This dangerous looking Bonnie and Clyde couple has finally been nabbed by the police in New York City. Caroline Stern, a dentist, and George Hess, a movie prop master, were returning from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing when they decided to cut loose at the Columbus Circle station. They danced. That’s right. Right in front of drug dealers, purse snatchers, and assorted felons, they danced. Thankfully, they were promptly arrested and the New York subway system was able to return to its joyless natural state.
Category: Society
This week Richard Posner, the conservative icon and intellectual on the Seventh Circuit, shocked many by saying that he was estranged from the Republican Party and becoming less conservative due to the “goofy” direction that the GOP has taken in recent years. As if on cue, the Sarasota Republican Party has decided that this year’s “statesman of the year” is none other than Donald Trump. That’s right, according to the Sarasota GOP, Donald Trump is the greatest statesman this year. Some would call it “goofy,” some would say “delusional.” I am honestly curious is GOP leadership in Sarasota are just out to sell tickets at any cost to their own credibility or whether they honestly believe this widely ridiculed character is a statesman in some parallel universe.
Continue reading “Trump Selected As “Statesman of the Year””
In Detroit, a woman has died in a bizarre accident where a hug with an off-duty officer led to an accidental discharge of his weapon and the death of Adaisha Miller, 25.
Continue reading “Detroit Woman Shot And Killed After Hugging Off-Duty Officer From Behind”
Police in Texas are dealing with a bizarre tragedy where a suicidal man ran out in front of traffic and was hit by a car. At the time, he was being chased by a man in a gorilla suit. Paul Nimnicht, 32, had announced in the CoCo Bongo nightclub that he was going to commit suicide outside of the club around midnight. When he ran outside, he was chased by a waiter dressed as a gorilla. The chase took them to Highway 281 where Nimnicht was struck by a passing Infiniti.
Continue reading “Suicidal Texas Man Hit By Car . . . After Being Chased By Man In Gorilla Suit”
You would think that the claimed discovery of the Higgs boson — or God’s Particle — would lead to a new round of celebration in Pakistan over its own Nobel laureate, Adbus Salam. After all, Salam helped develop the theoretical framework that led to the apparent discovery of the subatomic particle. However, before laying the ground work for discovering the God Particle, Salam picked the wrong God in the view of many Pakistanis. Salam, who died in 1996, has been stricken from school textbooks and public acknowledgments because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect that is viewed by Muslims as heretical.
We have followed the plight of women in Afghanistan as both the Taliban and the government roll back on advances in women’s rights after the U.S. invasion. Now another disturbing video has surfaced where dozens of men cheer as a man pumps round afer round into a woman accused of adultery. As nine shots are fired into her, the men cheer “God is Great!” in ecstatic celebration, as shown in the video accompanying the article below. Notably, this killing took place not in some far off province but the village of Qimchok to the north of Kabul.
Jordanian MP Mohammed Shawabka has a more direct method of debate that most politicians. During a television debate with an activist, Shawabka first throws a shoe at his opponent and than pulls a gun on him — pointing it at him on live television.
This video shows a terrifying moment as A Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) van on the Dallas North Tollway slams into a line of waiting cars on a ramp. It is astonishing that no deaths have been reported.
Continue reading “Texas Bus Slams Into Waiting Line of Cars On Highway Ramp”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out” – Katherine Dunn
“Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
We return to the word; our most basic element of communication. The written word is naturally an extension of the spoken word. At the beginning of civilization, all propaganda was the spoken word. The primary limiting effect on the spread of ideas was the size of audience within hearing range of the speaker. Then came the image, the structure and written word. They had greater value in spreading ideas because of their inherently static nature. With the invention of paper and other portable means of propagating words and images, ideas were no longer tied directly to the speaker. The content was static, but the medium of exchange mobile. The primary limiting effect was the ability to reproduce these works manually by scribes and artisans combined with literacy in the ancient world being a comparative rarity.
