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Here’s a little teaser video for your enjoyment, and a quick reminder that Monday’s special offer will be ending in 24 hours (10 am PST, Thursday, Apr. 22). Pre-order your copy of The Primal Blueprint Cookbook today and get 20% of the regular cover price, a free Primal Blueprint Poster ($14.95 value) and free S&H for U.S. orders (reduced S&H for international orders).

Stay tuned for today’s regularly scheduled article!

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Related posts:

1. Announcement: The Primal Blueprint Poster
2. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest
3. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest

We’re big big fans of the Plug-in Development Kit for webOS. It’s the magic that allows the Palm Pre to be the only phone on multiple US networks with real 3D gaming and one of the under-rated features of the platform.

Anyhow, as of right now the only PDK apps you see come from big, professional development houses like Gameloft. They’ve obviously done a great job with the apps and we’re also pleased to see that they occasionally put stuff on sale (Hero of Sparta is only 99 cents for a limited time, for example). You know us, though, we like to root for the little guys too.

To that end, Ben Combee of Palm’s Developer Relations team is following up on March’s release of a public beta of the PDK by asking if any developers have "ready-to-deploy" PDK apps. Which is to say that Palm has decided to open up the App Catalog to PDK apps a little earlier than originally planned. If you’ve been working on a PDK app, be sure to check out his post – there are a few caveats and provisos to be aware of.

If you’re not a developer, stay tuned. Palm’s deadline for these apps is tomorrow, so it’s entirely possible that we might see some indie PDK apps sooner than we previously thought.

Thanks to slp15 for the tip!

Despite the Droid Incredible’s release date still being a long week away, some unnaturally lucky types received have their new toys early.

There seems to have been a glitch in the Matrix that caused the phones to travel back in time 9 days. By “Matrix” I mean “Verizon’s phone ordering system” and by “travel back in time 9 days” I mean “get sent out immediately after the pre-order was placed”.

Now, now, before you get too excited and run off to pre-order your Incredible in the hopes it will be sent out early, I have some bad news for you: the glitch has been fixed.
Oh well. At least you can live vicariously through the video posted by one of the lucky pre-order guys over at the Android Forums.

[via Engadget]

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In an indirect yet obvious way, Section 3.3.1 of Apple’s new iPhone developers’ agreement binds developers to a promise that whatever they bring to the iPhone will be created exclusively for the iPhone. It effectively bans the use of cross-platform tools or middleware like Adobe Flash, by saying anything Apple approves must be coded in the company’s own Objective-C, or in C or C++.

If Adobe were to have proceeded with its previous plans to forge an official, working Flash platform for iPhone, that would have been the defiant move. Instead, Mike Chambers, the company’s product manager for Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), found himself yesterday afternoon sounding the retreat.

“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5,” Chambers wrote. “However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”

It isn’t clear to anyone, including Chambers, exactly how Apple will be able to enforce its provisions. The two possibilities are very strict policing of each and every one of its thousands of incoming App Store entries, or selective rejections that are intended to send a very clear message (similar to the record industry’s former strategy of selectively prosecuting file sharers). But as Chambers said yesterday, if Apple were to be selective, the selections that would send the clearest message would more likely concern Flash than Titanium, MonoTouch, or Unity.

Adobe won’t stop developers from using the tools the company already baked into its Creative Suite 5, for targeting the iPhone if they so choose, Chambers said. He just warned that if they do so, Apple may make their lives difficult. He said that personally, he’ll devote the attention he would have paid to iPhone to the Android platform instead, inviting fellow Flash developers to follow suit.

To that end, in an interview with Fox Business last week, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Flash development for smartphones has reached the point where the latest versions may be released “in the second half of the year.” Narayen made clear it won’t be Adobe doing the releasing, but rather the companies that handle their respective platforms — specifically Google, RIM, and Palm.

Apple’s insistence on restricting development to its own tools and to an absence of middleware could have a detrimental effect on the quality of the iPhone platform over time. First, middleware such as Unity made it feasible for smaller development shops to get a handle on iPhone OS — whether they were developing cross-platform or not — engaged and excited an entire realm of developers who felt they could exploit the power of the platform using tools they could manage.

