I think monkey pimps would go a long way towards validating evolution, don't you?
The mass murder of Jews, but not only of Jews, by the Nazis is very well documented. In the case of the Cold-War horror stories demonizing Stalin, the shoe is on the other foot -- all the evidence points in the _opposite_ direction.
ALL IN THE GAME
On Balance
The only thing you get when you enforce a political balance in hiring,
teaching, or campus life is a politicized university
By STANLEY FISH
Recently, the Supreme Court once again took up the question of whether it is permissible under the establishment clause of the First Amendment to display representations of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other public spaces. At issue is the relationship between those displays and the "Lemon test" -- the legacy of Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 ruling that, in at least one interpretation, bars the state from engaging in activities that endorse or promote religion.
In the course of a long legal journey that included suits, injunctions,
petitions, decisions, and appeals, those in favor of the displays argue that their purpose is secular, not religious. The Ten Commandments, they say, are one (although not the only) source of the values and traditions upon which this country was founded. Therefore to display them in a public place is merely to recognize that history, and to provide a momentof education (not proselytizing) for passers-by.
In response to the findings of a district court that the Commandments and some accompanying documents were chosen only because of their obvious "religious references," officials of the two Kentucky counties involved in the latest case modified the display, adding to it political texts, patriotic texts, song lyrics, and pictures.
The idea was to surround the religiously charged materials with materials obviously secular, on the theory that, so surrounded, the religiosity of the suspect documents would be muted and even negated. That strategy (which may or may not prove successful; we'll have to wait and see) is taken from the landmark cases County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984).
In Allegheny, the court ruled that a stand-alone crèche placed in the county courthouse in Pittsburgh "has the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message." But in the same decision the court said that a menorah, placed outside a government building and flanked by a Christmas tree and a sign saluting liberty, "does not have an effect of endorsing religious faith."
In Lynch, Justice O'Connor wrote that a crèche displayed in Pawtucket, R.I., along with teddy bears, candy-striped poles, and an (ungrammatical) sign reading "Seasons Greetings," "does not communicate a message that the government intends to endorse the Christian beliefs represented by the crèche." The reason, she adds, is that "the overall holiday setting changes what viewers may fairly understand to be the purpose of the display -- as a typical museum setting ... [which] negates any message of endorsement."
I leave the issues raised by those cases to the court's deliberation. My interest is in the mechanism by which materials bearing substantive content (as in "Jesus Christ died for your sins") are turned into museum pieces -- that is, into texts whose messages have been aestheticized or commercialized, in the case of the holiday setting (and did Justice O'Connor forget the etymology of the word "holiday"?) -- with the result that they are no longer taken seriously as texts by spectators or readers.
It is not simply that the "museum setting" negates the message of endorsement; it negates any message, and that is its purpose. The name for this transmogrification is balance: If you want to take the edge off or pull the sting from a message that may prove provocative and controversial, balance it with other messages that are either bland or differently provocative.
In that way no one can accuse you of endorsing or saying or meaning anything. Doing the dance of balance indemnifies you from any criticism, except the criticism that you stand for nothing in particular, which will hardly be received as criticism given that standing for something particular, or being perceived to stand for something particular, is what you are trying to avoid.
Of course you could always say that what you are standing for and indeed standing up for is the First Amendment. That really sounds good, but more often than not it is just a fancy way of running away from the real issues that might be debated if balance had not become your new theology.
That is why balance is such an attractive option for administrators when someone like Ward Churchill comes to town, or threatens to.
An administrator in that situation can take his or her cue from Bill Maher, who invited Churchill to appear on his program Real Time but then paired him with the brother of someone who had been killed in the assault on the World Trade Center.
That is genius and a balancer's dream. Maher gets to defend free inquiry and to display his compassion for the victims of an atrocity at the same time. He comes off looking reasonable, fair, and, yes, balanced, while both Churchill and the victim's brother look a bit extreme. What administrator could wish for more?
Obviously, balance can be useful and I have employed it myself, when making up search committees or appointing members of a task force. But useful as it might prove, balance is not a real value. It is a strategy and as such is always political in nature. That is, balance is not the answer to an intellectual question; it is the attempt to evade or blunt an intellectual question. You resort to it not in response to the imperative of determining truth, but in response to pressures that originate more often than not from nonacademic constituencies.
