[From the Wikipedia:]

“War Pigs” is an anti-war song by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath from their 1970 album, Paranoid. The song talks about war and the absurdities of those who make war without regard to the powerless people who are sent to die. It’s sometimes called a protest song.

It is the opening track on Paranoid, Black Sabbath’s best selling album. It can also be found on every live and compilation album by the band (except Cross Purposes Live) along with “Paranoid” itself and “Iron Man“. The outro to War Pigs has its own name: “Luke’s Wall”.

Originally intended to be the title-track, the name of the album was changed to Paranoid, as Black Sabbath’s record company feared a backlash by supporters of the Vietnam War. It is one of Black Sabbath’s most popular songs, and is still played on Classic Rock stations regularly. The riff, as with most Sabbath songs, is powerful and memorable, as are the eerie verses, which feature Osbourne singing alone (using a melody cribbed from their earlier “Behind The Wall Of Sleep”) and punctuated at every line by a guitar lick.

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This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it.

And after you get to the hopeful ending, your will be most upset by these paragraphs:

Five days later, the New York Times ran a front-page story about psychiatrists in Minnesota who were collecting money from drug manufacturers for prescribing atypical antipsychotics, including Abilify and Geodon. According to the Times, “Atypicals have side effects that are not easy to predict in any one patient. These include rapid weight gain and blood sugar problems, both risk factors for diabetes; disfiguring tics, dystonia and in rare cases heart attacks and sudden death in the elderly.”

Side effects like our son’s — almost certainly caused by a unique combination of the drugs and autistic catatonia — were not explicitly cited. These facts, however, were:

“In Minnesota, psychiatrists collected more money from drug makers from 2000 to 2005 than doctors in any other specialty,” the Times reported. “Total payments to individual psychiatrists ranged from $51 to more than $689,000, with a median of $1,750. Since the records are incomplete, these figures probably underestimate doctors’ actual incomes.”

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During the Pirate Bay raid in May of last year, the Swedish police confiscated 180 servers, most of which had no trace of TPB’s data. Despite the fact that the “offending” data that needs to be analysed has already been copied, the servers have not been returned to TPB up until today.

The police and prosecutor Håkan Roswall desperately tried to find something they could use against the Pirate Bay crew, but it now seems that they have very little to go on. Brokep, one of the Pirate Bay admins writes on his blog:

“I talk to alot of people that are somehow connected to other interesting people – one of them told me that the police officer in charge of the case against The Pirate Bay actually has _nothing_ to give the District Attorney. Still he’s pressing charges.”

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

Rod Serling (1924 – 1975)

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Former state lawmaker Ted Klaudt is facing criminal charges including eight counts of rape and additional charges of stalking and sexual contact with a child.

One of the victims was a former legislative page who was reportedly assaulted while staying with Klaudt in his Pierre hotel room during the 2006 legislative session.

Klaudt, 49, of Walker, was arrested this morning.

The charges, which involve two girls, were filed this morning in two South Dakota counties.

He’s accused of performing “ovary checks” and “breast exams” on one of the girls under the guise that he was helping her to donate her eggs, according to court records.

When the girl began to cry, he would give her beer or alcohol, the documents state.

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Ted Klaudt, 49, a Republican rancher from Walker, faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking.

Court documents mention five possible victims. Three were foster children between the ages of 15 and 19 who lived with Klaudt’s family. One is a cousin of one of those girls, and the fifth is a friend of Klaudt’s daughter.

And here is Washington Post on South Dakota’s attempt to ban all abortions last year, which would have outlawed them even in cases of rape or incest.