Unity is perhaps the most popular cross-platform game development tool that supports the iPhone platform. Like MonoTouch, its scripting engine is Mono, the open source work-alike for the .NET Framework funded by Novell. Although that scripting is essentially C#, the object-oriented C created by Microsoft (Objective-C is the object-oriented C originally conceived for the NeXT platform, brought to Apple when it reacquired Steve Jobs’ services in 1996), the tools built by Unity around that platform are much more intuitive, and the language as a whole is both more popular and more widely taught. At the time of the iPhone’s unveiling, the TIOBE Programming Community Index ranked Objective-C the #38 most popular language in the world, actually declining to #42 by April 2009. Today, Objective-C has risen all the way to #11, though C# (#6 and climbing) picks up new converts at about the same pace.

Objective-C’s converts have apparently come rather suddenly, probably in anticipation of Apple shutting the door on approvals for apps built using other tools.

Second, Apple’s move forces a decision among professional apps developers and service providers: Should they risk everything on one platform, even if it’s a successful one?

That’s not a decision that developers enjoy making. As Microsoft Chief Software Designer Ray Ozzie told reporters last November, from his discussions with mobile developers, he saw apps companies preferring to leverage as many platforms as they could, in order to justify the development costs they were putting in. Using widely accepted cross-platform tools helps lower those costs; using a tool that targets just one platform, and that requires specialization, raises those costs and thus reduces margins.

Ozzie foresaw a time when “app phones,” as he called them (iPhone being one) were known not just for what features they contained, but what popular apps they were capable of running. And to be a popular app, you need to be available more than one place. (It’s notable that Robbie Bach wasn’t in the room to hear this at the time.) “If there’s a market there, all the apps that count will be ported. Every app that matters will be ported to every one of them, because if there’s a set of users and it costs $50,000 of consulting time to have somebody port a little app, it’s going to get ported,” Ozzie said. “So I just don’t think there’s going to be significant differentiation at the app level.”

Apple’s move disallows differentiation at the app level, at least on paper. But that’s only if it enforces that differentiation. In a discussion among Unity developers today, developers there are hopeful that as long as their toolset can be used to produce binary code that can then be compiled by Apple’s Xcode — its prescribed iPhone OS developers’ toolkit — they will still be able to use libraries such as Unity iPhone 1.7 — released just days ago — to create their products.

The hope here among Unity developers is that Apple’s only grievance is with the existence of middleware or JIT compilers or interpreters on its platform, which would enable developers to bypass its strictly regulated deployment channel.
That hope could have been brightened last week by the announcement from the makers of PhoneGap, an iPhone app development tool that doesn’t use Objective-C, but rather enables apps to be built using common Web app languages such as JavaScript and CSS. Last Wednesday, PhoneGap announced it had communicated directly with Apple, and that it was told its tools were not in violation of Section 3.3.1.

In comments for that announcement yesterday, however, one independent Web developer whose profile lists cross-platform work, including .NET, advised PhoneGap developers to adhere to the spirit of Section 3.3.1 anyway. “Apple has strict iPhone / iPad Design Guidelines and you should follow [them] as much as you can,” he wrote. “Don’t do just ‘porting,’ that’s why this Apple vs. Flash fight started and as you can see, Apple is winning! Rethink your app for the Apple devices if you can.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Johnson & Johnson's slower growth future has already been discounted by investors, leaving shares pretty close to fair value, Glenn Novarro, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets says. 

"We project that JNJ will deliver mid-to high-single-digit EPS growth over the next three years," the analyst told clients in a note Tuesday.

"While this is below the growth rates that JNJ delivered earlier in the past decade, we believe that investors should take comfort in JNJ's ability to cut costs and deliver
consensus expectations.

Trading at roughly 12x forward estimates, Mr. Novarro believes that the stock is already discounting the slower growth estimates and reiterated his 12-month price target of $65.  

On Tuesday, JNJ reported better than expected earnings and revenues for its first quarter, but also cut its earnings guidance to reflect a higher U.S. dollar and healthcare reform.

