Ain't it the truth ... sadly

Animated Comics

Check out Mark's animated comics they are great.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
Read by Michael Gough.

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?

This is a re-post from 2004. It was composed by astronomer and science humorist Eric Schulman, a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Improbable Research. He later expanded this piece into a book, A Briefer History of Time.

Thought for the Day

Remember, your relatives had no choice in the matter, either!

Mortgage Fiasco brought on by the cabal's desires

Take a look at this graph and see the mortgage fiasco that the cabal encouraged and abetted.

Bo Diddley sent off Rockin'n a'Rollin

Bo Diddley's funeral rocked and rolled Saturday with as much energy as his music.

For four hours, friends and relatives sang, danced and celebrated the life of the man who helped give birth to rock and roll with a signature beat that influenced Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and many others.

As family members passed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's casket, a gospel band played his namesake song. Within moments, the crowd of several hundred began clapping in time and shouting, "Hey, Bo Diddley!"

Diddley, 79, died of heart failure Monday at his home in nearby Archer.

"In 1955 he used to keep the crowds rocking and rolling way before Elvis Presley," Diddley's grandson, Garry Mitchell, said before kicking his legs sideways, high up in the air, the way Diddley did onstage. Mourners cheered.

"I'm just telling it the way it is," Mitchell said.

Diddley, who was born Ellas Bates and became Ellas McDaniel when he took the last name of a cousin who raised him, was remembered for much more than his songs. Friends recounted his generosity, manifested in concerts for the homeless and work with youth groups and other charities; and the way he loved to talk to just about anybody he met.

Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan referred to one of his most famous hits as she told the crowd, "When the question is asked, 'Who do you love?', it's you, Bo."

The funeral was followed by a tribute concert featuring his touring band and other musicians.

Eric Burdon, leader of the rock group The Animals, attended the service, and flowers were sent from musicians including Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Petty, George Thorogood and others.

Burdon, also a member of the Rock Hall, called Diddley a big influence.

"I've been a fan of his since 16, 17 years of age. Probably one of the first records I ever owned," Burdon said, recalling that his attention was immediately grabbed when he saw an album cover with Diddley sitting on a scooter with a square guitar.

Burdon said he saw Diddley play last year at a concert in Australia, and even though he could tell his health wasn't great, Diddley put tremendous energy into the show. He was known for his stage moves, which some presume influenced Presley.

"He's always been jumping around and very aggressive; if he was onstage with the Stones, he was obviously putting Keith Richards in his place," Burdon said. In describing the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm Diddley made famous, Burdon said, "I call it bone music, because it goes to your bone."

But stories of another side of Diddley were told repeatedly at the funeral. A man who loved God and his family, who would always stop to talk in the grocery store and was always smiling.

His brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes of Biloxi, Miss., said Diddley always asked how he could help and what he could give.

"There was one thing he wouldn't give me. That's his hat," Haynes said, referring to the black hat the musician was also known for.

But Haynes said his brother grew weary of life on the road.

"'But this is what God gave me to feed my family,'" Haynes recalled Diddley saying. "'I have to keep doing it until God says it's enough.'"

Diddley was born in McComb, Miss. He moved to rural Archer in the early 1980s and had a recording studio on his 76 acres. Mitchell joked that Diddley got up so early, he would tap the roosters on the shoulder to wake them up. And he always sang at breakfast.

Diddley's friend Roosevelt Hutchinson described how the musician would wrap meat in several layers of tin foil, bury it and light a fire on top to cook it. Once the fire was lit, he would grab his guitar.

"He just enjoyed playing that thing under those trees," Hutchinson said.

But he enjoyed his family even more, friends said. He had four children, 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

"Please know this, because I know Diddley," the guitarist's business manager, Faith Fusillo, told his family. "As much as you loved him, he loved you more."

*****

Thanks again Bo. I still play that old guitar I got when I heard the first notes from yours.

