this is the first year i can recall in which i knew about standard time happening some time before it actually happened. this year, i heard about it last monday and i actually put it on my schedule, so now i know what time it is.

tomorrow is troll-o-ween, otherwise known as the troll’s birthday. also there’s going to be an “Osiris Ranebo Memorial Vegetable Sacrifice” as part of the festivities. be there if you’re in the area, but don’t if you’re not… we don’t want people who are going to come from outside the area and make trouble (like they have done in the past) which will make it more difficult to make arrangements for next year.

my appointment with ned, the ptsd counsellor, got postponed again. now it’s next thursday. 8/

thanks to , who pointed me towards people who dream in musicals, now i wonder if there are other people who dream, or hallucinate in operas… because while i was unconscious for 9 days during my injury and subsequent surgery, i had this massively complex hallucination which was an opera that featured a young, idealistic tow-truck driver and a sleazy used car salesman, both of whom were dressed in pure white uniforms, which then transmogrified into a huge chorus of people dressed in red uniforms singing about how brain surgery was similar to automotive repair and featured huge angiogram images projected on the backdrop. it was a clear enough hallucination that i wrote down an outline for the story, including most of the songs…

Ottery St Mary Tar Barrels… if i weren’t already a member of Cirque de Flambé, i would wonder why… as it is, i wonder if there’s any significance to the fact that it’s held on the same day as Guy Fawkes day…

Why Does God Hate Amputees? – now if we can just get the “christians” to read it…

Evidence for Intelligent Design – now if we can just get the “christians” to read it…

WHY BUSH IS UNIMPEACHABLE
By Ted Rall Wed Oct 26, 9:18 AM ET

Cracks Appear in the Constitution

NEW YORK–The phone rings with a blocked caller ID but I know who it is. My friend the film critic has just put down the same article I’ve just finished reading, a front-page blockbuster in the New York Daily News. It says that George W. Bush knew about Karl Rove’s scheme to blow CIA agent Valerie Plame’s cover for years, that he was Rove’s partner in treason from the start, that his claims of ignorance were lies. The News article is anonymously sourced but we know it’s 100 percent true because the White House won’t deny that Bush is a traitor.

“So they’ll impeach him now, right?”

My friend asked the same thing in 2001 when recounts proved Bush lost Florida, when the 9/11 fetishist admitted that he’d never even tried to catch Osama, when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, and when his malignant neglect killed hundreds of Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“This means impeachment. Right?” Wrong.

Any one of Bush’s crimes towers over the combined wickedness of Nixon and Clinton. And there are so many to choose from! How many times has Bush “made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States” (a key count in the Nixon impeachment)?

Stop laughing, you.

Unfortunately for my friend and the United States, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Nixon and Clinton faced Congresses controlled by the other party. Because Bush belongs to the same party as the majorities in the House and Senate, nothing he does can get him impeached.

Our failed Constitutional system means we’re stuck with this disastrous demagogue for three more years. Gloat now, Republican readers, but party loyalty’s stranglehold on impeachment can easily take the form of a complacent Democratic Congress overlooking the misdeeds of a batty Democratic president.

Any safe can be cracked; every system of safeguards breaks down eventually. We can’t get rid of Bush because the Founding Fathers, who were smart enough to think of just about everything, dropped the ball when they drafted the article that provides for presidential impeachment. Because there were no national political parties back in 1787, their otherwise ingenious system of checks and balances failed to account for the possibility that a Congress might choose to overlook a president’s crimes.

Small parties were active on the state and local level during the late 18th century, but James Madison, George Washington and most of the other Founders despised these organizations as harbingers of petty “factionalism” that ought to be banned or severely limited. Washington used the occasion of his 1796 farewell address to decry “the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” he warned. “It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection…In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.” Voting blocs were the enemy of good government.

In the new republic, Madison wrote in his seminal Federalist No. 10, political arguments should be considered on their own merits. Since candidates for and holders of political office would be judged solely as individuals, Congressmen would focus on the greater good rather than political alliances when weighing whether to impeach a president. Even when parties began to emerge as a national force in 1800, few politicians would have argued that a Democratic-Republican president should be safe from impeachment unless the Federalist Party happened to control Congress.

Another Constitutional breakdown, concerning the separation of powers, occurred in June 2004. More than a year after the Supreme Court decided in Rasul v. Bush that the nearly 600 Muslim men and young boys being held incommunicado at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to have their cases heard by U.S. courts, they remain in cold storage–no lawyers, no court dates. The Bush Administration simply ignored the ruling.

“[Bush’s] Justice Department,” Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, “sees [the ruling] through the sophisticated legal prism known as the Toddler Worldview: Anything one doesn’t wish to accept simply isn’t true.” Because the Founding Fathers never anticipated the possibility that the nation’s chief executive would treat its final judgments with the respect due an out-of-state parking ticket issued to a rental car, the Supreme Court has been rendered as toothless as a gummy bear.

The more you look, the more you’ll find that our Constitution has been subverted to the point of virtual irrelevance. The legislative branch has abdicated its exclusive right to declare war to the president, who was appointed by a federal court that undermined the states’ constitutional right to manage and settle election disputes. Individuals’ protection against unreasonable searches have been trashed, habeas corpus is a joke, and double jeopardy has become routine as those exonerated by criminal court face second trials in civil court. Our system of checks and balances has collapsed, the victim of a citizenry more interested in entertaining distraction than eternal vigilance.

Where evil men rule, law cannot protect those who sleep.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	5.9
Mind:	6.3
Body:	5.5
Spirit:	8
Friends/Family:	7.2
Love:	9.1
Finance:	3.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

blaugh… after spending almost an hour crafting this post, for some reason livejournal decided not to post it anyway, and now i’ve got to see if i can craft it again without losing my train of thought… 8/

i’ve decided to moderate the posts in because of the profusion of ads for other communities, encouragement to donate money, secular poetry, artwork, and random blurbs that belong in somebody’s blog, but not in a community about sivaism… i also updated the community information page to reflect this. i did it because i want to be a place where people can come with questions, answers and experiences related to sivaism, without having to sift through a bunch of other stuff. i am not saying this stuff shouldn’t be posted, but it should not be posted in a community about sivaism… i’m definitely not doing this to pick on any individual person…

however , a member of , is now pissed off because i rejected her post about a wall calendar that she is selling on cafepress, which didn’t have word one about siva in it at all… now she claims that the artwork in this calendar is related to sivaite experiences she had in the alps, and she’s dejected because it’s all her fault, i’ve insulted her, all she wants to do is become a rich and famous artist, and i’m standing in her way…

admittedly, now that i look at it, most of the random blurbs, secular poetry and so forth were, indeed, coming from , but i’m not doing this specifically to pick on . i suppose i should expect things like this being the moderator of a community – you can’t please everyone, but that’s why she has her own blog – so that if you don’t want to look at random blurbs that don’t concern you, you don’t have to.

now, to more frivolous stuff…

anybody remember TENEX? the first email is 34 years old now, and the @ sign is a common everyday occurance, but there was once when we were not being bombarded by spam on a regular basis. if you want to know who to kill…

this is a floccinaucinihilipilificatious post.

did you know that idi amin played the accordion? did you know that louis farrakhan was a calypso singer? the world is full of bizarre things like this…

manties – i’m not sure whether to be intrigued or disgusted…

jesus monster truck ministries – i’m not sure whether to be intrigued or disgusted…

i gave a button that says “I AM A TERRORIST!” to this person yesterday. she said that her web site wasn’t very exciting, and she was right. if any of the rest of you want buttons, magnets or stickers that say "I AM A TERRORIST!"…

Put what where? 2,000 years of bizarre sex advice

Tight corsets cause nymphomania, orgasms can kill and wasps are a turn-on. John Naish looks at the top sex tips over the ages

Mating. Reproduction. Nothing is more crucial to humanity’s survival, so it would be logical to expect us to have got it sussed early in our evolution. But since the start of civilisation, the fundamentals of human sex — where to put it, how and when — have been absurdly confused by a parade of moralists, pundits and visionaries all claiming to know the magic secrets and only too happy to pass them on at a very reasonable price.

