Anathema
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 2:52p |
From C.S. Lewis, various works"A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process."
"Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."
"Perfect humility dispenses with modesty."I'm going to have to add "The Problem of Pain" and "Mere Christianity" to my amazon.com list. | | 5:48p |
Mumps shots didn't fully protect in 2006Nearly 6,600 people became sick with the mumps, mostly in eight Midwest states, and the hardest-hit group was college students ages 18 to 24. Of those in that group who knew whether they had been vaccinated, 84 percent had had two mumps shots, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.
That "two-dose vaccine failure" startled public health experts, who hadn't expected immunity to wane so soon — if at all.
The mumps virus involved was a relatively new strain in the U.S., not the one targeted by the vaccine, although there's evidence from outbreaks elsewhere the shots work well against the new strain.
The researchers, reporting in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, note the virus likely came from travelers or students from the United Kingdom, where mumps shots are voluntary and there was a much larger mumps outbreak of the same strain. Many countries don't vaccinate against mumps, so future cases brought from overseas are likely. | | 5:57p |
Canadian blogosphere under attackAfter publisher Ezra Levant finally prevailed against a bogus complaint about “hate speech” for expressing his views about radical Islam at Canada’s Human Rights Commission, he expected the battle to continue in civil courts. Sure enough, he got sued by Richard Warman, a CHRC investigator — who included a number of Canada’s conservative bloggers as well.
It doesn’t matter if Warman’s case has little merit or hope of succeeding. The costs involved in fighting these kinds of lawsuits will drive people into silence, intimidated by financial ruin. If bloggers won’t stand up against these kinds of tactics, then who will? | | 6:43p |
Iraq snubbed Britain and calls US into Basra battleRelations between Britain and Iraq suffered “catastrophic failure” after Baghdad bypassed the British military and called in the American “cavalry” to help the recent offensive against Shia militia in Basra, The Times has learnt.
A source familiar with the sequence of events said that Mr al-Maliki seemed to have it in for the British because of the alleged “deal” struck with the Shia militia last year under which they agreed not to attack Britain’s last battalion as it withdrew from Basra in return for the release of several of their leading members from prison.
Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Baghdad, told The New York Times that the first he learnt of the Iraqi plan for Basra was on March 21. “The sense we had was that this would be a long-term effort, increased pressure gradually squeezing the special groups [the Iranian-backed Shia militia],” he said. “That is not what emerged. Nothing was in place from our side. It all had to be put together.”
A source told The Times that US forces were in Basra, eating and sleeping alongside their Iraqi counterparts, “basically doing the work that we were supposed to do. It was a catastrophic failure of diplomacy.”
The source described the moment when the American general arrived at the British base from Baghdad: “Suddenly the cavalry appeared.” The source said that the Americans provided “loads of technical equipment and combat power”. As soon as the Americans arrived and started hitting houses in Basra, the daily attacks of indirect fire on the British base stopped. The source said that during that time the mood among the British forces on the base was “miserable”. Man...I kinda feel bad for the Brit soldiers. | | 8:34p |
Egypt sentences 5 men for homosexuality CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said.
Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery" — a term used in the Egyptian legal system to denote consensual homosexual acts.
The five men were arrested in what human rights groups describe as a crackdown on people with the AIDS virus, using the debauchery charges as a means to prosecute them.
Four of the five men tested HIV-positive after all were forced to undergo blood tests in custody, Human Rights Watch says. The New York-based rights group issued a statement Tuesday signed by more than 100 other organizations around the world condemning the prosecutions.
Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the five men were abused and tortured over the past several months to "extract confessions" from them.
In addition to their prison time, the men were sentenced to an additional three years of police supervision, meaning they will have to spend every night at a police station, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the lawyer said. | | 9:39p |
hat tip Moggy Council tax rebel, 71, jailed AGAIN for refusing to pay bill until her street is 'cleared of drugs and prostitution'A pensioner was jailed for a second time yesterday after refusing to pay her council tax.
Josephine Rooney was sent to prison two years ago after withholding payment because she believed the local authority had failed to prevent her once-elegant street from being overrun by drug dealers and prostitutes. Hartington Street in Derby had become known to locals as Crack Alley and her constant lobbying of the council had proved fruitless, she said.
The authority claims it has already spent £800,000 on improvements and does not know what else it can do to make her pay her tax. The council has urged the former Eucharist minister to "work with us rather than against us", claiming it has long since addressed her concerns. Arrest the drug dealers and perhaps help the prostitutes up and out of a dangerous profession? | | 10:04p |
Meet the 17 personalities inside my mind...Aged 29, Karen Overhill was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder. In one of the most intriguing and disturbing cases of its kind, her psychiatrist helped her identify 17 distinct personalities - the result of abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her family. Here, Karen tells her story - and how she found a cure.
On New Year's Eve 1989, I took a trip to Las Vegas with my husband and some friends, leaving our two children at home. Initially, I had gone to bed early feeling unwell, but throughout the evening I then found myself in different parts of the casino and couldn't work out how I got there.
When my husband finally caught up with me, I had $2,500 in my handbag. I'd started with $25. I had to make excuses about where I'd been and why I wasn't in our room - because I simply had no idea how it had happened. ( rest of the article ) | | 10:35p |
'Evening News' Showcases War of the Greens: Trees vs. Solar Panels"Richard Treanor lives across the fence, drives a hybrid car," CBS correspondent Ben Tracy said. "Ten years ago he planted these redwoods to provide privacy. Now they had his neighbor seeing red."
"He called us over to the fence one day and said ‘I am going to be installing solar panels and therefore you have to take your trees down,'" Treanor explained.
And thanks to California's 1978 Solar Shade Control Act, the trees had to go. Failure to comply is a criminal offense. | | 10:52p |
One of our friends across the street is a democratic delegate for Hillary. What struck me was what he said when asked if he'd consider voting for Obama if it turned out in his favor. The guy said he felt Obama was treating Hillary as an inferior and talking down to her presence in the campaign because of her gender, and that he'll either vote Hillary or not at all.
I hadn't even heard that particular point of view. | | 11:27p |
ScribbleNifty drawing program. Give it a try. This is what I made (after several tries).  | | 11:51p |
Starving a dog is not art. Starving a dog is not raising awareness.An “artist” from Costa Rica, named Guillermo Habacuc Vargas, put a starved dog as a work of art, the poor dog died there, he did not want anyone give him food or water. This monster asked some children to chase the dog and he paid them for their dirty work to give him the dog.
In that event, (in which the dog died) he was chosen to represent his country in the “Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008″, the petition site is to sign to boycott him , so he won’t can participate in the event. |
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