To quiz, or not to quiz…
This list includes the canon of Shakespeare's works. But we commend you if you've also read The Two Noble Kinsmen and the two lost plays.
How Many Of Shakespeare's Plays Have You Read?
sabato 31 maggio 2014
21 Things That Accurately Sum Up How You Feel After Last Night's "Game Of Thrones"
Sweet, delicious spoilers inside.
Did you watch Game of Thrones last night? As soon as you saw it was King Joffrey’s wedding day, you probably felt a little like this:
Via HBO / renegadechicks.com
It seems like this asshole’s good fortune never ends.
HBO / giphy.com
Until this moment:
HBO / youtube.com
HBO / youtube.com
21 Things That Accurately Sum Up How You Feel After Last Night's "Game Of Thrones"
#GameOfThrones, #HBO
FTL: Advanced Edition Review
There’s something special about a game where you can choose to reroute power away from the vital life-support system to the weapons and coax one last shot out of your crippled, flaming wreck of a spaceship. It’s the kind of desperate, so-crazy-it-just-might-work move James T. Kirk or Han Solo would attempt to reverse his fortunes and save his crew. And even though it doesn’t always work – or perhaps because it doesn’t always work, and sometimes everyone dies and you have to start again – it’s those moments when it does that make FTL: Advanced Edition one of the most memorable and replayable games I’ve ever played.
FTL is a story generator more than it is a game of skill. After countless hours of the PC and iPad versions, I’ve effectively mastered its amazing ship-to-ship and somewhat weaker hand-to-hand combat systems – it doesn’t take too long, as it generously allow you to pause at any time and consider what to do and where to move your tiny crewmembers. (That makes it an excellent fit for the iPad’s touch controls, too.) But because it involves so many random factors, from whether a missile hits its mark to if your crew can rescue a space station from giant spiders in a miniature text adventure, FTL is often cruel to the point where a few bad jumps can render a playthrough effectively unwinnable. That’s the joy of it: you never get to feel safe.
FTL: Advanced Edition Review
#JamesTKirk, #FTL, #HanSolo
VICE News: Election Day in Turkey: Ballots, Watchdogs, and Fraud
After many turbulent weeks of campaigning amid protests, charges of corruption, and online censorship, election day finally arrived in Turkey. People in Istanbul had been talking about it like the season finale of some exhaustive, all-encompassing soap opera.
VICE News correspondant Tim Pool went to Istanbul to check out polling stations and the city's main election center. He found a largely analog election process, vulnerable to all kinds of voter fraud—citizen watchdog groups are the only line of defense against widespread election rigging. Tim caught up with one of these organizations, Vote & Beyond, as it monitored the elections.
VICE News: Election Day in Turkey: Ballots, Watchdogs, and Fraud
#Istanbul, #Turkey, #ElectionDay
Cost Cuts Could Lift Caterpillar's Earnings Despite Mining Weakness
We figure in the first quarter, CAT’s top line could decline slightly due to mining sector weakness offsetting growth from construction and power system segments. However, we figure the company’s first quarter profits will likely rise despite mining sector weakness on gains from cost reduction measures.
Cost Cuts Could Lift Caterpillar's Earnings Despite Mining Weakness
Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood, Sesame Street?
Joining Autism Speaks, a group whose mission is prevention and whose message is fear and despair, is jarring and belies 4.5 decades of what Sesame Street has built.
Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood, Sesame Street?
#SesameStreet, #AutismSpeaks
Don't Waste Your Money On Google Glass: 10 Better Ways To Spend $1500
Tomorrow is your lucky day! The clouds will part, and a host of angels will serenade the world as Google makes Google Glass available to anyone and everyone who wants it (although I assume there is a limited supply). Of course, it will still cost you $1500. Ouch. While it seems [...]
