Monday Clear Out the Tabs News

Opera, Opera, sing to me... sing of news...

Lost World, Giant Rat
Another expedition into Indonesia's virtually unexplored jungle, another series of bizarre and adorable animals.

In particular, in the picture slideshow, note the pygmy possum and the unnamed, but GIANT rat. It's the size of a cat. A pretty big cat. And completely docile, it seems.

Source: AOL News

Sovereignty is Another 'Quaint' Concept
The U.S. Border Patrol has been firing tear gas and pepper spray into Mexico in response to stone throwing mobs, or just because they feel like it.

Innocent people live in perfectly legal housing in the area. The border people just don't care. They're shelling a sovereign foreign power, and they just. don't. care.

Technically folks, that's a declaration of war on Mexico.

Source: Raw Story

Insert Witty Human Interest Title
A reporter/news anchor with vitiligo, the disease that kills off pigmentation cells in the skin but is otherwise harmless, is telling his story and writing a book. The contrast between the man with and without his work makeup is astonishing, I have to say. I can't even blend a halloween mask in decently.

Nice of him to go public. I can see how a disease like that would be humiliating, and in his line of work it's a real economic issue too. I hope they find out how the disease works, if for no other reason than that it'd be useful science. Kind of curious, an autoimmune, or seemingly so, disease that has such a mild effect.

Source: USA Today

Curses
So they've been making an effort to actually sift through all the archaeologically useful trash the Romans left in their wake in England, of late. In particular, it seems, the Romans had a custom of inscribing a person's name in lead and throwing it in the hot springs at Bath to curse them.

A recent rare find shows that someone did something like that to an Emperor by stamping his face, via a coin printed with his likeness, into some lead.

The Romans were kind of odd.

Source: The Guardian

Maybe This Means the Daily Show Will Return Soon
So various deals are being cut with the WGA to get late night shows back on the air without strikebreaking or scabs. Letterman in particular, as he owns his show, rather than CBS, seems ready to tell his parent network to shove it and agree to the new terms to get back on the air full steam. Leno and Conan are having to settle for skeleton crews.

Still, the networks are obviously starting to lose their bargaining strength.

Source: Firedoglake

Historical Irony Department
While the U.S. considers requiring an internal passport to fly from one American city to another, Eastern Europe moves into the travel paper free EU zone.

It's like bizarro-land when your former communist states are acting so much freer and more open than America, but there you go.

Source: Raw Story

Human Strain of the Endless War Against Eastasia
A story in the Army Times about the toll new tactics in particular are taking on already exhausted units in Iraq, and how one 'rebelled' by following mental health advice and medicating themselves out of a murderous frenzy.

The article is noteworthy to my mind for three things. One: The military continues to ignore its own mental health professionals, dealing with post-trauamtic stress as cowardice. Two: a unit that had lost, in rapid succession, something like a quarter of its men to attacks and suicide, is still expected to serve in active duty. Three: the insurgents in Iraq have already adapted to our new heavier personnel vehicles by using massive under-the-road bombs (500 lbs of explosives) that flip the vehicles on their backs like turtles, where they burn with everyone trapped inside.

Fourth-generational war, folks. There's no way known to win one. Welcome to the 21st century, where your billion dollar bombers and heavy armor don't mean jack.

Source: The Army Times