That's "cool"

Cool, in popular culture, is an aesthetic of attitude, behaviour, comportment, appearance and style. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no one meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and is very frequently used as an expression of admiration or approval. A great deal of literature has been committed to understanding the concept of cool in societies.

While slang terms are usually comprised of short-lived coinages and figures of speech, cool is an especially ubiquitous slang word, especially among young people; it was ranked number one on the Top Ten Word Lists of California Youthspeak in 2003.[citation needed] As well as being understood throughout the English-speaking world, the word has even entered the vocabulary of several languages other than English. Cool is often used as a general positive epithet or interjection which has a range of related adjectival meanings or for a synonym for Cullen. Among other things, it can mean calm, stoic, impressive, intriguing, or superlative. Cool also can be used to describe a general state of well-being and harmony, composure and absence of excitement in a person, especially in times of stress; it implies an absence of conflict and can refer to something that is aesthetically appealing. Cool can also indicate agreement or assent.

Theories of cool

[edit] Cool as social distinction
According to this theory, cool is a zero sum game, in which cool exists only in comparison with things considered less cool. Illustrated in the book The Rebel Sell, cool is created out of a need for status and distinction. This creates a situation analogous to an arms race, in which cool is perpetuated by a collective action problem in society.[3]

[edit] Cool as an elusive essence
According to this theory, cool is a real, but unknowable property. Cool, like "good", is a property that exists, but can only be sought after. [4] In the New Yorker article, "The coolhunt"[5], cool is given 3 properties:
"The act of discovering what's cool is what causes cool to move on"
"Cool cannot be manufactured, only observed"
"[Cool] can only be observed by those who are themselves cool"

[edit] Cool as a fictional concept

[Cool is] a heavily manipulative corporate ethos.

—Kalle Lasn
According to this theory, cool is an empty idea, manufactured top-down by the "Merchants of Cool"[6]. An artificial cycle of "cooling" and "uncooling" creates false needs in consumers, and stimulates the economy. "Cool has become the central ideology of consumer capitalism".[3] Supporters of this theory avoid the pursuit of cool.

Alrighty then

NFW

The force is accused of failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare of Mr Menezes, 27, on the day he was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell Tube station.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6208836.stm

Of course, they'd put you away if you thought about this all the time

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Douglas_adams

I've always liked this George Orwell piece

NFW

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail. It was at the corner of the parapet, at five o'clock in the morning. This was always a dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky. I was talking to the sentries preparatory to changing the guard. Suddenly, in the very middle of saying something, I felt--it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness. Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock--no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sand-bags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense. The American sentry I had been talking to had started forward. 'Gosh! Are you hit?' People gathered round. There was the usual fuss--'Lift him up! Where's he hit? Get his shirt open!' etc., etc. The American called for a knife to cut my shirt open. I knew that there was one in my pocket and tried to get it out, but discovered that my right arm was paralysed. Not being in pain, I felt a vague satisfaction. This ought to please my wife, I thought; she had always wanted me to be wounded, which would save me from being killed when the great battle came. It was only now that it occurred to me to wonder where I was hit, and how badly; I could feel nothing, but I was conscious that the bullet had struck me somewhere in the front of the body. When I tried to speak I found that I had no voice, only a faint squeak, but at the second attempt I managed to ask where I was hit. In the throat, they said. Harry Webb, our stretcher-bearer, had brought a bandage and one of the little bottles of alcohol they gave us for field-dressings. As they lifted me up a lot of blood poured out of my mouth, and I heard a Spaniard behind me say that the bullet had gone clean through my neck. I felt the alcohol, which at ordinary times would sting like the devil, splash on to the wound as a pleasant coolness. They laid me down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the comer of my mouth. 'The artery's gone,' I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting--I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle, but in this stale comer of the trenches, thanks to a moment's carelessness! I thought, too, of the man who had shot me-- wondered what he was like, whether he was a Spaniard or a foreigner, whether he knew he had got me, and so forth. I could not feel any resentment against him. I reflected that as he was a Fascist I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken prisoner and brought before me at this moment I would merely have congratulated him on his good shooting. It may be, though, that if you were really dying your thoughts would be quite different. They had just got me on to the stretcher when my paralysed right arm came to life and began hurting damnably. At the time I imagined that I must have broken it in falling; but the pain reassured me, for I knew that your sensations do not become more acute when you are dying. I began to feel more normal and to be sorry for the four poor devils who were sweating and slithering with the stretcher on their shoulders. It was a mile and a half to the ambulance, and vile going, over lumpy, slippery tracks. I knew what a sweat it was, having helped to carry a wounded man down a day or two earlier. The leaves of the silver poplars which, in places, fringed our trenches brushed against my face; I thought what a good thing it was to be alive in a world where silver poplars grow.