Last Train to Clarksville

America: At the edge of history once again?

One day this past January, Mary Kim Titla's parents left their home on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in southeastern Arizona and drove across the desert to Phoenix with a single purpose in mind - getting an up-close glimpse of a long shot named Barack Obama.

With them they brought two things: handmade signs that said "Apaches for Obama" and their grandson, Titla's nephew, a third grader. Carefully, they told him why he was there that day.

"This man," they told the little boy, "is going to make history."

Across the republic, we're hearing it everywhere in recent months, weeks and particularly in the days since Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee: In America, people say, the winds of history are blowing. And many are excited.

Last week, history became a buzzword. Jon Stewart mashed up clips of pundits rhapsodizing about history lessons. "Historic Choice: Obama," trumpeted the Richmond Times-Dispatch, one of many. "Barack Obama enters the history books," enthused CNN anchor Tony Harris.

"This is one of the most significant moments in American history," says Francine Childs, who in July 1956, at 14, sat at a Dairy Queen window every day for 30 days until she was served ice cream at the whites-only counter.

Obama is the most obvious historical figure. But he, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have each spent months vehemently rejecting the old ways, promising that change is at hand. Each has professed to be the one to maneuver us through what they all call a pivot point in history.

"America, this is our moment," Obama said last week as his winning delegate count became apparent. "This is our time - our time to turn the page on the policies of the past."

But historic moments have everything to do with history - both what has happened in the past, and the instant or era when things change. And each of the major candidates this year is deeply connected with some unhappy aspect of our past, and the urge to move on.

For Barack Obama, it is the American tradition of racial discrimination - and finally hurdling it. For Hillary Rodham Clinton, it has been gender inequity - and the promise of a woman in the White House. For John McCain, it is the legacy of Vietnam.

In American history, certain years - 1776, 1865 and 2001 among them - have revealed themselves as obvious crossroads. But not since 1968 have we had a presidential campaign and candidates that summon so many of the fundamental tensions of our history.

So it's worth asking amid the sense of wonder: Is this election year a pivot point? When we talk about making history, can we really ever learn from our yesterdays? Are there lessons from the past for the candidates to carry into the fall campaign and the administration beyond?

"The past is never dead," William Faulkner, one of America's greatest writers, once wrote. "It's not even past."

And so it is in America in 2008. We are riding history's unpredictable currents - no matter how passionately we want to move on, no matter how much control we think we have, no matter how loudly our would-be leaders insist that tomorrow is where our priorities lie.

___

TRIUMPHANT HISTORY

What is happening in American politics this year is linked, in the oddest of ways, with Commonwealth of Kentucky Death Certificate No. 26469, a bare-bones account of the Nov. 4, 1930, gunshot murder of a 60-year-old "colored" carpenter named Ed Doneghy.

"Ed Doneghy Killed at Louisville Polls," the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, reported a couple of days later.

Today, the Rev. Martin McMickle, 59, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, cannot stop looking at the smeared ink of the words on that death certificate. When McMickle was doing his family history several months ago, he learned of his link to Doneghy and followed up. He found out that the man was killed for trying to register to vote.

And in August, 78 years after a lethal gunshot at a Kentucky poll felled a man who wanted to vote, Doneghy's relative, Martin McMickle - minister, teacher, civil rights activist - will travel to Denver as a delegate to cast a vote for Obama as the Democratic nominee for president.

A pivot point in history? You bet. And not just because of Obama's triumph, either. To McMickle, this is a historic moment because of Clinton and McCain, too.

On Clinton: "I'm also mindful that my mother, who was born in 1914, was born into a country where women did not have the right to vote."

On McCain: "The whole idea that a person who is a senior citizen but has the energy and the vigor to sustain so far the primary campaign and is on the verge of beginning the general campaign says an awful lot about senior citizens and about when people ought to consider their active life has ended."