Don't Waste Your Money On Google Glass: 10 Better Ways To Spend $1500
#Google, #GoogleGlass
A Bathroom of One's Own
Twenty-five years ago today, transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen died of bladder and lung cancer, which she believed was caused by genetics, not the fuck-ton of hormones that rocketed her to stardom as “America’s first transsexual” in the 1950s. In her honor, I made a pilgrimage to the one place I know that bares her name: the Christine Jorgensen Memorial Bathroom, an intimate museum experience inside a Brooklyn duplex apartment. What’s a more fitting way to memorialize a transgender person, who always had issues with restrooms, than to give her a personal bathroom?
The facts of the matter: In 1952, a time before ultrasounds and the Polio vaccine, Jorgensen underwent multiple experimental operations to transition her body from male to female, all while under intense public scrutiny. Tons of journalists showed up at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) to cover her return from Copenhagen, where the surgeries were performed. On December 1 1952, the cover of the New York Daily News blared, “EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY,” and an icon was born.
“Christine's celebrity happened at a very particular time in US history,” said David Serlin, a Professor of Communications and Critical Gender Studies at UC San Diego and the creator of the CJMB. He pointed out, “There was this incredible enthusiasm for science,” and Jorgensen’s transformation was seen as a triumph of modern medicine. The public’s initial response, he said, was, “We are building rockets, we can cure illnesses, and we can take a boy from the Bronx and turn him into a glamorous woman!”
Glamorous is the right word. Standing in the CJMB, surrounded by dozens of portraits of Jorgensen, I was struck by the glam and the glitz, the furs and the crystals, the elegant eyebrows and the perfectly curled lips. The CJMB is a tiny space—maybe 80 square feet of sunshine-yellow tile—and every inch is covered in Jorgensen.
Serlin first became enamored with Jorgensen in 1992, while researching her for a grad class at NYU. Years before the days of Google Image Search, he rented photos from the Corbis Bettmann Archive to accompany his article—his first major academic success. He tacked the images he didn’t use to his bulletin board, where they became a personal talisman. (A few of them still grace the walls of the CJMB.) “Then I started to ask friends of mine about items,” he recalled, and eventually he discovered eBay. “Little by little, I amassed this archive.”
In the late 90s, cash-strapped queer community organizations around the country were digitizing their holdings and selling many original archival objects. Serlin told me that he feels complicated about the provenance of some of his items, but he recognizes that the collectibles were going to be sold regardless. Some objects, like a subway poster advertising a series of articles about Jorgensen in American Weekly magazine, are so ephemeral, it’s shocking they survived at all. Serlin estimates he has nearly 150 pieces of Jorgensen memorabilia. Serlin and his partner Brian Selznick created the CJMB when they moved to Park Slope in 2002. Selznick, an accomplished author and illustrator, designed the space and developed a puppet show based on Jorgensen's life. (The storyboard and some objects from the show are also in the CJMB.)
It’s only once I was inside the CJMB, standing face-to-face-to-face-to-face with Jorgensen, that I began to understand the magnitude of her fame. Every major magazine, newspaper, and radio show covered her transition. Books were written about her, and she later wrote Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, which was translated into multiple languages and adapted into a movie in 1970. She also released Christine Jorgensen Reveals, an interview album where she discussed her life with Nipsey Russell, who conducted the interview under the name R. Russell. According to Newsday's obituary, she reportedly made $12,500 a week performing in a stage show in Hollywood. Jorgensen was so famous that a young calypso musician named Louis “Calypso Gene” Wolcott recorded a song about her called “Is She Is or Is She Ain’t?” (Wolcott later changed his last name to Farrakhan and joined the Nation of Islam, but the song is on YouTube.)
This question of realness would end up being Jorgensen’s undoing, Serlin told me. Part of her celebrity had to with America’s love of science, but the rest had to do with how little anyone knew about sex reassignment surgeries. Her peers, even those in the nascent homophile movements of the 50s, had no context for gender transitioning. There was no T in the vague LGB movement, and the word transgender hadn’t even been coined yet. Of course, people with cross-gender desires have always existed, and a few earlier pioneers had also undergone experimental surgical gender reassignments, but they didn’t have a public face in America until Jorgensen, according to GLAAD.
