Dowbrigade

We
warned
about this happening.  First, gay marriages.  Next,
people want to marry their pets, imaginary friends, inflatable companions. Where
do you draw the line? My roommate married a dog, but she actually looked
quite attractive on her wedding day.

Perhaps a constitutional ammendment
IS in order, but with a special dispensation for cases like
this, where
there
is a
legitimate and reasonable fear of the ‘evil eye’ involved.

A tribal priest in eastern India has married a five year old boy to
a dog to keep evil spirits away from him and his family.

Bonjh Gope conducted the marriage of Samir Mudiya to a dog on the concluding
day of a three day tribal festival at Kuluptanaga in Jharkhand state.

The Press Trust of India reports that guests who came to see the "newly
wed couple" danced to drum beats and were served home brewed beer
and local delicacies.

The groom’s father Shanbabu claimed that four such marriages had taken
place this year.
It is reported he said he believed "such marriages would keep
the boy, the family as well as society at large away from the evil
eye."

A police spokesman said: "We have never heard of such a case.
We will have to seek legal opinion before taking action."

from Ananova

As a strictly amateur aficianado of the architectural
arts, we have been following the career of one Frank
Gehry, one of the
giants of our times, and like all true giants, a controversial figure
as well. Among his acclaimed designs are a series of fantastic beach
houses in California, the Guggenheim
Museum in Spain, and the Walt Disney
Concert Hall in LA .

Our initial response to Gehry’s style was a guffaw of disbelief.  We
were sure the photo we were looking at was a Photoshop hoax. What absurd,
impractical, bizarre spaces! Now an article in the Los
Angeles Times showers accolades on the Disney design for the way it has revitalized
the entire area in which it was constructed! The article says the zone
has become, as the architect intended, a sort of open-air "living room"
for the city.

This is of more than passing interest to Boston area residents as Gehry’s
latest project, the billion-dollar Stata
Center, is swiftly taking form
at MIT. It is already a controversial
project; aside from the design
(again, we hated it at first sight but are starting to come around) it
is seriously over budget and behind schedule (seemingly a trademark of
Beantown projects). Actually, we are looking forward to the opportunity
to see the space without all the cranes and scaffolding, and get a chance
to move around it.

Proof of the public’s fascination with architect Frank Gehry’s steel-and-glass
extravaganza can be seen in the hundreds of fingerprint smudges visitors
have left on Disney Hall’s otherwise sleek exterior.

"People actually feel the need to touch the building," said
Mark Slavkin, the Music Center’s vice president for education. "It’s
a nice problem."

An average of 1,000 people a day toured Disney Hall, the Music Center’s
fourth venue, for free when it opened to the public in November. About
7,000 people stopped by in December even after fees were instituted for
guided and self-guided tours.

article from the Los Angeles Times

That creepy feeling you sometimes get while attending a wedding — "this
one ain’t gonna last" — is now being expressed in numbers.
 

In an unusual bit of numerical reasoning, a psychologist and two mathematicians
at the University of Washington state that they now can predict the fate
of a marriage with high accuracy, identifying shortly after nuptials up
to 94 percent of the couples who are destined to split.

Here’s how: By recording what happens while husband and wife engage in
a brief conversation, and counting the number of positive and negative
interactions, the researchers calculate a compatibility ratio that warns
when a marriage is heading for trouble. If negative interactions outweigh
good ones by five to one, expect divorce.

This begs the obvious question, why not administer this test BEFORE
allowing couples to tie the knot, thereby avoiding years of useless expense,
suffering and emotional trauma. Think Brittany Spears and Jason Allen
Alexander would
have passed the test? How about Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie? Liza
Minelli and, well, anyone?

Which reminds us, why are gays so fired up
to get married? They should
be GLAD
they have an excuse
to
avoid
this
most
medievil
form of modern torture. And the rest of us should WELCOME those poor
bastards (and bitches) to the fellowship of the miserable. Misery,
after all, loves company…..

from the Boston Globe

Norma
Yvonne is the type of person who; when told by the doctor to eat more
roughage, will run right out and stock up on alfalfa, barley
and cashew nuts. So when told she should be drinking 8 glasses of water
a day, she instead made it a point to go through at least a gallon a
day. Since she only weighs 95 pounds and has nowhere to store that much
water, she is making constant trips to the lady’s room, and constantly
needs to know where the closest bathroom is. Well, guess what? All she
was doing was diluting her essential essence!

Conventional wisdom holds
so strongly that drinking eight glasses of water a day is
essential
to
good
health
that
bottles
of water
have
become as ubiquitous as cell phones in meetings, on commuter trains
and on sidewalks. The nation is, by all appearances, parched, just a
sip
ahead of dehydration.
 

But last week, a panel of some of the most esteemed nutrition and health
experts in the United States and Canada said there’s no need to try to
get eight glasses a day: People should just drink when they’re thirsty.

from the Boston Globe