Wednesday, October 10, 2012

WEB BOHEMIAN (Wednesday, October 10, 2012)

(1)- HIS RISE AND FALL – In 1498, Friar Girolamo Savonarola, whose visions of tribulation and transformation had galvanized the citizens of Florence for almost a decade, faced torture for the second time in his life.

(2)- NEUROECONOMICS – It came into being around the turn of this century, growing out of a critique of the basic idea in economics that people are driven by rational attempts to maximize their own happiness.

(3)- CONNECTICUT VAMPIRE SCARE -- In 1854, in Jewett City, Conn., townspeople exhumed corpses suspected to be vampires rising from their graves to kill the living. Newspaper accounts of these events survived.

(4)- OLDE ADDICTION -- You really have to work hard to get hooked on smoking opium. The Victorian-era form of the drug, known as chandu, is rare, and the people who know how to use it aren’t exactly forthcoming.

(5)- TOO FAT TO FIGHT – Retired military leaders say childhood obesity isn't just a health issue. It's also a national security issue. One in four young adults are too overweight to join the U.S. military.

(6)- ZOMBIE BANK ACCOUNTS – Mistakenly re-activated closed bank accounts is a widespread phenomenon. “There are 2.5 million deceased Americans yearly used to illegally apply for credit products and services.

(7)- MECHANICAL HORSE HISTORY --  horses have held a special place in human hearts. Herein: a brief history of the mechanical horse, from the 19th century to today.

(8)- TAX CHARTS -- The Tax Foundation posts a ton of super-informative, myth-dispelling charts on the U.S. tax system. Here are a few that popped out at me, but there are plenty more at the Tax Foundation website.

(9)- ENCOUNTERS WITH THE GOD PARTICLE – Up to the middle of the last millennium, except some considerable accomplishment by ancient Greeks, the search for rules governing the physical universe was largely religious in nature. Now comes The Higgs boson…

POLITICAL CARTOON

ENDIT