David Pett

Article Tags: Nigel Lawson

The revelation that the decision to close Europe’s skies following last week’s eruption of an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, and the spewing of ash into the sky, was triggered by advice from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre of the UK Met Office, based not on all relevant empirical evidence but on their computer model, has led to no small controversy. IATA, representing the airlines, has condemned the advice as absurd and unnecessarily alarmist, while others have noticed the parallel with the drastic decarbonisation policies promoted by the climate change lobby, similarly based largely on alarmist interpretations of the projections generated by Met Office computer models.

However, the folly of everyone relying on Met Office computer modelling is only half the story. An even more important read-across concerns our old friend the precautionary principle.

What the Met Office/Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre model does is essentially to provide short-term predictions of the extent and location of the clouds of ash. It may well do this (not a very difficult task, after all) pretty accurately. It is clearly a very much simpler and hugely less uncertain task than predicting the likely temperature of the planet a hundred years from now. It is, however, a very limited model, which does not even pretend to predict the intensity of the ash within the cloud, or in different areas of the cloud. Nor, of course, does the VAAC have any knowledge at all of what level of ash intensity is a serious hazard to jet aircraft and what level is not a serious hazard. When tackled about the intensity issue by the BBC, the Met Office spokesman claimed that this was irrelevant, since the policy in force was one of ‘zero tolerance’. This, of course, is complete idiocy (and is conspicuously not the policy in the US, whose air safety record is as good as Europe’s). It is, however, the so-called precautionary principle again – and indeed only a few days ago the Eurocontrol spokeswoman was explicitly justifying the original blanket flying ban on the grounds of the precautionary principle.

Source: thegwpf.org

Read in full with comments »   

The Hills’ Stephanie Pratt isn’t afraid to bare her buns to save bunnies for the cover of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ “Be Nice to Bunnies” Apple iPhone application, but the geniuses at the tech giant have branded the risque image — which features the recently-rehabbed reality starlet stark naked, beaming, and cuddling a bunny — a tad too R-rated to be featured on Apple’s friendly-family iTunes website.

From reality star to bunny protector…..

Instead, PETA will use a clothed image of Pratt for the app’s cover and launch the nude version as a print public service announcement on PETA.org.

Joining stars like Eva Mendes, Khloe Kardashian, and Sophie Monk who’ve gone naked for PETA campaigns, Pratt’s teamed up with the often-outspoken animal rights group to encourage consumers never to buy beauty and household products that have been tested on animals.

“Guinea pigs and rats and bunnies … [are] blinded, poisoned, and burned for such a useless experiment that’s not needed,” says Stephanie, who calls out companies like Clorox and Unilever — which continue to perform safety tests on animals despite more sophisticated methods of measuring product efficiency.

Desde principios de este mes de abril ya se encuentra en los concesionarios de la marca alemana el nuevo BMW Serie 5, de esta nueva generación ya os hemos dado todos los detalles en cuanto a gama de motores y demás datos, incluso la gama de precios de la nueva berlina alemana.

Pero siempre que se presenta un modelo, una cosa diferente es verlo en fotos oficiales y otra muy distinta verlo en persona, hace unos días pudimos asistir a la presentación en Vigo del nuevo Serie 5 realizada en el concesionario Celtamotor de BMW en Vigo.

La imágen exterior de la nueva generación del BMW Serie 5 destaca por unos trazos más redondeados y formas más musculosas, manteniendo un cierto aire con el Serie 3 y el Serie 7, el frontal se aleja de aquellas formas más rectas del Serie 5 anterior y en la parte trasera cuenta con los nuevos faros que ganan en fluidez similares a los del Serie 3.

Como siempre tal y como pudimos comprobar in-situ, el Serie 5 sigue con la calidad a la que nos tiene acostumbrado el fabricante bávaro, con un interior con todo lujo de detalles, más propio de un Serie 7 incluso, y con la calidad como seña. El salpicadero está orientado hacia el conductor y todos los BMW Serie 5 tienen una pantalla LCD de 7 pulgadas para proyectar información.

Por último los precio de esta berlina parten de los 41.900 euros del 535i de 204 CV y llegan hasta los 70.500 euros del potente 550i de 407 CV. El resto de la gama de compone de la siguiente manera:

• 523i 204 CV 41.900 €
• 528i 258 CV 45.400 €
• 535i 306 CV 50.300 €
• 550i 407 CV 70.500 €
• 520d 184 CV 39.950 €
• 525d 204 CV 44.700 €
• 530d 245 CV 49.300 €

BMW Serie 5 2010

Agradecimientos al concesionario Celtamotor Vigo.

