Random links
- Once Upon a Time in Tehran
- "Photos of a swinging Iran when the skirts were short, the dance was the twist, and America wasn't Enemy No. 1."
- Are You a Lopsided Weightlifter? Recovering the Lost Skill of Reading Fiction
- Charles Darwin on reading more than just non-fiction: "... if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."
- Starting an online store is no easy business
- An introduction to Greek bureaucracy ... perhaps one of the main reasons that the country seems to be on the edge of collapse. My favorite amongst the lists of things needed to open an online store selling olive oil products: "At the health department, they were told that all the shareholders of the company would have to provide chest X-rays, and, in the most surreal demand of all, stool samples."
- Judge dismisses charges against Muslim man who attacked atheist dressed as ‘Zombie Muhammad’
- "Talaag Elbayomy, a 46-year-old Muslim man, allegedly attacked Ernest Perce V, who was dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” and walking with a man dressed as “Zombie Pope” during the October parade. Both men were members of the Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania." I'm slightly amused the name of the atheist group - maybe they'll show up in town in the summer to do some parading. Basically it seems here that a confession from the guy plus an apparently grainy video was judged as not evidence enough by the [Muslim] judge... who decided to tell the guy that in much of the Muslim world he might have been executed for something like this. Apparently for posting audio of portions of the trial, the guy has also been threatened with jail time.