I am often amazed at what the human body can endure.

AP reports on a a man who survived three weeks in western Japan without food and water in near-freezing weather, by falling into a state similar to hibernation. (I've always thought hibernation would be a good way to spend the whole damn winter, after all the holiday parties are done of course.)

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days.

Another lovely episode of the XKCD webcomic. Makes me a bit misty-eyed...

I though Prosper was an interesting idea when I came across it a few months ago. In USA Today, Laura Vanderkam takes a look at it in the context of the larger microcredit movement:

Microcredit - small loans to people such as Miller who are neglected by traditional banks - is big news these days. Muhammad Yunus, founder of the microcredit Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize last week for his work developing the concept. But not all microcredit customers look like Grameen's (Bangladeshis borrowing $100 to buy a cow), and not all microcredit enterprises are charities like Grameen, either.

This afternoon, I did a reading at the Harford Poetry and Literary Society. In itself, that would be mildly interesting, a different crowd than my usual audience, skewing quite a bit older and more academic. But what's really cool is that I was invited by my former 7th and 8th grade English teacher, Alan Reese. Very groovy.

Something I wrote after Zelda's Sunday night. Needs polishing but I think there's something good here:

Wednesday mornings now I go running
almost a year now
not far, about three miles, halfway out then turn and come back
(out downhill, back uphill)
nice paved path, on pleasant days I pass moms with strollers, old people out walking

before I turn around and run back I turn off into the woods for a few minutes, along a trickle creek

sometimes, right about there
I feel him running with me

December 17th's Zelda's Inferno exercises:

1) connecting 3 phrases (from random texts):

- why aren't I happier than this
- if you are excited about it
- hold tight to the memories

perversity of the brain
it holds tight to the memories of pain, humiliation, frustrated desires
while moments of joy and love slip through like water through a leaky flowerpot

walk through the fields of paradise and your boots stay clean
but mud and dog shit will always stick to your shoes

the popular theory of Christmas is joy but look beneath the veneer

Reuters reports that the federal government has given up its attempt to use a grand jury subpoena to suppress information obtained the ACLU:

"The issue was not the content of the document but the government's unprecedented effort to suppress it," said ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro. "Now that the document has been declassified, it should be plain for all to see that it should never have been classified to begin with, and that the grand jury subpoena was overreaching and inappropriate."

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercises:

1) take a assertion from a previous work and negate it. Take that as the starting point of a new piece.

it's not that the stars are afraid of the sun
and run out of the sky when it comes up
(the sun after all is one of them, part of the Fraternal Order of Hydrogen Fusers, member of the union)

LiveScience reports on new rules from the Bushies for scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, putting controls on research that might go against the party line:

“I feel as though we've got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that's a very scary thing. I worry that it borders on censorship,'' said Jim Estes, an internationally recognized marine biologist who works for the geological unit. “The explanation was that this was intended to ensure the highest possible quality research,'' said Estes, a researcher at the agency for more than 30 years. “But to me it feels like they're doing this to keep us under their thumbs. It seems like they're afraid of science. Our findings could be embarrassing to the administration.''

Another Slashdot post (quoted material is another poster to whom I'm replying):

Say there's going to be a huge tragedy and someone's family
is going to die. If you could chose whether your family dies or someone
other family dies, which would you choose?

There is a large difference between "If between my father and some
stranger, I can only save one, so I save my father", and "To save my
father, I'm going to kill a stranger." Everyone understands if I throw
the single life ring to my dad instead of some random guy (though I'd
try hard to save both); everyone also undertands that it would be
monsterous if I killed the stranger to get the new heart that my dad
(hypothetically) needed.

My father's life is more precious to me, sentimentally, than
that of a stranger, so if all else is equal and no one's rights are
being violated his claims have priority to me. But his life is not,
ethically, more precious than that of a stranger; I cannot make a good
argument that his life is more precious than J. Random Stranger, so I'm
going to kill J. Random Stranger to harvest that heart. We all
understand that to be a violation of J. Random Stranger's rights.