Just as every generation thinks that it invented sex, we also think we invented lovemaking manuals, or at least based them on a few prototypes such as the Kamasutra and Marie Stopes’s 1918 Married Love. But today’s maelstrom of books, videos and DVDs has a far richer, more twisted heritage than that.

The tradition of bestselling love guides goes back to the Ancient Chinese. Our earliest known manuals were first written in 300BC and buried in a family tomb at Mawangdui, in Hunan province. Recent translation reveals the timeless nature of the subjects they tackled.

Written as Cosmo coverlines, they would look like this: Four Seasons of Sex — and Why Autumn is Hot, Hot, Hot; Wild New Positions; Tiger Roving, Gibbon Grabbing and Fish Gobbling; Aphrodisiacs to Keep You Up All Night!Plus Exclusive! Your Love Route to Immortality.

As ever, it was all nonsense: home-made Viagra recipes involved ingredients such as beetle larvae, wasps and dried snails. The books also promised that any man who had sex with a different virgin every night for 100 nights without ejaculating would live for ever (albeit rather uncomfortably).

These odd beginnings set a trend: weird tips from strange authors, many of whom became manual martyrs. Ovid, the Roman poet, advised women on the best positions to suit their bodies in his poem Ars Amatoria. For example: “If you are short, go on top/If you’re conspicuously tall, kneel with your head turned slightly sideways.” The prudish Emperor Augustus banished poor Ovid to a chilly outpost of empire (a small town on the Black Sea in modern Romania).

Medieval European sex advice followed the strait-laced trend: most of it said “don’t”. Pleasure paved Hell’s roads and misogynistic manuals such as De Secretis Mulierum (The Secrets of Women) claimed that females used sex to drain men of their power and that some hid sharp shards of iron inside themselves to injure innocent lovers.

A technological breakthrough in the Renaissance put us back on our lascivious tracks. The printing press enabled publishers to churn out dodgy books faster than the Church authorities could ban them. Readers were treated to gems such as Mrs Isabella Cortes’s handy hint from 1561 that a mixture of quail testicles, large-winged ants, musk and amber was perfect for straightening bent penises. The era also brought us the earliest recorded recommendation of slippers as a sex aid (“Cold feet are a powerful hindrance to coition,” warned Giovanni Sinibaldi in his 1658 book Rare Verities.) But to find history’s oddest advisers, we must look to the Victorians and Edwardians. William Chidley, for example, believed that he could best promote his ideas by walking around in a toga. Chidley, an Australian, advised readers in his 1911 pamphlet The Answer that heavy clothing caused erections, which would lead to sexual overexcitement, illness and death, as well as being “ugly things” of which “we are all ashamed”.

He urged people to live on fruit and nuts and to practise a method of flaccid intercourse apparently based on horses’ sex lives. Yet it wasn’t his ideas that got him repeatedly arrested, but his silk toga, which the authorities thought indecent. After his death, supporters continued propounding his theories into the 1920s.

For the ultimate proof that you don’t need relevant qualifications to become a world expert, we turn to Marie Stopes. She was married and in her late thirties when she wrote one of Britain’s most enduring sex guides, Married Love. But she was also a virgin.

Stopes was inspired by her betrothal to Reginald “Ruggles” Gates, who, she told a divorce court, had failed ever to become “effectively rigid”. When Married Love hit the shelves early in 1918 it outsold the bestselling contemporary novels by a huge margin. By 1925, sales had passed the half-million mark.

Stopes was a fan of Hitler’s eugenics and arrogant enough to offer Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw advice on writing. Her main sex-manual innovation was a theory that women have a “sex tide” of passion that ebbs and flows on a fortnightly basis — and woe betide the man who didn’t understand this. In case her second husband, the manufacturing magnate Humphrey Verdon Roe, got it wrong, she made him sign a contract releasing her to have sex with other men.

So that’s our sexual forebears, a weird lot with funny ideas. Compared with them we might appear at the zenith of sexual enlightenment. Our age is remarkable for the sheer volume of sex advice being consumed: one woman in four now owns a sex manual, says a survey by the publishers Dorling Kindersley. Everyone from porn stars to the car-manual firm Haynes has one out. Well, I wonder. In 50 years’ time, I foresee the students at a university faculty of s exual semiotics studying the early Twenty-Ohs with the same mirth, incredulity and horror that shake us when we consider our ancestors’ obsessions. Perhaps they will wonder why we bought so many manuals, videos and DVDs but seemed to have so little time or energy left for sex. Maybe they will link our obsession with orgasms to our endless need to go shopping. They might also connect our avid consumption of sex advice to our growing terror of personal embarrassment and “getting it wrong”. They may even have a name for us; perhaps the erotic neurotics.

Put What Where? Over 2,000 Years of Bizarre Sex Advice, by John Naish (HarperElement £9.99), is available from Times Books First at £9.49 p&p free.

Wisdom of the ancients

How to pull
“Pick the woman’s worst feature and then make it appear desirable. Tell an older woman that she looks young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks ‘fascinating’.” Philaenis, papyrus sex manual (2BC)

Go blondes!
“All women are lascivious but auburn blondes the most. A little straight forehead denotes an unbridled appetite in lust.” Giovanni Sinibaldi, Rare Verities: the Cabinet of Venus Unlock’d (1658)

Buns and corsets cause nymphomania
“Constricting the waist by corsets prevents the return of blood to the heart, overloads sexual organs and causes unnatural excitement of the sexual system. The majority of women follow the goddess Fashion and so also wear their hair in a heavy knot. This great pressure on their small brains produces great heat and chronic inflammation of their sexual organs. It is almost impossible that such women should lead other than a life of sexual excess.” Dr John Cowan, The Science of a New Life (1888)

On the other hand . . .
“The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind.” Dr William Acton, Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1858)

Indian enlargement
“Rub your penis with the bristles of certain insects that live in trees, and then, after rubbing it for ten nights with oils, rub it with the bristles as before. Swelling will be gradually produced. Then lie on a hammock with a hole in it and hang the penis through the hole. Take away the pain from the swelling by using cool concoctions. The swelling lasts for life.” Kamasutra, translated by Sir Richard Burton and F. F. “Bunny” Arbuthnot (1883)

