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Posted December 25, 2006  10: It's a
Horrible Life: Clarence the angel gets his wings after
convincing George W. Bailey to kill himself by showing him how
absolutely fantastic the world would have been had he never been born.
9:
The Polar Espresso: Elves
from around the world are kidnapped and forced to work at the first
Starbucks at the North Pole.
8:
How the Magnanimous Billionaire Gave Away Christmas:
A mad billionaire hires minions to sneak into people's houses and
replace the gifts around the tree with much better ones.
7:
Homo Alone: I really don't
want to see this. What was I thinking? You go see it.
6:
Elf Realization: Che Elf
rouses the toy workers to overthrow their hefty master. Siddhartha Elf
finds enlightenment.
5:
The Nightmare After Christmas:
A swamped clerk at a Wal-Mart's return desk kidnaps shoppers and opens
an underground slave department where illegal aliens can buy
white people.
4:
The Little Shop Around the Coroner:
Law and Order meets CSI
meets Bones meets Love, Actually,
with a bit of Die Hard and Eyes Wide
Shut thrown in.
3:
Rudolph the Normal-Nosed Reindeer:
There's nothing special about Rudolph so he never guides Santa's sleigh
or ever really amounts to anything. Nobody writes a song about
him and he dies in obscurity.
2:
Disaster on 34th Street:
Santa is hijacked by elf terrorists who crash his sleigh into Macy's
which mysteriously comes crumbling down in what many claim must have
been a controlled demolition. The US declares war on the North Pole and
blows up a Starbucks. Gimbles has its biggest week ever.
and the number
one Christmas movie I want to see...
1.
The Most Improbable Story Ever Told:
A virgin who appears on tortillas gives birth to a man who can walk on
water. Starring Jesus Saves (pronounced Hey-soos Sah-vess.)
Other than those, my Christmas gift to
myself is I'm using a reprint story that's vaguely Christmassy.
Here's Darenet #1 from the year 2000,
the very first newsletter I ever sent out...
Revisited
or
One Good Thing About Leprosy
by Michael Dare
When I first got involved in a custody battle for my son, Buster, the
court ordered a DNA test to make sure he really was my son. The results
came back 99.99% positive, laying aside the question of my paternity
forever. Last night something happened that made the test moot. My
son said something that would have proven he was my
son no matter what the DNA said.
He's 12, which means that when he watches a movie it better have Arnold, Bruce, or Jackie Chan or his attention will wander. In a valiant attempt to broaden his horizons, I occasionally attempt to throw in stuff like Bridge on the River Kwai or The Great Escape just so he knows there a few films made before the '90s that are actually worth seeing. It's always a danger to show my son a film I liked when I was his age, because occasionally they don't hold up. Remember that intense, ground-breaking, Academy Award winning car chase in The French Connection? Car chases have gotten so much better since then that to a 12 year old who's already seen all the Lethal Weapons and BH Cops, The French Connection is totally lame. The old James Bonds particularly don't fare well. I remember loving From Russia, with Love when it first came out, but watching it again with my son was about as exciting as watching my hard disk defragment. There are occasional surprises. Cary Grant in Charade and Gregory Peck in Arabesque totally held up because they were incredibly well written thrillers, full of humor and unpredictable plot twists. Trying to get him to watch Adam's Rib after he's already seen Ally McBeal and The Practice was an exercise in tedium. Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus was a great idea that made both of us cry at the end. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was a bad idea that put him to sleep. So when I came across a copy of Ben Hur at my local library, I wasn't sure if it would work. Yeah, it won 11 Academy Awards, more than any other film before or since, and my memories of the galley slave ships and the chariot race were still vivid, but would a 12 year old be able to handle a 3 1/2 hour biblical epic that was almost 50 years old? Then I noticed that it was letterboxed and that was that. Ben Hur is one of the greatest wide screen movies ever made, and seen in pan-and-scan you literally miss half the picture. So I checked it out and took my chances. I put it on and discovered to my immediate horror that it started with the birth of Jesus. Was this film going to proselytize and try to convert us from non-practicing Jews to non-practicing Christians? Memories of seeing the film as a kid came flooding back, and I remembered how, as a Jewish kid who went to Hebrew school three times a week, I felt alienated from the Christian parts of the film. I watched my son and he was fascinated. He was studying Roman times in school, and this graphic representation of life at the time of Christ was just what he needed to see. "Do we get to see him crucified?" he asked. "Yes," I answered. "Cool," he said. He kept watching as Judah Ben-Hur, played by the ultra-stoic Charlton Heston, stood on the rooftop of his house in Jerusalem with one of his servants to see a Roman parade pass by. The servant leaned on a wall and a couple of tiles accidentally came loose, falling to the street, narrowly missing a Roman officer, and getting the whole plot in motion. The Roman's come storming into the house and arrest Judah and his mother and sister. Judah's sent to become a galley slave rowing Roman ships, and the mother and sister are thrown into a dungeon and forgotten. The scenes of hundreds of slaves rowing the Roman ships into battle are just as good as I remembered, and Buster was as into the film as I was.
