Some humour

I came across this website though Pharyngula and and found some pretty funny lists on it, for example;

5 Books That Can Actually Make You Stupider

# 3 More Joy ... : An Advanced Guide to Sole Sex

There are millions of masturbation manuals in the world, but most of them consist of pictures of girls (or guys) and a tactful understanding that the reader will just get on with it. Not many men are confident enough to interrupt another male mid-stroke with a stern cry of "You're doing it wrong!" let alone offer them instruction. But that's exactly what Dr. Litten did. Not only can he refer to masturbation as "solo sex" with a straight face, but he sold enough books to get a deal for a sequel.

....

Dr. Litten achieves the impossible halfway through his own book and fucks up masturbation (we're fairly sure fucks up masturbation is a fetish, but we're too terrified to Google it) with the chapter "Sharing Solos." We're not sure exactly how repressed the author is or how cruelly his burly father crushed his dreams of being a dancer, but once you've got two men naked, having handsex together we've got a different word for that.

The 7 Most Powerful Wizards (Too Lazy to Use Their Powers)

Albus Dumbledore (the Harry Potter series)

Dumbledore is the headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and basically the most powerful damned wizard in the Harry Potter universe. He's a kindly old man, which is a good thing because he can turn invisible, create objects out of thin air, read minds, shoot fire, whatever. He's pretty much a god.

Unfortunately, most of the time he gives kind of boring speeches and makes a teenage boy do everything that he, being nearly all-powerful, should probably be doing instead.

finally , dustin the turkey;

Why would you want to send an obnoxious turkey puppet to represent your country in an international competition? Does this enter some sort of bizarre grand tradition that we here in the States aren’t aware of? Is it customary for countries to be represented by bizarre animal puppets? Is France sending a water vole with a mustache? Does Germany send a highly fashionable goose with a strong work ethic? Your European customs are strange and frightening to my American eyes. I’m not making fun of you, Europe; I’m just trying to understand you. Please explain yourself in simple terms I can understand. You know - by using the words “freedom,” “terror” and “McDonalds.”

minesweeper

If you used a computer in the 1990's you should watch this.

http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1770138&fullscreen=0

Dispatches: Holy Offensive

Richards Dawkins website has posted these links the the Channel 4 documentary "Holy Offensive". The documentary that examines two highly publicised clashes between artistic freedom and religious belief in today's Britain.

As usual the men of religion (this time the Sikhs) come off as petulant bullies - have I ever mentioned how sick of them I am???



Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xf5Og_0eAw
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Ou7Pqb6z4
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgMiNQyEktI
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LwpWnjpCuM

Here’s Penn + Teller +Michael Shermer = Fun

You might also learn something

Interview with Pat Condell

an interesting, if short, interview - also, it should have been videoed.

http://www.freethinker.co.uk/?p=580

FT: Do you still do stand-up?
PC: I haven’t worked the circuit full time for years. I wrote my last show specifically to say something about religion. Confronted first hand by the political correctness at the BBC, I felt the subject was being falsely represented and legitimate opinion was being censored. As a result, religion, and Islam in particular, was getting an inflated idea of its own importance. Stand-up was the medium I knew best, and as I didn’t see anybody else in the comedy world queuing up to address this situation I elected myself.

The Brits are eating more Free Range Chicken

Good!

Sales of factory-farmed chickens have slumped since a high-profile campaign raised awareness of the cruelty at the heart of the poultry industry and implored consumers to pay more to improve the animals' welfare.

Hopefully this trend will continue and expand.

Wence come Evil?

"If God is willing to prevent evil but unable?

• Then he is not omnipotent

If God able but not willing to stop evil?

• Then he is malevolent
  

If he is both willing and able?

• Then wence come evil?

If he is neither willing nor able?

• Then why call him God?"

- Epicurus, 341-271 B.C.E.


