A Puff Away From Frustration, a Tear of Sadness | Yangshuo, China

A Puff Away From Frustration, a Tear of Sadness | Yangshuo, China, originally uploaded by pqpqpq.

FIORENTINA- LIVERPOOL

FIORENTINA- LIVERPOOL, originally uploaded by ViolaChannel.

I took a few hours break from continuing my job search today to watch the Fiorentina-Liverpool UEFA Europa League (Champions League) match. It was fantastic (Fiorentina won) with two goals from Jovetic. A good touch to a frustrating month. Hopefully I'll have a job soon.

La Biblioteca

Favre Throws a Miracle

I know, I know...it's old news but I couldn't resist. Above is the video of the last second touchdown by Favre in yesterday's Vikings game with the call by the Vikings Radio Network play-by-play guy Paul Allen.

Favre may have won over my skepticism with this play.

Skol Vikings!

A Plan to Add Supermarkets to Poor Areas, With Healthy Results

Although there has been little opposition to the proposal’s goals, labor leaders have insisted that the stores be required to pay so-called living wages and offer health benefits to employees.

Damn those "living wages"

Article and picture from the NY Times found through The Green Light

Pittsburgh, City of Renewal

If Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, Gordon Brown, or any of the other hundreds of foreign government officials (plus 4,000 journalists) are looking for inspiration on how to revive their economies, they could do worse than to walk through Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, which brim with reminders that just about everything old can be new again. Got an abandoned ice manufacturing plant in the midst of an area otherwise brimming with restaurants and entertainment? Open the Heinz History Center, a regional history museum affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. Got an old church on a corner near the University of Pittsburgh? Sounds like a great place for a hookah bar. It’s a common, almost expected story here.

From The Atlantic

"The only way we are going to [catch Detroit] is to pick each other up and get each other's back," said (Michael) Cuddyer, who was 3-for-4 and hit his 29th homer.

Quote from the Minneapolis Star Tribune

A few weeks after I had all but written off the Twins playoff hopes they're back and fighting. Hopefully the next few weeks go well and we can get back into the playoffs.

Couple

Couple, originally uploaded by b-duss.

I have to say, Seattle is a beautiful city, and my neighborhood is a beautiful neighborhood.

My Green Light

My Green Light, originally uploaded by b-duss.

Between the execution that took 2 hours before they called it off and the execution of a potentially innocent man maybe we should rethink this whole capital punishment thing.

What it Feels Like to Have a Stroke

Garrison Keillor explains what it feels like to have a stroke.

After Tour in NBA, a Life of Duty Over There

James, who earned more than $2 million playing in the N.B.A., is making less than $2,000 a month. His commander, Capt. Curtis Byron, said he was unaware that the 6-foot-7 soldier in his unit was a former professional basketball player until James sought permission to be interviewed for news articles.

Full article in the NY Times

If You Printed the Internet...

If You Printed the Internet.

Rest in Peace Mr. Borlaug

Norman Borlaug, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for work breeding famine resistant crops and a man who is credited with saving at least a million lives died this weekend.

“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”

The day the award was announced, Dr. Borlaug, vigorous and slender at 56, was working in a wheat field outside Mexico City when his wife, Margaret, drove up to tell him the news. “Someone’s pulling your leg,” he replied, according to one of his biographers, Leon Hesser. Assured that it was true, he kept on working, saying he would celebrate later.

Found in the NY Times.

As Italy moves to replace traditional intersections with roundabouts for safety reasons, there are worries that artwork at the traffic circles could distract drivers.

From the NY Times. (But I know that's a big shock to people who know which websites I regularly read)

I have a fascination with roundabouts, and really enjoy them. Decorating them makes them even better.

Teams Seeking Remains Dig Back to World War II

As nearly 200,000 United States troops fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, a little-known unit is engaged in the herculean and at times quixotic task of trying to account for more than 84,000 Americans still missing from the nation’s previous wars. Most of the effort has focused on those lost in Vietnam, but under pressure from families, the military has paid new attention in the past two years to a vast majority of the missing — some 74,000 — still unaccounted for in Europe and the Pacific during World War II.

Great article from the NY Times. Check it out.

Went for a Run Today

My longest run of the summer, and since before the campaign last summer. I went 6.25 miles in 55 minutes. The run felt really good which is a feeling I didn't think would be coming around for a while. Basically pain free (a little shin soreness this evening but I'm icing it right now). Who knows, maybe this running thing will stick and I can add 20 more miles and get back into shape to do that marathon I've wanted to do for so long.

At Least There's This...

The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.
Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provided fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could also even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next few dozen millenniums.

And all those people said global warming was bad...

...unless changing a millennium worth of weather patterns is a bad thing that is.

From the NY Times