Judah Ben-Hur pulled valiantly on his oar as the Roman captain told
them they were all condemned men who were only being kept alive to
serve the ship. Then the ship is rammed and everybody dies but
Judah, who also saves the life of the captain, pulling him aboard a
small raft. The captain says "Why did you save me?" and Ben-Hur hands
him an oar saying "I kept you alive to serve the ship." They don't
write 'em like this any more.
So Ben-Hur goes to Rome where he is celebrated, but he longs to return to Jerusalem to find his wrongly imprisoned mother and sister. Several hours later, after a chariot race that's still one of the high points of all cinema, Judah finds his mother and sister in the Valley of the Lepers, which is just as pleasant a place as it sounds. We're spared close-ups of their skin falling off, but it's pretty clear they're not well and beyond hope. Then Judah hears that there's this Rabbi from Galilee nearby who's been known to cure the sick, so he picks up his dying sister and drags his sickly mother out of the Valley of the Lepers and into Jerusalem. Bad timing. They get there just as Jesus has been sentenced to death, and he is dragging his cross through the streets towards the hill where he is to be crucified. Though this scene takes place 2,000 years before the advent of cell phones, somehow word has gotten out around town that this is your last chance to get a glimpse of Jesus before they kill him. The streets are packed with thousands of onlookers. The entire population of Jerusalem has crowded the streets to watch Jesus drag his cross across town. But as Judah shows up with his sister and mother, people scatter, crying "Lepers! Lepers!" Apparently leprosy is pretty contagious, and nobody wants to be near them. They find a place up close, right by the side of the road, just as Jesus walks by. Jesus stumbles, and Judah offers him a drink of water. And my son says, with a totally straight face, "Gee, if you want a good seat at a parade, I guess it's a good idea to bring a couple lepers with you." I couldn't have put it better myself. He's my son all right. Iraq War Slogan Timeline
2001: GATHERING THREAT
2002: AXIS OF EVIL
2003: SLAM DUNK, SHOCK AND AWE, MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED
2004: FIGHT 'EM THERE, NOT HERE
2005: LAST THROES, ADAPT TO WIN, STAY THE
COURSE
2006: NEW WAY FORWARD
2007: THE NEW NEW WAY FORWARD, STAY THE
NEW NEW WAY FORWARD
2008: A NEW WAY BACKWARD, A FASTER NEW
WAY BACKWARD, HOLY SHIT, LET'S GET OUT OF HERE
2009: A NEW WAY OF FORGETTING THAT EVER
HAPPENED
2010: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
2011: THE NEW GATHERING THREAT
Under-Reported Story of the Week
Conspiracy Theory of
the Week
"In 1983, as the residents of Calcata, a small town 30 miles north of
Rome, prepared for their annual procession honoring a holy relic, a
shocking announcement from the parish priest put a damper on
festivities. 'This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the
devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have
taken it from my home.' Not since the Middle Ages, when lopped-off body
parts of divine do-gooders were bought, sold, and traded, has relic
theft been big news. But the mysterious disappearance of Calcata's
beloved curio is different.
"This wasn't just the residuum of any holy human - nor was it just any
body part. It was the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the snipped-off tip of
the savior's penis, the only piece of his body he supposedly left on
earth.
"Just what the holy foreskin was doing in the priest's house - in a
shoebox at the back of his wardrobe, no less - and why and how it
disappeared has been debated ever since the relic vanished. Some
suspect the village priest sold it for a heavenly sum; others say it
was stolen by thieves and ended up on the relics black market; some
even suggest Satanists or neo-Nazis are responsible. But the most
likely culprit is an unlikely one: the Vatican."
-
David Farley: Fore
Shame - Did the Vatican steal Jesus' foreskin so people would shut up
about the savior's penis? -
I Feel So Much Safer Now
"The Pentagon called them 'among the most dangerous, best-trained,
vicious killers on the face of the earth,' sweeping them up after Sept.
