Kaput

From Mental Floss -

Most Distinctive Obituary Euphemism for 'Died' in Each State
By Simon Davis

If you’re an American alive today, chances are you’ve heard or used one of over 100 different euphemisms for death. A common reason many people don’t just say someone has “died” is a desire to not want to appear too harsh. This happens not just in everyday conversation, but also in obituaries we read in newspapers and increasingly online.

Are some expressions for dying more prevalent in obituaries than others? Are there regional variations? To find out the answers to these questions, I reached out to Legacy.com, a leading online provider of paid death notices. According to the data they provided, in 2015, they hosted 2,408,142 obituaries across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Of those, 1,341,870 included one of their 10 most common euphemisms, or the word died.


http://mentalfloss.com/article/77544/most-distinctive-obituary-euphemism-died-each-state

Binging with Babish: Big Kahuna Burger from Pulp Fiction

Leading the Way

An excerpt from the LA Times -

Most computer science majors in the U.S. are men. Not so at Harvey Mudd
 By Rosanna Xia

Veronica Rivera signed up for the introduction to computer science class at Harvey Mudd College mostly because she had no choice: It was mandatory. Programming was intimidating and not for her, she thought.

She expected the class to be full of guys who loved video games and grew up obsessing over how they were made. There were plenty of those guys but, to her surprise, she found the class fascinating.

She learned how to program a computer to play “Connect Four” and wrote algorithms that could recognize lines of Shakespeare and generate new text with similar sentence patterns.

When that first class ended, she signed up for the next level, then another and eventually declared a joint major of computer science and math. Cheering her on were professors who had set out to show her that women belonged in computer science just as much as men did.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-harvey-mudd-tech-women-adv-snap-story.html

We Could Take a Page Out of Their Book

An excerpt from Now I Know -

McRefugees
By Dan Lewis

And as a result, many of Hong Kong’s poor make their way to McDonald’s — not for a meal, but for a good night’s sleep. As the BBC reported, “as night falls, the fast-food restaurant becomes a temporary hostel, attracting dozens of the city’s poorest people.” In the U.S., those non-customers would typically be kicked out, but in Hong Kong, the opposite is true: McDonald’s Hong Kong told the AP that “we welcome all walks of life to visit our restaurants any time” and aims to be “‘accommodating and caring’ to customers who stay a long time in restaurants ‘for their own respective reasons.'”

http://nowiknow.com/mcrefugees/

Humanity for Progress - StandupforUS

Life Goes On

An excerpt from the Undefeated -

The man who helped teach Kevin Durant and the Warriors that ‘Life Goes On’
After this man’s life-changing accident, his foundation caught some game-changing attention
BY MARC J. SPEARS

The man in the wheelchair needed help from his friends to go up three steps to get near Kevin Durant in the VIP section. The timing wasn’t the greatest, as it was nearly 1 a.m. at a San Francisco nightclub just weeks after the stunning news of the NBA star’s plans to join the Golden State Warriors. And security guards were making sure he had his space and privacy.

However, something told Durant to let Arthur Renowitzky and his wheelchair through. And once Renowitzky spoke to Durant, the two formed a relationship that remains bonded with a bracelet.

“He just wanted to tell me how he got to that point and how encouraged he still was even through his circumstances,” Durant told The Undefeated. “I thought it was inspiring. He handed me a bracelet and I’ve been wearing it ever since …

“You never know when you’re going to be in contact with angels. I feel like he is one of those guys at just the right time, the perfect time, he was put in my life. Hopefully, he feels the same way.”

http://theundefeated.com/features/the-man-who-helped-teach-kevin-durant-and-the-warriors-that-life-goes-on/

Good for Business

From KQED -

Fast Food CEO Says Higher Minimum Wage Boosts Business
By Sam Harnett

https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/01/03/minimum-wage-goes-up-and-so-does-business-thats-what-this-fast-food-ceo-says-happened/

https://soundcloud.com/kqed/minimum-wage-rises-and-business-does-too-fast-food-ceo-says-it-happened

Voices

An excerpt from the New Yorker -

THE VOICES IN OUR HEADS
Why do people talk to themselves, and when does it become a problem?
By Jerome Groopman

I often have discussions with myself—tilting my head, raising my eyebrows, pursing my lips—and not only about my work. I converse with friends and family members, tell myself jokes, replay dialogue from the past. I’ve never considered why I talk to myself, and I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, except Pam. She very rarely has inner conversations; the one instance is when she reminds herself to do something, like change her e-mail password. She deliberately translates the thought into an external command, saying out loud, “Remember, change your password today.”