Climaxes can kill
“Fainting, vomiting, involuntary urination, epilepsy and defecation have occurred in young men after first coitus. Lesions of various organs have taken place. In men of mature age the arteries have been unable to resist the high blood pressure and cerebral haemorrhage with paralysis has occurred. In elderly men the excitement of intercourse with young wives or prostitutes has caused death.” Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex: a Manual for Students (1933)

How often?
“The ordinary man can safely indulge about four times a month. More than that would be excess for a large majority of civilised men and women.” Lyman B. Sperry, Confidential Talks with Husband and Wife: a Book of Information and Advice for the Married and Marriageable (1900)

Single-handed signs
“Look at the habitual masturbator! See how thin, pale and haggard he appears; how his eyes are sunken; how long and cadaverous is his cast of countenance; how irritable he is and how sluggish, mentally and physically; how afraid he is to meet the eye of his fellow, feel his damp and chilling hand, so characteristic of great vital exhaustion.” Dr Henry Guernsey, Plain Talks on Avoided Subjects (1882)

Never marry these women
“Redheads. Any girl named after a mountain, a tree, a river or a bird. Ones with rough hands or feet. Ones who sigh, laugh or cry at meals. Any girl with inverted nipples, a beard, uneven breasts, flap ears, spindle legs or who is scrawny. Girls whose big toes are disproportionately small. Girls who make the ground shake when they walk past.” Koka Shastra, The Indian Scripture of Koka (12th century)

And, if you can’t find it, don’t worry
“The clitoris, while important, is not nearly as important as many of us have been taught or led to believe.” Edward Podolsky, Sex Technique for Husband and Wife (1947)

But whatever you do …
“Never fool around sexually with a vacuum cleaner.” Dr Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1972)

there are numerous bit torrents of all of the residents music available, including several albums (or whatever they’re called when they’re bit torrents) of stuff i haven’t heard before… now i need more disk space… 8/

hmmmm…

i’ll never be able to look at burning man the same way again… ever!

miscellaneous bits and pieces from the past week or so…

Study turns pot wisdom on head – Lab rats given drug 100 times as strong as pot

By DAWN WALTON
Friday, October 14, 2005

Calgary — Forget the stereotype about dopey potheads. It seems marijuana could be good for your brain.

While other studies have shown that periodic use of marijuana can cause memory loss and impair learning and a host of other health problems down the road, new research suggests the drug could have some benefits when administered regularly in a highly potent form.

Most “drugs of abuse” such as alcohol, heroin, cocaine and nicotine suppress growth of new brain cells. However, researchers found that cannabinoids promoted generation of new neurons in rats’ hippocampuses.

Hippocampuses are the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory, and the study held true for either plant-derived or the synthetic version of cannabinoids.

“This is quite a surprise,” said Xia Zhang, an associate professor with the Neuropsychiatry Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

“Chronic use of marijuana may actually improve learning memory when the new neurons in the hippocampus can mature in two or three months,” he added.

The research by Dr. Zhang and a team of international researchers is to be published in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, but their findings are on-line now.

The scientists also noticed that cannabinoids curbed depression and anxiety, which Dr. Zhang says, suggests a correlation between neurogenesis and mood swings. (Or, it at least partly explains the feelings of relaxation and euphoria of a pot-induced high.)

Other scientists have suggested that depression is triggered when too few new brain cells are created in the hippocampus. One researcher of neuropharmacology said he was “puzzled” by the findings.

As enthusiastic as Dr. Zhang is about the potential health benefits, he warns against running out for a toke in a bid to beef up brain power or calm nerves.

The team injected laboratory rats with a synthetic substance called HU-210, which is similar, but 100 times as potent as THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the compound responsible for giving marijuana users a high.

They found that the rats treated regularly with a high dose of HU-210 — twice a day for 10 days — showed growth of neurons in the hippocampus. The researchers don’t know if pot, which isn’t as pure as the lab-produced version, would have the same effect.

“There’s a big gap between rats and humans,” Dr. Zhang points out.

But there is a lot of interest — and controversy — around the use of cannabinoids to improve human health.

Cannabinoids, such as marijuana and hashish, have been used to address pain, nausea, vomiting, seizures caused by epilepsy, ischemic stroke, cerebral trauma, tumours, multiple sclerosis and a host of other maladies.

There are herbal cannabinoids, which come from the cannabis plant, and the bodies of humans and animals produce endogenous cannabinoids. The substance can also be designed in the lab.

Cannabinoids can trigger the body’s two cannabinoid receptors, which control the activity of various cells in the body.

One receptor, known as CB1, is found primarily in the brain. The other receptor, CB2, was thought to be found only in the immune system.

However, in a separate study to be published today in the journal Science, a group of international researchers have located the CB2 receptor in the brain stems of rats, mice and ferrets.

The brain stem is responsible for basic body function such as breathing and the gastrointestinal tract. If stimulated in a certain way, CB2 could be harnessed to eliminate the nausea and vomiting associated with post-operative analgesics or cancer and AIDS treatments, according to the researchers.

“Ultimately, new therapies could be developed as a result of these findings,” said Keith Sharkey, a gastrointestinal neuroscientist at the University of Calgary, lead author of the study.

(Scientists are trying to find ways to block CB1 as a way to decrease food cravings and limit dependence on tobacco.)

When asked whether his findings explain why some swear by pot as a way to avoid the queasy feeling of a hangover, Dr. Sharkey paused and replied: “It does not explain the effects of smoked or inhaled or ingested substances.”

and, almost exactly the same article from UPI:

Marijuana may spur new brain cells

By STEVE MITCHELL
Senior Medical Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) — Scientists said Thursday that marijuana appears to promote the development of new brain cells in rats and have anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effects, a finding that could have an impact on the national debate over medical uses of the drug.

Other illegal and legal drugs, including opiates, alcohol, nicotine and cocaine, have been shown to suppress the formation of new brain cells when used chronically, but marijuana’s effect on that process was uncertain.

Now, a team led by Xia Zhang of the department of psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon may have found evidence the drug spurs new brain cells to form in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, and this in turn reduces anxiety and depression.

Marijuana appears “to be the only illicit drug whose capacity to produce increased … neurons is positively correlated with its (anti-anxiety) and anti-depressant-like effects,” Zhang and colleagues wrote in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The paper was posted online Thursday.

In the study, rats were given injections of HU210 — a synthesized version of a cannabinoid chemical found in marijuana — twice per day for 10 days.

Zhang told United Press International this would be “a high dose” of smoked marijuana, but he added he is not certain how many equivalent joints it would take or whether patients now using the drug typically would be getting this much HU210.

Although HU210 was injected, Zhang said there would be no difference if it was obtained by smoking marijuana.

The rats showed evidence of new neurons in the hippocampus dentate gyrus, a region of the brain that plays a role in developing memories.

Zhang’s team suspected the new brain cells also might be associated with a reduction in anxiety and depression, because previous studies had indicated medications used to treat anxiety and depression achieve their effect this way.

To find out, they treated rats with HU210 for 10 days and then tested them one month later. When placed in a new environment, the rats were quicker to eat their food than rats that did not receive the compound, which suggested there was a reduction in anxiety behaviors.

Another group of rats treated with HU210 showed a reduction in the duration of immobility in a forced swimming test, which is an indication the compound had an anti-depressant effect.

