For most of Monday, the following hashtag was trending in the United States:
#WhenISeeAObamaBumperSticker. Interesting…
@JDun1989, the guy who started the hashtag, probably should’ve paid more attention in class as the grammatically correct way of putting it is “When I See AN…
The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.
Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF, chiming in on the pronunciation of the word. (As everyone knows, choosy memes choose “jif.”) Wilhite, a former CompuServe employee, created the format in 1987 and is to receive an award for his creation tonight. (via shortformblog)
1957 | SOUTH POLE, ANTARCTICA - National Geographic magazine’s Thomas Abercrombie, first correspondent to reach the South Pole, flies the Society’s flag from the Pole while reporting on the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58. (Photo by Thomas J. Abercrombie)
A cross-border exchange of fire in the Golan Heights between the Israeli and Syrian armies early on Tuesday triggered a claim by the Damascus regime that a jeep manned by Israeli troops had entered Syrian territory and was destroyed.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) denied the claim, saying shots were deliberately fired at a patrol inside the Israeli-controlled the Golan Heights, causing minor damage and no injuries. “In response, IDF forces returned precise fire at the source and reported a direct hit,” it said.
It was the latest in a string of cross-border incidents in recent months, which have raised concerns that the two-year-old civil war in Syria could spill over into the neighbouring Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied for more than 40 years.
Israel has launched three air strikes against targets inside Syria in recent weeks, all of which the country claimed were targeting weapons/supplies intended for Hezbollah. It remains to be seen what sort of impact today’s exchange of fire will have on ongoing attempts to jump-start peace talks between the Syrian government and rebel fighters.
Here are the 20,000 shipwrecks in US waters. Some of them are still leaking oil, because of Hitler. (No, really, they were sunk by German U-Boats—it’s a serious environmental problem.)
Breaking: Top IRS official to plead the Fifth
There’s another twist in the ongoing scandal revolving around Internal Revenue Service staff improperly screening for conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS who was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee tomorrow, will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions.
From a letter her lawyer sent to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.):
“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course.”
Stay tuned to the ever-evolving IRS mess at Politics Now.
Photo: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg
Teen Develops Computer Algorithm to Diagnose Leukemia
“Brittany Wenger isn’t your average high-school senior: She taught the computer how to diagnose leukemia.
The 18-year-old student from Sarasota, Fla. built a custom, cloud-based “artificial neural network” to find patterns in genetic expression profiles to diagnose patients with an aggressive form of cancer called mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL). Simply put, this means Wenger taught the computer how to diagnose leukemia by creating a diagnostic tool for doctors to use.”
Rock.
