LONDON — The view from Mount Olympus is not quite as awe-inspiring from the second step. The grand sweep of more than a century of history is less apparent from a lower height.
Michael Phelps, so used to looking up, was looking down at the Aquatics Centre pool deck, waiting for an Olympic medal to be hung around his neck for the 18th time, as many times as any athlete since the world started keeping score 116 years ago. Phelps has posed for the camera often enough during the past eight years that he really should have been more practiced at faking a smile, but the show of teeth looked forced, almost painful. He did not look happy as he pasted on a grin. He looked constipated.
That is the problem with a silver medal if you live in the rareified world.
If you look at silver in the wrong light, it might appear gray.
The business of history is messy, just like life, and in the perfect world of the greatest Olympian — and brook no dissent on the issue, Phelps is precisely that — he would have tied Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina with a shiny gold in the 200-meter butterfly, becoming the first man ever to win the same individual event in three straight Olympics. But he seemed caught between strokes, just as he was when he won the 100 fly at the wall in Beijing, and was out-touched by a lachrymose South African named Chad le Clos — he later called his finish “lazy.” Phelps wheeled to look at the scoreboard, saw he had lost gold by five hundredths of a second, whipped off his cap and threw it in the water in frustration. He was considerably more gracious minutes later during the medal ceremony. Le Clos, who wept on the podium as he heard his national anthem, clearly was a neophyte at this gold-medal business — not surprising considering Phelps set the world record in the 200 fly in March 2001 and still has it — and Phelps needed to remind him to hold the medal closer to his face while motor drives whirred.
Read MORE.
###
Find A Grave “Find A Grave is a free resource for finding the final resting places of famous folks, friends and family members. With millions of names, it’s an invaluable tool for genealogist and history buffs. Find A Grave memorials are rich with content, including dates, photos and bios. You can even leave ‘virtual flowers’ on the memorials you visit to complete the online cemetery experience. Find A Grave also contains listings for thousands of celebrity graves, making it the premier online destination for tombstone tourists.”
The first U.S. census in 1790 revealed that there were 3,939,326 citizens in the 16 states and Ohio Territory. The U.S. Census has been taken every 10 years since then. The United States made history when it took its first census in 1790, not only because of the size of the area enumerated and the effort to obtain data on characteristics of the population but also because of the political purpose for which it was undertaken – namely, representation in Congress on the basis of population. England took its first census in 1801. – Provided by Reference.com
###
24 Vintage Photographs of Abe Lincoln Being Awesome
Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary John Nicolay believed that no photograph could capture Honest Abe’s essence: “There are many pictures of Lincoln,” he said, “[but] there is no portrait of him.” Over 130 photographs of Lincoln exist—here are a few you may not have come across before.
Go and see them all and read all about them HERE.
###
New Jersey mom Pat Krentcil, who was charged this spring with child endangerment after taking her 5-year-old daughter tanning, recently accepted a challenge from InTouch magazine to quit UV rays for a month.
How did she survive replacing her 5-days-a-week tanning habit with Jergens self-tanner?
“I feel weird and pale,” she says.
From : jezebel
###
Turn That Noise Down!
An analysis of pop music from the past five decades reveals that today’s music is louder and more homogenous than it once was. The music industry has been accused of increasing the loudness of recordings in order to boost sales, but this study is the first to use such a large collection of music in exposing the practice. The researchers also found that modern pop music utilizes a more limited variety of sounds and note combinations.
###
The U.S. space agency is preparing for its newest Mars rover, Curiosity, to touch down on the Red Planet on August 6. The rover’s entry and descent will be nerve-wracking for NASA engineers, compounded by a 14-minute delay as the rover’s signals travel to Earth from Mars. If successful, Curiosity will be the sixth NASA spacecraft to land on the Red Planet.
Read MORE.
###
After 15 months of speculation, frustration, and general inertia, the former online poker players of America finally heard the good news on Tuesday. A deal had been struck between the online gaming sites Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, and the Department of Justice. Another deal between the DOJ and Absolute Poker was reported with details forthcoming. The early details are startling: PokerStars, one of the three companies shut down last April, will purchase its former competitor, Full Tilt, and pay the U.S. government $547 million to settle a civil lawsuit the government brought against Full Tilt. A portion of that money will be used to reimburse U.S.-based Full Tilt players who had their accounts frozen during the shutdown. PokerStars agreed to directly pay back another $184 million to non-U.S. customers to settle their outstanding balances.
Read MORE.
###
Virtual Reality Is Addictive and Unhealthy
In my days as an engineer, I ran the microprocessor division at Intel Corp. I then became a venture capitalist, investing in companies that built semiconductors, computers, networking systems, and Internet-related services. I focused on products that helped businesses run more effectively and gave little thought to how they might affect our minds, social interactions, and governance.
That lapse now comes home to me as I see people walking down the street, eyes fixed on the screens of their mobile phones, ears plugged into their iPods, oblivious to their surroundings…to reality itself. They are not managing their tools; their tools are managing them. Tools now make the rules, and we struggle to keep up.
MORE.
