The Miracle Beer Diet

That ‘splains it. I need to start drinking beer.

Around the Blogosphere

Nominations are now open for the 2007 Weblog Awards. Look through the list of categories and check the comments to see if your favorites have already been nominated. You can hit the + button to add a “me too” to a nomination. If you want to nominate a blog, you’ll have to register to comment. Nominations are open til October 15th.

Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics recently married Sean at Cosmic Variance. Wishing many many years of happiness to you both! They should be back from their honeymoon anyday.

Congratulations to Slippy Lane and Zesty on their recent engagement!

Congratulations to Penny and her brand-new husband, who tied the knot on September 21st, and didn’t bother to tell us til October! I guess she’s been busy, do ya reckon?

Suzie-Q and Globel Evildoer Fighter are apparently "combining forces"... personally, that is. I wish them all the happiness in the world! Despite the announcement, they couldn’t stay away from blogging very long.

Mamacita is closing up shop at her blog. Good luck, and we’ll miss you!

Andrew at The Gunsmoke Files has an awesome post on the homeless in Denver.

Coleen and Sadie are off to obedience school. Sounds like fun!

Motherpie reminds us that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Hoss is full of stories from his trip to Hawaii. The zoo is pornographic, the Wifi connections are elusive, and they don’t serve grits. Otherwise, a great time was had by all.

Bearforce1

I never heard of these guys til yesterday, but the music takes me back about 30 years. (via b3ta)

Vodou Brooklyn

Stephanie Keith met a Vodou priest at a Buddhist interfaith event in New York. He invited her to photograph and experience the religious world of his Haitian culture. Ten ceremonies later, she offers her images and reflections on these late-night rituals.

Produced by Trent Gilliss and Mitch Hanley

(via Metafilter)

The Sad Story of the Singing Nun

Jeanne Deckers was best known as The Singing Nun, who had a #1 hit in 1962 titled Dominique. What happened afterward is the sad part.

She didn’t seek the fame the music business brought her. Her political beliefs caused a rift between Deckers and her superiors. She left the convent and tried to raise money by resurrecting her musical career, but never quite made it back. Later, she received an income tax bill for her profits from Dominique, years after all proceeds had been donated to the church. Her decline into poverty and substance abuse led to a double suicide in 1985. Read the whole story. (via Metafilter)

Political Links

Frontier Former Editor puts his feelings about Iraq into a few choice words.

What happens when you get rid of all the illegal immigrants. Some towns are rethinking their recently-enacted hard-line laws.

Economic priorities of the federal government.

Have you heard of Free Speech TV? Find out more at Simply Left Behind.

I always hated it when Ann Coulter was attacked for her looks. That’s so unneccessary. There are plenty of other reasons to attack her, like the things she says. There are too many jokes about her looking like a man, so she has to go and say things that proves she hates being a woman.

Iceland had exactly one troop in Iraq. But now he’s going home, and leaves us a farewell song. The Loneliest Icelander.

Can you think of a better caption for the new republican logo?

Lise Meitner

How did a Jewish woman born in Germany in 1878 end up as a nuclear scientist? Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission! At first she received no credit for the discovery because of who she was. Then she received “the blame”.

The Nazis, in the meantime, had been removing all traces of the Jews, and Meitner’s name was erased from all the research she had done. Perhaps because of this, Otto Hahn managed to convince himself–and the world–that the discovery of nuclear fission (Meitner coined the term) had been his. Hahn received the Nobel Prize in 1944. (Meitner never did.) For years, Hahn was listed at the inventor, with Lise Meitner occasionally mentioned as his assistant.

When the atom bomb was dropped on Japan, Meitner was upset, not only by the devastation but also by the sudden publicity: reporters on her doorstep; cameras in her face; phone messages and telegrams waiting for her reply. She had little to say. The bomb had killed 100,000 people, and suddenly she was being portrayed in the media as the person who had come up with the blueprint for it.

Read the entire story at Neatorama.

Freestyle Tuba

Oystein Baadsvik plays tuba like you’ve never heard before. (via Gorilla Mask)

Miss C, the Snake Wrangler

When we finally made it home from afterschool errands this afternoon, we found our cat Biscuit acting funny. Princess got down on his level to see what he was looking at, then jumped out of her skin. A SNAKE! A SNAKE! Mama!

Yes, there was a little snake, wrapped around the TV electrical cord. I tried to pick it up with a broom, regretting that I tossed the big barbecue tongs out a couple of months ago. Princess and Gothgrrl jumped around and made so much noise that the snake slithered under one bookcase, then another, and finally hid behind a wall heater. Oh, great.

I took the kids to church and promised to get that snake. Later, Biscuit indicated the snake was under my desk. I chased it around a while, and threw a small towel over it so it wouldn’t see me sneak up. Then it was easy to take it out. I’m glad I decided to keep it to show the girls, or else they’d never believe I caught it, or be able to sleep tonight.

Good Reading for Today

The sun ripped off a comet’s tail, and NASA has the video.

How to survive as the family tech support person.

Patrick Mallucci has thoroughly researched pictures of celebrity women to compile images of the best looking breasts. His work is supposed to help plastic surgeons create the perfect looking breasts when clients request some work done on their natural assets.

Study in rats suggests long-term, moderate consumption of alcohol improves recall of both visual and emotional stimuli.

50 Myths About Money.

Rethinking the age of sexual consent. Should sex with a 16-year-old be the same crime as the rape of a 5-year-old?

How to make moonshine.

Some folks are finding fame by leaving comments on internet blogs.

How to Accept Criticism with Grace and Appreciation. Learn this technique, and your critics will turn into fuzzy pink kittens.

The new Dove Campaign for Real Beauty video packs a punch.

George Takei is now a heavenly body, as an asteroid has been named in his honor.

A guide for Thai women on finding a foreign husband. (via Look at This)

Lovelle Svart woke up Friday knowing it was the day she would die. A story of a legal planned suicide.

Amish Grace.

Two Million Virgins

A new book called Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After The First World War by Virginia Nicholson tells how The Great War affected the women of an entire generation.

One hazy morning in 1917 the senior mistress of Bournemouth High School For Girls stood up in front of the assembled sixth form and announced to her hushed audience: "I have come to tell you a terrible fact.

"Only one out of ten of you girls can ever hope to marry. This is not a guess of mine. It is a statistical fact.

"Nearly all the men who might have married you have been killed. You will have to make your way in the world as best you can.

"The war has made more openings for women than there were before. But there will still be a lot of prejudice. You will have to fight. You will have to struggle."

Sitting in the assembly hall among her shocked and silent schoolfellows was 17-year-old Rosamund Essex.

She was never to forget those chilling words, recalling: "It was one of the most fateful statements of my life."

When Rosamund, who never married, wrote her memoirs 60 years later she accepted that her teacher's pronouncement had been prophetic.

"How right she was," she recalled. "Only one out of every ten of my friends has ever married."

Read more about Rosamund Essex and other stories of women whose lives were changed by demographics in this article at The Daily Mail. (via Look at This)

Rubber Biscuits

(via Tacky Raccoons)

Good Blogs

Someone wrote me once and said it seems all the blogs he reads have the same material. That can be true, if you read mine and the blogs I work for and the blogs I cite. They are all linkblogs, looking for the latest and coolest posts on the internet. When a link is hot, you'll find it all over. But there are lots and lots of bloggers with talent and original material. I will try to post some of my favorite now and then, so you can explore different areas of the Blogosphere and maybe enjoy and learn something, too!

Today, here are a few bloggers who write well about what they do for a living. See, part of what makes these blogs so good is that these people have lives off the net. And they are very good at expressing themselves.

Waiter Rant is from a blogger who is also a waiter in New York. He posts stories about his experiences in various restaurants, his observations of diners, and things that have nothing to do with either. The writing is excellent. He has a book that will go to press very soon.