11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern
Cuba. Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from
Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for 'continued
detention.' And then set free.
"Decisions by more
than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to
release the former Guantanamo detainees raise questions about whether
they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether
some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants
free.
"The United States
does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave
Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human
rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one
group is attempting to compile one.
"When the Pentagon
announces a detainee has been moved from Guantanamo, it gives his
nationality but not his name, making it difficult to track the roughly
360 men released since the detention center opened in January 2002. The
Pentagon says detainees have been sent to 26 countries.
"But through
interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their
families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media,
The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at
Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:Once
the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either
freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their
detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or
continue to be detained. Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees
have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men
were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases
involving acquittals one in Kuwait, one in Spain initially resulted in
convictions that were overturned on appeal. The Afghan government has
freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker
Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation
commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because
of tribal or personal rivalries. At least 67 of 70 repatriated
Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior
Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that
most had been 'sold' for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who
invented links between the men and al-Qaida. 'We consider them
innocent,' said the official, who declined to be named because of the
sensitivity of the issue. All 29 detainees who were repatriated to
Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain
and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home
for 'continued detention.'"
- Andrew O.
Selsky: Many
Gitmo detainees quietly freed without charges -
"A major
criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE
Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the
prime minister claimed it would endanger Britain's security. The
remarkable intervention was announced by the attorney general, Lord
Goldsmith, who took the decision to end the Serious Fraud Office [SFO]
inquiry into alleged bribes paid by the company to Saudi officials. BAE
and the Saudi embassy had frantically lobbied the government for the
long-running investigation to be discontinued, with the company
insisting it was poised to lose another lucrative Saudi contract. This
came at a time when the SFO appeared to have made a significant
breakthrough, with investigators on the brink of accessing key Swiss
bank accounts. Lord Goldsmith consulted the prime minister, the defence
secretary, foreign secretary, and the intelligence services, and they
decided that 'the wider public interest' 'outweighed the need to
maintain the rule of law'. The decision was condemned last night as
naked political interference in a criminal case. The Liberal Democrat
chief of staff said the government had succumbed to Saudi pressure. The
UK made overseas bribery illegal in 2002, under US pressure. No
prosecutions have taken place under the new law. Clare Short, Mr.
Blair's former cabinet colleague, said: 'The message it sends to
corrupt businessmen is carry on - the government will support you.'"
She Still Won't Fuck You
Miss
America likes booze and sex.
My Fatwa
Dear Michael:
You could
be the next generation Salman Rushdie, if you play your cards right.
Continue chatting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his posse, and you may
well get the kind of exposure you are seeking, but you are going to
have to hang your hat on something controversial, like David Duke,
because, as we know, there is no bad publicity-except when it's
lukewarm.
I suggest that you continue to make a big
deal of how reasonable you are-our Diogenes cum Jimmy Stewart out there
with a Maglite seeking an honest man and finding him in the President
of Iran. Make him your pen pal. I would keep up this rationale pose
i.e. the average guy in pursuit of a dialogue leading to rapprochement
and peace for the whole world.
Then when you get really cozy with him,
Mahmoud will invite you to the next international conference where the
boys ratchet it up a notch and provide conclusive scientific evidence
that the Jews are indeed the sons of pigs and monkeys and are worthy of
the spit. You go along with it for a while, and then at a press
conference you call at the airport, you blow your cover and announce to
the international press that your are an infidel, a non-God fearing
atheist who thinks Islam is full of shit. I know, I know, that's only
half the story when it comes to your opinion of religion, but remember,
this is about the big win.
At that point, if it's a fatwa you want,
then it's a fatwa you are going to get. As long as you can get out of
the country without being gelded, you are going to be really big. It's
a shot at fame and fortune on the international stage, played out
against the backdrop of the End, and I say go for it.
Sincerely,
Ken Yas
Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week
 In the online version of The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in
Science,
you can click on any box and get an amazing
story that will piss you off.
Also from the year 2000...
 Jesus According to Buster by Michael Dare
I worked on the
original Los Angeles production of Jesus Christ, Superstar
at the Universal Amphitheater in the early '70s, and say what you will
about the film or of subsequent productions, this show was a knockout.
