"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
The Associated Press has removed an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 photograph "Piss Christ" from its image library following Wednesday's attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. "It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. It is fair to say we have revised and reviewed our policies since 1989," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan told POLITICO, referring to the year the AP first posted the photograph. It used to be that people were careful about offending. Offensive people were thought to be unattractive, perhaps poorly raised and educated. And surely the offensiveness of this "creation" was well understood. Why now? Taste has been replaced with fear. Probably worried about militant Methodists.
The Associated Press has removed an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 photograph "Piss Christ" from its image library following Wednesday's attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. "It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. It is fair to say we have revised and reviewed our policies since 1989," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan told POLITICO, referring to the year the AP first posted the photograph. It used to be that people were careful about offending. Offensive people were thought to be unattractive, perhaps poorly raised and educated. And surely the offensiveness of this "creation" was well understood. Why now? Taste has been replaced with fear. Probably worried about militant Methodists.
John Stewart said you should not have to be brave to be a comic. The remaining staff at the Charlie Hebdo paper announced that they will release an issue next week. "Stupidity will not win," columnist Patrick Pelloux told the AFP. They are brave. The problem here is not "stupidity," however, it is force. No one was more stupid than Pol Pot but his vision of Year Zero equality in Cambodia--while , indeed, did not last forever--killed one third of the population before it was euthanized.
Who was...Lord Horatio Nelson?
Risk to the public rivets their attention. Shallow philosophies abound, but a shallow philosopher with a gun is always taken seriously. Teachers strike all the time, but when the police in New York start to slow their work down....
In 2008, in the first of the nation's bizarre state presidential nomination contests--in Iowa--Barack Obama became a national contender by finishing first. Edwards--Edwards!--was second and Hillary third. Who won the Rube-publican race? Huckabee.
At Okinawa, Japanese Kamikaze pilots sank 30 ships and killed almost 5,000 Americans.
French economist Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" turned
down France's top award, the Legion D'Honneur. "I do not think it is
the government's role to decide who is honourable", said Piketty. This from a guy who wants to give government almost complete control of the economy.
The National Association of Manufacturers estimated the total cost of regulation to businesses, workers and consumers at $2 trillion a year — roughly $20,000 a year per employee.
Golden oldie:
Coronal holes are regions of the sun's corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface. Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the AIA images below. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark. Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts on board NASA's Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974. They can be seen for a long time, although the exact shape changes all the time.
The polar coronal hole can remain visible for five years or longer.
Brazil overtook the U.S. in 2013 to become the most prolific cosmetic surgery nation in the world, with almost 1.5 million procedures performed.
Zero Hedge has a number of graphs that purport to explain the increase in American GDP: Americans dipped into savings and purchased Healthcare. There was no other source of growth.
Archaeologists
in Egypt have
unearthed the tomb of a previously unknown queen, Egyptian officials
say. The tomb was found in Abu-Sir, south-west of Cairo, and is thought
to belong
to the wife or mother of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled 4,500 years ago.
Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said that her name,
Khentakawess, had been found inscribed on a wall in the necropolis. The
tomb was discovered in Pharaoh Neferefre's funeral complex. It is likely
Fifth Dynasty. Abu-Sir was used as an Old Kingdom cemetery for the
ancient Egyptian capital
of Memphis. Pyramid construction started in the Fourth.
An
intelligence document leaked to Le Figaro said Muslims are creating a
separate public school society “completely cut off from non-Muslim
students” in France. Over 1,000 French supermarkets are selling Islamic
books that call for jihad and the killing of non-Muslims.
Mermaids, mythical half-female, half-fish creatures, have existed in seafaring cultures at least since the time of the ancient Greeks. Mermaid sightings by sailors, when they weren't made up, were most likely manatees, dugongs or Steller's sea cows (which became extinct by the 1760s due to over-hunting). Manatees are slow-moving aquatic mammals with human-like eyes, bulbous faces and paddle-like tails. Christopher Columbus, sailing near the Dominican Republic, reported seeing three "mermaids"--in reality manatees--and described them as "not half as beautiful as they are painted."
The cost of the loan (finance charge) may range from $10 to $30 for every $100 borrowed. A typical two-week payday loan with a $15 per $100 fee equates to an annual percentage rate (APR) of almost 400%.
Alex Epstein, another political writer/entrepreneur has a new book which traces the improvement of the lives of humans since the development of fossil fuels. Cheap energy has finally freed us from the risks of much of our environment, a different slant than is popular. "Climate is no longer a major cause of deaths, thanks in large part to fossil fuels. ... The popular climate discussion .. . looks at man as a destructive force for climate livability, one who makes the climate dangerous because we use fossil fuels. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite; we don't take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe."
76 percent of people who die from alcohol poisoning are men, with deaths most common in men aged 45-54. And 68 percent of people who die from alcohol poisoning are non-Hispanic whites, with Hispanic people a far second at 15 percent.
On
October 21, 1805, Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet
at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain, and Napoleon
Bonaparte was forced to abandon his invasion plans for England. Nelson,
however, was mortally wounded at the height of the engagement while
pacing the quarter-deck of the HMS Victory. He died that day,
and his body was solemnly brought back to England. He was buried at St.
Paul's Cathedral.In London, a column was erected to his memory in the
newly named Trafalgar Square.
Sharyl
Attkisson is an ex-CBS reporter who has a book out about her
experiences in the media. The Right has seized her as sort of a
freedom-of-the-press champion so the debate regarding how she was
handled is going to be shrill and partisan. Nonetheless, this is a big,
important problem. What she alleges in her book is scandalous and really
dangerous in a free society. She has sued the Feds this week and, if
the baloney can be filtered out, the story should be interesting. It is
at least important as important in the U.S. as Ebola was.
Samuel Morse revealed his invention, the telegraph in 1838. Hence, Morse Code. In May 1844, Morse sent the first official telegram over a line, with the message: "What hath God wrought!" Western Union became the most successful adopter and a culture was created, economic wording, instant information, the dreaded telegram during war. Western Union delivered its final telegram in January 2006.
Two thousand years ago, English was the unwritten tongue of Iron Age tribes in Denmark. A thousand years after that, it was living in the shadow of French-speaking overlords on a dampish little island. No one then living could have dreamed that English would be spoken today, to some degree, by almost two billion people, on its way to being spoken by every third person on the planet. by 2115, it is possible that only about 600 languages will be left on the planet as opposed to today’s 6,000.
Plangent adjective: 1. Loud and resounding. 2. Sad or mournful. From Latin plangere (to beat the br- east, lament). Ultimately from the Indo-European root plak- (to strike), which also gave us plague, plankton, fling, and complain. Earliest documented use: 1666.
AAAaaaaaannnnndddd .........a picture of the sun and a coronal hole--actually it did not turn out so well:
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