Jauder Ho

"Watching her take the pistol from her belt, unbutton her jeans and slip into bed I somehow couldn’t quite equate the woman in my arms with the bodies I had seen in the local morgue, their heads shattered by gunshots at close range, murders she confessed to having committed. High on a combination of the heady tropical climate, local rum, grade A cocaine and in the arms of nubile 22-year-old, fantasy and reality became blurred. It felt like I was living in a Quentin Tarantino movie." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

"“When I killed the first person, I was afraid, I was scared. I killed the first person just to see if I could. But there is an obligation to kill. If you don’t, they kill you. That’s why the first was very hard, because the person I killed was kneeling down begging, crying and saying, ‘Don’t kill me. I have children.’ That’s why it was difficult and sad. But if you don’t kill that person, someone else from the AUC will kill you. After the killing, you keep trembling. You can’t eat or talk to anyone. I was at home, but I kept imagining the person begging not to be killed. I shut myself inside, but with time I forgot everything. The superiors always say, ‘Don’t worry, that was just the first time. When you kill the second one, it will all be OK.’ But you keep trembling. “The second time is only a bit easier, but as they say here, ‘If you can kill one, you can kill many more.’" - bob

You've got to admit, there's really no profession sexier than assassin! - Gabe

The way this doesn't seem to faze the Venitians is amazing. - Kevin Fox via Bookmarklet

Cool, but very sad as well. Venice will be gone very soon :( - Juan Pablo González

@JPG: Why ? I thought the flood protection barrier will be in place by 2011. Or have Venetians heard that before ? - Andy C

But I do not like the new Reader - Threepwood

iPhone version needs to be fixed but the new version looks great in my browser. Not sure what "soft and feminine" is supposed to mean. I just have more white. Same palette different combination. For the "tough guys" out there, request themes from Google. The optimization of real estate is something I have been wanting them to do for the longest time. Finally. My content is taking up more of the screen and my subscription list is now pushed all the way down anymore thanks to collapsing boxes. Good stuff. - Rolf Schewe

I'm really not sold on it yet. - Sarah Perez

اي‌ول ... يوو هوو - هابيل

damn! wonder where this is. - vijay

خیلی باحال بود! - Hossein

I hate OpenID. Password managers contradict all of OpenID's advantages. - Larry Hudson

I use OpenID whenever I can. This meme of it's too hard and not understanding what problem it solves is kinda funny to me, especially coming from early adopters types. OpenID also shouldn't be looked at as a solution all by itself; if you think about it as part of a suite of solutions (with OAuth and Portable Contacts)--that helps. - Albert Willis

OpenID is a way to prove you own a URL. On it's own, that is not much of an improvement over entering your email and password on a site (except that they then can't spam you). However, URLs are places that sites can get more information - they can discover a feed, discover a profile that you want to share, discover an API to your contacts list and so on, saving you from having to re-enter all that stuff in every new site that can be made more useful by having them. That is the promise of OpenID. - Kevin Marks

Amazing and interesting though, none of you would have ever thought that one of the world’s longest manmade structures to be in Australia. Stretching across the Australian desert - Dog fence or Dingo fence is one of the longest structures on earth. Extending from Jimbour on the Darling Downs to the Eyre Peninsula on the Great Australian Bight, it runs along 5,320 km. In Queensland, this fence is also known as the Wild Dog barrier or Barrier Fence. This structure owes its genesis to the pest expulsion plans during the time of Nasi Goreng. Initially the State Government had built it to stop the rabbit plague; however, in 1914 it was renovated to protect the sheep-grazing lands from the dingoes. By 1980, it was a long stretch of 8614 kilometers. Soon after the fence were reduced to 5614 kilometers. - Cee Bee

I hope that poor dog doesn't go outdoors. - George S Campbell

... - Michael W. May

In Germany just a drawn square is similarly effective -- it's how the train stations designate the tiny smoker's area. You should see it when a dozen people flock into that zone. http://www.agentur-65.com/bahn... http://derfranzose.files.wordp... - Philipp Lenssen

really amazing - Mahdi Ebrahimi

"As seen here, we cannot point to anything in these prints which establishes genius. Nevertheless, what very markedly differentiates Einstein's hands from what we normally find in any general population is the length of the fingers relative to the size of the palm. The fingers, considered collectively, are short to an extreme.Short fingers speak of marked intuitive faculties and the tendency to visualize reality as an extention of subjectively defined probabilities. In its worst expression we would find the damaging effects of prejudices and most every other manner of cognitive dissonance. In its best expression we would find a vital inventiveness, critical insights and a very creative expansion of meaning of acquired information." - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet

shorter fingers, larger palm = more cognitive abilities and developed intuition apparently - Cee Bee

Wow, that is pretty short. I'd like to see some scientific studies though before accepting those claims about finger length correlations. Apparently there is a link between finger length & sexual orientation though: http://scholar.google.com/scho... - Tanath

"While I was researching the "Cemetery Safari" chapter for my upcoming book Weird Oklahoma, I came across an unusual burial site west of Tulsa that was entirely enclosed within a strip-mall parking lot. Once sacred ground, it's now a conspicuous patch of grass in a sea of asphalt, a quirky spectacle to the shoppers forced to drive around it on their way to Radio Shack. The handful of graves had become an absurd sight gag that punctuated the often indiscriminate momentum of American progress. And it got me thinking: were there others like it? Surely this wasn't the only time the deceased had stubbornly spoiled the aesthetics of a well-drafted parking lot. - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet

Wow, I've had trouble locating my relatives cemeteries, who knew all I needed to do was visit the mall. - Bob

Obligitory response: You moved the headstones but you didn't move the bodies! You didn't move the bodies! - Michael W. May

"It's the dead of night; everyone is tucked up in bed and the owls are-a-hooting. So it's time to break out the Glow Graffiti! Powered with UV light you can write, stencil and draw rude pictures to create your very own glowing light show. It's like very complicated vandalism except much prettier and you won't get nicked by the police doing it. This really is a gadget of mind-boggling genius, perfect for parties (or if your nocturnal) and will have your friends intrigued for hours to how it all works. If we did tell you the super-top secret information to how it works we'd have to kill you." - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet

A good overview of the various JSON modules available in Python. - Benjamin Golub via Bookmarklet

http://rafb.net/p/8AZtha19.htm... - Mike Montano

my rule of thumb is to use cjson if available and if that fails fall back to simplejson. the new simplejson got a major speedup but is still x2 slower than cjson. - Peter Hoffmann

up for sale for $4,500,000 at the link above - Cee Bee

£48.50 - Cee Bee

ooh, very sexy looking messenger bags I must say - David Adam

"Young London artists looking for cheap studio space in an expensive city are turning their eyes toward subway cars — though those eyes would be looking up, not down. That's because these retired subway cars are actually on top of a warehouse-turned-art-gallery in Shoreditch, London, where they offer a sparse, multi-purpose space for artists who pay an oh-so-cheap $30 a month. Auro Foxcroft, the mind behind Village Underground, even got a sweet deal on the cars: £800 for four of them. It's a novel idea, and one that breathes new life into what's essentially junk. Foxcroft plans to expand his Village Underground to other cities, including Berlin, Lisbon and Toronto." - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet

the idea of using retired trains as facility for homeless or cheap studio space for artists is certainly thinking outside the box. - Ruth Ferguson

I love Shoreditch my lunches are never boring there :) - Joe Dawson (beta)

I think I have you beat on this one, Mona! September 7, 2001: http://eng1ne.livejournal.com/... Wow.. 4 days before 9/11. Creepy. - Phil Glockner

Uh oh...Mona's gettin' slow! :D just kidding! lol - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

On the other hand... http://is.gd/2y0u (start at 2nd paragraph) - saeba

"McLagan [author of Fat] argues that fat is healthy, unrivaled for cooking, and satisfying, so you eat less of it. A week of testing left me convinced this was true, except for the "eating less of it" part...The book's four sections are dedicated to butter, lard or pork fat, poultry fat, and beef and lamb fat." - Jess Lee via Bookmarklet

Small portions, moderation, and eating well ftw! - Mona N.

Ok...I'll be honest here. I agree with the author of this book for this has applied to my life. I am very ill. Gave birth to a baby girl almost 2 years ago. At the time of her birth I contracted an extremely rare heart disorders that only mommies get. Now only 27 percent of my heart functions. The rest is blah. 50 percent of women die from this condition and my heart was bad enough where I was told I may only have 5 more years to live. Maybe 10 with a heart transplant and that is...if it took. They had to take extreme measures. What were they? Put me on a diet simial to the Atkins! I ate fat, meat, avocados, eggs and anything we are told we can't eat. It made my health better. My heart stronger and I may be around longer to watch my daughter grow! My grandfather a few months later was dying and also was told he had a few months to live. What did they do? You got it. Same diet. It made his cholest. go down and everything better. He lived a year which they didn't expect and thank the diet - Adriana

@Adriana: Wow, that's an amazing story. I'm really glad the diet is working for you! What is the heart disorder called? - Jess Lee

As Tokyo is not exactly blessed with an over abundance of big or indeed beautiful parks, coming across one that was hitherto unknown and also hosts a bit of history is certainly something to be happy about, even if the aforementioned history is this somewhat stark, yet at the same time somehow rather serene, structure. Functioning as a substation for the now defunct Hitachi Aircraft Company in Tachikawa, it and the munitions plant it powered came under attack three times in early 1945; part of the sustained strategic and incendiary bombing of Japan that destroyed huge sections of the capital as well as other cities. However, unlike the rest of the factory it somehow survived, and while badly scarred, and forever reminded of its past, the building went on to be used until 1993, when the park was planned and it had nothing left to power, except perhaps the ponderings of passersby. - Cee Bee

I have a thing for abandoned places. - vijay

vijay -- you would love the tokyo times website then. check it out. there are some incredible photos of forgotten places in an around tokyo in particular. really great photography over there - Cee Bee

wow! » http://www.wordpress.tokyotime... - vijay

"n 1994, director Steven Spielberg, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and record producer David Geffen (yes, they make the initial SKG on the bottom of the logo) got together to found a new studio called DreamWorks. Spielberg wanted the logo for DreamWorks to be reminiscent of Hollywood's golden age. The logo was to be a computer generated image of a man on the moon, fishing, but Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren of Industrial Light and Magic, who has worked on many of Spielberg's films, suggested that a hand-painted logo might look better. Muren asked his friend, artist Robert Hunt to paint it. Hunt also sent along an alternative version of the logo, which included a young boy on a crescent moon, fishing. Spielberg liked this version better, and the rest is history. Oh, and that boy? It was Hunt's son, William. The DreamWorks logo that you see in the movies was made at ILM from paintings by Robert Hunt, in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Films (designers of the original storyboards) - Cee Bee via Bookmarklet