Advancing the Frontiers of Free Speech

A Lengthy Battle Against SavagesThis is an odd saga, to say the least.

It begins with an apparently faithful Catholic student by the name of Webster Cook, attending school at the University of Central Florida. Webster, it seems, wanted to show a (presumably) Non-Catholic friend a communion wafer, so he took it home to show a friend rather than eating it immediately.

Cook claims he planned to consume it, but first wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith.

"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth."

Source: WFTV.com

The story seems a bit odd, as he was apparently caught trying to take it out of the service and was confronted (he complains about physical force being used against him). A local tv station (in an admittedly inflammatory and biased article) suggests that he may have been protesting the fact that (and I thought this was odd) his PUBLIC UNIVERSITY has a CATHOLIC CHURCH on campus -- and uses public funds to support it.

A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him.

"She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand," Cook said, adding she wouldn't immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.

Diocese of Orlando spokeswoman Carol Brinati said she was not aware of anyone touching Cook. She released a statement Thursday: "... a Catholic Campus Ministry student representative filed a complaint with the Student Union regarding the behavior of the two young men. A Student Government Representative called Catholic Campus Ministry to apologize for this disruption."

Cook filed an official abuse complaint with UCF's student conduct court regarding the alleged physical force. Following that complaint, Brinati said church members filed their own official complaints of disruptive conduct. Punishment for either offense could result in suspension or expulsion.

"The church feels that I'm the problem here," Cook said. "The problem is actually that this is a publicly-funded religious institution. Through student government here, we fund them through an activity and service, so they're receiving student money."

Cook is upset more than $40,000 in student fees have been allocated to support religious organizations on campus for the 2008-2009 school year, according to student government records. He denied he is holding the Eucharist hostage to protest that support.

Source: WTFV

Because, as we all know, the Vatican is completely destitute.

At any rate, he managed to leave with the communion wafer/cracker though, and that, to my mind, would be that. If the church doesn't want him back, they always had the option of banning him. Big deal.

Well, to the good, faithful, and apparently radical Catholics of both the University and the United States, that most certainly was *not* that.

The Church decided to get in on the act, inflaming their local followers (knowing perfectly well the inevitable results):

Regardless of the reason, the Diocese says its main concern is to get the Eucharist back so it can be taken care of properly and with respect. Cook has been keeping the Eucharist stored in a plastic bag since last Sunday.

"It is hurtful," said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

Gonzalez said the Diocese is willing to meet with Cook and help him understand the importance of the Eucharist in hopes of him returning it. The Diocese is dispatching a nun to UCF's campus to oversee the next mass, protect the Eucharist and in hopes Cook will return it.

Cook said he'd consider returning the Eucharist if he gets an apology and a meeting with the Bishop's office to discuss the Diocese's policy on physical force.

Gonzalez said intentionally abusing the Eucharist is classified as a mortal sin in the Catholic church, the most severe possible. If it's not returned, the community of faith will have to ask for forgiveness.

"We have to make acts of reparation," Gonzalez said. "The whole community is going to turn to prayer. We'll ask the Lord for pardon, forgiveness, peace, not only for the whole community affected by it, but also for [Cook], we offer prayers for him as well."

Source: WFTV

And thus, wrath was rained down upon this poor schmuck, with the full blessing of the local religious establishment.

They accused him of committing a 'hate crime'. They harassed him. They compared taking the cracker to torture, and kidnapping!They threatened his life... repeatedly. The ultra-right wing Catholic League hate group led a national campaign against this poor student. Here's Donohue trying to ruin the kid's life:

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage--regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance--is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.

That's right, if you disagree with someone, forget reason, forget discussion, forget the law: just terrorize them.

Webster just wants all of this to go away. Especially now that he feels his life is in danger.

Source: Pharyngula

All because he didn't chew... a wafer.

Well, after a few days of terror and threats, the poor, humbled student returned his cracker, and begged for his life/forgiveness.

"I am returning the Eucharist to you in response to the e-mails I have received from Catholics in the UCF community," Cook wrote in a letter to the church. "I still want the community to understand that the use physical force is wrong, especially when based on assumptions. However, I feel it is unnecessary to cause pain for those who are not at fault in this situation."

Cook said some threatened to break into his dorm room to rescue the Eucharist. Brinati said the Diocese of Orlando didn't condone those threats, but was happy Cook had a change of heart and returned it.

Source: WFTV They didn't 'condone' those threats - but they sure didn't put a stop to them either.

Huh.

The oh-so-forgiving christian community continued with plans to ruin his life, but put the 'killing him' thing on the backburner, and the story started to die down. The University, for its part, started supplying ARMED GUARDS (presumably also at taxpayer expense) to the Church, to protect the poor, victimized wafer community.

Enter PZ Myers, well-known atheist/science blogger, who was shocked and disgusted at the raving mob trying to destroy, and possibly murder, this poor student. Whether a noisy protestor or apparently ignorant lapsed Catholic, his education, career, even life were now in the hands of the lunatic fringe. Myers thought this was outrageous.

So he came up with a simple plan:

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

Source: Pharyngula Yes, Myers determined that he would do to the wafer what this poor student never had: he would obtain one, maliciously, and desecrate it.

Needless to say, all hell broke loose. Again.

All of the regular readers have seen it — thousands of mindless comments by Catholics, demanding that no harm come to a cracker. My email is melting down with swarms of insults, threats, pleas, and promises of prayers because I threatened to violate one of their holy crackers. In my years of loud and often inflammatory blogging, it is the most impressive demonstration of mass lunacy I have ever seen.

Never mind that the Catholic League demands that I be fired, thousands of Catholics write to me demanding I be kicked out of the university immediately, and that they send me death threats, both the explicit kind and the vaguely menacing kind. Let's not forget Webster Cook, who started this all by simply walking back to his seat with a cracker, and now faces censure and possible expulsion from his university. Oh, those Catholics sure are forbearing and tolerant.

And since I mentioned yesterday that I was taking my oldest son to the movies, these good Catholics have leapt to the opportunity. Since I'm not demonstrating any fear over their threats against me, well hey, let's try a new target! KJ Atkins of Bellarmine University thinks cowardly warnings against my family might be effective.

"You fool, the vengeance for your sacrilege will not be . exhausted against you, but it will be carried out on your child. Wait and see."

Source: Pharyngula

Well, apparently Myers finally got his hands on a wafer/cracker, and did, in fact, carry out his 'threat' against an inanimate object. Despite stalkings, death threats against himself and his family, and, yes, another hate campaign from the Catholic League:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it's just a cracker. I wasn't going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus's tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

Source: Pharyngula

Will this be the end of the saga?

Doubt it. Myers implores his readers, and the world, to exercise a bit of their own independent judgment and reason:

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

Source: Ibid

When I first read about this mess, back when Myers made his original 'threat', I thought it might be a bit over the top. Not all Catholics are jerks, I thought; I wouldn't take quite the same tack.

Though, if you could get a hold of a communion wafer from that SPECIFIC Church, the one that tried to rouse a violent mob to terrify someone into obeying them (or failing that, have the person killed).... well, that would be a very different story.

That particular church had it coming, I thought.

Having seen the sheer volume of hate, venom, and terror that people like Bill Donohue spew at Myers, the threats against his family, the attempts to run him out of public life on a rail because he protests the victimization of a college student, at a public university, by the most powerful church in the world...

Well, it's hard not to root for Myers after all. If it comes down to defending a loudmouth or a violent, disgusting thug like Donohue, I'll side with the loudmouth anytime, anywhere.

PS: One last note: the student who started this whole mess? He's still going through a living hell.

The University of Central Florida's student Senate voted to impeach one of its own late Thursday night -- the student who sparked a firestorm of controvery after taking off from a Catholic Mass on campus with a sacred Communion wafer in his pocket.

All but two of the 35 senators present voted to impeach Webster Cook, but the action did not result in his automatic removal from office.

...

Although the Senate could kick Cook off the student government's legislative body, it does not have the authority to suspend or expel Cook from the university. That could happen only if he's found to have violated serious conduct code violations in student court. UCF is barred by federal law from confirming whether any complaints have been filed against Cook. But the statements included in the affidavit refer to a formal complaint against Cook by the campus ministry for disrupting the service.

Source: Orlando Sentinel.com Blog

That'll teach him to mistake a public university for an institution of higher learning and intellectual freedom.