Nancy Kraft,  Head of Preservation at the University of Iowa Libraries, will present two webinars to librarians and other curators across the country through The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS).

Disaster Preparedness and Planning
May 12, during Preservation Week (May 9-15)
Are you prepared for a disaster to your collection? According to the Heritage Health Index Report issued by Heritage Preservation in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 78 percent of us are not prepared, putting more than 1.6 billion items at risk in our libraries in the U.S. Preparedness is of utmost importance in the event of a disaster, large or small. Learn about the fundamentals of emergency planning, which include identifying key players, assessing risks, establishing collection priorities and other preparations for protection of your collections. Kraft discusses tools available for and gives tips on overcoming roadblocks to writing a disaster plan. Lessons learned in this session can be applied to any size institution.

Disaster Response
June 9
Once a disaster strikes, the knee-jerk reaction is to rush in and save everything. Rushing in without advance planning puts collections at risk of more damage and staff at risk of injury. This session discusses managing a disaster situation and salvaging collections. Topics covered include: assessment and planning, working with a vendor and volunteers, handling public relations and managing collection salvage. A single-building incident will be used as a case study to illustrate the implementation of a disaster response effort. Lessons learned in this presentation can be applied to disasters large or small no matter the size of the institution.

Kraft is responsible for directing the preservation and conservation of the library collections at the University of Iowa. In 2009 she received the Midwest Archives Conference Presidents’ Award for her extraordinary work following the historic levels of flooding that struck Iowa in the summer of 2008. She is also active in the American Library Association, where she served as 2005-2006 Chair of the Preservation & Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.

For registration information visit the Events & Conferences page on the ALCTS Web site at www.ala.org/alcts. Registration is only $39 for ALCTS members. $49 for non-members, and $99 group rate. All webinars are scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. CDT, 11 a.m. PDT).

Preservation Week is a joint project of ALCTS, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services with contributing support from many other library and museum organizations. Corporate support is provided by Gaylord, Familyarchives.com, and Archival Products. For more information on Preservation Week, visit the Web site at www.preservationweek.org.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

Legislation drives chemical industry to increase transparency, prioritize risks, and consider green chemistry strategies for alternatives to more toxic materials. …

… “EPA would be instructed to create a public database containing information about each chemical and EPA actions on that chemical, and the legislation would restrict which data can be claimed by industry to be confidential. The bill also seeks to promote green chemistry by establishing a program to develop incentives for companies to make and use safer alternatives to some chemicals. ” …

Via New York Times: Chemicals Reform Bill

Safe Chemicals Legislation (PDF).

Social networking sites are gaining pace these days, and the competition in the area is increasing accordingly. Among various social media destinations, Facebook and Yahoo are detaching from rivals and are steadily taking over the social web, shows recently unveiled data from comScore, a leader in digital analytics and intelligence, according to M… (read more)

Click here to follow Roto Arcade on Facebook. Fun is promised for all. 

You’re using catchers this year, right? Okay, let’s price them. Assume a 5×5 format, as always (shame on the founding fathers for ignoring runs scored), and don’t stress too much on any singular dollar value here – the important thing is noting how the players relate to one another.

$25 Joe Mauer(notes)
$22 Victor Martinez(notes)
$21 Brian McCann(notes)

When they ask Martinez what position he plays, he should say "hitter." But he’s going to carry catcher eligibility for a while, no matter what eventually happens to his position.

$17 Jorge Posada(notes)
$16 Matt Wieters(notes)
$15 Kurt Suzuki(notes)
$14 Bengie Molina(notes)
$13 Geovany Soto(notes)

The Orioles are a train wreck, but it’s not the kid’s fault. Let’s hope he sees a team over .500 before too long; catching and losing is an unfair burden for anyone. … Molina probably looks like 4-5 guys on your weekend softball team. You want players like this in your bunker. … Suzuki’s counting stats get a boost from the heavy workload the A’s throw his way. Let’s just hope they don’t break him down early in his career.

