Giblets demands to be sainted:

But Giblets is good and kind and does not hate children! All the time! And he has already performed like six miracles many of which involve healing or blowing up monsters which were about to eat virgins! Now how much cooler a saint can you get than that? Answer you cannot so saint me Giblets saint me now now now!

I heard an interview on NPR in which a reporter who covers the Vatican tried to clarify that when the church beatifies someone, it is not an endorsement of the person’s beliefs, but rather an endorsement of the inner holiness of that person. So the church is not endorsing a nun’s anti-Semitic visions of the passion, but rather setting her internal faith and fortitude in the face of intense pain as an example.

It’s a clever way of sidestepping the bad sides to people, but it’s a distinction lost on most people. Some might say you have to take the good with the bad, but in the sainting business, you don’t have to take the bad with the good. In the end it seems too much like rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Unless you specifically condemn the use of poison gas in WWI by Karl I, how can you beatify him without tacitly approving it?

Via Obsidian Wings, a good takedown of David Brooks. It’s not even that he is a shill for the Republican Party, in a kind of “looks reasonable on the face of it but makes no sense upon further inspection” defence of Bush’s politics, but he’s just dead wrong on both Bush and Kerry:

Brooks also claims that Kerry is “unable to blend his specific proposals into guiding principles”, while Bush is “abstracted from day-to-day reality”, presumably because he is absorbed in the contemplation of Platonic forms. Again, both claims are false. Bush has plenty of specific proposals to offer; in fact, most of his time in the debate is spent listing them. Kerry, for his part, has a clear set of convictions from which his policy proposals follow. He believes that we should work with other nations to pursue our own security, to ensure the peace and security of the world, and to prevent humanitarian catastrophes like Rwanda and Darfur. To do this, he thinks we need to maintain our credibility and moral leadership. He is prepared to go to war to protect this country, and to do so over the opposition of other countries, but only after all other alternatives have been exhausted; and he thinks we should work to prevent this last resort from being forced on us by strengthening our alliances and preventing various problems from boiling over. David Brooks might disagree with this vision, but it exists, and as presented in the debate it is clearly underwritten by moral principles. Likewise, I disagree with many of Bush’s specific policy proposals, but it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that they did not exist.

Naturally, read the whole thing. It even has a nice quote from Emerson for me to frame my ire with.

A lot of people have been linking to this letter from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Iraq. It is amazing, as Josh Marshall points out, for the disjunction between it and the actual news we get in the papers.
Continue reading →

As if we didn’t know enough already, Mugabe wants to ban human rights workers in Zimbabwe.

The bill requires non-governmental organisations to apply for a licence, but says none will be granted if the group’s aim is to promote human rights.

I’m pretty much speechless on this one.

I guess you can’t be Catholic and have a wheat-gluten allergy. Just goes to show how crazy Catholics are. In related news, over at Fafblog they are having some trouble with their Jesus bread-golem.

Rick James is dead:

“Today the world mourns a musician and performer of the funkiest kind,” said Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. “Grammy winner Rick James was a singer, songwriter and producer whose performances were always as dynamic as his personality. The `Super Freak’ of funk will be missed.”

According to the BBC, piracy is on the rise in the South Seas:

Indonesia suffered 50 attacks, although the figure was lower than the 64 reported in the first half of last year. “It was also the location where the greatest violence was experienced, with many of the pirates armed with guns and knives,” the IMB said.

The question is, did the pirates have their knives between their teeth?

Seriously though, this is terrible. I blame Disney.

UPDATE: For a real serious take on it, Kuro5hin has more details.

And yes, now soldiers can rehydrate their food with their urine. This reminds me of the first line of One Flea Spare, a play by Naomi Wallace in which I had the honor to perform, where Bunce the sailor’s first line explains why he was saving his piss: “it might have rum in it”.

Here’s a little anecdote from the taping of the O’Reilly Factor. This only reinforces my aversion to watching TV.

They finally found Bobby Fischer.