That is surely the case with respect to the demand that a college or university faculty should display balance, in its hiring practices or in its tenure decisions or in its course offerings or in the materials assigned by individual instructors. In none of those instances is balance a legitimate educational goal.
Take the insistence that faculties be balanced so that there is a proportionate number of conservatives and liberals. That is the least defensible form of balance -- called "intellectual diversity" by its proponents, but is really affirmative action for conservatives -- because it assumes a relationship and even an exact correlation between one's performance in the ballot box and one's performance in the classroom.
There is no such correlation: The politics relevant to academic matters are the politics of academic disciplines, and the fault lines of those politics -- disputes between quantitative and qualitative social scientists, for example -- do not track the fault lines of the national divide between Republicans and Democrats. Thus it is not a coherent argument to say that students will benefit from having conservative as well as liberal professors; for with respect to the different approaches to a topic or a subject, party affiliation is not a predictor of which approach a professor will favor.
One might respond by pointing out that our nonacademic commitments and affiliations -- to religions, political agendas, ethnic origins, regional loyalties, sports teams -- will have, to a great extent, formed the person who enters the classroom, but that is an argument of determinism that is belied by every "tenured radical" (and there are many) who is on the "conservative" side in the battles of his or her discipline.
It is always possible to draw a line backward from the views you currently hold to the life events that preceded them; but preceding does not mean producing, and the line cannot be drawn in the reverse direction in a way that suggests that if you attended such and such a school, or read such and such a book, or underwent such and such a conversion, you would inevitably come out on this or that side of an academic debate.
Neither the dire consequences that supposedly come along with a predominantly liberal faculty nor the good consequences that would come along with a "redress" of the "imbalance" exist. The only thing you would get were you to enforce a political balance of persons hired or promoted would be a politicized university.
The same holds for the requirement that a curriculum be balanced between traditional and avant-garde courses. The courses a department ends up teaching will be a function of many things -- the kind of college or university it inhabits, the composition of the student body, the direction the discipline is taking. All of those are academic considerations, and in response to them a department might well have a balance of traditional and avant-garde courses -- not, however, as a goal
and by design, but as an unintended consequence of legitimate educational decisions.
And, finally, balance is not something an instructor should aim for when assigning texts or making up a syllabus. An instructor should first figure out what he or she thinks important and central and then make his or her choices accordingly. There is absolutely no obligation to include materials from every corner of the disciplinary landscape; there is an obligation -- and it is the only one -- to include materials that are, according to your intellectual judgment, relevant.
I teach Milton as a poet whose aesthetic is inseparable from his theology, and that conviction about Milton dictates the materials I assign and the questions I introduce and entertain. I am aware, of course, that there are other approaches to Milton -- psychoanalytic, Marxist, historicist, feminist -- and while representatives of those approaches make occasional cameo appearances in my class, they are, at best, supporting actors and, more likely, negative examples -- examples, that is, of interpretive directions I consider wrong.
I see no reason to include what I take to be wrong interpretations simply because they are there; no reason, that is, except for one imposed on me from the outside and with political, not educational, motives.
To be sure, educational motives might in some instances lead me to choose balance as an organizing principle; perhaps I am teaching a survey of critical approaches. But while balance might be the answer to the question of what's the best way of accomplishing what I'm after in the classroom, balance can never, in and of itself, be what I am after; unless, that is, I want to trade in the academic life for a frankly political one.
And, finally, balance is not something an instructor should aim for when assigning texts or making up a syllabus. An instructor should first figure out what he or she thinks important and central and then make his or her choices accordingly.
Here's what I want to talk (read: babble incessantly) about for the moment: Mad Cow disease. Now I recently got back to what I like to call "my fighting weight" (mainly because it sounds better than "my crying like a little girl weight"). I did this by switching to a high-protein diet. Before you start telling me how awful it is, I just wanna say--I feel better, I sleep better, I look better, and I have much more energy, so shut the hell up.
My only real concern is this Mad Cow Disease. I don't know that much about it, except that, well, there's these cows....and they're mad...maybe because we lead them down a concrete chute and fire steel pins into their heads.
