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November 2006 Archives
The president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America has declined the job, saying the organization wouldn't let him expand its agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.
The Rev. Joel Hunter, who was scheduled to take over the socially conservative group in January from Roberta Combs, said he had hoped to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.
"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," said Hunter, a senior pastor at Northland Church in Longwood, Fla.
John Russo has been a victim of identity theft. So when he was asked to fork over a photo ID just to be seated at an IHOP pancake restaurant, he flipped.
"'You want my license? I'm going for pancakes, I'm not buying the Hope diamond,' and they refused to seat us," Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.
The restaurant now has agreed to reverse the policy of requiring customers to turn over their driver's licenses before they can order -- a rule that was enacted to discourage "dine and dash" thefts.
WCVB-TV in Boston reported the Quincy restaurant's policy had been enacted without corporate approval.
Customers unhappy over IHOP's policy to ask for IDs - Boston.com
The reality of needing to protect all electronic equipment against EMP from a nuclear explosion over our shores is becoming imminent. We now live in perilous times. The world is a becoming dangerous place, with China now threatening Taiwan with annihilation from hundreds of neutron bombs. Russia is modernizing their military infrastructure with an emphasis on first strike capability, they have an stretegic alliance with China, and Putin is exporting "special nuclear materials" to Iran, Syria and Egypt. President Clinton renounced "launch on attack" in favor of absorbing a first strike without retaliation, while President Bush wants "first strike" authority to attack anywhere with nukes without warning, and it is easy to see that our enemies are virtually being invited to hit us with nukes! Iran has plans to do just that!
globeandmail.com: Was Mom wrong? Study says you shouldn't sit up straight
Defying the age-old advice of parents and teachers, a new study shows that you're better off sitting back than sitting up.
An Alberta researcher has found that while seated, with feet flat on the ground, leaning back to create a 135-degree angle between the thighs and trunk is much less straining on the spine and will not lead to the potentially chronic back pain associated with sitting in an upright position for extended periods of time.
While Muslim extremists now fly planes into our buildings, saw the heads off journalists and aid-workers, and riot by the tens of thousands over cartoons, several recent polls reveal that atheists are now the most reviled minority in the United States. A majority of Americans say they would refuse to vote for an atheist even if he were a “well-qualified candidate” from their own political party. Atheism, therefore, is a perfect impediment to holding elected office in this country (while being a woman, black, Muslim, Jewish, or gay is not). Most Americans also say that of all the unsavory alternatives on offer, they would be least likely to allow their child to marry an atheist. These declarations of prejudice might be enough to make some atheists angry. But they are not what makes me angry.
As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population. The plain truth is this: There is no good reason to believe in a personal God; there is no good reason to believe that the Bible, the Koran, or any other book was dictated by an omniscient being; we do not, in any important sense, get our morality from religion; the Bible and the Koran are not, even remotely, the best sources of guidance we have for living in the 21st century; and the belief in God and in the divine provenance of scripture is getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily.
Web sites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court has ruled.
The ruling late Monday was a victory for a San Diego woman who was sued by two doctors who had complained that she had posted a libelous e-mail on two Web sites.
Some of the Internet's biggest names, including Amazon.com, AOL, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, took the defendant's side out of concern that a ruling against her would expose them to liability.
Immunity upheld in Web libel cases - Technology & Media - International Herald Tribune
If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum "retrocausality."
That's science talk for saying he hopes to find evidence of a photon going backward in time.
"It doesn't seem like it should work, but on the other hand, I can't see what would prevent it from working," Cramer said. "If it does work, you could receive the signal 50 microseconds before you send it."
UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.
No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.
At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.
The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.
Oxycyte is the newest product in a family of compounds known as artificial blood. The search for a synthetic substitute for human blood began at least as early as the 19th century, when doctors actually tried using milk to replenish blood loss. With the onset of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, pharmaceutical companies took on the cause in force, competing to create an artificial substance that could eliminate the problems—including tainted blood and supply shortages—associated with donated blood. The idea was that these substitutes could replace the use of donated blood in transfusions, during surgery, and in patients who had experienced major blood loss through injury.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday vowed to crack down on Canadians who drive after doing drugs, a change that Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada has been advocating for years.
“Increasingly, police have to contend with drug-impaired driving. A drug-impaired driver presents a danger, to himself, herself, and others,” said Harper at a news conference on Friday.
The prime minister said the Conservative government will introduce legislation to tackle drug-impaired driving, which will include measures to provide police with more tools to detect people who are driving under the influence of drugs, allow blood tests to detect drugs, and penalties for those who drive on drugs.
He said part of the measures will include spreading the message to Canadians that getting behind the wheel while on drugs is wrong.
Some travellers from Ontario and Alberta have been bringing more than just tourist dollars to countries such as Cuba — they're also packing badly needed medical supplies.
A do-it-yourself humanitarian aid group called Not Just Tourists has been filling old suitcases with donated medicine and supplies such as syringe needles and eyeglass frames to send to developing countries.
Van Riel said rural clinics and hospitals in Cuba have trouble getting such items partly because of the U.S. trade embargo with the country.
"When tourists came back and said they were so happy with plain old acetaminophen, Tylenol and ibuprofen … and vitamins, it just made me realize how in dire straits they were," Van Riel said.
After snatching the House with the closest thing to a crushing mandate ever likely in a system biased in favour of the incumbents, the Democrats now have their hands on the investigative machinery of Capitol Hill.