Well Epicurus didn't have youtube to help him out (link from boingboing)

A History of Evil

The Pastor in Chief

from onegoodmove the top 10 moments for The Pastor in Chief

The End of the World Bus Tour

from the Guardian;

We're on a coach tour of Israel, with a bunch of mainly middle-aged Americans. So far, so unextraordinary. The reason they're here, though, is that they all believe that the end of the world is just around the corner. Apocalypse-tourism - much more exciting than eco-tourism.

So they visit the valley of Armageddon, which is a real place and looks pretty peaceful today. Not for long, though, because this is where man and Satan will rise up against God, and soon the whole place will be flowing with the blood of 200 million soldiers. Lots of the tourists get baptised, some for the second time, not in the Jordan but in the Sea of Galilee because it's handier for their hotel complex. And, anyway, the Jordan runs through Galilee so it's kind of the same. They're preparing themselves for The Rapture. They spend a day at an Israeli army camp, doing menial tasks to help out the soldiers. Because Palestinians are God's enemies, obviously.

But it's hard to get angry with this lot, because they are all quite mad, with troubled pasts - lost children, drugs, multiple relationship failures. Just look at their eyes: they're clearly bonkers. Lovely.

I watched this peculiar documentary the other night and I haven't much to add to the review above except how keen the pilgrims where to see everyone burn in hell, they where practically gloating! I don't think "bonkers" quite covers them, sure, their ideas are nuts but they alternated between being 'super friendly' to sinister glee when describing Jesus killing everybody (but them). I really admired how the crew how stopped themselves from either bursting out laughing or bashing them across the head during the course of making the film? You obviously need a very steady head to make documentaries.

I would have loved if the film makers had asked some of the Jewish soldiers what they made of this crowd. It must be bizarre, after all, only Christians will be saved in the Rapture and yet these fanatics where helping to clean up an Israeli military base. It's a strange world.

Black Gold

I watched the documentary 'Black Gold' on More 4 last night and it was a real eye opener. I knew the mega corporations wouldn't be paying a fair price to the third world farmers for their coffee but the penitence they actually get was pathetic - a couple of cent per kilo at best!

I'm buying Illy coffee at the moment, at least they came out of the documentary a bit better than most (thank god!).

1 800 Nerd Girl

The Central Message of Monotheism

Oh Yeah! Sing along

Is this the start of an Islamic Reformation

My first guess would be "doubt it", but one never knows. Anyway, from the BBC comes this story of Turkish attempts to modernise the religion;

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

I really can't see this getting very far, the Vatican was able to update (somewhat) Roman Catholicism because

1. There is a single head of the organisation
2. It already had the Protestant examples to pick from
3. It was already 300 years overdue
   

Clearly this revision is picking from modern humanist principles a.k.a. "The Secular West" so I can't imagine any firebrand mullah worth his salt won't be able to shoot this down as an evil zionist plot or something. Still, the match has to be light somewhere.

More on Kosovo

Kosovo declared independence last week and the mainstream western media declared it "a triumph of freedom and democracy" - so you know instantly it's not that. Via informationclearinghouse comes this essay by Paul Graig Roberts as to possible reasons why the U.S., Britain, Germany etc where so quick to recognise the breakaway province while simultaneously so quick to demonise (again) the Serb's for daring protest the ripping apart of their own country

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a break-away movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be “intolerable.”

There is also this essay by Jeremy Scahill which gives a little more background to Serbia's current woes

A month before the [1999 ]bombing began, the Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic, which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]," as well as grant the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free market principles."

[after the bombing stopped] It didn't take long for the US to begin construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a "smaller version of Guantanamo." Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

New German Children's Book, Part II

Had a chance to read the story earlier and found it quite charming and the punchline is brilliant, the story starts with the poster proclaiming

He who knows not God, is missing something!

But after meeting a rabbi, a priest and a mufti the hedgehog and the piglet conclude the poster has one word to many;

He who knows not God, is missing something!

Intellectual property

Cory Doctorow has an interesting take on Intellectual Copyright that is well worth reading, basically he says its a sham. You can't and shouldn't copyright knowledge/information as aside from the obvious creative stagnation it fosters where can the limits be placed? Harry Potter after all was a concoction of every wizard story that was ever told...