$12 Russell Martin(notes)
$11 Ryan Doumit(notes)
$10 Yadier Molina(notes)
$10 Miguel Montero(notes)
$9 Miguel Olivo(notes)
$8 Mike Napoli(notes)
$8 Carlos Santana(notes)
$8 A.J. Pierzynski(notes)

Yadier Molina is another backstop getting run into the ground, but I’m sure the genius knows what he’s doing. Molina played six days in a row (one of the games was 20 flipping innings) before getting Tuesday off. … There’s no universal right answer with the Santanas and the Poseys; it depends on the scope of your league, the value of your bench spots, how competitive the waiver wire is, etc. Gotta take it on a case-by-case basis. … Montero’s just a shot in the dark; I loved him in March, like we all did.

$6 Ivan Rodriguez(notes)
$5 Jeff Clement(notes)
$4 Chris Iannetta(notes)
$4 John Baker(notes)
$4 Buster Posey(notes)

I’m not going to totally bury Clement yet because if he’s able to snap out of this funk he immediately becomes uber-valuable as a faux-catcher. … There’s always a stat-defense for Iannetta, or an excuse, but I’ll be surprised if he’s able to get anything past a time share with Olivo this summer.

$3 Rod Barajas(notes)
$3 Ramon Hernandez(notes)
$3 Carlos Ruiz(notes)
$2 Jarrod Saltalamacchia(notes)
$2 Chris Snyder(notes)
$2 Ronny Paulino(notes)
$2 Nick Hundley(notes)

I think Hundley could handle a regular catching gig (at least for our stat-grab purposes) but it’s not happening yet. … Anyone else sick of waiting on Salty? . . . Baker is what he is, a useful part-timer but in a mixed league where just one catcher goes to post, you need to be above him on the list. … A few people got excited when Snyder fell into a full-time gig, but I don’t see it. Go look at those career totals again.

$1 Kelly Shoppach(notes)
$1 John Buck(notes)
$1 Jeff Mathis(notes)
$1 Jason Varitek(notes)
$1 Jason Kendall(notes)
$1 J.R. Towles(notes)
$1 Dioner Navarro(notes)
$0 Rob Johnson(notes)
$0 Gregg Zaun(notes)
$0 Gerald Laird(notes)

I refuse to rank Taylor Teagarden(notes) until he actually gets a hit. Your witness.

Tony Fadell, who was formerly senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division, is the latest Silicon Valley IT expert to make a shift to clean tech.

A leading executive behind the iPod and iPhone, Fadell stepped down from his senior vice president role in November 2008 but stayed on with Apple as special advisor to CEO Steve Jobs until recently. Now, rumor is, he is moving into the fast-growing clean tech sector to focus on producing consumer-focused green technology.

(more…)

Tiradentes (1746–1792) foi o mais famoso banguelador, bode expiatório e pintor brasileiro de todos os tempos.

Joaquim José da Silva Xavier (o Tiradentes) foi um importante comunista que viveu em Minas Gerais na década de 20. O pseudônimo Tiradentes lhe foi dado quando cursava odontologia na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, curso jamais terminado em função da intensa atuação de tiradentes no DCE da Universidade e no Movimento Estudantil, através do qual pretendia implantar o comunismo no Brasil. Sua tentativa de provocar a revolução foi ridicularizada por seus vizinhos e colegas, e o prefeito de Belo Horizonte resolveu por bem cortar sua cabeça.

Bosquejo histórico sobre Tiradentes

Quando ainda era bem pequeno, além de fazer muito cocô e xixi, Tiradentes já pintava o sete. Ao crescer e acabar ficando grande, anos depois, continuou pintando o sete, ora como mascate, ora como tropeiro, comerciante, farmacêutico, e até como militar e minerador. Foi no trabalho de extração de pedras preciosas das rochas que ele desenvolveu a prenda de arrancar dentes. Usava até as mesmas ferramentas de mineração: martelos, alicates etc. O que, é claro, doía muito, tanto que, até hoje se comemora anualmente o dia que esse filho da puta foi enforcado, esquartejado, et cetera (segundo relatos da época, no caminho para o cadafalso, Tiradentes foi cercado por um sem-número de banguelas ex-clientes seus que o consolavam com palavras de apoio: -É bom? Quem é que tá com medinho agora, heim?). Ficou famoso nessa arte. Apesar de que ele preferia fazer suas extrações nas rochas, porque elas nunca gritavam.

