A Tale of Two Charlatans

I finally got something I wanted for Xmas: Grief vampire Sylvia Brown(e) blasted in the media, online...

"Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight – three women who went missing over a decade ago and were presumed dead – have been found to be alive. This item especially interested me because in 2004, on the totally irresponsible Montel Williams Show, “psychic” Sylvia Browne told Amanda Berry’s mom that her daughter was dead, causing her great shock and sorrow. And the mother, Jouwana Miller, went to her grave believing – only on Browne’s word – that her daughter had been murdered. She died in March of 2006, and friends were of the opinion that her passing was hastened by Browne’s totally uninformed and callous guess…"

SWIFT


Her non-explanation for this unfortunate lapse:

“I am so relieved that Amanda Berry and the other women have been found and are safe with their families. Of course I do feel very bad telling Amanda’s mother on the show that I believed her daughter was not alive, and I’m so so glad that I was wrong. I had a vision of her being held underwater, but I had interpreted it to have a different meaning. She was not being held under water but was being held down.” 

“Only God is right all the time but of course I’m wrong. But after 50 years of doing this work, I’d better be more right than wrong. I always say I hope I’m wrong. When it comes to this, I hope I’m wrong.”

Keep on hoping. What's especially rich is hearing other psychics blast her. (professional jealousy, perhaps?)

The Daily Beast


Here's the study Randi mentioned:

"This article is structured in terms of known and unknown outcomes. The criteria for a correct prediction is that it mostly matches a case referenced in a newspaper, and the criteria for a wrong prediction is that Browne’s claim is the opposite of what actually occurred. The metric for the final accuracy count is based on what is correct compared to the unknown or wrong claims. As this article shows, in the 115 available cases Browne was correct zero times and wrong twenty-five times."

CSI


BTW, John "Biggest Douche In The Universe" Edward [no letter 's'] was recently profiled on Glenn Beck's site. Strange world.

⚡☺⚡

In other glee-filled news, John "Dickless" McCormick has been convicted of fraud:

"A jury at the Old Bailey found Jim McCormick, 57, from near Taunton, guilty on three counts of fraud over a scam that included the sale of £55m of devices based on a novelty golfball finder to Iraq. They were installed at checkpoints in Baghdad through which car bombs and suicide bombers passed, killing hundreds of civilians."

Doubtful News

Eight years? He got ten:

"The biggest customer was the Iraqi government, which spent over £85m on thousands of the devices from 2008 to 2010. McCormick, who still insists he hasn't had customer complaints about the efficacy of the devices, also claimed in court to have sold them to the military in Kenya, Egypt, the prison service in Hong Kong, and border control in Thailand."

The Register


Meanwhile, in Thailand:

"Fraud charges are likely to be laid against Thai agencies which bought bomb and drug detectors from a discredited British firm... McCormick made an estimated 50 million pounds (2.1 billion baht) from sales of the device in countries such as Pakistan, Lebanon, Mexico, and Thailand."

Bangkok Post


Meanwhile, in Iraq:

"The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651’s clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country’s military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer. 

“'I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,' General Jabiri said. 'I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.'”

A legend in his own mind. I predict an unexpectedly detour in General Jabiri's career. Not that I'm psychic...

NYT


And finally, back in the UK...

"An unemployed man has been convicted of making fake bomb detectors in his garden shed."

Portsmouth News

How many charlatans is that now?

 ⚡☺⚡

Our Wacky World—4/23/2013

Obits...

Roger Ebert. Storm Thorgerson. Here are some of Storm's album covers.

Oh, and some woman from the UK died, too.

See you in Hell

Now that all the important news is out of the way, there was a bombing in Boston. Cue the assholes on Twitter. Cue the conspiracy theorists. The inevitable call for torturing a US citizen (note the comments). OK, so they didn't actually use the word "torture" but we know.

Let's see—how far is Boston from Mexico?

"We know that al Qaeda has camps with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border," Gohmert agreed. "We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics when they're radical Islamists. We know these things are happening, and it's just insane to not protect ourselves and make sure that people come in -- as most people do, they want the freedoms we have."