"So," McMickle says, "I think there's a wonderful biography in all three of them that can be instructive for the broader public: voting rights for African Americans, voting rights for women in America, and the importance of people continuing to live long beyond the artificial time lines of 65 or 70."

This sense of something special afoot - with Obama emerging last week as the most visible engine, but also including the other firsts of this unusual primary season - is part of why people who have had their own brushes with history feel a sense of it right now.

"We have had candidates who are not well known. We've had candidates who are African-American. We have had women. We have had a public which is disaffected from politics. But we've never had them all together. And in that sense, I think that makes it historic," says Natalie Davis, a political scientist who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Paul J. Matthews, a retired pharmaceuticals executive in Houston, has seen history and studied it. And he puts Obama's achievement in a very personal context.

In 1967, Matthews was a college student, a black man marching in a green ROTC uniform on a Prairie View A&M campus fired up by the battle for civil rights. He began to wonder about his choice to serve a nation that continued to treat blacks like second-class citizens.

He resolved his doubt by combing through books on military history. There, he found two paragraphs about the famed Buffalo Soldiers - the black regiments formed in the wake of the Civil War, comprised of men determined to show their worth as Americans.

It changed his attitude, and Matthews shipped off to Vietnam two years later. He logged 11 months, 29 days in a medical battalion, where he tagged the bodies of war dead and wrote notification letters to their families back home.

Today, Matthews runs the institution he founded: the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, a place where people discuss not only blacks' experience in that war but the larger issue - how American blacks over the centuries have served a system that scorned them. And now ...

"I'm so elated that starting from a situation where blacks couldn't serve in the military to the possibility of having a black man as commander in chief. ... That's quite a leap," he says. "If that's not a teachable moment, we'll never have one."

That's what history provides, says David Anderson: tangible, valuable tools for us all. It offers reserves of strength for a candidate, particularly one like Obama, who owes it to America to be a man of color rather than downplaying his race, Anderson says.

Anderson, 78, the great-grandson of an Alabama slave, spends his days portraying Frederick Douglass, the iconic 19th-century abolitionist, in Rochester, N.Y. History, insists Anderson, is not a burden. Just the opposite.

"You don't leave it behind," Anderson says. "It is NOT baggage. It is strength and it is essential knowledge. And the more you have of it, the better you can understand who you are and what you're capable of."

After visiting West Africa several years ago, Anderson decided to add something to his name - "Sankofa," a word from the Akan language that translates loosely to "go back and take." Anderson interprets it to mean this: "Retrieve from the past that which you can use to frame the future."

Learning from history, in other words.

___

UNEASY HISTORY

History, of course, can be a burden. Because the past is not even past. It's still with us.

Most prominently, Barack Obama faces the heritage of three torturous centuries of racial unease and injustice - and continuing racism in some quarters.

For months, Hillary Clinton grappled with the benefits and detriments of being a female front-runner. John McCain faces a nation increasingly obsessed with youth and detached from military culture that wonders whether, at 71, he can govern robustly - and how relevant his Vietnam POW experience is to today's discourse.

More generally, America and its past have always had an uneasy relationship.

We fashion elegies to a simpler, more unified and politically pure past yet often brush our real history aside in the name of an optimistic, forward trajectory that is part of the basic American DNA. We are quick with the word "historic," using it for everything from celebrity trials to new-and-improved snack foods, but rarely do we pause to consider what something historic really is.

The candidates don't always help, either.

"You see history abused so much in the political process," says Seth Masket, who spent part of the Clinton administration answering letters sent to the president and fashioning his written communication - the written equivalent of a speech writer.

"A lot of these historical metaphors are strained, a lot are inaccurate," says Masket, who now teaches political science at the University of Denver. People's relationship to history, he says, is visceral: "It's an exciting time to be alive, but it's also very scary. People who like the idea of tradition aren't sure what to cling onto anymore."

