Self-reference is great, but it’s a shame that I haven’t posted anything this month.

With the latest blog meme of reposting the first sentence of the first blog of each month (courtesy Marco), I can satisfy both points at the same time!

• JAN: My sister-in-law’s friend is over for a visit, and she got a spam for penis-enlargement pills.
• FEB: Alberta Premiere Ed Stelmach has called a provincial election for March 3.
• MAR: I’ve been looking to buy a replacement DVD drive for my Xbox (the original one is effectively dead, a common problem).
• APR: There’s a fair amount of evidence and for the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which states that it’s impossible to achieve better-than-market returns (when adjusted for risk) on a regular, repeatable basis.
• MAY: From the Political Compass FAQ:
• JUN: Goddard College invents Masters in Consciousness degree to study eastern religious traditions.
• JLY: The actual article is full of common-sense reasoning, but it was this part that caused me to post:
• AUG: While in Costa Rica, I had a brief discussion (with a poker website employee) about the likelihood that a computer will eventually be able to beat any human player.
• SEP: Magicians are entertainers who manipulate the human mind; some take that art too far.
• OCT: Barbara Ann Parodies:
• NOV: I’ve finally figured out a use for Twitter Now.
• DEC: Self-reference is great, but it’s a shame that I haven’t posted anything this month.

Marco and his wife are coming to visit, and want to take in a hockey game; preferably the Calgary Flames.

• Craig: st louis blues on fri, ny rangers on sunday
• Marco: ok. Either one is good. Rangers is my pick.
• Craig: FL panthers on the 12th, too bad you’ll be gone
• Marco: yeah.
• Marco: well, it’s better than watching the home team lose.
• Craig: hehe
• Craig: oh those are away games
• Craig: yeah sorry you’re outta luck this year
• Marco: no hokey?
• Craig: unless we go to a minor-league game
• Craig: no Flames in Calgary
• Craig: they’re on the road that week/end
• Marco: damn republicans
• Craig: hah the hitmen [the local minor league team] are away that week too
• Craig: so no hockey
• Marco: ok
• Marco: well, so be it
• Craig: unless you want to find a college team or something
• Marco: u have an Xbox 360?
• Marco: or a WII?
• Craig: I do
• Craig: both actually
• Marco: we will buy a hockey game
• Craig: haha
• Marco: and tell Gina that this is how it’s now played
• Marco: by canadians
• Marco: because with global warming all the rinks are liquid
• Craig: tell her we used to play on the northwest passage

From Nipple Ring History.

Years later, during the Victorian period around 1890, the fashion evolved again. It became popular to apply Anneux De Sein, small diamond rings or gold chains, to the nipples. Before this trend was popularized, it was mainly practiced by the upper class.

The linked page contains pictures of bare female nipples. Safe for babies, but not necessarily safe for work.

Barbara Ann Parodies

The song was later parodied as “Bomb Iran” by Vince Vance and the Valiants, written during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. A different parody version was a viral during 2006, courtesy of Adam Kontras, and the idea was sourced into a number of flash animations that same year. John McCain referenced the song, and attempted a line or two of the refrain as “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” in an answer to a question at a campaign stop on April 19, 2007; there was considerable criticism of the witticism.

Exploding Head Syndrome

Exploding head syndrome is a condition that causes the sufferer to occasionally experience a tremendously loud noise as originating from within his or her own head, usually described as the sound of an explosion, roar, waves crashing against rocks, loud voices, or a ringing noise.

Fark sometimes has the best headlines:

A 73-year old widow in Manila, Philippines was hypnotized and robbed in the street by a short woman who pretended to be lost. Baffled local police are on the lookout for a small medium at large

Because Ted doesn’t like to read, I’ve created a Text-to-Speech version of my recent blog post on authority using SpokenText.net.

It’s a 1.3 MB MP3 file, so download with caution. If it starts eating up too much bandwidth then I’ll kill it, so if you’re interested please grab it sooner rather than later.

The actual article is full of common-sense reasoning, but it was this part that caused me to post:

And while the zero-emission cars, are a big hit with environmentalists, the Canadian Federation of the Blind says the cars are a hazard for those who can’t see.

“For us, they are invisible,” Mary Ellen Gabias, the federation’s vice-president, told CBC News this week.

Think about that statement for a second.

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to construct complicated constructs.

…

The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three different readings of the word “buffalo”. In order of their first use, these are:

• c. The city of Buffalo, New York (or any other place named “Buffalo”), which is used as an adjective in the sentence and is followed by the animal;
• a. The animal buffalo, in the plural (equivalent to “buffaloes”), in order to avoid articles (a noun);
• v. The verb “buffalo” meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.

Thus, the sentence when parsed reads as a description of the pecking order in the social hierarchy of buffaloes living in Buffalo:

…

Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.

From Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. More good ones at List of linguistic example sentences.

From the Same Wikipedia article on Jeanne Calment:

In 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal, common in France, to sell her condominium apartment en viager to lawyer François Raffray. Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay a monthly sum until she died, an agreement sometimes called a “reverse mortgage”. At the time of the deal, the value of the apartment was equal to ten years of payments. Calment lived more than thirty additional years. Raffray died of cancer in December 1995, at the age of 77, leaving his widow to continue the payments for twenty more months.