Now I think we can all agree that a cow's life consists of standing around in bunches and then being eaten. God knows what will happen should they try to escape from this docile, and quite tasty, existence. I was prepared to take up the anti-cow movement, by organizing a little group I like to call All Cow Haters, Outside of Oprah (ACHOO). It was then, however, that Ken explained to me that Mad Cow Disease is simply a disease from eating tainted beef, which I almost never do.
Apparently, it's only English beef that can pass on the disease, so as my good deed for the day, I'm gonna tell you all how to remain safe.
1) You could give up beef altogether, but why would you want to do that? Then you could only eat vegetables, and McDonald's hamburgers, which contain only trace amounts of meat. But still, it's an option.
2) English people are very polite and well-mannered. If you happen to see a cow that clears its throat, or says "I say" before mooing, best not try to eat it.
3) English people like to spell things wrong, like 'colour'(color), 'honour'(honor), and 'football'(soccer). So beware of consuming any product spelled 'beuff', 'boeff', or 'spam'.
4) Don't go to England. I think this one goes without saying. They have a nasty history of enslaving every other culture they come in contact with. Plus they drive on the wrong side of the road.
5) Don't sleep in the subway, Darlin'. Boy, I love that song.
6) Drink lots of alcohol. This might not help, but it couldn't hurt.
So there you have it. Hope I've helped. And I hope that I have done it without offending anyone. But knowing Ken as I do, he must have a Limey vegetarian on his mailing list somewhere. To you, madam, I apologize.
Your Seduction Style: The Natural |
 You don't really try to seduce people... it just seems to happen. Fun loving and free spirited, you bring out the inner child in people. You are spontaneous, sincere, and unpretentious - a hard combo to find! People drop their guard around you, and find themselves falling fast. |
On February 25, 1990, Terri Schiavo had a cardiac arrest, triggered by extreme hypokalemia brought on by an eating disorder. As a result, severe hypoxic–ischemic encephalopathy developed, and during the subsequent months, she exhibited no evidence of higher cortical function. Computed tomographic scans of her brain eventually showed severe atrophy of her cerebral hemispheres, and her electroencephalograms have been flat, indicating no functional activity of the cerebral cortex. Her neurologic examinations have been indicative of a persistent vegetative state, which includes periods of wakefulness alternating with sleep, some reflexive responses to light and noise, and some basic gag and swallowing responses,
but no signs of emotion, willful activity, or cognition.
It is clear to this court that such severance was predicated on money and the fact that Mr. Schiavo was unwilling to equally divide his loss of consortium award (the $300,000) with Mr. And Mrs. Schindler.
The relevant Florida statute requires “clear and convincing evidence that the decision would have been the one the patient would have chosen had the patient been competent or, if there is no indication of what the patient would have chosen, that the decision is in the patient’s best interest.” Since there is no societal consensus about whether a feeding tube is in the “best interest” of a patient in a persistent vegetative state, the main legal question to be addressed is that of Terri Schiavo’s wishes.In other words, the court has to try to figure out what the patient herself would want. The "rule of thumb" used in the Karen Ann Quinlan case in the 1970s stated something along the lines of: If the patient were to awaken for 15 minutes, but knew that she would then return to her previous state, what would she choose? In this case, the court DID make a determination as to Terri's wishes. After listening to witnesses from both sides (no, it's not just the husband saying she would want to die), the court decided that there was "clear and convincing evidence" that Terri Schiavo would not choose to be kept alive by machines. Now, if you'll permit me a small digression...
"Robert has to deal with reality," Simpson said. "He's going to be second guessing himself a lot. Blaming himself. 'Why did I go back to the restaurant?' Things like that. I can't tell you the number of times I thought: 'If only I hadn't stabbed her in the throat, Nicole would still be alive today.' But you can't survive on 'if onlys.'"
"Don't listen to people. They can be cruel with their accusations. I mean, sure, it looks bad when you park on a deserted street, blocks away from where you're going to be eating. And some people might find it suspicious that he left her to go back to the restaurant to get his gun, but … he left his gun at the restaurant? Really? What, with like, the hat-check girl? Didn't this guy play a cop? Sheee-it. Punk ass white boy amateurs. Uh I mean, you know, stay strong, God is love."
"The best thing that he can do right now is to try to find the real killers as quickly as possible, even if he has to check every golf course in a three-hundred mile radius."