Then, there is the uncomfortable feeling that no matter what we do, we can't quite shake off the past. Andreas Killen, for example, surveys 2008 and sees 1973, all over again.

The themes in Killen's 2006 book, "1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol and the Birth of Post-Sixties America," sound familiar today: an unpopular president presiding over a divisive war; a country full of malaise and nervous energy trying to make sense of the civil rights and women's movements; rising gas prices, a faltering economy and an expanding unease about the government and the American message.

A generation later, every single item in that list weighs upon Barack Obama and John McCain.

"There have been many moments over the past few years when I've felt like we were reliving the early 1970s," Killen says.

The heritage of the early 1970s - war, malaise - could hamper the next administration "no matter how much of a mandate for change that president has," Killen says. History isn't always willing to let go.

Sometimes the intricacies of history can be summed up succinctly. Consider Mary Ann Vecchio, 52, who earned a place in the national consciousness at age 14 in 1970 when her cry of anguish during the National Guard shootings at Kent State was captured by a photographer's lens.

Her message to the candidates of 2008 is brief. And potent, too.

"What can they learn from the past?" she says. "Don't repeat it. Don't repeat it."

___

OPPORTUNITIES FROM HISTORY?

In the end, there is this, too: We are raising a generation less mindful of the American past and its messages than any that came before.

According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, students can graduate from the nation's top 50 colleges and universities without ever taking a course in U.S. history. And the National Geographic-Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy found in 2006 that only 37 percent of young Americans can find Iraq on a map. A recent national news broadcast, showing a screen on the famed 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen Douglas, put up photos of Lincoln and ... Frederick Douglass.

"The Baby Boomers were forced as college students to take Western Civilization or to take American history. This new generation never had to do any of that," says Davis, who teaches undergraduates at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.

"These folks are in the moment. They cannot line up three presidents in the 20th century in terms of order," she says. "They are absolutely a-historical. .... It's about them - the world that surrounds them at that moment. And there's no looking back because they don't know what to be looking for."

And of course there is that niggling thing Americans have to deal with every day - the ravenous beast called the present.

"We care about politics. On the other hand, we're not going to spend that much time worrying about it," says John Hinshaw, a historian at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. "We're worried about $4 a gallon gas and what's going on in our kids' lives. It's intensely interesting to certain groups, but a lot of it is just not what we do all the time."

And yet ... there are times when Americans make history, or at least appreciate that they are witnesses to it. Times like 2008.

"The United States of America is an extraordinary country," Condoleezza Rice said at the State Department the other day, reacting to the flurry of Obama news. "It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'We the people' is beginning to mean all of us."

That means the Rev. Martin McMickle, staring at a death certificate that chronicles an injustice and preparing to rectify it in some small way. It means Paul J. Matthews and David Anderson, preserving parts of the American past that they believe must be remembered.

It means Mary Kim Titla, whose parents journeyed from the reservation to see Obama. Two decades ago, she became the first American Indian TV reporter on the air in Arizona. This year, she is campaigning to be the first American Indian woman ever elected to Congress.

It means Marshall Trimble, a cowboy poet who is also Arizona's state historian. "Young black people or young women, young girls, young boys who say, `Hey, there's hope now. It can actually happen. It just isn't something that my parents talked about or that my school teacher said might happen. It did happen. It actually happened in America.' Think how that's going to provide inspiration to so many people."

And it means Francine Childs, the black girl at the Dairy Queen counter who grew up into a student activist, professor, author, world traveler. "Did I ever think this would happen?" she says. "It was something I'd always dreamed about, but (I was) never sure I would see that dream fulfilled."

Is 2008 shaping up to be a historic crossroads? It's always difficult to judge from within; in presidential election years, history is never far away and "historic" flows easily from the lips.

But this is, most certainly, a teachable moment - for the candidates and for the people they presume to lead.

