have a very real history and finacial interest in promoting an image of my school as intollerant. While I agree that a discussion on racial issues is necessary in Lakota, Mr. Hines has chosen an unfortunate course of action in his attempts to generate that dialogue. Regardless of his intentions he has caused true and unfixable damage to the Lakota East theater program, and has tarnished the reputation of the NAACP in the minds of some of the school's most socially liberal students.


This has absolutely nothing to do with diversity, tolerance, justice, or racism. This has to do with yet another Sharptonite who perpetuates racism so he can make a living. God forbid this guy should set an example for black youth by getting a real job and emphasizing education as the cornerstone of success. They might stop believing his self-serving excuses. They might start turning out like this guy. Or this guy. Or this guy. Or the gentleman I mentioned two posts ago. Even women could be afflicted with success, like this one.

Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Damon Lynch III, and Chris Smitherman, Gary Hines is just another parasite feeding off the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm just glad King isn't around to see his greatness putrefied by these scum-sucking bottom feeders.

Yeah, I'm mad. Why shouldn't I be? All I see here is a self-righteous megalomaniac exploiting people and situations for his own benefit. The color of his skin is irrelevant. To me, he's cut from the same cloth as Karl Rove, Pat Robertson, and Wal-mart.

Or maybe I'm just a racist. After all, I did see this play at the Playhouse when I was in junior high...


A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard

Headlines I Can't Pass Up

If you don't want to suck you must learn to blow, music teacher tells wind players.

Kearney Helps America's Dunders Mifflin

From the Business Courier:

Senate Bill 258 would require 10 percent of all state purchases to be made from small businesses, according to a news release from Kearney's office. A small business is defined as a company that is majority-owned by U.S. citizens with fewer than 500 employees.

Kearney, a Democrat, represents most of the city of Cincinnati, along with Norwood, Golf Manor, Deer Park, Silverton, Cheviot, Addyston, North Bend and Cleves.

Dog Bites Tiger

Football has a high risk of injury but I must admit this is one I haven't seen before...



ESPN's page has a review of the game with better (but shorter) video of the strange incident.

Mike Huckabee Fisting for President

If awful campaign ads were the NFL then this ad would be the New England Patriots.



Not even more cowbell could save such a fetid plea.

Maybe it's just an election time thing but Canada seems better and better all the time.

Why Catholic Girls Like Barry White

Recent anthropological research:

Deeper voice pitch predicts reproductive success in male hunter-gatherers...

The anthropologists studied the reproductive patterns of the Hadza, a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer tribe that lives much the same way that most human beings did 200,000 years ago... The females gather berries and dig for tubers, while the males hunt animals and collect honey.

The researchers found that, controlling for age, males with lower vocal pitch had more surviving children.

Previous studies have also shown a relationship between testosterone and deeper vocal pitch, and so increased testosterone may contribute to the male's ability to hunt.

“It’s possible that vocal dimorphism has evolved over thousands of years, partly due to mate selection,” said Apicella. “Perhaps at one time, men and women's voices were closer in pitch than they are today.”

Greener Parking Lots

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Toronto is a great city and is a great model for Cincinnati to follow if it wants to become a world-class city.

Here's another great idea from our friends up north. Look at the before & after images to appreciate the transformation.

God, Gays, & Guns Visit Regional Campuses

Shorter this group: You really shouldn't do that. It could lead to dancing.

The first American Iraq casualty comes to campus to advocate more dancing.

OSU frat party ends in gunfire.


World Toilet Day bonus: Check out what passes for satire in a "conservative" student newspaper. Pathetic. But it helps one understand how someone like Ann Coulter fits in with the sensibilities of college Republicans.

Rude Foods

Homo
Pussi
Megapussi
Aass
Cemen
Fart
Muffs
Grated Fanny
In-n-Out
Perky Nana
Prick

These are just a few examples of words that describe food and drink around the world.