They can hire lawyers and detectives; they can subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify under oath; they can mount show trials - or indeed real trials - subjecting their enemies to torment under the glaring klieg lights of the world media.
This is a powerful weapon, as Bill Clinton learned when Newt Gringrich stormed the House in 1994, breaking the half-century stranglehold of the Democrats. Newt’s Republicans did not rest until they had impeached the president for perjury and abuse of office in the Paula Jones/Lewinsky saga - even if the meaker Senate later opted for acquittal.
Or are we being premature about all this hand-shaking?
Comment is free: Americans should be proud
The ugly American mark two is dead. Overnight six years of glib European identification of "American" with right-wing fundamentalism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the Tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway neo-con, damning abortion as murder and torturing Islamo-fascists has been lain to rest, and by a decision of the American people. Americans should be proud and the world should take note.
Yesterday's result could hardly have been more emphatic. George Bush's election wizard, Karl Rove, said he would make America's midterm elections "a choice not a referendum". He would ask them to choose a congress not vote on his boss. The electorate did both. In a high turnout the majority rejected the tenets of the religious right and of "big government" neo-conservativism. They expressed concern over the corruption and warmongering of Washington and the state of their economy in Bush's hands. For the Republicans there were no consolations.
Some horrific images accompanying bible quotes. Makes for interesting learning. NSFW
The events of the past two weeks, which have seen the two largest companies in the world enter the Linux space, demonstrates that the party is over and the Linux game has changed forever. Red Hat is making a brave stand but stands little chance against the likes of Oracle and Microsoft.
One very much gets the feeling that in the enterprise at least, both Oracle and Microsoft are now ready to acknowledge that Linux is a game that they cannot afford to ignore. Both companies realize that they are missing out on a potential growth business by leaving to others what they could do themselves.
In Oracle's case, the company has weighed up the pros and cons and come to the conclusion that it has the people resources, expertise and existing customer base to usurp a growing Red Hat Linux support business worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. There is little Red Hat can do except fight the good fight, but it is badly outgunned by a much more powerful opponent with little barriers to entry into its market.
Poland's deputy education minister has called for Polish schools to ditch Darwinism in favor of creationism. His party is also well known for gay bashing and for wanting to introduce the death penalty.
Where do we come from? It's a question that has been dogging mankind since ... well, since when? Since man was created? Or since man climbed down from the trees? Poland's deputy education minister Miroslaw Orzechowski thinks he knows, and he wants Polish schoolchildren to know too.
Orzechowski is intent on keeping Darwinism from falling into the wrong heads. In a recent interview, he commented that it was "sad" that the "lie" of the evolution theories of Charles Darwin were being taught in Polish schools, and called for a debate on whether Darwin's theories should be purged from the school curriculum.
A prominent male hooker, Dirk Blackman, was forced to give up his position as the head of a large national prostitution ring when it was revealed that he had repeatedly had sex with sleazy evangelical leader Ted Haggard.
Members of the prostitution ring were shocked by the allegations. "There are some things that you don't even do for money," said one man, who gave his name as Johnny Lovehandles, bemoaning Blackman's "intimate physical contacts" with the virulently anti-gay and shamefully untrustworthy pastor.
The Haggard scandal was the latest in a string of revelations concerning male prostitutes fraternizing with conservative right-wing figures, including the bombshell that male exotic dancer Milli Flotilla had turned his Miami dressing room into a secret shrine filled with revealing photographs of Rush Limbaugh and Sen. Bill Frist photoshopped to depict them in compromising scenarios involving Dennis Hastert and a constiutional amendment prhibiting gay marriage.
The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.
Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.
The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.
"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."
Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.
Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind winked at his wife and gave her a reassuring smile as he was led away to jail.
Jo Hovind clutched the necktie he had been wearing. She kept her eyes on her husband until he was out of sight.
A 12-person jury deliberated for 2.5 hours on Thursday before finding the couple guilty of all counts in their tax-fraud case.
Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.
'Dr. Dino' guilty on all counts | Local News | PensacolaNewsJournal.com
Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is set to open in two weeks. The comedy follows a fictional Central Asian journalist who travels across the United States and interviews real people. Several of the film's unsuspecting stars have come forward recently to say they got duped into participating in the mockumentary. Most say they never read the fine print on the release forms they signed. What kind of releases are they?
Extra-long ones. Production companies typically get releases from everyone who appears on camera and can be identified in a finished film. A standard consent agreement has a couple of components. First, the signer agrees to let the producers use his image and voice in any way they see fit. Second, he waives the right to make a claim for defamation, invasion of privacy, or infringement of his rights of publicity.
How'd they get people to be in the Borat movie? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine
Germany and Canada are the best defenders of privacy, and Malaysia and China the worst, an international rights group said in a report released Wednesday.
Britain was rated as an endemic surveillance society, at No. 33, just above Russia and Singapore on a ranking of 37 countries' privacy protections by London-based Privacy International.
The United States did only slightly better, at No. 30, ranked between Israel and Thailand, with few safeguards and widespread surveillance, the group said.
The study ranks countries on various privacy-related issues. These include whether they have a written constitution with specific mention of privacy, the use of identity cards and biometrics, electronic surveillance including closed-circuit TV cameras, interception of communication, access of law-enforcement agencies to private data, surveillance of travel and financial transactions, and global leadership in promoting privacy.
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