"Well," he said, scratching his chin, "I don't know. But if he did kill her, it must have been because he loved her very, very much. And remember, in this country, a man is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Then he smiled, shrugging. "And even then…"
In addition to Harding, Feldman will feature four other pro wrestling matches, including "a local wrestler who weighs 650 pounds."
There will also be a raunchy Paris Hilton look-a-like contest, with the winner getting at least $250 in cash, Feldman said.
"We're out to give South Florida fight fans a classy night out," Feldman said.
Not long after Howard Hughes bought the Sands Hotel in 1967, Frank Sinatra had a falling out with the management after they cut off his credit in the Casino. After throwing some furniture at Casino boss Carl Cohen, who promptly punched out some of his teeth, Sinatra signed a contract with Caesar's Palace. (emphasis mine)
This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims."The Dutch are living in a kind of pressure cooker atmosphere," Mr. Hiltemann said.
Investigators revealed that Bouyeri's motivation to kill was likely sparked by the movie Submission and further aggravated by his hate of the western world and those who refused to accept Islamic values. (emphasis mine)
The Desperate Housewives actress says she went without sex for four years following her break-up from husband John Tenney.
She said: "I thought about a male hooker. It would be like getting your carpet cleaned and there was a spot they didn't get out.
"You would feel safe saying. 'I need you to get this spot out or I'm not paying you.'"
Hunter S. Thompson, whose life and writing, vivid and quirky reflections of each other, made him one of the principal symbols of the American counterculture, shot and killed himself yesterday at his home near Aspen.I have no respect for someone who commits suicide and pisses away his talent. Punk ass.
If a math professor's "speech" consisted of insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 5, or an astrophysicist's "speech" was to claim that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, or a history professor's "speech" consisted of rants about the racial inferiority of the n-----s, each one of them could be fired by a state university without running afoul of the constitution.
Just because we don't have bright lines for determining what speech can constitute a firing offense, doesn't mean there are no lines at all. If Churchill hasn't crossed them, we are admitting that almost nothing will debase and disgrace the office of professor (except, you know, suggesting that there might be innate differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women).
Is Ward forcing his views upon his students? Is he indoctrinating them in his own radical beliefs? This is what CU should be investigating, the same as if they received word of a math professor teaching that 1+1=11, or a geography professor who continually lectures his students that the world is flat.
Now, I'm a believer in the protection of free speech, even when it's unpopular. However, I also believe that the right of free speech is not absolute. There's always the old example of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, but you could also consider libel/slander laws, or even those court cases in which people were arrested for using profane language in public places. (The "cussin' canoeist" case was overturned on appeal, but people are still being charged under the same law.) We have to balance the right of individual expression with the possible harmful effect(s) it may have on others in the community.
SURPRISED CUSTOMER SAYS PENIS PILLS DON'T WORK
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A New Jersey man has filed a false advertising lawsuit against a maker of herbal penis enlargement pills, alleging the medicine does not fulfill its promises, the plaintiff's lawyer said on Monday.
Two similar cases, filed last year in Colorado and Ohio, accuse manufacturers of herbal dietary supplements, VigRx and Enzyte, of falsely claiming to be able to add substantial length and girth to a man's penis.
All three suits seek class action status and claim to represent more than 1 million total plaintiffs.
A new study out of Norway concludes it's unlikely lobsters feel pain, stirring up a long-simmering debate over whether Maine's most valuable seafood suffers when it's being cooked.
So why are some of these journalists attacking the bloggers with such spittle and spite, with the kind of invective they usually try to keep out of their columns (Steve Lovelady called us not just a lynch mob but "salivating morons," stooping to the level of intelligence, subtlety, nuance, and articulation of an Oliver Willis fuss)? Yes, it's jealousy. Yes, it's fear. But it's also truly about not understanding how this world could possibly operate. These are the people who used to control the news and they think it's now uncontrolled; they think that's bad.
In September, conservative bloggers exposed flaws in a report by Dan Rather; he subsequently announced that on March 9 he would step down as anchor of the "CBS Evening News."
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's media regulator [Ofcom] has chastised publicly owned Channel 4 for on-air trailers that promoted the U.S. teen drama "The OC" with one of the show's most infamous lines: "Welcome to the OC, bitch."
CNN Reporter: Ok, we need to do an update on the lack of progress in Iraq, ya know, talk about the constantly worsening security situation, native unrest, that sort of thing...
