Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s spiritual mentor, spoke about truth in his eulogy to judge R. Eugene Pincham this past Saturday. Beautiful words.
talking about Pincham’s integrity and honesty, Wright said, “You don’t change who you are because of where you are. You don’t stop telling the truth because it is not politically correct or it makes a racist uncomfortable . . .”
Jump to full Sun Times article here.
An ornate and beautiful underground temple was discovered in secret in the hills of northern Italy in November of last year.
. . . the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.
It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples.
Around these he dreamed there lived a highly evolved community who enjoyed an idyllic existence in which all the people worked for the common good.
More bizarrely still, Oberto appeared to have had a supernatural ability: the gift of “remote viewing” - the ability to travel in his mind’s eye to describe in detail the contents of any building.
“My goal was to recreate the temples from my visions,” he says.
Jump to full Daily Mail article
On Amazon.com reviewers have a lot to say about the Playmobil Security Checkpoint toy.
Loosenut writes
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”.
D. Forest adds
I remember missing a plane at age 8 while foreign airport security inspected my wallet for pennies. I cried and cried.
Now kids can reenact that excitement at home with their very own security checkpoint!
Ya makes some very strong statements, beginning with this one
Finally a toy that gets our kids used to living in a police state. Benjamin Franklin said that those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. But then again, he lived in France for awhile, so what did he know about anything.
In the related discussion, Jason Black puts a serious spin on why this toy isn’t appropriate for child’s play
Why is it disturbing? Several reasons. It’s disturbing because the toy teaches children that fear and paranoia are normal. That it’s right and correct for society to distrust its citizens the minute they buy an airline ticket. In a truly free society, citizens both have and exercise a responsibility to watch out for each other’s freedom. Everyone has the most freedom when everyone is actually acting to promote other people’s freedom as much as their own. This creates trust between citizens, too, and contributes to a healthy society. This toy undermines that idea, by suggesting that we should, in fact, distrust everyone around us to the extent that we should all have to have our shoes x-rayed before we may be deemed harmless.
Fox effectively fired Montel Williams after he stated during a televised interview that we ought to be at least as concerned about the 28 boys of ours who have died in Iraq since January, as we are about Heath’s death. He also shared the idea that the media community shouldn’t be discussing Ledger as an object in order to drive up ratings. This “young man . . . has not even been buried yet,” Williams admonished. He was, “somebody’s child, somebody’s father.”
When Montel refused to be guided by three colleagues back into a discussion on Ledger, one of the interviewers interrupted him, saying, “More Montel after this commercial break.” But, Montel wasn’t brought back after the break. Next, four days later CBS Television Distribution announced that “The Montel Williams Show” will not be back in production this year. Stations are being offered 52 weeks of the “Best of Montel” reruns to replace the live episodes.
Nellie Andreeva, of the Hollywood Reporter, quotes Williams: “After spending the last 17 years as a talk show host and 22 years prior in the military, I’m looking forward to the opportunities the next 17 years bring.”
See more at
Daily Kos
Blackvoices.com
Variety Magazine
Youtube video of Montel during the Fox interview
by Star Ledger Staff and wire reports
January 02, 2008, 5:07 PM
California sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for denying its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, challenging the Bush administration’s conclusion that states have no business setting emission standards.
New Jersey joined the lawsuit and other states were expected to follow. The legal challenge was anticipated after the EPA on Dec. 19 denied California a waiver it needs under the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuit was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson denied California the waiver, saying new federal regulations would be more effective than a patchwork of state laws. At least 16 other states had been expected to follow California’s lead and adopt the state’s tougher emission limits.
New Jersey and the other states cannot act without EPA approval.
“We need the waiver enabling California’s proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles, which are vital to the health and well being of New Jersey residents,” state Attorney General Anne Milgram said.
Jump to full Star Ledger article
The family of a California teenager plan to sue her health insurer which refused to pay for a liver transplant until hours before and she died on Thursday night.
Her family . . . will ask the Los Angeles district attorney to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna HealthCare, arguing that the firm “maliciously killed” Nataline Sarkisyan by its reluctance to pay for her treatment. Although she was fully insured and had a matching donor, Cigna refused to pay . . . .
The company recently posted figures for its third-quarter performance this year, which showed profits up 22%. Next year it expects to earn an income of up to $1.2bn.
Jump to full Guardian article.
[Rogers], too, addresses obsolescence’s worst form of fallout, e-waste, and provides some arresting numbers: In 2004, “about 315 million working PCs were retired in North America.” Most went “straight to the trash heap.” As did more than 100 million cell phones in 2005, creating 50,000 tons of e-waste. These all add up to a “toxic time bomb,” . . .
How did we come to this almost surreal conjuncture? The first phase involved “psychological obsolescence,” the carefully choreographed arousal of dissatisfaction with the old and irrepressible desire for the new and fashionable. It didn’t take carmakers long to discover that cosmetic changes induced consumers to “trade up for style, not just for technological improvements, long before their old cars wore out.” The fashion imperative, the need to have the latest thing, has worked with any number of products over the years. Slade relates amazing lore regarding the success of disposable razors, the invention of the wristwatch, the cutthroat battle for the radio market and the advent of the calculator, the gadget that jump-started the electronics revolution.
. . . Even more alarming is [Grossman's] expose of the troubles associated with polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, synthetic chemical compounds found in flame retardants used in TVs, computers and phones. PBDEs do not remain locked up in these objects, but instead drift into the air and infiltrate the living world. They are in our food and our bodies, and their ill effects can be drastic.
Finally, Grossman offers her perspective on the horrors of e-waste shipped in massive quantities to India, Nigeria, Pakistan and China, where children, women and men bereft of protective clothing and proper tools break apart our discarded electronics by hand. These exploited laborers are exposed, at grave risk, to permanent biological toxic substances, poisons that also flow unchecked into rivers and seas and the air we breath.
Jump to full Chicago Tribune article
Which Wolf Will Win?
A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every life there is a terrible fight - a fight between two wolves.
“One wolf is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit.
“The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.”
A child asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”
The elder looked him in the eye. “The one you feed.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached.
In a keynote speech at the International Women’s Peace Conference on Wednesday night, Ms. Williams told a crowd of about 1,000 that the Bush administration has been treacherous and wrong and acted unconstitutionally.
“Right now, I could kill George Bush,” she said at the Adam’s Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. “No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.”
About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush’s removal from power.
“The Muslim world right now is suffering beyond belief,” she said.
“Unless the president of the United States is held responsible for what he’s doing and what he has done, there’s no one in the Muslim world who will forgive him.”
When an audience member told Ms. Williams that Vice President Dick Cheney would become president if George Bush were impeached, she said, “Can’t you impeach them both?”
Jump to full Dallas Morning News article
There is an improperly used word in the well-written and awfully interesting article about chilis at Yale University.
“But trade in spices did not wet the North American palate for hot chili peppers.”
The author obviously meant, “whet the North American palate” - as in, sharpen it. Introducing liquid to a palate ["wetting it"] won’t create a further desire in that palate for a certain food taste.
According to the article, chilis were disseminated from South America and made their way from there around the world to Asia, India and other countries. The capsaicin chilis contain is excellent for treating a variety of physical ills such as swollen feet and varicose veins, and it also creates a sense of well-being in those whom eat it.
