Maybe, just maybe the music industry will get the message. Eventually.

via

The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat.
. . . .
When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin’s notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes.

Vladimir Bukovsky, “who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities,” explains how America’s use of torture “will destroy your nation’s important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East.”

[via]

Marines unload the body of 2nd Lieut. Jim Cathey, 24, from a commercial flight to Reno, Nevada, as passengers watch.

Clinging to Beck, Katherine Cathey of Brighton, Colorado, breaks down at the sight of the coffin of her husband Jim, a second lieutenant killed by a booby trap in Al Karmah. She cursed Beck when he arrived and wouldn’t speak to him for an hour. But by the time they reached the airport, she wouldn’t let go.

On the eve of the funeral, Katherine insisted on sleeping next to Jim’s body, so the Marines arranged a bed and offered to stand guard through the night. She fell asleep to music she and Jim had planned to play at their formal wedding celebration when he returned.

Don’t worry about this video, I’m pretty sure commercials aren’t lying to us.

My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.

Rodney Dangerfield (1921 – 2004)

[Quote:]

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand’s class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professor must be very happy – it’s not often you can give a hands-on lessons on fascism and totalitaianism like this..

[Quote:]

Maplecroft is a UK organization specializing in the coverage of the non-financial performance of global corporations and governments. Issues of concern include human rights, corporate governance and responsibility, the environment, and resource sustainability. Maplecroft crafts standard report documents, but presents its findings in an unusual way: it makes maps.

Maplecroft maps encompass the results of their work on responsibility and sustainability, along with material from more specialized groups like Amnesty International, the UN Development Program, and International Telecommunications Union. The maps appear to be updated relatively frequently, so few will contain substantively out-of-date information. They do require Flash, and I found the links to data explanations to be unresponsive on two different browsers. Nonetheless, most of the material is either self-explanatory or explained in the sidebar, and clicking on a given country will pull up an additional menu of information.

An amazing resource.

Link.

From Oscar Grillo’s Boludalia
Oscar was one of my earliest employers in animation, and his output of drawings is astoundingly prolific.
He has 2 other blogs, here, and here.