Fun Interesting Pertinent Information Dissemination

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Washington 'Spends' More on Tax Breaks Than on Medicare, Defense, or Social Security

Richest 20 percent get half the overall savings from U.S. tax breaks, CBO says

Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America | NPR (Great series. Give it a listen. Use the All Things Considered links on the right hand side.)

Why You Should Give A $*%! About Words That Offend
If you said the "s" word in the ninth century, you probably wouldn't have shocked or offended anyone. Back then, the "s" word was just the everyday word that was used to refer to excrement. That's one of many surprising, foul-mouthed facts Melissa Mohr reveals in her new book, Holy S- - -: A Brief History of Swearing.

"In the Middle Ages a phrase like 'Oh my God' or 'By God' or especially 'By God's bones' were really, really shocking, offensive. And especially the body part ones. So people would swear in these incredibly creative ways: ... 'By God's nails,' 'By Christ's bones,' 'Christ's precious blood.' And these were believed to actually be able to injure Christ, because in Catholic tradition, when Christ died he ascended into heaven and then his physical body sits up at the right hand of God and when you would say one of these body part [swears] it was thought to actually be able to break his bones or pull out his nails."

Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Take the Banks to Court, Already!

How the College-Industrial Complex drove tuition so high
Consider this: You have just paid about three times as much for your degree as did someone graduating 30 years ago. That’s in constant dollars — in other words, after accounting for inflation. There is no evidence that you have received a degree three times as good.

The Global Afterlife Of Your Donated Clothes
About 80 percent of the donations are carted away by textile recyclers, says Jackie King, the executive director of Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles (SMART), a trade association for textile recyclers. She says that means about 3.8 billion pounds of clothing that is donated each year is recycled.

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
What’s even more surprising is that this sort of theorizing isn’t limited to those on the margins. Perfectly sane minds possess an incredible capacity for developing narratives, and even some of the wildest conspiracy theories can be grounded in rational thinking, which makes them that much more pernicious.
In 2006, the political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler identified a phenomenon called the “backfire effect.” They showed that efforts to debunk inaccurate political information can leave people more convinced that false information is true than they would have been otherwise.

The Tricky Business Of Retirement: Hidden 401(K) Fees (Really important stuff if you have money in the markets.)
GROSS: So let me see if I understand this correctly. So say I have $50,000 in my retirement account, and I've paid a one percent fee on that this year, $500. Next year, I have $52,000 in my retirement account. I'm going to have to pay that one percent fee again not only on the extra $2,000, but on the $50,000 that I paid one percent on last year, right...

HILTONSMITH: That's exactly right.

GROSS: I'm paying one percent on that same money every year that it's in the account.

HILTONSMITH: That's a really good way to think of it actually. You pay that fee on what is in essence the same $50,000 base over and over and over and over again.

HILTONSMITH: Well in my report that I did on fees, I basically found that using some average fee numbers that I get from the industry, you could pay as much as 30 percent, basically, of your account in fees.

Politics and Business
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I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable.

Shootings by Philly police soar as violent crime plummets

Justice Department Secretly Obtains AP Phone Records

An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small
"One rebel commander recently filmed himself cutting out an organ of a dead pro-government fighter, biting it and promising the same fate to Alawites, members of Mr. Assad’s Shiite Muslim sect."

Banks to porn stars: Your money's not welcome

Our Intellectual Property Laws Are Out of Control

Welcome to the tax shelter island known as ... Manhattan
Turns out many U.S. companies store some of their offshore profits in banks here at home.

Young, famous and newly rich: A family dilemma for pro athletes
"I can remember going to bars and clubs and I don’t even drink alcohol, and getting stuck with a $400-500 tab," Davis says. "And I’m like wait a minute, I had four sprites."

Six Facts Lost In The IRS Scandal

Elizabeth Warren Student Loans Bill Endorsed By Several Colleges, Organizations
Come July 1, some student loan rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, prompting Warren to push for legislation that reduces the level to 0.75 percent.

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (Thomas Jefferson was one of the authors)
We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

How A Trip To Costco Can Work As An Investment Strategy

Science and Technology
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The big fat truth

More and more studies show that being overweight does not always shorten life — but some public-health researchers would rather not talk about them.

Research Reveals Yeasty Beasts Living On Our Skin
"What we found was that the human body is an even more diverse ecosystem than we had known when we looked only at the bacterial communities," Segre says. The survey turned up dozens of types of fungi — far more than anyone knew were there. In most parts of the body, fungi from the genus Malassezia dominated. One part of the body had an especially wide array: the feet. For example, researchers found at least 80 varieties on the heel, at least 60 between the toes and at least 40 on toenails. Elsewhere on the body, they only identified between two and five types of fungi.

People with higher IQs are slow to detect large background movements because their brains filter out non-essential information

Remote-controlled, dissolvable electronic implants have been created that could help attack microbes, provide pain relief and stimulate bone growth.

The weird and wonderful world of 3D printing (check out the pics)

Wireheading: This Strange Experiment from the 1950s Wired Pleasure Directly Into the Brain
Some of his more controversial stimulation experiments included giving a woman 30 minutes worth of orgasms, and providing a homosexual man with a prostitute to see if he could change his sexual orientation. He then began experimenting with pain centers, and there is a particularly striking description of one man’s reaction:

His face twists suddenly into a terrible grimace. One eye turns out and his features contort as though in the spasm of a horrible science-fiction metamorphosis. “It’s knocking me out … I just want to claw…, ” he says, gasping like a tortured beast. “I’ll kill you…I’ll kill you, Dr. Lawrence.”

'Soda Mouth' Can Look A Lot Like 'Meth Mouth' (pics)

Fun, Interesting, Disturbing and Offbeat
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KFC smugglers bring buckets of chicken through Gaza tunnels

Gazans with a hankering for the Colonel's secret recipe can call up a delivery company and get some finger lickin' food smuggled hot from Egypt in just three hours.

Cleared of Charges of Setting Off a School Explosion, Florida Honor Student Heads to Space Camp
An 18 year NASA vetern purchased a scholarship for her because he had been falsely accused of setting a fire when he was young.
'Marriage is serious business, but kissing is not': Mindy Kaling on why it should be OK to lock lips with others after saying 'I do'

'Just because I want to kiss someone doesn't mean I want to love that person, share a bed with him . . . tell him not to use so much salt, or share one AOL e-mail account,' she adds.

The problem with kissing, she says, is that it has been 'cheapened', and is now perceived as a gateway gesture to sex.

Morgan Freeman falls asleep during live television interview

Hugh Jackman Reveals: It takes a lot of chicken to become Wolverine

Videos
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