WIPO's (World Intellectual Property Organization) case for using the term is easy to understand: people who've "had their property stolen" are a lot more sympathetic in the public imagination than "industrial entities who've had the contours of their regulatory monopolies violated", the latter being the more common way of talking about infringement until the ascendancy of "intellectual property" as a term of art.

Once wins at the Oscars

The movie "Once" won and Oscar last night for Best Original Music, I really liked the film and was very pleased that they won.

The song.



The acceptance speeches.

Asymmetric warfare

Via Why That's Delightful comes this wonderful Ted Rall comic.

Pretty much sums up 'The Wests' entire foreign policy.

Victimcrite

Onegoodmove has a link to an old Colbert Report 'Word' segment called "Victimcrite", it's brilliant and should be watched by all. Link.

Wanna Feel sorry for a Scientist?

At least I assume the guy is a scientist. This is a clip from Iraqi TV apparently "debating" whether or not the earth is flat. There's some religious nutbag spouting "koranic science" (whatever the fuck that is) stating shit like the earth is flat and the sun is twice as big as the moon. I felt sorry for the science guy as it seemed to me he had to be veeery careful NOT to say anything which might be considered 'offensive' of Islam while at the same time insisting that the nutbag was wrong. Man, the world is a crazy place....

New German Children's Book

One of the fist things you really notice when you give up religion/god is the hypocrisy of the religious mind. The denialism blog has a post featuring a new children's book from Germany called Wo bitte geht's zu Gott?, fragte das kleine Ferkel (Which is the way to God, please?, Little Piglet Asked).

The book tells the story of a piglet and a hedgehog, who discover a poster attached to their house that says: "If you do not know God, you are missing something!" This frightens them because they had never suspected at all that anything was missing in their lives. Thus they set out to look for "God." Along the way they encounter a rabbi, a bishop and a mufti...

An English translation of the book can be found here and the illustrations here, I have to say I thought it looked very nice. One of the commentator's on denialism left the following comment which I liked and will post here and hopefully neither denialism not the poster will mind.

I got the book yesterday and read it. So... is it evil atheistic garbage? I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I was positively surprised at the content. There is snark about religion, but it's not a lot of it. My favorite part is the last page where about a dozen people of all sizes, shapes and ethnicities are drawn naked, with only the Christian bishop, the rabbi and the mufti being ashamed of their nudity.

As to the rest of the book, here's a rundown of the criticism: The piglet is astonished that it's mother should have been Jewish for it to be Jewish, as well. It's sad about God killing all the people and animals in the Great Flood, and it asks the rabbi how, if humans can invent gods (as he claims), he knows that the God he prays to is not an invention.

With the Christian priest, the piglet is turned off by the idea of God sending his own son to be crucified in order to wash our sins away with blood ("icky blood"), as well as the Catholic idea of eating a part of Jesus's body during mass (it calls the Catholics »cannibals« then, leading to the authors being sued by a Catholic ministry).

Finally the piglet and its friend get to the mosque, where they're surprised by the idea of praying five times a day and having to wash beforehand every time. They inquire how the people know that Mohammed didn't make those rules up and are being chased out of the mosque for it.

Outside, on the temple hill (where all three "temples" stand), the three priests meet, try to catch the piglet and its friend, but get into a physical argument about which faith sports the worst kind of hell. In the meantime, the piglet goes home and enjoys life again, all the while having a laugh about those funny humans: »If there is a God, he's surely not living in those haunted castles«.

All in all, the book is open about criticism of the biblical faiths, but I wouldn't say it's overly dismissive, offensive or even hateful. It *is* literature designed to get children off their faith, or better even, literature designed for humanists, atheists or whatever to give to their kids. And in that, it's not only a book about the value of free minds, critical thinking or the like, but a book about strange or silly ideas in faith (with the above-mentioned examples).