(And if you like that then you'll certainly want to peruse this list of place names like Dikshit, Big Beaver, Clit, Fucking, Lickham Bottom, Twatt, and so many more)

Dem Debate: Blitzer Comes in a Close 3rd

World O' Crap

Ironically enough, it was this Foodie Report post that sent me clicking around, eventually landing at the site of the World Toilet Summit which was just held in New Delhi.

Among the goals decided at the international crap conference:

India aims to eradicate open-air defecation by 2012 by building toilets for hundreds of millions of its poor and homeless, well ahead of a global deadline to do so, a government minister said.

An estimated 2.6 billion people, or about one-third of global population, do not have access to a proper toilet, according to the WHO.

More than half that number live in India or China, with India accounting for about 700 million people...

I've visited both those countries and have witnessed the problem. Now that I think about it, I've also seen it on a side street near Findlay Market and on N. Sheridan Ave. in Chicago. But not quite 700 million times.

While reading about the poop problem, I came across the "WTO" acronym a few times. Good to see them helping out the little guy, I thought. But it's not the World Trade Organization... it's the World Toilet Organization.

Two WTOs and they both pursue crappy projects. Go figure.

Visit the site. Click on 'toilet entertainment' and take the "what kind of toilet paper are you?" quiz. Or take the bathroom chemistry quiz. Or play 'Catch a Shit'. Or read about the World Toilet College.

Let me take a moment to thank everyone for having nothing better to do than read this blog. Since this blog is a piece of shit I thought this was a good subject for a post.

I wish all of you a very happy World Toilet Day (Monday, Nov. 19).

Reagan Redux Ruduxed

Paul Krugman recalls some "innocent mistakes" by the popularly and profoundly overrated President.

Skyline Chili in NYC!

Cincinnati expats jonesing for hometown chili in NYC have an option: Edward's.

Click on "Cincinnati Night."

The owner (that would be Edward) is the uncle of Kevin Youklis, a Cincinnati native (Sycamore H.S.) and proud owner of a new World Series ring. I presume Edward is the sibling of one of Kevin Youklis's parents and that's the Cincinnati connection.

So give it a try, New Yorkers!

(P.S. Your meal is not complete without Graeter's ice cream)

Two Things You Didn't Know About Ron Jeremy

1) Ron Jeremy (yes, THAT Ron Jeremy) has a master's degree in special education.

2) Ron Jeremy was at BGSU last night for a debate:

Last night in the Union, a debate raged -- the horny vs. the holy, the seedy vs. the sacred, the pervert vs. the preacher. Porn star Ron Jeremy, who has appeared in nearly 9,000 adult videos, and Chris Gross, an anti-porn advocate, argued over the effects of the pornography industry on society.

Predicting the Future of the Past Tense

Mathematical biology researchers at Harvard have quantified the rate at which irregular verbs become regular over time, at least in the English language. But the result is so precise that it is hard to imagine it wouldn't hold true for other languages.

Irregular verbs become regular at a rate that is inversely proportional to the square root of their usage frequency. So if verb X is used 1/10th as often as verb Y, it will become regular 100 times faster.

Lieberman and Michel's group computed the "half-lives" of the surviving irregular verbs to predict how long they will take to regularize. The most common ones, such as "be" and "think," have such long half-lives (38,800 years and 14,400 years, respectively) that they will effectively never become regular. Irregular verbs with lower frequencies of use -- such as "shrive" and "smite," with half-lives of 300 and 700 years, respectively -- are much more likely to succumb to regularization.

Lieberman, Michel, and their co-authors project that the next word to regularize will likely be "wed."

more...

Cincinnati Voters Make Strange Statement

Of all the scenarios I imagined, I have to admit that electing all 9 incumbents was not one of them.

We all know that incumbency has benefits. But when one considers that the Enquirer, CityBeat and local blogs all endorsed non-incumbents, it becomes more puzzling. Furthermore, WBDZ and Dan Hurley's NewsMakers also featured extensive forums with non-incumbents.