In a country defined by fast-forward but never all that adept with rewind, it's a chance to move ahead with real change - not merely to leave our national scars behind but to fashion ways to carry them with us. An opportunity to show that we can do more than lose ourselves in our own history; we can find ourselves there, too.

Word that!

This is NOT Cool

US reportedly withdraws from UN Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Tribune is reporting that the US has pulled out of the United Nations' Human Rights Council, "an international body within the United Nations System. Its stated purpose is to address human rights violations."

The news that the US has completely withdrawn from the Human Rights Council spread like wildfire Friday afternoon (June 6) through the corridors of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. There was general consternation amongst diplomats and NGOS. Reached by phone, the American mission in Geneva neither confirmed nor denied the report. Although unofficial, the news comes at a time of long opposition by the Bush administration to the reforms which created the Human Rights Council in June 2006. Washington announced from the beginning that the US would not be an active member but its observer status would mean that it could intervene during the sessions. To date even this has rarely happened.

Link

One Hundred Ninety Five

As of 6PM today:

Carolina Naturally is read in all 195 countries on the planet!

Who would have thought this little old blog would be a must read for so many.

Thanks.

Wildfire keeps burning NC wildlife refuge

• Carolina News

A wildfire that has burned 30,000 acres in eastern North Carolina may smolder for months as it burns decayed vegetation that makes up the soil in the area, North Carolina Forest Service spokesman Bill Swartley said Saturday.

The fire, which was about 30 percent contained, continues to burn in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, about 70 miles south of Norfolk, Va. The spread of the fire has slowed over the past few days and winds remain light, but it continues to threaten about 80 homes and businesses.

No injuries or structure damage has been reported.

Swartley warned that forecast temperatures near 100 degrees this weekend keep conditions ripe for the blaze, Swartley said. "When the fire comes near, the vegetation is that much more ignitable because they are already warm," Swartley said.

Gov. Mike Easley has declared a state of emergency in three counties. He warned that driving could be difficult with smoke-filled roads, but officials said none were expected to be closed.

For the past few days, smoke from the fire has blown north into heavily populated areas along Virginia's coast. But the winds have shifted, and forecasters expect the smoke to blow east toward the Outer Banks on Saturday.

Fire officials told residents that smoke from the blaze could linger in the area for months because the fire may smolder in the decayed vegetation that makes up the peat-filled soil. Peat is flammable, and over millions of years turns into coal, Swartley said.

"You won't see open flame. The ground is just really hot - you can't walk on it," Swartley said.

The only way to stop the fire from burning in the soil is to flood it. Firefighters are pumping water from nearby Phelps Lake to extinguish the ground fire in some areas. However, the only thing that will put all of it out for good would be several inches of rain at one time, like from a tropical storm, Swartley said.

The fire was sparked by lightning a week ago.

In California, a wildfire that briefly threatened 50 homes in the mountains northwest of Los Angeles pass was contained early Saturday. The blaze in the Grapevine area along Interstate 5 in the Tehachapi Mountains had charred about 500 acres - less than a square mile - of grass and brush by the time it was declared surrounded.

Residents of about 50 homes in Digier Canyon were advised to leave but the threat ended and the fire basically had stopped growing by Friday evening.

Damp weather during the night helped keep the fire down.

The cause of that fire had not been determined.

Not A Pretty Picture ...

• At this rate we could be next ...
  

Caribbean monk seal becomes extinct!

Federal officials have confirmed what biologists have long thought: The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo.

Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go.

The last confirmed sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was in 1952 between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service confirmed Friday that the species is extinct.

Kyle Baker, a biologist for NOAA's Fisheries Service southeast region, said the species is the only seal to become extinct from human causes.

The seals were first classified as endangered in 1967, and wildlife experts investigated several reported sightings over the past few decades. But officials determined they were other seal types.

The federal agency says there are fewer than 1,200 Hawaiian and 500 Mediterranean monk seals remaining, and their populations are declining.

