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Serious Breeders. The Duggars' slogan: "Always pregnant"
comment posted at 1:46 AM on Jul-3-05

"Despite the gravity of the problem, I believe there is an answer. Put simply, it is this: offer greater latitude for religious speech and symbols in public debate, but also impose a stricter ban on state financing of religious institutions and activities."

A proposal byNoah Feldman for redrawing the line between church and state.
comment posted at 7:57 PM on Jun-29-05

Freegans !
Because so much is trashed in our society, a freegan lifestyle can be one of great abundance -- food, books, magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, pet care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good can be found in the discards of retailers, institutions, and individuals simply by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags.
Previously mentioned here. (via memepool)
comment posted at 8:05 PM on Jun-29-05

What Really Happened. The history the government hopes you DON'T learn!
comment posted at 6:59 PM on Jun-27-05

Obese people are the target of awe and mockery, but they're also real. The Washington Post offers another terrifying, saddening, and inspiring portrait of a morbidly obese man trying to get moving. If you must comment about this, try not to fat-bash. It's just tacky and predictable...
comment posted at 8:34 PM on Jun-26-05
comment posted at 8:36 PM on Jun-26-05

Hey! Didn't anybody notice that today is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, sponsored by those bleeding hearts at the UN? The UNODC is declaring "even occasional use of marijuana is a link in a long and dangerous cycle of crime, degradation and terrorism." In Afghanistan, 30 -or is it 60?- tons of drugs have been burned in large bonfires (If they're not sure how much, blame the contact high). Meanwhile China celebrated the day with a massive demonstraton and a few executions. The United Arab Emarites is issuing a stamp. And the U.S.ofA.? Well, it's on the State Department Calendar, but the Office of National Drug Control Policy has never heard of it. Still, you can send an Anti-Drugs Day Greeting to someone you know (is a user).

BREAKING NEWS: In Kenya, 49 Killed, Hundreds Harmed by Poisoned... er... Alcohol. (nevermind)
comment posted at 3:59 PM on Jun-26-05

The Civic Action Network : Firefox meets Le Resistance ! Introduced at this year's DemocracyFest 2005, CAN's idea of "Civic Action Teams" ( not too different from corporate "teams" ) - was made into a 50's era camp movie short. [Watch it:
Quicktime, Windows Media Viewer appr. 10-11 MB]. The real goal : weaning liberals from their fractious ways and convincing them that small group teamwork can be effective, fun, and difficult to infiltrate. "We admired the organizational strength of the right-wing and noted much of it was built on small, church-based structures.". Download their "Small Groups, Big Victories" as a pdf ( 1.8 MB).
comment posted at 3:56 PM on Jun-26-05
comment posted at 8:05 PM on Jun-26-05

Cheney checks into Vail hospital, White House may be lying about what happened...
While the White House insists that Vice President Cheney was rushed to the hospital in Vail, Colorado to see an orthopedist others suggest he "was whisked to the adjacent cardiac unit, suffering from what was described...as 'an angina attack.'"

For more on the long history of the the administration's obfuscation regarding Cheney's heart condition, read this.
comment posted at 1:11 PM on Jun-25-05
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Jun-26-05

Shell Eco Marathon UK is coming up in England (6-7 july). It is a race not for the swift, but for those who can drive immense distances in super-efficient vehicles. Two years ago, the current world record of 10,706 MPG was set at one of these events. The lessons learned are useful in development in other fuel-efficient cars, such as the 100 MPG Honda Insight. Interesting in these times of high oil prices, then, when considering that despite tactical driving, normal petrol cars rarely get better than 45 MPG. Diesels are slightly better, as illustrated on BBC Top Gear, where Clarkson drives an Audi A8 from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank of diesel. That's 800 miles.
comment posted at 6:19 AM on Jun-25-05
comment posted at 6:42 AM on Jun-25-05

“Thank you for your recent E-mail. I appreciate your concern. However, I am, at this time, completely satisfied with the size of my penis.” Says a Gizmodo post: Now I consider myself fairly well versed in penis lengthening—a skill introduced to me, inadvertently, by my 6th grade math teacher—but I did not realize one could become a medical doctor and specialize in the topic. They also point to a similar device mentioned in an earlier post. Ow.
comment posted at 1:25 PM on Jun-25-05

Second US case of Mad Cow confirmed. The initial rapid screening test in November was positive, but a more stringent test was negative, and the USDA told America that the cow was BSE-free. The agency did not mention that it had skipped the Western Blot test, used in 2003 to confirm the first U.S. mad cow.
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Jun-25-05

