Pope: Workers have 'human right' to refuse gay marriage licenses

Pope Francis appeared to weigh in on the side of anti-gay-marriage clerk Kim Davis, saying government workers have a “human right” to refuse to carry out a duty if they have a “conscientious objection.” While returning from his visit to the U.S., the pontiff told reporters aboard the papal plane Monday that anyone who prevents others from exercising their religious freedom is denying them a human right.
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[SPOILERS] Top 5 Predictions for 'Supernatural' Season 11: Spoilers, Rumors and More

Season 11 of 'Supernatural' will premiere on Wednesday, October 7, which means we have a little more than a week to dissect the spoilers and rumors about the upcoming episodes. We've got five predictions for the new season right here, so let's get to it and list out what we think is in store for the Winchester brothers, Castiel and, of course, Crowley.
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Surreal Self-Portraits Communicate the Isolation of Depression

Edward Honaker’s series of dreamlike images expose his personal struggle with depression and allow viewers to further understand the sensitive topic that is mental illness. Diagnosed at 19, the young artist chose to explore the potential of communicating his emotions through a collection of self-portraits.
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Why Schools Are Increasingly Neglecting Introverts

For many students, quiet time is key for the learning process.
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Wedding guests receive bill for missed meals

Note accompanying invoice asked for reimbursement and explanation for why they didn't attend.
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Japan's Modern Tea Culture

Although the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony plays a less important part in Japanese society today, green tea is still the country’s preferred beverage, and teas such as like gyokuro (玉露), sencha (煎茶), genmaicha (玄米茶), houjicha (ほうじ茶), and matcha (抹茶) are consumed in large quantities by people of all ages.
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Reading Stash: 9 Superb Short Novels You Can Finish Over The Weekend

While long novels and epic fantasy tales enthrall and fascinate, sometimes a short, sharpened novel can make for an even more satisfying read for the busy. Today, we have compiled a few of our favorite short novels. Most are 200 pages or less, and can be comfortably finished over the weekend. Very little things are more satisfying than finishing a book, and these novels are bound to make your weekend more fulfilling.
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Weed Wars

ResponsibleOhio’s effort to legalize marijuana in Ohio has been mired in controversy, hindered by court battles, and attacked by government officials and cannabis advocates alike. And it might win anyway.
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No sense of an ending: which books have lost the plot?

A disappointing denouement can ruin a novel, leaving readers feeling disappointed or even angry. Now’s your chance to vent your frustration – if you can stand the spoilers. By Marta Bausells.
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Nabokov on the Sins of Translation

Vladimir Nabokov explains the perils of translating, and the great Russian short story.
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Women and the World of Dime Novels

Full of romance and adventure, dime novels were a variety of melodramatic fiction that was popular in the United States from about 1860 until the early 1900s. Published as cheap paperbacks (most cost only ten cents), they were generally regarded as low-quality fiction. The characters fought, fell in love, got married, and occasionally killed each other (or sometimes themselves). The goal of this exhibit is to highlight some of these female characters.
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Power Of Sour: How Tart Is Reclaiming Turf From Sweet

Americans once made sour drinks like shrubs and switchels and preferred tart strawberries and cherries. Then sugar became cheaper and ubiquitous. Now sour is returning in fermented foods and drinks.
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Do not have sex with our robots, Japanese firm warns users

The Japanese company behind humanoid robot Pepper has told its owners not to get frisky with it. In the user agreement for the android, mobile phone firm SoftBank states: "The policy owner must not perform any sexual act or other indecent behaviour" on the machine, which is designed to live with humans.
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Truck Hauling Bees Rolls Over on Oklahoma Highway

Photos from the scene show what is estimated to be millions of bees swarming and encasing emergency vehicles that responded to the scene
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What maps reveal about ourselves

Cartography has produced beautiful works of art – but are they as objective as we think? Alastair Sooke explores the unreliable history of map-making.
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Arsenic found in many U.S. red wines, but health risks depend on total diet