Random Observation

T-Shirt EditionSo I was coming up from the laundry room in our hotel this morning, and I saw one of the gaggle of kids who currently inhabit the place coming down in the elevator, wearing a tie-dye t-shirt that said 'Pius XI'.

I'm no Catholic, but even I could recognize the format for the name of a Pope, and further, this particular papal name stuck in my head for some reason, so I decided to look it up once I got back to my room. After all, if they're making t-shirts for kids featuring the guy, someone thinks he's pretty important, right?

Hitting the Wikipedia, I remembered where I knew the name: Pius XI was the Fascist Pope!

Pius XI was the pope who traded the Church's credibility and moral authority to first Mussolini (in exchange for land, statehood for the Vatican, and a theocratic Italian state), and then HITLER (again, for various special favors!) Quoth the Wikipedia:

Pius XI aimed to end the long breach between the papacy and the Italian government and to gain recognition once more of the sovereign independence of the Holy See. This goal led to one of his signature achievements, the signing in 1929 of the Lateran Treaty with the Italian government and the establishment of an independent Vatican City State.

Most of the Papal States had been seized by the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy (1861 – 1878) in 1860 at the foundation of the modern unified Italian state, and the rest, including Rome, in 1870. The Papacy and the Italian Government had been at loggerheads ever since: the Popes had refused to recognise the Italian state's seizure of the Papal States, instead withdrawing to become prisoners in the Vatican, and the Italian government's policies had always been anti-clerical. Now Pius XI thought a compromise would be the best solution.

To bolster his own new regime, Mussolini was also eager for an agreement. After years of negotiation, in 1929, the Pope supervised the signing of the Lateran Treaties with the Italian government. According to the terms of the first treaty, Vatican City was given sovereignty as an enclave of the city of Rome in return for the Vatican relinquishing its claim to the former territories of the Papal States. Pius XI thus became a head of state (albeit the smallest state in the world), the first Pope who could be termed as such since the Papal States fell after the unification of Italy in the 19th century. A second treaty, the concordat with Italy, recognised Roman Catholicism as the official state religion of Italy, gave the Church power over marriage law in Italy (ensuring the illegality of divorce), and restored Catholic religious teaching in all schools. In return, the clergy would not take part in politics. A third treaty provided financial compensation to the Vatican for the loss of the Papal States.

Source: Wikipedia (article on Pius XI)

That's not all, of course. Mussolini wasn't the only waste of human skin that Pius XI was willing to sell the soul of the church to for money and political power:

Pius XI was eager to negotiate concordats with any country that was willing to do so, thinking that written treaties were the best way to protect the Church's rights against governments increasingly inclined to interfere in such matters. Twelve concordats were signed during his reign with various types of governments, including some German state governments, and with Austria. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 and asked for a concordat, Pius XI accepted. Negotiations were conducted on his behalf by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII (1939 – 1958). The Reichskonkordat was signed by Pacelli and by the German government in June 1933, and included guarantees of liberty for the Church, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools.

Source: Wikipedia (Pius XI article, subarticle on German relations)

Good old Pius XI came to regret these treaties later, when the Fascists showed less inclination to follow some clauses than others. Apparently he was also unhappy with the whole 'wipe out the Jews' aspect to the Fascist worldview.

Not unhappy enough to give back the money, land, or political independence he obtained by aiding the Fascist ascendency to power, of course. In fact, even after the shame of World War II, his successor (remember, the man who actually negotiated with the Nazis) got the gifts from Mussolini written into the new Italian constitution... including the official theocracy clause!

The Lateran Agreements were incorporated into the Constitution of the Italian Republic in 1947.

In 1984 an agreement was signed, revising the concordat. Among other things, it ended the Church's position as the state-supported religion of Italy.

Source: Wikipedia (Lateran Treaties)

That's right. These odious agreements with a bloodthirsty madman were dragged into the modern era by the Church, which, it seems, still hadn't learned when to quit. For my part I can't believe Italy was an official theocracy until the 80s, but hey. They are pretty backward by European standards (just look at their government).

So there you have it. Pius XI, Fascist loving Nazi-enabler, is somehow deemed, in 2008, to be worthy of immortalization. On t-shirts for children.

What's next, Torquemada bibs and pacifiers?

Uggh.

The Politics That Flaps In the Night

Let's Get Political

Wastes of Skin
So here's a story of what happens when idiot hyper-religious people are allowed to raise children.

An 11-year-old town of Weston girl died Sunday night after her parents refused to seek medical attention for her treatable case of diabetes.

Everest Metro police Chief Dan Vergin said autopsy results confirm Madeline Neumann died from diabetic ketoacidosis, essentially an untreated case of diabetes.

Neumann's parents believed that their faith could heal the girl, Vergin said. They do not belong to a specific church or religion.

Neumann's aunt from California called authorities Sunday asking them to check on the girl, Vergin said. Authorities found the girl's almost lifeless body at the house. Neumann was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Clare's Hospital in Weston.

Authorities will send the results of their investigation to the Marathon County district attorney's office to determine whether the parents should face criminal charges.

These scum make me utterly sick. The next time someone tells you that gay people would make terrible parents, or atheists, or anyone else, remember what can happen when two 'normal', midwestern religious parents screw up.

Source: Wisconsin Radio Network

Wal-Mart Sucks
Keith Olbermann has been beating the drum on this, and good thing too. It's outrageous.

JACKSON, Missouri (CNN) -- Debbie Shank breaks down in tears every time she's told that her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in Iraq.

The 52-year-old mother of three attended her son's funeral, but she continues to ask how he's doing. When her family reminds her that he's dead, she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.

Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident nearly eight years ago that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home.

It was the beginning of a series of battles -- both personal and legal -- that loomed for Shank and her family. One of their biggest was with Wal-Mart's health plan.

Eight years ago, Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses and later sued for the same amount. However, the court ruled it can only recoup what is left in the family's trust.

The Shanks didn't notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart's health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit.

The legal fight is over, as the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal.

So Wal-Mart is going to bleed this woman for every penny she has left in the world, which is all that pays for her lifetime of medical needs.

The family's situation is so dire that last year Jim Shank divorced Debbie, so she could receive more money from Medicaid.

Jim Shank, 54, is recovering from prostate cancer, works two jobs and struggles to pay the bills. He's afraid he won't be able to send their youngest son to college and pay for his and Debbie's care.

"Who needs the money more? A disabled lady in a wheelchair with no future, whatsoever, or does Wal-Mart need $90 billion, plus $200,000?" he asked.

The family's attorney agrees.

"The recovery that Debbie Shank made was recovery for future lost earnings, for her pain and suffering," Graham said.

"She'll never be able to work again. Never have a relationship with her husband or children again. The damage she recovered was for much more than just medical expenses."

Graham said he believes Wal-Mart should be entitled to only about $100,000. Right now, about $277,000 remains in the trust -- far short of the $470,000 Wal-Mart wants back.

Refusing to give up the fight, the Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But just last week, the high court said it would not hear the case.

Graham said the Shanks have exhausted all their resources and there's nothing more they can do but go on with their lives.


Jim Shank said he's disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case -- not for the sake of his family -- but for those who might face similar circumstances.

For now, he said the family will figure out a way to get by and "do the best we can for Debbie."

"Luckily, she's oblivious to everything," he said. "We don't tell her
what's going on because it will just upset her."

Soulless scumbags.

This story illustrates perfectly why we should dispense with private health insurance with all due speed. You don't see this kind of garbage in any civilized country.

Source: CNN.com

Bill-O!!
A fascinating and quite lengthy Bill O'Reilly biographical piece from a couple of years ago. It really does give one some insight into the increasingly-irrelevant talk show host.

Class—that is, class resentment—is where, for O’Reilly, politics, and everything else, begins. His first best-seller, “The O’Reilly Factor,” published in 2000, asserts, “Whatever I have done or will do in this life, I’m working-class Irish American Bill O’Reilly.” (Another of O’Reilly’s feuds is with the columnist Michael Kinsley, who several years ago suggested that O’Reilly is actually from a middle-class background; last year, on the radio, O’Reilly objected to a call by the Los Angeles Times editorial page, then edited by Kinsley, for legal representation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. “They’ll never get it,” O’Reilly said, “until they grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off. And maybe when the blade sinks in, he’ll go, ‘Perhaps O’Reilly was right.’ ”) In the book, O’Reilly goes on, “No one ever told me or my sister that we were pretty far down the social totem pole while we were growing up in 1960s America. We took for granted that it was normal to buy cars only when they were secondhand, that every family clipped coupons to save money, and that luncheon meats were the special of the day.” And so on: “When our family went out to eat, a rare treat, we didn’t waste money on appetizers, if only because we didn’t go to the kind of restaurants that offered appetizers. Typically the pasta dish was spaghetti, and that was it. No linguine, fettuccine, rigatoni, etceterini, etceterini, to confuse the issue.”