Serlin speculates that at first most Americans “really thought Christine was menstruating and had eggs in her fallopian tubes.” But after six months, the press began to ask more probing questions about what her surgeries actually entailed. When they didn’t like the answers, the country “went ballistic.” Gender panic took over, said Serlin. “They said, ‘He's not a woman. He's just a neutered faggot.’” Reputable magazines like Time stopped using female pronouns for Jorgensen, and coverage of her took on a nasty, speculative air.
America didn’t have a huge problem with someone switching between two discreet and very separate sexes, but the suggestion of some middle ground, of a spectrum between male and female, made people fearful and angry. Jorgensen’s existence and acceptance as a woman implied that gender and the body were not necessarily connected, that gender was something one worked to create. If this were true, the sex-segregated ideals of post-war suburbia would have been out the window. In the eyes of the public, Jorgensen was no longer a man-made woman, but a gender terrorist in a blond bouffant.
Though haircuts have changed, America has viewed transgender people this way ever since. What fascinates me about Jorgensen—and what the CJMB, with its reverent air of mid-century majesty, captures perfectly—is the suggestion that it didn’t have to be this way. For six months, Americans decided not to be assholes about gender. Maybe we were too ignorant to act ignorantly, but for a brief moment we decided that it was possible to become a woman. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been the case if Jorgensen wasn’t pretty (couldn’t pass, as it were), or if she wasn’t white, ladylike, and well spoken—but she was, and America loved her. Sure, we’d set the bar on womanhood almost prohibitively high—expensive experimental surgeries, massive doses of hormones—but Jorgensen proved that the game itself wasn’t rigged the way it is now.
Standing inside the Christine Jorgensen Memorial Bathroom, I saw America poised on the threshold of acceptance, and then watched us slink away, afraid to take the plunge. We’ve spent the last 60 years trying to paper over the hole Jorgensen smashed in our gender binary system, but inside the CJMB, it’s easy to imagine an America that went in another direction, where Jorgensen taught us that gender is what Americans make of it and that our bodies are not our destinies.
In the end, the CJMB isn’t only a monument to Christine Jorgensen, but also to the world that accepted her as she wanted to be seen. Visiting helps me remember that our awe came first and our hatred came after, that America stumbles towards every new thing like a delighted (but dangerous) toddler, and that our present moment is just another moment waiting to be changed.
Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter.
A Bathroom of One's Own
#ChristineJorgensen, #DavidSerlin
Are We On The Road To A Generational War Over Social Security?
‘The Next America’ author’s surprising views on boomers and Millennials.
Are We On The Road To A Generational War Over Social Security?
Many Students Can't Afford Their First Choice College
The other day, I posted an article about students getting in to college and noted that 75% of students get in to their first choice college. Unfortunately, more and more students are not attending their first choice school and this is in large part because of cost. Last year, 57% [...]
Many Students Can't Afford Their First Choice College
#Students, #ChoiceCollege
NRG Energy Stock Sees Short Interest Drop 24.8%
The most recent short interest data has been released by the NASDAQ for the 04/15/2014 settlement date, which shows a 3,906,964 share decrease in total short interest for NRG Energy Inc (NYSE: NRG), to 11,841,164, a decrease of 24.81% since 03/31/2014. Total short interest is just one way to look [...]
NRG Energy Stock Sees Short Interest Drop 24.8%
#ShortInterest, #NRGEnergyStockSeesShortInterestDrop, #NRGEnergyInc
Former HFPA President Philip Berk Takes Leave of Absence Amid Book Controversy
His action follows a meeting Friday where members upset about things written about them in his book With Signs And Wonders aired their unhappiness
Former HFPA President Philip Berk Takes Leave of Absence Amid Book Controversy
23 Easy Dessert Bars That Will Leave You Drooling
None of these dessert bars have more than 8 ingredients, and they all come together in the blink of an eye. You’ll be chowing down ASAP!