Crooks & Liars

One track

Chalk up another one for some idiot terrorists:

"Dzhokhar and Tamerlan's motive—or motives—is still unclear. But that's not the only unknown. Many of the Tsarnaevs' actions last week seem baffling in retrospect. Here are some of the most confounding things they did..."

Mother Jones

What does the rest of the world think?

"So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks)."

Guardian

"An analysis this year by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that 'in states that require a background check for every handgun sale, 38 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners.' Six times more women were murdered by intimate partners than by strangers in 2010. A study published in the Journal of Urban Health in 2002 found that women were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun in states with high gun ownership than in states with low gun ownership."

Atlantic

Big noise from North Korea

The Scooter Store™ finally got nailed (I've been waiting a long time for this to go down):

"Those investigations came after a scathing investigative piece by CBS News about the company. Former salesmen and doctors who prescribed chairs in the past explained the company’s tactics: contact doctors’ offices incessantly to wear them down and convince them to prescribe scooters and power chairs whether the patient really needed one or not"

Consumerist

"The defendants assigned premature babies with low birth weight varying oxygen levels by 'the flip of a coin,' without disclosing the risks to their parents... The parents claim their children who were born or treated at The University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital suffered permanent neurological and vision damage, and that other babies died as a result of the study."

Courthouse News

“Hermann Goering saved my life.” (amazing):

Turley's Blog

"...go into the desert or some other remote place, and shine a flashlight or laser at any light they see in the sky. If it appears to flicker back, that counts as an instance of interstellar communication... I once spoke with a fellow at a UFO meeting who had been through Greer's 'training,' and he was very impressed by it. He explained that, at first, he could not see any of the ET craft that Greer was talking about. But as the training progressed, he learned how to perceive them." (not so amazing):

BadUFOs

"...the eel reportedly chewed through the man's colon, perforating his large intestine, and became stuck in his body cavity. Medical team members reportedly said the eel, which was 'simply trying to find its way out,' was alive when removed but died shortly thereafter. According to The Sun, the man is still recovering at the hospital and might face animal cruelty charges."

Huffington Post

"My invention easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you."

Telegraph

"...the FDA eventually concluded that the lab's violations were so 'egregious' and of such a 'pervasive nature' that studies conducted there between April 2005 and August 2009 might be worthless. About 100 drugs, including sophisticated chemotherapy compounds and addictive prescription painkillers, had been approved for sale in the United States at least in part on the strength of Cetero Houston's tainted tests. Stone said he expected the FDA to move swiftly to compel new testing and to publicly warn patients and doctors. 

"Instead, the agency decided to handle the matter quietly, evaluating the medicines with virtually no public disclosure of what it had discovered. It pulled none of the drugs from the market, even temporarily, letting consumers take the ibuprofen and other medicines it no longer knew for sure were safe and effective. To this day, some drugs remain on the market despite the FDA having no additional scientific evidence to back up the safety and efficacy of these drugs."

Atlantic

"The state announced yesterday that it has dropped its bid to privatize the state’s prisons because none of the four companies that wanted the job showed they could meet court-ordered requirements for inmate care... The private prison companies also proposed wages and benefits that are half what security staff at the prisons earn now"

Concord Monitor

You're irrelevant

"I am a guy that is becoming a pink disposable feminine pad, and later on I will be pressed against a soft vulva for a woman's period. I'm looking for more open-minded friends who are comfortable about this fate for me. I have wanted to become a pad since I was ten years old."

A Feminine Pad

"Wise Media is accused of placing unauthorized $9.99/month charges on wireless bills for so-called “premium services” that sent text messages with horoscopes, flirting, love tips and other information."

Consumerist

"The archbishop of the Washington diocese said Easter Sunday that he was concerned that Catholics would be shunned for opposing same sex marriage -- and that it was gay and lesbian Americans who need to "make room" for the very people discriminating against them."

Crooks & Liars


This was either a brilliant Poe or the most clueless shit I've ever read:

"Suzy's mistake, it seems, was interpreting the advice 'Just be yourself' literally. Like perhaps someone told her, 'Applying to colleges? Ah, just be yourself,' and she accepted this as an instruction to pursue no activities other than being herself.