A separate post in the comments section has some reaction to the book, I found this one to be particularly funny.

The perfidious and dangerous thing is that the very attractive graphical presentation is aimed at young children, which are defenceless against such anti-religious agitation

Stephan Kramer, General Secretary of the "Central Council of Jews in Germany"

Of course there is no sense of irony in the above statement, but it does show religious leaders are aware of the malleability of young minds and how crucial it is to wrap them at an early stage.

Banana Republic

[News Item]
Serving Prime Minister of XXXXXX has admitted to using party funds to buy a house for this then girlfriend Ms C in the early 1990's. Although he called it a loan the money was not repayed until 15 years later during an investigation of his tax affairs. Many of Prime Ministers cabinet and and party have stated they still support the man.

Does anyone seriously think that is XXXXXX= Gordon Brown that Grordon Brown would still be in office this morning?? Yet thats exactly the situation here in Ireland. Set XXXXXX = Bertie Ahern and we get the shoulder shrugs, the "Ah Sures" and various other cute whore euphemisms. The guy is corrupt, maybe not spectacularly corrupt, but corrupt none the less - it's and embarrassment that he is leader of this country!

Listen to Newstalk 106

Over the past week Newstalk 106 have been covering the shambles our health service is in under the umbrella title "Health Famine". I've listened to some of it and its been quite good, but the worms in the HSE aren't happy with the attention and are trying to silence the station by pulling its advertising.

The HSE is meant to run our public health service however it seems it is nothing more than a bureaucratic P.R. shop intent on running the system into the ground so the whole lot can be privatised. I suppose when that's your brief you may as well undermine democracy while your at it!

As usual there's been barely a squeak from 'Official Ireland', what a feckless bunch of wankers they are!

Blackest Black Created

Pretty cool this, a new ultra black material has been invented.

[standard] black reflects about 1.4 percent of incoming visible light, and in recent years it has become somewhat outmoded. In 2003, scientists developed a substance made of nickel and phosphorus that reflected just 0.17 percent of visible light ...

The newest black -- which when held next to something conventionally black, such as a tuxedo jacket, is noticeably blacker -- reflects just 0.045 percent of visible light.

Kosovo Declares Independance

Well the first chapter of the next Balkan war was written on Sunday as Kosovo declared independence. Looking at the map below it's not hard to see why Kosovo wants independence but unfortunately for them a lot of very important Serbian monasteries are located in that little patch of land. I once had the opportunity to ask a Serbian woman why Kosovo was so important and she basically said "Everything that is Serbia is there", something similar to being say, Greek, but the Turks occupying Athens. The only question is why the U.S. and Europe are so keen on this idea? Is it just to stick it to the Russians?

War Made Easy

Obama

I'm still keeping an eye on the ever-more-boring U.S. primaries, the best thing about the whole business are the political cartoon's, I particularly likes this one;

More Pat

Arguement By Analogy

Skeptico has a new post about Arguement by Analogy, it's well worth a read.

When someone argues by analogy, you can be pretty sure it’s because they don’t have any facts, evidence or logic to support their position. And all you have to do to debunk their argument, is find the flaw in the analogy.

It ties in nicely with a similar idea about the use of metaphor's

Be Careful Believing Your Own Metaphors:

I've cautioned students against using metaphors; though they make writing more vivid, and sometimes more persuasive, they often obscure more than they reveal. Part of the problem is that they are literally false -- if they were true, they wouldn't be metaphors. Sometimes the literal falsehood reveals a deeper truth, but sometimes it's just plain false.

Great! now the Catholics are starting

It was only a matter of time but the miasma of faux religious persecution has drifted over Ireland. A teenage school girl who, under Catholicism, is firmly in the second class (should that be sexond??) category risks expulsion just so she can wear a couple of icons. I have no doubt this will be seen as another attack by the 'evil' secular world with little thought given to easy compromises or the desperate need of the religious to shove their nonsense down everyones throat.

from breakingnews.ie

A schoolgirl who has been suspended from class in the North for wearing religious images on her lapel is vowing not to remove the items.