America’s top four wine-producing states — California, Washington, New York and Oregon — found all but one have arsenic levels that exceed what’s allowed in drinking water.
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5 Ingredient Slow Cooker Macaroni & Cheese - Homemaking Hacks

There is no denying the ultimate comfort that a good bowl of macaroni & cheese offers up.  
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Buried Treasure Amongst the Stacks

This is what buried treasure looks like in a library: This book, which is a collection of two perfectly respectable but not very rare tracts by Vatican Librarian Agostino Steuco, has acted as a vessel, a treasure chest, for the bits and pieces that went into its binding and physical construction.
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Oakland Athletics Become First MLB Organization To Employ Female Coach

A look at the big news that the Oakland Athletics have become the first Major League Baseball team to hire on a woman as a coach. Justine Siegal will work with the organization's minor league infielders in the instructional league this fall.
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How to Cookie with Science

Chocolate chip cookies are nearly universally adored. People like them in all sorts of textures, sizes, and tastes. So how can you make your perfect cookie? Using science, of course. In preparation for National Homemade Cookies Day on October 1, here are some tips on how to experiment with ingredients to get cookie that is just right for you.
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When Tea Is as Sweet as Soda: Sugary Tea around the World

We think of tea as healthful, but from Morocco to Taiwan to the American South versions of it have become so sugar-laden that a regular sweet tea habit may be just as unhealthful as a soda habit.
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Top Banana: When Fruit Was King

New Orleans has a festival for pretty much anything you can eat or drink: po'boys, Creole tomatoes, gumbo, seafood, cocktails, barbecue, a squash with dimply green skin called a mirliton. Yet there’s one glaring omission: a banana festival.
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Full Brewery Construction Guide

The following is a step-by-step guide to the construction of a complete home brewery system. Designed with burner heat shielding and built-in plumbing for mash, cooling and cleaning water re-circulation. The guide includes plans for both an immersion chiller and my own counter-flow heat exchanger design.
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Husky Raised By Cats Doesn't Know How To Be A Dog

This is the WORST thing that could happen to a dog. Tally, we wish you a speedy recovery.
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Feds say your hard drives are for the government’s keeping

Does Constitution demand return of computer files outside a search warrant's scope?
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China's first glass-bottom bridge opens

It's called Brave Men's Bridge for a reason. The recently completed span is a glass walkway suspended a stomach-flipping 180 meters (590 feet) above a sheer drop in China's central Hunan Province. Haohan Qiao, as it's known in Chinese, is the latest in a series of glass-floored attractions to open in China and the rest of the world. Despite its terror-inducing appearance, its creators say the bridge in the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park is perfectly safe.
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FBI and DEA under review for use of NSA mass surveillance data

A 'staggering' amount of data, one judge said.
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RWW News: Bryan Fischer Says All Immigrants Are Welcome, Provided They Convert To Christianity

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Maple syrup: Why the Real Stuff Makes all the Difference

Real maple syrup is worth the extra expense, but why choose maple syrup over other natural sweeteners like honey or sugar? Here's why and what to look for.
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Piercy & Co Design A House Behind A Nineteenth Century Stable Wall

Set within the Kew Green Conservation Area of southwest London, the four bedroom family house is formed of two sculptural weathering steel volumes inserted behind a retained nineteenth century stable wall.
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How Lin-Manuel Miranda Shapes History

Works of art have long informed how people understand the past, and Hamilton is no exception. Edward Delman speaks with the show's writer, composer, and star about the process of translating history onto the stage; the ways in which Hamilton could alter our perception of history; and the role artists play in shaping historical narratives.
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Ralph Lauren Leaving CEO Post

The fashion industry saw one of its iconic figures step aside Tuesday when Ralph Lauren said he is is giving up the title of CEO of the company bearing his name.
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One Million Moms’ Tax-Exempt Outrage Industry

The online arm of the American Family Association is making crazy money—and paying no taxes—off of their campaigns against Chobani, the Muppets, and rainbow Doritos.
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Mr. Deity and the Evidence

Mr. Deity has found evidence of The Exodus
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The mystery of the female orgasm