"Being yourself is not a talent. If you worked two full-time jobs all the way through high school and one of them was 'being yourself' and the other was 'trying your best,' you actually worked zero full-time jobs. It's important to make time for yourself, of course, but you should be making other things in addition to that. Like goals and plans and effort."

Gawker

This one's for real:

"DOUBLE FUCKING NEWSFLASH: SIGMA NU IS NOT GOING TO WANT TO HANG OUT WITH US IF WE FUCKING SUCK, which by the way in case you're an idiot and need it spelled out for you, WE FUCKING SUCK SO FAR. This also applies to you little shits that have talked openly about post gaming at a different frat IN FRONT OF SIGMA NU BROTHERS. Are you people fucking retarded? That's not a rhetorical question, I LITERALLY want you to email me back telling me if you're mentally slow so I can make sure you don't go to anymore night time events."

Gawker

FAIL

Our Wacky World—3/29/2013

More innuendo against rats (will it never cease?):

"A faulty switchboard was blamed for the incident, and in the kind of explanation that doesn't exactly inspire confidence, TEPCO says a 15-cm (6-inch) dead rat found 'near' the switchboard may have been linked to the failure. The company says it will further investigate the dead animal and possibly-associated 'burn marks' on the switchboard."

The Register

Here's a wider view of the alleged rodent. 

It's official: Jesus will show up this September—assuming this isn't another hoax site. And Obama looks like Satan (or vice versa). Even worse, he has a food taster.

CIA analysts recall the day they had to prepare for Dick Cheney:

"That month, Vice President Cheney scheduled a meeting with our Branch to discuss our assessment of Iraq’s relationship with al-Qaida and 9/11. It was his second visit to the Branch; there always seemed to be more questions. The Branch Chief called us together for a practice session in a bland conference room a few days before their arrival. At this so-called 'murderboard' session, we weren’t stripping down our analysis to find data we’d missed. We were practicing how to defend our perspective when questioned by the Vice President of the United States."

Wired

You meant to say the Sixth Commandment, right?

"The corpse of Modester Gida (30), who was from Nyamweda area in Mhondoro under Headman Mashingaidzwa's kraal reportedly left mourners shell-shocked after the deceased woman's vagina mysteriously disappeared and was replaced with a penis... 'What happened here was so scary. It's true a male organ grew on my aunt's body. We don't know what kind of a disease it is but we believe it's an act of witchcraft'"

My Zimbabwe

"Hearing all this, I was less shocked than intrigued. As an anthropologist who studies the region, I was familiar with the problem of penis snatching."

Alternet

"Johnson said in court Thursday that the trial will delve into the hip-hop music culture and the notion that a secret society called the Illuminati has control over the success of some performers. It was the belief that a sacrifice had to occur in order to join the Illuminati that allegedly incited El-Amin... Investigators recovered more than a pound of marijuana from the Athens Avenue home...as well as literature dealing with the Illuminati and its alleged connection to the music industry."

Richmond Times-Dispatch

"This man is a time traveler, James from the Future. He says he does not know what year he has come back from, but it is after the New Age or whatever you call it has already occurred, that great Transformation in Consciousness that will be happening any day now. (Many people expected it to occur in 2012, but were disappointed.) James says he does not know why he was sent back, but he thinks it is to act as a historian to make better records about what was happening before the Transformation."

Bad UFOs

"The National Rifle Association came under fire late Thursday from members of a gun-control advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., after reports surfaced of Newtown residents receiving robocalls and pro-gun postcards from the NRA."

Huffington Post

"Fifty-six-year-old Robert A. Lyzenga, a former pastor at Sunrise Christian Reformed Church in Lafayette, was charged Thursday with five counts of child exploitation and five counts of voyeurism... At least one external hard drive was found to have numerous videos and still photos of juvenile and adult females taken in the church’s restroom."

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

"...people are really overreacting about this there just some kids having fun all they did was break a couple of milk jugs the worst damage was that they knocked some cans down and break a single light it may be annoying for the employees but it certainly does not need SEVERAL misdemeanors maybe one thats all"

Gawker

"...a new utility sink is installed in the men's restroom outside the House chamber in the state Capitol in Nashville, Tenn. Legislative staffers and building administrators have sought to reassure some concerned lawmakers that the new sink was not installed as a special facility to support Muslim prayer rituals, but rather to make it easier for custodial staff to fill buckets and clean mops"

Tennessean

"...a federal jury in Alabama has found the president of the Republic for the United States of America guilty of a number of federal tax crimes."

