:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Sunday, May 30, 2004 ::

Did you know that the hot nazi in the last indiana jones movie is
named Alison Doody. Or that medical experts now believe that between
1 and 20 of the 7,000 american babies who die of SIDS may have
actually died from a homicidal parent. Or that symptoms of
Guillain-Barre syndrome, a nonffatal inflammatory condition of the
nervous system and muscles, resembel the symptoms of arsenic
poisoning.

:: Jim Nichols 5/30/2004 09:28:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Scientists Say Chicago Sinking Every Year:

"Shifting land caused by the melting of Canadian glaciers causes Chicago to sink at the rate of about a millimeter a year, a Northwestern University study has found. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/20/2004 06:06:00 PM [+] ::
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Print: The Chronicle: 5/21/2004: Can Philosophy Exist?:

"Mr. Cronk and his colleagues could be a case study in how to take a fledgling department at any institution and build it into a powerhouse program through hard work and persistence."

:: Jim Nichols 5/18/2004 10:33:00 PM [+] ::
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You could say he was a dreamer. Everyone has one stupid dream they wish they could live out. Everyone has one brilliant dream they should live out. Most of us don't do either one. His dream was to walk across the world. One foot in front of the other from here to back here, going everywhere. Why walk across the world? Well because he could. Think of all of the people he would meet, just walking. To walk across the world was his dream. And it was a dream he liked. What stops people from doing what they dream? There is always something you find in your way. Why do we let these things stay in our way? Is it fear, does fear hold us back or do we let fear in as the excuse. He wasn't going to make excuses anymore. He was going to start walking. Now the question on his mind was where to first? If you don't know where you're walking how do you decide where to go. You have to make some kind of decision. And his decision was to walk. So he started out by getting up out of the lazy boy chair he watched tv in and walked to the front door. Grabbed his coat off the coat rack and went out the door.

:: Jim Nichols 5/18/2004 10:29:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Researchers confirm theory that universe in rapid expansion:

"The universe is expanding at an ever increasing pace, British researchers announced, confirming, with the use of a NASA telescope, findings that offer an important potential insight into the future of the cosmos. "

This is one of the funniest most depressing things in the world.

:: Jim Nichols 5/18/2004 04:14:00 PM [+] ::
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I'm in a weird mood tonight. I feel like something is chasing me. I can't put my finger on it, but my mind is spining circles round and round trying to keep myself afloat.

:: Jim Nichols 5/17/2004 10:50:00 PM [+] ::
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From Law Clerk to Chief Justice, He Has Slighted Rights:

"Under the leadership of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the court has abandoned the minority-protecting role assumed by the Warren court. What happened?"

:: Jim Nichols 5/17/2004 09:56:00 PM [+] ::
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No one will believe you until you get a tattoo, thats how sad our culture has gotten.

:: Jim Nichols 5/17/2004 09:46:00 PM [+] ::
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Court boosts civil rights law for disabled | csmonitor.com:

"The US Supreme Court has upheld the right of disabled individuals to sue states for equal access to public services and facilities.

In a major 5-to-4 decision announced Monday, the nation's highest court ruled that Congress acted within its authority when it made states liable in federal court for failing to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)."

:: Jim Nichols 5/17/2004 09:27:00 PM [+] ::
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Here the world matters and you don't; in dreams you matter and the world doesn't.

:: Jim Nichols 5/16/2004 05:18:00 PM [+] ::
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American Prospect Online - ViewWeb:

"The deficits are now projected at $400 billion this year and at comparably destructive levels for the indefinite future. The tax cuts are responsible for more than $3 trillion in long-term revenue losses over 10 years. And Greenspan hasn't even spoken out against the president's campaign to make the cuts permanent.

Just imagine the outcry from Greenspan, Wall Street, and the Republican Party if these deficits had been the result of social spending rather than tax cuts for America's wealthiest. For half of the cost of the projected deficits - $200 billion a year - we could have universal, high-quality child care and health insurance for all Americans. Think of that."

:: Jim Nichols 5/15/2004 10:59:00 AM [+] ::
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Rise of an 'Iraq generation' in Europe? | csmonitor.com:

"While America's enemies flaunt photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as evidence of US iniquity, her friends are expressing disbelief and disappointment. They are also wondering how far the images may loosen Washington's grip on its claim to global moral leadership. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/14/2004 07:53:00 PM [+] ::
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Writing is about being human. Writers listen, they learn, they pay attention to the little details of life that float to the bottom settling like silt in a river. Its the writers job to excavate.

:: Jim Nichols 5/13/2004 05:50:00 PM [+] ::
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The wind had died down. It had been windy all day, the kind of wind that reminds you how alive the world is. Ladies in short skirts kind of windy. Now he sat in his room, the window half cracked open, waiting, listening. He didn't know what he was waiting for, or what he was listening for, he just was. He was learning how to just live. He wanted to learn how to make all the little things in his life fade away, shrink down to picture book size. He wanted to learn to write, but first he would have to learn to live. Every writer has a story they take with them, scene or character that they live out in their day to day life. His story wasn't good enough yet. Black eyes, blue balls, descriptive words, descriptive life. Somebody would need to write something quickly. The stories we tell ourselves, they have to improve. You have to get better at telling your own life story. If you don't then what is the point of living. You live until you die so all the in between better start getting wittier, funnier, smarter, you have to fill up your life with lots of truth.