I never saw Nassau County, Long Island, where O’Reilly, who is fifty-six, grew up, in the nineteen-sixties, but I’m guessing that restaurants so unpretentious that they wouldn’t serve a soup-of-the-day didn’t actually exist. Still, the idea of such a restaurant captures O’Reilly’s idea of himself. As soon as he left home—to go to Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, New York—O’Reilly had occasional encounters with members of the fortunate classes, in which, inevitably, he was put down. At Marist, he longed for the girls from nearby Vassar, but “the Ivy Leaguers up from Princeton or down from Cornell got the dates; we were treated like hired help.” By O’Reilly’s account, wealth and fame have not changed the pattern. Even now, when he wanders within range of the “swells,” which he does surprisingly often for a guy who despises them, they sneer at him, just as they would sneer at any ordinary American.

In particular, it's worth noting just how ritualized the O'Reilly factor is. It's a cliche, I know but the show sounds like nothing so much as The Two Minutes Hate.

But the real gems are the items on just how bitter and borderline insane Bill really is.

O’Reilly’s account of what went wrong at CBS has him, as always, pissing off powerful people because he won’t play their phony games. The key moment seems to have come when, during the Falkland Islands War, O’Reilly and his crew got some exclusive footage of a riot in the streets of Buenos Aires and it wound up being incorporated into a report from the veteran correspondent Bob Schieffer, which failed to mention O’Reilly’s contribution. O’Reilly was furious, and after that, by his account, he was in career Siberia at CBS. During this period of forced inaction, he later wrote, “on a visit to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I stumbled upon an amazing story. The tiny fishing village of Provincetown had become a gay mecca!” O’Reilly took a cameraman there and did a piece on the dangers this posed to local kids, but the network wouldn’t air it. Not long after that, he left.

In 1998, after the launch of “The O’Reilly Factor,” but before superstardom, he published a thriller called “Those Who Trespass,” which is his most ambitious and deeply felt piece of writing. “Those Who Trespass” is a revenge fantasy, and it displays extraordinarily violent impulses. A tall, b.s.-intolerant television journalist named Shannon Michaels, the “product of two Celtic parents,” is pushed out by Global News Network after an incident during the Falkland Islands War, and then by a local station, and he systematically murders the people who ruined his career. He starts with Ron Costello, the veteran correspondent who stole his Falkland story:

The assailant’s right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello’s mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent’s brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds.


Michaels stalks the woman who forced his resignation from the network and throws her off a balcony. He next murders a television research consultant who had advised the local station to dismiss him: he buries the guy in beach sand up to his neck and lets him slowly drown. Finally, during a break in the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention, he slits the throat of the station manager. O’Reilly describes each of these killings—the careful planning, the suffering of the victim, the act itself—in loving detail.

In the novel, O’Reilly splits his alter ego in two, by creating a second tall, b.s.-intolerant Irish-American, a New York City homicide detective named Tommy O’Malley. O’Malley is charged with solving the murders that Michaels has committed, while competing with Michaels for the heart of Ashley Van Buren, a blond, busty aristocrat turned b.s.-intolerant crime columnist. Michaels, a possibly once good man driven mad by broadcast journalism, tells Ashley, “Journalism, as you know, is a profession that requires its participants to be aggressive, skeptical, and persistent in pursuit of the truth. Yet, the moment you enter your own newsroom, you’ve got to drop all that. The managers want total conformity. They want you to play the game, to do what you’re told to do.” And, later, “It’s a self-obsessed business. ‘How are things going to impact on me? Is this person my friend or my enemy? I’ll get him before he gets me.’ That kind of thing. It’s a brutal way to live.” Again and again, O’Reilly’s characters remind us that on-air broadcasters are among the most powerful and glamorous people in America, and so the stakes in television newsroom politics could not be higher.

Tommy O’Malley, too, has a lot of ambition and rage, but he channels it into bringing bad guys (not just Michaels but a collection of urban ethnic street punks out of the old “Dirty Harry” or “Death Wish” movies) to justice. Michaels, though rejected by the suits, the swells, and the phonies, is not entirely immune to their values. He lives in a mansion, eats filet mignon, dresses stylishly, and can’t dismiss the A-listers from his consciousness. He is drawn to places like Malibu, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Upper West Side, partly to carry out his murders and partly because a kind of psychological undertow pulls him there. O’Malley seems not to know that they exist; he is broke and not stylish. He is morally redeemed by the police mission, just as Michaels is morally damned by television.

So there you have it. O'Reilyl engages in, even publishes, grotesque revenge fantasies and ultimately seems to desire his own self-destruction as much as that of his enemies.

Truly a bizarre man.

Source: The New Yorker

Yet More Olympics
So the lack of momentum for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics seems to be not-building.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games' opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown's determination to attend the Olympics.

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.

"The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate," Tusk said. "I do not intend to take part."

Further, it looks like the EU as a whole might boycott the Olympics.

The EU foreign ministers are to discuss the China quandary at lunch in Slovenia today, with calls being made for a common European position.

"We don't support a boycott and don't intend to boycott the opening of the games," a British Foreign Office spokesman said. "None of the 27 [EU states] are calling for a boycott yet."

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has described the boycott proposal as "interesting", while Sarkozy this week hedged his bets and said his attendance depended on China's conduct.

"Yet". None of them are doing it.. "yet".

Hehe.

Source: The Guardian

Siege of Basra
So the Iraqi central government, under Iranian semi-pupppet Maliki, decided to bust a cap in its political adversaries to the south, and staged an invasion of Basra.

Things went predictably enough.

BAGHDAD — Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

Witnesses in Basra said members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.

Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the American-led effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi government had made strides toward being able to operate a functioning country and keep the peace without thousands of American troops.

Mr. Maliki has staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on militias.

But as criticism of the assault has risen, it has brought into question another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.

Security has suffered as well.

Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country back to the sectarian violence that strained it in 2006 and 2007.

So basically, Maliki's Pro-Iranian government, which recently gave the Iranian President Ach-ma-dick-inajad (credit to the Daily Show for giving me a pejorative which saves me spelling his name) a warm welcome, complete with flowers and red carpet treatment, is trying to take out its biggest Shiite rival, Al-Sadr. Meanwhile, Iraqi politics continued to degenerate.

“We don’t have to rush to military solutions,” said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr’s party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki “escalated the situation.”

...

In Baghdad, the American military was also drawn deeper into the violence generated by the Basra assault. The military issued a statement saying that American soldiers had killed nine Iraqis that it called terrorists in firefights around Sadr City, the Shiite slum that forms Mr. Sadr’s base of support. The statement said seven of the Iraqis were killed after they attacked an American unit, and two more when they were caught placing roadside bombs. Later Saturday, the military announced that two American soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb in Shiite-controlled eastern Baghdad.

Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said they would extend a strict and citywide curfew indefinitely, in an attempt to keep the streets clear.

Mr. Maliki’s forces may also have lost ground in the battle for public opinion when, in a well-publicized event in Sadr City, 40 men who said they were Iraqi police officers surrendered their weapons to Sadr officials, who symbolically gave the officers olive branches and Korans. The weapons were returned after the officers pledged not to use them against Mahdi Army members.

“These weapons are for defending the country but not for fighting your brothers,” said Sheik Salman al-Fraji, head of the Sadr office there.

Although a citywide curfew remained in effect in Baghdad, the booms of rockets or mortars were heard in the morning. It was not immediately clear who had fired them or where they landed, although the fortified Green Zone, the nerve center of American and Iraqi governmental operations here, has been a frequent target since the Basra operation began.

Clashes between militias and Iraqi government security forces continued elsewhere. There was intense fighting for a second day north of Basra in Dhi Qar Province and its capital, Nasiriya, where officials said the toll on Saturday was 28 killed and 59 wounded. There were running battles on a main bridge in Nasiriya, an Iraqi police officer said, and gunmen controlled the town of Shatra, about 20 miles north.

...