TPM

Game over, man

Happy Anniversary

Well it was almost ten years ago that the Grand Debacle began. The peace, I mean. The war, the easy part, started ten years ago today. I'll jump the gun by thanking everyone ahead of time.

A big round of applause for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Wolfowitz et al for the most expensive clusterfuck in memory.

And that other guy—what was his name? Haven't seen him lately. Umm, uh... oh yeah, the fearless leader of glorious New Iraq, his royal highness Ahmed Chalabi, bullshit artist extraordinaire.

Special thanks to Curveball, without whose expertise at fooling the CIA (but not the Germans) the United States would now be under Islamic rule.

Last but not least, the ultimate thanks to Saddam Hussein, without whose direct responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and huge cache of WMDs the neo-conservatives would never have had the excuse they were praying for.

My condolences to all the dead: Iraqis, coalition personnel, Phil Donahue's TV show and especially the bin Laden family. Let us pause for a moment of silence in remembrance of Colin Powell's reputation and take one final piss on the desiccated corpse of enabler-in-chief Tony Blair's career.

Thank "Bob" Iraqi oil paid for the whole thing. We needed the money after George W. Bush cut taxes during a war. (OK, so he cut them before the war but he didn't put the money back...)

$Ω

"I sit in the darkness of my own device / and search my soul for paradise"—Roz Williams (R.I.P.)

Our Wacky World—3/10/2013

Having dealt with the Russian meteor, José Canseco now weighs in on gravity.

"Now we have to add Israel to the ever-growing list of countries that are home to bigoted shitbag soccer fans" Meanwhile, along similar lines in Egypt... Some Buddhist sexual harassment... '90s TV show theme song shuts down school system...

Beauty before comfort

How did the human race ever survive without "APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIFUGAL FORCE"?

They have some dumb cops in Tennessee:

"The elderly couple would not seem to fit a profile for a cartel member, but the Tennessee police felt that they had made a critical mistake in their drug conspiracy. Their car had a picture of a marijuana leaf — apparently a common marking for drug mules. It turned out to be a Buckeye leaf decal. After being detained, the police reportedly told the Ohio State football fans that they needed to be more careful in the future and take off the decal. It appears to be the view of the Tennessee police that a picture of something looking like pot is enough for reasonable suspicion."

Turley's Blog

They have some dumb "pre-med' students in Florida:

"Washington, who said he's a 'pre-med" student at the College of Central Florida, said he would never intentionally hurt his daughter and only added less than a capful of bleach to about two ounces of her formula because a classmate from school told him she used the remedy with her child."

OCLA

They have some dumb teachers in Windsor:

"Parents at a South Windsor school are expressing outrage after teachers led graduating students to believe they were heading to Disney World for a year-end trip - only to reveal the next day that the kids were the butt of an elaborate joke.... One of the teachers recorded the scene on an iPad and it was later shown to another class so they too could join in the teachers' merriment."

The Windsor Star

There are some dumb people in office:

"'You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,' he said. However, he said he had not 'done any analysis' of the difference in CO2 from a person on a bike compared to the engine of a car"

Seattle Bike Blog

"In a stunning, 134-page ruling, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission this week ordered the six cops back on the job, finding that “the present state of hair testing for drugs of abuse ... does not meet the standard of reliability necessary to be routinely used” to fire someone."

Boston Herald 

"That's right, Vanderbilt's nondiscrimination policy actually discriminates against conservative Christians. So the state should sanction Vanderbilt by essentially abolishing its police force. We're not making this up."

Nashville Scene

It's that time of the year again—time for UFO nuts to get together:

"She showed drawings of supposed ET/human hybrids, in various stages of integration into the human genome, as well as photos of persons alleged to be late-stage hybrids who are (mostly) successful at passing for human. Some are fashion models, whose gaunt, angled face is said to demonstrate alien ancestry, although anorexia and heroin might produce the same effect."