Asked how he thought the findings might impact the debate over using marijuana to treat medical conditions, Zhang said, “Our results indicate cannabinoids could be used for the treatment of anxiety and depression.”

He added that his view is “marijuana should be used as alcohol or nicotine,” noting “it has been used for treating various diseases for years in other countries.”

Last June the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 that the federal ban on marijuana supersedes the laws of certain states that allow the substance to be used for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of pain, nausea in cancer patients and glaucoma. Eleven states have passed laws legalizing marijuana use by patients with a doctor’s approval, including California, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

The Bush administration, through the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Agency, began conducting raids in California in 2001 on patients using marijuana. Two of those arrested by the DEA — Angel Raich, who suffers from brain cancer, and Diane Monson, who used the drug to help alleviate chronic back pain — sued Attorney General John Ashcroft, requesting a court order to be allowed to grow and smoke marijuana, which led to the Supreme Court decision.

Paul Armentano, senior policy analyst with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told UPI he thought the findings “would have a positive impact on moving forward this debate, because it is giving … a scientific explanation that further supports long-observed anecdotal evidence, and further lends itself to the notion that marijuana, unlike so many other prescription drugs and controlled substances, appears to have incredibly low toxicity and as a result lacks potential harm to the brain that many of these drugs have.”

The DEA Web site, however, contends that “marijuana is a dangerous, addictive drug that poses significant health threats to users,” including cancer and impaired mental functioning.

Armentano said this is a distortion of what scientific studies actually show. Studies in animals indicate marijuana actually may protect against many forms of cancer, rather than cause the disease, he said. In addition, studies in marijuana smokers have found little evidence of cognitive deficits, and even when they do, the defects disappear if the person stops smoking for 30 days.

Tri-Lamb Material 69% Nerd, 43% Geek, 65% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Dork, earning you the coveted title of: Tri-Lamb Material. The classic, “80’s” nerd, you are what most people think of when they think “nerd,” largely due to 80’s movies like Revenge of the Nerds and TV shows like Head of the Class. You’re exceptionally bright and smart, and partly because of that have never quite fit in with your peers or social groups. Perhaps you’re realized, or will someday, that it is possible to retain all of the things that you like about being brilliant and still make peace with the social cliques around you. Or maybe you won’t–it’s really not necessary. As the brothers of Lambda Lambda Lambda discovered, you’re fine just the way you are and can take pride in that. I mean, who wants to be like Ogre, right!? Congratulations! THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 70% on nerdiness You scored higher than 77% on geekosity You scored higher than 97% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos.

You Are Likely an Only Child

At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated. At work and school, you do best when you’re organizing. When you love someone, you tend to worry about them. In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic. Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management. You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books. The Birth Order Predictor

nope, i’m the oldest of four kids…

there’s another project that goes along with the performance of ORGAN²/ASLSP, sort of, which is The Clock of The Long Now, a mechanical clock that is designed to run for 10,000 years…

finally, Original Pussy Beer… i have in mind specifically when i post this, because he’s a beer conoisseur, but i’m not sure i would go that far myself…

now i’m really glad i got fired from minuteman press. they gave me a raise last week, just before i was fired. i got my final check in the mail today, and they raised me .50 cents an hour, so instead of making $11.00 an hour, i was making $11.50 an hour… this is despite the fact that i told them when they hired me originally that i needed to make $14.00 an hour minimum, and from what i understand, other people in the same position at other shops in the area are making between $17.00 and $21.00 an hour. if i was still working there, there would definitely be some mighty complaining being done, and i’d probably quit simply because of that, if they hadn’t already fired me. they were complaining about how my mistakes were costing them money, but i get the impression that if they’re paying that little, they should expect to get work from their employees that matches.

i saw dr. kim yesterday. the first thing she did was recommend medications. she only did a cursory physical exam and she doesn’t even know me at all.

when i said i wasn’t interested, she tried really hard to convince me, but honestly, the more she tried to convince me, the more i was convinced that i don’t need medications… especially since she said that if my home situation and my work situation was the way i wanted it, that i probably wouldn’t need medications… i figure that if i have a choice between living the way i want, or taking drugs, i’ll choose living the way i want every time and if the only other option is taking drugs that i wouldn’t need otherwise then i’ll decide not to take them anyway. i’d rather be depressed than take drugs i don’t need.

i’ve got an appointment with ned, the ptsd counsellor, tomorrow… 8/

Ok listen up you ass jockeys because I’m only going to say this once. If I thought I’d have you morons putting idols of me nailed to a goddamned cross up all over the place, I would’ve requested something more aesthetically pleasing. You think I like coming down to earth disguised as a nubile co-ed and seeing reminders of how I died everywhere?

Newsflash: I didn’t die for your sins. I died because some so-called friend of mine ratted me out. That is no big deal. Happens all the time. But man, it fucking hurt up there. And it was hot, too.

But what’s with this nonsense about the bible? Quit fooling yourselves. It is a PARABLE, a story meant to tell you how to live your life. If you believe the earth was created in seven days, I have a freaking bridge to sell you in Manhattan. Asshat.

It’s true: I am a republican. But only because I support state’s rights above federal involvement, not because I think this bullshit in my name is more right than what Vishnu’s got cooking up across the sea. Those whacky bastards are blue and have many arms, did you know that? Fucking crazy!

Do me a favor. People who live in glass trailers shouldn’t throw stones. So please stop heaving rocks in my name, or I’ll come down there and put my neener up to your dome and pop a cap (I’ve been hangin’ with Tupac recently, he’s sweet).

And stop asking what I would do. Daddy gave you free will for a fucking reason, you fucking nutcase. Use it.

But since you keep asking: What would I do? Man, I’d bang your sister, that’s what. But she has crabs. A burning bush, so to speak.

Ok you lot, put that in your pipe and smoke it – this is my word.

Ps – I am currently incarnated as a handsome, virile young man. If you seek to repent, kneel before me. But only if you are an attractive woman who owns black stiletto boots that go up to your knees (and you’re willing to leave them on).

sigh… how come when i am mailed something funny it turns out to be fake?

oh well, i’ll post it anyway.

---

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary

2. Then look up aluminum, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘ise’. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up vocabulary).

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort hings out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler.

A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will star tdriving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) – roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

my friend

in spite of the fact that i’m probably a lot happier not working for that bunch of morons any longer, i’m really depressed. on the other hand, now that i’m not working, i got in touch with moe’s friend kim, the social worker, who re-scheduled my appointment with dr. kim (no relation) for monday, and an appointment to see ned the ptsd counsellor on thursday, so that’s supposedly a good thing, but i’ll believe it when i see it…

malcat is moving to LA, which means that he’s selling his house on delridge. i went over there this morning to cut a hole in the front wall of his downstairs apartment so that he could have a pest inspection before selling the house. it was supposed to be a 24×24 hole, but it ended up being a 24×48 hole because half of it, the first part of the hole, had a whole bunch of studs and house-exterior on the outside which prevented me from going all the way through… which, of course, wasn’t apparent until after i had already cut through the sheetrock… fortunately, mal’s moving, and he told me that any problems would, by definition, not be my fault regardless of what i did, so i’m relieved about that.