Catrina McDermott has been threatened with expulsion from St Eugene's College in Roslea, Co Fermanagh, for wearing emblems of St Patrick and a guardian angel.

However, her mother says the 15-year-old is determined to keep wearing them when she returns to school on Monday as they had given her the strength to carry on after she was bullied.

She says she can't think why such items would be banned in a Catholic school.

The principal, however, says the decision to forbid pupils wearing any badge was introduced last year and a compromise would be for Catrina to wear them inside her blazer.

The Daily Show: Mitt drops out

Via onegoodmove comes the best Daily Show clip I have seen in a long while.

I am still flabbergasted by what passes for politics in the U.S. This nut came close to becoming the leader of largest most agressive military on the planet, the people who wanted him are concerned about gays, god and democrats. Can an entire country be schizophrenic? It seems that nothing that should concern Americans does. Instead their fears and worries are twisted and corrupted so that something that would benefit the vast majority like National Health Care is seen as 'evil' but bombing the shit out of people half way around the world is considered 'noble'. America needs another great leader to save them (and us), I wonder if Obama is it?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=156317&title=mitt-drops-out

More Lunacy

The dimwit Archbishop of Canterbury reckons having different laws for different people would be a good thing. It's hard to know here to start with this, but it would certainly mean that anyone coming to the U.K. would be locked into their pre-emigrant status (i.e. women) with little hope of breaking free. It also undermines the central principle of the pre-eminence of the law and everyone being equal under it.

But sure, none of that matters, what's important is that backward superstitious beliefs are "respected" and that the iron grip of mullahs and priests is never slackened.

The Archbishop of Canterbury sparked controversy today when he said the introduction of sharia law for British Muslims was "unavoidable".

Cooool

I found this image on Why, That's Delightful and really liked it. Hopefully it's true, but I don't think we'll have to be so evil about it :-)

Documentary : second skin

Via boing boing I found this trailer for a documentary called Second Skin about people involved in MMORPG's, looks interesting to me...

£1.99 chicken

This is a disgrace! Tesco in the U.K. have slashed the price of a whole chicken to £1.99, the timing of this seems (to me) to be a riposte to Jamie Oliver's attempt to broaden awareness of the chicken industry to encourage consumers to be a little more ethical on the food they eat..

Tesco slashed the price of a whole chicken to £1.99 yesterday, in a move that critics warned would heap financial pressure on the poultry industry and make it harder to the improve welfare of factory-farmed animals.
....
Dr Lesley Lambert, the CIWF's director of research and education, said: "£1.99 doesn't reflect the real price of producing a chicken. At the moment, farmers make only 2p per chicken, so this will push them to the limit."

Robert Fisk on Torture

A couple of years ago on a visit to Prague my wife and I visited a Torture museum which contained lots of medieval torture devices along with sketches and comments as to how they worked. It was a fairly stomach churning (though fascinating) experience and I came away convinced torture could not work - stubbing your toe is incredibly painful, to be tortured is beyond comprehension, I would admit anything.

In the movies the bad guy (and we know he is a bad guy) can be tortured and made to reveal his diabolical plans which the hero then uses to save the day. Perhaps in a fair, just and perfect world that scenario could happen but in the real world, not so much. Instead we end up with witch trials where mere suspicion is enough to get you kidnapped and tortured where you 'confession' is all but assured. I can't believe the so called 'leaders of the free world' support this.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19282.htm

Bush's recent visit to the Middle East

Here's an interesting article from Information Clearinghouse about the (real) reasons for Bush's recent visit the several Middle Eastern states, seems plausible to me;

So, what was the real purpose of Bush's trip?
....
Bush went to the trouble of traveling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to “sleep with the fishes”. For the last two months, various sheiks and finance ministers have been groaning about the falling dollar---threatening to break from the so-called “dollar-peg” and covert to a basket of currencies. Bush's trip appears to have rekindled the spirit of brotherly cooperation. The grumbling has ceased and everyone is back "on board". The regional leaders now seem considerably less bothered by the fact that inflation is gobbling up their economies and driving labor, food, energy and housing through the roof. Reuters summed it up like this:

Life in Cold Blood

Sir David Attenborough's new series 'Life In Cold Blood' started on BBC1 last night and it was brilliant.