Camera Man: We've been saying the situation is "constantly worsening" since about 5 minutes after they pulled down that statue of Saddam. I mean we'd practically have to see alien mantis people walking down the street, kicking in doors, pulling out small children, and eating them in the street for things to have been "constantly worsening" for that long...
She said it’s really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued
But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover
Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Wonder Woman: Why did you summon me? What's the emergency?
Batman: I...needed a hand with my utility belt.
Wonder Woman: That doesn't sound like a matter for the Justice League!
Batman: Today, it's the "Justus" League, baby...Just. Us.
Wonder Woman: You know, I could bind you with my magic lasso.
Batman: I'm counting on it. (cue '70s wocka wocka guitar) Now come on over here and see what you can do with this bat-pole.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Professor Churchill's opinions regarding September 11 have been utterly rejected by the public at large, have caused public figures from across the political spectrum to unite in their outrage against him, and have led many of his own colleagues to condemn his statements. If he intended to generate sympathy for terrorists, the effect has been the opposite. We need not fear his words, and we must not allow our anger to cause us to betray our deepest moral and legal principles. Indeed, it is most important that at times like these we defend our fundamental liberties. Liberty faces a far greater threat from a rejection of the First Amendment than it does from the opinions of Ward Churchill.
Influential Sunni Arab leaders of a boycott of last Sunday's elections expressed a new willingness Friday to engage the coming Iraqi government and play a role in writing the constitution, in what may represent a strategic shift in thinking among mainstream anti-occupation groups.
.....
In part, the Sunni and nationalist groups may be playing to their own constituencies. By all accounts, the Sunni turnout was far lower than that of Shiites and Kurds, although Sunni leaders debate whether that was a result of intimidation or adherence to calls for a boycott. But some residents in such Sunni towns as Ramadi and Tikrit have suggested there may be regrets over the choice. The disappointment seems strongest in urban areas, which have proved less sympathetic to the insurgency than the countryside.
The insurgents "made fools of us," said Mahmoud Ghasoub, a businessman in Baiji, a restive northern town. "They voted to disrupt the elections but failed. Now we have lost both tracks. We did not vote, nor did they disrupt the elections."
CNN military analyst James Marks, a retired Army general, questioned its authenticity.
He told CNN in a phone interview that the flak jacket in the picture had a kind of trim along the edges that he'd never seen before, and that the open-legged pants, as opposed to gathered hems, struck him as odd.
He also questioned what appeared to be camouflage paint on the face.
"We have not used camo paint with conventional forces serving in Iraq," Marks said.
The study, which is bound to provoke controversy, showed that the women who were directly exposed to semen were less depressed.
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs.
In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.
And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.
In an announcement which is stunning the world, France has decided to change its name permanently to Stinkland.
Leonardo DiCaprio has received a lifetime achievement award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free.
Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward.
..............................................................................................
We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom.
We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.
We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.
Let there be justice for all.
Let there be peace for all.
Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign.
No one is sure how the fire started, but a common theory is that heat from the decomposing manure deep inside the pile eventually ignited the manure.
"The driver said 'kids we've got porn, do you want to watch it'," one of the pupils told reporters. "Everyone started shouting yes, yes and he just put in a tape and we watched it on the small TV screens on the bus."
6. License: ...A license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver, not otherwise limited as to place or time of possession, shall be effective throughout the state, except that the same shall not be valid within the city of New York unless a special permit granting validity is issued by the police commissioner of that city. Such license to carry or possess shall be valid within the city of New York in the absence of a permit issued by the police commissioner of that city, provided that (a) the firearms covered by such license have been purchased from a licensed dealer within the city of New York and are being transported out of said city forthwith and immediately from said dealer by the licensee in a locked container during a continuous and uninterrupted trip; or provided that (b) the firearms covered by such license are being transported by the licensee in a locked container and the trip through the city of New York is continuous and uninterrupted; or provided that... (emphasis mine)
Patrick Burk’s firearm is legally registered to Patrick Burk - it is not “unlicensed.”
A license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver shall have attached the licensee`s photograph, and a coupon which shall be removed and retained by any person disposing of a firearm to the licensee. Such license shall specify the weapon covered by calibre, make, model, manufacturer`s name and serial number... (emphasis mine)