"We hope we've learned from the extinction of Caribbean monk seals, and can provide stronger protection for their Hawaiian and Mediterranean relatives," Baker said.

The Hawaiian monk seal population, protected by NOAA, is declining at a rate of about 4 percent annually, according to NOAA. The agency predicts the population could fall below 1,000 in the next three to four years, placing the mammal among the world's most endangered marine species.

"When populations get very small, they become very unstable," Baker said. "They become more vulnerable to threats like disease and predation by sharks."

Vicki Cornish, a wildlife expert at the Ocean Conservancy, said the fate of the Caribbean monk seal is a "wake-up call" to protect the remaining seal populations.

"We must act now to reduce threats to existing monk seal populations before it's too late," she said. "These animals are important to the balance and health of the ocean. We can't afford to wait."

Monk seals are particularly sensitive to human disturbance. And the sea creatures have been losing their food supply and beaches, officials say.

"Once Hawaii, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean were teeming with fish, but these are areas under severe fishing pressure," Cornish said. "They'll eat almost anything - shellfish or finned fish - but their food supply is waning and they're in competition with man."

The Caribbean monk seal, first discovered during Christopher Columbus' second voyage in 1494, once had a population of more than 250,000. But they became easy game for hunters because they often rested, gave birth or nursed their pups on beaches.

From the 1700s to 1900s, the seals were killed mainly for their blubber, which was processed into oils, used for lubrication and coating the bottom of boats. Their skins were used for trunk linings, clothing, straps and bags.

The endangered Hawaiian monk seals face different types of challenges, including entanglement in marine debris, climate change and coastal development.

About 80 to 100 live in the main Hawaiian Islands and 1,100 in the largely uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a marine national monument.

Biologist Bud Antonelis said NOAA's Fisheries Service has developed a monk seal recovery plan for the Hawaiian monk seals.

"But we need continued support from organizations and the public if we are to have a chance at saving it from extinction," he said. "Time is running out."

As for the Caribbean monk seal, NOAA said it is working to have them removed from the endangered species list. Species are removed from the list when their populations are no longer threatened or endangered, or when they are declared extinct.

Turkish speaker wants new constitution after ruling

How typical: Fundies are wrong and try to force their wrong on everyone else and the fundies in Turkey are still trying to do just that ...

Turkey's parliamentary speaker has proposed a new constitution and the re-establishment of an upper house of parliament to reduce the power of the country's top court.

Koksal Toptan's suggestions come after the Constitutional Court on Thursday rebuffed an attempt by the Islamic-oriented government to lift a ban on Muslim head scarves in universities.

Toptan's suggestions appear to be aimed at rearranging the sharing of power between the judiciary and the Parliament and immediately drew the ire of the main secular opposition party.

Toptan accuses the Constitutional Court of "overstepping its power and seizing the power of the Parliament," in remarks on Saturday. The government leveled similar accusations against the court on Friday night.

There was no immediate comment from the government to Toptan's suggestions.

It will never happen the way the fundies want as long as the military supports the majority of the non-fundies of Turkey so the better get used to the idea.

And I Quote

Life is tough. Life is tougher when you are stupid.

~ John Wayne

Wonder Woman actress finds body on river in D.C.

The actress who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s says she didn't do anything extraordinary when she discovered a body this week on the Potomac River in Washington.

Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn't have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body.

District of Columbia police say the body of 47-year-old Helen Johnstone of Washington was found floating on the river Wednesday. The medical examiner's office has not declared an official cause of death.

Carter says she "did what anybody would have done."

Way to go Wonder Woman!

Fundie's in Turkish government scold high court on head scarf ban

Fundies are fundies everywhere and never learn:

Turkey's Islamic-oriented governing party on Friday accused the country's top court of overstepping its authority when it struck down a law that would have allowed Muslim head scarves to be worn at universities.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party campaigned for re-election last year on a promise to lift a ban on head scarves, claiming the prohibition violated religious and personal freedoms. Upon victory, the government passed constitutional amendments to lift the ban.

