Japanese fire pianist_English_Xinhua

Just weird.

Japanese fire pianist_English_Xinhua
Xinhua is almost totally unreliable. But the picture is like you might imagine. (He is not losing his job).


Woman sits on boyfriend's toilet for 2 years - More health news- msnbc.com
You might've seen this already. Pretty damn strange. Her skin grew around the toilet seat.


Burned alive for not washing feet U.S. Reuters
Yeah, so this bride was unhappy with her new husband. They fought a lot, drank a lot to forget the fighting, and he had the misfortune of forgetting to wash his feet before getting in bed. So she set his sheets on fire.



China


China slams U.S. human rights record - China- msnbc.com
Because they aren't happy that we called them mean.
Guess what?

"The invasion of Iraq by U.S. troops has produced the biggest human rights tragedy and the greatest humanitarian disaster in the modern world," the council said in its report.

You mean, aside from the murderous repression in Burma, the genocide in Darfur, and the preventable deaths of millions of Koreans from starvation and work camps? Or aside from the occupation of Tibet, in which, as you read this, soldiers are shooting protesters?
And on smaller tragedies, what about the occupation of Xinjiang? In both Tibet and Xinjiang the people are not Chinese, do not wish to be Chinese, and are not allowed to practice their religions, to say nothing of the millions of Christians in China. And then there's the threatened war with Taiwan.



I will grant that the war in Iraq has not gone terribly well, and a lot of people have died. But here's the difference: we're trying to make things better. Even if that's pitiful, at least we're trying. I'm not sure how brutally repressing a people, and crowding them out of their own land with foreign settlers, makes much of anything better.

Anyway, off my soapbox and onto the next thing. For now.



Taiwan elevates aboriginals to downplay Chinese roots International Reuters
I'd noticed when I was there that aboriginals were being fussed over. There really aren't a lot of them, though. I think they should also play up their Japanese and pirate roots, too - after all, they were a Japanese colony for a while, and some famous pirates were based on the island. The mainland never really did govern the place.


Science


Too many distractions get in way of learning - Kids and parenting- msnbc.com
Don't multitask, if you want to remember anything.


Welcome to the Frontier - Home Page
These guys make rocket engines for a living. They decided they needed more space and better facilities, so they bought a decommissioned Atlas-E missile silo. It's still got the blast doors and everything (well, all the structural parts. The nukes are gone, obviously). It's pretty cool.


Tardigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There is a creature that can

survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151°C
(303°F), 1,000 times more radiation than any animal, nearly a decade without
water, and can also survive in a vacuum like that found in space.

Sounds a little scary, right? Fortunately, they are so small you can't even see most of them. They are pretty damn cool if you ask me.