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Flickr’s Pixelsurgeon has remixed a bunch of BBC news-footage in which the anchors, having signed off, just look at one another with relief and sit silently waiting for the fade-out, calling the result, “The Day There Was No News.” The effect is nothing short of wonderful.
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I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage—orange peels, tea leaves—and the only way for anyone to bathe was to fill a bucket with cold water. In a country where workers normally suppress their complaints for fear of getting fired, employees at this factory couldn’t resist telling us the truth. “We work so hard for so little pay,” said one middle-aged woman with undisguised anger. We could only guess how hard—the place kept no time cards. Painted in large characters on the factory walls was a slogan: “If you don’t work hard today, look hard for work tomorrow.” Inspirational, in a way.
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The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.
The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.
Is there anything that the Soviet Union used to do that the GOP still has to catch up on? Except for big furry hats, that is?
One of my favorite things about humanity is that for essentially any issue, material, object, or behavior you can think of, someone has thought about it really deeply.
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For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
People sometimes wonder what Christ was thinking about on the cross. Now we know. He was thinking about the time, thousands of years in the future, when a man would make a sacrifice so pure, so selfless, so deep, and to such a great effect that it would make the Crucifixion and the salvation it wrought look like a lump of dogshit by comparison. Well done, George.
I am stunned at the… I’m not even sure there is a word for whatever this is.
I nominate ’sociopathetic.’
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The Catholic Church’s top astronomer has said there is no contradiction between the one true faith and believing in aliens.
The statement will surely spark speculation that the Church knows more than it’s letting on and is preparing the world for some pretty big revelations, or at least laying the groundwork for mass conversions of extra-terrestrials once we’ve tracked them down.
José Gabriel Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory, admitted the possibility of extra-terrestrial life in an interview with the Papacy’s inhouse daily L’Osservatore Romano, titled “The Alien is my Brother”.
The paper quoted him saying: “It is possible, even if until now, we have no proof. But certainly in such a big universe this hypothesis cannot be excluded.”
“This is not in contradiction with our faith, because we cannot establish limits to God’s creative freedom,” Funes continued. “To say it with St Francis, if we can consider some earthly creatures as ‘brothers’ or ’sisters’, why could we not speak of a ‘brother alien’? He would also belong to the creation.”
Summer silly season is starting early…
(and on that note, let me present…)
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The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
“No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”
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For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.
“As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are better protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
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Democrat Travis Childers (CHILL-ders), a court official in Prentiss county, beat Republican Greg Davis, mayor of Southaven, in a runoff election for House district MS-01 by a margin of 53% to 47% yesterday. The seat, which is R+10, became free when Gov. Haley Barbour appointed its occupant, Roger Wicker, to the Senate to fill the vacancy created when Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) resigned. This is the third stright loss for the GOP in a contested heavily Republican district this year. On March 8, scientist Bill Foster (D) defeated businessman Jim Oberweis (R) in IL-14 an R+5 district in the Chicago suburbs. On May 3, Louisian state legislator Don Cazayoux defeated former representative and newspaper publisher Woody Jenkin in R+7 LA-06. And now MS-01. All three races saw the national parties heavily involved. Both the NRCC and the DCCC spent upwards of $1 million on these races and outside groups, such as the conservative Freedom’s Watch, poured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The MS-01 loss is especially painful to the GOP for three reasons. First, the Republicans tried very, very hard here, pouring in huge amounts of money and having Gov. Haley Barbour and Vice President Dick Cheney campaign for Davis. Second, in IL-14 and LA-06 they could argue they had flawed candidates. That doesn’t hold here. Greg Davis is a popular mayor who has done a good job and has never been involved in any scandals. Third, this election was the second field test of the Republicans’ November strategy, which they rolled out against Cazayoux and refined here. They ran ads bitterly attacking Childers as a close associate and fellow traveler of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. They called him a LIBERAL (them’s fightin’ words in Mississippi). They said he didn’t represent Mississippi values. They tried everything. It didn’t work.
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The Rev. John Hagee, the fiery evangelical pastor who endorsed John McCain, issued an apology to Catholics for disparaging remarks he made, including accusing the Roman Catholic Church of supporting Adolf Hitler.
Louisiana is still waiting for an apology for his Katrina remarks…