It was before they put a roof over the amphitheater, so there was a
magnificent view of the San Fernando Valley behind the stage. The
director, Tom O'Horgan, made brilliant use of this during the finale,
in which high intensity lights and strobes flashed through smoke around
the crucifixion, blending with the clear lights of the valley below. It
was almost enough to make you a believer.
There was a revival of
the show at the Universal Amphitheater in the late '80s with the
original Jesus and Judas, Ted Neely and Carl Anderson, so I had to go,
this time with my eight-year-old son Buster. I'm Jewish and Buster had
never been to a church in his life. All he knew about Jesus
was that he had something to do with Christmas.
He enjoyed the show
enormously. It was not only his first live Broadway musical, it was his
first contact with the story of Jesus Christ. The next day one of his
friends asked Buster about Jesus Christ. Here's what he told them...
"Jesus was this cool
guy who lived 2,000 years ago. He had long hair and wore a robe and he
preached peace and love and stuff till he got a lot of followers who
thought he was the messiah. Then one of his followers named Judas
betrayed him to the Romans who nailed him to a cross and he died. Then
I went backstage and met him and told him how good he was. I told him I
really liked the part where they crucified him. Then I met Judas and
told him how good he was, even better than Jesus. It was
really cool because dad was friends with Jesus, and this wasn't some
new Jesus, it was the original Jesus. Then dad and Jesus and Judas had
a glass of wine together while I ran around the dressing room
playing with Jesus' kids."
Satan Doesn't Want You To Know
I'm
naked right now.
Don't Take My Word For It
"I've often thought people treat God
rather rudely, don't you? Asking trillions and trillions of prayers
every day. Asking and pleading and begging for favors. Do this, gimme
that, I need a new car, I want a better job. And most of this praying
takes place on Sunday - his day off. It's not nice. And it's no way to
treat a friend."
- George Carlin
-
"People should climb down from their pedestal, stop ridiculing people
with different beliefs, and start looking for evidence for their own
beliefs. The universe is full of mysteries. There is nothing
wrong with discussing the mysteries, but it is foolish to believe you
have the answers. For example, it is acceptable to discuss the
issue of life on other planets; the existence of a god or gods; and if
there is a god, where god came from. However, only a fool, or a
disinformation agent, will claim to have the answers to these
mysteries... The ironic aspect of this issue is that some of
the people who ridicule religion are firm believers in aliens, and
their complaints about religion apply to their belief in aliens. In
fact, we could describe their belief in aliens as a different type of
religion! The similarities are striking...
"Some people have seen God: Some people claim that they have talked to
God, and that God has talked to them. Other people claim they have not
directly seen or talked with God, but they have seen evidence of His
existence, such as miracles or mysterious lights.
"Some people have seen Aliens: Some people claim that they have been
abducted by aliens. Other people claim they have not directly seen or
talked with aliens, but they have seen evidence of their existence,
such as crop circles or mysterious lights from unidentified flying
objects.
"Will Jesus save us?: Many people hope that Jesus Christ, or some God,
will soon appear, and all the suffering of the world will end.
"Will Aliens save us?: Many people who believe in aliens are hoping
that the aliens will come out of hiding, and that they will end all the
suffering of the world. Supposedly the aliens love us, and they will
give us their advanced technology."
-
Daryl Bradford Smith: Aliens
and Religion - The fine line between Beliefs and Deception
-
"The word
'Jew' refers to both a religion and a race. Using one word for two
different concepts is as stupid as referring to a religion as
'Chinese'. In such a case, some people would describe themselves as
Chinese when they were referring to their race, and other people would
describe themselves as Chinese when they were referring to their
religion.
"Idiotic
arguments would occur because some Chinese would insist that you cannot
be Chinese unless your parents were Chinese. Other people would argue
that we can all become Chinese, even Sammy Davis Jr. Incidentally, was
Sammy Davis Jr. Jewish?
"This
arguing over words may seem trivial, but it is the reason we have wars
in the Middle East. A group of people referring to themselves as 'Jews'
are insisting that Palestine belongs to them because their ancestors
lived there 2000 years ago. They created the Zionist movement to help
restore their homeland.
"However,
numerous historians have looked into this issue and discovered that
most of these Zionists are not descendants of the original Jews.
Rather, most Zionists are 'Ashkenazi Jews'; a race of people from Asia.
The real, original Jews were physically and genetically similar to the
Arabs, specifically, dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair.
"The
real homeland for the white, Ashkenazi Jews is near the Caspian and
Black Seas, not Palestine. Their ancestors picked up the Jewish
religion many centuries ago. Due to the widespread ignorance of people
in that era, after a few generations they assumed that they were the
descendants of the Jews that lived in Palestine."
