Aw, kids-of-Gud.

I just got a call and email from my former dentist. I don't think I have dental coverage up here, but oh well.

I don't quite understand the reasoning here: French Call For Veil Ban In Public Buildings

Critics of the veils call them a gateway to extremism, an insult to gender equality and an offense to France's secular system. A 2004 French law bans Muslim headscarves from classrooms.

...

France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at some 5 million. Only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear such attire, usually a "niqab" pinned across the face to cover all but the eyes.

"It is perhaps a marginal problem, but it is the visible part of the iceberg," Gerin said in a Friday interview. "Behind the iceberg is a black tide of ... fundamentalism." He denounced those he called "gurus" or "French Taliban" who, he claimed, promote a radical brand of Islam that forces women and girls to hide themselves.

Brain slug cupcakes (from Futurama)

Alicia Traveria's scrummy brain-slug cupcakes were made for a birthday party, using "gum paste, with royal icing eyes, and flower stamen antennae." There's also "some slight grenadine flavor" in the buttercream icing brains.

Oh dear god. Disney-logoed DDT-impregnated wallpaper for the kids' room (1947)

Does your 1947 tenement apartment suffer from the kind of disease-bearing insects that thrive in filth? Why not protect your children from this infectious influence by wallpapering every surface with DDT-impregnated wall-paper? It's hygienic and stylish! Available with Disney trademarks!

Dude, I think if KO calls Bauer TWPITW, there won't be hyperbole involved in it.Screw Orally...I think Worst Person tent city has a shiny new mayor. Rip into him, Keith. Use the Latin AND every rotten story you know about Ty Cobb(there are a lot)

I am trying to Make Progress. Had an informational interview this morning, just signed up for some professional development brown bag in a couple of weeks, emailed my building management about non-working disposal. Now I should send some actual applications out, but maybe I'll do my job for a while instead?

15 Animals On Computers

Animals, like humans, enjoy the warm glow of a computer screen dishing out that soft electric light. Dogs and cats seem to be the mainstream pet to put on a computer, but there are also some that may come as a surprise to you.

eta: ION, a cat pushing a watermelon out of the water: [link]

This is so frustrating - talk about being counterproductive, giving ammunition to your opponents, etc.

BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.

...

Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Yay! I am so proud of NO [link]

In news about how my diamond shoes are too tight, I wish my dishwasher had a timer -- I never remember to start it when I'm leaving the house, and it is LOUD and takes forever to run!