This country briefing is full of interesting information.

Montenegro - or Black Mountain - gained de facto independence in the late 18th century, when it was ruled by bishop princes who managed to carve out a free enclave in the heart of Ottoman-occupied Balkans. This was formally recognised in 1878, when it became a monarchy.

Although recognised by all the major European powers and the United States, which maintained embassies in its tiny, mountaintop capital of Cetinje, Montenegro gained the dubious distinction of being the only Allied nation to disappear off the map after the First World War. It entered the conflict in 1914 by declaring war on imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary, but by 1915 its tiny army was wiped out and the country occupied

Go-Sees, photos inspired by Juergen Teller's book Go Sees: Girls Knocking on My Door / Hardcover / 470 pages / Scalo (September 1999) / ISBN: 3908247144.

I came up with this idea yesterday, when I was thinking of Juergen Teller's "Go Sees" and was surprised that I could hardly find any on flickr. So I created a flickr group! Please help it grow.

Red M&M's ®

Manufactured by Masterfoods USA / M&M Mars

There are approximately 500 Red M&M's ® per pound

Here's a fun trivia fact...

Red M&M's ® were discontinued for 11 years from 1976 to 1985 after the FDA banned Red Dye No. 2, even though Red M&M's ® did not contain this dye. They have always used Red #'s 3 and 40!

Many consumers protested, and a student at the University of Tennessee (Paul Hethmon, the photo editor on the student newspaper, the Daily Beacon) started a society for the Restoration and Preservation of Red M&M's.®

Red M&M's ® were reintroduced at about the same time as glasnost and the crumbling of the anti-Red scare.

Focus groups were held to decide the correct proportions for the gradual reintroduction of the banned variety during the Christmas season of 1985.

The new proportions were 30% brown, 20% red, 20% yellow and 10% each of orange, green and tan for plain M&M's.

Events

• 1932 - The Egyptian University rector "Ahmed Lotfy El-Said" resigned to protest against the transfer of Dr. Taha Hussein without the University permission. On 2003, an academic group called "March 9" was established in Egypt to defend academic rights and university independence.
• 1945 - World War II: Bombing of Tokyo - American B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, Japan with incendiary bombs. The resulting fire storm kills over 100,000 people.
• 1967 - Josef Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
• 1977 - Approximately a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims take over three buildings in Washington, DC, killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. The hostage situation ends two days later.

• 1454 - Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer and cartographer (d. 1512)
• 1943 - Bobby Fischer, American chess player

• 1989 - Robert Mapplethorpe, American artist (b. 1946)
• 1994 - Charles Bukowski, American writer (b.1920)
• 1997 - The Notorious B.I.G., American rapper (b. 1972)
• 2003 - Stan Brakhage, American filmmaker (b. 1933)

Ok, I cheated with the numbers... but only because I thought these were interesting.

Amazing! I never even knew about the defection of Stalin's daughter, or about the hostage incident in '77.

The act of assignment is a social act, and is in nearly all cases, and all societies, an act that seems a simple recognition of a simple biological reality. However, the usual act of assignment carries with it some conscious and unconscious assumptions, namely that the external genitalia reflect other aspects of biological sex, such as internal anatomy, gonads, hormones, and chromosomes. The act of assignment usually carries the implicit expectation that future gender identity will develop in the gender of anatomy, assignment, and rearing.

In a minority of cases one or more of these assumptions prove false. There have been rare instances where parents (for a variety of reasons) have reared a biologically normal child in the opposite gender. More commonly, in the case of some transgender or intersex individuals, gender identity does not simply follow the biological sex or sex of rearing. In some conditions usually termed intersex, the external anatomy does not reflect accurately the internal anatomy.

Wikipedia: Sex Assignment

Surgery for Intersexed People  

It's also possible to have XY chromosomes and be physically female.

"A woman with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) has a nearly normal female body despite a 46XY karyotype and testes, a condition termed testicular feminization in the past."

Wikipedia: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

winter

the entire set of blocks near my apartment from zhonghua road to the river are being destroyed. it's kind of hard to capture the full extent of the destruction. they created a ghost town and are now reducing it to rubble.

went to the jing'an temple hoping to see mike tyson but then realized it was probably just an april fool's hoax. damn we are naïve!!

went to the ice palace; basically a huge huge refridgerated room. they have ice sculptures of the terracotta warriors, the venus de milo, castles, igloos... icy slides, a scary luge, and even dog sleds pulled by huskies! we went to the "ice bar" where the good bartender served us ice old jäger. actually it was just coca cola.

♥ ++'+ ♥

Sotheby's Bets on a Windfall for Today's Chinese Art

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this has Penn & Teller in it?!! and Run DMC have a helicopter. and then P&T impersonate Run DMC in Tokyo!