Key Insights
Consumers should be aware of the fact that labels containing statements such as, "12 for the price of 10", or "3 for $1.99" can increase sales in at least 40%. Learn More...Products in large packages are perceived as less expensive to use, so consumers used them 18% to 45% more than usual. Learn More...
In a focus group, 84% of the people agreed with the belief that "More is Better" when dealing with consumer products such as detergent. Learn More...
The principle states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached at which the response suddenly becomes strongly repulsive; as the appearance and motion are made to be indistinguishable to that of human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-human empathy levels.
HOW TO DETECT ROBOT SPEECH
Try to evoke an emotion
Does the speaker mind when you intimately discuss the promiscuity of his mother? If not, you may be dealing with a very polite human or a non-human. Either way, it's a good idea to hang up the phone.
On April 26, 1945, Cap Arcona was loaded with prisoners from the concentration camp Neuengamme and together with two smaller ships, Thielbek and Athen, was brought into the Bay of Lubeck with the intention of destroying evidence of what happened at Neuengamme by scuttling the ships with the prisoners imprisoned below.
The range of Robert Anton Wilson's expertise is always astonishing. In email to the universe he tackles a dazzling array of subjects including: The Passion of the Antichrist; The Celtic Roots of Quantum Theory; Paranoia; Black Magick & Curses; LSD, Dogs & Me; Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective; Sexual Alchemy; Cheerful Reflections on Death and Dying; The Relativity of "Reality" and a whole bunch more. Bob's description of his campaign to become governor of California (as the candidate of the Guns & Dope party, no less) will have you rolling on the floor.
<>ISBN 1-56184-194-3 256 pages $16.95A teacher asks her class to use the word 'contagious' in a sentence.
Roland, the class swot, gets up and says, "Last year I got the Flu
my Mum said it was contagious."
"Well done, Roland" says the teacher." Can anyone else try?"
Katie, a sweet little girl with pigtails, says," My grandma says
there's a bug going round, and it's contagious."
"Well done, Katie" says the teacher. "Anyone else?"
Little Irish Shaun jumps up and says in a broad Irish voice, "Our
next door neighbour is painting his house with a two-inch brush and my
Dad
says it will take the contagious.
****************************************
A Scotsman, an Italian, and an Irishman are in a bar. They are
having a good time and all agree that the bar is a nice place. Then the
Scotsman says, "Aye, this is a nice bar, but where I come from, back in>
Culbokie, there's a better one. At the Culbokie Inn, ye buy a drink, ye
buy
another drink, and the proprietor himself will buy yir third drink!" The
others agree that sounds like a good place.
Then the Italian says, "Yeah, zat's a nice bar, but where I come
from, zere's a better one. In Roma, zere's this place, Vincenzo's. At
Vincenzo's, you buy a drink, Vincenzo buys you a drink. You buy anudda
drink,
Vincenzo buys you anudda drink." Everyone agrees that sounds like a great
bar.
Then the Irishman says, "You tink dat's great? Where Oi come from in
Dublin, dere's dis place called Morphy's. At Morphy's, they boy you
your forst drink, dey boy you your second drink, dey boy you your tird
drink, and den, dey take you in de back and get you laid!"
Wow!" say the other two. "That's fantastic! Did that actually
happen to you?"
No," replies the Irish guy, "but it happened to me
sister!".........
**********************************************
The plane crash
Ireland's worst air disaster occurred today when a small 2-seater
Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery this afternoon in central Ireland.
Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 826 bodies so far and
>expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night.
***************************************
I was sitting in mcsorley's by e e cummings
I was sitting in mcsorley's. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing.
Inside snug and evil. the slobbering walls filthily push witless creases of screaming warmth chuck pillows are noise funnily swallows swallowing revolvingly pompous a the swallowed mottle with smooth or a but of rapidly goes gobs the and of flecks of and a chatter sobbings intersect with which distinct disks of graceful oath, upsoarings the break on ceiling-flatness
the Bar.tinking luscious jigs dint of ripe silver with warm-lyish wetflat splurging smells waltz the glush of squirting taps plus slush of foam knocked off and a faint piddle-of-drops she says I ploc spittle what the lands thaz me kid in no sir hopping sawdust you kiddo
he's a palping wreaths of badly Yep cigars who jim him why gluey grins topple together eyes pout gestures stickily point made glints squinting who's a wink bum-nothing and money fuzzily mouths take big wobbly foot
steps every goggle cent of it get out ears dribbles soft right old feller belch the chap hic summore eh chuckles skulch. . . .
and I was sitting in the din thinking drinking the ale, which never lets you grow old blinking at the low ceiling my being pleasantly was punctuated by the always retchings of a worthless lamp.
when With a minute terrif iceffort one dirty squeal of soiling light yanKing from bushy obscurity a bald greenish foetal head established It suddenly upon the huge neck around whose unwashed sonorous muscle the filth of a collar hung gently.