Verbal rehearsal of material—the shopping list you recite as you walk the aisles of a supermarket—is part of our working memory system. But for some of us talking to ourselves goes much further: it’s an essential part of the way we think. Others experience auditory hallucinations, verbal promptings from voices that are not theirs but those of loved ones, long-departed mentors, unidentified influencers, their conscience, or even God.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/the-voices-in-our-heads

Squirrels in love - Wild Tales from the Village - BBC Two

This ‘Melanin Goddess’ is Redefining Mainstream Beauty Standards

A Deep Dive Into Football Safety

An excerpt from the New Yorker -

CAN TECHNOLOGY MAKE FOOTBALL SAFER?
A high school in Fort Lauderdale is using everything from state-of-the-art helmets to robots to prevent head injuries.
By Nicholas Schmidle

But Kivon went to St. Thomas primarily to play football. The school has produced more pro players than any other high school in the country. By the time Kivon enrolled, the St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders had won eight state championships and two national titles. Moreover, the school had embarked on a potentially radical experiment. The head football coach, Roger Harriott, had been instituting changes to make the game safer. He limited practices to ninety minutes, and got the school to acquire a pair of motorized human-size robots, wrapped in foam, which players could tackle, saving their teammates from unnecessary hits. Harriott hoped to put St. Thomas at the vanguard of football safety while remaining champions.

“Football is just a vehicle to make these kids better young men,” Harriott said. One day this fall, he told his team, “Ultimately, it’s for you to become a champion in life—a champion husband, a champion father, community leader, colleague.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/can-technology-make-football-safer

HitchBot, the Hitchhiking Robot

From the Washington Post -



HitchBot, the robot that had hitchhiked its way across Germany, the Netherlands and across Canada without incident, survived just over two weeks and 300 miles in the United States after being vandalized beyond repair and abandoned on a street in Philadelphia. (hitchBOT)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/when-a-beer-cooler-rolls-up-to-your-doorstep-the-future-has-arrived/2016/12/30/c1e6ad38-cc67-11e6-a747-d03044780a02_story.html?utm_term=.f54193fe85da&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

Determined to Succeed

From the Los Angeles Times -

My father came here illegally. But in many ways he was a red-blooded American
By Hector Becerra

My father was like so many immigrants of his generation from Mexico: Coming north, without proper papers, looking for work and a better life for their families. Over the years, my father and people like him were demonized by those who felt they were ruining California and praised by others who believed their work ethic and labor were a boon to the state.

During the tough times, it was easy to feel like an outsider, alienated for not being American. That wasn’t quite my dad.

He had a sixth-grade education, thanks to a Mexico whose stamina for relentlessly poor governance and knack for driving out its citizens was impressive. So he carved out his own learning, going to night school in L.A. to get his high school degree soon after his arrival.

My father read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Steinbeck and Melville from our childhood porch in Boyle Heights. In spiral notebooks he composed verses to Mexican songs about his hometown in Jalisco state, like the one he first penned as a teenager, just a few years after his father died when he was 12 — and just a few years before he crossed into the U.S. in the trunk of a car.

By 1980, he had become a legal resident, and no longer had to worry about being caught in a work raid.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-my-father-20161229-htmlstory.html

Roping with Pride in the International Gay Cowboy Association

In Spite of

An excerpt from the New Yorker - (Bold is mine)

STARMAN
Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new guide to the “Cosmos.”
By Rebecca Mead

Tyson attended public schools, and was not a distinguished student. He was social, and teachers criticized him for being inattentive. When speaking to other educators, he stresses the importance of reaching not just the A students, who are already likely to succeed, but the B students, who might succeed if they were more deeply engaged by their teachers. He is on the board of the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, which seeks to offer such encouragement to students in public schools. Calvin Sims, a former chairman of the fund, says, “To have someone in Neil’s position talking about these great ideas, and to do it in a humorous and animated way—and to have someone who looks like them do that—I think means the world.” Not long ago, Tyson’s elementary school, P.S. 81, invited him to give a commencement address; he declined. He recalls telling the administrators, “I am where I am not because of what happened in school but in spite of it, and that is probably not what you want me to say. Call me back, and I will address your teachers and give them a piece of my mind.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/starman

A Better Name?

From the Los Angeles Times -

Hollywood sign altered to read 'Hollyweed'
By Laura Nelson

Los Angeles residents awoke New Year's Day to find a prankster had altered the famed Hollywood sign
to read "HOLLYWeeD." (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-hollywood-sign-hollyweed-20170101-htmlstory.html

Check Out the Prizes . . . Geez Louise!

From the  Huffington Post -

Top 10 Gadgets of the Last 50 Years
By Stewart Wolpin

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stewart-wolpin/top-10-gadgets-of-the-las_b_13924614.html?ir=Technology&utm_hp_ref=technology

CBeeBies BedTime Story Raccontata da Tom Hardy 31/12/2016

Humanitarian of the year is building futures

Apologies if this is a repeat.  Worth another look even if it is.

Many Adults Are Stumped By The Horse Riddle. Can You Solve It?