Sir David Attenborough brings viewers the final chapter of his epic overview of life on Earth as he transforms perceptions of cold-blooded animals in this landmark BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.

"Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as slow, dim-witted and primitive," says David. "In fact they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and extremely sophisticated."

There are some amazing creatures on show but perhaps the best part is Sir Attenborough's utter delight when he encounters them, especially for the first time. I've grown up watching Sir Attenboroughs documentaries, to my mind the man is a god, everything he touches turns to gold and Life In Cold Blood is no exception.

The world's rubbish dump

A depressing story from the front page of the London Independant,

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

If mankind does survive the next 100 years it surely will be through luck. Some days there doesn't seem to be a square inch of the planet we're not destroying.

God the Psycho

Echo's what Dawkins said in the God Delusion

Ireland Vs Italy

The G-man and myself went along on Saturday to watch another uninspired performance by Ireland, this time against a very poor Italy. O'Sullivan showed once again just how stubborn he his by picking the same group of players who performed so poorly in the recent World Cup only this time he added insult to injury by stating he picked the players "on form". This total, utter and abject dishonesty really is beyond the pale ( I should know I live here). He did not on pick on form. Instead he picked the same clique of players he always does and sent them out to face Italy with a threadbare Plan A and no Plan B. I don't know how those guys can stand it? They all look miserable and listless. We know they can play, Munster is doing brilliantly in Europe while many of the players from Leinster and a few from Ulster have had excellent seasons. After watching the first three games I honestly think Ireland could actually win the competition, they have the players, but not the manager. The IRFU made a huge mistake not replacing O'Sullivan last October, this is yet another 6 Nations gone abegging.

The Clone Wars - Animated

Via themovieblog comes this preview of the upcoming Clone Wars cartoon. I have to say I'm a little disappointed by it, it look cool, but it's got that 'style over substance' vibe that permeated the prequels. Hopefully I'm very wrong.



also at themovieblog today are some funny 'What-If' movie posters for if the writers strike doesn't end soon.

Cetic on Dawkins

More Dawkins

Dawkins on 'The Big Question'

I'm beginning to feel sorry for Richard , it must be head wrecking to be continually mislabeled (militant atheist, etc.) , face the same weak arguments and debate the full spectrum of religious believers who each know their's is the correct faith for which they have excellent reasons to believe. It feels a little like an episode from The Twilight Zone.



Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWlN5fwPbw
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4BWS_qa_lQ
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_rrE65fD1Y
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUybZ-SHg5I
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GrZyHMZmQ

Interview with a U.S. Marine

Information Clearing house posts a pretty chilling interview with an ex-marine named Jimmy Massey, it's not a present read.

Q: You have also denounced the use of depleted uranium…

A: I am 35 years old and I only have 80 percent of my lung capacity left. I have been diagnosed a degenerative disease in my backbone, chronic fatigue and pains in my tendons. You know, I used to run 10 kilometers just because I liked to run, and now I can only walk between 5 and 6 kilometers every day. I am afraid of having children because of that. I got a swollen face. Look at this picture (He shows me the photo on his Book Fair credential). This photo was taken shortly after I returned from Iraq. I look like Frankenstein. I owe all that to depleted uranium, now you can imagine what is happening to the people in Iraq.

They also report that the estimated Iraqi dead is now at 1 million...

Frozen At Grand Central Station

This is really cool. 207 people walk into Grand Central station in New York, at a given time they all freeze mid-motion for the next five minutes before resuming as normal. Excellent stuff. Link from boingboing.

Ted Talk: Cassini Mission

A really cool Ted Talk about the Cassini mission to Saturn. It's really inspiring stuff.