“Unfortunately we were expecting one thing but we saw something else,” said Ali Hussam, 48, a teacher, who said that after Saddam Hussein the people of Basra had hoped for peace. “But unfortunately with the presence of this new government and this democracy that was brought to us by the invader, it made us kill each other.”

“And the war is now between us,” he said.

Source: The New York Times

Live from Basra
Some great reporting by an Iraqi stringer for the Times on how things went down in Basra.

Iraqi forces started their assault on the Shiite militias in Basra on Tuesday. Whatever the initial goal of the operation, by the time I arrived in Basra it was a patchwork of neighborhoods that were either deserted or overrun by Mahdi fighters. There were scattered Iraqi Army and police checkpoints, but no place seemed to be truly under government control.

...

That is when we started to see terrible signs of the conflict in Basra. I counted about 20 civilian cars coming north with coffins strapped to their roofs, heading to bury their dead in the Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf. My driver and I were unsure about the road ahead, so we flagged down a family driving in the opposite direction. As we did so, a woman in the passenger seat began frantically waving a piece of white cloth — a white flag — out her window.

It turned out that she was terrified that we might be members of the Mahdi Army, who she said had put bombs and snipers all along the road where the family had just passed. Once we calmed her down, she suggested another way.

...

Gun battles broke out unpredictably, so I ran or walked when it was quiet, then dropped down and sought cover when I could hear shooting. After 45 minutes or so, I came upon the Rumaila Hotel in a central neighborhood called Ashar. Amazingly, it was open, with six or seven guests inside and a couple of employees. I was so exhausted I didn’t think twice, just checked in.

The next day I moved around as much as I could. The common observation was this: There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will.

...

On Saturday I was talking with a colleague on my cellphone when a gun battle started right outside the hotel. It was so loud I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line anymore. I dived into a corner of my room and waited for it to end.

A while after the shooting stopped, some other residents of the hotel and I went outside. The street was littered with the shells of heavy machine guns where the Mahdi Army had fired toward another hotel, the Meerbad, where Ministry of Interior officials were staying, perhaps 50 yards away. We could see their pickup trucks, now full of bullet holes, in the parking lot of the hotel.

Yeah, this thing went really well.

Source: The New York Times

This Looks Like a Job For.... Iran?
So who could dampen the escalating violence in Iraq? Who could possibly wield enough power and influence in such a volatile place?

Who's actually in charge, in other words?

BAGHDAD — Iranian officials helped broker a cease-fire agreement Sunday between Iraq's government and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

The deal could help defuse a wave of violence that had threatened recent security progress in Iraq. It also may signal the growing regional influence of Iran, a country the Bush administration accuses of providing support to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.

It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

NOt to mention predictable.

Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni lawmaker who oversaw mediation in Baghdad, said representatives from al-Maliki's Dawa Party and another Shiite party traveled to Iran to finalize talks with al-Sadr.

Iran has close ties with both al-Sadr's movement and al-Maliki, who spent several years in exile there. Al-Nujaifi said the agreement was brokered by the commander of Iran's al-Quds Brigade, which is considered a terrorist organization by Washington.

That's right, they traveled to Iran, on orders from its 'terrorist' military, where they agreed to a peace ordered by the Iranians.

Wow.

Source: USA Today

Another Perspective on the War
Namely, one you get from actually considering the human cost of grand ambitions, which is something that El Presidente would never do.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart was in Washington, DC Tuesday night for the USO-Metro Awards Dinner, where the Daily Show host was honored with a Merit Award from Joint Chiefs vice-chair General James Cartwright. If it seems an odd fit for a comic who consistently lampoons the Bush administration, the Washington Post's Reliable Source informs readers that all the comedic comfort Stewart gives critics of the Iraq War is matched by his efforts to comfort our wounded soldiers:
Turns out the comedian has been quietly visiting soldiers at Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals, trips he began in 2004 to better understand the Iraq war. "I felt that I was living in a world of theory," he told the audience, "but I hadn't touched the reality and the humanity of it." The first patient he met was "funnier than I was" -- and Stewart's been a regular ever since.

Stewart told the Post, "I certainly get a lot more out of it than they do...If anything, it's made me angrier... You can be for the war, against the war, but you can't be uninformed about it. To see the human cost is part of the equation."

Source: The Huffington Post

Not Just Iraq
Finally, a story that shows the Bush administration can reduce any number of countries to uninhabited rubble, not just Iraq.

Imagine that your home was reduced to mold-covered wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government provided-trailer that gives off formaldehyde fumes you finally win a federal grant.


Then a collector announces that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in the same boat.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

...

One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, has $11 billion in federal funds.

...

Frank Silvestri, co-chair of the Citizen's Road Home Action Team, a group that formed out of frustrations with ICF, sees it far differently.

"They want people to pay for their incompetence and their mistakes. What they need to be is aggressive about finding the underpayments," he said. "People relied, to their detriment, on their (ICFs) expertise and rebuilt their houses and now they want to squeeze this money back out of them."

The prospect of Road Home grant collections comes less than two weeks after the Louisiana inspector general and the legislative auditor said they were investigating why former Gov. Kathleen Blanco paid ICF an extra $156 million in her waning days in office to administer the program. With the increase, ICF stands to earn $912 million to run Road Home, a contract that also sweetened its initial public stock offering, helping it buy out four other companies and enter government contracting in sectors including national defense and the environment.

Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state body that asked for the Blanco-ICF investigations, acknowledged the collections could be painful for applicants, many of whom have used up their nest eggs to rebuild.

...

Melanie Ehrlich, co-chair of Citizen's Road Home Action Team, which has documented Road Home cases that appear littered with mistakes, said she had no confidence that ICF had correctly calculated overpayments. She charged that the company was more likely using collections as retribution against people who had appealed their award amounts in effort to get the aid they deserved.

"I think they are looking for ways to decrease awards and that's part of dissuading people," she said.

Oh, I'm sure everything is above board, with this massive private contractor operating under the Bush administration.

Riiiight.

Source: Raw Story

Conservatives Update

Republicans and Other Jerks

Wireless Wiretaps Plus
So it turns out that the Feds have a backdoor into absolutely everything about you on one of the larger wireless carriers *cough* *cough* Verizon *cough*.

Every single customer, call, both contents and origin/destination, billing records, personal information, all of it.

Not one warrant.

Source: Wired

Court is the Only Way
Legal jeopardy is simply the only way to make a Republican do their job.

Responding to a lawsuit by Michigan and eight other states, the Bush administration is reconsidering its policy on mercury emissions from cement plants, which critics say allows too much air pollution.

Whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency changes the rules will depend on test results of technology that could reduce the emissions, spokesman Dale Kemery said Thursday.

But an environmental law firm that has battled the EPA for a decade over the matter said the agency promised in a court filing last month to set standards it previously had resisted.

"They've turned 180 degrees," said James Pew, attorney for Earthjustice, based in Washington, D.C.

Mercury comes from raw materials used to make cement — such as limestone, clay, sand and iron ore — and from fuels such as coal that fire the kilns where the ingredients are baked. Mercury is a neurotoxin linked to learning disabilities and is most dangerous to fetuses and young children, usually by eating fish contaminated through environmental exposure.

The agency in December 2006 set limits on mercury and hydrocarbon emissions from cement kilns built after Dec. 2, 2005. But for kilns built earlier, the EPA imposed lesser requirements.

The states sued in February 2007, saying the federal Clean Air Act requires mercury emission limits for all plants, not just new ones. Earthjustice, which had sued the EPA three previous times over cement kiln mercury, filed a separate case on behalf of several activist groups.

Activist groups and nine states. Nine states that are sick and tired of mercury poisoned kids.

The nine states include Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania

Source: Raw Story

What, Israel Again?
The little country that could demonstrates that it won't just stand by and let the US get all the bad press.

In Jerusalem, more ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Harediim, are leaving their cloistered neighborhoods for cheaper housing in the suburbs. In one suburb, that has led to rising tensions and sporadic violence with their modern Orthodox and secular neighbors.

Religious fanatics! Is there anything they can't ruin?

A small group of ultra-Orthodox extremists has been intimidating fellow Jews who they deem to be not kosher or modest enough, or who don't keep the Sabbath the way they want them to.

One resident of the sprawling, quiet suburb of Ramat Beit Shemesh, a half-hour outside of Jerusalem, is Solly Wahlbe, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who spends his days studying the Torah.

In an outdoor shopping area near a local supermarket, the slight 18-year-old says he approves of the big signs posted everywhere around by his fellow ultra-Orthodox, which implore women to dress modestly.