:: Jim Nichols 5/13/2004 05:18:00 PM [+] ::
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By 3:30 everyone had fallen in the water at least once. Carl had already fallen in 5 times. You might ask what we're doing. What we'll say is that we're shootin' fish with high powered rifles. The correct answer is that we're bonding. When you go shooting fish the point isn't to actually hit the fish, all you get with that are fish guts everywhere. The idea is to hit just in front of the fish, just in front of the nose the bullet bolts to the bottom of the lake and its the concussion that kills the fish, it breaks the fish's air bladder and the fish floats up to the top. If you hit a female thats spawning you can sometimes get six or seven male fish. The fish are just lookin to score. They aren't expecting a bullet to come crashing in on them. Think of it as a sneak attack. Really what it is is five guys with nothing better to do on a spring day.

:: Jim Nichols 5/13/2004 05:06:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Bush approval rating hits lowest point:

"For an incumbent to be at 46% job approval at this point in an election year has historically always spelled defeat' for presidents since 1950, says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/11/2004 10:26:00 PM [+] ::
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The New York Times > National > How to Catch Fish in Vermont: No Bait, No Tackle, Just Bullets:

"It is a controversial pastime, and Vermont's fish and wildlife regulators have repeatedly tried to ban it. They call it unsportsmanlike and dangerous, warning that a bullet striking water can ricochet across the water like a skipping stone.
But fish shooting has survived, a cherished tradition for some Vermont families and a novelty to some teenagers and twenty-somethings. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/11/2004 09:39:00 PM [+] ::
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I've taken to watching fight club in Spanish. I've become infatuated with making myself into a chuck palahniuk cut out. I've taken to him the way a person obsesses over Russian Nihilists. This is my life and I can't even be creative enough to do my own thing. On the down side this kind of thing doesn't pay well... on the up side i'm learning to laugh again. That was one thing you taught me to do, laugh. My professor in my class asked me a question, I knew the answer but told him I have no clue. Somehow this is me gaining control over my life. Go to school forever, write cookie cutter novels, play in a band that doesn't exist... this is my life...

:: Jim Nichols 5/11/2004 06:50:00 PM [+] ::
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Darwin's natural heir :

"Hailed as a genius of modern science, he's also been accused of racism in a vicious debate over evolution. Ed Douglas on the former Southern Baptist who found clues to human behaviour in the ways of the humble ant and is now focusing on the battle to save the planet "

:: Jim Nichols 5/09/2004 08:07:00 PM [+] ::
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Haiku

if you live you die
nothing lasts forever now
we are immortals

:: Jim Nichols 5/07/2004 10:16:00 PM [+] ::
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So this insane guy comes up to me as I'm walking out of the drugstore and asks for a paperclip. I tell him I don't have one. He walks off quite distressed. It got me to thinking, man it would suck to be him. Not only is he insane, but no one has a paper clip he can use.

:: Jim Nichols 5/07/2004 08:33:00 PM [+] ::
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This is the start of a story. Its a short story, so don't worry about getting comfortable, it will be over before you have time to think about it. And its not like I want you to think about any of this anyways. I'm just writing because I have nothing else to do. You're just reading for the same reason. Maybe you think you should have something to do. Maybe this is just my two cents to help you along the way to get to that no-where special that you've always dreamed of getting to. I don't know and I don't really care. All I know is this is my first short story. Its about a boy with fire engine red hair. He eats too fast and can't digest his food very well. Sometimes he chokes. This is a short story about the last time he choked. He swallowed so hard and then he turned blue. He turned blue, and everyone around him began to scream. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn't. He wanted to breath, but he couldn't. This is the part of the story where the boy with fire engine red hair dies. THis is the point where you ask yourself why you kept reading. This is the point where I ask myself why I don't stop writing....

:: Jim Nichols 5/07/2004 01:22:00 AM [+] ::
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BBC NEWS | Health | Pensioner's 'Do Not Resuscitate' tattoo:

"Ms Polack, 85, from Lyndhurst in Hampshire, is so concerned about unwanted medical care that she has invested in a ?25 tattoo across the front of her chest.
It reads 'Do Not Resuscitate' in capital letters and is set around a red heart with a line through it. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/06/2004 11:27:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - New Finds Put Maya Culture Back a Few Centuries:

"Archeologists excavating a 2,500-year-old Maya city in Guatemala have unearthed buildings and massive carvings indicating the presence of a royal metropolis of more than 10,000 people at a time when, scientists had previously believed, the Maya were only simple farmers. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/05/2004 11:38:00 PM [+] ::
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Study: California economy hinges on housing - 2004-05-05 - Sacramento Business Journal:

"New-home construction helped drive California's economic recovery in 2003 as the industry generated $59 billion in economic activity and more than 526,000 jobs, according to a new study by the Sacramento Regional Research Institute paid for by the California Building Industry Association. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/05/2004 08:44:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Rall's 'Tillman' Cartoon Pulled by MSNBC.com:

"A cartoon questioning late footballer-turned-soldier Pat Tillman's credentials as a 'hero' was pulled from MSNBC.com this afternoon. The drawing also brought Ted Rall 110 e-mails in less than 15 minutes. "

:: Jim Nichols 5/04/2004 03:31:00 PM [+] ::
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"No one gets the relationship they deserve. For some this is a cause of unending resentment, for some people it is the source of unending desire. And for some people the most important thing is that they have found something that doesn't end." --Adam Phillips

:: Jim Nichols 5/02/2004 04:07:00 PM [+] ::
...