UNICEF bombs the Smurfs in fund-raising campaign for ex-child soldiers – “The people of Belgium have been left reeling by the first adult-only episode of the Smurfs, in which the blue-skinned cartoon characters’ village is annihilated by warplanes… The animation was approved by the family of the Smurfs’ late creator, ‘Peyo’.”

articles about intellectual property issues by negativland, which was the upshot of a discussion in which favourably compared my music to that of negativland…

i’ve been a fan of them for a long time, but ®™ark has a bunch of projects that make me really wonder who pays them to do this kind of shit. really. it sounds like a lot of fun, but being a corporate saboteur doesn’t sound like a way to pay the bills…

Near Impossible Your life has been 66% difficult. Dear Lord. Based on your family, money, political context, and personal situation — during the important years of your development — it appears your life was NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. What does this mean? Well, the “difficulty” of your life is a measure of how rough you had it. In your case it appears the dice were thrown snakeeyes — so much went wrong during your development years that it’s become hard to succeed. My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 96% on difficult Link: The How Difficult Is Your Life Test written by chicken_pot_pie on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

well, the question i posed at the end of this entry has been answered. the answer is 21 weeks and 6 days.

i got fired today. there were a bunch of jobs that got screwed up because the artwork either wasn’t there at all and i had to create it – which i did incorrectly because of the fact that they only had old, incorrect samples to go by and they were unwilling to send the job to the customer for proofreading because it was a reprint of a job that had been printed before, regardless of the fact that it was over a year since we printed the job the last time – or the artwork was there, but it was incorrect from the beginning and, being as how that was the only artwork that was there for those particular jobs, i assumed that it was the correct artwork, even though it had been superceded before i got there, and for some reason the new artwork had been deleted and the old artwork had been saved – all before i even started working there – but because these jobs got screwed up "on my watch" so to speak, even though they were screwed up before i even started working there, i got blamed for their screwups… and as a result, majid went on a flaming, part-farsi (or whatever language it is that he speaks) tirade, made up a whole bunch of completely arbitrary "rules" which wouldn’t really affect anything except majid’s state of mind (or lack thereof), but would only make my job that much more difficult if i actually followed them, and said that if i couldn’t abide by them, that i was fired…

so, i’m fired now.

part of me is relieved that i don’t have to go to work and work with that crew of blithering idiots any more, but part of me is wondering how long it will be before i’m living in a motorhome somewhere, or worse…

and yet another part of me is just waiting to see, now that i’ve got the network a lot more organised than it was before i got there, how long it will be before they’ve totally fucked everything up and come whimpering to me asking me to fix some thing or another that i was able to get to work, but now that i’m gone they can’t figure it out any longer… i wonder how much i would charge to fix said screwup then…

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PUBLIC RITUAL VEGETABLE SACRIFICE

for the common era year (sorry) of 2005

at

eXit-38

which can be found by going here

it will be held on SPROOGLE (the closest sunday to the second tudesday of the month) which, this year, falls on

9 October, 2005, (tomorrow)

at 1:00 pm

cross posted to , ,

Johnny Jetpack Propulsion Laboratories is my friend nathan arnold and various other folks (including me). their scheduled launch of Johnny Jetpack was unexpectedly cancelled by the tight-assed seattle city council member david della, park superintendent ken bounds and virginia swanson, special event coordinator for the city of seattle. complaints and harassment are in order.

the new avatar is courtesy of who is, apparently, no relation to Andrew Looney: Activist or The Official Monster Raving Loony Party, although both are ideas well worth considering.

October 7, 2005
Recruiters and Thugs on Campus – Why Do We Hate Our Freedom?

By WILL YOUMANS

The predatory tactics used by military recruiters to lure in youth from our schools and universities feed on desperation by offering dreams of cash for college, marketable skills, a signing bonus, and promises of cushy desk jobs. “Green card” soldiers fight for the hope of citizenship. Recruiters have been known to deceive by offering that which they cannot guarantee.

The recruiters, as a tangent, are doing little more that what George W. Bush did. They both invent reasons to persuade us to kill and die. Where the recruiters paint visions of a better life for the recruits, Bush offered us the opportunity to defend ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. Then, after the proof could not be found in the pudding, he shifted it to establishing the first democratic domino in the region. Later, it became about taking on Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This shifting logic is the equivalent of the shifts a new recruit experiences when he or she enlists. Instead of training as a medic in sunny Florida as promised, the bright-eyed recruit ends up on the front lines in sunny Iraq.

Obviously, then, this is more than just about the dishonesty of quota and bonus-driven recruiters, this is about the politics of the war these recruitment efforts are part of. Thus, military recruiters are predictably becoming the lightening rod for the anger of the betrayed public. On schools and universities, student activists who confront recruiters are facing expulsion, arrest, and other attacks.

Thanks to the Solomon Act universities lose some government funding if they deny recruiters access to our future leaders. Those student-activists trying to boot the recruiters off campus face more than the Department of Defense, they have a budget-obsessed university administration to work against. The danger is that they will prioritize free money from the government over free speech for the students.

Before we can talk about whether campus recruiters should leave, we have to make sure there can be a debate. At George Mason University, specifically, the students have to fight for the freedom of speech just to protest the presence of the recruiters. Last Thursday, Tariq Khan, a student there who served for four years in the Air Force, simply stood inside the student center with a handful of pamphlets and a small sign taped on his chest. He shared on the sign his personal experiences with the recruiters: they lie. It said, “Recruiters lie. Don’t be deceived.”

Khan just stood there, mostly silent. He offered his literature to anyone who asked for it. Before he knew it, a ROTC student and his side-kick, a lumpy right-winger, were yelling at him. With foam coming out of their mouths, they called him a “pussy.” They talked with enthusiasm about the thrill of getting to kill Iraqis. The ROTC student grew angry with Khan’s calm demeanor. Several people tried to intervene by joining the debate. Finally, the ROTC student grabbed the sign and ripped it. Khan calmly began to write another notebook paper-sized sign.

Campus security arrived and told Khan he was violating school policy by being there. Instead of arresting the ROTC student for assault and the willful destruction of property, the officer sought to remove Khan for “tabling” outside of the area where tabling is permitted. Khan did not even have a table with him.

Khan refused to leave, believing the Constitution protected his right to just stand there. The officer began to handcuff him. Khan did not resist, but he did not comply. He saw it rightfully as an unjustified arrest. Soon, some freedom-loving students were chanting “kick his ass,” and a few actually helped the officer subdue Khan. Though he was non-violent the entire time, they caused him several injuries. A witness saw the officer “putting him in a headlock, choking him, and then proceeding to throw him against the stage.” He was later charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

I wonder if the recruiters who reeled in Khan fresh out of high school fed him the fancy talk about defending our freedom–the same freedom that got him a gash on his forehead. They probably just told him about the great marketable skills he would learn, and all the money he would get for college. Instead, they had him cleaning bathrooms and doing menial labor–the type of work that requires no skills and no plans for comfortable living. And the money his four years of service brings him is not quite enough to pay for four years of college.

We could blame the officer for acting improperly, like we could fault Lyndie England and other bad apples. Clearly, the problem here is a policy framework that criminalizes free speech and those who practice it. If universities want to benefit from recruiters telling students about the freedoms they have to fight for, at least let those freedoms be practiced on campus. Otherwise, students might just realize that the biggest threat to freedom is not foreign enemies, but those claiming to protect them.

