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Evaluate World Peace

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JustDuckie

Bon mots and random thoughts.
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Grim Reaper Sings About Kids Dying in Unicef's Insane Sound of Music Parody | Adweek (http://www.adweek.com/adf... http://www.adweek.com/fil... )
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"The hills are alive with the sound of Unicef Sweden singing about cholera. A jolly grim reaper does a Broadway number on waterborne diseases in Forsman & Bodenfors' insane new ad from the children's charity. Titled "The sound of Death," it parodies The Sound of Music -- namely the song "My Favorite Things," performed by children in the musical. But instead of whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string, it turns out that Death loves dysentery and leptospirosis. The clip is firmly in the Mel Brooks tradition of dark comedy (Think "The Spanish Inquisition" from History of the World, Part I, or maybe more appropriate, the Nazi-themed "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers). And any macabre, musical PSA these days is likely to evoke, however slightly, "Dumb Ways to Die."" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Mother dangled toddler over cheetah pit at Cleveland zoo -- and he fell in | US news | The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.co... http://i.guim.co.uk/stati... )
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"Zoo officials in Cleveland say a woman was dangling her two-year-old son over a railing when he fell about 10ft (three metres) into a cheetah exhibit. Cleveland Metroparks zoo says the toddler's parents jumped in and pulled him to safety Saturday afternoon. The zoo's executive director says the cheetahs didn't go toward the boy or his parents and that several eyewitnesses saw the woman holding the child over the railing. Zoo officials say the boy hurt his leg in the fall. Cleveland fire department spokesman Larry Gray says the toddler was treated for bumps and bruises at a hospital. The zoo says Cleveland Metroparks plans to seek child endangering charges against the mother." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Awww... Nice cheetahs. Must have been overfed. :( - SAM - - (Edit | Remove)
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Noise, not strippers, was problem at Hillsborough mansion | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune (http://tbo.com/news/polit... http://tbo.com/storyimage... )
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"If it wasn't for the loud parties, the owner of a $2 million mansion in northwest Hillsborough County might have continued operating a training school for strippers next door to an exclusive gated community. But the all-night, liquor-fueled celebrations, complete with booming stereos and screaming women, drew complaints from the Cheval West neighborhood. "If they had flown under the radar, they'd still be in business," said Hillsborough sheriff's Deputy Phil Acaba, who has investigated the events at 18520 Ramblewood Road. "The noise was the issue that brought their downfall."" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
Good afternoon there, Florida. - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/20... http://static01.nyt.com/i... )
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"Around this time every year, Joseph Bankman, a professor of tax law at Stanford Law School and a longtime advocate of using technology to simplify tax filing, gets on the phone with reporters to explain what is wrong with how we do our taxes in the United States. Every year he says pretty much the same thing: No other industrialized country asks its citizens to jump through as many hoops to calculate their taxes as ours. It isn’t just lawmakers or the hapless-seeming Internal Revenue Service that is perpetuating the annoyance of tax time, he adds. Instead it is the private sector — specifically, the software company Intuit, which makes TurboTax, the most popular tax program in the country. For more than a decade, Mr. Bankman and a small group of tax experts have called on the government to create a tax preparation method that they say would vastly reduce the time and cost of tax-filing for most people. Intuit has been a primary obstacle to the effort." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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This Actor's 20 Robin Williams Impressions Are Unbelievable (http://www.buzzfeed.com/b... http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com... )
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"The South Carolina-based comedian cites Williams, who died last August, as 'the man [whose] spark ignited my passion.'" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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DMN Columnist in a Lather Over Hookup Billboard | Dallas Observer (http://blogs.dallasobserv... http://blogs.dallasobserv... )
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"One of The Dallas Morning News' resident scolds, editorial board member Tod Robberson, is fixated on a hookup-website billboard that was erected over Interstate 345 in Deep Ellum a couple of weeks ago. It's not so much the implication of hot, dude-on-dude action that bothers Robberson, he tells us, but that that action is occurring outside of committed relationships. "I suspect that gays in loving, committed relationships also would find this type of advertising offensive," he says in an April 3 post for the DMN's opinion blog. "It sends exactly the wrong message, given what's happening politically across the nation. The timing could not be worse. The ad really is not about gays and straights. It's an advertisement for blatant, unbridled promiscuity of the most dangerous kind."" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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"As disturbing as hearing Robberson's righteous salivation about the billboard has been the last couple of Fridays, let's hope, for Tod's sake, that the gays learn their lesson before Friday, when it would seem the third in his series would be due." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Florida plans to give hunters another shot at pythons in 2016 | Miami Herald Miami Herald (http://www.miamiherald.co... http://www.miamiherald.co... )
