The Funniest Paragraph Ever

From an article entitled 'Jamaica's Miracle - Myths, Legends and the Making of Usain Bolt', by by Alexander Osang and published in der Spiegel:

[ The other athletes were mere accessories, Olympic and world champions playing the opening act for the fastest man in the world. The journalists were interested in only two other athletes. One was Oscar Pistorius, who is running the 400-meter race on prosthetic lower legs, and the other was 800-meter runner Caster Semenya who, for a time, was rumored to be a man. ]

The woman without a womb, the man without legs and the sprinter without limits; they're all competing in the London Olympics. It's the biggest circus of the day, and these are the star attractions.

2012-07-20 Coke, IBM WhipSaw Trading

Bloomberg - Investors Whipsawed By Hourly Price Swings In IBM, Coca-Cola

"Investors in three of the biggest Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) stocks were whipsawed by price swings that repeated every hour yesterday, fueling speculation the moves were a consequence of computerized trading.

Shares of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) and Coca-Cola Co. (KO) swung between successive lows and highs in intervals that began near the top and bottom of each hour, data compiled by Bloomberg show. While only IBM finished more than 1 percent higher, the intraday patterns weren’t accompanied by any breaking news in the three companies where $3.42 billion worth of shares changed hands."

ANC Centenary - Celebrating 100 Years of Selfless Struggle

A ZAR 1 Million Luxury German Sedan
Owned by the Ruling ANC
Emblazoned with the Slogan
'100 Years of Selfless Struggle'

Alan Watts and the Trouble with Symbols

Alan Watts: "Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience."

Most civilized people today are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other the whole system of symbols about this world that we have in our minds. They are all very, very useful symbols, all our civilization depends on it but like all good things they have their disadvantages And the principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality. Like we confuse money with actual wealth and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves with ourselves. Of course reality from the philosopher’s point of view is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me what do I mean by reality. Am I talking about the physical world of nature or am I talking about the spiritual world or what? And to that I have a very simple answer: When we talk about the material world it is actually a philosophical concept. And if I say that reality is spiritual it is also a philosophical concept.And reality itself is not a concept, reality is …

….and we won’t give it a name.