Archive for November, 2010
Pope Says Condoms Sometimes Permissible to Stop AIDS
Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:
VATICAN CITY — The use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS may be justified in certain cases, Pope Benedict says in a new book that could herald the start of sea change in the Vatican’s attitude to condoms.
In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday ahead of the book’s publication next week, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as “a first step toward moralization” even though condoms are “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.”
While some Roman Catholic leaders have spoken in the past about the limited use of condoms in specific cases to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as a lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility himself in public.
The Vatican newspaper unexpectedly published significant excerpts from the book on Saturday night, days before…
‘Laughology’ Strikes Ontario, With Hilarious, Bizarre and Comical Events
disinformation’s breakthrough “new laughter” film Laughology launches in Ontario, Canada this week with a series of events and screenings featuring demonstrations of laughter techniques, laughter contests and a laugh-in.
On Monday, Nov. 22nd, Laughology director and professional laughologist Albert Nerenberg speaks in downtown Toronto and about the repression of female laughter:
The Power of Female Laughter takes place Monday evening at 5:30 at the Duke of Westminster Pub at First Canadian Place, 77 Adelaide Street West and is being put on by the Toronto Chapter of 85 Broads. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.
Contact: 85BroadsTO@gmail.com
On Wednesday, Nov. 23rd, Laughology launches in the town of Collingwood, Ontario, with a new laughter demonstration and a feature screening. More info here:
http://www.town.collingwood.on.ca/node/3562
Finally, on Friday November 26th, a mass laugh-in precedes a screening of Laughology at the Revue Cinema in Toronto. Nerenberg will demonstrate new contagious laughter triggers, while there will be a short laughter competition before…
Gay Couple Weds As Flight Veers Over Canadian Airspace
Some couples dream of lavish white weddings in a chapel. Some think of a small ceremony on the beach. Others think of interesting ways just to make their marriage legal. From The Raw Story:
Same-sex marriages are not legal in most US states, so some gay couples are finding creative ways to tie the knot.
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, announced Thursday that he had witnessed a gay couple get married on a redeye flight from San Francisco to New York as it briefly crossed into Canadian airpace.
“There was a wedding on my @VirginAmerica flight to New York! The captain flew briefly over Canadian airspace so two gentleman could marry,” Mullenweg tweeted.
[Continues at The Raw Story]
Derrick Jensen on Identifying With “The System”
A clip of Endgame author Derrick Jensen discussing how crucial it is to the environmental struggle to understand who and what we identify with.
Girl’s Severed Hand Reattached To Leg
Simultaneously joyous and disturbing news via premier British medical science journal Orange UK:
Surgeons in China saved a little girl’s hand – by grafting it on to her leg for three months. Nine-year-old Ming Li lost her hand when she was run over by a tractor on her way to school in July. But her arm was too badly damaged to reattach it to her wrist so doctors temporarily attached it to her right calf instead.
Dr Hou Jianxi, spokesman for the hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, said the hand had now been transplanted back on to her arm. “When she came in, her left hand was completely severed from her body. It was very scary,” he told the Zhoukou Evening Post. “But Ming Li can now move her wrist again and her left hand is a healthy pink colour proving that the blood is circulating well.”
Li will need two more operations…
Everything You Need To Know About The Federal Reserve And ‘Quantitative Easing’
The people at Xtranormal explain “Quantitative Easing,” hammering everyone’s favorite private bank pretending to be a government agency, the Federal Reserve.
More fun with Xtranormal, this time about the Tea Party, here.
Fox News: Heaven Is For Real
Fox News (no, not a local affiliate) interviews a four-year-old boy who visited heaven after slipping out of consciousness during an emergency appendectomy. While there he met his dead grandpa and Jesus, among others. Watch journalist Gretchen Carlson have her mind blown by this “amazing story.”
BacillaFilla: The Bacteria That Could Make You Grow Concrete In Your Mouth
Annalee Newitz reports from the frontier of biotechnology for io9.com, asking a very pertinent question:
A group of UK students have engineered a new bacteria they call BacillaFilla. It swarms into concrete cracks, then secretes a gluey mixture that hardens into concrete filler. But what if this bacteria escaped into the wild and started reproducing?
Newitz describes the way that BacillaFilla works and concludes:
But what happens when that future arrives, and workers accidentally inhale some of that BacillaFilla? Maybe it lands on their teeth, whose calcium content is close enough to being like concrete that suddenly you’ve got workers with a mouthful of concrete. Or maybe you’ll start to see walls and bridges growing tumors: Places where the BacillaFilla didn’t stop growing after the cracks were filled in.
Pretty scary stuff!
Dismembered Fingers Found Near Quarters of Alleged Rogue US Army Unit
AFP reports, via CommonDreams:
An investigator told how he found dismembered fingers near the quarters of an alleged rogue US army unit accused of killing Afghans for sport and taking trophies from the bodies.
The gruesome testimony came as a third US soldier faced a pre-trial hearing over the alleged killings — after which the rogue soldiers allegedly posed for photos with their victims — in southern Afghanistan earlier this year.
If proved in a full court martial, the crimes would be among the worst committed by US forces in Afghanistan, and could deal a blow to efforts to win over the support of ordinary Afghans in the war-torn country.
Private Andrew Holmes, one of five soldiers accused of going rogue, listened quietly as Special Agent Benjamin Stevenson described finding severed fingers near where members of the unit lived.
Army prosecutors allege Holmes participated in the execution of an Afghan the southern Kandahar province in…
Mall Fever: Will Christmas Shopping Revive The Economy This Year As It Hasn’t In Years Past?
