Scientif American: “There have been countless literary descriptions of men miraculously breast-feeding, from The Talmud to Tolstoy, where, in Anna Karenina, there is a short anecdote of a baby suckling an Englishman for sustenance while on board a ship. The little anthropological evidence documented suggests it is possible.”

New York Times: “Mr. Edwards could keep the women on his staff and have to answer for the sometimes vulgar and intemperate writings posted on their personal blogs before he hired them late last month. He could dismiss them and face a revolt in the liberal blogosphere, which is playing an increasingly influential role in Democratic politics and could be especially important to his populist campaign. Some bloggers saw the controversy as manufactured by conservative groups.”

New Scientist: “In a recent study, the technology was 70% accurate at predicting whether participants planned to add or subtract a pair of numbers. Paralysed people may one day be able to use devices based on the technique to carry out complex actions, the researchers say. However, ethical concerns have been raised about its possible use in interrogation.”

“The Radio Times speaks of ‘swearing and nudity… in skiploads right from the opening scenes’, but I’m not getting my hopes up too high.”

“My instinct is that this one-off final episode will be a skin-free zone (apart from maybe some of those ultra-realistic prosthetics that allow the series to show all those grizzly scenes of childbirth going wrong!), but I will tune in on the off-chance that Tamzin Malleson will finally show some flesh.”

“ITV4 has Carlito’s Way at 11.00pm. Another movie that makes an appearance regularly, this was only on a few months ago, but features Penelope Ann Miller’s best nudity, which makes it worth seeing in my opinion.”

These and other film and television musings can be found at the blog, In the Best Possible Taste.

John Sutherland: “The piece was, I believed, mildly sarcastic. YouTubers were not amused. For a day or two, I was YouTube-famous. The contents of their video responses – which at the time, could all be summoned instantaneously from the Wikipedia entry – are bruisingly abusive. ‘Die! You asshole!’ rants one paunchy YouTuber, jowls quivering with homicidal rage. ‘Your head is so far up your arse you can see your tonsils,’ offers another, with a show of that less-than-Wildean wit for which YouTube is justly famous. (They seem for some reason to be obsessed with the rectal tube.)”

Associated Press: “An astronaut drove 900 miles and donned a disguise to confront a woman she believed was her rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot, police said. She was arrested Monday and charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts.”

And that’s only the beginning.

(via MeFi)

I learned tonight that I have mispronounced “omniscient” for years. Pay no attention to that linguistic bumbler at the gates.

John Freeman now seems to be fighting his peers. (Read the comments.)

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes repeatedly stapled together by an Arrow T50, and your earholes sodomized by a dominatrix’s sex toy collection, with a blindfold — a big throbbing blindfold as impenetrable as onyx — tied round it, goddammit goddammit, in the dark, the cold frightening dark where imaginary leopards gnaw upon your ankles and Fleet Street hacks bang out really fucking fragmented ledes magically syncopated to their inveterate pill-popping and flask-swigging, you surely haven’t failed to notice the latest expression of mass culture rage authored by Charlie Fucking Brooker, which has inspired a Metafilter thread, taken over the Guardian‘s column inches and, blimey, the internet (no capital letters for you, you damn evil bloggers!) in a series of crudely written sentences that come across as incoherent bloviating aimed at — well, I’m not sure exactly.

The point is this: Charlie Brooker is an angry man. Or he wants us to believe that he’s an angry man. Well, I can outdistance this Charlie Come Lately in a few paragraphs.

Charlie Fucking Brooker (hereinafter referred to, as I see fit, as “CFB”) needs to step out of his flat every once in a while. He needs to get out right now so that I can beat him up. Or maybe someone else can beat him up. Or maybe Mac enthusiasts can beat him up. Because he just doesn’t understand. And because he doesn’t understand and we cannot comprehend his rambling column (three word summary, folks: he hates Macs) and he feels compelled to declare a technological jihad, there is only one solution: a bunch of scrawny geeks, at least six thousand of them, attacking Charlie Brooker at Wembley Stadium. Someone needs to charge admission. Someone needs to provide chainsaws. And somebody needs to film it.

Charlie Brooker may hate Macs, but I hate Charlie Fucking Brooker. I have always hated Charlie Fucking Brooker even before I knew who he was. Even before I was aware that he was a columnist. Even before I knew his name. When I was a boy, I asked several of my friends who I might hate in my adulthood and they suggested that it would be some English guy named Charlie. I did not know who this Charlie would be. Oh, but now I know who he is!

I hate the people who read Charlie Fucking Brooker, and I hate the people who think they read Charlie Fucking Brooker. I even hate the people who even considered reading Charlie Brooker. I will go on hating Charlie Fucking Brooker, even if we have a crazy night and he proves okay in the sack. Even if he turns out to be a good guy and he buys me a lager.

There can be no quarter! Charlie Brooker must be stopped. But more importantly, he must be hated!

This has been a cultural commentary.