The delusional world of Robert Hendy-Freegard, assasin/spy/carsalesman The tale of a power-mad car salesman. The guy managed to get so many people to do so many crazy things that I suggest you read the link for yourself. Unbelievable.
comment posted at 6:36 AM on Jun-25-05

I felt I was pretty much prepared technically but I had this huge hole in my apprenticeship — dealing with actors. I had no experience of that. I had been filming fish for four years.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be presenting Risks and Reinvention: The Cinema of Louis Malle (June 24 - July 19). This extensive retrospective will include all of the great director's feature films and nearly all of his documentaries, including the rare seven-hour Phantom India. After its run at Lincoln Center, the retrospective will go on tour across the U.S. and Canada. Malle’s thriller Elevator to the Gallows will also receive a US theatrical release this summer. (via The Criterion Collection). More inside. — —
comment posted at 12:35 PM on Jun-23-05

Southern Baptist Convention targets gays "[ The SBC ] passed a resolution urging parents and churches to investigate whether their community schools promote homosexuality....It encourages Southern Baptists to “investigate diligently the curricula, textbooks and programs in our community schools and to demand discontinuation of offensive material and programs. ....It added a commendation for “godly teachers and students who feel a call from God to take a stand for Christ at secular schools to be a light shining in the darkness.” ” ( via Mainstream Baptist )
comment posted at 11:47 AM on Jun-23-05
comment posted at 11:55 AM on Jun-23-05
comment posted at 12:20 PM on Jun-23-05

Pirates, Global Warming and Intelligent Design. (oh my)
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Jun-23-05

Who can you trust if you can't trust the Wall Street Journal? RealClimate debunks the latest junk science on climate change from the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
comment posted at 11:40 AM on Jun-23-05

GoDaddy.com condones torture. One of the most important assets we are using to protect Americans both at home and abroad is our military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- “Gitmo.” (Blog posting from founder Bob Parson's highlighted on the front page of GoDaddy.com) [update: recanted]
comment posted at 11:07 AM on Jun-20-05

This might be the only time in your life you get to hear this because the finance industry survives soley on large-scale ignorance, so listen very closely. There is NO housing bubble in the US. NEVER invest in actively managed funds. Financial lamers do better than financial jocks (and almost everyone else). .

Sadly however most of you won't have the mathematical knowledge to differentiate the advice backed by several Nobel laureates and world-renowned academics from the "advice" of any of the thousands of horny little evangelists spruking their financial "theories" for profit or fame.
comment posted at 5:51 AM on Jun-20-05
comment posted at 10:18 AM on Jun-20-05
comment posted at 8:55 PM on Jun-20-05

The Global Housing Price Bubble is bursting. Prices are already declining in Australia and Britain. The Economist has another story that outlines how a global bursting of this bubble could be deleterious to the world's economy. The bubble is bigger than the stock market bubble of the late 90s. Will there be a smooth landing or will spending collapse when it cannot be funded on housing price gains?
comment posted at 8:48 PM on Jun-16-05

"This planet answers an ancient question," said team leader Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus argued about whether there were other Earth-like planets. Now, for the first time, we have evidence for a rocky planet around a normal star."
The star, Gliese 876, visible in the night sky, lies only 15 light-years away.
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Jun-14-05

The Consciometer - What if scientists could precisely measure when life begins and ends?
Common sense, law, medicine, and philosophy have long considered consciousness a central aspect of our moral existence as human beings. Sometime in the next decade or so, neuroscientists will likely identify the specific neural networks and activity that generate the vague but vital thing we call consciousness. An interesting read from Slate
comment posted at 3:09 PM on Jun-14-05

The Art of Loving.
What is the problem with modern man? In 1956, psychologist Erich Fromm questioned Western society's ability to foster love: "If we speak about love in contemporary Western culture, we mean to ask whether the social structure of Western civilization and the spirit resulting from it are conductive to the development of love. To raise the question is to answer it in the negative."
Almost 50 years later, what can we say about our culture now? Valentine's Day spending totaled $13 billion this year, but it seems modern man has not yet found love. Instead he fills it with "entertainment" and forms of pseudo-love which ultimately alienate him from others. Media from dawn to dusk: Media consumption averages ten hours per person per day in America. What's more, Americans are “media multi-tasking”: using different media at the same time. Ritalin Sales have soared. Americans carry an average $8,562 in debt on their credit cards. Hummers. Bling bling. Crunk juice. Hooking up. Baby mamas. Tweens. Obesity. Binge Drinking. Depression.
comment posted at 3:15 PM on Jun-14-05

It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, Jane Elliott, a elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa, conducted her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and on Oprah.

