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Zemyla
 
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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Zemyla » Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:04 pm

Earth certainly hasn't cleared it's orbit. I mean, look at Counter-Earth! <p>-----
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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Capntastic » Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:25 pm

Honestly, raise your hand if you're going to stop thinking of Pluto as a planet in your lifetime? It's a silly ruling says I :(


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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Deeum » Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:27 pm

I just got through reading this and the Yahoo news article. Very intresting, but I'll miss Pluto being called a planet.

But that's okay. It'll always be the 9th planet to me. <p><div style="text-align:center">
Image
</div></p>Edited by: [url=http://p068.ezboard.com/brpgww60462.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dragonmistressscv>DragonMistressSCV</A] at: 8/24/06 20:28

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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby pd Rydia » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:10 pm

::raises hand:: I will! The article led me to look up information on "Xena," which led me also to Ceres 1. Both of which are classified as dwarfies like Pluto. Made of 8 planets and 3 dwarfies, the solar system is officially more humongous! <p>
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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby PriamNevhausten » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:10 pm

Zero: *raises hand*

Really, I mean. It's not that big a deal. It's not like their redefining it destroys it or anything. Hell, our kids' school textbooks might now include Ceres and Xena along with Pluto as a part of basic astronomical education taught in elementary school.

How many of you knew about Ceres and UB313 already? No? Then what have you lost? A category has been added, and we have better ways of classifying things. Plus, now we can write superhero plots involving colliding Pluto with its moon to form a new true planet as an evil base or some shit. It's win-win. <p><span style="font-size:xx-small;">"It's in the air, in the headlines in the newspapers, in the blurry images on television. It is a secret you have yet to grasp, although the first syllable has been spoken in a dream you cannot quite recall." --Unknown Armies</span></p>

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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Zemyla » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:28 pm

I just want to know what's going to happen to Sailor Pluto. <p>-----
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<span style="font-size:xx-small;">I think boobs are the lesser of two evils. - Inverse (Pervy)
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Of course! Anything worth doing is worth doing completely wrong! - Travis English
Ultimately, wizards and clerics don't say, "Gee, I want to become a lich because weapons hurt less and I don't have to worry about being backstabbed; that whole 'eternal life' thing is just a fringe benefit."-Darklion
But this one time I killed a walrus with my bare hands, and I suddenly understood spherical coordinates. - KnightsofSquare
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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Capntastic » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:50 pm

Sorry, but it if hasn't been in The Magic Schoolbus, it isn't scientifically canon :(


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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby E Mouse » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:22 pm

Quote:
Pluto just a dwarf


Sailor Pluto: AND I MY AXE <p>


<span style="font-size:xx-small;">"Their rhetoric... You didn't put communists in his bed did you!" came Amber's indignant reply.

"Why not? All I had to do was open a gate to his bed and stick up a sign saying 'Hot virgin willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of international socialist fraternity.'"</span>

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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby pd Rydia » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:01 pm

Priam's potential superhero plot trumph's Kyle's Magic Schoolbus counterpoint. <p>
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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby Capntastic » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:09 pm

They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Just puttin' it out there.


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Re: THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAS EIGHT PLANETS.

Unread postby pd Rydia » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:32 pm

<ul>Local10.com
http://www.local10.com/news/9725203/detail.html

Boy Charged For Meowing At Neighbor Lady
Family Gave Cat Away After Neighbor's Complaints

POSTED: 2:26 pm EDT August 23, 2006
JEANNETTE, Pa.
-- Meow. A Pennsylvania judge is being asked to decide whether that word is a harmless taunt or grounds for misdemeanor harassment.

Police have charged a 14-year-old boy with that crime. Michael Loughner is accused of meowing whenever he sees his 78-year-old neighbor, Alexandria Carasia.

The boy's family got rid of their cat after Carasia complained that it was using her flower garden as a litter box. Now, she said, the boy makes meowing sounds every time he sees her.

He said he's only meowed at her twice.

"I've had to put up with this for three years," Carasia said. "As I walk by, I see Michael and his mother. He got on the porch and hid behind the bamboo screen and starts meowing. If I don't make this stop now, they're going to keep doing this to me. I shouldn't have to worry about walking out of the house and being harassed by this young kid."

Loughner said that on July 23 he went out to hold his dog so it wouldn't leave the yard as Carasia walked by.

"She was walking through and she kept looking at us," he testified. "I grabbed the dog so it wouldn't leave the yard. When I put my head down, I meowed."

He said that was one of the two times he's ever meowed at the woman, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported.

"As she walked in front of the house, nothing was said," the boy's mother, Sally Loughner, told the court. "He stepped off the porch to make sure the dog didn't get out. As he reached down and got the dog, he said, 'Meow.' ... She said, 'Do you want me to call the cops again?' I said, 'Go ahead, he hasn't done anything wrong.'"

There is a history of disputes between the neighbors, according to the paper.

Sally Loughner told the court that she ended up sending her cat to live with family members so that she could "keep peace in the neighborhood."

Defense attorney David Martin Jr. asked that the case be dropped.

"This should never have been filed," Martin said. "This is not something that police should be wasting their time with or wasting the court's time."

The judge heard from both parties Tuesday. He decided to wait 90 days before ruling, saying he'll decide what to do after seeing how the boy and his neighbor get along in the meantime.

Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</ul> <p>
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fundies in the prisons, wicca in arlington, katrina homes

Unread postby pd Rydia » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:03 pm

emphasis mine



http://www.alternet.org/rights/40324/

Evangelical Conversion-for-Parole Program Thwarted
By Rob Boston, Church and State
Posted on August 28, 2006, Printed on August 28, 2006


The day after a federal court struck down a taxpayer-supported evangelical Christian program in an Iowa prison, Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, issued a press statement. He was not pleased.

"The courts took God out of America's schools, now they are on the path to take God out of America's prisons," Earley groused.

Earley's analysis of judicial decisions dealing with religion and public schools was widely off the mark, but he had good reason to be upset about the recent ruling on public funds for inmate indoctrination. His organization, Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by ex-Watergate felon Charles Colson, has been sponsoring the Iowa program for three years. If the ruling stands up on appeal, not only will Earley's group have to shut down the program, it will be required to repay the state of Iowa more than $1.5 million in public support it has received during that time.

The June 2 decision in Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries was a staggering loss not just for Earley's group but perhaps for key elements of President George W. Bush's "faith-based" initiative as well.

U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt didn't mince words. Officials at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility had become, he wrote, far too entangled with religion by establishing a special wing for Prison Fellowship's InnerChange program. InnerChange, Pratt declared, is suffused with religion.

"The religion classes are not objective inquiries into the religious life, comparable to an adult study or college course, offered for the sake of discussing and learning universal secular, civic values or truths," Pratt wrote. "They are, instead, overwhelmingly devotional in nature and intended to indoctrinate InnerChange inmates into the Evangelical Christian belief system."

Later in the ruling, Pratt observed, "For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates. There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates."

Attorneys at Americans United were especially gratified by the legal victory. For AU's legal team, Pratt's meticulous 140-page ruling capped more than three years of hard work, including extensive research and on-site visits with inmates and their families in Newton.

Americans United first became interested in the case late in 2002 after a Newton inmate filed a lawsuit pro se (without an attorney) challenging the program and outlining its details. Americans United agreed to represent the inmate and filed another lawsuit against the state's support of the program on behalf of taxpayers and family members of inmates. The two lawsuits were then combined into one.

<font color=red>The InnerChange program was given the prison's "honor unit," which had been used to house the best-behaved inmates. Those inmates were dumped back into the general population. In their place, about 200 inmates took possession of the wing and began receiving religious instruction around the clock.</font>

Iowa corrections officials had instituted the program in 1999. In the first full year, the state allocated $229,950 from its Inmate Telephone Rebate Fund, funds obtained from surcharges placed on calls made to and by inmates. A few years after that, the state stopped using the telephone monies, instead funding the program with direct appropriations from the Healthy Iowans Tobacco Trust, which is partly composed of tax dollars.

Many inmates and their families were especially upset over the allocation from the telephone rebate program. Money from that fund is supposed to be spent on programs to benefit all prisoners, yet a significant portion of it was being siphoned off to fund a religious program that only some inmates wanted.

AU's lawsuit challenged only state involvement with InnerChange, not religious programs in prisons generally. Prison inmates have the right to practice their faith behind bars. They may read religious literature, receive visits from spiritual counselors and, within the confines of the unique security needs of prisons, access religious items.

The InnerChange program was something entirely different. The effort was established at Newton Correctional Facility after public issuance of a proposal that Pratt determined was "gerrymandered" to fit only the Colson group. State officials, he concluded, were adamant about establishing the evangelical program in the prison.

On paper, InnerChange was open to any inmate who wanted to take part. The reality on the ground was something else. The program was so saturated with the conservative, biblically literalist form of Christianity favored by Prison Fellowship that members of other faiths found it inhospitable. During the trial, several inmates testified that they found InnerChange impossible to reconcile with their own religious beliefs.

