"A team of scientists has been able to engineer “stable and functional” blood vessels in mice using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells taken from humans. The blood vessels lasted for 280 days in the brain of the mice. The scientists are from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and Harvard Stem Institute, Harvard University."
"I don’t think you should ever say anything that you’re going to have to apologize for later. If the heat gets hot, just let them get mad. How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body? Let them be upset. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a pauper. It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say. To me the way to manage is not to have 50 versions of yourself — I do this thing, and the next time you’re going to hear me is the next time I do another one."
"Cancer Rates Are Going Down
More Porn, Less Rape
Longer Life Expectancy Stops Population Growth
People Everywhere Are Getting Smarter
Trade Creates Jobs and Makes People Richer
Local Biodiversity is Increasing
Markets Make People Nicer"
"Thailand's premier university has apologized for displaying Adolf Hitler on a banner alongside Superman and other superheroes, saying it was painted by ignorant students who didn't realize Hitler's image would offend anyone. "
"It’s often the man who gets blamed for bad sex. He came too fast. He didn’t make me come. He forgot about foreplay. He wouldn’t go down on me. In and out, roll off. That was it. He never kisses me during sex. All he knew was one position — doggy style. Women can be bad lays too, but when it’s the man’s fault there are two possible reasons for it. One, he was inexperienced. Women usually blame all bad sex on the inexperience and ineptitude of the man. This is a comforting thought for them, but the reality is that virginal incompetence accounts for very few poor sexual encounters. For every virgin clumsily popping his cherry there are 10,000 men with extensive sexual histories enjoying a romp in the sack. The second, and by far more frequent, reason for bad sex is that the woman wasn’t pretty enough to stimulate the man to answer the call of duty with enthusiasm. This reason — uninspired sex caused by female ugliness — is understandably disturbing for women to contemplate. There will never be a situation where one girl says to the other “He’s horrible in bed because you’re kinda gross-looking.”"
Are Feminists Finally Noticing That the Men Have Left the Building? * Hooking Up Smart: "Feminism flipped gender roles, and there is considerable confusion on the part of both sexes as they navigate a sexual marketplace that now seems upside down. Hymowitz addresses the question of how today’s women want both contemporary equality and old-fashioned chivalry: Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill. But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure. The might hook up as freely as a Duke athlete. Or, they might want men to play Greatest Generation gentleman. Yes, they want men to pay for dinner, call for dates…and open doors for them. A lot of men wonder: “WTF??!” Why should they do the asking? Why should they pay for dinner? After all, they are equals and in any case, the woman a guy is asking out probably has more cash in her pocket than he does; recent female graduates are making more than males in most large cities...
Perhaps most significantly, she goes on to identify – for the first time in the mainstream media, perhaps, the concept around which the sexual marketplace revolves: female hypergamy. Far worse in the bait and switch category is women’s stated preference for nice guys and actual attraction to bad boys…enough of them are partial to the Charlie Sheens of this world that one popular dating guru, David DeAngleo, lists “Being Too Much of a Nice Guy” as No. 1 in his “Ten Most Dangerous Mistakes Men Make With Women.”"
That's. Glorious.
"Slater's 50/50 in San Diego knows that all too well, so, in honor of our nation's birth, they created the 'Merica Burger, which isn't just topped with bacon... it's MADE of bacon, including two bacon patties topped with bacon, in addition to bacon cheese, bacon bits, and plenty of bacon grease."
"Salon: “But really, this is the same tired line we’ve heard from Oswalt and other comedians before.” Oh, it’s certainly tired, but not in the way you’re thinking, Salon. It’s “tired” because me and everyone I know in the comedy business (as opposed to you and your fellow dullards in the professional outrage and desperate click-bait business) are tired of explaining ourselves to the 21st century schoolmarm brigade...
