“…Over my past four years, I’ve outsourced more business jobs then I thought possible and more personal tasks than some would consider appropriate… and I cannot imagine doing it any other way – and not to mention, it’s been a blast. Sound intriguing? …”

“…You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else…”

“…Two new patent applications from Apple revealed this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office describe technology that would generate a three-dimensional model of an object or place based on a recording. Users could then navigate the 3D space “in an order other than that of the recording…”

“In these difficult economic times, many Americans are wary of buying items they’ll use just once or twice and then store in the garage. But for those times you really need a hedge clipper, bread maker or camping stove, there’s a social networking site called NeighborGoods.net. The site is an inventory of items users are willing to lend…”

I’m having a hard time figuring out how this situation could possibly be more evil:

“The following is a direct translation of the below Persian document:

‘…We call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows…’ “

“…I believe the biggest mistake in the “mindset” of people today is thinking that enough exercise can get them the weight loss they want and should be their top priority. I was reminded of this recently by a person I see in the gym who is doing at least 2+ hours of daily cardio and some weights. He is in there 4-5x a week and I kid you not, brings food to the gym to snack on while he works out. I’ve consulted with him in the past and told him that he needed to focus less on working out and more on eating correctly, yet his response was “Oh…I can’t do that, I like to eat too much…so I need to workout instead”. Wrong……wrong….wrong. …”

“Bishop Macram Gassis shepherds the founding of a civilization … And he does it through action: Life-endangering charity and clarity. Gassis is the Catholic bishop of El Obeid, which includes Darfur, and is less than 2 percent Catholic…”

“I love seeing friends face-to-face. (Not in gangs, but one or two at a time.) I love Facebook. I love e-mail. I love letters, although it has admittedly been a while since I’ve written one. But I hate the phone. Hate it. Hate. It. ….”

“Those already outraged by the president’s health care legislation now have a new bone of contention — a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.”

“A conservative blog posts 2 minutes, 38 seconds of video clips of a black federal agriculture official saying she didn’t do everything she could to help a white farmer. The blogger labels it racism. Calls grow for the Obama administration to remove her. No one at the Agriculture Department or the White House checks further. The official is forced to resign. Monday ends, but not the story…”

“At 2:10 p.m. ET, Spitz issued this statement:

‘I made poorly considered remarks about Rush Limbaugh to what I believed was a private email discussion group from my personal email account. As a publicist, I realize more than anyone that is no excuse for irresponsible behavior. I apologize to anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments greatly; they do not reflect the values by which I conduct my life.’ …”

“…But as BP continues its pressure tests on the well which has, for now, stopped spilling, most of the really outsider technology being implemented has been focused on the cleanup. Here are five innovative oil-cleaning machines—and why they just might work…”

“The New York soup shop immortalized by the Seinfeld show’s “Soup Nazi” character reopened Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan after a hiatus of six years. There was a line around the block, but the soup man himself — Al Yeganeh — was unavailable. He has never been amused at his portrayal in the sitcom and the media…”

“…On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives…”

“Well, there are a whole bunch of Muslim Facebook users who aren’t too happy with the site. Apparently, it doesn’t sufficiently cater to their faith. First, it suspended four popular pages that broke its Terms of Service; second, it didn’t immediately cancel and ban some pages that promoted the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” event. If Facebook doesn’t prove it’s a good little dhimmi, they’ll leave it for a more Islamic-centric social networking site…”

“The stunned black dad of a newborn, white, baby girl declared yesterday — ‘ I’m sure she’s my kid … I just don’t know why she’s blonde.’ “

“Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust…

“…Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government…

“…The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity….

“…Nowadays, the members of our ruling class admit that they do not read the laws. They don’t have to. Because modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower…

“This is all about a class of Americans distinguishing itself from its inferiors. It recalls the Pharisee in the Temple: ‘Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men…’

“In sum, our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislike that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way…”

“The country’s conservative and influential merchant class is on strike. This does not bode well for Ahmadinejad’s government.”

“…Discussing Babywise or the Preparation for Parenting series can result in conversations that range from slightly awkward to downright volatile. Dialoguing about parenting choices tends to lend itself to a posture of defensiveness for nearly all of us. How can we have peaceful, grace-filled conversations with others about a topic that is often a catalyst for divisiveness?…”

“…From my very existence to my recent attainment of my PhD, there is no one more directly responsible for my being here and being as I am than my mom. It is the sort of enormous debt one can never pay back but only ever hope to pay forward to children of one’s own. And no one could ever have my interests more purely at heart than she does. And no one, not even I, could be more unabashedly proud of me or anything I accomplish than she is.

“Nearly every good trait I have is either a variation or poor imitation of hers and it always brings me great pride to discover a way that I emulate her. Through whatever combinations of genetic and interpersonal influence, I have inherited, learned, and continue to aspire to acquire her icebreaking gregariousness, disarmingly self-deprecating sense of humor, open-book honesty (even with utter strangers), fierce loyalty, appreciation of people, mature self-awareness, emotional resilience, dogged principledness, reflexive hospitality, utter openheartedness, bottomless ability to forgive, scrupulous work ethic, clear-headed perspective, unshakable moral uprightness, and full-hearted, full-time devotion to love…”

“Teaching children about holiness is difficult because they come from such a different viewpoint than adults. Here are some resources that although they are not called “Koran” or “Bible” help children understand the holiness of the meaning of texts…”

“Using FaceTime video conferencing, the iZ software will act as an intermediary, allowing spoken words to be transformed into sign language (and vice versa) in real time. The service will be rolled out on July 26th, which is the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

“…But Carnahan’s campaign wasn’t able to completely sell out the Folly Theater, where Obama will appear for a grassroots event on Carnahan’s behalf, at the prices they wanted. Tickets once priced at $250 are now going for $99, while $35 tickets are half off…”

“It takes a lot to spook the solid old gold market. But when it emerged last week that one or more banks had lent 380 tonnes of gold to the Bank of International Settlements in return for foreign currencies, there was widespread surprise and confusion…”