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Friday, October 31, 2003 Rumsfeld's Folly In the week since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Oct. 16 memo appeared in USA Today, the press squall has churned mostly around the doubts it expresses about the prosecution of the war on terror and the way those doubts contradict the administration's public statements. But the memo is significant for an entirely different reason. It opens a window onto the Bush team's flawed thinking about the war on terror. Read More. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 07:43 | link | comments Surprising the Master (Zen Story) posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 06:31 | link | comments (2) Gay Teen Suing Florida School Over Expulsion Oct. 30 — A gay high school senior says he was outed by a teacher, then kicked out of the Christian high school he attended in Jupiter, Fla. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 04:13 | link | comments (1) Hidden Kingdom
“When Walt Disney began planning his theme parks in the 1950s, he had already established himself not only as a successful entrepreneur but also as the patriarch of American childhood and the tycoon of the American imagination. What he still longed for was something beyond the two dimensions of celluloid film, books, or television. He wanted to entertain all the senses--in his own space, in his own way. He wanted to create not a virtual reality but an alternate reality that conceded no element of its environment to chance or outside influence. Political insulation was hardly incidental to this vision. It was a central part.” posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 03:12 | link | comments (1)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 02:08 | link | comments "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/31/03 01:36 | link | comments Thursday, October 30, 2003 "[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003 posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/30/03 06:26 | link | comments (1)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/30/03 05:05 | link | comments "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/30/03 04:28 | link | comments (1) Top Ten Items On Rush Limbaugh's To-Do List
10. Apologize for racist remarks by explaining he was high on illegal painkillers 9. Pat down friends and family to see who's wearing a wire 8. Announce his candidacy for governor of California 7. End pill addiction -- get back to sandwich addiction 6. Search desperately for some way to blame the Clintons 5. Make moves on soon-to-be-single Halle Berry 4. Tell Donovan McNabb derogatory remarks were part of new season of "'d" 3. Brunch with Robert Downey Jr. 2. Dinner with Trent Lott 1. Check job listings for pompous blowhard From: Late Show with David Letterman posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/30/03 03:48 | link | comments The world came first and the gods came later. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/30/03 01:05 | link | comments Wednesday, October 29, 2003 Free speech, hate speech clash Five years after University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was killed, touching off a national dialogue on gay rights, an anti-gay hate group wants to put up a monument to Shepard’s murder in hiss hometown. The city doesn’t want it, but it is caught in a legal tangle that involves, of all things, the Ten Commandments. Read More. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/29/03 04:54 | link | comments While drug testing in the workplace increased dramatically in the 1980s, in 1992 it leveled off. Much drug testing in American industry is due to government mandates requiring testing, not due to the business judgment of employers. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/29/03 03:33 | link | comments From the Christiania Website! The story of Christiania is colour full, long, and filled with battles, victories and defeats. Many of the people who began the experiment do not live here anymore, but the dream of a life lived in freedom and the idea of a city ruled by its inhabitants continues. Now 25 years later, people from near and far still feel attracted to the magical mixture of anarchy and love of the Freetown. It all began in 1970 when a group of citizens knocked down the fence at the corner of Prinsessegade and Refshalevej close to the Grey Hall. They wanted a playground for their kids and something green to look at. The same year an exhibition took place at Charlottenborg called "Noget for Noget" (Give and Take), where all sorts of hippies, freaks and people into macrobiotics showed themselves off, sold their goods and exhibited their art, including theatre, pictures, and happenings. An alternative newspaper called Hovedbladet (Head Magazine) was published in connection with the exhibition. One of the articles discussed the abandoned military barrack in Badsmandsstraedes kaserne and put forward thousands of possible ideas for their use, not least as homes for the numerous young people who were unable to find accommodation elsewhere. However, the squatters movement and the alternative forces "The New Society" summer camp in Thy also needed a place for them to be able to realize their dreams. The article resulted in a massive immigration of people form all sections of society, who came to create an alternative life based on communal living and freedom. This was the birth of Christiania. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/29/03 02:19 | link | comments Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders? posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/29/03 01:23 | link | comments Tuesday, October 28, 2003 The Benefits Certainly Seem to Outweigh the Risks
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 05:55 | link | comments A positive drug test does not indicate whether an employee was impaired or intoxicated on the job, nor does it indicate whether an employee has a drug problem or how often the employee uses the drug. Thus most tests do not provide information relevant to job performance. Source: Lewis Maltby, Vice President, Drexelbrook Controls, Horsham, PA, as cited in Report of the Maine Commission to Examine Chemical Testing of Employees, (December 31, 1986).posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 04:14 | link | comments Odd News - NYPD officers Paul Damore and Farrell Conroy were briefly suspended without pay in July for their conduct in the 45th Precinct station house in the Bronx, when they got into a fistfight over which one would get to be the driver of their patrol car. [NYPD News, 7-8-03] - In August, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, ordered the owners of Keep It Simple, a nonalcoholic "bar" catering to recovering alcoholics by creating the ambience of a tavern without the temptations, to enforce the city's no-smoking law for businesses. However, smoking is a popular crutch for recovering alcoholics, and the owners sought an exemption from the law in order to retain their customers, but the city said the only legal exemption on the books is for establishments that serve alcoholic beverages. (In September, Keep It Simple applied for a liquor license but