So goodbye, Salon. I feel like I’ve graduated from you. I’ve still got The Nation, and Garret Keizer and Slate and Talking Points Memo and The Jimmy Dore Show and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Jim Hightower. Oh, and Heather Havrilesky and the indispensable Cintra Wilson, both of whom you chased away from your own site like Mary MacLane fleeing the icy oatmeal of Butte, Montana in 1903. I don’t have Bill Hicks anymore, and I’ve been missing him coming up on twenty years next spring. And George Carlin, who’s been gone for five. Greg Giraldo left in 2010, and then Patrice O’Neal a year after that. But if they were alive, I’d happily drive them down to your offices and watch them kick the living shit out of all of you humorless, frightened scolds. I’d wait out in the car, though. I’m a terrible hand-to-hand fighter. No reach and spaghetti arms. I try to make up for it in what I write and say. Why don’t you?"
"Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't take crap from anybody" - Robert Anton Wilson
"Listen, we get about 80 years on this planet, at best. Much of that time is painful. The night is dark, and full of terrors. If you find something that makes you happy, and it doesn’t hurt you or others, that is a great thing. Life is too damned short for the concept of “guilty” pleasures to have any meaning. I’m glad these people had this party, and that they had a good time, regardless of how they looked. I’m sorry it was edited in such a way that individuals were mocked, and the comments about autism and killing everyone in the video found in the comments section are repugnant."
Some of the finest basketball of the modern era.
""On our first album, there was a song he wrote, I can’t remember which one it was, but I listened to it and said, “Do you think you could take some of the ‘I’s and ‘me’s out of it?” And he thought about it and he was like, “Yeah, I think I can do that.” And he did. So 10 years later, I’m visiting him in Nashville. He’s in a wheelchair. He’s blind, pretty much. It felt so awkward. So I said, “What have you been working on lately?” And he said, “I’ve been working on using ‘I’ and ‘me’ less.” And I said, “Really?” And he said, “Yeah. Remember? You gave me that comment on the song? That’s what I’ve been working on.” Incredible. He didn’t mean it in the context of songs. He meant it in the context of life." — Rick Rubin, on what he remembers most vividly about working with Johnny Cash."
"One of the assurances I keep hearing about the U.S. government's spying on American citizens is that it's only used in cases of terrorism. Terrorism is, of course, an extraordinary crime, and its horrific nature is supposed to justify permitting all sorts of excesses to prevent it. But there's a problem with this line of reasoning: mission creep. The definitions of "terrorism" and "weapon of mass destruction" are broadening, and these extraordinary powers are being used, and will continue to be used, for crimes other than terrorism...
Back in 2002, the Patriot Act greatly broadened the definition of terrorism to include all sorts of "normal" violent acts as well as non-violent protests. The term "terrorist" is surprisingly broad; since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it has been applied to people you wouldn't normally consider terrorists. The most egregious example of this are the three anti-nuclear pacifists, including an 82-year-old nun, who cut through a chain-link fence at the Oak Ridge nuclear-weapons-production facility in 2012. While they were originally arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge, the government kept increasing their charges as the facility's security lapses became more embarrassing. Now the protestors have been convicted of violent crimes of terrorism -- and remain in jail...
Meanwhile, a Tennessee government official claimed that complaining about water quality could be considered an act of terrorism. To the government's credit, he was subsequently demoted for those remarks."
Joss Whedon For The Win.
Ah, Liberia.
"Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has shut down a government office suspected of issuing fraudulent birth certificates to facilitate child trafficking, a justice ministry official said Thursday. Deputy Justice Minister Benedict Sannoh told The Associated Press that the president took the decision to close the Bureau of Vital Statistics at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare last week due to "increasing reports of the issuance of birth certificates that have been used to procure passports and then used in return to facilitate the trafficking of children.""
"Still conflicted by the nonsensical "send him to India to smash up the spider terraformer thing" ending to Man of Steel? Well, the clever "How It Should Have Ended" series has solved all those problems for you."
"Takeru Kobayashi set the record for cupcake eating (13 in one minute) so he needed something to wash it down. Here he attempts and easily accomplishes the infamous "gallon milk challenge." Keep in mind, that's whole milk he's drinking. This was filmed at Uncle Bob's Self Storage in Upper Saddle River, NJ."
All I got from this, is that according to this video, women in their 20's are way more fun. How sexist. Or ageist. Or something.
Neil Patrick Harris and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are unfuckwithable.