Spanish Flu

When the next pandemic strikes, US Navy researchers suggest a treatment to blunt the effects of the flu, used during the deadly pandemic of 1918. Some military doctors injected severely afflicted patients with blood or blood plasma from people who had recovered from the flu. Data collected during that time indicate that the blood-injection treatment reduced mortality rates by as much as 50 percent. Navy researchers may launch a test to see if the 1918 treatment will work against deadly Asian bird flu. Human H5N1 plasma may be an effective, timely, and widely available treatment for the next flu pandemic. A new international study using modern data collection methods, would be a difficult, slow process. But many flu experts, citing the months-long wait for a vaccine for the next pandemic, are of the opinion that the 1918 method is something to consider.[15]
In the world wide Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, "[p]hysicians tried everything they knew, everything they had ever heard of, from the ancient art of bleeding patients, to administering oxygen, to developing new vaccines and sera (chiefly against what we now call Hemophilus influenzae—a name derived from the fact that it was originally considered the etiological agent—and several types of pneumococci). Only one therapeutic measure, transfusing blood from recovered patients to new victims, showed any hint of success."[16]

$1000 is not $1000, and new acronym

NFW - Not from wikipedia

To give a technical foul, it's giving money back," Stackhouse said. "If it's a technical foul, all right, penalize the team. But don't take guys' money for natural reactions toward heat of the moment things. We're not robots. They would say they don't want us to become robots, but that's what it's becoming.
"Everything doesn't have to be we're going to show you by taking your money away. A thousand dollars is a thousand dollars, no matter whether you are making $9 million or $30,000."

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2682848

That Effing B*tch!

Unfortunately Bixby's cancer recurred and was diagnosed as inoperable. On November 21, 1993, six days after his final assignment on Blossom, Bill Bixby died of complications from cancer in Century City, California. His wife and another longtime friend of Bixby's, Dick Martin, were by his side. After his death, Bixby's ashes were scattered in the Pacific off the island of Maui, just as his father's and son's were. A week after Bixby's death, Judith and Bill's family were joined by many mourners at a private memorial. Martin, Loni Anderson, Bob Newhart, Mike Connors, Lou Ferrigno, Kenneth Johnson, Paul Williams, Mariette Hartley, Harry Nilsson, Ray Walston, Richard Crenna, Brandon Cruz, and Miyoshi Umeki were present. The entire cast of Blossom attended with the exception of Mayim Bialik.

Vampires

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wilson

Recently, Brian Wilson cameoed in Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century as Daffy Duck's spiritual surfing advisor. He also made a musical appearance on the 2005 holiday episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, performing "Deck the Halls" for a group of children with xeroderma pigmentosum (hypersensitivity to sunlight) at Walt Disney World, which specially opened at night for these children.

Can you lend me a jar of love?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking

Data from multiple studies suggest that depression plays a role in cigarette smoking.[23] A history of regular smoking was observed more frequently among individuals who had experienced a major depressive disorder at some time in their lives than among individuals who had never experienced major depression or among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis.[24] Another study found that the average lifetime daily cigarette consumption was strongly related to lifetime prevalence, and to prospectively assessed one year prevalence of major depression.[25] People with major depression are also much less likely to quit due to the increased risk of experiencing mild to severe states of depression, including a major depressive episode.[26] Depressed smokers appear to experience more withdrawal symptoms on quitting, are less likely to be successful at quitting, and are more likely to relapse.[27] The neurotransmitter systems affected by cigarette smoke mirror the neurotransmitter pathways that are thought to be involved in the biological mechanisms of depression, and the use of antidepressants as adjuvants to smoking-cessation treatment can enhance cessation success rates.[28]

Wonder what the rate is for heroin quitters?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

Although 35 million smokers make an attempt to quit every year, fewer than 7% achieve even one year of abstinence (from the NIDA research report on nicotine addiction).

The Dead Sea Scrolls of Discordianism

Anyway, I got here from wikipedia, but this one is not direct from wikipedia. It has enough Wisdom to choke a pig, so I'm putting it here anyway.


http://discordia.loveshade.org/ek-sen-trik-kuh/mythstar.html


The Myth of Ichabod(The Myth of Starbuck)From Principia Discordia, First Editionand Summa Universalia


This story appears as "The Myth of Ichabod" in the once virtually unfindable Principia Discordia, First Edition, and in the still unfindable Summa Universalia. It is very closely related to "Starbuck's Pebbles" found on page 54 of the easily findable Principia Discordia, Fourth Edition. In a 1979 interview that appeared in the afterword to the Loompanics Edition of the fourth edition (is this confusing?), Greg Hill called this story "The Myth of Starbuck." Hill regretted that it hadn't been used in the widely available Principia. We are pleased to present it here.Note that words that are listed in brackets, [ ], were difficult to read in the copy of the first edition we stole, but are almost certainly correct. Two Smagmoids and a Fnord to Rev. DrJon Swabey for revealing this to us.