Toffee Ritz Bars
Click here for the recipe!
bakerita.com / Via bakerita.com
Browned Butter Butterscotch Bars
Click here for the recipe!
Via bakerita.com
Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars
Click here for the recipe!
bunsinmyoven.com / Via bunsinmyoven.com
23 Easy Dessert Bars That Will Leave You Drooling
Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation
Inspired by scientific studies, ordinary people are buying and building devices to send electrical current into their brains. Some say it has improved their memory and focus. Others have found relief from depression and chronic pain. But are they getting ahead of the science?
Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation
#ScientificStudies, #StrangeNewWorld, #BrainStimulation, #ElectricalCurrent
You Can Now Take Classes At Hogwarts
Still waiting for your letter? Check your email.
Always wished you could go to Hogwarts?
Warner Brothers / Via thehogwartslist.tumblr.com
Well now you can!
Warner Brothers / Via libereading.com
A group of amazing Harry Potter super fans have created a series of FREE online Hogwarts classes allowing you, for the first time, to take the classes you've always wanted. The website is a mix of a role-playing (a la Dungeons & Dragons) and a MOOC (massive open online course).
Unfortunately there is no Sorting Hat, but you get to pick your house. If you need help you can check out our quiz to find out where you should be. Once you've been “sorted,” you join your dorm, buy books (at a virtual Flourish & Blotts), and start a rigorous curriculum of classes like Charms, Herbology, Astronomy, History of Magic, Transfiguration, Potions, and, of course, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Each course consists of nine lessons, with a selection of assignments, like a 300-word Transfiguration essay in which you have to explore possible loopholes in one of the exceptions of Gamp's Law.
You can also write for The Daily Owl. Not bad, huh?
Now you can finally find out if you are a Hermione or more of a Ron.
Warner Brothers / Via glee.wikia.com
You Can Now Take Classes At Hogwarts
#WarnerBrothers, #HogwartsClasses, #Hogwarts
Ricky Gervais: BBC, Netflix Interested in Revival of 'The Office'
The actor and comedian also addressed speculation that David Brent and his band might play the Glastonbury music festival.
Ricky Gervais: BBC, Netflix Interested in Revival of 'The Office'
#RickyGervais, #DavidBrent
Silvio Berlusconi's Tax Fraud Sentence Reduced to Community Service
An Italian court lowered the media tycoon’s original four-year jail term to a year of service because of his advanced age.
Silvio Berlusconi's Tax Fraud Sentence Reduced to Community Service
#SilvioBerlusconi, #CommunityService, #TaxFraudSentence
Bad Bank Barclays
It seems Barclays is to become the latest in a long line of distressed banks that have divided themselves in two. The Financial Times revealed yesterday that Barclays is to create an internal “bad bank” into which will be placed toxic junk still lying around after the 2008 financial crisis. Like [...]
Bad Bank Barclays
#Barclays, #BadBankBarclays
Apple Should Assume It Will Never Win Over Wall Street, Instead Of Trying To
Tim Cook has been actively trying to court Wall Street by promising great new products and doing stock buybacks and stock splits. It’s a waste of time and focus. He should use his cash only for selective acquisitions.
Apple Should Assume It Will Never Win Over Wall Street, Instead Of Trying To
#TimCook, #WallStreet, #StockBuybacks, #StockSplits
Noel Coward's 'A Song at Twilight' Comes to Pasadena Playhouse
One of the playwright’s most daring pieces, starring Bruce Davidson, Sharon Lawrence and Roxanne Hart, runs through April 13.
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Noel Coward's 'A Song at Twilight' Comes to Pasadena Playhouse
#NoelCoward, #RoxanneHart, #BruceDavidson, #SharonLawrence
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