This week: Ed spent an uninterrupted sixteen hour period contemplating several ways to murder Charlie Fucking Brooker (on his PC). He went to the gun range and fired about thirty-two rounds of ammo into targets that he named Charlie Fucking Brooker. He read Charlie Fucking Brooker‘s latest column and realized that the UK finally had its own version of Chuck Klosterman.

Associated Press: “The world’s leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is ‘very likely’ caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press….The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report. However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit. On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.”

I am operating on a prepossessing paucity of sleep and still have many things to do today. So things may be quiet on this end, at least for today. However, two more podcasts will be unleashed tonight. There will also be dancing bears, if I play my cards right.

A list of authors who wrote nude. (via Quiddity)

Escapegrace: “Anyway…at one point, Silverblatt recounted the interviews he had conducted earlier in the week – Mailer on The Castle in the Forest and Dave Eggers on What is the What – and seemed unexpectedly overcome with emotion at the state of the world depicted in the three novels. I don’t think the pathos was necessarily scripted and I was sort of touched.”

(via Sarah)

Neighbor receives aggressive notes from crazy neighbor; high school teacher discovers story and has his students read the letters set to music, as well as write respectful letters back to the neighbor as an exercise in reading comprehension. (via MeFi)

Babble: “Like surprisingly many people, I have always held a vague abhorrence for Neal Pollack. Could it be his claim to be the ‘Greatest Living American Writer’? His penchant for putting his name in his book titles? Or his jokey, sexist piggishness — supposedly the ironic mantle of a true feminist, but I really have my doubts? I think it’s just him.”

My score is 27, but I think this test is a load of phooey. Any test that declares me this intelligent based on a fucking beer question is ridiculous.

Jewish Journal: “But to really understand why people still come to Hollywood, and why they continue to pitch and write on spec, or still write literary novels and/or start blogs — and continue to do so in the face of the changing industry — you have but to turn to Sarvas’s favorite novel, ‘Gatsby’ (and let’s not forget that Fitzgerald himself ended his days here). Is there a better explanation for the essential optimism that animates our lives and that inspires Sarvas and ‘The Elegant Variation’ than how Fitzgerald concludes his great novel?”

Oh come on, Mr. Teicholz. I count Mark as a pal, but this is a bit much.

Bookish Love: “Doctorow gave the longest reading I’ve ever attended, clocking in at about 40 minutes. Although the writing was captivating and he included a felatio scene [sic], describing the neck of one of the participants as swan-like, forty minutes might be too long for anyone to read at one clip.”

Scientific American: “A patient who damaged his left insula, a region of the brain located deep within the cortex on either lateral side, may have opened the door to kick the habit without even trying. The day after suffering a stroke the 38-year-old man, who had a 40-cigarette-a-day addiction, reported to doctors that his ‘body forgot the urge to smoke.’ This revelation prompted a study that found the insula is intimately linked to smoking addiction.”

There’s one other thing I should note about Malcolm Jones’ laziness. I was contacted by the book’s publicist to interview Vikram Chandra. I offered profuse apologies to the very nice publicist, pointing out that, as good as this sounded, I simply did not have the time in my schedule to read the 900-page book. You see, I wanted to give Chandra the same respect that I give to all the authors I talk with, which involves reading the book from start to finish and actively thinking about it.

I have never interviewed a single author in which I have not finished the book. And I refuse to talk with an author in a long-form interview if I am not permitted enough time to do this. (And I’ve had to cancel out on some very good authors because of this. Alas, one can only do so much.)

The mainstream media has long accused bloggers of being lazy reporters. If anything, this Malcolm Jones flap illustrates that some mainstream media reviewers might possibly be lazier.

To me, it seems a requisite that if you are being paid to write a review, whether you like the book or hate it, you should be professional enough to read it to the very end. Whether the book is 200 pages or 1,000 pages. Whether the book is breezy or dense. Whether the book employs arcane words and references or employs a less demanding timbre. That Jones could not fulfill this basic duty suggests to me that he has no business writing book reviews. He should leave this to the professionals.

Click on the cat. I can hear up to 15,000 Hz. (via Quiddity)

New York Times: “Magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless. Giora Keinan, a professor at Tel Aviv University, sent questionnaires to 174 Israelis after the Iraqi Scud missile attacks of the 1991 gulf war. Those who reported the highest level of stress were also the most likely to endorse magical beliefs, like ‘I have the feeling that the chances of being hit during a missile attack are greater if a person whose house was attacked is present in the sealed room,’ or ‘To be on the safe side, it is best to step into the sealed room right foot first.'”

Consumerist: “Richard Brown nearly died on Sunday, January 21st, thanks to reckless indifference by a Southwest Airlines ticket agent. A dying hep-C patient, Richard, secured an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. After getting turned down, he was referred to the University of San Francisco. When he went to board in Scottsdale for California, the ticket agent refused to let Richard fly unless he bought another ticket, due to his weight. The weight gain is due to water retention because of his failing liver. Richard lives on California Disability Pay and had no funds to pay for the extra ticket. The flight was not sold out. The ticket agent didn’t care when shown Richard’s medical papers, saying, ‘each airport has their own rules and these are ours, no extra seat, no boarding.'”