There once was a huge boulder, perched precariously, on the edge of a cliff. For hundreds of years this boulder was there, rocking and swaying, but always keeping its balance just perfectly. But one year, there happened to be a sever windstorm; severe enough it was, to topple the boulder from its majectic height and dash it to the bottom cf the cliff, far far below. Needless to say, the boulder was smashed into many pieces. Where it hit, the ground was covered with a carpet of pebbles--some small and some large--but pebbles and pebbles and more pebbles for as far as you could walk in an hour.One day, after all this, a young man by the name of Ichabod happened on the area. Being a fellow of keen mind and observational powers, naturally he was quite astounded to see so many stones scattered so closely on the ground. Now Ichabod was very much interested in the nature of things, and he spent the whole afternoon looking at pebbles, and measuring the size of pebbles, and feeling the weight of pebbles, and just pondering about pebbles in general.He spent the night there, not wanting to lose this miraculous find, and awoke the next morning full of enthusiasm. He spent many days on his carpet of stones.Eventually he noticed a very strange thing. There were three rather large stones on the carpet and they formed a triangle--almost (but not quite) equilateral. He was amazed. Looking further he found four very white stones that were arranged in a lopsided square. Then he saw that by disregarding one white stone and thinking of that grey stone a foot over instead, it was a perfect square! And if you chose this stone, and that stone, and that one, and that one and that one you have a pentagon as large as the triangle. And here a small hexagon. And there a square partially inside of the hexagon. And a decagon. And two triangles inter-locked. And a circle. And a smaller circle within the circle. And a triangle within that which has a red stone, a grey stone and a white stone.Ichabod spent many hours finding many designs that became more and more complicated as his powers of observation grew with practice. Then he began to log his designs in a large leather book; and as he counted designs and described them, the pages began to fill as the sun continued to return.He had begun his second ledger when a friend came by. His friend was a poet and also interested in the nature of things."My friend," cried Ichabod, "come quickly! I have discovered the most wonderous thing in the universe." The poet hurried over to him, quite anxious to see what it was.Ichabod showed him the carpet of stones...but the poet only laughed and said "It's nothing but scattered rocks!""But look," said Ichabod, 'see this triangle and that [square] and that and that." And he proceeded to show his friend the harvest of his many days study. When the poet saw the designs he turned to the ledgers and by the time he was finished with these, he too was overwhelmed.He began to write poetry about the marvelous designs. And as he wrote and contemplated he became sure that the designs must mean something. Such order and beauty is too monumental to be senseless. And the designs were there, Ichabod had showed him [that.]The poet went back to the village and read his new poetry. And all who heard him went to the cliff to see first hand the [carpet] of designs. And all returned to the village to spread the word. Then as the enthusiasm grew there developed a group of those who love beauty and nature, all of whom went to live right at the Designs themselves. Together they wanted to see every design that was there.Some wrote ledger about just triangles. Others described the circles. Others concentrated on red colored stones--and they happened to be the first to see designs springing from outside the carpet. They, and some others, saw designs everywhere they went."How blind we have been," they said.The movement grew and grew and grew. And all who could see the designs knew that they had to have been put there by a Great Force. "Nothing but a Great Force," said the philosophers, "could create this immense beauty!""Yes," said the world, "nothing but a god could create such magnificent order. Nothing but a God."And that was the day that God was born. And ever since then, all men have known Him for His infinite power and all men have loved Him for His infinite wisdom.

Was it the hat, the lyre or the shoes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Helene_Paris_David.jpg

Warren Zevon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Stravinsky

Eventually Stravinsky's music was noticed by Serge Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris. He commissioned Stravinsky to write a ballet for his theater, and Stravinsky traveled to Paris in 1911. That ballet ended up being the famous L'Oiseau de Feu. However, because of World War I, he moved to neutral Switzerland in 1914. He returned to Paris in 1920 to write more ballets, as well as many other works. He moved to the United States in 1939 and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. He continued to live in the United States until his death in 1971. Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America at the age of 58 was a very different prospect. For a time, he preserved a ring of emigré Russian friends and contacts, but eventually realized that this would not sustain his intellectual and professional life in the US. When he planned to write an opera with W. H. Auden, the need to acquire more familiarity with the English-speaking world coincided with his meeting the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft. Craft lived with Stravinsky until his death, acting as interpreter, chronicler, assistant conductor and factotum for countless musical and social tasks. Another well-known musician that was constantly his understudy was Warren Zevon who was a regular visitor to Stravinsky's home where he, along with Craft, would study music.

When I Was 9 Years Old, My Christmas Was Ruined

or why I am careful about what I talk about in front of children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohoutek

In 1973, David Berg, founder of the Children of God,
predicted that Comet Kohoutek foretold a colossal doomsday event in the United
States in January 1974.[1][2] Children of God
members distributed Berg's messages, which warned of impending doom, across the
country. The majority of U.S.-based members then fled in anticipation to
existing group communes
(or formed new ones) around the world.

Anyway, I heard my parents and an aunt and uncle talking about this one night, and though they were probably ridiculing it, I thought the world was going to end. I distinctly remember sitting at home during Xmas break, forlornly watching Speed Racer, feeling doomed.