"As long as we accept the principle that
religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith,
it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and
the suicide bombers.
- Richard Dawkins: The God
Delusion -
"The
beauty of science as a way to understand the world is that it requires
that experiments be provable and subject to the kind of scrutiny that
religion forbids. In science it is the 'heretic' who overturns the
existing scientific understanding of the world who is rewarded, men
such as Einstein and Darwin. The scientist that developed a new theory
that overturned either of these two's theories would be immensely
rewarded. A religious heretic can look forward to the possibility of
being killed. Terrible things have been done using scientific
knowledge, but that is not the fault of science, it is how it is used
by humans. The response to that line is religion has been manipulated
by bad people too, however a wonderful saying that I like to use
follows 'It goes without saying that bad people will do bad things, but
for good people to do bad things takes religion.'
"I will close with one more thought that I
tell religious people when talking with them. 'You are just as much of
an atheist as I am, I just happen to believe in one less god than you
do. When you realize why you reject all the other gods and religions,
you will realize why I reject yours.'"
- Wisceptic
-
"I lift my voice aloud,
make
Mantra of American language now,
I
here declare the end of the War!
Let the States tremble,
let the Nation weep,
let
the President execute his own desire --
this Act done by my own voice,
nameless Mystery --
published to my own senses,
blissfully received by my own form
approved
with pleasure by my sensations
manifestation of my very thought
accomplished in my own imagination
all
realms within my consciousness fulfilled"
- Ralph Ginzberg: Wichita
Vortex Sutra (1966) -
"If a man will begin with certainties, he
shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he
shall end in certainties."
- Sir Francis Bacon -
"My grandmother
is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. She drinks right out of
the bottle."
- Henny Youngman - "Power corrupts.
Absolute power is kind of neat."
- John
Lehman -
"The only reason
for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."
- Leo Rosten - "A healthy male
adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in
other people's patience."
- John Updike - "Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of aviation
professionals and pilots throughout the globe that have gathered
together for one purpose. We are committed to seeking the truth
surrounding the events of the 11th of September 2001. Our main focus
concentrates on the four flights, maneuvers performed and the reported
pilots. We do not offer theory or point blame. However, we are focused
on determining the truth of that fateful day since the United States
Government doesn't seem to be very forthcoming with answers. We stand
with the Scholars and Veterans for Truth along side family members of
the victims - family members of soldiers who have given the ultimate
sacrifice - including the many Ground Zero workers who are now ill or
have passed away, when we ask for a new independent investigation into
the events of 9/11. We do not accept the 9/11 Commission report as a
satisfactory explanation for the sacrifice every American has made and
continues to make - some more than others. Thank you for taking the
time to inform yourself."
"Two in three children in Iraq have simply stopped going to school,
according to a government report.
"Iraq's Ministry of
Education says attendance rates for the new school year, which started
Sep. 20, are at an all-time low.
"Statistics released
by the ministry in October showed that a mere 30 percent of Iraq's 3.5
million students are currently attending classes. This compares to
roughly 75 percent of students who were attending classes the previous
year, according to the Britain-based NGO Save the Children...
"Iraq was awarded The United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) prize for eradicating illiteracy in
1982. At that time, literacy rates for women were among the highest of
all Islamic nations...
"UNICEF representative Roger Wright said in the October 2004 report:
'Iraq used to have one of the finest school systems in the Middle East.
Now we have clear evidence of how far the system has deteriorated.
Today millions of children in Iraq are attending schools that lack even
basic water or sanitation facilities, have crumbling walls, broken
windows and leaking roofs. The system is overwhelmed.'
"Two years later,
the situation has grown far worse. Now it is so bad that international
agencies are not around to survey it any more...
"Just before the U.S.-led invasion in spring 2003, school attendance
was nearly 100 percent."
- Dahr Jamail
and Ali al-Fadhily: It's
Either Occupation or Education -
"An accident that occurred as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being
dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas,
could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization
charged Thursday. The Project on Government Oversight said the
'near miss' event, which led the Energy Department to fine the plant's
operator $110,000, was due partly to requirements that technicians at
the plant work up to 72 hours per week. The Pantex plant, 17
miles northeast of Amarillo, is the country's only factory for assembly
and disassembly of nuclear weapons...
