Whatever Bottomless Gulf May Yawn News

The world advances one step further toward madness and dissolution.

A Popularity Contest Infinitely Cooler Than Stupid Karaoke
Cassini Photographs, sorted by 'kewl' factor. Some awesome stuff there. The big winner is naturally the now-famous photograph that combines a total eclipse of the Sun by Saturn with, in the very distance, through the rings of Saturn, our tiny blue dot of a planet.

Lovely.

Source: Ciclops (Cassini Imaging Laboratory)

Oh Those Adorable Poor Folks!
The tone in this incredibly condescending article is sickening. A woman left a check for a very large sum of money behind; a man returned it. That's all that's relevant.

Oh wait... the man is a poor minimum wage worker on food stamps! And he didn't try to cash the check! Which he never could have done

A fast-food worker who found a $185,000 check on the sidewalk said he didn't think twice about trying to cash it. Reggie Damone, 47, who receives food stamps and works at McDonald's in Lisbon, managed to track down the owner of the check, a landlord.

Yes, because banks commonly let you cash checks for almost 200 grand without ID! What a plausible option!

Damone said although he knew the $185,000 could pay his rent and other bills for a long time, he was never tempted to try to cash it and splurge.

He said he remembered his mother's words: If you take something, you lose three times that amount — and if you do something good, something good comes back to you.

Isn't it nice that there are poor people you don't have to beat with your ivory topped cane? Guffaw, guffaw.

The landlord's niece gave him a fifty for returning the worthless paper. I'm oscillating between that being a miserly gesture, considering the supposed value of the check, or generous, considering how damn useless it would be to anyone to try to steal it. I guess it could just be a gesture without any particular meaning; the AP article just has me in a very cynical place.

Source: Raw Story (AP feed)

Republican Party Desperation
So, ahem, *someone* is trying to warn Huckabee supporting pastors off publicly supporting him. Not anyone else; just him.

True, I hate religious figures getting a tax-exempt bully pulpit where they're allowed to do everything BUT actually say the words "vote for X", but this is sad. I mean, it's right out of the Republican Dirty Tricks Handbook... circa 1992.

Source: Raw Story

Never Forget, Never Forgive
An vintage article talking about how the press corps make sure politican candidates grovel properly, and punish them if they don't. They gave Dean a commemorative t-shirt after they destroyed his campaign! Isn't that cute?

They thought it was clever, calling his Iowa speech 'I have a Scream"! How witty!

Yeesh.

Source: SeattlePI.com

Minamata Memorial
I really like this memorial to the victims of corporate greed at Minamata, the famed site of massive industrial mercury poisoning in Japan.

Well, I have to wonder about the silvery orb. Probably meant to remind people about mercury. But I love the murky flowing water effect. Eerie.

Source: Wikipedia