from the oh,-frabjous-day dept.

If you haven’t yet been saturated by the wonderful goodness that is Not My Desk, this would be a good time to start. Mr. Livingston has given us a nifty theme week, in which he comments on old Not My Desk material. It’s sort of like lies.com, in the sense of being a wacky web site where you’re exposed to an alternate viewpoint, except in his case it’s actually funny. Yay!

from the where-we-least-expect-it dept.

According to an al Queda representative, the organization is planning new terror attacks against the United States. Said spokesman Abu Ghaith, “Let America be prepared to fasten its seat belt because, thanks to God, we are going to surprise it in a place where it is not expecting.” Hm. I’m not expecting a global outbreak of peace, love, and understanding; do you guys think you could manage something in that area? No, I guess not.

from the cultural-revolution dept.

Again from the L.A. Times (cypherpunk/cypherpunk login works) comes a story that ties in recent headlines about child molestation (priests molesting young parishioners, teachers running off with students) with recent pronouncements from experts who argue that children are inherently sexual beings, and that society needs to back off from the blanket judgements that criminalize all sexual interactions between the nominally adult and the nominally otherwise. Interesting stuff.

from the conservationist-conservatives dept.

There’s a nice article in the (registration required, cypherpunk/cypherpunk works) L.A. Times on how a number of senior career officials in the various environmental agencies are quitting, rather than comply with dubya’s pro-development philosophy.

from the abuse-of-and-by-animals dept.

a_stupid_box writes “Irony of ironies. After the little piece about PETA, I start to find all this animal news. First off is the story about a French rapper fined for spanking his monkey which is a rather short but nontheless funny article. Secondly I find that another fellow Gen-X’er is going to be laid up for a while due to a little disagreement he had with a shark. Important lesson to be learned here, folks, but I’m sure that if you’re on this site you can figure it out on your own.” Hmm. I’ve got no idea what lesson he’s referring to. Don’t spank your monkey, or someone on the other side of the world will be bitten by a great white?

from the boys-and-their-guns dept.

From the Hindustan Times comes news of the Indian Defense Secretary’s Strangelove-ian assurance that everything is in place such that if Pakistan uses its nuclear weapons on India, India will use its own nuclear weapons in response. So, I wonder just how many more fingers we can get on the trigger in our global game of all-chambers-loaded Russian roulette before someone has a little “accident.”

from the what’s-love-got-to-do-with-it? dept.
Another weird user submission just arrived over the lies.com transom. I’ve read this one through twice now, and still can’t quite figure out who’s lying to whom. But it’s interesting, in a depressing kind of way, and features fairly good spelling, considering. And it’s a lies.com original; the kind of stuff you can’t find anywhere else. Except, um, talk radio, Usenet, Jerry Springer, and several thousand other journals of record of the dark side of life in these United States. But anyway. Follow the link, or scroll down, for the story.
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from the one-smear-fits-all dept.

a_stupid_box writes “I came across this story saying how PETA (yes, THAT PETA) is in danger of losing their nonprofit status. Why? Oh, they were just supporting eco-terrorism. PETA donations may no longer be tax-deductible pending a federal investigation. I’m all for treating animals humanely, but if hooking a monkey’s brain up to a car battery is going to let me live 50 years longer, I’ve got two things to say; red is positive, black is negative. PETA seems to value human rights less than animal rights in my honest opinion, so they’re getting no sympathy from me.” It’s actually a pretty interesting article, if slanted fairly heavily in the anti-PETA direction. Worth a read.