George Soros sells his gold

George Soros, the hedge fund investor who called gold "the ultimate bubble", has sold almost his entire holding of the precious metal, leading to fears that the price is about to fall.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/gold/8524535/George-Soros-sells-his-gold.html

Klimt Kiss Close ...From Paris

We are dangerously close to breaking some significant records on DailyBrisk.There are two posts that have overshadowed all the others.

Our most popular post?  You'll have to work for that one (Hint:  Proceed to 2009 on the right hand side of DB, scroll down to September 30th.  Bill's original post about 'healthy women' has garnered over 10,000 independent google hits).  Our second most popular post?  Gustav Klimt, Art Nouveau and Top 10.  Google those words, and you'll get our second most popular DailyBrisk post, with 8,000 independent google hits.  This particular Klimt painting ('The Kiss') is the most popular painting in the world, so I suppose it isn't entirely surprising that kissing is classically popular, whether in art or real life.   

32 freakin' FEET long; almost as big as the bloody ship

One Titanic price tag: Unique diagram of liner used at official inquiry to find what caused disaster to fetch £150,000 at auction

The 32ft long plan of the ship used in the 1912 inquiry will be sold at an auction in Devizes, Wiltshire, and could reach an incredible £150,000. The extraordinary plan was used by witnesses and experts to establish the cause of the tragedy, and even contains original chalk marks showing what happened and where the water may have entered the vessel.

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Did the Unabomber kill with poisoned Tylenol in 1982?

Authorities want to take DNA samples from "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in connection with their investigation into the 1982 incident in which seven people died after taking Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide, according to the FBI office in Chicago.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/05/19/unabomber.tylenol/index.html?hpt=T2

Big Breakfast, small tummy

Eat a Protein-Rich Breakfast to Reduce Food Cravings, Prevent Overeating Later, Researcher Finds

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2011) — A University of Missouri researcher has found that eating a healthy breakfast, especially one high in protein, increases satiety and reduces hunger throughout the day. In addition, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the researchers found that eating a protein-rich breakfast reduces the brain signals controlling food motivation and reward-driven eating behavior.

This is a real conflict. She can not take part in any decision on OCare and be considered a real Justice.

Oh my: Documents reveal that Kagan may have helped craft legal defense of ObamaCare

Conflict.

Cornel West Calls Obama a Black Mascot of Wall Street Oligarchs

Scholar Cornel West’s scathing critique of President Obama’s liberal bona fides in a series of recent interviews has ignited a furious debate among African American bloggers and commentators.

The well-known Princeton professor and author, who has released rap albums and starred in Hollywood films, supported Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cornel-wests-criticism-of-obama-sparks-debate-among-african-americans/2011/05/18/AFlGTf6G_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

This is perhaps the most naive move since Jimmy Carter

Israeli PM Netanyahu Rejects Obama's Calls to Pull Back, Calls '67 Borders 'Indefensible'

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There is no satisfaction on the Left

Cornel West: Obama Has Not Been True to His Race67

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West: Obama 'a black mascot' and 'black puppet'

Only an idealist or a muslim would say this

Obama Tells Israel to Pull Back to Its 1967 Borders

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President Obama, delivering his first major address tackling the uprisings in the Middle East, on Thursday endorsed Palestinians' demand for their own state based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.

BHO sides with Palestinians on border issue with Israel

POTUS ticks off the Jews before visit by Netanyahu by saying Palestinian state should go back to pre 1967 Middle East war borders -- an absolute no-no for Israeli leadership.

Is it just me or does it seem he has more interest in determining borders of foreign states rather than policing the southwestern states' borders with Mexico?

If I were Netanyahu, I'd cancel my trip to DC.

The next sound you hear will be the cacophony of Jewish donors abandoning BHO.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110519/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_mideast_palestinians_1

Today's cartoon

Babel rises in Buenos Aires

Sculpture has an interesting story

This week, Argentinian artist Marta Minujin has produced “The Tower of Babel,” an ode to linguistic oneness erected in the Plaza San Martin to celebrate Buenos Aires being named the World Book Capital of 2011. The structure contains some thirty thousand books in various languages, many of them donated by embassies of countries around the world (the U.S. sent one thousand books; Ecuador sent thirty-five hundred). “I don’t know why we have to have different languages,” Minujín told the A.F.P. “Art needs no translation.” Noble sentiments, to be sure, but I prefer her more irreverent reason for building the tower: “It’s really amusing to be able to climb up and down a work of art.”

