Spiders are generally solitary creatures and in the northern hemisphere they generally don’t get together and cover the trees with their webs. But rules are meant to be broken.
This New York Times story tells of spiders who are covering acres of Texas forest with their webs.
The BBC, reporting on a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society, says that 140 million people in developing countries are drinking water with such high concentrations of arsenic as to constitute poisoning. Experts estimate that one out of ten people living in these areas will die of aresenic-induced ailments, particularly cancer.
The problem resulted from the well-intentioned efforts of aid agencies to steer communities in poor areas away from using surface water, which is often badly contaminated by bacteria, towards well-digging, not realizing the well water could have high levels of arsenic.
DampRabbit recently posted this amazing video of the Ariz Brothers’ acrobatic act. I don’t know where he gets all this historical footage, but I am grateful he is taking the time and effort to post them online for the rest of us.
The grand finale is just incredible.
The job cuts are part of a restructuring plan by EarthLink to reduce operating costs and boost efficiency. As part of the plan, EarthLink will also close offices Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and California. The company will move its remaining operations to its Atlanta, Ga. facility.
Now read this from later on in the same article…
The company also announced Tuesday its board of directors voted to authorize the purchase of an additional $200 million of its outstanding shares of common stock. EarthLink now has $270 million available to repurchase its stock.
This is rewarding sellers of Earthlink stock at the expense of those who hang on to their Earthlink stock. Given that Earthlink is already having a tough time of it, it would make more sense for them to hang on to the money. When credit gets tight, you want to have cash on hand.
Look at this chart over at Calculated Risk. The ARM are really going to hit hard next year.
A German teenager accidentally climbed out of a fourth-floor window and fell 10 meters to the ground where he kept on sleeping, albeit with a broken arm and leg.
According to this article, no drugs or alcohol was involved.
Ok, so this could so easily be me. . .It’s a detailed and funny (especially if you can relate) tale of a lady dining out of her class. I can relate; totally. Nearly nothing can make me feel so uncomfortable as dining out of my class, and I completely agree with this statement:
I am so out of place. I am beneath… contendedly so. And I’m fine that way. I will never get use to food I can’t recognize in a glance. I will never understand silence at a dinner table, talking only of surface subjects – everything being wonderful and beautiful – instead of talking wildly or debating the latest subject, laughing hilariously about something that happened that day, cutting back and forth in between bites, each sharing their part of a story, finishing off each others sentences – disagreeing and just agreeing to disagree, moving right along to the next topic – dinner time being the best part of our day, feeling so close and connected. That’s where we formed our beliefs, our loves, our memories.
I’ll never quite understand why there is five eating utensils and two glasses, and a napkin that looks more like something you would frame.
I don’t want to spoil the story and ruin all the build-up and such, but I will say that it involves taking food that appears to be safe (some type of potato), and only finding out after it’s in her mouth that it’s really a sea urchin!
Go read it.
Maybe you might even begin to understand why I avoid all formal occasions like the plague. Actually, I might have an easier time dealing with the plague. . .
The Poem of the Week is The Charge Of The Light Brigade by Lord Tennyson. You can read about the battle that he based the poem off of here.
PC Bloggs makes fun of those who think that more laws are the answer to crime with devastating British irony.
One of the biggest errors of modern time is a misplaced faith in laws. It is thought that the right laws can do everything from taming the power of the US to improving the status of woman. But the truth is that laws do not create society, society creates laws. The power of a law nessearly stems from the values that make up a society. As a consequence, laws that are not based on values common to a society will only create widespread lawlessness. In other words, without a society based on common values, laws are useless.
This truth is ignored by many people who think that if they can only get the right laws passed, then society will be so much better. Such people would do well to read this essay from the Belmont Club exploring the consequences of trying to make enforce a common law were there is no common society.