Reileen van Kaile

Death comes in many guises, but one way or another it is usually a lack of oxygen to the brain that delivers the coup de grâce. Whether as a result of a heart attack, drowning or suffocation, for example, people ultimately die because their neurons are deprived of oxygen, leading to cessation of electrical activity in the brain - the modern definition of biological death.

If the flow of freshly oxygenated blood to the brain is stopped, through whatever mechanism, people tend to have about 10 seconds before losing consciousness. They may take many more minutes to die, though, with the exact mode of death affecting the subtleties of the final experience. If you can take the grisly details, read on for a brief guide to the many and varied ways death can suddenly strike.

wyld_dandelyon

posts about
preserving the balance between development and wilderness in today's world. In a similar vein, ysabetwordsmith

dantaron

Gentle reader,

In the course of her duties today, this blogger was obliged to consider the vast range of input to be expected from the ladies and gentlemen who do her company the honor of using its software. In particular, she was occupied with the task of addressing the tendency of some users to express an excess of emotion, or to seek to produce an improper effect upon the unsuspecting reader, with the strength of their language.

In order to curb these unfortunate tendencies, and forestall the employment of coarse and unsuitable language, she was enjoined to produce a list of particularly crude and unsavory terms whose use would be most strictly prohibited. Nor would variants of the selected expressions be permitted; the software produced at her place of employment is of a sufficiently sophisticated nature to encompass the derivation of gerunds from the raw verbal forms &c. There will even be some discussion in the forthcoming weeks regarding the inclusion of the recently popularized “leet” forms produced by the systematic substitution of numeric characters for the letters to which they most closely bear a resemblance.

Due to the popularity of her employer’s product, this blogger’s task was further complicated by the requirement to produce appropriate lists in both the American and British dialects of the English language. Furthermore, because even within the several nations who have adopted the product there exist variations in the level of local sensitivity, it was deemed appropriate to produce two lists per dialect. The “core” assemblages contain those of the gravest offense, which are liable to shock and horrify even the most liberal-minded and worldly of readers. The “additional” lists are provided to broaden the range of prohibited speech in order to protect any more delicate-minded communities which may choose to uphold a stricter standard of decency. The selection of the list to adopt is of course entirely within the purview of the customer.

cliterature n. One handed reading matter.

cockoholic n. One who is addicted to cockohol.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

[. . .]

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

ozarque

There are an assortment of different genres of traditional teaching grammars for foreign languages. There's the one that's strictly for tourists; it has a lesson about finding the bathroom, a lesson about buying a ticket, a lesson about going to a restaurant -- that kind of thing. There's the one that's mostly scripts -- it has a lesson where two people greet one another, a lesson where two people tell one another goodbye, a lesson where one person orders a meal and another takes the order, a lesson where one person asks another how to say something and the other person answers the question, and so on. There's the one that has a Nuclear Family as its cast of characters and takes them through their daily lives -- it has a lesson with the NF at breakfast, a lesson with the NF at dinner, a lesson with the NF going to the mall, a lesson with the NF celebrating a birthday, and so on. There's the one that describes the world -- it has a lesson about a country, and a lesson about weather, and a lesson about transportation, and so on. And there are more. Choosing your genre from this assortment is critical, the way choosing your genre for a novel is critical, because the choice immediately dumps a bunch of rules and constraints and tropes and stuff on you.

GRAFTON, Wis. - A Grafton woman has been arrested and booked for failing to pay her library fines. Heidi Dalibor, 20, told the News Graphic in Cedarburg she ignored the library's calls and letters as well as a notice to appear in court.

[. . .]

The incident cost Dalibor about $30 for the overdue paperbacks "White Oleander" and "Angels and Demons" and her mother nearly $172 to get her out of custody.

sannion

Rihanna goes on to sing:

You can stand under my umbrella

And this is one of the most powerful metaphors in the piece. Here she is comparing Zeus to an umbrella, by which she means that Zeus is our shelter and protection from the storm, a noble sentiment indeed, and one that is truly worthy of the god that she hymns so lovingly. No doubt that is why she chose to give such a name to her piece, for it is truly the central theme of the song.

Oh, please. As you might know, Senator Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, which—last I checked—is a state. One of those United States, actually. Of America. But it turns out, according to political analyst Cokie Roberts, Hawaii is too "foreign" and "exotic" a locale for a campaigning presidential candidate to go to for vacation. Huh?

On yesterday's edition of ABC's This Week, Roberts criticized Senator Obama for "going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii," which she said "does not make any sense whatsoever." Funny, it makes perfect sense to me. Can't a guy go back to his home state to chill? According to Roberts:

"I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place... He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time."

Novels may be classified in this manner:

(a) Those that are best-sellers, (b) those that were assigned to you in school, (c) those that you feel you have already read even though you have not, (d) classics, (e) those that are not read as the author intended, (f) those that many intend to read “some day,” (g) fantasy trilogies, (h) those that are otherwise not flawed, (i) those that were written on manual typewriters, (j) those that can be judged by their covers, (k) those that were padded by their designers during production to appear longer than they are, (l) those that are only called ‘novel’ by courtesy, (m) those that have been condensed by Readers Digest, (n) those that look well upon the shelf.