Bad UFOs


So the Hitler Channel is running a new series entitled The Bible. How (bad) was it?:

"With the pace of a music video, the characterizations of a comic book and the political-correctness quotient of a Berkeley vegetarian commune — laughably, the destruction of Sodom is depicted without the faintest hint of the sexual peccadillo that takes its name from the city — this production makes Cecil B. DeMille look like a sober theologian."

I hear that the CGI angels really kick ass at Sodom. (Hollywood Reporter) On a related topic, some Ark builders would like your money.


Frightened white people speak:

“I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist ....we were healing quite well as a nation on racial issues until Obama came along and now we have a lot of racial discord... If Obama can take your guns away he can take your car, he can take your home, he can take your bank account, he can take your very life”

Rightwing Watch

"Here are some other recent examples of sleep texts, as posted on Twitter and Instagram:

• "Wtf did they put in those little bomb things."
• "No bounces issues with monh..., pillow helps"
• "I legittt wish veggird were enough to fuelme"
• "The bullet holes really look great on my teddy bear."

CNN

"God will dispatch an angel to lead miracles; rid you of your enemies; bless you with prosperity; heal you; give you longevity; give you an inheritance you knew nothing about; and give you back everything the devil has stolen from you. In other words, these are the ways in which the TBN Praise-a-thon is about you and not about Paul and Jan Crouch or Steve Munsey or Benny Hinn or Eddie Long or anybody else making more money. Instead, if you give, you will be blessed in miraculous ways."

Salon

"The vials were sealed, labeled, and placed in Brooks's office until a waste-management firm could arrange a pickup. Johnson, who was raised Mormon and attended undergrad at BYU ('where figure drawing classes models wore bikinis or speedos') immediately claimed censorship. 'I am happy that he had to sit with 68 vials of my cum in his presence'"

NYmag


"Sain told police that he didn't mean to threaten Fields, and regrets the language he used."—No doubt. Here's an example:

"Rhonda Fields, N----- C---, Mother of -----, Death to Both, All N----- Back to Africa, F--- you, F--- Your Laws, I Keep my 30 Round Magazines, There Will Be Blood!, I'm Coming For You, N----- B----"

Occupy America


Prosperity Gospel is the cash cow of evangelism and now you can take a test to find out if your church is living up to its tenets:

"Does your church teach that God wants you to be a millionaire, yet your pastor is the only millionaire in the congregation? - 1 point"

Religion Dispatches


File this under "sounds really fucking familiar":

"His bestselling 1954 book The Seduction of the Innocent convinced parents and politicians alike that comics were a direct cause of violence, drug use, and homosexuality among young people. It led to the restrictive editorial code issued by the Comics Magazine Association of America, and a national movement to keep comics away from children and teens... Though Wertham claimed his evidence came from thousands of case studies, it turns out that he was lying."

io9

Speaking of best-selling books, here's the latest way how to buy that status.

"The son of American evangelist Benny Hinn was arrested in Brazil after allegedly beating up a deaf and dumb man during one of his father's rallies"

Mail Online

“'Concerning the question if alligator is acceptable to eat during the Lenten season...yes, the alligator is considered in the fish family...' The archbishop said he agreed with the parishioner that the alligator is a 'magnificent creature that is important to the state of Louisiana' and which is also 'considered seafood.'”

Catholic News Agency

"Most of the Slot Guru’s winnings are given to complete strangers. 'I love to give money to people who never expect it. Going up to someone and handing them a $100 bill in the casino when they least expect it makes me happy. Giving to others is what I believe the lord wants me to do. It’s all about Karma,' said the Slot Guru."

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

"SaharaReporters has uncovered a document indicating that a million dollars of Bayelsa State’s poverty alleviation fund was spent by then Governor Goodluck Jonathan on bringing American entertainers Beyonce and Jay Z to Nigeria in 2006."

Sahara Reporters

Our Wacky World—2/16/2013

ETO explodes over Russia—cue the inevitable chorus of conspiracy theorists. Former Major League Baseball star and steroid user José Canseco has offered his priceless opinion.

Why there are so many good dashcam videos of a 10 tonne bolide screaming over Russia? A better question would be, "Why are there so many Russian dashcam videos on the internet?"

