Nepal moves to get rid of its monarchy.

Cuba expanding private farms. Reinventing the wheel, again and again. I have an apropos quote, by me, from my childhood:

Wisdom is learning from your mistakes. Real wisdom is learning from other people's mistakes.</a>

Porn makes men take bigger financial risks.

Host of soil bacteria found which can live on antibiotics. Cattle get fed antibiotics. Cattle poop. Soil bacteria get exposed to poop. *evolution* Profit! Or not, from out point of view.

China allows access to English wikipedia (Tibet and Tianenmen still restricted) but not Chinese wikipedia.

Raul Castro, new leader of Cuba, is moving rapidly to liberalize some aspects of life. Like letting Cubans buy cell phones, computers, and DVD players, and use hotels and rental cars previous reserved for foreign tourists, Cuban newlyweds, and "workers selected for high productivity and revolutionary zeal". Now, I've spoken up for Cuba's record in health care and education, and I probably will again, because money's not worth much if you're dead. OTOH -- man, what? Second class economic citizens in one's own country? I know, this is probably standard Communist practice and I haven't had to think about it for a while. But really, what kind of logic gets people to a setup like that? Well, avoiding "cultural contamination" with foreign ideas or people, I guess. I keep thinking of the Marxist phrase about "internal contradictions of the system", though.

Whether Cubans can afford any of the above on their $17/month [sic] wages is another matter, but at least they'll have the right to buy and go.

Elsewhere, Turkey's supreme court is considering whether the ruling party is unconstitutional for being too Islamic. The *ruling* party... it occurs to me that Turkey is like a secular Iran, constitutionally, with the military taking the role of the Supreme Leader.

Oh, and I tried resetting my late sleep, and ended up waking up when I'm used to going to bed, and being stuck awake since. Thus my icon. I am grumpy.

LOLParrot

Huckabee endorses wifely submission. Fred Thompson calls him a liberal. All the GOPers endorse more tax cuts, because the federal government is running such a surplus right now... McCain says US was founded as a Christian nation.

Majikthiese notes the various male Presidents who have cried in public, without the grief that Hillary Clinton is getting over her voice wavering.

Greta Christina on the harm of woo-woo thinking. Links in passing to the total failure of a whole slew of phone pet psychics to detect that the pet in question did not exist.

(from pompe) More on how US doesn't regard foreigners as having any rights.

Dead heart stripped of cells, remaining matrix repopulated with stem cells. Woo!

RIAA argues it's illegal to make private-use MP3s of CDs you legally own.
Wash Post

RIAA sues Usenet

More specifically, defends the EPA's dismissal of California's greenhouse gases plan.

WorldNetDaily Jew blames fellow Jews for attacking Christmas. Can we re-define "self-hating Jew"? From "criticizes Israel" to "sucks up to Evangelicals who are just waiting for him to convert so the world can end"?

10 NYC subway riders attack Jews for saying "Happy Hannukah". Muslim comes to their defense. One member of the group allegedly yelled, "Oh, Hanukkah. That's the day that the Jews killed Jesus," she said.

And in the interests of being a Shinto fanboy and adding to the Happy Holidays list:
Tohji-taisai, the Japanese celebration of the winter solstice. When your chief god is a sun god, you don't go for subtlety... a couple of web pages say that pumpkin is traditionally eaten, because it resembles the sun. I'll remind y'all that pumpkin is an American native, and pause so we can all once again ponder the fluid nature of traditional food... especially since Japan was pretty isolated during much of the contact-with-Americas period. (Though Wikipedia says Portuguese sailors introduced kabocha to Japan in 1541, with isolation starting around 1635.)

Huckabee, the "Christian candidate", as Rove's Frankenstein monster.

Christians in Nigeria witch-hunting children.

Gerry was picked out by a 'prophetess' at a prayer night and named as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face... Magrose is seven. Her mother dug a pit in the wood and tried to bury her alive... "To give more than you can afford is blessed. We are the only ones who really know the secrets of witches. "

Victorian prisons and their descendants. Just last night I watched that Michael Moore video on Norway, with their maximum sentences of 21 years, and a rather different kind of prison. (8 minute video.)

"We pledge allegiance to the flag... one white nation, indivisible..." Satire, not news.

