Isegoria

In case you haven’t heard — Astronaut charged with attempted murder:

A married U.S. astronaut was accused on Tuesday of trying to kidnap and kill a rival for the affections of a fellow astronaut after a bizarre 950-mile drive wearing diapers to confront the woman.

U.S. Navy Capt. Lisa Nowak, who has three children, was initially arrested on attempted kidnapping charges on Monday in Orlando after assaulting Colleen Shipman, a U.S. Air Force captain she considered competition for the affections of a male astronaut, police said.
[...]
Nowak drove to Orlando airport around midnight on Sunday night, waited for Shipman’s flight from Houston to arrive and then followed Shipman to the parking garage armed with pepper spray, a steel mallet and a BB gun, police said.

She also carried black gloves, a folding knife with a 4-inch (10-cm) blade, rubber tubing and trash bags, they said.

In a search of Nowak’s car, police later found diapers that Nowak told them she wore so she wouldn’t have to stop to urinate during her drive from Houston. Astronauts wear diapers during shuttle launches and landings.

Nowak tried to get into Shipman’s car and sprayed what may have been pepper spray through the window when Shipman refused to open the door, police said.

Nowak told police she did not intend to physically harm Shipman.

In her statement, Nowak described her connection to male astronaut Bill Oefelein as “more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship.”

I blame space madness.

I’m not sure what to make of the anonymous Confessions of a middle-aged Ecstasy eater, published in The Guardian.

The title, in case you’re not familiar, is an homage to Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821) by Thomas DeQuincey — as is the style of the first few paragraphs.

The Daily Show‘s Burning Sensation segment was a fairly run-of-the-mill global warming piece — until the Punxsutawney Phil portion. That was funny.

I’m not sure what to make of the anonymous Confessions of a middle-aged Ecstasy eater, published in The Guardian.

The title, in case you’re not familiar, is an homage to Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821) by Thomas DeQuincey — as is the style of the first few paragraphs.

Roman descendants found in China?:

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features.
[...]
The town’s link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome’s eastward expansion.

But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop “with a fish-scale formation” came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

He said the “fish-scale formation” was a reference to the Roman “tortoise”, a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above. Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. “We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour,” he said. “At school they call her ‘yellow hair’. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don’t know about our ancestors.”

Jill Parkin, a British mother of two girls and a boy, says, ‘Stop feminising our schools – our boys are suffering’:

It’s a teacher truism that little girls want to please and little boys want to win. The trouble is that our whole system is geared to a strange idea of egalitarianism which has somehow been confused with fairness.

NFL Wants To Remind You That Having People Over To Watch The Super Bowl On A Big Screen Is Copyright Infringement:

The NFL apparently nastygrammed a church for planning to host a Super Bowl party. The original complaint was first that the church was charging people, but also that they used the term ‘Super Bowl’ (as if people would somehow believe that the church was associated with the NFL?). After the church agreed to let people in for free and not use the term, the NFL continued to complain, saying that showing the Super Bowl on a screen larger than 55 inches represents copyright infringement.