The real meaning of the 9/11 tragedy: Santa, Jesus and 9/11
Month: September 2011
Memorial
On September 11 this year the world was moved my the memorials for the victims of the 2001 attacks on the US. It is always tragic when innocent people die because of larger political conflicts over which they have no control.
Having remembered the 3,000 killed in the US, it is time we remembered the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq and Afganistan when the US and its allies went on the offensive.
The plight of the abandoned animals of Fukushima
After the disaster of the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami on March 11, 2011, many animals were abandoned or separated from their owners. Following the humanitarian aid, workers have been busy caring for the lost animals of the region. However, in the evacuated area around the crippled Fukushima power station, animals abandoned in the evacuation have starved and turned to cannibalism and suffered. Human rescuers risk arrest.
Many humans have not forgotten the animals and continue to pressure the authorities to rescue as many as are still alive. You can find out more on the SALA site. Contains disturbing images.
Google uses more power than Salt Lake City
Google Uses More Power than Salt Lake City: http://bit.ly/nBIBcY
That means that we the users are using more power than Salt Lake City for searching, emailing, Google Plus-ing, photo sharing and page hosting.
This revelation raises questions about how much energy Facebook and Twitter and MySpace are using through our use — not to mention WordPress (Hi!).
Greenpeace has been pressuring Facebook to commit to using cleaner sources of energy in its Unfriend Coal campaign.
And I suppose it is up to we the users to decide whether we need to be using so much energy on these services.
The Onion today
Where there’s a willy, there’s a way
Two extracts from a recent Harper’s Review. The first says something about commodity fetishism that perhaps Marx had not intended. The second just says something …
… a Louisiana man told police he exposed his penis to a
Ford because he’s aroused by Walmart.
A Texas jury sentenced religious
fundamentalist Warren Jeffs to life in prison for
sexually assaulting two girls, aged 12 and 15, who
numbered among his 78 wives. A prison guard said Jeffs
has been masturbating continuously when not in court,
despite eating “[barely] enough to stay alive.”
And I can’t help quoting this bit from the same Review even though this kind of thing is dreary in its frequency and predictability:
Phillip Hinkle, an antigay Republican state representative from Indiana, was discovered to have offered cash to an 18-year-old man in exchange for spending the night, plus a tip for a really good time.
Don’t breath the food
Starved dogs eat owner in literary reference
In a moment where real life imitates literature, several dogs in Indonesia have eaten the owner who starved them. It might have been a homage to the novel The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek, but they were certainly just hungry.