This month a new airline will emerge with a curious mission: to be the Halal friendly skies. Rayani Air will be Malaysia;s first “Islamic airline.” That alone is not too surprising. After all, we had Hooters Airline for people with a different transportation need. (Frankly, I would just be delighted if a religious airline declared that God intended passengers to have legroom). No, the surprising thing is the impetus for the airline: conservative Muslims believe that the two Malaysia Airlines recent disasters were punishments from God for not adhering to Islamic values. That’s right. God killed a couple hundred people (including devout Muslim passengers) because the airline was not sufficiently pious.
Category: Society
There is a controversy in the New York fire department where FDNY candidate Wendy Tapia will be allowed to graduate despite failed the physical test to become a firefighter six times. Adding to the controversy, Lt. Elizabeth Osgood, who objected to Tapia’s special treatment, was allegedly barred from promotion for months. Tania’s treatment has raised objections that the FDNY is trying to avoid a gender discrimination lawsuit after it was sued successfully for $98 million for racial discrimination.
Best wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas. It was 70 degrees yesterday and will be close to that today. A truly bizarre Christmas where I walked Luna in shorts! Continue reading “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”
We have been discussing the continued rollback of civil liberties by our Asian ally, Thailand, including absurd prosecutions such as the recent arrest of a mechanic who merely “liked” a photo viewed disrespectful of the King’s dog. He appears however to be in the disgruntled one percent according to the military junta. The authoritarian government just released the type of poll that only a junta would find plausible: 99 percent of Thais are happy with the junta’s governance since it took power last year. Well, if you can’t believe a junta, who can you believe?
Continue reading “Thai Junta Proclaims 99 Percent Support From Public . . . In Its Own Poll”
We have previously discussed the investigation of Orthodox Jewish schools in the United States after former students were shown to be barely able to do basic English and math after being schooled primarily on religious texts. Now there is a lawsuit in Israel in which Avihay Marciano and 50 other former Orthodox students suing over their lack of basic education from an ultra-Orthodox school. What is most interesting about the lawsuit is that he is suing the government, which financially supports these schools.
Continue reading “Former Ultra Orthodox Students Sue In Israel Over Lack Of Basic Education”
We have previously discussed acts of heroism in the face of terrorism, including acts by Muslims who reject the violence and claims of morality by ISIS and others such as the Muslims who formed a human shield around tourists in Tunisia. We have another such case out of Kenya where Muslim passengers refused to identify non-Muslims when their bus was seized by the Islamic extremist group Al-Shabaab. The passengers reportedly told the terrorists that they would have to kill them all or let them all go.
I have previously written about my disagreement with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to rescind federal trademark protections for the Redskins as a racially disparaging name as well as the underlying law used to strip the team of its trademark protection. The law allows for a small administrative office to effectively dictate the outcome of a long simmering societal debate over the team name. More importantly, the standard for determining what names or words are disparaging remains dangerously undefined with striking contradictions as we have previously discussed in permitted and disallowed trademarks. One of the cases that I have discussed involves an Asian-American rock band called The Slants, which was also barred by the office. Now the band has won a major victory not just for itself but also the first amendment in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. The Court struck down the part of the law allowing the denial of the registration of offensive trademarks. The case, which is likely to appealed to the Supreme Court, will have a major impact on the Redskins controversy.
There is a truly bizarre case out of London where a former Ernst & Young manager was sentenced in what is viewed as largely voyeur case in the country’s history. Some 3,500 people were filmed by George Thomas, 38, who installed cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms in his own home, shower rooms and lavatories at his work place and bathrooms in a large number of coffee shops in central London.
Continue reading “Former Ernst & Young Executive Arrested In Largest Voyeur Case in English History”
We have been discussing the criminalization of Christmas celebrations by the Sultan of Brunei. Now, as if to show that Muslim extremists have no monopoly on crazy, Benzi Gopshtain (also reported as “Gopstein”), who heads the far-right Lehava organisation, has called for the same prohibition in Israel. Indeed, the statement of Gopstein and those of the Muslim clerics in Brunei seems almost indistinguishable.
There is a bizarre story out of the New York Times where the newspaper printed an astonishing statement by President Obama that was immediately picked up by journalists and then removed by the newspapers under a claim that it was trimmed for space. The newspaper said that President Obama defended his criticized laid-back response to the Paris and San Bernardino massacred to not watching enough cable television. It was the most newsworthy part of the fairly generic article and yet it quickly disappeared as social media lit up with criticism of the President.
A poll by the Democratic Public Policy Polling outfit found that 30 percent of Republicans support the bombing of Agrabah. The only problem is that agrabah is the fictional home of Aladdin. Of course, few would sympathize with Jafar, Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Agrabah (particularly after his horrible conduct in the Cave of Wonders), there are other rather cute cartoon characters in Agrabah who should not be vaporized in the war on terror. Yet, the bombing of Agrabah seems almost tame when candidates are calling for the killing of the families of terrorists or pledging that, if they are allowed to go back in time, they would strangle the baby Hitler.
Continue reading “Magic Carpet Bombing? Poll Shows Surprising Number of People Want To Bomb Agrabah”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Following his arrest this week for alleged securities fraud, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli resigned his office.
Turing garnered infamy for the 5000 percent price increase of Daraprim, a $13.50 medication indicated for patients requiring treatment of Toxoplasma gondii–an opportunistic pathogen afflicting the immune-compromised such as AIDS patients. Monthly treatment cost now associated with the drug can be upwards of seventy-five thousand dollars. See previous articles HERE and HERE.
Interim CEO Ron Tiles thanked the 32-year-old for “helping us build Turing Pharmaceuticals into the dynamic research-focused company it is today.”
Continue reading “Embattled Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli Resigns”
Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 70, of Brooklyn was convicted this week in a bizarre series of crimes where he and others kidnapped and beat Orthodox Jewish men who refused to grant their wives religious divorces or “gets.” He was to 10 years in prison, a relatively light sentence given multiple kidnapping and beatings ordered by Epstein. The attackers were paid by women to force “gets” out of their husbands. That makes this a religious-based form of organized crime.
For months, Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager who took over a pharmaceutical company and raised the cost of a critical drug more than fiftyfold, has been the face of corporate greed and immoral business practices. He may soon has a record to go along with his well-earned reputation. Shkreli was arrested on a seven-count indictment alleging that he fraudulently induced investors to invest in two separate funds and misappropriated Retrophin’s assets to satisfy Shkreli’s personal and professional debts. Presumably, if convicted, the judge will not (despite natural temptations) enhance his sentence 50 times simply because he want a higher profits penalty curve.
While it will not sit well with those creationists who reject evolution and believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old, a new study may interest the rest of mankind. The study at the Royal Institute of Technology in Solna, Sweden from that the relationship between man and dog goes back more than 33,000 years ago and appears to have originated in south east Asia. The study shows domestication much earlier than the prior estimate of 10,000 years.
Continue reading “Study: Dogs Were Domesticated More Than 33,000 Years Ago”