Please sign this petition calling on the university to drop the charges: http://fawcettweb.com/peace/

Will Youmans has a blog: www.kabobfest.com.

Pinky You scored 28% sweetness, 51% intelligence, 42% rage, and 61% lunacy!

You are Pinky! When a little bit of brains meets a lot of wacky, they’re sure to find you there. Try not to hurt anyone, though!

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 20% on sweetness You scored higher than 40% on intelligence You scored higher than 99% on rage You scored higher than 80% on lunacy

Link: The Which Animaniac are you? Test written by AuroraStarlite on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him
By Matthew Rothschild
October 4, 2005

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High. “At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.”

She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.”

Then they got down to his poster.

“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

“I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”

A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that.”

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period.

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.”

Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, “We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.”

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: “ridiculous.”

George Bush is the anti-christ

today massoud asked me if i knew of any way to make a “snapshot” on a windows machine. turns out he meant a “screen shot” but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that he was sitting in front of a windows machine when he asked me this, had been for at least 45 minutes, had been staring directly at the keyboard, and had somehow missed the key that says “PRINT SCREEN” right in front of him…

today there were two jobs that needed to be reprinted because of chaos. the fact that i got yelled at because of other peoples’ stupidity is the upshot of the whole deal, but this is how it went down. on job #1, there were two parts, a “shell” or masthead that gets printed in two colours, and an “imprint”, which gets printed on the shell. they wanted 20,000 shells, but only 1000 imprints, which means that they’ll be using the shell for jobs in the future as well. the last time we printed this particular file (the shell, not the imprint) was over a year ago, well before i started working there, and when i went to find it, as i generally expect with documents that haven’t been printed for a year or more, it wasn’t in the right place on the network… in fact it was the only file i could find like it on the network anywhere, and it was in a folder that was originally labeled “trash” when i first started, but that’s a separate issue entirely. i used that file and updated it with a new work order number. i do it this way because i’ve been bitten in the ass by files that weren’t in the right place on the network, so i re-created them – from defective prints and/or other incorrect information – and caused even more chaos than there was already, so i have gotten into the habit of using old files for jobs that are being reprinted so that won’t happen as much.

so we printed the 20,000 shell masters, and the 1000 imprints… then we discover that the address on the masthead is the wrong address.

the file which i found in the folder labeled “trash”, the only file like it anywhere on the network, had the old address on it!

why the hell they decided to save that file, and not the one with the new, correct address on it, is so far beyond me that it boggles the mind.

the other job is a similar story: i created 2 new business cards from an old file that i found on the network, which was the correct file, but for some reason, out of two columns of cards, one column was off center – not enough that i could see it when it was on the computer, nor enough that it was perceptible to greg, but when it came to cutting the cards they were off center enough that the whole job has to be reprinted.

naturally, it was discovered that both jobs had to be reprinted around the same time, which, coincidentally, was also the time when majid was alone in the shop with me and greg… and majid lost it. he yelled at me, and what he yelled made sense in that they were english words that made sense together in a sentence, but that sentence had absolutely nothing to do with the problem. what he yelled at me was “i want all jobs to print as .pdfs from now on. no more printing native files, convert everything to .pdf before printing it.” the only thing that converting every job to a .pdf before printing would do is add an extra, unnecessary and sometimes impossible task to the job. he also spent quite a bit of time yelling at greg as well, but i didn’t pay much attention to that because i was busy fixing the screwed up files (which i did, and had new plates output in about half an hour), and then he stormed out of the shop and was gone until after lunch, and just before i left for the day – at 2:30, because of lack of work.

i’ve collected a huge quantity of files that would have been lost, because they were in the folder which had been labeled “trash” and if it weren’t for the fact that i was warned by my immediate predecessor to not do so, i would have thrown it away without even looking in it. why they decided to keep the old masthead artwork – which i had to change, convert to .eps and re-import into the “shell” document before producing new plates, and why they decided to keep a file full of business cards that were off center without fixing them is pure, unadulterated stupidity, yelling at me is adding rudeness and yelling something that doesn’t address the problem is the PRIMARY reason why i HAVE TO get out of there. have to, have to, have to, HAVE TO, HAVE TO!!!!

if it weren’t for my injury, i don’t know whether i’d be able to take it or not, but since my injury there is NO WAY i can take this level of stupidity.

in other news, a favourite subject for spammers is also local, and you don’t have to deal with spammers to get one…

MiltonMessages dot com is a strange, but oddly compelling way to advertise… i wonder what i could get away with…

flee past’s ape elf

thanks to

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing “intelligent design” to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.

In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is “God’s word expressed in human language” and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.

They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways “appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries”.

The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: “We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.”

They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its “intransigent intolerance” and to warn of “significant dangers” involved in a fundamentalist approach.

“Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others.”

Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”, a passage used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had “tragic consequences” in encouraging hatred and persecution. “The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians.”

As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.

Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.

The bishops say: “Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come.”

In their foreword to the teaching document, the two most senior Catholics of the land, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh, explain its context.

They say people today are searching for what is worthwhile, what has real value, what can be trusted and what is really true.

The new teaching has been issued as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council document explaining the place of Scripture in revelation. In the past 40 years, Catholics have learnt more than ever before to cherish the Bible. “We have rediscovered the Bible as a precious treasure, both ancient and ever new.”

A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word. The Breakout Trust raised £200,000 to make the 30-minute animated film, It’s a Boy. Steve Legg, head of the charity, said: “There are over 12 million children in the UK and only 756,000 of them go to church regularly.

That leaves a staggering number who are probably not receiving basic Christian teaching.”

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

UNTRUE

Genesis ii, 21-22

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man

Genesis iii, 16

God said to the woman [after she was beguiled by the serpent]: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

Matthew xxvii, 25

The words of the crowd: “His blood be on us and on our children.”

Revelation xix,20

And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had worked the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone.

TRUE

Exodus iii, 14

God reveals himself to Moses as: “I am who I am.”

Leviticus xxvi,12

“I will be your God, and you shall be my people.”

Exodus xx,1-17

The Ten Commandments

Matthew v,7

The Sermon on the Mount

Mark viii,29

Peter declares Jesus to be the Christ

Luke i

The Virgin Birth

John xx,28

Proof of bodily resurrection

and, conversely, have you taken the Geocentrism Challenge

CAI will write a check for $1,000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. (If you lose, then we ask that you make a donation to the apostolate of CAI). Obviously, we at CAI don’t think anyone CAN prove it, and thus we can offer such a generous reward. In fact, we may up the ante in the near future.

You can submit your “proofs” to our e-mail address [email protected]. We will then offer a response. Both your “proof” and our response will be posted on the CAI science page at our website. If you do not want your actual name listed, we will change your name, but your contents will be posted. If you do not want either your name or your contents posted, then you are not eligible for a reply from CAI nor the $1,000 reward. CAI will be the sole judge of whether you have successfully proven your case. But since CAI is built on its reputation of honesty and truthfulness, rest assured that if you do indeed prove your case, you will be rewarded the money.