One inmate, Benjamin Burens, who practices a Native American religion, participated in InnerChange for a while, even though he is not a Christian. Burens testified that InnerChange staff pressured him to become a born-again Christian and criticized him for taking part in Native American rituals, labeling them a form of witchcraft. Burens was eventually expelled from the program.

According to the court record, non-evangelical Christians were commonly referred to by InnerChange staff as "unsaved," "lost," "pagan," those "who served the flesh," "of Satan," "sinful" and "of darkness."

This criticism of other faiths even extended to other Christian denominations. As Pratt noted, "Testimony revealed a constant tension between Roman Catholic inmates involved in InnerChange and the chronic problem of InnerChange volunteers criticizing Roman Catholic beliefs and practices.... InnerChange's Field Guide clearly warns that non-Christians and those who desire time to observe faith practices not included in the InnerChange program, e.g., Roman Catholics who wish to attend Mass or Native Americans who wish to participate in the sweat lodge ceremony, may do so only if those observances do not conflict with the InnerChange program requirements."

Pratt found this reliance on conversion clear evidence of InnerChange's sectarian character.

"To anyone well-acquainted with the program -- as are the state Dept. of Corrections management team and the InnerChange staff -- the object of the InnerChange program is to change inmates' behavior through personal conversion to Christianity," he wrote. "InnerChange's position that no one actually is required to convert to pass through the program is mere formalism. Every waking moment in the InnerChange program is devoted to teaching and indoctrinating inmates into the Christian faith."

AU had also raised issues of unequal treatment among inmates, based on their willingness to conform to the evangelical atmosphere of InnerChange. Again Pratt found this argument compelling.

InnerChange inmates enjoyed perks and benefits that are significant to an incarcerated population. <font color=red>The special unit for InnerChange inmates featured private toilet facilities and cells with wooden doors instead of steel. The environment was generally safer, and inmates were entrusted with keys to their own cells. InnerChange inmates had extra contact with their family members and even gathered together to watch movies on weekends.

But InnerChange inmates got an even bigger benefit: access to special classes that made parole much more likely. Treatment classes are a condition of parole in Iowa, and most inmates must wait until they approach their release date to take part in them. InnerChange inmates got the classes earlier, significantly increasing their odds of being granted parole.
</font>

In an attempt to defend the program, Earley and other Prison Fellowship officials insisted that taxpayer money was funding only the secular aspects of InnerChange. AU attorneys attacked this assertion, quoting Prison Fellowship Ministries' own materials to prove that there are no secular aspects to InnerChange.

AU cited an InnerChange document that asserted, "All programming all day, every day is Christ-centered." The organization also noted that Prison Fellowship was trying to have it both ways: bragging to its fundamentalist Christian supporters about the program's religiosity and then playing it down before government officials to get more tax support.

In fact, even a cursory glance at the organization and its materials exposed InnerChange's ties to evangelical Christianity. Its website states upfront: "The InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) is a revolutionary, Christ-centered, faith-based prison program supporting prison inmates through their spiritual and moral transformation."

It adds, "IFI is an integral part of bringing a biblical sense of justice to correctional facilities in America. We are confident that the results will matter. States will realize a spectacular reduction in the rate ex-offenders are returned to prison and Prison Fellowship through equipping, exhorting and assisting the local church to minister to prisoners, victims and their families will realize souls won for the Kingdom of God."

The Web site emphasizes InnerChange's reliance on the "transformational model" of rehabilitation. This model, InnerChange asserts, "tries to help inmates' change by identifying sin as the root of their problems. It encourages inmates to turn from their sinful past, see the world through God's eyes, and surrender to God's will. This model promotes the transformation of the inmate from the inside out through the miraculous power of God's love."

All paid staff and volunteers at Prison Fellowship and InnerChange must agree with the organization's view on theology. Staff members must sign Prison Fellowship's Statement of Faith, which reflects fundamentalist beliefs. Non-evangelicals and non-Christians are not hired.

Pratt had no problem debunking claims that InnerChange has secular components. "The overtly religious atmosphere of the InnerChange program is not simply an overlay or a secondary effect of the program -- it is the program...," he wrote. "Here, every activity -- worship services, revivals, community meetings, daily devotionals -- is organized and developed by the InnerChange program and is designed to transform an individual spiritually. Even the otherwise traditional rehabilitation classes themselves, as set forth above, have been turned into classes intended to indoctrinate inmates into the Christian faith."

With so many of their key claims left in tatters by the decision, defenders of InnerChange were left clinging to a frequent fallback position: InnerChange should receive tax funding because it reduces prisoner recidivism.

Responding to the ruling, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told Baptist Press, "A federal judge finds a prison rehab program that actually works and has much lower recidivism rates than other programs, and so he declares it unconstitutional because it dares to bring a faith element into the program."

In fact, there is no objective evidence that InnerChange works or reduces recidivism. In 2003, Colson released what he said was statistical validation for this claim, trumpeting a study purporting to show that inmates who took part in InnerChange returned to prison at a much lower rate than those who did not.

The study made a big splash in the media, but the claims quickly evaporated. Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California-Los Angeles, examined the data and found it to be statistically invalid. Prison Fellowship had excluded all the prisoners who did not finish the program, in essence kicking its failures out. When all of the participants were added back in, Kleiman found that InnerChange participants actually returned to prison at a slightly higher rate than a control group.

Nevertheless, program supporters like Land continue to dutifully regurgitate the assertion that InnerChange has shown startling rates of success. Although without foundation, this claim has undoubtedly helped the program spread to other states. InnerChange now receives tax support in Texas, Kansas and Minnesota, and a program that Prison Fellowship claims is privately funded was launched in Arkansas just days before the ruling came down.

In addition, InnerChange hopes to make inroads into the federal prison system. <font color=red>In March, the U.S. Justice Department announced it was soliciting proposals for a "single-faith" prison rehabilitation program to "facilitate personal transformation for the participating inmates through their own spirituality or faith...."</font>

The solicitation listed 10 requirements that interested groups must have -- all of which just happen to mirror the features of InnerChange. Earley seemed to get the message, telling The Washington Post that his group is "very interested" in the proposal.

Americans United has been communicating with the Justice Department, trying to persuade it to fix the proposal's constitutional defects. The ruling in the Iowa lawsuit, AU attorneys say, will help them make the case.

The Justice Department's interest in "faith-based" rehabilitation isn't surprising. The current director of the Justice Department's Task Force On Faith-Based And Community Initiatives is Steven T. McFarland, a former lawyer with the Christian Legal Society who also served as vice president for program and partnership development for Prison Fellowship International from 2002-05.

The Iowa ruling could also have broader implications for the entire "faith-based" approach to other social service programs. Faith-based funding assumes that religious content can be legally underwritten by taxpayer dollars. The Iowa decision casts serious doubt on that claim.

Americans United chose to litigate against InnerChange, in part, because it was an opportunity to bring a test case against the faith-based initiative. For years, initiative backers have insisted that the religious component of faith-based services can somehow be isolated and government money directed only to what remains. AU has argued that most faith-based plans are so saturated with religion that tax funding cannot go to them. This ruling upholds AU's argument and can only be seen as a blow to one of the key features of the Bush initiative.

"This decision should strongly bolster our efforts to rein in faith-based funding," said Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex Luchenitser, who is lead counsel in the Iowa case. "The court's decision makes clear that the government cannot provide any support whatsoever to a program that proselytizes those it claims to serve, or coerces them to take part in religious activities or discriminates against those who refuse to adopt its religious teachings."

Luchenitser was joined on AU's litigation team by AU attorney Heather Weaver and Iowa civil rights attorney Dean Stowers.

Federal lawmakers who back the Bush faith-based initiative are well aware that the decision spells trouble for their agenda. On June 7, three House Republicans, Joseph R. Pitts of Pennsylvania, Trent Franks of Arizona and Steve King of Iowa, hosted a briefing with Earley in the Capitol to discuss the ruling and possible remedies. An attendee provided notes to Church & State.

<font color=red>Earley called the decision a "direct assault on the faith-based initiative" and went on to insist that the main purpose of InnerChange is not conversion. He and the House members attacked Americans United and AU Executive Director Barry W. Lynn by name. They also overstated the reach of the decision, insisting that it puts prison chapels at risk. Franks went so far as to assert that advocates of separation of church and state will not rest until they remove religious symbols from the headstones at Arlington Cemetery.</font>

Participants discussed a possible legislative response from Congress but decided to wait until the appeal is heard. One participant remarked that this case is one they "must not lose." (Pitts later attacked the ruling during a speech on the floor of the House.)

The ruling can also be seen as a blow to Colson's larger ambitions for society. For years, Colson and his backers have talked about saturating public institutions with the proper "biblical worldview" -- one of fundamentalist Christianity. Colson focused on prisons in part due to his personal history but also because prisons are a soft target. Public opinion leans toward a punishment model of corrections, and many rehabilitative or work programs have dried up in recent years. Recidivism rates remain high, leading some to back just about any approach that promises to prevent inmates from committing new crimes once they are released.

