] On May 19, 1995, I received a standard-sized gray
] envelope, stuffed with what looked like, through a small
] cellophane window, a check for $95,093.35.

] The documents I had expected to make me cry actually
] made me laugh out loud. First Interstate Bank of
] California was abbreviated throughout as FICAL. An acronym
] pronounced as fecal, not fical, I thought. This is a fecal
] matter.

Bank Error In My Favor: Collect $95,000: Man 1, Bank 0

By K. Alexa Mavromatis, Staff Writer

With national recognition as an accepting, liberal place to live and work, Providence is developing a reputation as a welcoming place for gays.

The city’s combination of education, art and a community that is accepting to gays is attracting entrepreneurs who are enhancing the retail, service and high tech industries, among others.

Gay Business Comfortable in R.I.

quoted (illegally, I guess)

===
The Poetics of Security: Skateboarding, Urban Design, and the New Public Space
by Ocean Howell
(© 2001. No portion of this essay, text or image, may be reproduced without author's consent.)

Abstract:

Skateboarding is a thorn in the side of landscape architects, planners, and building owners; so much so that there are now design workshops that teach a series of defensive architectural tactics for deterring the activity. The type of skateboarding that plagues these architects and the spaces they create, "street skating," has only existed for about 15 years, and in fact was born out of the barren, defensive spaces created by redevelopment. Viewed in this light, it is clear that street skating is not only an impetus for defensive architecture, but also a symptom of defensive architecture. Recognizing that redevelopment spaces fostered pathologies, cities and corporations have begun to build more friendly spaces in the past couple of decades. But they have been careful to ensure that the spaces are only friendly to a select subset of the public, namely office workers and consumers. To create such spaces requires knowledge of the minutest details of undesirable behaviors—a knowledge that can only be gleaned through surveillance. Because the resultant spaces appear open but exclude the vast majority of the citizenry, they represent a restrictive discourse of publicness. Although the destructive effects of skateboarding have been exaggerated, the purpose of this essay is not to argue that skateboarding should be permitted in public space. It is by virtue of its status as a misuse of these spaces—and because it is a symptom of defensive design—that skateboarding is exceptionally good at drawing attention to the quietly exclusionary nature of the new public space. Ultimately, skateboarding affords an observer glimpses of the larger processes of surveillance and simulation by which public space, both physical and cultural, is produced.

The Poetics of Security: Skateboarding, Urban Design, and the New Public Space

Great government information on the medical efficacy of various non-traditional health-care techniques.

Treatment Information by Treatment or Therapy

What happens when you play Counterstrike too much? You end up with a potty mouth. And some enemies:
So, the story goes that co-worker A got sick of co-worker B's constant profanity whilst playing Counter Strike. Co-worker A then hid a microphone next to co-worker B's desk, and captured this stream of rantings. Then, as co-worker A was a member of an electronic music-making concern, he endeavored to edit it all together. The end result was this: The Terrible Mr. G.

The Terrible Mr. G

(use cpunks/cpunks for user:pass)

Unspeakable Conversations

By HARRIET McBRYDE JOHNSON

He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child. It has nothing to do with me. I should not feel threatened.

...

It is a chilly Monday in late March, just less than a year ago. I am at Princeton University. My host is Prof. Peter Singer, often called -- and not just by his book publicist -- the most influential philosopher of our time. He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live. He also says he believes that it should be lawful under some circumstances to kill, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn't consider them ''persons.'' What does it take to be a person? Awareness of your own existence in time. The capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live.

...

It's not that I'm ugly. It's more that most people don't know how to look at me. The sight of me is routinely discombobulating. The power wheelchair is enough to inspire gawking, but that's the least of it. Much more impressive is the impact on my body of more than four decades of a muscle-wasting disease.

Unspeakable Conversations

quoted:
===
The science fiction author A. E. Van Vogt definied a nexialist as "One skilled in the science of joining together in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields", and I think that sums it up rather well.

Nexialism

quoted:
====
Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McDonald's coffee in February 1992. Liebeck ordered coffee that was served in a Styrofoam cup at the drive-through window of a local McDonald's.

After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck
could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap.

The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonald's refused.

During discovery, McDonald's produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck's. This history documented McDonald's knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

FACT SHEET: MCDONALD'S SCALDING COFFEE CASE

This is a pretty creepy use of Macromedia Flash. :)

Look Into The Eyeball

This group is no match for Lesbian Russin Pop stars T.A.T.U (taty.us). What's really wrong about this group is that their MOTHER writes all of the lyrics and came up with the idea of the dynamic twin duo to shake their asses together. Who says sex doesn't sell?!? :-)

Cheeky Girls