Visitors will be able to climb up and down the work of art until May 28th, when they’ll be able to help pull it down and take bits of it home with them.

You can view a slide show of the tower being built at the Guardian.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books#ixzz1MowPz2eQ

Writers and their typewriters

Sure, some have used journals and handwritten their masterpieces, but today it's mostly computers and other electronic devices.

One of my favorites, Carson McCullers, in 1961

The slideshow will show you some other famous writers and the locations and writing instruments they used to create their noteworthy tomes. It's interesting that so many of the typerwriters in this slide show are "portable."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2011/may/11/authors-typewriters-in-pictures#/?picture=374451790&index=0

Bogey

Woods falls out of top ten in Forbes' 'Celebrity 100'

Golfer also about to fall out of the top 10 golfers in the world

Related Articles

• Former Tiger Woods mistress, 9/11 victim fiance to get TV series

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/section/sports/#ixzz1MorQVfMC

Should you plan that Memorial Day picnic?

Judgment Day May 21: When will the world actually end?

Judgment Day May 21: Harold Camping, the head of the Family Radio broadcasting network, has calculated that the apocalypse will begin on May 21. Do his numbers add up for a judgment day this weekend?

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Will the world actually explode on May 21? There's no way to prove that it won't! One man says Judgment Day is coming this Saturday.

NASA/Newscom/File

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You should follow the math that Camping mentions to explain why he and his followers believe Saturday is the beginning of the end of the world.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0518/Judgment-Day-May-21-When-will-the-world-actually-end

Everything you ever wanted to know about eBooks ...

... and wanted to hear about it on LinkedIn

Groups on professional networking site are designed for readers, authors, publishing personnel, just about anyone who has an interest in reading, ebook reading that is.

http://www.mediabistro.com/ebooknewser/linkedin-groups-for-ebook-authors-publishers-readers_b10975

YouTube creates "town hall" for pols to duke it out

Sounds just a tad lame for me

http://techland.time.com/2011/05/18/youtube-town-hall-lets-politicians-duke-it-out-online/

Will they start looking for Michelangelo's David model after this?

Is this the skull of the Mona Lisa? Bones found at site of alleged model's burial

A crypt beneath St. Ursula convent in Florence, believed to be the final resting place of Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo, has yielded a female-sized skull. If scientists can confirm it belongs to the model, forensic artists will attempt to reconstruct her face to see how it compares to the 500-year-old version painted by Leonardo da Vinci. ...read

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No man is an island

The moats of Mississippi: Homes that have become little castles as owners build levees to protect against the floodsThey have surrounded themselves with tons of sand and earth.

Dems effort to raise gas prices defeated.

Reid's Energy Tax Hike Rebuffed

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Every Playboy - ever

Playboy Puts Entire Magazine Catalog Online

AP

May 18: This publicity image provided by Playboy Enterprises, Inc., shows a sample of the member home page for the web site, i.playboy.com, as viewed on a tablet device for the web-based subscription service.

CHICAGO -- Good news for those who thought their copies of Playboy were gone forever when their moms found them and threw them away.

Playboy launched a Web-based subscription service Thursday called i.Playboy.com that allows viewers to see every single page of every single magazine -- from the first issue nearly 60 years ago that featured Marilyn Monroe to the ones hitting the newsstands today.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/05/19/playboy-puts-entire-magazine-catalogue-online/#ixzz1MoKBLZfT

Truth eventually wins out

Veteran Journalists: Today's White House Reporters Are Too Timid

Several veteran and prize-winning journalists who covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush say that the current crop of White House correspondents are too timid and deferential and have played a role in killing the impact of presidential news conferences.
"If you watch an Obama news conference, and watched a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, [it's] as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president," says Sid Davis, the former NBC Washington bureau chief who covered nine presidents. "It looks like they are watching a funeral service at [Washington funeral firm] Joseph Gawler's and it shouldn't be that way." [See photos of the Obamas behind the scenes.]
Adds Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Haynes Johnson, "It's all very stale, very structured, very pale."
And longtime NBC and ABC reporter Sander Vanocur: "You want to know what's wrong with the press? The press is what's wrong with the press."
They and others anchored a media panel Monday night organized by the White House Historical Association to herald the 50th anniversary of the first live televised news conference, conducted by JFK. Former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry moderated the discussion from the very same State Department Dean Acheson Auditorium where Kennedy eventually conducted 60 televised news conferences with ease and humor. [See who has been visiting the White House.]