Now a word of caution. By “proof” we mean that your explanations must be direct, observable, physical, natural, repeatable, unambiguous and comprehensive. We don’t want hearsay, popular opinion, “expert” testimony, majority vote, personal conviction, organizational rulings, superficial analogies, appeals to “simplicity,” “apologies” to Galileo, or any other indirect means of persuasion which do not qualify as scientific proof.

The $1,000 Challenge will go on indefinitely. So, if you’re up for the challenge, take your best shot!

Some may be tempted to say, “Oh this silly. Everyone knows the earth goes around the sun. What is CAI trying to prove, anyway?! What difference does it make?” Well here’s the long and short answer to that question. It directly effects how you view God, Scripture, the Church and Modern Man.

* It effects your view of Modern Man because if he is wrong about the two teachings he has proposed as fundamental to modern knowledge (Evolution and Heliocentrism) this suggests that many other things man believes about the world are suspect of falsehood. As we know, modern man has continually used the Copernican model and its variant forms (Galileo, Kepler, et al) in an effort to weaken both the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Church to hold them accountable for the way they live their lives. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: “We don’t have to take the Bible literally because, as we all know, the sun doesn’t go around the earth, but Scripture says it does. So why should I trust the Bible?”

If Scripture can be dismissed by claiming that it is mostly a collection of myths and fables from ignorant and primitive people; and if the Church can be faulted for siding with an aberrant view of cosmology; then modern man thinks he has found the ultimate excuse for relieving himself of being bound by either Scripture or the Church.

That is not all. If one examines the so-called “scientific proofs” for either Evolution or Heliocentrism, the proofs simply do not exist. Yet modern man, so desperate to find his excuses, has turned mere theories into “facts,” and has thereby convinced the world that IT, not the Church or Scripture, is the king of truth.

* It effects your view of the Church because if it can be proven that, after the Church clung so tenaciously to the view that the sun revolves around the earth, but that now the Church finally has to admit she was wrong about one of its more authoritative teachings in the seventeenth century, this does not bode well for convincing modern man to abide by the Church’s official teaching on ANY issue. Unfortunately, this is precisely the attitude we have seen from modern man. Man, because he has convinced himself that his “science” has turned Scripture into superstitious myths and fables; and the Church into a mere purveyor of the same; has become so cock-sure of himself in the little world he has created, that he not only has no need for God, he has attacked, and thinks he has destroyed, the very foundations of that belief. The modern Church, because she has been weak in fighting this issue, and indeed, ever since the days of George Terrell and Teilhard de Chardin has been infiltrated by free-thinking evolutionists, it totters to-and-fro, in one instance apologizing and condoning, and in other instances drawing back and distancing itself, resulting in no sure-footing for the world to rest upon. Meanwhile, a recent poll of young people in Europe reveals that 47% of them attribute their spiritual apathy to the difference between the theological and scientific explanations for the origin of the world. As for the Church’s previous condemnations of Copernicanism and Galileo, here are the facts: The Inquisition of 1615 in Rome declared the position of Galileo to be “scientifically false, and anti-Scriptural or heretical, and that he must renounce it” (Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 6, p. 344). Following this was a decree from the Congregation of the Index on March 5, 1616, prohibiting various heretical works, and among them were those advocating the Copernican system. As for the Pope at that time, Paul V, “there is no doubt that he fully approved the decision, having presided at the session of the Inquisition, wherein the matter was discussed and decided” (Ibid, p. 344). To Galileo’s dismay, the next Pope, Urban VIII, would not annul the judgment of the Inquisition. The Encyclopedia concludes: “That both these pontiffs [Paul V and Urban VIII] were convinced anti-Copernicans cannot be doubted, nor that they believed the Copernican system to be unscriptural and desired its suppression. The question is, however, whether either of them condemned the doctrine ex cathedra. This, it is clear, they never did” (Ibid, p. 345). So despite what anyone says, the Catholic Church has never endorsed the Copernican theory and no pope has ever annulled the decrees of Paul V or Urban VIII. The only thing the Church has done is apologized for the treatment of Galileo in a 1992 address by John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Science.

* It effects your view of Scripture. Scripture is very clear that the earth is stationary and that the sun, moon and stars revolve around it. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, “flat-earthers” are not accepted here, since Scripture does not teach a flat earth, nor did the Fathers teach it). If there was only one or two places where the Geocentric teaching appeared in Scripture, one might have the license to say that those passages were just incidental and really didn’t reflect the teaching of Scripture at large. But the fact is that Geocentrism permeates Scripture. Here are some of the more salient passages (Sirach 43:2-5; 43:9-10; 46:4; Psalm 19:5-7; 104:5; 104:19; 119:90; Ecclesiastes 1:5; 2 Kings 20:9-11; 2 Chronicles 32:24; Isaiah 38:7-8; Joshua 10:12-14; Judges 5:31; Job 9:7; Habakkuk 3:11; (1 Esdras 4:12); James 1:12). I could list many more, but I think these will suffice.

Now, of course, someone will immediately object: “Well, we don’t have to interpret these passages literally.” Says who? The Church has made no dogmatic teaching saying that we don’t have to take these Scriptures literally. In fact, Leo XIII taught in Providentissimus Deus (1893) that, in the first instance, Scripture MUST be interpreted literally, unless there is some compelling reason to interpret it otherwise.

In fact, I find it quite puzzling that Catholics, who would die for a literal interpretation of the Scripture “This is my body” in Matthew 26:26; or “unless a man is born of water and the Spirit” in John 3:5; or “upon this rock I will build my church” in Matthew 16:18; or “he who sins you shall forgive they are forgiven” in John 20:23, suddenly become so anti-literal when even clearer passages (i.e., those teaching Geocentrism) permeate Scripture. A common epithet foisted upon Catholics who disbelieve in Evolution and Heliocentrism is that they have “a Protestant mind-set,” based on the prevailing opinion that some Protestants are known to read the Bible more literally. Yet isn’t it ironic that to the Protestant mind it is the CATHOLIC who maintains the crassly literal interpretation of Scripture when, for example, passages such as Matthew 26:26 are interpreted by the Catholic Church to mean that we actually eat Jesus’ body — something absolutely repulsive to Protestants.

So it seems that the issues before us are not those revolving around whether one is Catholic or Protestant; rather, it’s a matter of which Scriptures someone decides to interpret literally and which he decides not to interpret literally. Of course, that polarity leaves the whole thing wide open for discussion, which is precisely what we are seeking to do at CAI (except the passages that have been dogmatized by the Church).

* Finally, it also effects your view of God because God says that, even though for Him all things are possible (Matt 19:26), there is one thing that is absolutely impossible for Him: and that is to lie (Titus 1:2). Again, if we are to base our understanding of a passage, such as Matthew 26:26, on the precise literal meaning of Jesus’ words because we believe that He actually said what He meant and could not lie to us, then why do some people find it so easy to read the above passages which speak about a stationary earth and a moving sun as mere figures of speech? The only reason is that people believe science has proven that the earth goes around the sun. If they are right then, of course, we would have to interpret those passages figuratively.

But the $64,000 question is: Are they right? Mind you, this cannot simply be a case of saying that the Heliocentric model works. Mathematically speaking, as several astronomers have told me, one could make Jupiter the center of the universe and work out a mathematical model in which all the motions of the heavenly bodies are accounted for, but a mathematical model is not necessarily reality (which is precisely the problem with modern science, since much of it is mere mathematical hypothesis, not necessarily physical reality).

