Monday, May 27, 2013

Our Wacky World—5/27/2013

"A group of elderly JFK conspiracy theorists were comparing notes when one of them suddenly had a heart attack. After going through the whole tunnel light scenario he finds himself facing God. He asks 'Oh Lord, who really killed JFK?' And God replied 'It was Oswald acting alone.' At that point the EMTs were able to jolt him back to life. Later in the hospital with his co-theorists he said in a low voice 'The conspiracy is bigger than we thought.'"
I won't bother to link to his raving but check out this sentence from conspiracy freak Alex Jones:
"I don’t want my daughters growing up in a country where some transvestite comes walking into the thing hopped out of their brain on drugs vomiting and crapping all over the place."
He's also very afraid of atheists. You should be afraid, Alex. One might shit on your lawn.


A message to world governments: good luck banning 3D printed guns. On the other hand, the current model has an alarming tendency to blow up in your face.


"They" walk among us:
"They often arrived in old model cars which were as shiny and well kept as brand-new vehicles. Sometimes they slipped up in their dress, wearing clothes that were out of fashion or, even more perturbing, would not come into fashion until years later. Those who posed as military officers obviously had no knowledge of military procedure or basic military jargon. If they had occasion to pull out a wallet or notebook, it would be brand-new ...although most men carry beat-up old wallets and notebooks quickly gain a worn look. Finally, like the fairies of old, they often collected souvenirs from the witnesses ... delightedly walking away with an old magazine, pen, or other small expendable object."
BadUFOs

"A Boston Children’s Hospital psychiatrist who became convinced his 16-year-old patient suffered from “evil spirits” and appointed himself as her spiritual mentor has been barred from practicing medicine":
Boston Globe

"Families who attend Faith Tabernacle Congregation in North Philadelphia and First Century Gospel Church in Juniata Park have lost more than two dozen children to illness since 1971, according to non-profit Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. (CHILD, Inc.). Both churches believe in the power of prayer over modern medicine. 
"'God promised us that if we do his will, that there’s no infection; all these diseases that you name, would not come to you...'
"John says he believes the congregation is being persecuted for their beliefs."
NBC


Croatia has a lot of land mines:
"Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT."
Houston Chronicle

"'A woman swimming with Dreamer thought she had been rammed,' Hyson writes. 'The woman was taken to hospital for examination. The woman had a large bruise. X-ray revealed that under the ribs, near the center of the bruised area, there was a small tumor. It is my feeling that Dreamer likely "zapped" the tumor with a powerful sound pulse, perhaps to heal it, and the high intensity sound left bruising from hydrostatic shock. At the least, the bruising called medical attention to the tumor.' 
"There has been no research in this regard, though it would be fairly simple. Dolphins could be put in the water with people with various stages of cancer and healthy controls. You could have, say, 15 controls and one patient. If a dolphin displayed unusual behaviors around that person, it’s possible the animal detected something."
Living Green

"Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front"
NY Post


World's Greatest Conservative Hip Hop Songs:
"Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known by his stage name Eminem, grew up in Detroit, probably the single city to have been ravaged the most thoroughly by Democratic Party malfeasance and malgovernance. It should not come as a surprise, then, that this song from his major label debut, The Slim Shady LP, released during the Clinton administration, contains a vicious attack on the Clintons"
So now they've decided they like Eminem? I heard nothing but complaints at the time.

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

"Toru Hashimoto, who serves as the Mayor of Osaka, told reporters at his weekly press conference Monday that 'anyone would understand' the role of 'comfort women' when soldiers were risking their lives and you wanted to give them 'a rest.'
"Bizarrely, Hashimoto also revealed that he told a U.S. military commander during a trip to a base on the island of Okinawa that the adult entertainment business in Japan should be 'utilized more' by U.S. personnel."
CNN


Some of you may be burned out on Boston Massacre 2.0. I'm not because I didn't engage in the non-stop video circus. And what I do enjoy is commentary like this:
"To put it mildly, this has been a bad week for democracy and a worse one for public discourse. ...marathon runners, first responders and many ordinary citizens responded to a chaotic situation with great courage and generosity, not knowing whether they might be putting their own lives at risk. Since then, though, it’s mostly been a massive and disheartening national freakout, with pundits, politicians, major news outlets and the self-appointed sleuths of the Internet – in fact, nearly everyone besides those directly affected by the attack – heaping disgrace upon themselves."
Salon


The reason the Boston bombers (sounds like a roller derby team) had no escape route planned? They were too stoned:
“Marijuana is not the harmless drug the media frequently claim it to be. It is a mind-altering substance that can play a role in creating communist or Islamic terrorists.”
News Corpse

"The Ugandan priest has been suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for exposing what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse in the Catholic Church is a problem in Africa as well as in Western Europe and North America."
LA Times

Fuck You
"When the controversy erupted over gun control recently, and I listened to the dire predictions of the NRA and the alarmist condemnations from the right, I thought about John Prather for the first time in many years. Throughout his battle with the army, not a single shot was fired. He didn’t barricade himself and amass stores of ammunition. He didn’t attend armed rallies discussing Second Amendment “remedies.” He didn’t hate his government or the soldiers he confronted. He served them coffee and explained his position in simple and direct language. He prevailed because his humility and integrity commanded respect. He understood what “stand your ground” ought to mean. He won by moral force rather than force of arms."
Turley's Blog

"Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had... '...if I closed my mind when I saw this man—in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed—I would have shut off a very good experience for myself'"
Bad Astronomy

"Would you want somebody who swears their allegiance to Osama bin Laden and the idea of Al Qaeda, would you want them advising your school board? It doesn’t matter what they’re advising them on. I hear people say, what’s he advising them on? At some point you have to inject sanity in the discussion and so if somebody is advising your school board and they’re a Muslim Brother, they are hostile, they should be treated like they’re from Al Qaeda."
Rightwing Watch


Hilarious parody of parodiable author Dan Brown:
"Renowned author Dan Brown got out of his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house and paced the bedroom, using the feet located at the ends of his two legs to propel him forwards. He knew he shouldn’t care what a few jealous critics thought. His new book Inferno was coming out on Tuesday, and the 480-page hardback published by Doubleday with a recommended US retail price of $29.95 was sure to be a hit. Wasn’t it?"
Telegraph

"Scientists have identified 100,000 pieces of retrovirus DNA in our genes, making up eight percent of the human genome. That’s a huge portion of our DNA when you consider that protein coding genes make up just over one percent of the genome."
National Geographic

"So when Halley's Comet orbits around the Sun, how does the comet know where our Sun will be 75 years later, since the comet leaves the solar system in the opposite direction of the Sun's orbital path (around the galaxy)? Where does it go? What causes it to come back? Certainly not gravity. How did comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 know where Jupiter would be two years later, when Jupiter had moved over 500 million miles since the comet's previous orbit of the planet? Its apojove was 32,313,600 miles, so again, gravity was not a factor. For more than 4 billion years, it obeyed the command of God, until its (Divinely) staged crash into Jupiter."
Ghana Web

This one actually links to a story
"You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball coach."
Deadspin


I haven't mentioned this developing scandal until now:
"U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s former chief of staff, GOP operative Andy Parrish, stated in a signed affidavit Monday that the Minnesota Republican approved payments made to a top aide who was barred by Iowa Senate ethics rules from accepting money for his work on her presidential campaign."
Star Tribune