What lies ahead for the Iowa case? <font color=red>Judge Pratt, aware that his decision would be appealed, has temporarily stayed his order. If the ruling is sustained by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Newton officials will have to disband the program. In addition, Prison Fellowship will have to repay the state of Iowa $1,529,182.70. This type of repayment, called "recoupment," is unusual. In this case, Pratt said, it is justified for two reasons: First, as Pratt put it, "the severe nature of the violation." Secondly, the judge noted that InnerChange officials should have known their program was constitutionally suspect. He pointed out, for example, that corrections officials in California provided the group with a detailed memo explaining why that state would not fund the organization, citing constitutional concerns.</font>

Americans United's Lynn hailed the opinion, saying it should stand as a warning to religious leaders tempted to take taxpayer funding.

"There is no way to interpret this decision as anything but a body blow to so-called faith-based initiatives," Lynn said. "Tax funds cannot underwrite conversion efforts." Continued Lynn, "Government has no business paying for religious indoctrination and conversion programs in prisons or any other tax-funded institution. Furthermore, church leaders who take faith-based funding may find that they've made an expensive misjudgment if their 'faith-based' funding is challenged."

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/40324/



<hr size=4 align=left width="74%" noshade>

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77070

First US Military Wiccan dies in Combat.....
Thursday July 06, 2006 03:27


Sgt Patrick D. Stewart died last September 25th in Afghanistan while serving the US military in Afghanistan. He was attached to the Nevada national guard and the helicopter he was travelling in was target of a rocket-propelled grenade. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze star, a distinguished veteran who had served in the US military mission to Korea and active combat in Operation Desertstorm.

Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart like any other distinguished combat veteran gets a memorial in his home town, though his body was cremated and his ashes scattered by his widow Roberta Stewart in Reno.

Last May 31st she organised a memorial of her own to protest a decision by the US "department of Veterans Affairs" who have refused to honour her husband's wishes that a pentacle be put on his stone. This constitutes a breach of the 1st amendment, as Wicca has been accepted by Federal Courts as a religion since 1995.
[img: Mrs Stewart July 4th in Fernley Nevada addresses a crowd of supporters]
"Whatever one's opinion might be about the Wiccan faith, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution provides for religious freedom for all individuals of all faiths -- whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Wiccans and others," wrote constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead a noted figure in Christian evangelical circles in an online essay for ChristianityToday.com on June 5.

he went on to write "... The only way that freedom can prevail for Christians is for Christians to stand up and fight for the minority beliefs and religions of others."


At present a total of 37 "faith" symbols are used for War Veteran Memorials in the USA. The majority are christian based variations of the cross, Kathurlicks like to see the bloodied body of Jesus hanging there all in pain, whereas Protestants prefer a plain cross to symbolise resurrection. Jews and Muslims of course have the Star of David and Crescent Moon respectively. Mormons and Masonic symbols have long been accepted. Since Wiccans applied 7 years ago to see the pentacle included in faith based symbols on burial or memorial markers, the US war veterans department have moved to add a Buddhist wheel, a star with nine points for Baha'i believers and even invented a symbol for atheists which looks somewhat like an atom, but the pentacle has not yet been seen.

Sgt. Patrick Stewart's widow and mother to his two children (also wiccan) is quick to point out that his faith was registed on his military ID or "dog tags" as they are informally known. She insists everyone knew he was wiccan.

Speaking to a rally in support of her petition and her dead husband's wishes on US Independence Day she said :-
"Today, we have honored his memory and the freedom of all faiths in the manner in which he would have wanted,"
"In that spirit, we call for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to end its discrimination and be held accountable for upholding the freedom of religion ... (that has) been granted to all of us as unalienable by the rights of the United States' Constitution."...."In life, Patrick was my heartmate, my best friend and my confidante," she said before ending the service with a moment of silence for all of America's fallen soldiers....."He was a compelling and passionate man, a brave person who stood tall and proud. He was strong in his convictions, and he loved his country," she said. "He loved the freedom of the great outdoors, of the mountains and the wide-open skies. He loved the freedom that was the foundation of America"

A retired US military chaplain Rev. Maj. Bill Chrystal added :-
"Let us honor them by fighting for the rights they held so dearly," Chrystal said. "In Pat's case especially, may we never tire until all are free to worship as they please and, when the time comes, to rest under the symbol of the faith that sustained them in life and gave them hope in death."

There are some who believe that the US military is shy to include the symbol because of its association amongst fundementalist christians, (many of whom enlist) with devil worship.

Wiccans thought would be quick to discount such allegations. The Rev. Selena Fox is pastor and senior minister of the "circle sanctuary" one of the USA's oldest and most established Wiccan worshipper groups, and claims that 2 other Wiccan widows also wish see their husbands' markers bear a Pentagram. If so, Sgt Stewart was the 3rd Wiccan to die, but only the first to be officially dog tagged.

Jo Schuda a spokesperson for the Veterans Assocation has argued that lack of a central hierarchy (perhaps on the lines of an annual druidic meeting near lambay volcano) has hampered the religious denomination in its dealings with the US military. However the lack of a "wiccan pope" or "chief rabbi wicca" has been overcome she insists and claims 2 requests for Pentagrams will be honoured by October.

Wicca is a peace-loving religion and preaches pacific solution to conflict, except when dealing with left hand path insurgents who resist the emergence of democracy.

bless you all.

here endeth the lesson.
passeth the plate
.:.

Independent Media Centre Ireland
http://www.indymedia.ie
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77070

Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.



<hr size=4 align=left width="74%" noshade>

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/04/HOG86HFNDU1.DTL

The little house that roared
A tiny cottage designed for Katrina survivors offers the Bay Area a few clues about disaster relief and affordable housing
Susan Fornoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 4, 2006


The Gulf Coast's unique housing crisis has given birth to a cute, yellow, 308-square-foot house known as the Katrina Cottage, which has put a smile on the face of just about everyone who traipsed across the white-trimmed threshold to see how the concise layout could shelter a family of four under its charming pitched roof.

Inside on the walls, at showings in Orlando in January and Ocean Springs, Miss., in February, architectural drawings by cottage designer Marianne Cusato and South Carolina architect Eric Moser detailed how various models of the Katrina Cottage could serve as a "Grow House" that would over time be expanded to a bigger house, or maybe even just provide a rear guest cottage to a new house to be built at the front of the lot.

Outside on the broad front porch, visitors lingered on its built-in benches.

"Everyone walks through and says 'Wow, it's so big,' " said Cusato, a New Yorker whose design was the first to be built of more than 100 created for the Mississippi Renewal Forum under the leadership of New Urbanism co-founder Andres Duany last fall. "Three hundred square feet and they say it's big."

It's big enough to make people stop and think, especially here in the Bay Area. Will we be able to get one of these instead of a travel trailer when the Big One knocks down three or four times as many dwellings as Mississippi lost in Katrina? And with an adorable, friendly structure like this costing only about $35,000 to build, why must Bay Area starter homes cost half a million dollars?

The answers are -- as usual when talking about Bay Area housing -- a little depressing and more than a little complex.

That is, where answers exist.

--How it shakes out--

If the federal government knows how it's going to house all of the Californians who will be displaced by the Big One, it's not saying yet. The Chronicle reported just last month that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff several times to show her the Federal Emergency Management Agency's earthquake relief plan and been put off.

According to the latest report from the Association of Bay Area Governments, a plus-7.0 quake on the Hayward Fault will render 155,000 housing units uninhabitable, displacing 360,000 people and putting 110,000 in need of publicly provided housing. Loma Prieta, by comparison, made 16,000 homes unlivable; Northridge, 46,000.

That report encouraged property owners to retrofit buildings before the Big One hits; it offered no solution to the inevitable housing crisis except to say that shelters operated by the Red Cross that typically stay open four to six weeks after a disaster will have to stay open longer.

After that, well, there's the FEMA travel trailer. A whole bunch of them, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

"Studies show that when you put a bunch of these trailers in an area, crime will be high and it's going to be a bad area," said Jason Spellings, the Jackson, Miss., builder who put the Katrina Cottage together with design assistance from local architect Michael Barranco. "You put one on your property and your property value starts going down immediately; they can't hold the land value."

"You can get a free trailer for 18 months if you qualify, and it's a lousy place to live, but it's free," Cusato said. "This cottage is durable, the quality of life is better and it's not going to blow away in the next hurricane, so why don't you want this?"

Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran told FEMA she'd prefer more cottages and fewer trailers -- "This has a lot more character and a lot more soul than a FEMA trailer," she told the Biloxi Sun Herald last month -- but the government agency has declined to assist. Emeryville architect Christopher "Kit" Ratcliff said he could see why after viewing the plans.

"One of the problems that I see with it, and I probably shouldn't say this, is that it looks nice," Ratcliff said. "I think the government has a very hard time giving things away to people or underwriting things that go beyond some sort of bureaucratically understood minimal gesture.