Charming Indian video on condom usage

Very brief Krugman post on the National Review's fear of universal health care and how it might mean a permanent shift away from conservatism. Comments note there's an implicit assumption that universal health care would work, if not it could be revoked by the electorate and drive them back to conservatism.

Old LJ post on religious discrimination by the Salvation Army.

That report (PDF) on Iran? The administration has been sitting on it for the past year, while saber-rattling about the imminent nuclear threat.

Bush: "We must stop Iran's nuclear weapons program!"

All 16 (!) US spy agencies: "Mission accomplished, they stopped in 2003."

Rather than painting Iran as a rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with the bomb, the estimate states Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.”

US claims right to kidnap British citizens if extradition isn't working.

Way I see it, this sets a precedent for Rumsfeld being kidnapped to stand trial in France. Right? Right?

LJ seems to be logging me out everday. Or Firefox started nuking cookies.

Temples of Damanhur, from heron61. Italian insurance broker creates massive, ornate, underground temples in hard rock. To be a geek, it's like a mad Solar of Art making a massive work which makes spontaneous social attacks: when the police finally got in, they were overawed. Then, perhaps because it's Italy, they apparently decided it was so beautiful it must be seized at once for the authorities. Article suggests it's a Wonder of the World.

...that I didn't grow up in Polk County, Florida. Yet another school board of ignorant creationists wanting "intelligent design" in their schools. And even the state standards just specify learning about "biological changes over time", not evolution.

Georgia (the US state) governor leads group and prays for rain. Not, of course, performing a rain dance, nor sacrificing to Zeus, or spending money to, I don't know, pump water up into the reservoir.[1]

Greta Christina on the "trendiness" of atheism.

"Atheists just need a Hallmark card.". Later notes that you don't find Christians in the US having to post under pseudonyms, lest their families find out their beliefs and ostracize them, nor expressing concern for their jobs or personal safety.

[1] To be fair, an article like that probably wouldn't tell everything. Apparently Georgia is trying to retain water normally released to Florida and Alabama; of course, that would then just pass on the water shortage.

Sign that the US has a rather privileged place in the Internet: drought.gov.

Urges pharmacists to claim and use a right of conscientious objection regarding Plan B. Assures that martyrdom is a realistic possibility for the entire Catholic people. This in the wake of the beatification of 498 martyrs from the Spanish Civil War -- something I hadn't known about, to be honest, the Republicans killing a bunch of priests and nuns. One of them has been indicted for torture in the Phillipines, and I'd bet some more of the priests had dirty hands relative to social conditions, but I won't try defending what plausibly sounds like expectable mass murder of clerics by revolutionary leftists. OTOH, the Church defended Franco's dictatorship for forty years, and that still has defenders.

Muslims blamed, at least partially. BBC, not Daily Mail
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7028639.stm

Then Try, Try, Try Again!

Washington Post article
on the continuing failure of the War on Some Drugs, with the Taliban using the threat of Western poppy eradication to rally support in Afghanistan, pot being 6% of British Columbia's GDP and a bigger employer than mining + logging, and other such goodies.

Well, it's just a proposed law, not a passed one, but still:
http://feministing.com/archives/007480.html#comments

Got it from ginmar. A comment says it was illegal in West Virginia in 1992 for a woman to get an abortion or tubal ligation without the husband's permission, though the abortion thing seems to me to conflict with Roe vs. Wade. (Second or third trimester, maybe?)

Horse meat is pretty popular outside of the Anglosphere, unlike changing one's maiden name

Two realtors have looked at the house, with an 80 grand spread of projected prices.

Amusing alternate 7th book: HP Widdershins (much shorter, and illustrated) That said, I've read and enjoyed the real Deathly Hallows.

I've seen Pan's Labyrinth, The Queen, the Battle of Algiers, and Secretary. Two Miyazakis came today (Howl, Castle) but haven't watched yet.

I've discovered the artists Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham; both seem neat.

India has its first woman president, as of a few days ago. China controls 80% of the vitamin C market. Wisconsin is fighting over universal care -- more "expand and subsidize", not a full reform.

The new Gilded Age

River Tam interviews (embedded QuickTime)


Religion beat killed reporter's faith. Which randomly made me think of God as metaphor.

I've been learning Ocaml again. I haven't done much with the house yet. Sleep still sucks.