Our Wacky World—5/11/2011

"The measure not only limits the amount of time male chickens can spend with their female counterparts to 10 days each year, but also requires them to prove they’re disease-free before they’re allowed access to the hens."

NJ dot com

"Iran is in South America. Hezbollah is in South America. I already talked about how China is in control of the Panama Canal. And even about 50 miles away from here in the Bahamas, building a port there."

Think Progress


This man is spacially-challenged—he doesn't seem to know what "next" means even though he uses the word:

"It does not say what driveway. It doesn't say at the mosque," he said. "I have issues with the mosque. The sign is not directed at anybody. If they feel it's at them, that's how they feel."

Buffalo News (note that he's also a really bad liar)

"The Seattle Fire Department says one person was trapped after a car crashed through sheetrock in a hospital parking garage and plunged 10 feet down an unused elevator shaft."

KIRO


It seems that Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn object to photographs of women, including the Secretary of State (here's the color version). But that's no surprise as they've done it before. The good news is that they could be in trouble this time:

"This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House."

Oh fuck, I've gone and modified it:

Do not modify this or Obama will kill you

"The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater."

Wired

'Several people said to be close to...president [Ahmadinejad] and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits). Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".'

Guardian


The best part of the following story is that he's a Bob Jones University graduate:

'Moats spoke passionately about his time as a Seal and how he left to pursue his religious calling. He explained that “I had almost no discipline. I was as wild as they came. That was my nemesis,” Moats said. “They weren’t looking for a guy who brags to everyone he is a SEAL. They wanted somebody who was ready but had an inner confidence and didn’t have a braggadocio attitude.” He described how after a fight in a bar, he decided to answer the call of the faithful. He even had a plaque in his office celebrating his service in the Seals.'

Turley's Blog

Turley's right. If you lie about your marital status to get a bigger tax refund, that's a crime. If you lie about your marital status to get laid, oh well.

Our Wacky World—5/6/2011

"Even when the students eliminated political predictions and looked only at predictions for the economy and social issues, they found that liberals still do better than conservatives at prediction. ... those prognosticators with a law degree were more likely to be wrong."

Poynter

Ka-ching

This is a classic. Dr. Harriet Hall describes in detail what happened when she dared to criticize a bogus weight loss product/multi-level marketing scheme on-line. Cue the terminally clueless comments:

"It was as if no one had actually read what I wrote. No one bothered to address any of my specific criticisms. No one even tried to defend Isagenix's false claims... No one offered any evidence that “detoxification” improves human health. No one tried to identify any of the alleged toxins or show that they are actually removed... No one commented when I observed that the amount of vitamin A in these products is dangerous and goes against the recommendations of the Medical Letter... I offered some alternative explanations that might account for people believing that Isagenix is effective when it isn't; no one commented on that."

Skeptical Inquirer

"...the Texas House has proposed slashing $27 billion from the budget, including huge cuts to education, nursing homes, and health care for the poor. Yet last Friday, the Texas House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax break for those who want to buy yachts costing $250,000 or more."

Think Progress


Headline: "Parents arrested after starved six-year-old is found trying to eat herself in cage - with remains of another child buried in garden" (bonus—it's in Virginia)

Mail Online

Sue me

'"The manager tried to repossess the computer because he mistakenly believed the Byrds hadn't paid off their rent-to-own agreement. When Brian Byrd showed the manager a signed receipt, the manager showed Byrd a picture of Byrd using the computer — taken by the computer's webcam.... Byrd demanded to know where the picture came from, and the manager "responded that he was not supposed to disclose that Aaron's had the photograph"'

AP

And the class-action lawsuit has already begun.


Black helicopters are real: "The helicopters that flew the Navy SEALs on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden were a radar-evading variant of the special operations MH-60 Black Hawk, according to a retired special operations aviator."

Army Times

"The wall that shielded Bishop Raymond Lahey's secret life of depravity collapsed in an instant after a simple question from an airport customs agent: do you have a laptop? ...his relaxed tone changed noticeably and he grew anxious when the specific question was asked — three times."

Winnipeg Free Press

The family that deludes together

'The most memorable case of delusions of parasitism I have seen was a patient who [sic] I saw in clinic who, while we talked, ate a raw garlic clove about every minute. “Why the garlic?” I asked. “To keep the parasites at bay,” he told me. I asked him to describe the parasite. He told me they floated in the air, fell on his skin, and then burrowed in. Then he later plucked them out of his nose. At this point he took out a large bottle that rattled as he shook it. “I keep them in here,” he said as he screwed off the lid and dumped about 3 cups with of dried boogers on the exam table.'

Science-based Medicine

Just for the record, I have skin problems. My skin peels like an onion. The itching is quite annoying. It's not parasites, it's not chemtrails, it's probably the heartbreak of psoriasis.

Chris Rodda is really fucking pissed off

How pissed off is she?:

"A lie can be told in a few words. Debunking that lie can take pages. That is why my book, (which is only the first volume of what will be a three volume series), is five hundred pages long. Nobody is going to be able to adequately prove to any audience that Barton's lies are lies in an interview like Jon Stewart did last night, and David Barton is never going to agree to debate anyone that he knows can defeat him."

✂ 

'"Do well by doing good" -- the words of a man who could have become outrageously wealthy by patenting his inventions, but decided to just let everybody have them for the public good -- have now been stuck in my head for hours, and aren't going to leave until I do what I'm about to do -- give my book away for free.'

Dispatches From The Culture Wars (guest post)


Of course you can still buy it. I'm sure she could use the money. I'd give you the link but you should go to her site and click through the Amazon link there so she can make even more money.

Barton is already crowing about his Daily Show performance on his steaming pile of a website. What a Freudianly perfect name.

"Chris Rodda is someone who never intended to be a writer, but got pissed off enough at the rampant Christian nationalist revisionism of American history that she decided to write a book about it, which somehow led to her "day job" as Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. She is also a blogger on the Huffington Post and Talk2Action, writing about historical revisionism, religious issues in the military, and whatever else she feels like writing about."