(spattered)by this instant of semiluminous nausea A vast wordless nondescript genie of trunk trickled firmly in to one exactly-mutilated ghost of a chair,
a;domeshaped interval of complete plasticity,shoulders, sprouted the extraordinary arms through an angle of ridiculous velocity commenting upon an unclean table.and, whose distended immense Both paws slowly loved a dinted mug
gone Darkness it was so near to me,i ask of shadow won't you have a drink?
(the eternal perpetual question)
Inside snugandevil. i was sitting in mcsorley's It,did not answer.
outside.(it was New York and beautifully, snowing. . . .
Kinda sums up the feeling I get in pubs in autumn/winter. Hmmm... time for a pint...
!SR
1. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Anenome. Listen to it here, Courtesy of the Push Bin, this track has never left my stereo for the last two weeks.
2. Chemical Brothers - Where Do I Begin? - Listen to it here. from Charlie's set. An old classic, back on my playlist. Also worth listening to from this playlist is the Terry Reid song, Little Axe and Fred Neil.
3. Mouse on Mars - Mykologics. Listen to it here. Nice, smooth tick tock, bit of electronica. Also from one of Charlie's sets. The Bebel Gilberto song right after it is class too.
4. The first thirty minutes of The Shrunken Planet Sept 17th 05. Not that the rest of the show isn't any good, it's just that the first part is excellent. I spread my hands wide apart and say it's this ambient. Perfect for a Saturday morning. Listen to it here. Also an honourable mention to the playlist of October 1st, with the Lavender Diamond track "Rise in the Springtime" accompanying me through my morning yoga. It can be heard about 22 minutes into the set that starts from here. What a voice.
5. Tim Maia - E Necessario. Along with the Tony Bizarro song that follows it, two funky songs picked from the Baille Funk 2 album. Listen to them both here, from the Push Bin playlist.
6. Low - Immune. Well ok anything by Low will do at the moment. This track is from the Airborne Event playlist, hear it here, also Low here, and That's How You Sing Amazing Grace, followed by the Sisters of Mercy. Also worth listening to from this playlist is the Amon Tobin Verbal track. Sunflower can be heard here, from the Karaoke Alarm Clock with Jason Das, which also has a track from Mum. Shots and Ladders from the Andrew Listfield set, and couldn't help noticing a track "Lobby at 5pm" apparently "Recorded in July 2001, in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center. " Venus can be heard here, it is one of my favourites, from the
Karaoke Alarm Clock set.
7. Halicali - Track 03 (Japanese title). Bautiful Japanese pop! Picks me up everytime. Listen to it here, from the People Like Us playlist. I like it and I'm not ashamed to admit it!! Would also like to hang out with the band...
8. Beth Orton - Carmella. This track should be higher up the list, Listen to it here from Mike Lupica's show.
9. The entire Mike Lupica after Xmas party show, listen here
10. Parliament - Little Ole Country Boy. Listen to this crazy, funky, twangy, song here. If there is another song that combines country music and yodelling then I want to know if it's as good as this! From the Charlie playlist but I think I heard it somewhere else first.
!SR
PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor
Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to
a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel
training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at
great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to
the Zombie Preparedness Institute.
If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we'd all be roaming
the earth in search of human brains by Friday
A luminescent area the size of the state of Connecticut was shown to have
occurred in the Indian Ocean. "The circumstances under which milky seas form
is
almost entirely unknown," says Steven Miller, a Naval Research Laboratory
scientist who led the space-based discovery. "Even the source for the light
emission is under debate."
science is on the verge of an amazing discovery - our Sun has a companion star carrying us through a great cycle of stellar influencesLost Star Book
My favourite urban legend. From Snopes, other versions are available.
There was a family from Surrey who decided to spend their vacation in France, taking their elderly grandma with them. Granny spent all their stay complaining. Well, not quite all of it, because a little way into the holiday, she died on them.
Deciding that the old woman whould hate not to be buried in her beloved Blighty, the family set about returning her home, and, mindful of the customs and other problems they might face, they resolved to hide her. So they bought a cheap bit of carpet, and rolled the wrinkled little corpse up in it. Granny's body was by now too stiff to bend on to a car seat, so they had to strap her on the roof-rack. In this way she was driven across France for two days, through driving rain and baking sunshine, across the Channel by ferry, and finally all the way home.