But the court threw out the amendments Thursday, saying they violated Turkey's secular principles. The decision, which is final, threw up a heavy legal barrier to any furthur attempts to lift the ban and has deepened the divide between the Islamic-leaning government and secular institutions.

"The decision is a direct interference with parliament's authority," said Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, the ruling party's deputy chairman. "It is a violation of the rule on the separation of powers."

Though most of Turkey's 70 million people are Muslim, many see the head scarf as an emblem of political Islam and consider any attempt to allow it in schools as an attack on modern Turkey's secular laws. Some also argue that lifting the ban would create pressure on all female students to cover themselves.

Turkey's fiercely secular military signaled satisfaction with the court's decision to uphold the ban, which has been vigorously enforced in public offices and universities since a 1980 military coup.

The Constitutional Court's ruling does not bode well for Erdogan's party, which faces the threat of being dissolved under a separate case filed by a prosecutor on grounds it is "the focal point of anti-secular activities."

Erdogan has kept silent on the court decision. But Firat said the prime minister would discuss the ruling with his fellow lawmakers in parliament Tuesday.

Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan was expected to hold a news conference Saturday on the issue.

Another top party member, Bulent Arinc, described the decision as "grave."

"It gives me goose pimples," said Arinc, a former parliament speaker. "The Constitutional Court has indirectly seized the power of parliament."

Dozens of people, including some women wearing black chadors, protested the ruling Friday in Ankara. A placard left outside the court building read: "No one can go against God's order to wear head scarves."

Hundreds of people also protested the court ruling in Istanbul and in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, following Friday prayers.

And you wonder why fundies of all stripes are looked down upon?

Don't let the sun go down on you

Like in the old Westerns the sheriff is 'suggesting' that the strangers get out of town ...

Texas governor suggests sect may want to move on.

Gov. Rick Perry hinted Thursday that members of a polygamist sect whose children were recently returned amid a botched sex-abuse investigation should pack their bags, a newspaper reported.

Perry, who was in La Baule, France, for a European business conference, said that the state of Texas has an obligation to protect young women from being forced into marriage and underage sex, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition.

He also warned members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that child sex abuse won't be tolerated and even suggested that followers of the renegade Mormon sect may want to get out.

"If you are going to conduct yourself that way, we are going to prosecute you," Perry said. "If you don't want to be prosecuted for those activities, then maybe Texas is not the place you need to consider calling home."

Willie Jessop, an FLDS elder who lives in Utah, said Perry's remarks were shocking, particularly given a Texas Supreme Court ruling that forced this week's return of 440 sect children on the grounds that child welfare officials provided scant evidence that the children were in danger.

"It's an outrage that he should even make such gross and broad allegations," Jessop said. "He's listening to people that tell lies about the FLDS."

FLDS officials have accused the state of persecuting sect members for their religious beliefs.

Texas authorities raided the sprawling compound in west Texas in early April after three calls to a domestic abuse hot line, purportedly from a 16-year-old mother who said she was being abused by her middle-aged husband. The calls are now being investigated as a hoax.

Perry said that using the information state authorities had at the time, "they acted with the best interest of those children."

"If responsibility needs to be taken for (court edicts) saying that we stepped across some legal line, I'll certainly take that responsibility," the governor said.

Jessop, who has insisted that children at the ranch were not mistreated, has sidestepped questions about underage marriages at the Yearning for Zion ranch. But he did announce this week that the church would no longer sanction marriages of any girl too young to give legal consent.

Though the children have been returned, a criminal investigation continues.

*****

"And MaryLou is pregnant with triplets" ... oh, sorry, that is a different soap opera. But still ...