said it would still not serve alcohol.) [Edmonton Journal, 8-15-03; Edmonton Sun, 9-18-03] - Brandon Kivi, 15, was suspended from Caney Creek High (Conroe, Texas) in October for possibly saving the life of his girlfriend (a fellow classmate) by lending her his asthma inhaler after she had misplaced hers; that was delivery of a dangerous drug. And Raylee Montgomery, 13, was suspended from school in Duncanville, Texas, in September when her shirttail became untucked, a violation of the dress code (raising the number of dress-code-caused suspensions in her 3,500-student school to more than 700 in just five weeks). [North Texas Daily-AP, 10-10-03] [Dallas Morning News, 9-29-03] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 03:58 | link | comments So, what's your drug of choice? Religion? posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 03:20 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 02:01 | link | comments In a report funded by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, researchers concluded that "drug sales in poor neighborhoods are part of a growing informal economy which has expanded and innovatively organized in response to the loss of good jobs." The report characterizes drug dealing as "fundamentally a lower class response [to the information economy] by men and women with little formal education and few formal skills," and the report notes "If the jobs won't be created by either the public or private sector, then poor people will have to create the jobs themselves." Source: Hagedorn, John M., Ph.D., The Business of Drug Dealing in Milwaukee (Milwaukee, WI: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, 1998), p. 3. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/28/03 01:11 | link | comments Monday, October 27, 2003 Time Magazine November 3, 2003 Vol. 162 No. 14 Sunday, Oct. 26, 2003
posted by stenoeon, 10/27/03 02:29 | link | comments Friday, October 24, 2003 VIGNEUX-SUR-SEINE JOURNAL A Crime of the Young Stalks France's Urban Wastelands
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 08:33 | link | comments (1)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 08:33 | link | comments Start your day with a good laugh! Hey kiddos! You know, if there's one thing President Bush loves more than sucking the yummy Chee-tos® dust out from under his fingernails, it's reading 100% kinda-authentic*, anthrax-free letters from honest-to-goodness America-loving boys and girls just like YOU! Here, we reprint some of the bestest and most realest ones for you to emulate when penning your own reverential missives to our God-appointed ruler! Read the letters! posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 06:53 | link | comments Rumsfeld's Pentagon Papers Donald Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo—which was leaked to USA Today on Wednesday and picked up by the rest of the media, for the most part with a shrug, on Thursday—may be the most important, even stunning official document yet to come out of this war. Read More. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 06:10 | link | comments Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 05:03 | link | comments (2) "Tetrahydrocannabinol is a very safe drug. Laboratory animals (rats, mice, dogs, monkeys) can tolerate doses of up to 1,000 mg/kg (milligrams per kilogram). This would be equivalent to a 70 kg person swallowing 70 grams of the drug -- about 5,000 times more than is required to produce a high. Despite the widespread illicit use of cannabis there are very few if any instances of people dying from an overdose. In Britain, official government statistics listed five deaths from cannabis in the period 1993-1995 but on closer examination these proved to have been deaths due to inhalation of vomit that could not be directly attributed to cannabis (House of Lords Report, 1998). By comparison with other commonly used recreational drugs these statistics are impressive." Source: Iversen, Leslie L., PhD, FRS, "The Science of Marijuana" (London, England: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 178, citing House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and Technology, "Cannabis -- The Scientific and Medical Evidence" (London, England: The Stationery Office, Parliament, 1998). posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/24/03 02:25 | link | comments Thursday, October 23, 2003 The Smurfs Were Communists! Okay, I know it sounds crazy. I didn't believe it myself at first. Then I started thinking about it, and it starts getting scary.
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 08:31 | link | comments (2)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 08:05 | link | comments "Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." -- Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind" (1950), p. 149, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 07:23 | link | comments The Unconquerable World The MAD logic of MAD "Mutual Assured Destruction" fited a world shaped by a bipolar relationship. However, this concept defies adjustment to a multi-nuclear power world. In an interesting article by Jonathan Schell, author of “The Fate of the Earth”, he explores the issues that are at stake. He also gives special attention to the role of nuclear-armed terrorists in all this. Read Article posted by durani, 10/23/03 06:38 | link | comments According to the United Nations, profits in illegal drugs are so inflated, that three-quarters of all drug shipments would have to be intercepted to seriously reduce the profitability of the business. Current efforts only intercept 13% of heroin shipments and 28%-40%* of cocaine shipments. (*At most; the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention notes that estimates of production and total supply are probably understated by reporting governments.) Source: United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Global Illicit Drug Trends 1999 (New York, NY: UNODCCP, 1999), p. 51.posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 06:26 | link | comments Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders? (Twilight of the Idols (1889), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations) posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 05:45 | link | comments The Clash of Civilizations? World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance. From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible. With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary. In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other. Read the article. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 05:06 | link | comments (5) The Netherlands follows a policy of separating the market for illicit drugs. Cannabis is primarily purchased through coffee shops. Coffee shops offer no or few possibilities for purchasing illicit drugs other than cannabis. Thus The Netherlands achieve a separation of the soft drug market from the hard drugs market - and separation of the 'acceptable risk' drug user from the 'unacceptable risk' drug user. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 04:12 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 03:38 | link | comments Is Mother Teresa's Miracle for Real?