Continue reading “Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Tomas Lopez, a Hallandale Beach, north of Miami Florida, lifeguard was fired for helping to rescue a swimmer who was 1500 feet outside his company’s contracted zone of responsibility. Alerted to the distressed swimmer, Lopez did what comes naturally to lifeguards, he ran to help.
Continue reading “Lifeguard Fired For Saving Life Outside Contracted Area”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
I am a regular subscriber to the website WhoWhatWhy written by investigative journalist Russ Baker. Recently he ran a response by one of his readers, Dave Parker, to a video Russ posted of Nick Hanuer, a billionaire venture capitalist who gave a talk at TED, which is an acronym for the non-profit, Technology, Entertainment and Design, TED holds conferences around the world on business/societal issues that relate to its theme. In his talk Mr. Hanuer dispelled the idea that the Rich create wealth and instead said it was really the middle-classes that drove the economy. He disparaged the idea that it is the entrepreneurs who are the “job creators”. Although the talk was well received by the conference attendees, TED curiously chose not to publicize it as it usually does with other such talks. Perhaps their decision was because Mr. Hanuer’s thesis goes against the current widely accepted mythology regarding job creation and entrepreneurship. Here is a video of his talk:
In his comment on this video, Dave Parker used the writings of Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell was:
“an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience.”
My reading Dave’s article was the type of moment where you can imagine me slapping my head and exclaiming: “Damn, why didn’t I think of that”. Indeed, I’ve read all of Campbell’s books and seen all of his famed PBS series of interviews, done with Bill Moyers. What follows is my jumping off from Mr. Parker’s excellent comments and any credit for what I’m writing here goes to him for his perception. In applying Campbell to Mr. Hanuer’s comments, Dave solidified a concept for me that’s been playing in my head for years about the 1%’s need to increase the disparity between themselves and everyone else . The Rich are trying to create a new kind of feudalism where Lordships are won not on battlefields, but in corporate boardrooms. The rest of us need to be impoverished because without serfs to worship them, having everything ultimately becomes boring. Some of the 1% no doubt are less ego-driven and have empathy for those not on their level, but even they are beneficiaries of a mythology in creation. I believe that this mythology is the result of a campaign waged since the supporters of Barry Goldwater went down to an inglorious defeat. Continue reading “Mythology and the New Feudalism”
South Carolina Judge Michael Nettles has imposed a novel sentence on Cassandra Tolley, 28, for DUI. Tolley has been ordered to read and write a summary of the Old Testament book of Job. I have been an outspoken critic of such novel punishments for years (here and here). The order to read and summarize a religious book is not simply an affront to our legal system but a danger to the separation of church and state.
Continue reading “South Carolina Judge Sentences Drunk Driver To Read Book Of Job”
Bahawalpur Pakistan was the scene of a horrific crime after thousands of Muslims were told by religious leaders to raid a police station and punish a man accused of ripping pages out of a Koran. The mentally ill man was accused of blasphemy, but never saw a courtroom. The mob pulled him from the police station, beat him to death and then set his body on fire.
Some of us were highly critical of the Roberts decision on health care — finding that the federal government could impose the individual mandate as a tax even if it could not be justified under the Commerce Clause. This followed the Court rejecting the tax status for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act and the fact that the Obama Administration — including the President — long denying that it was a tax. The Administration changed its position in court and argued that it was a tax, if the Commerce Clause did not sustain the mandate. That has produced a political backlash after the Court recognized it as a tax all along. However, now Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that President Obama denies it is a tax and even denying that the Administration ever said it was.
Continue reading “Obama Campaign Spokesman: It’s a Penalty, Not A Tax”
First alcohol-free beer and now “highless” marijuana. Israeli researchers have developed a medicinal marijuana that can ease the symptoms of some ailments without producing the euphoric high of pot. For many this may seem like tasteless cake or non-alochoiic vodka, but the discovery could lead to some interesting legal and political issues.
Continue reading “Ultimate Buzz Kill: Israelis Develop “Highless” Marijuana”