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I'm always running across some interesting tid-bit that I'd love to share with others, but, but, but, they just don't seem to fit into any particular group.
Here is your chance to post interesting, entertaining, funny, and noteworthy topics, videos, pictures, links, that tickle your fancy...
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At Long Last, a Creepy-Realistic Humanoid Robot
For decades, we’ve seen movies depicting futuristic robots that are nearly-identical to human beings. But we haven’t actually seen a machine that could truly be mistaken for a person. That is, until now.
Seriously, if you were just walking down the street and this thing passed you, would you even look twice? Watch video below and read more about our soon-to-be robot overlord here.
So i'm thinking, we need a group, or thread, for Dallas Gaytheist to post those stories he is so good at finding....
LIke, make it a weekly, or even monthly feature? somewhere..........and then, we have to talk DG into this, ha ha!! (if we leave it as random thing, i won't know where to look for it...)
I LOVE his stories, i love to get on my softest robe, make a cocktail, light a candle or hit print and go sit by the fireplace,
and read whatever story he has put up.
He is most excellent at finding very good ones. I "save" them to read later, when i am in no hurry, no errands or chores pressing down, etc.. I've never been disappointed, he is just the best at finding a good yarn.....
so what do you think, do we need a new group? "The weekly/monthly story from Dallas Gaytheist"??
~~or~~
A special, ongoing thread somewhere?
oh, and who will convince DG he wants to do this???
Hey JM, thanks a lot. I'm glad you like the short stories I've posted. However, you're about the only one, I think. No one ever reads or comments on them. I'll dig some more up for you. I think I've given you:
The Upper Berth
Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand
Mrs. Amworth
What else?
I have a fascination with those who hoard. No doubt it's because I have a strong tendency toward hoarding myself. Having watched some of the many new TV programs that expose the worst cases of hoarding, I'm very relieved that I never let it get anywhere near as bad as these extreme examples. But if I had kept it up, I might very well have found myself drowning in too much of everything!
I know my 'collecting' began because the art that I made required collage materials, so that gave me license to collect all manner of stuff for artistic purposes of course. Later in my life when I was dealing with a great deal of personal stress, buying stuff was a distraction which gave me a quick pick-me-up.
Stuff was piling up and my home became extremely cluttered. It wasn't until I sold my home a few years later that I was forced to finally deal with the fact that all this accumulated stuff would have to be disposed of because I was moving into a small two bedroom apartment. It was painful to let go, but I had no choice in the matter. The thought occurred to me to rent a storage unit, but deep down I knew better than to continue to feed this unsustainable addiction of mine. I hired a couple of women who specialized in organizing Tag Sales, and opened my house to the hoards of other hoarders - haha. I wasn't laughing then though, my stuff flew out the door because the prices were unbelievably low. Most everything had to go, so there was no point in stuff not selling. I was in shock before, during and after the sale, but once I moved into my apartment and had only what I really needed, did I breathe a sigh of relief. Honestly, I got rid of too much stuff, and should have kept a few things that I now regret I didn't, but I don't regret the lighthearted feeling of now living clutter-free.
I do have to still watch myself, needing to think twice before I buy something new. Do I really need it? Is there space for it? I also force myself to purge stuff seasonally that I haven't used and are just a waste of precious space.
Anyone of you have or have had a similar 'collecting' problem? How are you coping?
Children of Hoarders on Leaving the Cluttered Nest
Holly Sabiston said that her home in Austin, Tex., fluctuates between neat and “über neat.”
New York Times
JESSIE SHOLL’S West Village apartment is a rent-stabilized fifth-floor walk-up, three small rooms and a sleeping loft where she and her husband, both writers, have lived for seven years. Perfect-storm conditions for clutter. But Ms. Sholl, a petite, pale-skinned woman of 42, keeps things tidy with routine “purges.” Even of objects she likes.
“I should get rid of this,” she said on a recent afternoon, pointing to a chicken sitting on top of a bookshelf, handmade by an artist out of recycled shower curtains. “It serves no purpose.”
Two minutes earlier she had been admiring its colorful plumes.
She laughed. “It’s a little pathological, I admit.”
If Ms. Sholl is overly zealous in her approach to housekeeping, one can understand why after reading her recently published memoir, “Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding.” The parent Ms. Sholl describes is a woman whose cluttered living room inexplicably contains five sewing machines and at least eight pairs of moldy cowboy boots. She is someone who buys too much and doesn’t throw anything away, even as the stuff piles up and impedes normal life — the textbook definition of a hoarder.