"I think this is a nifty little design, and I think it's really hitting a good need and it's a wonderful thing to offer people. I was fantasizing myself about how you'd add on to it, and I think you can. And I can think if the Hayward or San Andreas fault really busts loose in this part of the world, there'd be a lot of people who have a plot of land who'd like to have something like this on it quickly."

Ratcliff is president of the Bay Area's only 100-year-old architectural firm, which was started by his grandfather, Walter, just before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That was the year the San Francisco Relief Corp. built more than 5,000 structures of 140 to 252 square feet, along what is now Park Presidio Boulevard, that have become known as the "earthquake shacks."

These were intended to provide temporary shelter, but temporary defies definition sometimes. Who hasn't rented an apartment just until they found something better, and lived there five years or more? Whose child hasn't attended class in a so-called "temporary classroom" that has been in use for a generation?

San Francisco architect Mark Miller and his firm, MKThink, found that 76 percent of such structures overstay their intended welcome, and has developed a modular solution he calls "classroom in a can" that is flexible, portable -- and also bright, a quality he finds essential to disaster recovery.

"How do you bring normalcy back to people's lives -- this is a lot of what the struggle is in New Orleans," Miller said. "There's so much talk, so much angst, all these contests, and the No. 1 thing people are looking for is to get on with life. That's what this cottage is, a base to rebuild a life. And for disaster relief, I think it's really appealing.

"When the trailers arrive fast and give people a home that's dry and safe, that's a good thing, but they tend to linger. This is little and it's cute and it's yellow and it's well thought out, and you wouldn't mind if it did linger."

Said Spellings, the cottage builder, "In 1992, Andrew hit Florida and I was in college and helped with the cleanup. There are still people in FEMA trailers in and around Homestead, Fla."

Well, there are still people in earthquake cottages in San Francisco, according to the Western Neighborhoods Project Web site, http://www.outsidelands.org, which reports that 5,000 of the structures were hauled off to various parts of the city, where 23 still stand. Fortunately, they were made of durable materials, with fir flooring, redwood walls and cedar-shingled roofs, and were easily and attractively expanded into larger homes.

Those went for about $100 in 1906; Cusato's cottage can run as much as $148 a square foot. Spellings, driving down Highway 495 to the Gulf Coast behind a more cheaply made manufactured home, noted such details as his cottage's $450 Spanish cedar door, compared with the home's door that "probably cost $100."

"Also, when you build a 300-square-foot house, the price per square foot is going to be as high or higher than that of a 1,500-square-foot house, because you're buying the same kitchen and bathroom over and over," he said. "In Mississippi, $148 a square foot is very high. So we have to get the price down. One way is to go to 600 square feet. Another way is to go to a factory setting for production and buy in bulk."

--Nowhere to grow--

Ah, to find a house in the Bay Area at $148 a square foot. The way that the Katrina Cottage reconnected coastal residents to their community's history got San Francisco architect Miller fantasizing about building a modern little three-story house of maybe 700 square feet in the city.

"If you build it prefab, you could get the cost down from $500 a square foot to $200 a square foot," Miller said. "I don't think it's out of the question."

Generally, though, the 700-square-foot home in the Bay Area will be a condo, with no possibility of expanding in any direction. Remember what used to be known as the starter home? Asian Neighborhood Design architect Rose McNulty lives on a 103-year-old property in San Francisco that started with a 600-square-foot house in 1903, with an 1,100-square-footer to follow in 1910.

"My immediate reaction to the 'Grow House' plans is that city planning and building departments in California won't like the hodgepodge nature of the houses being built over time," McNulty said in an e-mail after viewing Cusato's drawings. "Perhaps in less urban areas they would grant permits for all phases, with the understanding that it would not all be built at once, but cities (and especially San Francisco) usually want more control over what is built."

That's where zoning comes in, said Karen Hester, the founder of Temescal Creek Cohousing.

"Where I live is zoned R-35, which means that you can only cover half of the lot size with buildings," Hester said via e-mail. "So you might be making a commitment when you buy a tear-down and replace it with a 'grow' cottage to only have a 1,000-square-foot house, no matter that you later win the lottery, unless you build up" and add a second story.

Not only that, said San Francisco architect Neal Schwarz, associate professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, "The 'Grow House' is based on a suburban model of development in which land is at less of a premium. That fact alone makes it difficult to imagine this as an applicable strategy for the Bay Area.

"That said, the project is refreshing in its potential to counteract the disturbing tendency we see in the Bay Area toward monster homes. We increasingly define ourselves through square footages. Developers, of course, feed into this psychology, ever expanding our expectations of home just as McDonald's expands our expectation of the size of drink we need with our burger and fries."

It's a safe bet that there's not a developer in Northern California who would plan a community of expandable Katrina Cottages. One developer who is using modular construction methods to reduce costs and increase speed, Greg Francis, is working at the ultra-high end of the market.

"This year we will build five custom homes using the modular system of building," Francis said in an e-mail. "They will be built in factories in Nebraska and Colorado and shipped to our area 80 percent to 85 percent complete. Their prices will range from $1,100,000 to $3,500,000."

It's not that there's not a market for $35,000 expandable houses, of course -- there's just not a market for $35,000 expandable houses that cost $500,000 because of all of the expenses added to the builder's objective of making a profit.

"If you look at land prices in the Bay Area, a lot costs probably a minimum of $200,000," said Cindy Siwecki, vice president of marketing and research for the Reiser Group, an integrated sales and marketing resource for builders. "By the old formula, the price of land times four is usually what the cost of the house would be, or with a finished lot, the price times three. So you can't build something that small here. You can't take a 300-square-foot house and put it on a $200,000 lot.

"The cost of new has gotten very, very expensive. These places affected by Katrina, they don't have the same high land cost, the same infrastructure. Here, a building permit in some cities is $100,000 to $150,000. So you're looking at $300,000 and you haven't even poured foundation yet."

And so, times four, the house needs to cost $1.2 million.

That leaves the government to subsidize starter projects. An article in The Chronicle on Feb. 23, "Urban housing success story faces budget ax," featured well-designed mixed-income housing projects that have been built using Hope VI grants, but the Bush administration seeks the elimination of that program.

Cusato is working on private funding and mass manufacturing to churn out her Katrina Cottages for Mississippians. "I'm having a hard time building these down here because of the politics, but I may be putting 2,000 of them in Ghana," she said. "A developer in Virginia wants to do some as affordable houses. People see it and realize it's a dignified way to live."
Resources

To see all six versions of the expandable "Grow House," and for more information about New Urbanism, visit http://www.newurbanguild.com. The New Urban Guild also is issuing a series of plan books containing more small designs.

For more information on the earthquake cottages, visit http://www.outsidelands.org. more cottage photos and information about architect Marianne Cusato, visit http://www.cusatocottages.com. more information about MKThink's "classroom in a can," visit http://www.mkthink.com. S.F.

E-mail Susan Fornoff at sfornoff@sfchronicle.com.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... HFNDU1.DTL
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
<p>
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"he is the godamn batman! thats why! if he can breath in space you damn bet he can wear a panty on his head!" glu-glu</div></p>Edited by: pd Rydia&nbsp; Image at: 8/28/06 20:04

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Re: fundies in the prisons, wicca in arlington, katrina home

Unread postby E Mouse » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:07 pm

RE: Article one.

Murder. Murder. All of them. <p>


<span style="font-size:xx-small;">"Their rhetoric... You didn't put communists in his bed did you!" came Amber's indignant reply.

"Why not? All I had to do was open a gate to his bed and stick up a sign saying 'Hot virgin willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of international socialist fraternity.'"</span>

<span style="color:blue;font-size:xx-small;">Excaliburned:</span> <span style="font-size:xx-small;">Ah yes, I'm thinking of having the USS Bob be preserved outside the Arena as a monument of sorts</span></p>

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Re: fundies in the prisons, wicca in arlington, katrina home

Unread postby Zemyla » Tue Aug 29, 2006 4:52 pm

Re: Article three

I saw the word "Grow House" and immediately asked myself if I would have to add the parts in a specific order to get it to work most effectively. <p>-----
Do not taunt Happy Fun Zemyla.

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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sun Sep 03, 2006 7:25 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5303200.stm

Stolen Munch paintings found safe


Two masterpieces by artist Edvard Munch have been recovered two years after they were stolen from an Oslo museum.

The Scream and Madonna were found in a police operation. "We are 100% certain they are the originals. The damage was much less than feared," police said.

They had been missing since two armed men ripped them from the wall and threatened staff at the Munch Museum in the Norwegian capital in August 2004.

Three men were found guilty of charges relating to the theft in May.

"We felt it was a victory today when the pictures turned up," police chief Iver Stensrud told a press conference in Oslo.

"For two years and nine days we have been hunting systematically for these pictures and now we've found them."

Mr Stensrud added that police believed the paintings had remained in Norway since they were stolen.

"We feel we have been hot on the trail of the paintings the whole time, but it has taken time," he said.