Unhappily, having made it back without a hitch, the family were devastated when, after a well-earned cuppa, they went outside to find the car stolen
!SR
The Safe Intersections Act, part of the transit bill signed Wednesday by President Bush, makes it a misdemeanor for unauthorized users to wield a "traffic signal pre-emption transmitter," a special remote control used by police, firefighters and ambulance drivers to change traffic lights to green as they approach an intersection.
Links here and here
Gnome Liberation Front. This organization has come into being for the sole purpose of liberating Gnomekind everywhere.
No longer must Gnomes suffer the extreme heat of summer, nor the severe and biting cold of winter.
No one knew how or why atoms interacted with each other until very recently, when a study done by me while drunk showed atoms to actually be bands of fighting gnomes.Link here
We who consider ourselves moral and upright are often fascinated by the behavior of the pitiless, merciless, and guiltless psychopath. Like a magnificent black panther: powerful, dangerous, and alien, the psychopathic character can have a dark, perfect beauty that simultaneously attracts and repels us. We will explore the use of such characters in the films of Stanley Kubrick, the 20th century film auteur as it relates to his view of the nature of both individuals and human institutions.
Aug 5, 10:31 AM (ET)
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - Kris Bryan couldn't believe it when she came home and realized strangers were taking away her stuff - including her 7-week-old kitten. A legal notice in the Lawrence Journal-World for unclaimed property mistakenly listed Bryan's address. The notice said the items would be thrown out if they weren't picked up from the apartment.
"I was freaking out," said Bryan, 22. "I told them, 'That's my apartment - there's been some mistake.'"
Sgt. Dan Ward, a spokesman for the Lawrence Police Department, said Bryan confronted the people at her home, who showed her the Journal-World ad. They returned the items they had taken, but others had already made off with an estimated $3,300 worth of possessions - everything from a TV and a DVD player to video games and Bryan's kitten.
Ward said it was unclear how people got into Bryan's home. There were no signs of forced entry and Bryan told authorities she believed her door was locked.
Police are still trying to find her possessions. Despite the ad's confusion, those who took them could also face charges.
"Just that ad in the newspaper doesn't give someone permission to go in and take items," Bryan said.
The Journal-World's chief operating officer, Ralph Gage, said Thursday that the matter has been settled, but would not elaborate on the terms.
"We made a mistake in a legal ad," he said. "It's totally settled to the satisfaction of all parties."
From Excite news
FIGHTING WORDS
A Very, Very Dirty Word
The British Empire's second-greatest gift to the world.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, July 6, 2004, at 1:36 PM PTThe following anecdote appears in one of Niall Ferguson's absorbing studies of the British Empire. On the eve of independence for the colony of South Yemen, the last British governor hosted a dinner party attended by Denis Healey, then the minister for defense. Over the final sundown cocktail, as the flag was about to be lowered over the capital of Aden, the governor turned to Healey and said, "You know, Minister, I believe that in the long view of history, the British Empire will be remembered only for two things." What, Healey was interested to know, were these imperishable aspects? "The game of soccer. And the expression 'fuck off.' "
I thought I had posted this before. But I hadn't. So I'll post it now. Ah, there it is. Now I'll f** off.
Check out the article at Slate
!SR
everyone's so familiar with the familiar song and dance about Star Wars being the Woodstock of our generation, about how Joseph Campbell and the power of myth powered the most comprehensive comparative religion fable rolled into one tell-all amazing sci-fi epic of epic proportions that you could probably just puke. The truth is, that crap just sells more tickets to pseudo-intellectuals who need to rationalize going for the eleventh time to see a movie about their most deeply rooted fear: impotence and premature ejaculation. Star Wars is one big cock tale about one and only one thing, the ability to get and keep it up all the way to the end.
No doubt Aristotle just rolled over in his grave. An essay called "Homer and Aristotle" would appear to be a treatise on two ancient Greek thinkers; in this case, it's a depiction of Homer Simpson's Aristotelian virtues.
People are really amazed that a "wicked, evil" cartoon can be so enlightening! I would recommend this for any church considering it.
In short, it's about as smart as Ralph Wiggum. However, while Ralphie is amusing, this book isn't."Me fail English? That's unpossible!" - Ralph Wiggum
EMAIL TO THE UNIVERSE
Robert Anton Wilson
The range of Bob's interests is truly astonishing. In this book he covers such diverse topics as: The Passion of the Antichrist; The Celtic Roots of Quantum Theory; Paranoia; Black Magick & Curses; LSD, Dogs & Me; Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective; The Relativity of "Reality"; Sexual Alchemy; Cheerful Reflections on Death and Dying and a whole bunch more.
English borrowed cretin from the French word cretin in 1779. It comes from an earlier word, cretin, which meant "Christian" in the (French) dialects of Valais and Savoie (compare the standard French word, chretien). Its ultimate source is the Latin christianus, "Christian".