Random Acts of Reality chronicles the adventures of an EMT in London, England. The well-written stories are thought-provoking and often exciting.

The Blank Top Chronicles is by a guy who answers the phone for a DC cab company. Besides the wealth of material (never underestimate the stupidity of people demanding service), he tells these stories in a particularly hilarious manner.

Saw Lady (Natalia Paruz) is a busker and recording artist who plays the musical saw in New York City. She writes about music, life in New York, and the busker lifestyle.

There are more, and blogs on other subjects as well. Check these out, and I'll have more in the days to come.

The Bloody Benders

The Benders of Kansas were America’s first serial killers. They ran an inn in their tiny prairie home. The main draw was thier daughter Kate, who was not only attractive, but supposedly a psychic medium.

If a diner, overnight guest or séance participant appeared to be wealthy, he was given a seat of honor with his back to the curtain. While Kate distracted him, Old Man Bender or his son would sneak up to the curtain with a sledgehammer. They would then strike a savage blow to the top of the man’s head, killing him instantly. The body was then dragged back beneath the canvas and stripped. A trap door that led to an earthen cellar was opened and the body was dumped below until it could be buried somewhere on the prairie. A favorite burying ground was apparently an orchard that was located on the property.

Read more about the Benders at Dead Men Do Tell Tales. (via Metafilter)

The Last Laugh

Stadler and Waldorf signing off The Muppet Show every episode. (via Milk and Cookies)

Informative Links

Why Do Otherwise Normal Girls Refuse To Go Dutch? Here’s a breakdown of opinions, according to Gawker comments.

The Monkeysphere, or why you don’t care about 99% of humanity.

Never mind your carbon footprint; what will your asshole footprint on earth be?

It’s possible you’ve taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. Now here’s an explanation of what your initials mean that really makes sense. I am an ENFJ. (via Metafilter)

The 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World.

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Nothing. (via Bits and Pieces)

The truth about a career in marine biology.

Enter your zip code at ZIPskinny and find information from the 2000 census report.

The growing “happiness gap” between men and women. Thirty years ago, women reported being slightly happier than men. Now men are happier.

Exercise your brain by switching your mouse to the other hand.

How to catch a mouse without a mousetrap.

Weird and Funny Links

Robot Chicken does The Great Pumpkin. NSFW.

If you are a politician, and you are going to steal bandwidth, don’t do it to a b3ta member.

Rammstein is getting all traditional in preparation for Oktoberfest.

Non-Stop FAIL! This video may make you hurt.

Robot Chicken takes on the myth of the protective blanket vs monsters in the dark.

Headline of the week: Trouser snake kills Cambodian man.

If this picture doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, I don’t know what will.

Star Trek: TNG and The Love Boat. More eerie similarities than you can shake a stick at.

See what happens when you translate a phrase through several different languages. I put in “Never underestimate the stupidity of large groups.” And received “Too much the great group not never is a form of the analysis that not nonstupid in the possession of the order no.”

A Tough Dance

A Tough Dance. The film is from 1902 (originally silent); the song is from 1905.

Renault Ballet

Watching cars do an intricate group dance is nice, but it’s even better when something goes wrong! (via the Presurfer)

Information, useful or not.

How did people make toast before electric toasters? By setting a gadget over a fire or a stove burner. This site has some of these antique implements for sale, with descriptions on how they were used. (via Grow-A-Brain)

The man who saved the world by doing ...nothing.

The proper procedure for bringing your own wine to a restaurant.

Recipe for poutine.

Caffeine Facts.

The longest non-stop flight ever measured. Yes, it was a bird! A bar-tailed godwit flew 7,145 miles from Alaska to New Zealand—without taking a break for food or drink.

Follow Aurora Borealis season with online webcams and galleries.

Crocodiles have a powerful homing instinct. Move them, and they’ll travel hundred of miles to get home. This just-released study is the last paper by Steve Irwin.

Ten full-length classic movies available online, ranging from the chilling Nosferatu to the heartwarming It’s A Wonderful Life. All worth watching!