Participating in the Grand Democratic Experiment, one post at a time.
On the mind/body front: Are body’s ills really all in the mind? When the woman, having experienced her fourth miscarriage, visited her physician, he gave her a surprising diagnosis: psychosomatic abortion. That is, she had lost the fetuses because of stresses in her life, particularly concerns about her religious affiliation and her husband’s unwillingness to […]
Via Boing ^2: Smithsonian grants first-refusal rights to its archived footage to Showtime. Um… Not OK.
Another one via Boing Boing: Investigated by Homeland Security for paying a credit card bill What’s next? EFF-brand 4th Amendment Credit Card Envelopes?
Via 802 Online: Governor bars bloggers from press conferences. Cathy raises some most excellent points here, especially re: Wait, aren’t bloggers working in print? They’re using words. You can print them out on a piece of paper. And what does this mean for journalists who are working pro bono? Does this mean that volunteer reporters […]
Via Boing Boing: 4th Amendment luggage tape – – man, did I need this on my trip to Baltimore or what!? They must have heard about my ties to the French.
Following up on my recent post, I saw this Autotopia article pop up in my aggregator. …usually increased profits have something to do with increased sales, or gains in efficiency. ExxonMobil’s profits increased by 27 percent over the fourth quarter of last year, but production of oil actually DECREASED over the prior year, according to […]
Exxon-Mobil reports 2005Q4 as being one of record profits. $10.7 billion in profits. Revenue rose 20 percent to $99.7 billion as rising demand and hurricanes lifted prices for oil, natural gas and gasoline. Full-year revenue was $371 billion, pushing Exxon Mobil past Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as the largest U.S. company by sales. The average U.S. […]
Via Boing Boing: Sliwinski at In Newsweekly reports on Blizzard’s roundabout discriminatory policies re: World of Warcraft. The response from Blizzard was, “While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a ‘GLBT friendly’ guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have […]
Fafblog! presents, in the continuing War on Terror: the Department of Baby-Eating: Q. How many non-terrorist babies would it be acceptible for the president to accidentally eat in the course of enforcing a rigorous terrorist baby-eating program? A. First of all, the president would never ever eat a baby unless it was reasonably suspected to […]
And while I’m at it… Can I get a “WTF?” for the TSA? Highlights on my trip down and back…: Trip down: “Take your shoes off…” – – what’s w/ the shoes? I mean really? When have you ever hidden anything in your shoes? And so one guy does the plastique soles trick but did […]