Women wearing jeans or pants, Wahlbe says, are a distraction to what he calls "the focused, settled minds" of the Harediim.

"When dealing with this issue of Torah, your mind has to be much more settled and can't be jumping around to all sorts of different planets and all sorts of different fantasies and thoughts that might come up on a teenager's head," he says.

Or, he says softly, "into the head of a married man. ... We're not trying to change people," he says, "but they must respect our way of life."

They're not trying to change people. They just can't control themselves because they've been brought up in a goddamned cult, and thus they want to force everyone to agree with them or else get stoned to death.

The problem is that Wahlbe is in a public shopping center in a mixed suburb where Harediim make up a little more than a quarter of the population. A minority of ultra-Orthodox have tried to impose "respect" using rocks, fists and intimidation.

Oh yeah. This is going to end well.

Dr. Hahvah is a modern Orthodox woman who dresses modestly, keeps kosher and observes the Sabbath. One day driving home, she saw that someone had put up a sign in her neighborhood that read "Don't pass here unless you dress modestly."

"I find that offensive," she says. "I don't think that anybody should impose dress codes on the public."

When she tried to haul the sign down, some ultra-Orthodox pelted her and her car with rocks. Dr. Hahvah, who asked that her full name not be used, went to the local police, but she says they did nothing.

"It's very hard. I know the people who attacked me and when their families come to see me as a doctor and I can't say anything or do anything because it's unprofessional," she says.

That rock attack was hardly an isolated incident. People driving on the Sabbath have been bombarded with rocks. Earlier this year in Beit Shemesh, a young Haredi woman was sitting next an Israeli soldier on a public bus when ultra-Orthodox men assaulted both of them and forced the woman off the bus. Men and women, they said, should be segregated. Later, an ultra-Orthodox man who stood up to the zealots within his own community was himself brutally beaten. He said it was like a pogrom.

Hehe. Silly religious idealists. You thought getting your own country to play with would end the violence and hate? Haven't any of you read Durkheim? Society is DEFINED by its outsiders. In the absence of real ones, imaginary outsiders are always invented.

But what will the powerful government, with its legal monopoly on violence, do about this problem?

"One of the problems with this group of violent fanatics, I would call them, is that they don't know how to handle when they have a disagreement," says Shalom Lerner, the deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh.

...

"Culturally, it's a big change for them," he says. "This is the first time these group of peoples are moving out of Jerusalem, out of Mea Shariim. They're not used to seeing a woman in pants, they're not used to seeing a woman with uncovered hair, and they find it very hard to adjust."

Lerner, an observant, modern Orthodox, says Beit Shemesh leaders said enough is enough after some businesses received mafia-like threats to put up modesty signs — or else. Then a family whose television was allegedly visible through a window got a threatening letter demanding they cover it up or face attack. Lerner says the town made it clear to the ultra-Orthodox that there will be big legal, financial and political costs if the threats, bullying and violence continue.

"If it's a school they want, the school will be the last one to get allocation," he says. "It won't be where they want. We won't give them any financial help. If they want to be tough, we'll be tough."

Paperwork! Holding that up will solve everything!

Last summer, community members started a group that's trying to narrow the religious and cultural divide through dialogue. Organizers say they have made some progress, but both sides acknowledge the goal of the dialogue, in the end, is not wider integration but a kind of peaceful segregation.

"If they want to be the way they want [and] we want to be the way we want, we can't put them together," says David, a 25-year-old ultra-Orthodox who studies Torah full time, "because it's two different things — it's two different worlds."

He's 25 and he wants to segregate the nation and spend the rest of his life studying a single book written by crazy people a few thousand years ago.

Seriously. There's no long-term peaceful coexistence with these people. They either have to adapt, or eventually they'll rise up like our South did in the Civil War, and you'll have to crush them. Don't say I didn't warn you, Israel.

Source: NPR

I Always Thought Heavy Drinking Led to Republicans
Though I was more inclined to believe it was Fetal Alcohol Syndrome than adult drunkenness that actually caused the disorder.

A Minnesota state senator has withdrawn a bill which would have extended drinking hours at local bars during the Republican National Convention next summer.

The legislation would have changed the closing time from 2 am to 4 am for bars in the seven-county Minneapolis-St. Paul area between Aug. 29 and Sep. 8.

Legislator Linda Scheid gave up her effort following just an hour of debate in the state legislature, after she found that the police had concerns that it would affect all bars, not just those near the convention.

Republicans love to hold their conventions where they're just not wanted. First New York, where the cops had to install a fascist police state to create a quasi-Disneyland part of the city for the GOP, now Minneapolis, where, apparently, the Republicans need a steady supply of hard liquor just to stand all the liberal, functional government and tolerance.

Jerks. Go back to the inbred South already.

Source: Raw Story

Salvia
Conservatives are looking to ban another drug now, because the state-corporate monopoly on your brain tissue needs more protection.

On Web sites touting the mind-blowing powers of Salvia divinorum, come-ons to buy the hallucinogenic herb are accompanied by warnings: "Time is running out!" and "stock up while you still can."


That's because salvia is being targeted by lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously.

"As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one," said Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, who has introduced a bill to make possession of salvia a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Ahh, Prohibition. Is there any social ill it can't turn into an epidemic of greed, corruption and violence?

Mike Strain, Louisiana's Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner and former legislator, helped his state in 2005 become the first to make salvia illegal, along with a number of other plants. He said the response has been largely positive.

"I got some hostile e-mails from people who sold these products," Strain said. "You don't make everybody happy when you outlaw drugs. You save one child and it's worth it."

THINK OF THE CHILDREN

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Among those who believe the commotion over the drug is overblown is Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit group that does research on psychedelic drugs and whose goal is to develop psychedelics and marijuana into prescription medication.

"I think the move to criminalize is a misguided response to a very minimal problem," Doblin said.

Doblin said salvia isn't "a party drug," "tastes terrible" and is "not going to be extremely popular." He disputes the fact teens are its main users and says older users are more likely.

"It's a minor drug in the world of psychedelics," he said.

Yes, people are really going to get in line for a short-lasting, terrible tasting mild hallucinogen. Woe betide us if they do, as well.

Meanwhile, tobacco, which has killed millions of Americans? Legal. Alcohol? Legal. Yes, if you like killing yourself or your brain, we have two and only two options available. You even have to consume them the way WE, I mean the government, tell you (witness the efforts to ban alcohol inhalers, which make it cheaper to get drunk and thus cut down on the profit margin).

Not that I'm advocating banning tobacco or alcohol. Just noting the inherent hypocrisy here.

Source: Raw Story

Surrounded by Jerks!
So it seems it isn't safe to walk the corridors of school without the threat of being accosted on all sides by jerks.

LANCASTER, Pa. - The family of a middle school student who was given detention for wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of a gun has filed a federal freedom of speech lawsuit against the school district.

Donald Miller III, 14, went to Penn Manor High School in December wearing a T-shirt he said was intended to honor his uncle, a U.S. Army soldier fighting in Iraq.

The shirt bears the image of a military sidearm and on the front pocket says "Volunteer Homeland Security." On the back, over another image of the weapon, are the words "Special issue Resident Lifetime License - United States Terrorist Hunting Permit - Permit No. 91101 - Gun Owner - No Bag Limit."

Isn't that cute? He thinks being a gun owner and remembering the date a terror attack happened makes him a licensed vigilante!

Normally I am vehemently opposed to this t-shirt banning nonsense, but this one actually implies that the kid will murder people, with a gun (bag limit, anyone?) and get away with it, so I could see it frightening, say, some poor brown student who already gets the hell harassed out of him for having a 'funny sounding' name.

Let's see if the school can overgeneralize this one racist, jingoistic misbehavior into a sea of troubles, though.

But an attorney for the school district said school must create a safe environment for students in the post-Columbine era, and bringing even the image of a gun to school violates the district's policy.

"There's a much higher level of sensitivity these days," Penn Manor attorney Kevin French said. "But it's based on reality."

The lawsuit was filed in January. A federal judge will hold a conference on the case March 31.

That poor judge. He'll be up late many a night, with only a bottle of Scotch to comfort him, trying to find a way to rule that doesn't let the morons win. Either side.

Our thoughts are with you, good sir or madam.

Source: AZ Central

News Is Like a Box of Chocolates

Random Assortment

Gym Class
In an effort to cater to a wider variety of theocrats, Harvard is running one of its student gyms gender-segregated part time.