Funny how, back in 1929, we had a black Thursday and then a Black Friday as the market crashed, plunging the country into a depression. Now we have every retailer in every mall in America on their knees praying for a prosperous black Friday the day after Thanksgiving.
The Shops at Wiregrass in Wesley Chapel, Florida. Photo: Wdwic Pictures (CC)
If you read this argument before, it’s because I have been making it since 2007, year in and year out. That’s on account of the reality that our economy is driven more by consumption than production, and most consuming takes place during the holidays.
So once again we are being asked to join a global ritual even if we are broke.
Get in gear people, and get your wallets back to the mall: do your duty for Santa and Wall Street. It will be difficult for the economic recovery to make much headway without…
What If Ron Paul Was The Shit?
Here’s something you won’t hear from the mainstream anytime soon…
Ron Paul, from a year and a half ago: “What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq? What if the American people learn the truth: that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security, that it never changes from one administration to the next?”
And before you reactionaries react, Ron Paul spoke out against the Tea Party: See Ron Paul’s Shocking message to the Tea Party.
Top Cop Tells How To Handle Police Encounters
Neill Franklin is the Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He advised the producers of the film 10 Rules for Dealing with Police and dispenses his best advice on dealing with cops for Huffington Post:
As a 33-year law enforcement veteran and former training commander with the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department, I know how easy it is to intimidate citizens into answering incriminating questions or letting me search through their belongings…
20% Of Americans Are Mentally Ill
This could explain a lot of the craziness we’ve seen in this country of late, methinks. Kathleen Doheny reports for WebMD:
Nearly one in five adult Americans has experienced mental illness in the past year, according to a new government survey, with women, the unemployed, and young adults more likely than others to be affected.
Among those one in five — representing 45 million Americans — the survey found that nearly 20%, or nearly 9 million, also had substance dependence or abuse problems in the previous year.
The results are in the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Mental Health Findings conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
“It’s a sobering report,” says Peter Delany, PhD, director of the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality at SAMHSA.
Access to care is wanting, with less than four…
Meet Guinness’s Ultimate Record Breaker
Ashrita Furman is the record breaking equivalent of the tabloid stars who are famous for being famous. Furman has recorded more world records, as recorded by Guinness, than anyone else. None of his records are really that impressive, only his obsession with racking up more and more of them. Jilian Mincer profiles him for the Wall Street Journal:
Most visitors to Antarctica go to see the penguins and the glaciers. Ashrita Furman went to hop on a pogo stick.
Mr. Furman, seeking to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest mile on a pogo stick, jumped up and down a landing strip on the Antarctic tundra in 2003…
Explosion Traps Dozens Of New Zealand Miners
Again? Hopefully this time the miners won’t have to wait 2 months to see sunlight again. The New York Times reports:
At least two dozen men were trapped underground after an explosion on Friday rocked the country’s largest coal mine in a mountainous region in the country’s South Island.
Authorities said it was too early to determine a cause of the explosion, and said no deaths had been reported from the accident. Local media reported two people had been pulled safely from the collapsed mine, located near the town of Atarau near the west coast of the South Island.
Earlier in the day Pike River Coal, the company operating the mine, said 27 people were in the mine, but it was not clear whether the two men who had emerged were included in that figure. The New Zealand National Police was unable to confirm the exact number missing.
Rescue teams were assessing the safety of…
What Makes People Vote Republican?
Jonathan Haidt wrote back in 2008:
What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason…
Dutch Government Pushes Tourist Ban In Cannabis Coffeeshops
If you’d like to experience Amsterdam’s famous coffee shops, I suggest booking your flight soon. From Reuters:
The Dutch government said on Wednesday it wanted to ban tourists from buying cannabis in “coffee shops,” where hash is on sale legally, as part of a national crackdown on drug use.
The government, which took office last month, has agreed to limit the sale of cannabis to Dutch residents to curb crime linked to its production and trading.
The Netherlands has one of Europe’s most liberal soft drug policies and its coffee shops are a popular tourist attraction, especially in Amsterdam and border cities near Belgium and Germany.
But some cities near the border with Belgium have clamped down on drug tourism, and the Dutch minister for security and justice confirmed Wednesday a wider crackdown after coalition parties agreed to push for a ban in September.
[Continues at Reuters]
Fox’s Roger Ailes Calls NPR Nazis
Roger Ailes giving Congressional testimony
Way to go Roger, the rest of the media is going to love you more than ever. Sample quote from Howard Kurtz’s interview with Ailes for the Daily Beast, where he discusses the executives at NPR:
They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”
Elsewhere in the interview Ailes says Obama thinks differently from most Americans; defends Murdoch’s GOP donations; admits Glenn Beck sometimes goes too far; slams Jon Stewart as a conservative-basher; explains why he rode to Juan Williams’ rescue; and sees NPR as taxpayer-funded propaganda. The kind of man you’d like as your neighbor, right?
Part 1 of the interview here. Part 2…
Former Jet Blue Flight Attendant Steven Slater Becomes Rapper
Jet Blue flight attendant, Steven Slater, received time in the spotlight aboard a flight for quitting his job and exiting on an inflatable slide. However, his fifteen minutes of fame didn’t seem to be enough. In a country where fifteen minutes can be stretched into 3 seasons worth of fame, he has now decided to become a rapper. Line 2, a cell phone app that provides in-flight texting ability on airplanes that have Wi-Fi, has formed a contract with Slater. Steven Slater’s rap single, “I’m A Rapper Bitches”:
