To those who still check this blog occasionally, or might visit it by accident while cleaning up their bookmarks, know this:

Bored Athenians, after five and a half fairly chaotic years of brief commentary and shameless link-theft, is suspending operations due to all contributing authors being seduced away by Twitter, which far better suits our miniscule attention spans and need for immediate posting gratification.

You can find ongoing pedantry, punditry, and platitudes from your favorite Bored Athenians on Twitter at @evil_overload, @vennui, and @shenifonler.  Ennui can also be found combining sentences into coherent paragraphs and kicking other sorts of grammatical ass at http://pennoir.wordpress.com.  Read her words, and heed them well.  We’ll be watching.  The extensive archives will be left online for nostalgic perusal during times of boredom, rememberence, or Twitter outages.

Thanks, y’all, it’s been great!  The Blog is  dead, long live the Blog!

-Evil Overload

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Introspection
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Compliments of CM from DC. Apologies to Evil Overload and the Dark Side.

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Reposted from Boingboing, just cuz:

Wondering about Tuva? Here’s the Google Maps perspective, centered on the Tuvan capital city of Kyzyl.

Anyone know if that singing is linguistic, or just musical? In either case: Woah!

Categories: Smart Art
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Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Conservative Heresy
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Interviewer asks Joe Biden tough questions about Marxism, Biden gets irritable:

The Obama campaign later sent this message to the station in response to their unfair and un-journalistic hostility:

‘”This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.’

Read about it here.

And ask yourself:  Was this interview more or less hostile than the Palin interviews?

Categories: Conservative Heresy, arses
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It’s 11 minutes long and it’s pro-McCain, but it’s entertaining, it was already banned once, and it explains the problem fully and backs it up with facts:

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Chaos Purge, Wot's All This Then?, Conservative Heresy, arses
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From amidst the febrile ravings of RStevens

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Wot's All This Then?, arses
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1.  Halligan tool

2. Denver tool

3.  Stanley FuBar

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 Seriously:  you can put in sequences of numbers and search for information on patterns that fit them.

Link

Try inputting the Fibbonacci sequence.  Just try it, I fucking dare you.

Categories: Yay Science!
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The real question for any post-mainstreaming-of-the-blogsphere blogger is this:  How do I continue to productively externalize my thought processes without being distracted by the public presentation aspect of this medium?

…said he as he chose to file it under “Introspection”.

Categories: Introspection
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“”The saucer will hover and propel itself using electrodes that cover its surface to ionize the surrounding air into plasma. Gases (such as air, which has an equal number of positive and negative charges) become plasma when energy (such as heat or electricity) causes some of the gas’s atoms to lose their negatively charged electrons, creating atoms with a positive charge, or positive ions, surrounded by the newly detached electrons. Using an onboard source of energy (such as a battery, ultracapacitor, solar panel or any combination thereof), the electrodes will send an electrical current into the plasma, causing the plasma to push against the neutral (noncharged) air surrounding the craft, theoretically generating enough force for liftoff and movement in different directions (depending on where on the craft’s surface you direct the electrical current).”"

Looks like it’s time for me to read up on plasma physics, because I have no idea how this shit works. Very cool, though. Link!

Categories: Evil Space Monkeys, Technology Porn
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Look out, Chuck Norris:

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It’s upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.There’s only one artist on Barack Obama’s iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama’s new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

More!

from this here place

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from here

Categories: Wot's All This Then?, Global Death Wish, arses
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(Shoutout to J. Stone for this one)

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(Blame Manous for this sage advice)

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!, Smart Art
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From the pages of Wikipedia:

“King Goujian of Yue, king of Yue, was once imprisoned after a defeat in a war by King Fuchai of Wu, king of the State of Wu. The state of Yue later became a tribulatory to Wu. Secretly planning his revenge, Goujian’s minister Wen Zhong suggested training beautiful women and offering them to Fuchai as a tribute. His other minister, Fan Li, found Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, and gifted them to Fuchai in 490 BC.

Bewitched by the beauty of Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, Fuchai forgot all about his state affairs and on their instigation, killed his best advisor, the great general Wu Zixu. Fuchai even built Guanwa Palace (Palace of Beautiful Women) in an imperial park on the slope of Lingyan Hill, about 15 kilometers west of Suzhou. The strength of Wu dwindled, and in 473 BC Goujian launched his strike and put the Wu army to full rout. King Fuchai lamented that he should have listened to Wu Zixu, and then committed suicide.

In one disputed account of her fate, it was written that Goujian ordered Xi Shi to be drowned by being thrown into a lake, to avoid being tempted by her as Fuchai was.”

This tale of a kingdom laid low by beauty has become the historical illustration for Stratagem #31, the “Beauty Trap”, from the Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Categories: That's F*cking Historical!
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This knife, in addition to putting holes in things, injects them with what, at standard temperature and pressure, would be a basketball-sized volume of gas, but has been compressed for the occasion. The gas, once injected, simultaneously expands rapidly and freezes everything around it. Perfect for shark attacks and other tense social situations.

Link

(via William Gibson’s blog)

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3. People who sit in cramped cubicles answering customer service calls in drab corporate callcenters are overjoyed to help fix your DSL modem.
I don’t know Ron, but I guarantee you that Ron has never said “allow us to provide you with excellent customer service.” In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Ron provides satisfactory, but not excellent customer service, jerks it to manga, gets in heated arguments over Battlestar Galactica, and hates his job because his boss doesn’t appreciate him enough. But some day Ron will get his degree in computer science, quit his job, and then his boss will be sorry for not paying Ron more! Until then, he’s an undersexed shill. Unless the beefy, goateed computer programmer look is making a comeback, and based on personal experience, it hasn’t.

Link

(via Monochrom)

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The FAIL Blog again fails to fail to amuse.

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http://www.getfirefox.com

In honor of the Firefox 3 release today, this site will unerringly crash Internet Explorer. Try it and see!

Categories: Smart Art, Technology Porn
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Declining US$ sending cocaine trade to Europe

Afghani opium farmers switch to wheat

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Good stuff:

 –f8 is generally the aperture that provides the sharpest point of focus on lenses. That doesn’t mean you should always shoot at f8.
——
–Rules were meant to be broken, yes, but it feels much better if you know what the rules were in the first place. Picasso started as a realist. Once he had that down he could paint whatever he wanted. Be like Picasso. He got laid a lot.
——
–Never be ashamed to take a picture. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. You’re not soul-snatching, you’re soul-preserving. Also, is there a picture you really really want to take of someone? Just ask nicely and confidently and 90% of the time they’ll say yes.

More

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(Click for larger images. Originals from here)

Venus: Slightly smaller than Earth, mostly flat (due to frequent volcanic activity and killer winds), and a 3% axial tilt, meaning minimal seasonal variation. Apparently, if we could just terraform it, it would be a damn paradise, and would have surface temperatures close to those of Earth. Anybody got a mass driver I can borrow?

Categories: Yay Science!, Technology Porn
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Deadly Sins-themed wine glasses!  Brilliant! Compelling! Capacious! In some cases, downright impractical! Pictured: Lust. Link

via boingboing

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More excellent photos here

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“The best way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.”

– Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary-General of the U.N.

Categories: Evil Space Monkeys, arses
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I think it is for exactly this sort of thing that we created the Smart Art category (if by “think” I mean “blindly speculate” and by “we” I mean “Ennui”):

dawdlr is a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: what are you doing, you know, more generally?

Great idea! Be sure to drop them a postcard, nextime you’re engaged in something general.

Link

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