The Scream, painted in 1893, is one of the world's most recognisable paintings.

The artworks will now be examined by experts to establish what effect their two-year disappearance has had on their condition.

Mr Stensrud said no reward had been paid but would not give details of how the paintings were recovered.

Police said no new arrests had been made and the two gunmen remain at large.

In May, Bjoern Hoen, 37, was sentenced to seven years for planning the robbery, Petter Tharaldsen, 37, got eight years for driving the getaway car and Petter Rosenvinge, 34, received four years for supplying the vehicle.

Hoen and Tharaldsen were also ordered to pay 750m kroner (£62.3m) compensation to the City of Oslo to reflect the value of its lost paintings.

Three other men were acquitted. All had pleaded not guilty.

Mr Stensrud said those convicted had not contributed to the recovery of the paintings.

Published: 2006/08/31 16:59:38 GMT


<hr size=4 noshade align=left width="74%">

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1441444.ece

They're back!
Munch paintings recovered


Both of the paintings by famed Norwegian artist Edvard Munch that were stolen two years ago have been found and are now in the possession of the police in Oslo.
[img: Oslo police could finally report the recovery of two Munch masterpieces stolen on August 22, 2004. PHOTO: FRED GJESTAD]

[img: "The Scream" PHOTO: SCANPIX]

[img: "Madonna" PHOTO: SCANPIX]

[img: The theft of the two Munch masterpieces shocked the nation in 2004. PHOTO: SCANPIX]
Both The Scream and Madonna were found Thursday afternoon in what police described as a "successful action" by the Oslo Police District.

Police wouldn't say where the famed artworks were found, but said they think the paintings have been in Norway all along.

The paintings are, according to police, in much better shape than they had feared.

Iver Stensrud, who heads the Oslo Police District's organized crime division, claimed no ransom had been paid, nor had any reward been paid out to tipsters.

Expert examinations of the paintings must still be carried out, but police were confident they had recovered the masterpieces that were spirited out of the Munch Museum in Oslo's Tøyen District on August 22, 2004.

No arrests had been made as of Thursday evening, and none of the men convicted of the theft of the paintings is said to have contributed to the recovery of the paintings.

The theft of the Munch paintings has long been thought to have been part of efforts to divert police attention from their investigation of another armed robbery earlier that year, in which a police officer was killed.

"The Scream" has been valued at NOK 500 million (USD 81 million) and "Madonna" at NOK 100 million, but both artworks were also considered priceless in many ways and difficult if not impossible to sell.

The paintings Madonna and The Scream were torn off their walls at the Munch Museum on a quiet Sunday morning in August 2004. The armed robbery shocked the art world and the country, and meant the loss of two national treasures.

City and museum officials were jubilant that the paintings are back in safe hands.

"I am, on behalf of Oslo's entire population, both relieved and happy," said Gro Balas, director of culture for the city of Oslo, which owns the paintings through the will drawn up by Edvard Munch himself.

Balas said the paintings are owned "by everyone," and that "the whole world has an option on these paintings."

She said she'd experienced being in Germany and having people "come up and offer their condolences after the paintings were stolen."

Ingebjørg Ydstie, acting leader of the Munch Museum in Oslo, told news bureau NTB that experts will now make a comprehensive examination of the paintings, to determine whether they've been damaged. She stressed that the experts so far have no doubt that the paintings found are genuine.

"I feel a great sense of joy on behalf of the museum and a whole world of art lovers," she said. "This is a big day."

Ydstie said she expected the examination to be completed relatively quickly, so the paintings could be put back on exhibit again.

Aftenposten's reporters
Nicolai Heyerdahl
Trond Eide

Aftenposten English Web Desk
Nina Berglund

This is an article from http://www.aftenposten.no. 01. september 2006 kl.12:23
Publisher: Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway. Telephone: +47 - 22 86 30 00.All rights, including copyright and database right, are owned by or licensed to Aftenposten Multimedia.
© Aftenposten Multimedia.



<hr size=4 noshade align=left width="74%">

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/31/paintings.recovered.reut/index.html

Norwegian police recover 'The Scream'

OSLO, Norway (Reuters)
-- "The Scream" and another stolen masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch were recovered by police on Thursday, two years after gunmen seized the paintings from an Oslo museum.

"'The Scream' and 'Madonna' are now in police possession," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage is much less than we could have feared."

He said the pictures were recovered on Thursday afternoon in "a successful police operation" and said no ransom had been paid.

"The Scream" is an icon of existential angst showing a terrified figure against a blood-red sky. "Madonna" shows a bare-breasted woman with long black hair.

Two masked gunmen walked into the Munch Museum in Oslo in August 2004 and yanked the two works from the walls in front of dozens of terrified tourists. They escaped in a car driven by another man.

The paintings are both from 1893. Three men were convicted in May of taking part in the theft and were sentenced to up to eight years in jail.

Two of them were ordered to pay $122 million in damages.

The police said an expert at the Munch Museum had examined the pictures and judged them authentic. A scientific examination will also be carried out to verify the works.

Munch painted two famous versions of "The Scream", including the one recovered on Thursday.

The other was stolen in 1994 from Oslo's National Gallery by thieves who simply broke a window and climbed in with a ladder. It was recovered after several months by police posing as buyers.

Stensrud would not answer questions about media reports last week that a jailed bank robber, David Toska, had promised information about the paintings if he won a reduced sentence.

"Out of consideration of police working methods, it will be hard to give details about how the operation was carried out," the police said in a statement.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. <p>
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby Capntastic » Sun Sep 03, 2006 7:45 pm

Hurray for recovered legends!

ALSO I ADD:

__________________________
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5305520.stm

Discord over guitar sites
By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Magazine

Guitar sales are at an all time high, according to figures last week
With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off, the music business has set its sights on a new enemy on the internet - websites which transcribe pop songs into musical notation.

The guitar may be enjoying a comeback among schoolboys and dad rockers alike, but beginners hoping to strum along with their favourite bands are finding dissonance online.

Having seen off some of the biggest networks that enabled free downloading of songs over the net, the music business is now calling the tune for websites aimed at guitarists.

Music publishers in the US say the guitar "tab" sites illegally infringe songwriters' copyright, and have issued "take down" orders to some of the biggest.

Tab, or guitar tablature, is a simple form of musical notation for the guitar - far easier to learn than traditional musical notation. Notes are depicted on a staff that represents six strings across a fret board.

Some of the sites targeted have all but closed down, provoking an angry reaction on guitar blogs.

Illegal adaptations

Since the early days of the net, guitarists have shared tabs for their favourite songs, online.

While tab is officially published in books, to be bought, from which a royalty goes to the songwriter, the selection is limited - most songs are never formally transcribed.

But online, just about any artist, from Boyzone to Big Bill Broonzy, has had their work written into tab - free to view, no registration required.

Most sites, however, claim their tabs are not ripped off from official sources - rather they represent the "interpretation" of a song. Skilled musicians can transcribe a guitar riff, chord sequence or solo after just a few listens.

But that doesn't wash with the music industry, which says even adaptations of songs are covered by copyright law.

Cathal Woods, who runs Olga.net - Online Guitar Archive - has removed all 34,000 tablatures in the site's archive after getting a "take down" letter from lawyers representing two US groups: the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Music Publishers Association of the United States (MPA).

"Obviously the law is on their side and obviously these are copyright infringements," he says, frankly. But he plans to fight the order along with other sites.

"They're forcing everyone off the net but as far as I know they don't have anything [an iTunes-style equivalent] that would fill the need for guitar tab online.

"My other objection is that for the music publishing companies, it's as if the internet never happened. The internet changes everything and we need to think about what's permissible in the context of the internet."

'Unprofitable' site

Olga, which claimed 1.9 million users a month before going offline, is the mother of all guitar tab sites, dating back to 1992. So why has the crackdown come now?

Olga grab
Olga, which started as a Usenet group, has been shut
"Some people say it's because the business is looking for a new target after MP3 sites. But almost all tab sites use very basic, text-only tabs. They are low-level, low information sites whereas with MP3 sharing sites you were getting something that is qualitatively identical to the original song."

Mr Woods says that Olga was not a profit-making site. Its advertising covered its cost, but it kept a community feel.

"[The lawyers] say we're making money out of these sites but I've never been paid for it. It's a hobby. I've got a full-time job," he says.

Speaking last year, the president of the NMPA, David Israelite, said unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature "deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing. The US MPA says it has the support of sister organisation around the world, including its UK counterpart.

Lawyer and editor of Out-law.com Struan Robertson says under British law, there is little doubt that tab sites are, technically, breaking copyright laws. But he is "disappointed" with how the US music industry is going about it.

"In the UK a few years ago, the British music industry didn't go after MP3 sites because at the time there was no legal source of reasonably priced music on the internet. Then iTunes [Apple's legal music download site] came along and only then did the British industry step in and threaten to sue the illegal sites."
_____

It's bullshit. Especially, since if you can even find a songbook of the album with the song you want to learn, it costs about as much as the CD. And even then, they're impossible to find.