Indicted Saudi gets $80 million US contract

ABC News reports on the humorous story of Gaith Pharaon, a Saudi financier who is wanted by the FBI for alleged bank fraud that cost US taxpayer $1.7 billion. The funny part is that the US military just awarded him an $80 million contract to supply jet fuel to US military bases in Afghanistan.

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

As a purely coincidental aside: "Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy."

And who still believes the cabal is a group of saints, raise your hands. Come on, raise'em high.
What, no one is raising their hands, oh, well, I guess that means no one still believes the cabal are saints.

Just another in an unending litany of faux pas and peccadilloes this 'administration' is responsible for.

Notable Nudists Update

The following is a list of notable persons living and deceased who have embraced nudism.
It is a growing list ...

John Quincy Adams
Christina Aguilera
Jennifer Aniston
Fiona Apple

Kevin Bacon
Oksana Baiul
Josephine Baker
Eric Balfour
Kylie Bax
Drew Barrymore
David Beckham
Victoria Adams Beckham
Amanda Beard
Jack Black
Lara Flynn Boyle
Kevin Brauche
Melanie Brown
Jimmy Buffett
Robert Burns
Gene Burton

Winston Churchill
Kelly Clarkson
Nadia Comaneci
Billy Connolly
Cindy Crawford

Johnny Depp
Athena Demos
Alan Dershowitz
Cameron Diaz
Dido
Isadora Duncan
Erica Durance

Marianne Faithful
Ralph Fiennes
Colin Farrel
Ralph Fiennes
Colin Fletcher
Flea
Bridget Fonda
Peter Fonda
Matthew Fox
Jamie Foxx
Benjamin Franklin

Eva Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Gerald Gardner
Ian Gillian
Jeff Goldblum
Cuba Gooding Jr
Amy Grant
Macy Gray
Spalding Gray

Ginger Haliwell
Linda Hamilton
Tom Hanks
Daryl Hannah
Woody Harrelson
Melissa Joan Hart
Nina Hartley
PJ Harvey
Goldie Hawn
Carole Henderson
Robert A. Heinlein
Ernest Hemingway
Margaux Hemingway
Mariel Hemingway
Alfred Hitchcock
Paris Hilton
Fiona Horne
Kate Hudson
Kate Humble
Elizabeth Hurley
Angelica Huston

Enrique Igelsias
Julio Iglesias
Natalie Imbruliga

Hugh Jackman
Janet Jackson
Jade Jagger
Famke Janssen
Lyndon Johnson
Raul Julia

Nicole Kidman
Kiera Knightly
Olga Korbut
Heidi Klum

Avril Lavigne
Lucy Lawless
Heath Ledger
Hyapatia Lee
Lindsay Lohan
Jennifer Lopez
Mario Lopez
Peter Lupus

Andie MacDowell

Matthew McConaughey
Ewan McGregor
Sir Ian McKellen
Sarah McLachlan
Patrick McNee
Elle McPherson

Madonna
Barry Manilow
James Mason
Eva Mendes
Christopher Meloni
Helen Mirren
Demi Moore
Alanis Morrisette
Kate Moss

Jack Nicholson

Patrick "Tip" O'Neal
George Orwell

Paloma Picasso
Pink
Brad Pitt
Sidney Pollock

Sheryl Lee Ralph
Daniel Ratcliffe
Keanu Reeves
Lynn Regrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Tara Reid
Christina Ricci
Fred Rogers
Sara Rue

Claudia Schiffer
Seal
Jerry Seinfeld
Shakira
George Bernard Shaw
Sherri Shepherd
Alicia Silverstone
Jessica Simpson
Rod Sirling
PJ Soles
Britney Spears
Princess Stephanie of Monaco
Patrick Stewart
Joss Stone

Emma Thompson
Henry David Thoreau
Justin Timberlake
Leeann Tweedon

Vince Vaughn

Liv Ullman
Tracey Ullman

Robbie Williams
Bruce Willis
Walt Whitman
Katrina Witt

Xuxu

Adrian Young