Religious so-called leaders calling for terror against other nations? Not exactly an original concept! Does Pat Robertson aspire to be the Christian Osama Bin Laden? In a Aug. 22 broadcast on cable television, the wealthy American televangelist called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of […]
Pope Panzerfaust rolled into Köln today, threw his scull cap into the cheering mob and slid down the handrail of the gangway. No, he did not kiss the ground – he’s doing the ecclesiastical slide! Yeah, he’s now da man! Check out all the young Christians, screaming and fainting, when they catch a glimpse of […]
A toast to the efforts of Sean Wilson and Julie Bradford and all supporters of the Pop the Cap effort here in North Carolina. This weekend the NC Governor Mike Easley signed House Bill 392 into law. It is now on the books as S.L. 2005-277 and it raises the cap on alcohol content for […]
Early in the morning on August 13, 1961, workers began tearing up the cobblestone and asphalt along the sector boundaries across Berlin. They began erecting concrete pillars and barbed-wire barricades, while units of the the Volkspolizei – the People’s Police – kept the angry people in the eastern sector in check with machine guns. The […]
… are much cheaper than people. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is projected to cost a total of $686 million over 6 years, according to this year’s NASA budget (PDF – see page 320). This is roughly half of a single launch of the space shuttle but the MRO is designed to send back a […]
Seit 1. August gilt jetzt also die neus Rechtschreibung – fast überall. Da dachte ich mir dass ich mir das mal genauer anschaue muss. Über Jahre war das ja ein Riesentheater und ich war also auf ein paar Überraschungenn gefasst. Die Überraschung war dann allerdings dass die sogenannte “Neue Rechtschreibung” tatsächlich nur eine handvoll Änderungen […]
Congratulations to NASA – the space shuttle is back in one piece. Now it’s time to put those big clunkers in a nice museum and charge foreign tourists money to see them (I think that US taxpayers have already paid their admission fees). At an average cost of $1.3 billion per launch, and a total […]
Last weekend Laura went to see the new Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie. She had been very anxious to see it, and she seems to have really enjoyed it. I am looking forward to seeing it one of these days myself. But today I heard about a movie I really want to see as soon as […]
There is a big debate raging over whether biofuels (biodiesel, ethanol) are sustainable. A paper published earlier this year by David Pimentel and Ted Patzek has the biofuels proponents on the defensive about the sustainability of the two most widely used types of biofuels in the US: corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel (methylesther). Ethanol production […]
My photo album for our Iceland vacation is finally ready. It took a while to get it ready, but I had a lot of pictures to sort through; almost 700 from our 5 days in Iceland! I ended up using 220 images for the website. I took all the images with my Canon D350 (Digital […]
Peak Oil can come – my bike and I are ready! Earlier this year, the freehub on my bike broke and I just was too damn lazy to replace it. In June, I got a nice new wheel from the bike shop (Sunrim AT18 with a Shimano Deore freehub). Yesterday, finally, I decided to fix […]
Like everyone else, I am shocked and saddened by the attacks on innocent civilians in Sharm al-Sheikh. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, and with all affected by these cruel, barbaric acts of terrorism.
Interesting project by the the American Progress Action Fund and the Genocide Intervention Fund to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur: use Journalism-School science for an activist campaign called Be A Witness.
Today is Nelson Mandela’s 87th birthday. Happy birthday, Madiba!
“I saw that everybody looked so terrible, just like they came from hell,” she said. “No one was talking. No one was screaming.” Hiroshima Survivor Recalls Devastation The Washington Post, July 16, 2005 (quoting Hiroshima survivor Shigeko Sasamori, 73) 60 years ago today, the first nuclear explosion began the age of the atom bomb. On […]
One of the vocal allies of children in armed conflicts around the world is the Office of the UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. The Under-Secretary-General Olara A. Otunnu is a tireless advocate for helping children around the world who are victimized by armed conflict. The website for his office published […]
Massacre of school children and adults in northern Kenya: Hundreds of armed men surrounded a primary school and nearby houses and opened fire as children were making their way to school early on Tuesday. Security forces say 56 people – including 22 children – died in the revenge attack by raiders feuding over water and […]
Last week I met with George Piwang-Jalobo, who is an energetic campaigner for a resolution to the conflict in Northern Uganda. He is the founder and director of the Center of Conflict Management and Peace at Gulu University in Uganda. He is also a scholar at the Divinity School at Duke University, here in Durham. […]
Kenyan journalist John Kamau, of the Sunday Standard newspaper, chronicles his G8-summit experiences on the BBC website. In an entry from Wednesday, he comments on the lack of journalists from Africa at a summit that supposedly intends to “solve” problems in Africa. It is a sad state of affairs that we cannot find concrete analysis […]
I know that Londoners are a resilient bunch and won’t be intimidated by these act of violence against civilians. But I do want to express my sorrow and solidarity with all Londoners. Over at Back to Iraq, Chris Albritton has posted a translation of a message that was supposedly generated by the perpetrators of these […]