Naquela época, a ruma de comedores de rapadura era muito grande, imensa, mas ainda era possível encontrar alguns dentes podres entre as cáries das bocas do povo. Tiradentes distraiu milhares de dentes de mineiros e cariocas. Nas cidades por onde ele passava, formavam-se filas de dobrar todas as esquinas da praça da Igreja Matriz. Até os humoristas Tiririca e Tião Macalé (Ih, nojento, tcham!) viraram banguelas nas mãos do artista.

O Inconfidente

Quando soube que o reino português mandaria fazer uma derrama, cobrando da população os 20% da produção de ouro devidos e não pagos, correspondentes aos quintos do inferno da Coroa, totalizando 8.000 kg do metal, Tiradentes resolveu pintar o sete às escondidas, como ativista político. Ele tentou, então, formar uma conspiração para livrar os brasileiros do jugo da rainha Maria I dePortugal, carinhosamente chamada por seus patrícios de ´A Louca`.

Foi aí que a craca roeu o casco. A tal da Maria Maluca ouviu falar das artes que ele estava fazendo, e tratou de condená-lo da melhor maneira que a Coroa dispunha para lidar com homossexuais e terroristas: Tiradentes deveria ser enforcado em praça pública e, por via das dúvidas quanto à reencarnação dos mortos, seu corpo seria esquartejado em quatro partes, sendo que cada uma delas deveria ser levada para um lugar diferente do País, bem distante um do outro: Buenos Aires, Disneylândia, Austrália, Shopping Iguatemi, Alaska e Monte Everest. A execução aconteceu em 21 de abril de 1792, no Largo da Lampadosa, Rio de Janeiro. Como a corda estava apertada demais, foi o jeito ele morrer antes mesmo de ser enforcado. Segundo consta nos "Autos da Devassa" (a devassa devia ser a Maria Maluca) o enforcado morreu de morte natural, sendo tal conclusão uma prova cabal da secular burrice brasileira.

Verdades sobre Tiradentes

O que muita gente não sabe é que Tiradentes(cabra punheteiroherói brasileiro) não foi muito mais que um pobre filho da puta. Tentou enriquecer com o comércio de maconha puta pinga um produto que ninguém sabe ao certo o que era,como um bom brasileiro, mas por uma razão que ninguém sabia, só quem comprava eram os nego mano escravos, que sempre davam calote por não ter dinheiro, assim Tiradentes ficou mais pobre que antes. Enquanto Tiradentes se fudia calado trabalhava noite e dia, como bom brasileiro que é, os playboy das fazendas mineiras, estavam putos da vida porque seus pais teriam que tirar dinheiro da mesada para pagar o ouro que os políticos cobravam. A pergunta é: Se Tiradentes não tinha nem onde cair morto que porra ele tinha a ver com com impostos que iam cobrar dos ricos? Enquanto isso, tomado por uma forte viadagem depressão ele começou a consumir toda a mercadoria que ainda tinha, a que ninguém sabe o que era, e andou pela rua onde osplayboy a jovem elite agrária, conspirava contra a coroa, apelido dado ‘Maria Louca’ por ser velha. Foi aí que vendo aquele homem bêbado decidido, chamaram ele para participar de seus planos, e como ofereceram cachaça vendo que se indentificava com a causa nobre de seus brimos, o que ninguém sabe como isso pode ter acontecido, ele aceitou. O seguindo os planos ele começou a gritar pela rua os ideais da Inconfidência mineira. No final das contas só Tiradentes e seus amiguinhos pobres acabaram morrendo, e os playboy curtiram a noite num puteiro boteco que a Dercy Gonçalves acabara de abrir.

Final da história

O corpo de Tiradentes foi partido em pedacinhos e distribuido pela cidade afora, mas a cabeça dele sumiu antes que alguém pudesse ver. A duas especulações sobre o que poderia ter acontecido, já que ninguém sabe onde foi para a tal cabeça:

O morto não era Tiradentes, como qualquer um que era amigo dele conhecia muito bem sua cabeça, mesmo estando raspada, então os soldado da coroa tiraram a cabeça
Tiradentes carregava consigo uma inovação tecnologica, presente da tua mãe, durante o curto tempo de três anos que ficou preso aguardando julgamento(rápida para os padrões brasileiros). Ele carregava consigo um anel peniano que contava o número de penetrações. O anel foi o percursor do computador moderno, mas como foi uma invenção brasileira, ninguém deu bola.