Edited by: Capntastic&nbsp; Image at: 9/3/06 20:37

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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby pd Rydia » Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:48 pm

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/08/24/career_women/index.html

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/08/24/career_women/print.html

Unhappily ever after:
An article in Forbes says that marrying a woman who makes over $30,000 a year will ensure a life of illness, filth and cuckolding. How did we get here again?

By Rebecca Traister

Aug. 24, 2006
| "Don't Marry Career Women" is what the headline of the Aug. 22 Forbes.com story read. Just like that. "Don't Marry Career Women." It was easy to blink, shake your head like you were seeing things. Surely it was a joke, something out of the Onion. A provocative headline on a more nuanced story. But then came the text, by Michael Noer, an executive editor and writer for Forbes.com.

He conceded that his flashy suggestion might come as a buzz kill for many guys, "particularly successful men" who might be "attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations." And why shouldn't they be, he continued. "After all, your typical career girl is well-educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure … at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?"

Yeah, it did sound familiar. Familiar like a figment from the 1950s, the bad old days that today's young women know about only from their mothers and from kitschy retro-magnets. But it was 2006 and here was a genuine dinosaur of unenlightened gender incivility, published not in some righty rag but in a supposedly mainstream business publication -- in which Bono recently invested! -- a magazine that ostensibly has female readers and that covers female business people and that has for several years published an annual list of the 100 most powerful women in the world. That publication was telling its readers that working women make bad wives!

Well, for 48 hours at least. Sometime around 5:30 on Wednesday, Aug. 23, two days after its publication, "Don't Marry Career Women" disappeared from the Forbes.com Web site, along with an earlier story by Noer, titled "The Economics of Prostitution," in which he compared "wives" to "whores" and wrote that "the implication remains that wives and whores are -- if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi -- something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing." Both stories had been linked on many Web sites that almost uniformly derided them and their author.

But about three hours after the story's sudden absence from the Web, a visitor to the Forbes.com site found "Careers and Marriage," a debate. Editors had reframed Noer's story as one half of a "point-counterpoint" discussion, lightening its heft as an institutional statement by pairing it with a rebuttal by married female columnist Elizabeth Corcoran. "Don't Marry a Lazy Man" was the title of Corcoran's take, which flaccidly asserted that "Studies aside, modern marriage is a two way street. Men should own up to their responsibilities, too." Corcoran's retort rested on the fact that despite being the kind of woman Noer thinks would make a bad wife, she and her husband have been married for 18 years and that this month they plan to engage in some "snuggling at a mountain-winery concert." As of this writing, Noer's "Economics of Prostitution" story was still unavailable online.

"The story about careers was taken down so we could put up a new, enhanced package which includes Michael's original story," said a Forbes.com spokeswoman in an e-mail late Wednesday. She said that she did not know when or if the "wife or whore" story would go back up. On Tuesday, the same spokeswoman had e-mailed Salon to say that "the piece and its sourcing speaks [sic] for itself. Forbes is known for its provocative opinion and Forbes.com's readership -- both male and female -- expects nothing less." Noer was out of the office this week -- it has been reported elsewhere that he was ironically attending a wedding -- and Forbes.com editor Paul Maidment was also on vacation.

The furor over "Don't Marry Career Women" is a testament to the speed of an angry blogosphere, but also to the anachronistic and wholly outrageous tone of the article. It was easy to wonder how we had traveled through space and time to a moment at which it was OK to publish this kind of thing. Was it a result of the recent press success of Caitlin Flanagan, who urged women to stay at home and service their spouses? Was it the repeated chirruping of David Brooks and John Tierney about how educated women will end up lonely spinsters? Had our sense of what passes for enlightened thought eroded so steadily that at last some twerp at Forbes was able to just explode it without any of his bosses even noticing for a while? A while being since February, in the case of the "Economics of Prostitution" piece.

In "Don't Marry Career Women" Noer earnestly cataloged the deficiencies of an employed wife, cheekily dropping phrases like "career girls" and "folks," and putting "feminist" in scare quotes as if he were a wannabe Rat-Packer, his hair slick with Bryl-Cream.

Much of the data on which Noer drew came from conservative think tanks or dubious-sounding publications. The National Marriage Project. "What's Love Got to Do With It," a 2006 study that even Noer admitted is "controversial." Sylvia Ann Hewlett. (He also cited more mainstream sources, like USA Today.) But the traditionalist, reactionary bent of many of his footnoted sources only amplified his police siren of a thesis.

An accompanying slide show listed the "Nine Reasons to Steer Clear of Career Women," starting with the news that a professionally successful woman won't want to marry you -- "you" being Noer's male reader; he didn't bother to pretend that he might have any female eyes skimming his work -- because high-achieving women "search less intensively for a match," and "have higher standards for an acceptable match than women who work less and earn less."

If your working girl should unwisely deign to hitch her wagon to your star, according to Noer, it won't be long before she's cheating on you, a quagmire illustrated by a photo of a hussy lounging in red lingerie, barely concealing her adulterous assets. According to Noer, working women stray when a wife ventures outside the home, because a job increases the chances that "[she'll] meet someone [she] likes more than you." That surely doesn't sound like a stretch in this case.

Noer's list went on. Rosie, your riveting bride, will be less likely to bear you children. If she does, she'll be unhappy because wealthier women are "used to 'a professional life, a fun, active, entertaining life,'" and will therefore be dismayed at the un-fun and un-entertaining responsibilities of child-rearing. If you marry one of these witches, "Your house will be dirtier," since studies show that a woman who makes more than $15 an hour "will do 1.9 hours less housework a week." Perhaps the saddest result of your careerist heterosexual union is that "You're more likely to fall ill." That because according to research he's unearthed, wives who work more than 40 hours a week "do not have adequate time to monitor their husband's [sic] health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband's [sic] emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress."

These daggers of poetic injustice were accompanied by photos of a virile bearded man looking glum, a creamy white shag carpet dusted with a squalid layer of cheez-kurls, unvacuumed thanks to those 1.9 hours of undone housework, and a working mother so tormented by her lot that a solitary, glycerine tear slurked down her cheek.

The piece was so utterly ludicrous that for some, it was hard to do much but laugh. "I'm deeply grateful to Forbes Magazine for saving many women the trouble of dealing with men who can't tolerate equal partnerships, take care of their own health, clean up after themselves or have the sexual confidence to survive, other than a double standard of sexual behavior," wrote Gloria Steinem in an e-mail. "Since a disproportionate number of such unconfident and boring guys apparently read Forbes, the magazine has performed a real service."

Steinem wasn't the only reader to raise her eyebrows and emit a pitying chuckle. Linda Hirshman, who has recently urged women to stay in the workforce and make their families work by limiting the number of children they have, "marrying down," and negotiating for truly equitable divisions of domestic work, is essentially Michael Noer's worst nightmare. Her response to the story was to drily note that "women are not natural slaves, as so many sociobiologists would like us to believe. Ergo, they get harder to bargain with as they get more resources. This is actually good news. If men want doormats, they will have to marry dummies and anticipate dependents. There's a price to acquiring someone willing to take a bad bargain."

And while many of the successful women that Forbes covers were unavailable for comment in this third week of August (on vacation, undoubtedly engaging in the kind of "fun, active, entertaining life" that makes them sulky about domestic drudgery), some were in their offices … and pissed. "It's incredibly disappointing to see them publish a piece that makes such gross generalizations about working women," said Travelocity president and CEO Michelle Peluso, who has been featured in Forbes and who said she planned to approach the magazine directly about the piece. "Especially considering how hard women have worked to balance being great wives, mothers, managers, employees and individuals. This article feels like one that would have been behind the times were it published in 1950, nevermind 2006."

If the whole debacle feels pre-historicized, there's a reason for it, said Hirshman by phone. In part, its anachronistic feel comes from the fact that it is based on backward-looking data rather than anything that might account for or anticipate changing social and sexual attitudes. In this, it resembles the famous Newsweek piece claiming that women over 35 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married, a story that was recently recanted 20 years too late.

"Even assuming [Noer] was relying on good data, all it is is information from the past, which is that women's expectations rose while husbands' behaviors did not change," said Hirshman. "If you have to choose between acting like a jerk and marrying a bimbo on one hand and acting like a mensch and marrying a Harvard grad on the other, then I think men may change their behavior." A piece like Noer's, which assumed that men are not capable of changing, not capable, say, of taking on more "non-market" domestic work or being otherwise equal partners who enjoy robust relationships, is, Hirshman argued, "very misanthropic and anti-male."

She's right. But what's also right is that this piece -- that, yes, treated men like limp, pasty, hideous creatures who can only be happy if they feel dominant and unthreatened -- was actually dressed up as purely anti-female.