"It said that during three separate unsuccessful attempts to dismantle
the warhead in March and April of last year, workers applied too much
pressure to the device and a safety mechanism failed to work.
Oversight project investigator Peter Stockton, a former Energy
Department official, said the device was a W56 warhead, with a yield of
1,200 kilotons, 100 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb."
- Jeff Nesmith: Watchdog:
Firm nearly detonated nuke bomb -
"[T]his
country's taxpayers fork out as much as $80 per day for federal
prisoners awaiting the inevitable deportation back to their homeland.
Chippewa County Jail's Sheriff Moran claims that Sault Ste. Marie jail
receives $56 per day per federal inmate - under the national average.
Still, at that rate Hernan's 65-day incarceration cost us $3,640 -
almost seven times the cost of an actual flight back to Quito, Ecuador.
A fellow Ecuadorian inmate waited in Chippewa County Jail for 10
months. Do the math: 300 days, at $56 per day, equals a whopping
$16,800 - the price of our inefficient, and some would claim racist,
deportation system."
- Jacob Wheeler:
Forgotten
Prisoners: The Problem With Our Immigrant Deportation System -
"Two recent studies should be the final nails in the coffin of the lie
that has propelled some of this nation's most misguided policies: the
claim that smoking marijuana somehow causes people to use hard drugs,
often called the 'gateway theory...'
"In one National
Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study, researchers from the University
of Pittsburgh tracked the drug use patterns of 224 boys, starting at
age 10 to 12 and ending at age 22. Right from the beginning these kids
confounded expectations. Some followed the traditional gateway
paradigm, starting with tobacco or alcohol and moving on to marijuana,
but some reversed the pattern, starting with marijuana first. And some
never progressed from one substance to another at all...
"Lead researcher Dr.
Ralph E. Tarter told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 'It runs counter to
about six decades of current drug policy in the country, where we
believe that if we can't stop kids from using marijuana, then they're
going to go on and become addicts to hard drugs.'
"Researchers in
Brisbane, Australia, and St. Louis reached much the same conclusion in
a larger and more complex study published last month. The research
involved more than 4,000 Australian twins whose use of marijuana and
other drugs was followed in detail from adolescence into
adulthood.
"Then - and here's
the fascinating part - they matched the real-world data from the twins
to mathematical models based on 13 different explanations of how use of
marijuana and other illicit drugs might be related. These models ranged
from pure chance - assuming that any overlap between use of marijuana
and other drugs is random - to models in which underlying genetic or
environmental factors lead to both marijuana and other drug use or
models in which marijuana use causes use of other drugs or vice
versa.
"When they crunched
the numbers, only one conclusion made sense: "Cannabis and other
illicit drug use and misuse co-occur in the population due to common
risk factors (correlated vulnerabilities) or a liability that is in
part shared." Translated to plain English: the data don't show that
marijuana causes use of other drugs, but instead indicate that the same
factors that make people likely to try marijuana also make them likely
to try other substances.
"In the final blow
to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a
nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway
effect that does exist is 'more likely to be social than
pharmacological,' occurring because marijuana 'introduces users to a
provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source
for other illicit drugs.' In other words, the gateway isn't marijuana;
it's laws that put marijuana into the same criminal underground with
speed and heroin."
- Bruce Mirken: Why
Smoking Marijuana Doesn't Make You a Junkie -
"I'm tired of
all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep
enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?"
- Jean Kerr: The
Snake Has All the Lines -
"The widening gulf between workers and executives is part of a stunning
increase in inequality throughout the U.S. economy during the past
thirty years. To get a sense of just how dramatic that shift has been,
imagine a line of 1,000 people who represent the entire population of
America. They are standing in ascending order of income, with the
poorest person on the left and the richest person on the right. And
their height is proportional to their income - the richer they are, the
taller they are.
"Start with 1973. If
you assume that a height of six feet represents the average income in
that year, the person on the far left side of the line - representing
those Americans living in extreme poverty - is only sixteen inches
tall. By the time you get to the guy at the extreme right, he towers
over the line at more than 113 feet.
"Now take 2005. The
average height has grown from six feet to eight feet, reflecting the
modest growth in average incomes over the past generation. And the
poorest people on the left side of the line have grown at about the
same rate as those near the middle - the gap between the middle class
and the poor, in other words, hasn't changed. But people to the right
must have been taking some kind of extreme steroids: The guy at the end
of the line is now 560 feet tall, almost five times taller than his
1973 counterpart...