Tanta precaução de nada serviu. Trinta anos depois de morto, Tiradentes pintou o sete de setembro. Sua melhor e mais importante obra.

Em compensação, hoje se paga 40% de impostos no Brasil e não aparece sequer um louco para reclamar.

Fonte: Desciclopedia – Pode confiar com fé.

At the eComm Conference in San Francisco, Skype’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Mr. Jonathan Rosenberg waived the 560 million users mark that Skype has recently passed, offering some general statistics about Skype’s usage among Internauts.

The figure  leaves Facebook in the dust for web supremacy, at a distance greater than 160 million … (read more)

I was with a girl shopping for assorted consumerist baubles. Technically, she was shopping and I was providing color commentary. A man must learn to amuse himself to pull through these dreaded moments. In the middle of a well-delivered quip, I noticed from the most distant corner of my eye a familiar jeans-covered ass. I studied the ass for a bit and the flow of hair down the back and realized it was one of my exes. She turned around and confirmed for me it was her.

She didn’t see me. I studied her for a bit. The three years were not kind to her. Her body was still great but her face looked drawn, eyes sad, and was that an incipient turkey gullet? When I dated her she was a solid 8, and sexy as hell. Now? A 7. Barely. In just three years she dropped a full point. I wondered if she had gone through an emotionally draining divorce in the time since I’d known her. She was at the store alone on a day in which most women are shopping with their partners.

My time spent with her had been good. I held no ill will toward her. We departed not as exes, but as former lovers, blessedly free of bitterness or rancor. And yet, when I saw my ex there in the store, and mentally noted that the girl I was with was better looking than her, a sadistic urge to flaunt my latest lover and parade her past my ex like a trophy float overcame me. I maneuvered myself and my female company into visual range of my ex. I made sure not to look over. I wanted the bump in to feel natural.

As I maneuvered closer to my ex through the aisles of clothes and kitchenware, I placed my hands lovingly on various erogenous zones of my companion’s body. All while pretending not to notice my ex. I slid my hand down my lover’s back, played with her hair, and made sure to tell a joke so that she giggled girlishly within earshot of my ex. Unfortunately, my ex didn’t notice. Either she was captivated by the 40% sale on hand towels, or she was expertly avoiding acknowledging my presence. I doubted the latter, because usually even the best actresses cannot hold it together with zen-like calm and serenity when bumping into an ex who left such an indelible impression on them. They give away their true feelings with a nearly imperceptible quiver in the shoulders, or a nervous dart of the eyes.

Had she forgotten me? Not possible. We dated too many months, and I… did things… with her that assured a memorial to me would forever be etched in her brain, like a Vietnam Lovers Memorial of sex acts. Or maybe she didn’t recognize me? I *was* wearing a hat, crisply turned down along the front brim.

Nevertheless, no matter how much I maneuvered, I couldn’t needle my ex with my profound pettiness. She remained steadfastly unaware of my presence, flitting about the store like a hummingbird. What a wasted opportunity for a deliciously ego-massaging bump in.

I told my girl about my ex being alone in the store, and how I was trying to get the ex to see us. I also told her she was hotter than my ex. Instead of chastising me for my immaturity, her eyes lit up with conspiratorial glee and she offered a strategy.

“Ooh, I’m curious. Which one is she? Let’s walk by her and I’ll stick my ass out for you to smack. Yay!”

God bless women. Just when you are about to resign yourself to the thought that they are made of nothing but sugar and spice and everything nice, you are reminded of the arsenic laced within.

We left the store mission unaccomplished. I pondered for a second why I relished the thought of rubbing my happiness in the face of a sad, possibly single ex for whom I had nothing but warm feelings. I had released the id monster from its hindbrain depths, and danced a little jig with it.

I guess it just feels too good. And I’ve no doubt she would’ve done the same had the shoe been on the other foot. Any woman would’ve done the same. But don’t bother asking them. They’ll deny deny deny. They’ve got an image to burnish, you see.