And not just dressed up -- tailored to his ideological specifications. At one point, while making his point that high-earning women aren't as motivated to marry, Noer admitted that the same statistics he was relying on showed that for black women, the opposite was true. This serious disqualifier -- that the assertion does not seem to be true for a large chunk of the female population -- did not deter him. For his purposes, black women did not seem to count. Neither did not-rich ones. As he so poetically put it, "we're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a 'career girl' has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year."

At another point in his story, Noer also conceded that some of the studies cited "have concluded that working outside the home actually increases marital stability, at least when the marriage is a happy one. But even in these studies, wives' employment does correlate positively to divorce rates, when the marriage is of 'low marital quality.'" To translate this into a completely common-sense observation: Women who work tend to have a better ability to get out of rotten marriages than women who do not work and have no means to support themselves. Guess what? This is great news.

But look at what all this hemming and hawing and all the misandry of Noer's argument got boiled down to. After all, it was not headlined "Don't Marry White Career Girls" or "If You Are Really Self-Loathing and Weak, Try to Find Someone Who Doesn't Work and Will Consent to Live With You Out of Financial Desperation for the Rest of Her Life."

No. Just "Don't Marry Career Women." It's a dinosaur. And what's scary is that it has walked the earth again.

-- By Rebecca Traister
Salon Media Group, Inc
101 Spear Street, Suite 203
San Francisco, CA 94105
Telephone 415 645-9200
Fax 415 645-9204

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby Choark » Fri Sep 08, 2006 5:01 pm

Wait...

So women are allowed careers in America?

Bloody hell mates, surely there bloomers will be getting stuck in all those gears or pulleys!?

*Said person was dragged off by the ear by one annoyed mother for messing up his room and got the slipper.* <p><div style="text-align:center"> </div>
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby Kai » Fri Sep 08, 2006 5:34 pm

"You're more likely to fall ill." That because according to research he's unearthed, wives who work more than 40 hours a week "do not have adequate time to monitor their husband's [sic] health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband's [sic] emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress."

This reminds me of a very very common belief in India that a woman is responsible for her husband's wellbeing. If he falls ill or dies, it is presumably due to some failing in diligence or piety on her part. When a woman is widowed, it's not so bad as it used to be. There was a time when she'd be rejected by her own children for killing their father, would be expected to shave her head and eventually would take on the life of a wandering ascetic, atoning for what must surely have been a grievous lapse on her part.

To this day there are women in India who want nothing more than to die before their husbands, sparing themselves the stigma and pain of being "at fault." <p>-------------------------
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby pd Rydia » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:33 pm

I received an insert with my medicine at Kroger's Pharmacy which alerted me, as a woman, to be sure to get all my family members' prescriptions' directions right. Because Studies Show that the wife/mother is responsible for dispensing medicine in most U.S. homes, and most relapses in illnesses occur from not following the directions on the med bottles correctly.

Mike and I got a good laugh out of that. Because, you know--if you don't laugh, you have to cry. <p>
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby Choark » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:36 pm

It's at times like this I'd say, and I quote
Quote:
Ah, the way it should be.

However you never know how seriously someone will take something like that and try to kill me via angry typing through the internet.

Semi-seriously though, its always weird thinking on how different attitudes are throughout the world, and what our cultures might call 'backwards' thinking. Kinda interesting, kinda scary. Probably tainted by my culture but I wouldn't wish my sister or mother to either feel like that and I really find it hard to actually see it from that point of view.

Of course I always wonder how much its all is actually like that anyway. I mean people go on about how England/America was say even just 100 years ago and how they treated women, but at the same time women also still ruled the roost at home, were known for shouting down men and really running it all and men treating them as equals or above. Overal views don't always get down to the nitty gritty common as muck folk who have less time to be sexiest to anyone cause they have more important things to be doing. *shrugs*

Still: That articles name just makes a guy think "Bitter much, mate?" <p><div style="text-align:center"> </div>
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby Kai » Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:36 pm

Semi-seriously though, its always weird thinking on how different attitudes are throughout the world, and what our cultures might call 'backwards' thinking. ... Of course I always wonder how much its all is actually like that anyway.

One of our Indian hosts' wife died a few months before we got there. Apparently she'd spent years in devotions to the sole end that she die before he did.

So, yeah. I can speak from personal observation that it very very much still works that way. <p>-------------------------
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Unread postby pd Rydia » Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:46 pm

I mean people go on about how England/America was say even just 100 years ago and how they treated women, but at the same time women also still ruled the roost at home, were known for shouting down men and really running it all and men treating them as equals or above. Overal views don't always get down to the nitty gritty common as muck folk who have less time to be sexiest to anyone cause they have more important things to be doing.
I can't speak for Britain, and I didn't live 100 years ago, but that's not how it was for, say, my mom. Mom was taught, at home and in school, that her job at home was to be The Wife. To cook, to clean, to raise the children. When Her Husband came home from Winning Bread, she needed to be sure to have things ready for him--dinner, a clean room, and herself, ready to listen to his stresses from work. Amanda and I found a 70's era "home ec" textbook in my HS library--this stuff was in there. As well as classic advice such as, 'be sure not to bother your husband by talking about yourself or your complaints when he gets home from work, because he won't want to hear it.' When I mentioned this to my mom after getting home, she laughed and said, basically, 'Yeah, that's what we were taught.'

Even if women had "ruled the roost at home," that's no trade-off for other conditions. When mom originally began working, it was legal--and policy--to fire women from the job as soon as they got pregnant. Laws had to be passed to make this illegal. My mom mentioned this to me in passing, a very blase' manner--that's just how things were.

There are plenty of "well, it wasn't that way for /me/" women in this country--but neither was my mom alone in her situation. The/we nitty gritty common folk had and have just as much time to be sexist as anyone else. It's much harder to not be sexist when it's encoded into the things you encounter every day--like mom's home ec textbook, pharmacy pamphlets, or the English language.

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Re: .

Unread postby Kai » Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:58 pm

It's much harder to not be sexist when it's encoded into the things you encounter every day--like mom's home ec textbook, pharmacy pamphlets, or the English language.

Actually, I could totally go on a huge tangent about the Sapir-Worf hypothesis and how neat it is, but I'll settle for being thankful that, despite all indoctrination, I am a strong, empowered womyn. <p>-------------------------
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Re: .

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:08 am

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15474438.htm

Posted on Fri, Sep. 08, 2006

U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks

By Mark Brunswick and Zaineb Obeid
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq
- U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Johnson declined to provide an actual number for the U.S. tally of August deaths or for July, when the Baghdad city morgue counted a record 1,855 violent deaths.

Violent deaths for August, a morgue official told McClatchy Newspapers on Friday, totaled 1,526, a 17.7 percent decline from July and about the same as died violently in June.

The dispute is an important one. With Baghdad violence reaching record levels in July, U.S. commanders warned that the country was tipping toward civil war. They then ordered 8,000 U.S. troops and 3,000 Iraqis to conduct house-by-house searches of Baghdad's neighborhoods in an effort to root out insurgent gunmen and militia death squads in Operation Together Forward.

The program, which began in earnest Aug. 7, included bringing in thousands of American troops from other parts of Iraq in what was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to head off a civil war that many Iraqis say has already begun.

Within weeks of the kickoff of the Baghdad security plan, the U.S. military's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, boasted that the murder rate in Baghdad had fallen by 46 percent and attributed most of the fall to the new security sweeps.

On Thursday, Caldwell revised the figures, posting a statement on the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq that the murder rate had dropped even more - by 52 percent from July.

That claim was immediately contradicted by the morgue figures, which trickled out in accounts by various news organizations citing unnamed officials.

Johnson said he couldn't comment on morgue figures and declined to release the raw numbers on which Caldwell's claim was based. He said the numbers were classified and that releasing them might help "our enemy" adjust their tactics.

"We attempt to strike the right balance, being as open and transparent as possible without providing information that places our troops or Iraqi civilians at undo risk by the enemy adjusting their tactics for greater impact," he said, in explaining the decision not to release the figures.

Johnson said the numbers more accurately reflect the impact of Operation Together Forward's mission: targeting operations of shadowy sectarian death squads, who often use drive-by shootings, torture and executions as tactics for terror, rather than suicide bombings or rocket or mortar attacks.

He said the figures quoted by Caldwell reflect a "cautious optimism" that the situation is improving in Iraq.

But whether the violence is truly improving is far from clear. The morgue numbers made public this week reflect only deaths in Baghdad and figures compiled by the Ministry of Health for August violent deaths throughout Iraq won't be released until later this month.

Car bombs daily claim tens of victims, and tit-for-tat exchanges of mortar fire are nightly occurrences. Every morning bodies are discovered, many with their hands and feet bound.

The distinction in the way those people die is lost on victims' relatives, some of whom suggest the true numbers are higher.

"If you want the truth, even when we hear or see the scenes of explosions, assassinations, or number of dead on TV, we don't really care anymore, our feelings are dead," said Dhiya Ahmed, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed on Aug. 11. The young man was walking with a friend near his house when gunmen approached and shot them both dead.

"The numbers are not quite true," said Ahmed. "I bet the actual number is much more."