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"Wanted: savvy hunter, tolerant of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, immune to muggy heat, able to traipse through razor-sharp sawgrass and -- most important -- unafraid of snakes. Florida wildlife officials announced Monday the return of the "Python Challenge," a monthlong hunt that in 2013 that was wildly successful -- at least in terms of drawing out-of-town reporters and TV crews who helped raised the profile of one of the state's most destructive and wily invaders. The hunt itself did not put a major dent in the Burmese python population, with 1,600 hunters bagging 68 snakes. The hunt is scheduled for early 2016, when seasonal cold weather should bring out the cold-blooded reptiles. Details are still being ironed out, said Florida Fish and Freshwater Fish Commission spokeswoman Lisa Thompson." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Proposed hell theme park sparks fury, debate, irony - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... )
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"A proposal to build a theme park based on ideas of hell at a public cemetery in Hualien County has gone viral on the Internet, drawing mixed reactions from the public while the county government quickly denied authorizing the project. A netizen on Wednesday reposted a proposal published on the county government's Web site, and said that Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi planned to build a theme park featuring the "18 Levels of Hell," referring to a belief combining elements of Buddhist and traditional Chinese thought that the dead are taken to one of 18 levels of hell to atone for their sins. The project proposes an amusement park comprising 18 sites that correspond with the 18 levels of hell, featuring gruesome attractions such as a bridge of reincarnation and food stalls hawking "human barbeque" and sausages. A group of fortune-tellers would be positioned at the entrance to the park to warn off those perceived to be susceptible to the influence of spirits, the proposal says." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
"A department official, Wu Chun-hsun (吳俊勳), said contractors had proposed nearly 100 development projects, which were posted online for public review before a smaller selection is presented for government review and public hearings. Criticisms over the proposed theme park were gratuitous, as the government has not yet approved the project, Wu said." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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North Carolina education bill: It would require public university professors to teach eight courses per year. (http://www.slate.com/arti... )
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"Forcing everyone into a 4-4 minimum (so ideally an excruciating 5-5, I guess?) is a "solution" that could only be proposed by someone who either doesn't know how research works or hates it. It's like saying: Hey, I'll fix this car by treating it like a microwave." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
"Whether or not the stated goal is to “close it all down,” that will definitely be the result. The professors forced into a 4-4 will simply pick up their research—and the labs where that research gets done, and those labs’ workforces, much of them nonacademics, Mr. Schalin—and move them somewhere that will fund them. With the inevitable cratering of UNC–Chapel Hill and NC State, the Research Triangle will become the Research Dot, and the 50,000 individuals North Carolina currently employs in Research Triangle Park—a massive conglomerate of nonacademic research labs located where it is precisely because of its proximity to Duke, UNC, and NC State—will have their livelihoods put in danger. It’s easy to sneer that the university isn’t a “jobs program” until you have to answer for your state’s brain drain." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Authorities: Neighbor forced man onto high-rise balcony, microwaved his wallet (http://www.baynews9.com/c... )
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"Tampa Fire Rescue officials say Mohammed Almarri illegally entered his neighbor's apartment on the 30th floor of the luxury Element apartment building at 808 N Franklin St. He then forced the owner to retreat to his balcony, put the owner's wallet into the microwave and turned it on. The victim told officials Almarri also took the victim's collection of lighters, piled them on the floor next to a small electric heater and turned the heater on. Firefighters were dispatched to the scene around 8:45 a.m. to investigate a report of a man trapped on his high-rise balcony. They smelled smoke, but found no active fire, and the victim was not injured. Almarri was arrested soon after. Damage to the apartment and contents was estimated at $1,000." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Florida! - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Woman slashes husband for not washing his hands after using toilet -- Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion (http://www.japantoday.com... )
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"Police in Tokyo's Ota Ward said Monday they have arrested a 29-year-old woman on suspicion of attempted murder after she slashed her husband because he didn't wash his hands after using the toilet." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Garry Trudeau's Full Remarks on Charlie Hebdo at the Polk Awards: 'Satire Punches Up' -- The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.co... http://cdn.theatlantic.co... )
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"Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny--it's just mean. By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence. Well, voila--the 7 million copies that were published following the killings did exactly that, triggering violent protests across the Muslim world, including one in Niger, in which ten people died. Meanwhile, the French government kept busy rounding up and arresting over 100 Muslims who had foolishly used their freedom of speech to express their support of the attacks. The White House took a lot of hits for not sending a high-level representative to the pro-Charlie solidarity march, but that oversight is now starting to look smart. The French tradition of free expression is too full of contradictions to fully embrace. Even Charlie Hebdo once fired a writer for not retracting an anti-Semitic column. Apparently he crossed some red line that was in place for one minority but not another." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