"Of the three auto-diagnosing apps, the best program missed malignant growths 30 percent of the time; a second performed only slightly better than flipping a coin. One app, instead of using an algorithm, simply forwarded the photo to an accredited dermatologist, who responded with his considered opinion 24 hours later. At $5 per lesion, this was the most expensive program, though the e-doctor misdiagnosed just one in 53 melanomas."

Salon

"Unlike Many Secular Educators We Teach The Scientific Method!"

"Five things to remember:

1. Know your material. 
2. Be confident. 
3. Communicate well. 
4. Be thorough. 
5. Pray your exhibit will witness to non-Christian visitors."

Note that there are no pictures of this year's fair. That's because some mean atheists spoiled their fun.


How do living organisms survive without this?

"The problem with most water is that the body can’t actually absorb it, as the water’s composition can’t properly seep into the cells. You see water isn’t just water. If you’ve ever gone for a run and then stopped at a drinking fountain to drink some water, you may have experienced the feeling of the water not really quenching your thirst, besides tasting terrible. ...some people think that spring water is a good solution, but spring water...still isn’t the best because it is a simple molecular composition. While changing the pH (potential hydrogen) is helpful, that still doesn’t change the molecular structure i.e. surface tension and bonding angles. 

Starfire Water is different. Our water is spinned [sic] for several hours in a vortex to change the (hydrogen) composition of the water at a molecular level. Your cells suck up this water like a sponge."

Starfire Water


Another woo-meister bites the dust:

"In 1975 Swann wrote To Kiss Earth Good-Bye, which contains some really fascinating stuff. He makes the usual predictions of an impending ecological disaster. (The exact nature of the disaster changes from time to time, but that ecological disaster is always there in the near future, waiting for us.) Swann tells how he first established an ESP connection with one of his houseplants, asking it what was wrong when it was not doing well. The plant replied by projecting mental images to him."

BadUFOs

"As for Mike and Trina, for the past two years they have been 'unable to function' without their coffee enema, a ritual that takes five hours of planning and executing each day. They fill a 32-ounce bucket with coffee and deliver it to their lower intestine via a Vaseline-coated hose. 'That's the freaky part... I try to relax.'"

ABC

"'This is crazy. He was doing what he loved,' his mother, Doris Prokopi, said Friday from her Land O’Lakes home. 'That’s what he told them when he was arrested. That this was like arresting Indiana Jones. He collects these bones and puts them all together. This was always his dream. I don’t think he wanted to do anything else.' The question now is how should we interpret all of this? Is Prokopi a comic book hero or a black market mastermind? A scientist or a profiteer?"

The latter (Skeptic Blog)

"A pastor in Connecticut has apologized for taking part in a vigil for the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School because his church does not allow worshiping with other faiths."

Crooks & Liars

Click for story

We now pause for a commercial from the Scientologists.


A misogynist's tale of recovery:

"At this time, I was also dabbling in music recording and fancied myself as the new Roger Waters. When I was dumped by my then-girlfriend, I wrote a whole concept album about the break-up. Embarrassingly, it got a distribution deal and was produced on a decent-sized CD run, so there’s a permanent record of it that still comes back to haunt me."

Noodlemaz

"Ms Harris drank up to 10 litres of Coke every day – equal to more than twice the recommended safe daily limit of caffeine and almost 1 kilogram of sugar... She died...from a cardiac arrest."

SMH

"Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets. 

“'If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, and check for your ID. We’re going to do it to everybody'”

Salon

"But when the smoky haze -- caused by rapid fire of nearly 140 bullets in less than 30 seconds -- dissipated, it soon became clear that more than a dozen officers had been firing at one another across a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland."

Cleveland

"Our favorite is Fitness & Sporting Goods, where the coupon can’t be used on anything labeled a 'fitness accessory.' One could argue that almost anything in this department would fall into that category."

Consumerist

Click for the message to his holiness

Our Wacky World—2/4/2013

???

Yet another installment in the What Were You Thinking/The Internet Never Forgets dept.:

"A 23-year-old math teacher has been suspended from her job after it was revealed she had been posting half-naked photos of herself on Twitter and joking about using drugs at school."