The family's tragedy has been intense. Last year the victim's father was killed in a similar fashion.

Even while touting the successes, Caldwell on Thursday warned on the coalition Web site about possible increases in violence from insurgent and terrorist attacks that he said would be used to divert attention from the Baghdad security initiative.

"It should not be a surprise if we witness brief up ticks in violence in the near future," he wrote.

Government leaders seem to be bracing for more bodies. A meeting was held recently between officials in the Health Ministry to talk about importing refrigerators for the morgue. The idea was to set them up in an empty building nearby.

But the discussion quickly broke down over what kind of freezers they would use: ones with sliding doors or a single large freezing room. More talks are scheduled.

In Baghdad on Friday, three civilians were killed and three others wounded when a bomb targeting the convoy of the Karrada neighborhood police commander exploded. Three police officers also were wounded.

Police also discovered 14 bodies in a western portion of the city.

Drew Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2006 McClatchy Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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Re: .

Unread postby E Mouse » Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:04 am

So... basically, all the numbers are lies?

Why am I not surprised? <p>


<span style="font-size:xx-small;">"Their rhetoric... You didn't put communists in his bed did you!" came Amber's indignant reply.

"Why not? All I had to do was open a gate to his bed and stick up a sign saying 'Hot virgin willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of international socialist fraternity.'"</span>

<span style="color:blue;font-size:xx-small;">Excaliburned:</span> <span style="font-size:xx-small;">Ah yes, I'm thinking of having the USS Bob be preserved outside the Arena as a monument of sorts</span></p>

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Re: .

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sun Sep 10, 2006 10:54 am

It's old hat. Supposedly, all references to sexual acts of violence used to be removed from domestic violence studies prior to 1992 because they 'skewed' the results. Not that similar things aren't still happening. <p>
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Re: .

Unread postby Capntastic » Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:28 am

Computers as judges, in China.

"A court in China has used a software program to help decide prison sentences in more than 1,500 criminal cases, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Wednesday."


Not gonna C&P the whole article because this thread is a pain for me to scroll through already, but this is pretty..messed up :(

Edited by: Capntastic&nbsp; Image at: 9/15/06 1:29

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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:55 am

update on previous story:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2006/sep/13/091310252.html

State says Nevada soldier's plaque can include Wiccan symbol
By SCOTT SONNER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

RENO, Nev. (AP)
- The widow of a Nevada soldier killed in Afghanistan a year ago won state approval Wednesday to place a Wiccan religious symbol on his memorial plaque, something the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to do.

"I'm just in shock," Roberta Stewart said from her home in Fernley, about 30 miles east of Reno.

"I'm honored and ecstatic. I've been waiting a year for this," she told The Associated Press.

Sgt. Patrick Stewart, 34, was killed in Afghanistan last Sept. 25 when the Nevada Army National Guard helicopter he was in was shot down. He was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does not recognize and therefore prohibits on veterans' headstones in national cemeteries.

The new development came Wednesday when state veterans officials... [the rest of the article] <p>
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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby E Mouse » Sat Sep 16, 2006 2:43 pm

Happy end! <p>


<span style="font-size:xx-small;">"Their rhetoric... You didn't put communists in his bed did you!" came Amber's indignant reply.

"Why not? All I had to do was open a gate to his bed and stick up a sign saying 'Hot virgin willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of international socialist fraternity.'"</span>

<span style="color:blue;font-size:xx-small;">Excaliburned:</span> <span style="font-size:xx-small;">Ah yes, I'm thinking of having the USS Bob be preserved outside the Arena as a monument of sorts</span></p>

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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby pd Rydia » Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:02 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5350666.stm

Stunning finds of fish and coral
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website


[img: The "walking" shark; Enlarge Image]

Discoveries of hugely diverse fish and coral species in the Indonesian archipelago have amazed researchers.

The Bird's Head region in Papua may be the most biologically diverse in all the oceans, say scientists from Conservation International (CI).

Among 50 species believed to be new are bottom-dwelling "walking" sharks and "flasher" wrasse, which feature colourful male courting displays.

CI is working with the Indonesian government to protect the ecosystem.

"Five years ago we ran our first expedition to Raja Ampat [islands off the Bird's Head], and this revealed what we felt to be the epicentre of marine biodiversity on the planet," said Mark Erdmann, a CI scientist on the project.

[img: Location of Bird's Head peninsula]

Researchers have just returned for a more detailed survey, which revealed 20 corals, 24 fish and eight mantis shrimp believed to be new to science... [full story at lunk] <p>
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...

Unread postby pd Rydia » Wed Sep 20, 2006 11:30 am


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Re: ARTICLES~!

Unread postby BrainWalker » Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:07 am

Jesus. How do you piss someone off enough that they decide the only effective retaliation is to tie you to a car and drag your face across a mile of pavement? That's fucked up. <p><div style="text-align:center">Image</div></p>

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"How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby pd Rydia » Thu Sep 21, 2006 3:41 pm

How does a person get so fucked in the head that they decide that sort of action is something they can and are willing to do?

I mean, fuck, I stand here as officially "head-fucked," called weak, Jesus-deficient, a leech on society, depraved, worthless, etc., etc., but that shit there is crazy. I've never in my life come half as close to -thinking- of anything like that.

You people without mental illnesses scare me. <p>
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Re: "How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby Kai » Thu Sep 21, 2006 3:48 pm

I don't know. I think it's fair to assume that whoever did that is... obviously crackers. <p>-------------------------
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Re: "How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby pd Rydia » Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:58 pm

But not the tasty delicious kind. :[ <p>
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"he is the godamn batman! thats why! if he can breath in space you damn bet he can wear a panty on his head!" glu-glu</div></p>

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BrainWalker
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Re: "How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby BrainWalker » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:23 pm

Nope. Definitely wouldn't want to enjoy a bowl of soup with that guy. <p><div style="text-align:center">Image</div></p>

Choark
 

Re: "How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby Choark » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:45 pm

You know that there is one of those siutations where "That's just plain nasty" to "I'd never want to go like that" and "Ow" really doesn't do it justice, but nothing else really comes to mind.

Also "Poor woman".

Tis odd how these stories more make me sad then wanting to go and find the people who did this and do the same to them. I must lack the fire of revenge/justice. Did they identify the body at all? Or is some family of a missing person still wondering if thats there Woman there? <p><div style="text-align:center"> </div>
<div style="text-align:center"> Image </div>
<div style="text-align:center"> </div></p>

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pd Rydia
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Re: "How do you piss someone off enough"...

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:56 pm

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-liu22sep22,0,6477733.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Anorexia's Red Herring: Too-skinny models may be a factor in spawning eating disorders, but they're just one of many.
By Aimee Liu

THIS WEEK
in Madrid, heroin chic was prohibited. For the first time, the organizers of a major international fashion show recognized that by showcasing emaciated models, the fashion industry promotes eating disorders. Under pressure from the Madrid government, medical associations and women's advocacy groups, the Assn. of Fashion Designers of Spain finally rejected morbidly thin models.

When selecting models for this year's Madrid fashion week, which ends today, the designers set a minimum body mass ratio (calculated on the basis of height and weight). Their required ratio was 18 — meaning a minimum of 119 pounds for a 5-foot, 8-inch woman. The bar was by no means high. For ordinary mortals, a ratio of 18.5 qualifies as underweight. Even so, five of the 68 auditioning models flunked.

To understand why they flunked, we need to look ... [rest of article at lunk]


<hr size=4 align=left width="74%" noshade>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/opinion/22fri4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Where Size 0 Doesn’t Make the Cut
Published: September 22, 2006


If fashion models were purebred dogs instead of underfed women, there would be an outcry over the abusive standards for appearing in shows and photo shoots. The prize for women who aspire to the catwalk is a ridiculous size o, though overachieving undereaters seem to be reaching for size 00, which invites further starvation, serious illness and worse.

If the industry needed a wake-up call, it got one last month, when Luisel Ramos, an Uruguayan model who had been advised to lose weight, died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating, and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

Nevertheless, organizers of Madrid’s Fashion Week caught designer and fashionista scorn for banning the unreasonably thin from their show. The Madrid standard: a minimum body mass index of at least 18 ... [lunk for rest of article] <p>
<div style="text-align:center">dictionary.com | encyclopædia dramatica
"he is the godamn batman! thats why! if he can breath in space you damn bet he can wear a panty on his head!" glu-glu</div></p>Edited by: pd Rydia&nbsp; Image at: 9/23/06 17:59

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Kai
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Conservatives and Things....

Unread postby Kai » Mon Sep 25, 2006 11:48 am

Relief for Battered Conservative Syndrome

As best as I can figure, GOP establishment leaders have been spitting in conservatives’ eyes since at least around 1988. That’s when George the First ran as the candidate who would continue Reagan’s conservative agenda, only to end up talking out of both sides of his mouth when it came to reading his lips. And it’s been pretty much all down hill from there. <p>-------------------------
"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit and the emperor remains an emperor." -- Sandman "The Kindly Ones" </p>

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