"Writing satire is a privilege I’ve never taken lightly. And I’m still trying to get it right. Doonesbury remains a work in progress, an imperfect chronicle of human imperfection. It is work, though, that only exists because of the remarkable license that commentators enjoy in this country. That license has been stretched beyond recognition in the digital age. It’s not easy figuring out where the red line is for satire anymore. But it’s always worth asking this question: Is anyone, anyone at all, laughing? If not, maybe you crossed it." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Chinese Man Yuan in Hunan Province Busted After Car Accident for Having at Least 17 Girlfriends (http://www.newser.com/sto... )
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"Sometimes all it takes for a wounded man to heal is a little TLC -- or a lot of TLC, if all 17 of your girlfriends show up. A Chinese man identified only by the surname Yuan was in a car accident on March 24 and was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, per local media. But when staff started contacting his loved ones, more people than anyone expected showed up at his bedside. Yuan had apparently been dating at least 17 women at the same time, including one who says she has a son with him, the South China Morning Post reports, with no one aware of the others' existence until his accident. "I was really worried when I heard that he was in hospital," one paramour says, per the Morning Post. "But when I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn't cry any more."" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Being fat in middle age reduces risk of developing dementia, researchers say - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost... )
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"A surprising study contradicting all previous research found that being fat in middle age appears to cut the risk of developing dementia rather than increase it, the Lancet scientific journal has reported. A study of two million people found that the underweight were far more likely to develop dementia, a growing problem among the elderly in the Western world. Underweight people had a 34 percent higher risk of developing dementia than those of a normal weight, the study found, while the very obese had a 29 percent lower risk of becoming forgetful and confused and showing other signs of senility." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
So, I might live forever then? This is how I'm choosing to interpret :D - Jennifer D. - - (Edit | Remove)
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Washington deputies find cabin that family reported stolen - Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/was... )
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"Authorities say a log cabin that a family reported stolen off its foundation has been found in rural northeast Washington. Stevens County Sheriff Kendle Allen says deputies following a tip found the cabin Thursday morning about 10 miles from its original location. He says the structure had been placed on stilts and was sitting at the end of a private road east of Springdale. Chris Hempel tells The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane (http://is.gd/gJ97eb ) that her family drove to their cabin Tuesday and found the entire 10-by-20-foot structure missing. Investigators think that whoever took the cabin was living in it." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
I'm glad they found it. I hope that the people living it it weren't desperate... but they did have the resources (or at least a friend with a really big flatbed) to move the house down the road. - Jennifer D. - - (Edit | Remove)
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Johnny Depp, Liar and Star of Chocolat, Doesn't Even Like Chocolate (http://defamer.gawker.com... http://i.kinja-img.com/ga... )
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"Johnny Depp. You may know him from such films as: Chocolat. However, his Chocolat costar Juliette Binoche revealed in a startling interview with The Hollywood Reporter recently that Johnny Depp didn't even like chocolate when he made that movie: To tell you the truth, the shop was all fake chocolate. Because of all the lights, chocolate wouldn't have been able to stand up with that heat. But of course we did have to eat some. I discovered that Johnny Depp actually didn't like chocolate. He was spitting it out after each take, and Alfred Molina didn't like chocolate that much, either. It was a funny experience dealing with them and the faces they would make." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Police: $70K in bull semen stolen from Minnesota farm - Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/pol... )
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"Police are investigating the theft of about $70,000 worth of bull semen from a farm in southern Minnesota. Mower (MOH'-ur) County Sheriff Terese Amazi (AM'-uh-zye) says a LeRoy man reported Tuesday that a storage canister with vials of bull semen was taken from his unlocked barn. The theft happened sometime between April 1 and 7. The man said the only time he and his hired hand were away from the farm was on Easter Sunday. The Austin Daily Herald (http://bit.ly/1HRkCPi ) reports the canister was worth about $500, and the vials of semen were worth from $300 to $1,500 apiece. Police have no suspects." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Tap instructor: "Did everyone learn the umbrella dance from 'Singin' In The Rain'?" High school student: "Yeah, but could you give us the counts for the part where he sings with no music?" Tap instructor: "Yeeeaaahhh...there aren't really counts for that part. Because Gene Kelly likes TAKING HIS SWEET TIME."
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In Rise of Yik Yak App, Profits and Ethics Collide - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/20... )
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"Do venture capitalists and other highly sophisticated and compensated investors, like those controlling large private equity and hedge funds, have any moral or ethical responsibility for the investments they make? Should the smart-money crowd be held accountable for the harm caused to people who use the products and services created with the money that springs from their coffers? Or is the bottom line the only thing that matters when it comes to investing? These questions come to mind when considering the turmoil caused on college campuses nationwide by Yik Yak, the anonymous messaging service founded in 2013 by Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington soon after they graduated from Furman University in Greenville, S.C. Not surprisingly, the immense popularity of Yik Yak has attracted the attention of venture capitalists looking for the next Facebook." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Entire cabin stolen off foundation, baffling owner - Spokesman.com - April 8, 2015 (http://www.spokesman.com/... )
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"When Chris Hempel returned to her family’s rural property and found the gate’s lock cut, she was expecting to find thieves had broken into their cabin. What she didn’t count on was finding the entire cabin missing. “We drove up to the cabin and the cabin was gone, it was just an empty hole where it used to sit,” she said. Hempel, her husband, and their two children have owned property just outside of Springdale for about four years, and say the forest is a perfect place to hunt, relax and get away from work on the weekends. They visit their cabin about every two weeks, but returned on April 7 to find the structure missing – stolen off its foundation. “We’re just kind of at a loss right now. Like, seriously?” she said." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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DICKS. That's who does it. - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Wielding firecrackers, monkey-chasers to start work on Monday in Gukeng - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... ) http://www.taipeitimes.co...
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"Yunlin County has recruited and trained seven people to chase monkeys away from farms in the county, which has a large population of Formosan macaques. The seven, selected from more than 30 applicants, are to soon begin work in the mountains of Gukeng Township (古坑). Their primary tactic is to employ firecrackers to deter the primates. It is better to use firecrackers to scare off the animals than to erect electrified fencing or adopt sterilization to reduce their numbers, the township administration said. The administration said the job of “monkey-chaser” is more difficult than it may seem and that most recruits are older farmers, although it also received applications from young people with college degrees." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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'Attn. barf cleaners': kid writes apology to Ore. bookstore | Local & Regional | Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, Idaho News, Weather, Sports and Breaking News - KBOI 2 (http://www.kboi2.com/news... )
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"A child who vomited inside the Powell's bookstore on SE Hawthrone Boulevard wrote an apology letter to the "barf cleaners." It all began late last month, when a kid named Jack vomited inside the bookstore, close to the bathroom. "Attention: Barf cleaners," Jack wrote on the envelope of his apology letter, which included a gift card to Ben & Jerry's ice cream. "This Ben and Jerry's card is for the people who cleaned up the throw-up of a kid on Friday the 28th. I don't know their names, but I thank them a lot and I'm sorry again for throwing up and hope you enjoy your ice cream. From: Jack, AKA the kid that puked right next to the bathroom."" It all began late last month, when a kid named Jack vomited inside the bookstore, close to the bathroom. "Attention: Barf cleaners," Jack wrote on the envelope of his apology letter, which included a gift card to Ben & Jerry's ice cream. "This Ben and Jerry's card is for the people who cleaned up the throw-up of a kid on Friday the 28th. I don't know their names, but I thank them a lot and I'm sorry again for throwing up and hope you enjoy your ice cream. From: Jack, AKA the kid that puked right next to the bathroom." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
"“It was gigantic in diameter,” Jennifer Wicka said." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Shorter Stature May Pose Higher Risk of Heart Disease - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/20... )
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"To the surprise of researchers who had thought the very notion a joke, an international consortium of investigators reported on Wednesday that shorter stature increases the risk of heart disease. After gathering genetic data from nearly 200,000 men and women worldwide, the investigators found that each extra 2.5 inches of height brings a 13.5 percent reduction in heart disease risk. The relationship is present throughout the range of adult heights. A person who is five feet tall has a 30 percent greater chance of developing heart disease than someone who is 5 feet 6, said a lead author of the new study, Sir Nilesh Samani, a professor of cardiology at the University of Leicester in England. Of course, the increased risk pales in comparison to that caused by smoking, which elevates the odds of getting heart disease by 200 to 300 percent. There is nothing people can do about their height, but the researchers hope the finding will lead to the discovery of new links to heart disease. The paper was published in The New England Journal of Medicine." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)

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Naked jogger runs down Fla. streets, tries to evade cops - NY Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.co... )
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"A man who created a sensation by jogging naked though traffic-choked Fort Lauderdale streets claimed he was running for his life, but cops said he was simply high on the synthetic drug flakka. Matthew Kenney, 34, was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation Saturday after Fort Lauderdale police chased and finally subdued him, WSVN reported. Florida has reportedly been overrun by flakka, a street drug dubbed "$5 insanity" and called more potent than bath salts or meth." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Can't stop the signal! ;-) - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Why Writers Love to Hate the M.F.A. - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/20... )
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"It was peak reading season, and Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was gamely juggling a call from a reporter, interruptions from her 7-year-old as well as a 10 percent surge in applications to the University of Iowa's Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. Ms. Chang was in the thick of decisions about who would fill 50 spots evenly divided between the fall fiction and poetry workshops. I'm deluged," she said, surprised by the number of applications she was sorting through 1,380 especially in a year with a stronger economy, a condition that typically causes graduate school applications, never mind those to fine arts programs, to drop. "I have a tub of manuscripts," she said. "It's weird!" Perhaps, she speculates, the surge is a result of the juggernaut HBO series called "Girls," the one where the neurotic aspiring novelist Hannah Horvath, played by Lena Dunham, takes off to the Iowa cornfields and shines a bright light on the venerated program." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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"With so much seemingly working against it, it is astounding the degree has gained traction at all. But there is another argument, and another list — prominent literary writers and poets with M.F.A.s and a diverse pool of work: Jhumpa Lahiri (Boston University), Phil Klay and Gary Shteyngart (Hunter College), Michael Chabon (University of California, Irvine), Ayana Mathis (Iowa), Jay McInerney (Syracuse University), Saeed Jones (Rutgers) Manuel Muñoz (Cornell), Ocean Vuong (New York University), David Foster Wallace (University of Arizona). The list could go on. And on. In an essay in the book “MFA vs. NYC,” George Saunders, a professor in Syracuse’s program, writes that there are so many negative myths about the M.F.A. that they have become clichés. “Most critiques I read of creative writing programs or writing in the academy are kicking entities that don’t actually (in my experience) exist.” Karen Russell, whose book “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize when she was 29, is similarly inured to the critics. What did Columbia’s M.F.A. program do for her? “Basically everything,” she says. “I’m not even sure what I’d be writing now if I hadn’t gone.”" - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)
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Cops uncuff Fla. woman, who then swallows handful of 'Molly' - NY Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.co... )
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"One Florida woman decided to get high after cops cuffed her. Police who arrived at a drug trafficker's Tampa home temporarily let the 23-year-old out of handcuffs so she could sign a document. Instead, Kimberly Noelle Collera reached for a handful of the synthetic drug known as Molly and swallowed it, the Tampa Bay Times reported. "If I'm going back to prison, I'll at least get high before I go," Collera reportedly told her arresting officers." - JustDuckie - - (Edit | Remove)