: How Would the U.S. Media Cover the Super Bowl if It Were in Another Country?

The two finest teams from the nation's 32 premier league squads meet each year in an event known as the Super Bowl. (There is in fact no bowl.) This year, the game pits a young upstart team from the Northwest Frontier Provinces against another from the mountainous interior region led by the aging scion of one of the sport's most legendary families. The winner of the contest will claim the title of "world champion," although very few people play the sport beyond the country's national borders.

While the competition can last for more than three hours, actual playing time is no more than about 11 minutes. The rest of the time is taken up by military-level strategizing, replays of the action, and providing medical attention to injured players. The game's rules are so intricate that television networks employ teams of well-paid "analysts" to explain to viewers what happened in the play they just watched.

But the spectacle of the Super Bowl—which can consume more electricity on its own than some small countries—involves more than just football. The nation's largest corporations use the event to showcase their latest products in elaborately produced advertisements that some fans find as entertaining as the game itself. (American businesses, in defiance of normal economic logic, consider it worthwhile to spend $4 million on just 30 seconds of airtime during the event.) America's premier recording artists are brought out to perform at the game's midpoint. Millions of chickens are slaughtered to obtain only their wings—the traditional American delicacy consumed by fans at home.

full @ http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/01/30/if_it_happened_there_how_would_we_cover_the_super_bowl_if_it_were_in_another.html

Sheesh. Kids these days...

Good point

A guy was driving down the street and got a flat tire. He jacked up the car, spun off the bolts and took off the flat tire.

The tire landed on the pile of bolts... and all of them flew up in the air and fell into a nearby storm drain. He sat there fuming with anger. How was he going to put on the spare?

"No problem," said a man leaning out of a window from a building across the street. The building had a sign on the lawn: "Insane Asylum."

He repeated, "No problem. Just take one bolt from each of the other three tires and use them to put on the spare tire."

"That's brilliant!" said the guy with the car. "What are *you* doing in an insane asylum?"

The man at the window replied, "I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid."
.

Sometimes all you need is a headline

 

Rat-infested ghost ship Lyubov Orlova heading for Britain

 

A very short book review, and to the point.

 

  MIT Science Fiction Society's review of Stephanie Meyer's 'Twilight', which consists of this photo and nothing else. 

We've seen creative Rickrolls before, but this one takes the cake.

 

http://io9.com/student-rickrolls-his-teacher-in-this-ingenious-quantum-1503348805

Ben Franklin: Advice on Choosing a Mistress

 

 

Happy Birthday Ben Franklin!

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Presented for your amusement; Ben's advice to a young man on choosing a mistress. Dated June 25, 1745, this letter was considered lewd by standards of the mid 1800s and often suppressed. By the mid 1900s the letter was used in federal courts as a reason to overturn overly-prudish censorship laws.

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Advice on Choosing a Mistress

  from a private letter by Ben Franklin,
   Philadelphia, June 25, 1745

My dear Friend: I know of no medicine fit to diminish the violent natural inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness. Your reasons against entering into it at present appear to me not well founded. The circumstantial advantages you have in view by postponing it are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the thing itself, that being married and settled. It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being.

Separate, she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he, her softness, sensibility, and acute discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in the state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. If you get a prudent, healthy wife, your industry in your profession, with her good economy, will be a fortune sufficient.

But if you will not take the counsel and persist in thinking of a commerce with the sex inevitable, then I repeat my former advice, that in all your amours you should prefer old women to young ones. You call this a paradox and demand my reasons. They are these:

1. Because They have more knowledge of the world, and their minds are better stored with observations, their conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.

2. Because when women cease to be handsome they study to be good. To maintain their influence over men, they supply the diminution of beauty by an augmentation of utility. They learn to do a thousand services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old woman who is not a good woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of children, which irregularly produced may be attended with much inconvenience.

4. Because through more experience they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an intrigue to prevent suspicion. The commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the affair should happen to be known, considerate people might be rather inclined to excuse an old woman, who would kindly take care of a young man, form his manners by her good counsels, and prevent his ruining his health and fortune among mercenary prostitutes.

5. Because in every animal that walks upright the deficiency of the fluids that fill the muscles appears first in the highest part. The face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the neck; then the breast and arms; the lower parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: so that covering all above with a basket, and regarding only what is below the girdle, it is impossible of two women to tell an old one from a young one. And as in the dark all cats are gray, the pleasure of corporal enjoyment with an old woman is at least equal, and frequently superior; every knack being, by practice, capable of improvement.

6. Because the sin is less. The debauching a virgin may be her ruin, and make her for life unhappy.

7. Because the compunction is less. The having mad a young girl miserable may give you frequent bitter reflection; none of which an attend the making an old woman happy.

8th and lastly. they are so grateful!!

Thus much for my paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely

Your affectionate friend, 
Benjamin Franklin

FW: Things could get a little ... Wonky.

 

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The Executioner strikes again!

 

RTFM

 

My understanding is that this was the only deliberate joke in the movie 2001: A Space Oddessy,
 Haywood Floyd biting his hand as he struggles with the directions.

Sometimes all you need is a book title

 

 The Jewish-Japanese Sex & Cook Book and How to Raise Wolves

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0399110437/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Sometimes all you need is a headline

 

Oklahoma man charged with 'atomic wedgie' murder of stepfather

  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/us-usa-oklahoma-wedgie-idUSBREA071LI20140108

 

Modern Era

FW: New York Pastafarian Christopher Schaeffer Sworn Into Town Council Wearing Colander

Christopher Schaeffer, a Pastafarian minister, was sworn into the Pomfret, N.Y. Town Council last week wearing a colander, the Observer reported on Friday.

Schaeffer is a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a group founded by an atheist in 2005 that has adopted the spaghetti strainer as its symbol.

"It's just a statement about religious freedom," Schaeffer told the Observer. "It's a religion without any dogma."

Bobby Henderson, founder of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, blogged about Schaeffer's swearing-in on Monday, saying Schaeffer "may be the first openly Pastafarian sworn into office."

"Some people will see it as obnoxious or a sign that he's not taking the oath of office seriously," Henderson said of Schaeffer's decision to wear a colander. "But I am completely confident that Schaeffer will distinguish himself as a Council member of the highest caliber."

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/pastafarian-christopher-schaeffer_n_4551662.html

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And let us bow our heads and say, "Ramen."

THIS!

"You were sportsing pretty hard out there."

Most Interesting Man