In a test of Harvard's famed open-mindedness, the university has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week to accommodate Muslim women who say it offends their sense of modesty to exercise in front of the opposite sex.

The policy is already unpopular with many on campus, including some women who consider it sexist.

"I think that it's incorrect in a college setting to institute a policy in which half of the campus gets wronged or denied a resource that's supposed to be for everyone," said student Lucy Caldwell, who also wrote a column in The Harvard Crimson newspaper critical of the new hours.

Student Ola Aljawhary, who is Muslim and works out elsewhere on campus but is not one of the women who requested the change, rejected that argument.

"The majority should be willing to compromise," she said. "I think that's just basic courtesy. We must show tolerance and respect for all others."

No, Ola, the majority should not be willing to compromise our secular state to accomodate your partiarchial desert cult.

Nor that of the Mormons in Utah who want the same thing.

If you don't like men in your gym, work out at home. There's no reason to accomodate your backward religious crap in a public institution, any more than we should have to teach Creationism to appease idiot Christians.

Kent Blumenthal, executive director of the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association, which has 660 member colleges and universities nationwide, said he could not think of any other institution with a similar policy.

"It seems in some ways contrary to the purpose of campus recreational programs, which is all about access," he said.

Harvard's policy is no different from commercial gyms that cater partially or even exclusively to women, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"The Muslim bashers portray it as the world coming to end, but if women have a couple hours a week to work out in private, I don't see it as a major issue," he said.

Now now, I bash many kinds of religious nuts. Be fair.

Though I don't think it's the end of the world; I think it's creeping theocracy. If theocracy could end the world we'd all be dead already.

Still, hardly a positive development.

Source: Raw Story

Crete

Around 300 priceless artifacts from Europe's oldest civilisation, the Minoans of ancient Crete, will go on display in New York from March 13, the private Alexander S. Onassis foundation said Wednesday.

Titled "From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 BC", the six-month exhibition will feature gold jewellery, seals, votive figures, tools, weapons, engravings and frescoes from several Cretan museums, including the prestigious museum of Heraklion in the island's capital.

Most of the artifacts have never been displayed outside Greece, said archaeologist Maria Vlazakis, supervisor of museums in western Crete.

"The first palatial civilisation on European soil flourished on Crete during the third and second millennia BCE," she told a news conference.

Awesome! I love the Minoans.

A highly technological, refined culture thousands of years ahead of its time, brought low by environmental disaster and weak politics.

Sound familiar?

Source: Raw Story

Intertubes
So Youtube is now more popular than Wikipedia (in the UK at least), in terms of unique users.

Not really surprised. Youtube is just so popular, and Wikipedia's glamour is wearing pretty thin these days.

Source: The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/05/digitalmedia.youtube

Free Trade?
The next time you hear someone ramble on about how Free Trade is the best policy, remind them that the US engages in its own protectivist tariff scheme.

If that doesn't work, you could remind them of our huge agricultural subsidies too.

Source: US Government
(A hat-tip to Atrios for pointing this out)

Feet
So three right feet have washed up off a couple of islands in Canada.

That can't be good.

Canadian police are investigating the mystery of three right feet that have turned up off Vancouver Island in the past six months.


The first was washed up in August on an isolated island in British Columbia. A 12-year-old girl beachcombing with her family found a size 12 running shoe with a human right foot still inside. Six days later a couple hiking around coves on another remote island found another size 12 right foot in a trainer under a tree trunk. Then, last month, another right foot was spotted, this time bobbing about in the water off a third island.

Although the discoveries sound like a film plot, the scenario is flummoxing police in western Canada. They collected DNA from the remains but could not match them to anyone on their database.

Dr Simon Boxall, an oceanographer from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said: "It is not that unusual for body parts to turn up in the sea - they can be the result of a fishing accident, or a whole body getting hit by a passing ship, for example - but the fact that all three were clustered so close together does suggest dodgy dealings."

...

As for why all three feet were right and not left, Boxall believes it is a coincidence.

Not everyone agrees. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a former professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, and an expert in floating objects (he is writing a book called The Floating World for HarperCollins), said: "Left footwear and right footwear often tend to wash up at different times at different places because they float differently.

"There are beaches that collect mostly rights and other beaches that collect mostly lefts. The winds or the currents sort out left and right footwear."

However, resident Digby Jones, 80, told the New York Times: "The whole thing is a scam, as far as I'm concerned, all part of a big joke. If they go to the mortuaries on the mainland, they'll find some guy laughing his head off."

Beaches that collect one foot or the other?

This I'd have to see. Though I think I might not want to.

Also, let's all hope it's just a sick and unjustifiable joke, eheh. The alternative is of course even worse.

Source: The Guardian

Religious Follies

Wacky

Pope Against Gay Marriage, Big Surprise
So Pope Sideous made some remarks prior to his latest America tour. He's against abortion, in favor of nuclear disarmament, and oh yeah, opposed to gay marriage. Yeah. No big shockers here.

He just says that about gay marriage so that his male companion and longtime secretary doesn't get any ideas about popping the question, though.

Alternately: POPE SIDEOUS IS COMING! HIDE THE YOUNGLINGS

Source: Page One Q

Witches
The Scottish parliament is the target of a very small campaign to pardon all the 'witches' that were convicted of witching back when it was a crime to be a witcher.

Witch.

Lawmakers in Scotland are being asked to push for a posthumous pardon of everyone found guilty under ancient witchcraft laws, including a spiritualist who was convicted during World War II.

One petition, signed online by 206 people, calls for members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) to urge the executive in Edinburgh to appeal to Britain's interior minister to reconsider a previous refusal to pardon Helen Duncan.

The spiritualist was convicted under the Witchcraft Act 1735 and jailed for nine months in 1944, after a seance in which a dead sailor was said to have disclosed the loss of a British battleship and most of her crew.

The British authorities had kept secret the sinking to maintain morale during World War II and it was not disclosed for several months.

...

The second petition, signed on the Scottish Parliament's website by 69 people, urges lawmakers to push the executive to posthumously pardon everyone convicted in Scotland under witchcraft laws between 1565 and 1736.

Supporting research to the petition said about 4,000 people, most of them women, were accused of being witches, with witch-hunting rife particularly in the region south of Edinburgh.

I for one am curious how she actually found out about the battleship thing. Also, on the second petition, why stop at 1736? Was it ok to persecute people for witchcraft after that?

Source: Raw Story

Hagee
So St. John McCain got a big religious endorsement this week from John Hagee, a lunatic fringe Protestant bible thump in the Deep South. McCain for one says he's 'honored' and 'pleased'.

The problem is, Hagee isn't just your average lunatic. He's a virulent anti-catholic one.

But Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement Thursday that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, "calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system.' "

Yes, that's right, grandstander in chief Bill Donohue is on the case!

It's hilarious when these right-wingers eat their own.

Of course, Hagee has other controversial positions.

JH: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.

The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it would was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades.

So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the Day of Judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

God wiped out New Orleans because of teh gay. Good to know. Here I thought hurricanes were caused by seasonal increases in water temperature.

All Muslims are killers, according to Hagee

JH: There is really no room for compromise between radical Islam --

TG: I'm not talking about radical Islam. I'm just talking about Islam in general.

JH: Well Islam in general -- those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.

He's also ranted about Harry Potter being either Satan or the tool of Satan, it's hard to tell which.

Hagee's biggest 'policy' position is conditional support for Isreal because he believes it's necessary to jumpstart the Rapture.

A small minority of evangelical Christians have entered the Middle East political arena with some of the most un-Christian statements I have ever heard. . . . [Rev.] Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon (which will mean the death of most Jews, in his eyes) and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West.

Great job, St. John McCain! You're in bed with a loon!

Sources: Salon.com
Firedoglake

Jamaica Hates Teh Gay Too
Jamaica likes to bill itself as a tourist paradise, but don't go if you're one of them there limp-wristed nancy-boys.

MANDEVILLE, Jamaica: One night in January, Andre and some friends were finishing dinner when a mob showed up at the front gate. Yelling anti-gay slurs and waving machetes, sticks and knives, 15 to 20 men kicked in the front door of the home he and his friends had rented and set upon them.

"I thought I was dead," Andre, a 20-year-old student, recounted in a faint voice, still scared enough that he was in hiding and did not want his full name to be used.

The mob pummeled him senseless. His right hand, the one he used to shield himself from the blows, is covered with bandages. His skull has deep cut marks and his ear was sliced in half, horizontally. Doctors managed to sew it back together, and he can hear out of it again.

Being gay in Jamaica is not easy. For years, human rights groups have denounced the harassment, beating and even killing of gays here, to little effect. No official statistic has been compiled on the number of attacks. But a recent string of especially violent, high-profile assaults has brought fresh condemnation to an island otherwise known as an easygoing tourist haven.

Naturally, the Jamaicans have a good reason for this savage behavior.

God tells them it's right.

Disapproval of gays is an entrenched part of island life, rooted, Jamaicans say, in the country's Christian tradition. The Bible condemns homosexuality, they say. But critics say islanders are selective in the verses they cite, and the rage at gay sex contrasts sharply with Jamaicans' embrace of casual sex among heterosexuals, which is considered part of the Caribbean way.

While some other Caribbean tourist destinations have made a point of marketing to gay travelers, Jamaica has not joined the trend.

The double standard on the island is reflected in the anti-gay lyrics of Jamaican dance hall music, the headlines of some hyperventilating tabloids - "homo" is the term most often used - and the fact that homosexuality remains illegal here, with the specific crime called "buggery."

...

No place has shown that hostility recently more than Mandeville, a prosperous and quiet town in Jamaica's South Coast area. A couple of weeks back, a local tabloid, The Jamaica Star, printed a screaming headline when a local policeman, disturbed by the attack on the dinner party guests, decided to disclose his sexual orientation to the paper. He said that he had been harassed regularly by his colleagues because he is gay and that the police did not take violence against gays seriously.

"Jamaica's motto is 'Out of Many, One People,' and I say, 'What about us?' " said the policeman, Michael Hayden. Hayden, who has since taken leave from the force, is now in hiding out of fear that his colleagues might kill him.

...


Not even funerals are safe for gays. A year ago, just down the road from the disrupted dinner party, a gay businessman's funeral was interrupted by a mob outside the church. The mob, outraged that effeminate mourners wearing tight pants and shirts had dared to show up, threw bottles and rocks through the windows, then barged inside and ordered that the service be stopped.

The pastor, who had not known the dead man was gay, pressed on, furious at the protesters for what he considered a defiling of his church.

"The same religion they use to justify these attacks, I use to show what they do is wrong," said the pastor, the Reverend Amos Campbell, of True Vine True Holiness Church. No one was prosecuted in the episode.

...

The commander of the Mandeville police station, Inspector Claude Smith, while making it clear that his religious beliefs firmly oppose homosexuality, rejected the notion that the police condone violence against gays. Enforcement of the law against homosexuality, he said, should be up to the police, not angry mobs.

Wowsers, huh? Machete wielding mobs, cops in on the deal, even gay policemen driven into hiding, fearing for their lives.

What a country.

Source: The International Herald Tribune

Nigeria: Still a Craphole
A big article in The Atlantic about the low level religious war in Nigeria between Muslims and Christians, Christians and other Christians, Muslims and other Muslims... you get the idea.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with 140 million people (one-seventh of all Africans), and it’s one of the few nations divided almost evenly between Christians and Muslims. Blessed with the world’s 10th-largest oil reserves, it is also one of the continent’s richest and most influential powers—as well as one of its most corrupt democracies. Last year’s presidential election in particular—in which President Olusegun Obasanjo, an evangelical Christian, handed power to a northern Muslim, President Umaru Yar’Adua—was a farce. Ballot boxes were stuffed by thugs or carted off empty by armed heavies in the pay of political candidates. Across the country, political power is a passport to wealth: according to Human Rights Watch, anywhere from $4 billion to $8 billion in government money has been embezzled annually for the last eight years. The state has all but abdicated its responsibility for the welfare of its people, roughly half of whom live on less than $1 a day.

In this vacuum, religion has become a powerful source of identity. Northern Nigeria has one of Africa’s oldest and most devout Islamic communities, which was galvanized, like many others, in the 1980s by the global Islamic reawakening that followed the Iranian revolution. For Christians, too, in Nigeria, there’s been a revolution: high birthrates and aggressive evangelization over the past century have increased the number of believers from 176,000, or 1.1 percent of the early-20th-century population, to more than 51 million, or more than a third now. Thanks to this explosive growth, the demographic and geographic center of global Christianity will have moved, by 2050, to northern Nigeria, within the Muslim world.

...

While religion became a source of friction in Nigeria during the Biafran civil war in the late 1960s, the trouble between Christians and Muslims intensified in the 1980s, when the first oil boom fizzled and the ensuing economic downturn led to violence. Since then, thousands have been killed in riots between the two groups sparked by various events: aggressive campaigns by foreign evangelists; the implementation in 1999 and 2000 of sharia, or Islamic law, in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states; the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in 2001; and the 2002 Miss World pageant, when a local Christian reporter, Isioma Daniel, outraged Muslims by writing in one of Nigeria’s national papers, This Day, that the Prophet Muhammad would have chosen a wife from among the contestants. Most recently, in 2006, riots triggered by Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad left more people dead in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world.

“These conflicts are a result of secular processes,” said Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, one of Nigeria’s leading intellectuals and a top executive of one of the country’s oldest banks, FirstBank. “It’s about bad government, economic inequality, and poverty—a struggle for resources.” When a government fails its people, they turn elsewhere to safeguard themselves and their futures, and in Nigeria at the beginning of the 21st century, they have turned first to religion. Here, then, is the truth behind what Samuel Huntington famously calls religion’s “bloody” geographic borders: outbreaks of violence result not simply from a clash between two powerful religious monoliths, but from tensions at the most vulnerable edges where they meet—zones of desperation and official neglect where faith becomes a rallying cry in the struggle for land, water, and work.

So a lack of government turns people to religion to solve their problems.

How's that working out?

A few hundred yards down the road from the church, there’s a cornfield. In it, a row of mounds: more mass graves. White signs tally the dead below in green paint: 110, 50, 65, 100, 55, 25, 60, 20, 40, 105. Two months after the church was razed, Christian men and boys surrounded Yelwa. Many were bare-chested; others wore shirts on which they’d reportedly pinned white name tags identifying them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella organization founded in the 1970s to give Christians a collective and unified voice as strong as that of Muslims. Each tag had a number instead of a name: a code, it seemed, for identification. They attacked the town. According to Human Rights Watch, 660 Muslims were massacred over the course of the next two days, including the patients in the Al-Amin clinic. Twelve mosques and 300 houses went up in flames. Young girls were marched to a nearby Christian town and forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Many were raped, and 50 were killed.

So, about how you'd expect.

Are outside religious authorities any help?

At the time of the massacre, Archbishop Peter Akinola was the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, whose membership was implicated in the killings. He has since lost his bid for another term but, as primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, he is still the leader of 18 million Anglicans. He is a colleague of my father, who was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America from 1997 to 2006. But the American Episcopals’ election of an openly homosexual bishop in 2003, which Archbishop Akinola denounced as “satanic,” created distance between them.

...

When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

Not so much, no.

But they've got new, American-style Megachurches now! That working any better?

Democracy, Nigerians told me repeatedly, is a numbers game. That’s why whoever has more believers is on top. In that competition, Christianity has a recruiting tool beyond the frontline gospel preached by those such as Archbishop Akinola: Pentecostalism, one of the world’s most diverse and fastest-growing religious movements. In Nigeria, the oil boom of the 1970s brought a massive movement of people into cities looking for work. That boom’s collapse spurred the growth of the Pentecostal Gospel of Prosperity, with its emphasis on good health and getting rich; and of the African Initiated Churches, or AICs, which began about 100 years ago, when several charismatic African prophets successfully converted millions to Christianity. Today, AIC members account for one-quarter of Africa’s 417 million Christians.

One bustling Pentecostal hub, Canaanland, the 565-acre headquarters of the Living Faith Church, has three banks, a bakery, and its own university, Covenant, which is the sister school of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Canaanland is about an hour and a half north of Lagos, which has an estimated population of 12 million and is projected to become the world’s 12th-largest city by 2020. With 300,000 people worshipping at a single service at the Canaanland headquarters alone and 300 branches across the country, Living Faith is one of Nigeria’s megachurches, and the dapper Bishop David Oyedepo is its prophet. The bishop, whose bald pate glistens above deep-set eyes and dazzling teeth, never wanted to be pastor: he had no interest in being poor, he told me. “When God made me a pastor, I wept. I hated poverty in the Church—how can the children of God live as rats?”