###
How Wall Street Lawyer Turned Insider Trader Eluded FBI
Every dawn in the early spring of 2011, Matthew Kluger peered out his window, wondering when federal agents would knock at his door. Kluger, a mergers-and- acquisitions lawyer, says he worried that authorities were closing in on him as the source of illegal tips in a three-man insider-trading ring that had eluded detection for 17 years.
The knock came on April 6. U.S. agents handcuffed Kluger, hustled him into a Dodge Intrepid, drove to the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Manassas, Virginia, and laid out the case against him. The evidence included tape recordings of Kluger telling the man he tipped to get rid of a cellular phone that could lead back to him — and to do it carefully because the authorities had dogs that can sniff out mobiles.
“I really would like to see this phone go bye-bye ASAP,” Kluger said, adding: “Do you want this to be our undoing?”
MORE.
###
Japan turns masturbation into art
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.
The days when the sex industry believed only women were in desperate need of self-pleasuring aids appear to be long gone.
Global Post
Nowadays, when one walks into a sex shop, aisles offering male masturbation tools are just as bountiful as those catering to women.
At least in Japan.
Seven years after Koichi Matsumoto left his car salesmen job to start “something that hasn’t been done before” and launched Tenga “New Adult Concept,” his company has sold over 15 million male masturbation units worldwide.
MORE.
###
Study: Paranoia is Self-Fulfilling – Lindsay Abrams – The Atlantic.
Bob Dylan on His Dark New Album, ‘Tempest’ | Music News | Rolling Stone.
‘The Crossing’ by Menahan Street Band – Free MP3 | Music News | Rolling Stone.
8 badminton players tossed from Olympic doubles – Salon.com.
Is Anxiety Overdiagnosed? – Lindsay Abrams – The Atlantic.
Exercise Improves Mental Health of Heart Failure Patients | Psych Central News.
Fruit flies on methamphetamine die largely as a result of anorexia | Science Codex.
###
Amazing Places To Experience Around The Globe
MORE.
###
Charles Darwin came to many of his ideas by observing the wild creatures of South America. The biologist Sinéad Collins elaborates on his work by actually creating evolution in her laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Collins, 36, sets up experiments to uncover evolution’s basic rules. She then uses the information to help work on solutions to contemporary environmental problems like global warming and marine acidification.
We spoke for two hours at last winter’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, British Columbia, and then again last month by telephone. An edited and condensed version of the conversations follows.
When people get algae in their swimming pools or their ponds, they do their best to get rid of it. Why do you deliberately grow it in Scotland?
MORE.
###
How Swimming Photographers Make Their Underwater Moment – NYTimes.com.
Was Your Stuff Made by Slave Labor? It’s Not Always Easy To Tell – Isabella Bennett – The Atlantic.
New and Hot Video: Exclusive: Grateful Dead Play ‘Going Down the Road’ at 1974 Show | Rolling Stone.
Implicit Learning: Researchers Uncover How to Learn Without Trying | TIME Ideas | TIME.com.
Extreme Olympic Close-Ups | Extreme Olympic Close-Ups | Olympics | TIME.com.
Natural Gas Fracking Industry May Be Paying Off Scientists .
###
Cancer cell discovery could revolutionise treatment
Scientists have discovered direct evidence to support a controversial hypothesis about the growth of cancerous tumours which could revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
The conventional view of cancer is that it results from genetic mutations within ordinary cells that cause them to divide uncontrollably into a tumour that can then spread to other parts of the body. This suggests all cancer cells are created equal with an equal capacity for dividing uncontrollably and an equal tendency to spread. However, three independent studies have now shown this to be a myth.
The scientists found that there is a hierarchy of cancer cells within a solid tumour and at the top of the hierarchy are key “cancer stem cells” that are ultimately responsible for causing a tumour to grow and develop.
MORE.
###
NBC is actually airing live Olympics right now, as the Spain-United States women’s water polo match is underway. They may decide to end the practice entirely and go all-tape delay, though, as an underwater shot aired earlier revealed a bit more than they bargained for. Water polo’s a rough sport, and this sort of thing is normal (I’m actually surprised we haven’t had any televised dong shots during men’s matches; I played it a bit in high school and crotch-grabbing is a common way of playing defense). Somebody call the FCC (no, seriously, please don’t call the FCC). [NBC]
via.
###
Some Comma Questions
Peter Arkle
Who knew people were so interested in commas? Commenters to my post “The Most Comma Mistakes” raised many points, questions and objections; collectively, they concentrated my mind wonderfully. Here are excerpts of a few representative comments, edited for clarity, followed by my responses.
Ted Morton from Ann Arbor, Mich., writes:
Why couldn’t “The gay, bespectacled, celebrated British artist David Hockney is a master of color” be written “The gay and bespectacled and celebrated and British artist David Hockney is a master of color”?
I don’t understand why “celebrated” and “British” are different kinds of adjectives unless “celebrated” was meant to qualify “British.”
MORE.
###
The One Thing You Need to Know About the Relaunch of Digg – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.
Pete Seeger Teams With Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle on New Albums | Music News | Rolling Stone.
Don’t overplay your hand on Iran, US officials reportedly warn Israel.
Urban Ebola: Why the Latest Outbreak in Uganda Raises Worries | Healthland | TIME.com.