Dana Larsen posted a link to this comic book cover in a comment to my recent post about her story on Alternet. In her story she points out many drug references in the Popeye stories and argues that “Popeye’s strength-giving spinach is meant as a clear metaphor for the miraculous powers of marijuana.” Here is […]

… formerly known as “EARTH” … The good folks at the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment project took the extremely utilitarian definition of the Earth’s relationship to the human race as a “Provider of Ecosystem Services” and analyzed this relationship painstakingly in their report, which is presented on www.greenfacts.org: 2.1 Ecosystem services are the multiple benefits provided […]

Since this morning, Canadian sealers slaughtered an estimated 4200 baby seals, as the annual seal hunt on Canada’s Atlantic coast began. By the end of the this year’s hunting season, sealers will have clubbed and skinned 300,000 seal pups. According to the US Humane Society, this is the largest commercial slaughter of marine mammals on […]

The U.S. Navy is the world’s largest user of diesel equipment. Now they are making a commitment to using biodiesel: Beginning June 1, 2005 all U.S. Navy and Marine non-tactical diesel vehicles will be required to operate on a B20 (20 percent) biodiesel blend as part of the military’s efforts to increase their use of […]

The Kingdom of Bhutan posted a PDF of its draft constitution on the web. The constitutional commission solemnly enshrined in Article 9, section 2, promoting “those circumstances that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness” as a principle of State Policy. In fact, the draft mentions “happiness” four times, including once in the […]

The BBC reports that the demonstrators were demanding a delay of the April 24 presidential election. According to LeTogolais, the demonstrators demanded transparent and fair elections. The article quotes representatives of the opposition as saying that the way the preparations are going and with the short time until the elections, there is no way the […]

NC State reseacher Mary Schweitzer went to Montana on a dig, cracked a dino bone and found “fresh” dino meat: Schweitzer found the tissue in the thigh bone of a well-preserved T. rex that her former graduate school adviser excavated from a remote area of northeastern Montana along the Missouri River. The bone was broken […]

It strikes me as a cruel irony, this public spectacle of sobbing Christians clinging to the artificially prolonged metabolic activity of the body of one woman on the eve of Good Friday. Not so ironic, however, and rather cruel and cynical, are the policial games that some members of congress, namely DeLay and Frist, are […]

Togo’s exiled opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio returned to Lomé Saturday, after eight years in exile. He was greeted by thousands of cheering Togolese who want to see an end to the 38-year bloody military rule of the family of the late Gnassingbe Eyadema. “This is the only man that can save the country,” people said […]

The last couple of days I was up to my armpits in stuff. Last weekend I started cleaning out the basement. Then I read a DailyKos diary about “stuff” and I started to think a bit more about stuff, and how we spend so much time accumulating stuff, then managing our stuff, dealing with our […]

Yeah – poor OPEC. These guys are hard at work trying to control the price for their precious black gold, so that people in Minnesota can afford to heat their homes. Yet, it’s out of their hands. sorry! They are pumping like mad, there is nothing else they can do, Reuters.com reports: With its output […]

The six Togolese opposition parties came together and nominated Bob Akitani as their single candidate to run against “Baby Eyadema” Faure Gnassingbe in the April presidential election. The 74-year-old retired mining engineer is vice-president of Olympio’s UFC and is well-known from his last presidential run in 2003. It took the six parties a while to […]

This is a funny story turning weird: yesterday I chuckled, when I read the report that the president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, had abandoned his 300-room residence because he was worried about “rodent ghosts” haunting the place. These things happen; many Africans are very worried about supernatural phenomena. Ancestral spirits are an integral part […]

With pomp and circumstance Togo held the funeral for Gnassingbe Eyadema on Sunday. A giant portrait of Eyadema, with the words “I will always be with you”, overlooked Lome’s marbled Palais des Congres building where dignitaries had gathered to receive the coffin. Yes, he’ll remain with us as an example of the bad old times […]

The BBC reports Korean researchers think they may have discovered a cure for Avian Influenza: “Scientists at Seoul National University say they fed an extract of kimchi to 13 infected chickens – and a week later 11 of them had started recovering.” Cabbage against a killer disease? That makes even a Krautheimer like me wonder. […]

When I listened to the Malcolm McLaren monologues on WPS1 for the first time, his voice opened up all these memory banks from a past life, when I was 16 or 17. One evening, I went to see the movie “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle” at a small “program” movie theater in Stuttgart with my first […]

The Pew Internet Project published a new survey that documents the rise of the Internet as a source for political information. A post-election, nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press shows that the online political news consumer population grew dramatically from […]

Presidential elections in Togo are set for next month with Faure Gnassingbe as the candidate of the ruling RPT (aka Eyadema’s party). Gilchrist Olympio, the leader of the opposition UFC, can not legally contest the polls, since he was forced to live in exile after an assassination attempt in 1992. Hopefully the opposition in Togo […]

The Grande Dame of African music, Miriam Makeba, celebrates her birthday today. She lent her gorgeous voice many times to the people, as she spoke out against apartheid and for ciivil rights, and was heard in Carnegie Hall as well as at the United Nations. More about Mriam Makeba: music.org.za miriammakeba.co.za leopardmannen.no wikipedia.org

In Salina, Kansas, at 2:49 pm ET Steve Fossett made aviation history when he touched down in his Global Flyer after a 25,000-mile (40,234 kilometer) around-the-globe voyage that took 67 hours and two minutes.