"Although corporate executives have always had the power to pay
themselves lavishly, their self-enrichment was limited by what Lucian
Bebchuk, Jesse Fried and David Walker - the leading experts on
exploding executive paychecks - call the 'outrage constraint.' What
they mean is that a conspicuously self-dealing CEO would be forced to
moderate his greed by unions, the press and politicians: The social
climate itself condemned executive salaries that seem
immodest.
"Lately, however, we
have experienced a death of outrage. Thanks to the right's well-funded
and organized effort, corporate executives now feel no shame in lining
their pockets with huge bonuses and gigantic stock options. Such
self-dealing is justified, they say: Greed is what made America great,
and greedy executives are exactly what corporate America needs...
"Under Bush, the economy has been growing at a reasonable pace for the
past three years. But most Americans have failed to benefit from that
growth. All indicators of the economic status of ordinary Americans -
poverty rates, family incomes, the number of people without health
insurance - show that most of us were worse off in 2005 than we were in
2000, and there's little reason to think that 2006 was much
better.
"So where did all
the economic growth go? It went to a relative handful of people at the
top. The earnings of the typical full-time worker, adjusted for
inflation, have actually fallen since Bush took office. Pay for CEOs,
meanwhile, has soared - from 185 times that of average workers in 2003
to 279 times in 2005. And after-tax corporate profits have also
skyrocketed, more than doubling since Bush took office. Those profits
will eventually be reflected in dividends and capital gains, which
accrue mainly to the very well-off: More than three-quarters of all
stocks are owned by the richest ten percent of the population...
"A generation ago the distribution of income in the United States
didn't look all that different from that of other advanced countries.
We had more poverty, largely because of the unresolved legacy of
slavery. But the gap between the economic elite and the middle class
was no larger in America than it was in Europe.
"Today, we're
completely out of line with other advanced countries. The share of
income received by the top 0.1 percent of Americans is twice the share
received by the corresponding group in Britain, and three times the
share in France. These days, to find societies as unequal as the United
States you have to look beyond the advanced world, to Latin America.
And if that comparison doesn't frighten you, it should."
"Science and art belong to the whole world, and before
them vanish the barriers of nationality."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
"There is a well-organized and growing movement to impeach President
Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. On my bookshelf sit half a dozen
books making the case for Bush's impeachment. I myself have no doubt
that Bush has, in fact, committed impeachable offenses, and that for
each Bush 'high crime and misdemeanor,' Cheney's culpability is ten or
twenty times greater...
"Impeachment is a political process, and not only are the votes to
remove either Bush or Cheney lacking, but it also would not be very
good politics to do to them what was done to President
Clinton. There
is no chance either Bush or Cheney will be removed from office...
"Getting the necessary two-thirds supermajority in support of
impeachment in today's Senate, which is virtually evenly-divided
politically, is simply not possible. With forty-nine senators of the
110th Congress members in good standing with the Republican Party, and
most of them rock-ribbed conservatives, even if the House produced
evidence of Cheney personally water-boarding 'Gitmo' detainees in the
basement of his home at the Naval Observatory, with Bush looking on
approvingly, there are more than thirty-three GOP Senators who still
would not vote to convict...
"The drive to impeach Bush and Cheney should, however, refocus its
effort and energy into another undertaking - one that not only might
succeed, but if it did, it would greatly benefit the nation and the
well-being of all Americans. Allow me to explain:
"The Constitution's
Impeachment Clause applies to all 'civil officers of the United States'
- not to mention the president, vice president and federal judges. It
is not clear who, precisely, is among those considered 'civil
officers,' but the group certainly includes a president's cabinet and
sub-cabinet, as well as the senior department officials and the White
House staff (those who are issued commissions by the president and
serve the President and Vice President).
"Quite obviously,
Bush and Cheney have not acted alone in committing 'high crimes and
misdemeanors.' Take a hypothetical (and there are many): Strong
arguments have been made that many members of the Bush Administration -
not merely Bush and Cheney -- have engaged in war crimes. If war crimes
are not 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' it is difficult to imagine what
might be. Jordan Paust, a well-know expert on the laws of war and a
professor at University of Houston Law Center, has written a number of
scholarly essays that mince few words about the war crimes of Bush's
subordinates. For example, many of their names are on the 'torture
memos...'