In dealing with her mother’s home in Minneapolis, Ms. Sholl has spent much of her life alternating between feeling shame about its squalid condition and attempting to rid it of the books, scraps of paper, empty food cartons and thrift-store tchotchkes littering every available surface.
When she learned that her mother had cancer, in 2006, Ms. Sholl flew out for one last-ditch cleanup attempt, an effort that inspired “Dirty Secret.” “The stove was piled feet-high with dirty pans,” Ms. Sholl said. “It gnawed at me that she was living that way.”
Many children of hoarders know the feeling. Even as scientists study the cognitive activity that accompanies the disorder and television shows like TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive” and A&E’s “Hoarders” have made it a mainstream issue, scant attention has been paid to how hoarding affects families of the afflicted, especially their children. Most are left to their own devices to make sense of growing up in homes where friends and relatives are unable to visit, with parents who seem to value inanimate objects more than the animate ones navigating the goat paths through the clutter.
Randy O. Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College, has been studying hoarders for two decades and is an author of “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things.” Children of hoarders, he noted, often display a tortured ambivalence toward their parents, perhaps because unlike spouses or friends of hoarders, they had little choice but to live amid the junk.
“They grew up in this difficult environment and naturally came to resent it,” Dr. Frost said. “But at the same time, these are your parents and you have to not only respect and love but take care of them. What happens when they get old?”
NOT surprisingly, there are a number of online support groups and blogs devoted to children of hoarders, including Hoarder’s Son and Behind the Door. The most popular, Children of Hoarders, maintains an online forum where members trade strategies for helping parents, discuss issues like “doorbell dread” (more on that later) and share stories. One account, posted by a woman named Tracy Schroeder, details in emotionally raw terms her mother’s death and the subsequent cleanup of the family home in Clovis, N.M., which was filled with magazines, craft supplies and dog feces.
“The COH Web site was my saving grace,” Ms. Schroeder, 42, said. “Nobody understands the weirdness of growing up this way unless they go through it.”
In high school, Ms. Schroeder said, she was a cheerleader and president of her class, but she lived in constant fear that “someone would see our house.” After her parents divorced, she strategically arranged visits with friends when she was spending weekends with her father. The college she attended was 20 minutes from her mother’s house, but she rarely visited, she said, because “I wouldn’t want to stay there, and that would cause fights.”
CONTINUE Reading Page 2 HERE:
Posted on: May 22, 2011 2:22 PM, by Ethan Siegel
The 2011 World Beard and Mustache Championships just took place in Trondheim, Norway. Those of you who've been following what's been going on with me for a while know that I shaved my head for charity two years ago, and, thanks to my 2009 astronomy class, I've been growing a beard for the last 18 months (and counting). But, as you can see, I have a long way to go until I can compete with some of these show-stoppers:
Fritz Sendlhofer, champion of the Garibaldi category,
(All photos from 2011 WBMC credit Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images.)
Karl-Heinze Hille, Imperial Partial Beard champion,
Dusan Lalos, Natural Partial Beard champion,
and Dieter Besuch, Freestyle Partial Beard champion.
And, while having a partial beard perhaps makes me partial to them, I can't help but marvel at some of the full beards, including Full Beard/Styled Mustache champion Burke Kenny:
3rd place in Full Beard Freestyle, Gerhard Knapp:
2nd place in Full Beard Freestyle, Hans-Peter Weis:
and the most impressive beardsman I know of, Full Beard Freestyle champion, Elmar Weisser, whose Norwegian flag + Moose beard also deservedly won "Best in Show."
Just... wow! I have a long way to go before I'm competitive with these guys, but in the meantime, I have my hirsute heroes. You can see more of the best beards and the 2011 World Championship results by following the links.
But what about astronomy beards? Well, I have to give credit for greatest transformation to British astronomer John Couch Adams. Famed for almost discovering Neptune, he had one of the worst (and least successful) comb-overs of his day.
But, after finally admitting his baldness to himself and embracing it, he grew a beard. And the results, at least in my opinion, were a vast improvement.
Even as an old man, the beard impresses me. In any case, I hope you're getting to enjoy whatever it is that amuses you this weekend, and that you have a great one!
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/05/weekend_diversion_t...
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