Oral Sex: A Dangerous and Deadly New Trend!
... Creation Scientists are beginning to believe that the talk around the water
... Oral sex is like playing Russian roulette, but instead of holding a ...
www.landoverbaptist.org/news0504/oralsex.html - 16k -Cached - Similar pages
[Russian Roulette] made its first appearance in written English in 1937. It was used at that time by Georges Surdez in a short story he wrote for Collier's magazine entitled 'Russian Roulette'.
A long time ago, in a time slot far, far away ...
"The Star Wars Holiday Special" debuted on CBS on Nov. 17, 1978. It aired just one time, and then nearly vanished from memory.
"Up until the mid '90s, there was really no evidence that it had even existed," says Scott Kirkwood.
Maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
The special became 90 minutes of "Star Wars" history that many fans aren't aware existed, and those that do would like to forget.
Could it really be that bad? Let's just say it makes "The Phantom Menace" look like "Citizen Kane."
The production values were low, most of the cast looked embarrassed and it ended with Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) singing a Life Day song to the tune of the "Star Wars" theme.
A rather depressing story as Little Hans, a young German youth, is indoctrinated into the Nazi way of life, with tragic results.
"Father Dougal" long-shot to be new Popefrom Yahoo news
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The race is on to succeed John Paul II as pope and bookmakers are already getting in on the act. But not all the candidates are quite what they seem.
According to The Washington Post on Tuesday, gamblers can back Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Italy at odds of 11 to 4. "Or they can take their chances on Father Dougal Maguire of Craggy Island, Ireland, a long shot at 1,000 to 1."
Is this true?
At Heathrow Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a graphical calculator. Authorities believe he is a member of the notoriousAl-Gebra movement.
He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction!
This has been really bugging me - I'm certain it's not true. Following the death of the Queen Mother in the UK:
What with all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person which almost wentun-noticed last week.
Larry La Prise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey," died peacefully aged 83. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin.
They put his left leg in - and things just started to go downhill from there.
Wow! The 1,000,000 random digits produced by the Rand Corporation are some of the best random digits out there! I was amazed at some of their selections. For example: would YOU have conceived of the sequence 35462? Or 239877687468? Or 776834689765872643756324876 (one of my personal favorites). This is fine, fine work. Kudos to the folks at Rand on this most fascinating tract that truly keeps one on the edge of his seat.
After returning to Spain, Cabeza de Vaca wrote an account of his years in the Americas. First published in 1542, this extraordinary adventure story has thrilled readers for centuries. Cabeza de Vaca's account is also of great anthropological and historical importance. In Texas alone he identified 23 Indian groups, describing in detail their clothes, languages, eating habits, rituals, homes, and migrations. In 1989, thanks to the generosity of Bill and Sally Wittliff and an anonymous donor, the Southwestern Writers Collection received a very special gift - a copy of the 1555 edition of La relación. This is one of the rarest books in the world.Mind you for some of the indians it wasn't all bad:
Throughout this land they get drunk on a certain smoke and give all they have to obtain it. They also drink a tea made from the leaves of a tree that resembles the live oak, which they toast in vessels on a fire.
Opportunities at Crime Scene Clean-Up
If you have what it takes to be a team player and are looking for adventure in our field, you are cordially invited to submit your resume' to the address below.
- As Crime Clean-Up positions itself in an ever expanding market, we're always looking for professional talent.
AM: The DC comics were always a lot more true blue. Very enjoyable, but they were big, brave uncles and aunties who probably insisted on a high standard of you know mental and physical hygiene. (audience laughs) Whereas the Stan Lee stuff, the Marvel comics, he went from one dimensional characters whose only characteristic was they dressed up in costumes and did good. Whereas Stan Lee had this huge break through of two-dimensional characters. (audience laughs) So, they dress up in costumes and do good, but they've got a bad heart. (audience laughs) Or a bad leg. (audience laughs) I actually did think for a long while that having a bad leg was an actual character trait. (audience laughs)
Rabbi Burns was born in Scotland, and still retains British nationality, a Scottish accent, and a penchant for kosher haggis, single malt whiskies, heather, and the kilt. He spends part of his time in the Orkney Isles, in London, on the Isle of Wight and in Jerusalem over-seeing his shop, Cheeses of Nazareth. His favourite snacks are Baby Bel - or, as he calls them, Little Baby Cheeses. He has been known to eat a dozen for breakfast.
In the spirit of Borges' remark, write a book review of an imaginary book. (Between 500-1000 words.) The book may be from any time period, it may be fiction or non-fiction, and its author may be either an invention or an actual writer.