Note: As with many of my posts, the chronology of this post has been altered to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

Filed under: The Id Monster

What looks like a bulky female hygiene product is actually a health monitor that hooks up to an iPhone via Bluetooth, sending bodily information such as heart rates to the compatible app. More »

Scott Rudd

Marina Abramović performing The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010

At ten o’clock on a recent weekday morning, when the crowds were let in the door and up the stairs to the big hall on the second floor of MoMA, Marina Abramović was already seated in the center of a space that had been cordoned off by lines on the floor, strong lights making it seem like a movie set. She was wearing an immensely dramatic flowing red dress. Her black hair was in a single plait which folded around her left shoulder. She had her back to the stairs. She would not move from her own chair, not once, not even to eat or go to the bathroom, while the museum stayed open. In front of her was a small simple table and an empty chair, a line forming to take the seat facing her.

I was second in the line. The woman in front of me seemed nervous as more people joined the line behind us. By ten thirty there were more than twenty people waiting to sit on that chair opposite Abramović. Many others stood around and watched.

Marina Abramović’s eyes were closed and her head was down. She was like a figure praying or in a state of concentrated reverie. The effect, the pose, was from a painting in its designed, self-conscious stillness rather than a moment in opera or the theatre. As the woman who was first in the line approached and sat down, Abramović did not move; she let a few seconds linger. And then she lifted her head and opened her eyes.

She seemed immensely weary. The gaze was of someone who has been gazing too much into too many faces. But it was not tired; it was fully alive, alert to itself and the light and the still drama of the occasion. She did not do much more than gaze, allowing very little variation in the intensity of the look. Sometimes she blinked. That was all. I watched from a distance and waited.

And then it was my turn. I had been told by one of the guards to let ten seconds or so pass before I approached. During this time, Abramović put her head down once more and closed her eyes. I had been seated for something like half a minute when she lifted her head and looked at me. The gaze now, from this closer perspective, was more sorrowful, but it was also oddly noble and grand. And it was concentrated. She was looking at me and at me only.

I knew not to speak or move or make any gesture. I tried to soften my own gaze, which had been too concentrated and sharp to begin with, and I was curious to know if she would notice this, or do anything with her own gaze in return, but she did not. The lights caught her left eye in two points, but later only in one point, which means she must have moved her head slightly, but I did not see her doing this. The other eye seemed dead, or deadened in comparison. Her nose was strong, her lips full.

It was important, I thought, to do the gazing as intelligently as possible. I knew that she would not smile, or descend into shyness. She would only look. And I had permission to look at her looking all day if I liked. Despite the line of people waiting, there was no time limit on how long I could stay in this chair.

It was like being brought into a room in Enniscorthy when I was a child on the day after a neighbour had died and being allowed to look at the corpse’s face. You studied Abramović’s face with the same mystified intensity, as though it would yield something—not come alive exactly, but in its very stillness offer something, an image maybe, that you should know and remember.

The gazing came in waves. Sometimes it was easy to relax and just look, and blink when you had to, and then look harder. She was always looking directly at your eyes. Her face was not like a mask. Just as the face of someone who has recently died can seem to flicker or move, so too her face seemed at times infinitely suggestive and vulnerable. But it was also sexual, sensuous, spiritual, and that made me both fascinated and uncomfortable. It made me feel that I could spend the day there opposite her, and maybe the next day too, and it also made me want to go, it made me consider at what point I would leave.

As soon as I began to think over my options, I forced myself to look at her more closely. I had no clear idea what she was thinking but she was doing a good imitation of someone gazing in the most serious way at someone else, like a painter might gaze in that second before applying the brush to the canvas, or like the sitter in turn might gaze at the painter. Or like we should look at paintings ourselves, or at things we believe in. Whatever she was doing, Abramović was causing a line of energy that made laughter, mockery, irony into matters that were beside the point.

This was serious, too serious maybe, too intimate, too searching. It was either, I felt, what I should do all the time, or what I should never do. I wondered if I should go. I tried to look at her harder, I tried to get more from my gaze and from hers. She did not change. Eventually, I bowed to her and turned away from her. She put her head down again and closed her eyes and awaited her next visitor. My stay had lasted twenty minutes.

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is on view until May 31 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.