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| Goes to this man.
"Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions. What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist. Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions: The man tried to rob him. The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English. The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week. "That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them. Bruce ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He was released Tuesday on $7,500 bail. Marakis ended up at the hospital with stitches. He told the police he didn't want to press charges, espousing biblical forgiveness. But Tuesday, Bruce wasn't saying sorry."
The entire article is fascinating. This guy really needs to removed from any position that gives him a weapon or the slightest bit of authority.
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| I just thought this was an interesting list:
Abraham Lincoln was born
Utah became the first state to give women the right to vote
The NAACP was founded
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to issue marriage licenses to gay couples
(making it a slightly more random list, it was also the day that Charles Darwin was born*, the day that the Viet Cong first released U.S. prisoners of war, and the day Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial)
Just thought I'd share.
* Yes, I know he's not American, but I still think he has been very significant in American history.
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| Now we finally have the company owning up to it.
The great Baby Einstein scam
"The New York Times reported Thursday that Disney is offering a refund to buyers of its ubiquitous "Baby Einstein" videos, which did not, as promised, turn babies into wunderkinds. Apparently, all those puppets, bright colors, and songs were what we had feared all along—a mind-numbing way to occupy infants."
And, as I've said many times, the biggest issue with the show is the fact that kids that little should not be watching any television at all. They need real interactions, with real people who react back to them.
"According to the article, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two years old stay away from watching screens. In the letter threatening Disney with a class-action lawsuit for "deceptive advertising," public health lawyers hired by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood cited a study which found a link between early television exposure and later problems with attention span."
Don't forget - studies show (although they weren't quoted directly here) that kids who watch Baby Einstein end up dumber than kids who don't. You have to spend that time actually being a parent.
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| Safe When we were young
innocent with hope
and unwise in the ways of the world
We heard His still small voice
Radical dreams were whispered in our ears
We knew we could be different Now we are older and wise in the ways of the world
We listen again to the still small voice
It tells us to find good jobs
marry kind spouses
make comfortable homes
raise safe children
save enough money Is that His voice we hear?
Or have our lives
become so wise
that we forgot how to be still? | | |
| A week ago, the New England Journal of Medicine reported the results of a poll that should have had a great influence on the health care debate:
73% of doctors support the public option
However, just a few days later Investor's Business Daily was able to respond with a poll that gave many people the opposite feeling:
Two-thirds of practicing physicians oppose ObamaCare
Now, which one to believe? For some news agencies, they claim they don't know what to believe. Other people (right-wing blogs, I'm talking to you) immediately believe the one that agrees with them - the IBD poll was thrown around the internet far quicker than the NEJM poll. However, there are objective ways for us to see which one is correct.
First of all, consider the source. The New England Journal of Medicine is the oldest medical journal in the world. It was founded by and is run by doctors. Presumably, it wants what's best for doctors. Investor's Business Daily, on the other hand, is owned by a stocks expert and routinely publishes right-wing editorials. It was explicitly founded for wealthy investors, and wants what's best for them. Earlier this year, they claimed that if Stephen Hawking was British, then the British health care system would have left him for dead long ago. Except that Stephen Hawking is British, and owes his life to the British health care system. So they've already proven that they will make stuff up out of nowhere to make their case.
Second of all, consider the methodology. The NEJM published a full paper on their poll. They got got a random sample from a database that included all the physicians in the United States, excluded the ones from U.S. territories and the ones who were still in training, and published full data on the internal figures for the ones who did reply. IBD, on the other hand, only used half as many doctors in their poll. They won't say how they chose the physicians in their poll, they won't put out any of the internal figures, at least one of the questions is clearly biased, and they claim "results are still coming in", which means that they're publishing the results of an incomplete poll. Nate Silver, an expert on evaluating polls, wrote an article on why IBD polls in general, and this one in particular, are not the least bit trustworthy. It might as well have been made up by Glenn Beck.
Unfortunately, very little of this information will reach people. The biggest fear-mongerers will spread the poll that agrees with their fear-mongering, and a few more people will be scared into not supporting a good idea. This is why I really do not like the direction that political discourse is going.
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