From the G-spot to multiple orgasms, female sexuality has presented many mysteries. But as Linda Geddes discovers, radical experiments are finally revealing some answers.
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Painting Stolen by Nazis Recovered in Central Ohio, Returned to Poland

“It’s not every day we get a phone call from the FBI."
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Burlesque dancers stage 'wild striptease protest' outside Barnes & Noble

Bombshells blew up Broadway when a gang of burlesque dancers took to the streets in a "wild striptease protest" outside an Upper West Side Barnes & Noble. The group was unhappy because the bookstore agreed to let them perform in its storefront windows to promote a new book, "Goddess of Love Incarnate: The Life of Stripteuse Lili St Cyr," only to lose its nerve and withdraw the offer at the last minute because their outfits would be “too revealing.”
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The young Chekhov: a comedian in spite of himself

Before Chekhov produced some of the greatest stories ever written about disappointment, death, long­ing, passion and loneliness, he was a different kind of writer: a newspaperman dashing off copy to feed the booming culture of weekly comic magazines in St Petersburg and Moscow. Small enough to operate largely beneath the censors’ attention, magazines such as the Spectator, Dragonfly and Alarm Clock rewarded topicality, brevity, irreverence and the ability to produce work at speed.
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Gallery: How To Peel Things

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of peeling some difficult vegetable, scraping away, nicking your fingers, and muttering, "There must be an easier way?" Well, here are ten tips for easier peeling. Garlic, ginger, and squash figure prominently, along with a few more unexpected vegetables. Take a look and tell us if you have better methods for any of these!
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What happens when U.S. rates rise?

When U.S. rates rise how will this affect longer-term rates, the dollar – and precious metals? Saida Litosh, senior precious metals analyst at GFMS at Thomson Reuters explains. We analyze the three episodes of monetary policy tightening in the United States in the past 20 years, specifically 1994-1995, 1999-2000, and
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Love Gov: An Education in Debt

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London tattoo convention - a visual tour

Guardian photojournalist Felix Clay visited the annual festival at Tobacco Dock, which hosted more than 300 of the world’s most prestigious tattoo artists
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These are the top 10 books Americans tried to ban last year

In an age where kids can access porn from the machines they carry in their pockets, banning books seems like an antiquated means of information control. But that doesn’t keep people from trying.
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The Woman Behind Latin America's Literary Boom

For writers coming of age during and after the Boom, invoking Carmen Balcells linked them to a special kind of origin story. Jonathan Blitzer on the literary agent, who died a week ago, in Barcelona, at eighty-five.
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Whole Foods cutting 1,500 jobs

Whole Foods (WFM) is cutting 1,500 jobs over the next two months, or about 1.6% of its workforce, as it focuses on its strategy to lower prices for customers, the grocery chain said Monday. Shares ended down 1.1% for the day. The cuts come after Whole Foods added more than 9,000 jobs in the past year. The company said it expects "a significant percentage" of employees being let go to find other jobs among Whole Foods' open positions...
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"The Internet Was Fucking Me Up": Patrick DeWitt On Writing

The author of The Sisters Brothers doesn’t have a TV, or the internet. What he does have is a new novel, and perhaps a few answers. By Daniel Dalton.
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17 Famous People Who Look Even Better As Juggalos

A freelance art director gave some famous faces the ultimate makeover
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Why “Pagan”? – An Atheist Pagan’s Response to a Theist

His question is essentially “Why the heck do you call yourself Pagan?” Since I don’t know the author’s name, I will call him Jön. Jön’s question is a genuine one, and it is one I have heard several times in the last few weeks. Jön’s question is addressed not just to me, but to other atheist Pagans and Humanistic Pagans out there, so I encourage others to post their responses as well. By John Halstead.
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It’s sleazy, it’s totally illegal, and yet it could become the future of retirement

They used to be ludicrously popular in America. Could they be again?
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Meet the man who invents languages for a living

David J. Peterson has crafted languages for TV shows and films — even a whole language for a single giant, in Game of Thrones. For him, every language is a balance of the technical and the artistic.
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