On Sunday, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta, bringing her one step closer to sainthood. To be beatified, in most cases, a person must have performed a miracle from beyond the grave; on Oct. 1, the Vatican certified that Teresa, who died in 1997, had miraculously cured one woman's cancerous tumor sometime in 1998. How does the Vatican certify a miraculous cure? Read More. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/23/03 03:22 | link | comments Wednesday, October 22, 2003 "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color." Don Hirschberg posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/22/03 08:58 | link | comments Zen Story A Cardinal went to visit a Zen Monastery. He and three monks decided to take a stroll in the fields. They came to a small canal. One of the monks crossed the canal by walking on the water, followed by the second and then the third. The Cardinal, watching in awe, said to himself “these guys are walking on water and they are not even Christian. I am a Cardinal I should be able to do it too”. posted by durani, 10/22/03 05:36 | link | comments Cheney's new adviser has sights on Syria It seems the grand plan is to take Iraq, Iran if possible, then take Syria, build an oil pipeline to the Mediterranean and bypass the Red Sea, Suez Canal route. posted by durani, 10/22/03 05:30 | link | comments Urban Legend? From That night the underground transmitted a message to all Danes. 'From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.' The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing a Star of David. The following day the Germans rescinded the order. Find out if this legend is true at Snopes
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/22/03 04:50 | link | comments Bush Reinstatement of Gag Rule Resulting in Deaths, Disease Globally Women's eNews reports that the global gag rule "has led to closed clinics, cuts in healthcare staff and dwindling medical supplies, leaving women, children and families without access to vital healthcare services." This policy, reinstated by President Bush in 2001 as one of his first acts in office, prohibits any organization receiving population funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from using those or other funds to provide or promote abortion. The gag rule also led to shortages in contraceptives due to large cuts in funding to organizations that refused to sign the rule. By 2002, the gag rule had cut off shipments of USAID-donated supplies to 16 developing countries, because the only recipients in those countries were members of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which lost $20 million in USAID funds because it refused to comply with the policy. Condoms procured with HIV/AIDS funds are not subject to the rule, but critics of the rule say that, in practice, organizations that refused to sign the rule have not been able to get funds earmarked for HIV/AIDS prevention. Hillary Fyfe, chair of the Family Life Movement of Zambia, asserts, "I think they are killing these women, just as if they are pointing a gun and shooting. There is no difference." posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/22/03 04:08 | link | comments Obsessed Zen Story Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/22/03 03:56 | link | comments (1) Tuesday, October 21, 2003 "Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives. " -Richard Bach posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 07:24 | link | comments Is the funding of terrorism another unintended consequence of drug prohibition?Click here to view a recent Common Sense ad dealing with the issue of prohibition funding terrorism. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 05:21 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 05:06 | link | comments According to a September BBC report, police in South Korea are investigating some of the 22,000 complaints made already this year by computer gamers that characters and property that they have acquired in such all-consuming games as "EverQuest" and "Ultima Online" have been stolen by hackers and sold to other gamers to make their own playing more successful. Experts say such theft of "intangibles" should be punishable by law, but the value of the stolen property might be inconsequential, except to those players whose entire lives revolve around a game and for whom the acquisition of a character or property might have involved hundreds of hours of playing. [BBC News, 9-29-03] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 04:43 | link | comments The first writing about the use of mushrooms came from a Spanish priest called Bernardino de Sahagun who around 1500 reported a mushroom-rituel from the Aztecs: "After a night of fasting, whereby only cacao was drank and before sunrise, during a festive gathering mushrooms were eaten. When de first effects where noticeable everybody began to dance and sing, while others cried. At the end of the ritual everybody came together to share there vision." Read More posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 03:57 | link | comments (1) Mommie Dearest posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/21/03 02:48 | link | comments Monday, October 20, 2003 "When angry count four; when very angry, swear. " posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/20/03 08:33 | link | comments "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will." posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/20/03 06:21 | link | comments (2) Flight School posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/20/03 04:37 | link | comments (1) Condi's Phony History posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/20/03 03:38 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 10/20/03 02:36 | link | comments Saturday, October 18, 2003 Space...a War Zone!? Space may become a war zone in the not-too-distant future, according to senior US military officers. "In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground" Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, deputy commander of US Northern Command "I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years," Rich Haver, Vice President for Intelligence Strategy at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. Read Article posted by durani, 10/18/03 03:51 | link | comments (1) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
the German occupation headquarters at the Hotel D'Angleterre came the decree: ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARMBAND WITH A STAR OF DAVID. 