Mail Online

"Sobrino Valdeci...was arrested...for raping several women attending his church. He gave as an excuse that his penis had been consecrated with 'divine semen of the Holy Spirit... I hope to continue my wonderful job within the prison'"

M24digital

"...they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. ...these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies."

Opposing Views

No

"the reason why I say Evolution is false is because Evolution say's [sic] a fish can turn into a monkey but a fish dose not have the voice of a monkey and Evolution says a monkey can turn into a fish but why don't we see sea monkeys under water evolution says a rock Turned into a Fish witch has sex with a Monkey in a Mud Pool that was struck by lighting and then the fish grew legs and walked and gave birth to a Human so the big question is what was the fish shoe size before it grew feet lol ahhahahahahah Evolution is false checkmate"

Debate


Meanwhile, Ken Ham denies his own propaganda:

"I don’t know where people get the idea that people rode dinosaurs. I mean, there’s no evidence in the Bible that that is so. When Job was looking at Behemoth, the description there… there’s nothing to do with people riding dinosaurs. We don’t know how people interacted with dinosaurs."

Leo Weekly

Surprise, grandpa:

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

Forbes

Is the NRA leadership out of touch with their own members?:

"...84% of gun-owners and 74% of NRA members (vs. 90% of non–gun-owners) supported requiring a universal background-check system for all gun sales; 76% of gun-owners and 62% of NRA members (vs. 83% of non–gun-owners) supported prohibiting gun ownership for 10 years after a person has been convicted of violating a domestic-violence restraining order; and 71% of gun-owners and 70% of NRA members (vs. 78% of non–gun-owners) supported requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years in prison for a person convicted of selling a gun to someone who cannot legally have a gun."

Yes. And when this happens on Fox News you're pretty well fucked. (New England Journal of Medicine )

NO

"Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent."

Independent

"When cops finally allowed the pair to see the boy, they found the panicked kid seated in a shabby chair with his left wrist cuffed to the wall, Mendez said... The police later dropped the robbery charge against the seven-year-old. Police insist that he was held for half the time stated by the family. That would still be five hours for $5."

Turley's Blog

You don't have Dr. Oz, the Great and Terrible, in your country? You probably will soon:

"Oz is fifty-two and jauntily fit, with a perfectly tamed helmet of brown hair and lengthy sideburns. His scrubs, powder blue and cinched at the waist, fit so well they looked as if they had been run up for him on Saville Row. In promotional pictures, Oz, with a stethoscope draped like a scarf around his neck, looks eerily like Doug Ross, the character that George Clooney made famous on 'E.R.' He worked the line like a gifted politician, hugging people as they flipped open their phones and tried to get a picture with him. Many had brought old copies of magazines to be signed: Time, Good Housekeeping, Prevention—all with Oz on the cover. 'I worship you, Dr. Oz,' one woman told him. Another threw her arms around his neck. 'I haven’t seen a doctor in eight years,' she said. 'I’m scared. You are the only one I trust.'"

New Yorker

The rules just don't apply to some people:

“In providing mail service across the country, the Postal Service attempts to work within local and state laws and regulations, when feasible... However, as you are probably aware, the Postal Service enjoys federal immunity from state and local regulation”

Yahoo

And... It's official. Fetus ≠ person:

"But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect 'unborn persons,' and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights."

Huffington Post

Hell No

In other church news:

"Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929. 

"Since then the international value of Mussolini's nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James's Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland."

Guardian

"The honour killings are carried out by law abiding, educated and respectable people, who fear the society and always try to guard their reputation. They always care about their esteem and public image and do not want any harm to their public standing"

Telegraph

"Minnesota attorney Thomas P. Lowe, 58, has been suspended indefinitely after he was found not only to have had an affair with a client in a divorce case but then charged her for time they spent having sex."

Turley's Blog

A major patent troll bites the dust:

"Remarkably, the judge overseeing the case ruled during trial that the jury wouldn't be allowed to make a decision about Newegg's arguments that the patent was invalid. That line of reasoning—that Soverain's patents were bogus to begin with—would become the basis of Newegg's appeal.

"Just saying "do it on the Internet" isn't a novel invention, the appeals court ruled. The three-judge panel found that all of the "shopping cart" patent claims were rendered obvious in light of the CompuServe Mall."

Ars Technica

Fuck No