PBS's 1985 documentary A Class Divided is viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature participants' reactions. (Related: different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and a program evaluation and transcript of the exercise.)

Ms. Elliott recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
comment posted at 8:18 PM on Jun-13-05

"One lawyer said that his client... has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm." The age of this "client" when he was detained? 14 years old. The reply of the camp's public affairs officer: "They don't come with birth certificates."
comment posted at 8:20 PM on Jun-13-05

Private enterprise uber We Media ? Sponsored by U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, "The “Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act” (H.R. 2726) would let big cable and telecom companies shut down Community Internet and municipal broadband projects being planned across the country. The bill would prevent state or local governments from providing “any telecommunications service, information service or cable service” anywhere a corporation offers a similar service." Hands off those Internets, peasants.
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Jun-12-05
comment posted at 3:03 PM on Jun-12-05

more iraqgate: "Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’" "MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal."
comment posted at 2:48 PM on Jun-12-05

"When they emerged after 50 yards, the landscape no longer looked anything like the southern edge of the Amazon forest. It looked like Iowa." In Mato Grosso, Brazil the rainforest is vanishing. And all because of soybeans and beef. "If we were an aggressive tribe, we would have killed the land owners already," said Tupxi, one of the canoeists, who estimated his age at 77. " good Washpost story...
comment posted at 2:54 PM on Jun-12-05
comment posted at 7:26 AM on Jun-13-05
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Jun-13-05

We Media: "This report details the important considerations when exploring a collaborative effort between audience and traditional media organizations." A look at participatory journalism from the Media Center at the American Press Institute.
comment posted at 2:07 PM on Jun-12-05

"Creatures are out there that can control brains." [pdf]

The women "spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive", but were "less trustworthy and had more relationships with men". The men become "less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight". All "are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents". Why? Something has its tentacles in their brains. They probably got it from that cuddly old species, the domestic cat, which the parasite infects by making infected rats "almost taunt" the cats into eating them.

Parasites in the brain alter their host's behavior. It's not just video game fiction. Various multi-host parasites make their living by making their hosts less ambulatory and less willing to explore, by castrating them and making them less cautious of predators, or by forcing their hosts to stay out all night so as to be eaten in the morning. These parasites offer yet another example of how stupidly clever evolution can be, and raise questions about how free "free will" really is.
comment posted at 2:58 PM on Jun-12-05

Just a reminder: Living as we do in a highly politicized world, I think its worth reminding ourselves of what a past master at manipulating such a world had to say for himself
comment posted at 6:57 AM on Jun-9-05
comment posted at 9:21 PM on Jun-9-05
comment posted at 5:17 AM on Jun-10-05
comment posted at 3:18 PM on Jun-10-05
comment posted at 4:37 AM on Jun-12-05

Young man gets life sentence for helping his girlfriend end pregnancy. The girlfriend was not charged. Under the Texas Fetal Protection Law, a woman cannot be charged for causing the deaths of her own fetuses for any reason. The defense contended that Basoria punched herself while Flores was stepping on her, making it impossible to tell who caused the miscarriage.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Jun-8-05

A White House aide with no scientific training edited government reports to weaken the language linking greenhouse gases with climate change. Example of editing here. This comes on the heels of news that ExxonMobil was instrumental in the Bush administration's decision to reject the Kyoto Treaty.
comment posted at 9:41 PM on Jun-9-05

Donald Rumsfeld recently aimed critisicm at China's military spending. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?” A question he may well ask of himself. According to a report recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (in our fair city) Global Military Spending topped $1Trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of all military expenditures, while Britain and France each made up 5 percent of the total. In all, 15 countries accounted for 82 percent of the world's total military spending. The BBC reported last month that Chinese military spending increased by 12% in 2004 to $25Bn - or one twentieth of what the US spends.
comment posted at 11:04 AM on Jun-7-05

Shouldn't you cook salmon in your dishwasher? Poaching fish in the dishwasher is a virtually foolproof way to shock your friends, prepare a succulent meal, and do the dishes—all at the same time. Not all of the The Surreal Gourmet's offerings are quite so weird, but they might, as he claims, make you into a culinary hero.
comment posted at 10:39 AM on Jun-7-05

Scotlands diet was healthier in 1405 (within a lifetime of the Black Death) than today, according to archaeologists. Might we see the "Medieval diet" replace the "Mediterranean diet"? Some traditional food practitioners think so.
comment posted at 11:06 PM on Jun-6-05