Bishop Oyedepo built Canaanland to preach the Gospel of Prosperity. As he said, “If God is truly a father, there is no father that wants his children to be beggars. He wants them to prosper.” In the parking lot at Canaanland, beyond the massive complex of unusually clean toilets, flapping banners promise: Whatsoever you ask in my name, he shall give you, and By his stripes he gives us blessings.

Oh yeah, that sounds promising. God will give you money.

Muslims? Want to get in on the crass, brazen hucksterism?

The Christian Gospel of Prosperity is so powerful that it has spawned a unique Nigerian phenomenon: an Islamic organization called Nasrul-Lahi-il-Fathi (NASFAT). The name is drawn from a verse in the eighth chapter of the Koran: “There is no help except from Allah.” This is the same chapter, “The Spoils of War,” or Al-Anfal, that Saddam Hussein cited to justify his genocide against the Kurds. But NASFAT has no interest in violence. Instead, the organization is based on economic empowerment and prosperity with an Islamic spin. Started with about a dozen members in the 1990s, NASFAT now has 1.2 million members in Nigeria and branches in 25 other countries. The organization has an entrepreneurship program, a clinic, a prison-outreach program, a task force to address HIV/AIDS, a travel agency, and a soft-drink company called Nasmalt, whose profits go to the poor. It even offers matchmaking. Although many conservatives believe that this engagement with the secular world is haram, forbidden, and distinctly un-Islamic, NASFAT argues that it is the only way to survive in the marketplace.

“We are competing for faithfuls,” NASFAT’s executive secretary, Zikrullah Kunle Hassan, said one blistering Sunday last August in Lagos. “Many people now want God. This is happening especially among the youth, that they feel they need to be committed to faith.” Gesturing to the streets choked with more than 100,000 men and women clad in shining white as they came from a prayer service at the Lagos Secretariat Mosque, he explained that NASFAT meets on Sundays so that Muslims have something to do while Christians attend church. “The space on Sunday is usually not dominated by Islam, but other faiths and other values. But when our people come here, they come and drink from the fountain of Islam.”

The prayer ground looked like a fair. Hawkers sold lemons from a wheelbarrow. Small booths offered pretty, scalloped hijabs, embroidered with “NASFAT” in blue. Men sat on prayer mats eating rice, while women attended a lecture on ways to make money that are in keeping with Islam.

I'll take that as a yes.

Are there any religious figures trying to help stop the fighting? Sort of. The article goes in depth discussing an interfaith group founded by two former rival militia leaders, one Christian, one Muslim.

For more than a decade now, James and Ashafa have traveled to Nigerian cities and to other countries where Christians and Muslims are fighting. They tell their stories of how they manipulated religious texts to get young people into the streets to shed blood. Both still adhere strictly to the scripture; they just read it more deeply and emphasize different verses.

Ahh, isn't that nice. Maybe there's hope for tolerance and understanding after all?

On one closed door, a bumper sticker read Combat AIDS with Shari’a. The method was clear: abstinence. The imam and the pastor share the same conservative moral values, which has also helped them to find common ground.

...

He identifies himself very much as a fundamentalist and sees himself as one who emulates Muhammad. Although he and Pastor James don’t discuss it, he also proselytizes among Christians. “I want James to die as a Muslim, and he wants me to die as a Christian. My Islam is proselytizing. It’s about bringing the whole world to Islam,” he told me that day.

Such missionary zeal drives both men, infusing their struggle to rise above their history of conflict with the same undercurrent of competitive tension that runs across the Middle Belt and the continent. As Pastor James told me at his office, Peace Hall, in Kaduna, he still believes strongly in absolute and exclusive salvation mandated by the gospel: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’” He still challenges Christians to rely on the strict and literal word, and he’s still uncompromising on fundamental issues of Christianity. “We see same-sex marriages in the United States as signs of end times: it’s Sodom and Gomorrah,” he told me. “But I also want to say you can believe what you want to believe. We have to find a space for coexistence.”

Not so much on the tolerance and compassion, I guess. But hey, this sounds like it's going to work out just fine!

*rolls eyes*

Honestly. I just cannot fathom this kind of insanity. It makes my head hurt.

Finally, the article managed to ask a seemingly 'deep' philosophical question that, in fact, has a remarkably simple answer:

So if religion has proven not to safeguard the car, not to cure malaria, not even to stop politicians from stuffing ballot boxes, is it worth fighting and dying for?

No.

This has been, as Atrios frequently says, another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.

Source: The Atlantic

Even More Science

Frontiers of Research

Oxford to Study... Faith?
Yeah.

University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.

Let's see. About ten percent, maybe as high as fifteen percent, of Americans are atheists.

This country hates Atheists more than any other social/ethnic group, even teh gays.

So... I'm guessing, if there are still that many self-described godless heathens, then the answer is no.

Source: Raw Story

Load of Blarney

The authenticity of the Blarney Stone, kissed by about 400,000 tourists a year, has been questioned by Mark Samuel, an archaeologist and architectural historian, and Kate Hamlyn in a new book.

According to legend, kissing the stone at Blarney Castle, near Cork, endows the kisser with the gift of gab or great eloquence and skill at flattery.

...

Blarney Castle dismisses the theory that the current stone is not the one with the claimed magical powers.

Marketing manager John Fogarty told AFP the Blarney Stone is a piece of the Stone of Scone or "Stone of Destiny", on which the kings of Scotland were crowned.

One legend says the Scone Stone is supposed to be the pillow stone said to have been used by the Biblical Jacob.

...

"McCarthy heard of the powers of the stone from a woman who was saved from drowning in Blarney Lake behind the castle. She told him he would get the gift of eloquence by kissing it," Fogarty said.

Wait, you mean an alleged magical rock found in a lake by a crazy woman might not, in fact, be magical? Or for that matter, the right 'magic' rock?

My faith in Scot-Irish sobriety and seriousness is forever shaken to the core!

Source: Raw Story

Self-Healing Rubber
Some French boffins have come up with a synthetic rubber that mends itself after cuts or damage at room temperature.

French chemists on Wednesday announced they had created rubber that heals itself after it has been cut, a breakthrough that could lead to clothes that self-mend if torn and toys that repair themselves if damaged by a tot.

The molecular concoction -- described by other scientists as having "a touch of magic about it" -- can self-heal at room temperature in around 15 minutes by simply pressing the damaged pieces together, they report in the British weekly science journal Nature.

Nifty. I hate it when my rubber clothes tear and have to be mended.

Err. (I presume they mean things like shoe soles here).

Oh, and there's a nifty bit at the end for anybody sick of hearing the 'ignorant Aztecs thought the Spanish were gods' story.

In a commentary also published by Nature, synthetic materials scientists Justin Mynar and Takuzo Aida noted that when the Spanish conquistadores first witnessed the Aztecs playing a game with a bouncing rubber ball, they thought such balls must be possessed by evil spirits.

"Imagine their reaction if, on cutting the ball in half, it was made as good as new simply by pressing the two halves together," they write.

"Even today, such a feat would have a touch of magic about it. But this is what (has been) achieved."

What was it Arthur C. Clarke said? Any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic?

Yeah. So it would appear.

Source: Raw Story

Spreadsheet Science
Sometimes all you need to excel is Excel.

Ha, ha, yeah. Sue me.

It took just a couple of hours using data available on the internet for University of Sydney scientists to discover that the Milky Way is twice as wide as previously thought.


Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler led a team that has found that our galaxy - a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across - is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years that had been previously thought.


Proving not all science requires big, expensive apparatus, Professor Gaensler and colleagues, Dr Greg Madsen, Dr Shami Chatterjee and PhD student Ann Mao, downloaded data from the internet and analysed it in a spreadsheet.

Ahh, astronomy. The only science where a 1 in 10 accuracy rate is considered the norm.

Source: University of Sydney

Gravity Lamp
An architect type boffin at a Virginia school has come up with a design for a gravity powered lamp. It works something like the ancient greek programmable robot; you raise a lead weight and its descent provides stored energy to perform a task.

Neat.

Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free -- completely independent of electrical infrastructure.

The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.

To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, Moulton said. "It's more complicated than flipping a switch but can be an acceptable, even enjoyable routine, like winding a beautiful clock or making good coffee," he said.

It doesn't say how long the lamp stays lit on a charge though, that I notice. Hopefully it will be quite a while. Having to constantly turn your light back on would make reading an annoying task.

Source: Virginia Tech News