Today

Peter Fonda calls Obama 'traitor' at Cannes...

JOBLESS CLAIMS: 409,000

Dem Senate rejects GOP bill to expand, speed offshore drilling...

The tide is turning

GOP On Track To Block Obama Judicial Nominee For First Time

Republican opposition is steadily growing against controversial University of California-Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, President Obama's nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, potentially imperiling a judicial appointment for the first time in his presidency.

Senior Republicans launched an all-out push to quash the nomination, urging their conference colleagues to support a GOP-led filibuster.

"(Liu's) record reflects a carefully honed and calculated philosophy that he developed and advanced over the course of his brief career in the ivory towers of academia and which threatens the American tradition of limited constitutional government," Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and senior panel member Jeff Sessions of Alabama, wrote in a letter, obtained by Fox, to their GOP colleagues Wednesday.

How is a law that is not enforced in two states good for everyone else?w

ENTIRE State of Nevada Scores Obamacare Waiver

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Nevada secures partial waiver from federal health care law

By Karoun Demirjian, The Policy Racket

Monday, May 16, 2011 | 5:08 p.m.

Nevada got a partial waiver from the health care law - a significant development that Democrats are dismissing as par for the course and Republicans are claiming as a political victory.

The Health and Human Services Department announced late Friday that Nevada had secured a statewide waiver from certain implementation requirements of the Obama administration's health care law, because forcing them through, the department found, "may lead to the destabilization of the individual market."

He is not one of US.

Obama Jokes About Pirates Who Killed Americans?

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Wednesday, May 18, at a DNC event in Boston President Obama took to the podium to tout his accomplishments to the local political scene. Along with illegal immigration and the economy, the President also took time to joke about piracy...

"Along the way, we dealt with H1N1 and an oil spill and pirates. (Laughter.) Do you remember pirates? (Laughter.) Golly. (Laughter.) Thomas Jefferson had to deal with pirates. I thought we were past that. " (Laughter.)

Apparently the President "dealt" with pirates in a very unique way. In February four Americans were captured and killed by fifteen Somali pirates, and on Monday, May 16th eight of them were offered plea deals.

LinkedIn stock doubles in IPO

It began trading Thursday on New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LNKD (LNKD), and shares began trading $83 each and quickly rose above $90.

At $90 per share, LinkedIn is valued at about $8.5 billion.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/technology/linkedin_IPO/?section=money_latest

CDC Warns Public to Prepare for 'Zombie Apocalypse'

Are you prepared for the impending zombie invasion?

That's the question posed by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention in a Monday blog posting gruesomely titled, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." And while it's no joke, CDC officials say it's all about emergency preparation.

While metrics for the post are not yet available, Daigle said it has become the most popular CDC blog entry in just two days.

"People are so tuned into zombies," he said. "People are really dialed in on zombies. The idea is we're reaching an audience or a segment we'd never reach with typical messages."

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/18/cdc-warns-public-prepare-zombie-apocalypse/?test=latestnews?test=latestnews

Men relax best when wives are busy

I just about fell out of my backyard hammock when I read this one.


Household chores often get in the way when dual-earner couples want to unwind after a stress-filled day on the job. Now, a new study shows that while wives' stress levels drop when their husbands are helping them with chores, for men it's the opposite: stress levels fall when their wives are busy while they're relaxing.

Over four days, two weekend days and two weekdays, researchers tracked activities at 10-minute intervals and sampled saliva repeatedly to measure cortisol, which increases in stressful situations. High cortisol levels can affect sleep, weight and immune resistance. Researchers focused on the cortisol decline following work; a steeper drop is considered healthier, they say.

For both sexes, doing more housework kept cortisol levels higher at the end of the day. But for women, healthier cortisol levels resulted when their husbands spent more time pitching in on housework. For husbands, more leisure time was linked with healthier cortisol when their wives spent more time doing house-related work and less time in leisure.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/sex-relationships/marriage/story/2011/05/Men-relax-best-when-wives-are-busy/47266972/1

Europe demands that next IMF chief comes from European Union

Fine with me. Can they select and send a non-pervert next time?

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The European Commission insisted Thursday that the next leader of the International Monetary Fund must come from the 27-nation European Union, a stance backed by the Germany, the continent's economic heavyweight.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2011-05-19-imf-next-chief_n.htm