Do people around here even bother to learn about candidates anymore? I'm skeptical.

The most surprising result to me is the failure of Greg Harris. He was probably the most qualified candidate in the entire field. Nobody brought as much to the table as Harris. He was endorsed by the Enquirer, CityBeat, and local blogs, and his appearances on NewsMakers and WBDZ's forum were very impressive.

I'm guessing the reason for the council outcome has to do with the lack of a hot, divisive issue. There was such an issue, but it was a county issue that had nothing to do with council. That took the heat off council. There was nothing council-related that got voters hot under the collar. The only issue that came close was The Banks, on which there was minimal disagreement because everyone wanted "to move forward."

No heated issues, no divisive positions... incumbency.

Compare that to Kentucky, which booted out its corrupt Governor (and Atty General) with extreme prejudice. I guess Kentucky is more interested in moving forward than Cincinnati. Maybe Greg Harris should move there.

I'd be interested in further analysis of the council election. Maybe one of the CityBeat reporters can do so after Greg Flannery's orgasm is over.

A Warning About the Chicken Gyro at Chicago Gyros

Don't get the chicken gyro at Chicago Gyros (in Clifton).

The regular gyro is fine, and its deliciousness has been lauded by many, including me.

But I took home a chicken gyro a few weeks ago and it was awful. The chicken was tough, stringy, and tasteless. And it wasn't gyro style meat. There were only a few pieces (mercifully) of tough, stringy, tasteless chicken lightly seasoned and cooked on the grill. The meat must have come from a 100-yr old bird. I took 4 or 5 bites and into the garbage it went. Totally unacceptable.

Was this an anomaly? Does anyone else have a chicken gyro experience to report?

4 Things

"Oh, my head hurts so much. I'm never drinking again... at least not without my portable microchip capillary electrophoresis system."

Alex Boase's list of the 10 wackiest experiments ever.

“They filled me with disbelief, astonishment, disgust and — best of all – laughter. With hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed by honest, hardworking scientists who were not prepared to accept common-sense explanations of how the world works.

Is Outsider the world's fastest rapper? (Even more impressive here, where he comes in at about the 4:30 mark).

Your good vocabulary can send free rice to the hungry.

3 Things...UPDATED!

Nonopus? Look closely... count the arms!

An interactive public art display you'll never see in Cincinnati.

Girl with eight limbs scheduled for surgery.
update: see the CNN report

Colts vs. Patriots: Final Thoughts

It was a great game. I'm glad that it's over, though. There's only so much anticipation, prediction, and pre-game analysis one can take in the course of a week. The completion of the game marks the halfway point in the Colts-Patriots-Manning-Brady inundation of the sports airwaves. This week will be filled with post-game analysis. Once it's over, I can start watching ESPN again.

I think the Colts made two key flubs that sealed their fate. The first was in the late 3rd or early 4th when they had third-and-2 and went for a long pass instead of a run. I didn't understand that. A run or short pass would have been more sensible options. Furthermore, Addai was excelling in both those areas. The long pass failed and the Patriots got possession.

The second flub came halfway through the 4th quarter when the Colts were trying to run the ball and eat up the clock. They got 2 consecutive penalties that gave them third and long. They couldn't do it, and gave the Patriots possession at midfield with just under 4 minutes left.

Everybody knows you don't give Tom Brady a chance at a game-winning drive, because he will make you pay, and that's exactly what he did.

But it was a good game, perhaps the only competitive game the Patriots will play all year.

It was disappointing to see that Bill Belichick is still a fat, fucking weenie. What the hell is wrong with that guy? What a petulant little snot-faced brat. I can't believe a guy who can't even act like a grownup has three Super Bowl rings. Ridiculous.

In other football news, I am revising my previous forecast of the Bengals postseason chances from 50-50 to zero-zero.