"Lowering the aim of an impeachment effort to focus on those who have
aided and abetted, or directly engaged in, the commission of high
crimes and misdemeanors, would have all the positives, and none of the
negatives, of going after Bush and Cheney. It would not be an effort to
overturn the 2004 election, but rather to rid the government of those
who have participated, along with Bush and Cheney, in abuses and
misuses of power; indeed, many among them have actually encouraged Bush
and Cheney to undertake the offensive activities.
"Many of these men
(and a few women) are young enough that it is very likely that they
will return to other posts in future Republican Administrations, and
based on their experience in the Bush/Cheney Administration, they can
be expected to make the offensive conduct of this presidency the
baseline for the next president they serve. Impeachment, however, would
prevent that from happening."
"Michael Dare is
a taxi driver who...no, no, no, wait just a damn minute here. What the
fuck kind of a name is Michael Dare? Is Dare even a real surname? I
mean, if it is, I apologize to those who bear it, but come on! Michael
Dare, my ass. Michael Dare sounds like a shitty '80s cop show starring
Don Johnson: Michael Dare is a cop who DOESN'T play by the rules...
Yeah, whoever thought that Michael Dare was a cool name can just eat me
raw. Why not: Michael Kickass? Or Michael PlowFist? How about Michael
Savage? Oh wait, no...that won't work at all."
- Annie Riordan:
Review
of the film The Straun House (Dr. Rage) which
apparently has a lead character named Michael Dare -
"Don't be afraid. It's that simple: don't let them
scare you. There's nothing they can do to you... a writer always
writes. That's what he's for. And if they won't let you write one kind
of thing, if they chop you off at the pockets in the market place, then
go to another market place. And if they close off all the bazaars, then
by God go and work with your hands until you can write, because the
talent is always there. But the first time you say, 'Oh, Christ,
they'll kill me!' then you're done. Because the chief commodity a
writer has to sell is courage. And if he has none, he is more than a
coward. He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic, because writing is a
holy chore."
- Harlan Ellison -
"You can't fool me, there is no sanity clause."
- Fiorello (Chico Marx) in A
Night At The Opera -
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The Best of Disinfotainment Today - 2006 A Year of Journalism with the Crap Removed  Or The Best of Disinfotainment Today - 2005, you slowpoke. |
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Contact George W. Bush - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Freemasons - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Skull and Bones - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Carlyle Group - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Illuminati - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact
Satan - mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Contact both houses of Congress -
president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Supreme Court - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Dick Cheney - mailto:mvice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Halliburton - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Bechtel - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Saddam Hussein - tightywhities@whitehouse.gov
Contact Osama bin Laden - mailto:thetwins@whitehouse.gov
Contact Jeb Bush - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Fidel Castro - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Kim Jong Il - eng-info@kcna.co.jp
Contact Jacques Chirac - france-presse@un.int
Contact the new Pope - accreditamenti@pressva.va
Contact the old Pope - mailto:%20thirdlevel@hellfireanddamnation.com
Contact God - president@whitehouse.gov
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (04-04) After 20 mental patients disappeared from his bus, a driver replaced them with sane citizens and delivered them to a mental hospital. The unidentified bus driver was transporting 20 mental patients from the capital city of Harare to Bulawayo Mental Hospital when he decided to stop for a few drinks at an illegal roadside liquor store. Upon his return he was shocked to discovered that all the mental patients had escaped. Desperate for a solution, the driver stopped at the next bus stop and offered free bus rides to several people. He then delivered them to the mental hospital, informing the staff they were easily excitable. It took the medical personnel three days to uncover the foul play. The real mental patients are still at large. |
Chapter 1
The Inmates It was a good night to be insane. Pitch black, rain pouring heavily, lightning striking again and again, perfect for lighting up the old wooden sign outside the crumbling gray stone walls of "The Gainesville Asylum for the Insane," with the word "insane" crossed off in crayon and the words "mentally handicapped" scrawled nearby, and the words "mentally handicapped" crossed off in chalk with the words "perfectly normal" scribbled next to them. There must have been an insane cackle breaking the momentum of the storm as lightning struck again and again, barely illuminating a skeleton key opening an old lock on a dirty door, heavy with age, squeaking open with a rusty creak. Another insane cackle. Yep, the insane like nights like this. It takes them outside themselves, forcing them to ponder the outside world as it really is, a random series of powerful illuminations, rather than the inside world, which varies splendidly in the sparkling synapses of the cerebral cortex of each individual, sane or not. |
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The Critics Agree
Looks like it might be “REALLY GOOD” - Publisher’s Discount Outlet < | |