There are many things Europeans in the US complain about, especially these days: No local public transportation systems (outside NYC); no decent bread; no sidewalks; awful roads; houses made of sticks; etcetera. And I live in a state where the sale of beer with more than 6 percent alcohol is illegal, but the natives make […]

This NY Times editorial highlights the fate of two young women in NYC who were arrested and accused of plotting to become suicide bombers. If there is a real reason to believe that charge, officials are obviously right to have acted. But so far, they have said little about the evidence against the girls, and […]

It is spring in North Carolina. Finally. We are all completely drained from the deprivation and hardship of six weeks of Winter, i.e. six weeks of temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 9 days of “hard frost (below 32 degrees Fahrenheit), and two “snowstorms” (average of 1.5 inches of snow) that shut down everything. But all […]

With over 200 Marburg virus deaths in Angola, an all out information campaign is now under way, Reuters reports:”Five TV and radio advertisements in both the official language Portuguese and the most widely spoken local languages were broadcast throughout the day on national media.” Reuters also reports that so far 203 of the 221 infected […]

TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA – A frat boy/reality-TV/border vigilante/republican prankster caused a serious border incident when he shared a cereal bowl with a hungry and thirsty guy from Mexico walking across the Arizona desert. The ACLU says the Mexican man was held against his will and photographed with a mocking slogan. Jesus’ General has a photo and […]

The WHO keeps finding humans infected with the bird flu in Viet Nam, and the death rate now stands at 49 out of 79 in SE Asia. We now also know that getting the bird-flu vaccine into mass production will take 3-5 years: [T]he Department of Health and Human Services had awarded a $97 million […]

Updated to WordPress 1.5 today – very nice! The current look is just the default, but I like it. I am still looking around for a more exotic theme. Stay tuned … Also, I registered a new domain, yikpa.info. This website will be dedicated to this small village in Togo, and I am hoping to […]

The comment spam was getting out of control, so I turned off comments on older posts. I’ll just keep the newer posts open for comments for now, until I implement a better solution. [UPDATE: the solution should be somewhere here …]

At a February fundraiser in South Carolina for the victims of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami, former New York mayor and “Man of the Year” 2001 Rudi Giuliani charged a $100,000 fee and donated $20,000 to the fundraiser. How generous. He still made a nice $80,000, which is $20,000 more than the total raised at […]

The Tar Heels are National Champions!!!

Have you fixed your bicycle yet? The end is near! The end of cheap gas, that is. More and more people are acknowledging that peak oil is indeed upon us, possibly in the next few years. That means that just as fossil fuel consumption is skyrocketing, we may be hitting the top of the Hubbert […]

The HSUS estimates that at in the last 3 days, 5 hours 62,800 seal pups have been clubbed to death in Canada. I urge you to join the boycott of Canadian seafood until they stop this butchery. HSUS’s Director of Canadian Wildlife Issues is out on the ice off of Prince Edward Island, documenting how […]