The main question they have to answer is: Can it be proven, by direct and irrefutable scientific evidence, that the Heliocentric system is the ONLY viable system to understand the universe. I can safely tell you that the answer to that question is an unqualified NO, and thus I don’t make the “CAI $1000 Challenge” lightly. Even the more astute heliocentric physicists have admitted as much. As the famous physicist Hans Reichenbach has said: “Here lies one of the reasons which led the scientists to accept the Copernican system, even though it must be conceded that, from the modern standpoint, practically identical results could be obtained by means of a somewhat revised Ptolemaic system” (From Copernicus to Einstein, p. 18). Hence, even if there is a possibility that the Heliocentric system is wrong and the Geocentric right, then it would behoove Scriptural exegetes to reserve their opinion on the passages of Scripture which teach Geocentrism, for science has not proven their case against them.

By the same token, did the Church seek advice and counsel from science when she, after interpreting Matthew 26:26, took a dogmatic stand on its literal meaning? Of course not, for science had nothing to offer in the way of irrefutable proof that Transubstantiation could not occur. In the same way, science has no irrefutable proof that the earth revolves around the sun, and this, in my opinion, demands a literal interpretation of the Geocentric passages in Scripture. If someday science can prove, irrefutably, that the earth indeed goes around the sun, then we will understand all those passages figuratively, but not until that time; and it is my opinion that we will NEVER have to do so.

If someone wants to argue that the Catholic Church takes Matthew 26:26 literally because the Tradition of the Church as far back as the early Fathers binds us to do so; well, the same can be said about Geocentrism, since all of the Fathers, without exception, were Geocentrists, even in the face of several Greek astronomers (Aristarchus of Samos; Heraclides of Pontus) who were already advocating Heliocentrism one thousand years before Copernicus.

So, if you’re so inclined, take your best shot! We’re laying our reputation on the line in order to bring this vital truth to the world, and we at CAI have the courage to do so.

Robert Sungenis
Catholic Apologetics International
May 7, 2002

sounds like these people need the flat earth society…

another short day… i left at 11:30 this morning because i finished up all the work there was to do, and they said they wouldn’t have any more until at least tomorrow. massoud is back, but so far there has been no change in the network, apart from the fact that the colour and black and white composite printers are working intermittently. i’ve discovered that the really old mac – the tower without USB – actually has more RAM than the newer old mac – the imac – which means that there are a few jobs that i can work on on the imac, but if i want to send the job for plates i have to do it from the tower because otherwise it prints the fonts incorrectly in spite of the fact that the right fonts are activated.

indirectly courtesy – My Free Implants for women and men…

courtesy – Chinese chimpanzee quits smoking after 16 years… now the question i have is who started the chipanzee smoking in the first place?

interesting geeky things to do with google that aren’t your everyday googlewhacks. (i think i got this from , but i’m not sure…)

You’re a hydra. You have many different outlooks on life, and know how to utilize each one to make the best of any situation. Others may mistake this for hypocrisy or even insanity, but you know yourself better than that. Indecision is your greatest flaw. Your alignment tends slightly towards *evil*. What mythical beast are you? brought to you by Quizilla

it seems like just the other day there were so many links on my desktop that i had to update in order to clear them off, and there’s already a whole pile of new links, and i have to update again.

i finally got in touch with moe’s friend kim, who set me up with a counsellor to help me deal with PTSD, and she re-encouraged me to apply for SSI disability again, despite the fact that they’ve already turned me down twice. she says they always deny everyone three times. i wonder how the people who really can’t work end up getting through the whole thing. also she says that they start accumulating money for you starting the first time you apply, so when they do actually accept your application you get a large lump sum that’s all the accumulated money from the first time you applied… and it’s already been two and a half years since the first time i applied… if i apply again, and again (emphasis on "if"), i’m going to buy a computer or something with my first check… although it would be a good thing for me to consider, because i can work while on disability, and there’s free health care coverage which i don’t currently have. of course i’ve never actually needed health care coverage, except for that one time… but half a million in medical bills for 2 months of brain surgery and hospital care is a pretty big exception…

work is work… massoud had to go back to iran for something or another, and he left the network in a workable, but different and not entirely put together state. there’s no word when he’s going to be back. i left at noon yesterday, and at 3:45 today because there wasn’t anything for me to do. also i spent a whole bunch of time doing bindery and cutting jobs because there was no typesetting. majid has been being really nice to me, but he’s been arguing with greg when he thinks i’m not listening. today greg said that he couldn’t do a job because of restrictions caused by the press, and majid said that he was tired of hearing greg’s excuses and he would be hiring a new press operator soon, and training them himself… <shudder> the mere thought of having to break in a new press operator, especially one who has been "trained" by majid, is enough to make me want to quit now.

tomorrow i’m running sound for the hurricane survivors’ benefit concert.

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Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

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Rep. DeLay Calls Indictment ‘Baseless’

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A Texas grand jury on Wednesday indicted Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates on charges of conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post. A defiant DeLay insisted he was innocent and called the prosecutor a “partisan fanatic.”

“I have done nothing wrong. … I am innocent,” DeLay told a Capitol Hill news conference during which he criticized the Texas prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, repeatedly. DeLay said the charges amounted to “one of the weakest and most baseless indictments in American history.”

In Austin, Earle told reporters, “Our job is to prosecute abuses of power and to bring those abuses to the public.” He has noted previously that he has prosecuted many Democrats in the past.

Republicans at the Capitol selected Rep. Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record), R-Mo., the current Republican whip — No. 3 in the leadership ranks — to fill the vacancy temporarily.

Reps. David Dreier of California, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, and Eric Cantor of Virginia, the chief deputy whip, will assist Blunt with some of the majority leader duties.

Republicans expressed their backing for DeLay, the first House leader to be indicted in office in at least a century.

“He will fight this and we give him our utmost support,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois following a private GOP meeting.

DeLay said he was certain the indictment would be dismissed and shrugged off the charges as a “political witch hunt” designed to drive a wedge in the Republican ranks.

“If the Democrats think we’re going to go crawl in a hole and not accomplish our agenda, I wish they could have been a fly on the wall” of the closed-door meeting, DeLay said after the session.

The indictment accused DeLay, 58, of a conspiracy to violate Texas election law, which prohibits the use of corporate donations to advocate the election or defeat of political candidates. Prosecutors say the alleged scheme worked in a roundabout way, with the donations going to a DeLay-founded political committee, then to the Republican National Committee and eventually to GOP candidates in Texas.

The indictment stems from a plan DeLay helped set in motion in 2001 to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections for the first time since Reconstruction.

Indicted with DeLay were two of his associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay’s national political committee.

The grand jury’s foreman, William Gibson, told The Associated Press that Earle didn’t pressure members one way or the other. “Ronnie Earle didn’t indict him. The grand jury indicted him,” Gibson told The Associated Press in an interview at his home.

Gibson, 76, a retired sheriff’s deputy in Austin, said of DeLay: “He’s probably doing a good job. I don’t have anything against him. Just something happened.”

The Texas Republican temporarily stepped down from the No. 2 leadership post that he had held since 2002, as required by House rules.

Blunt said he was confident DeLay would be cleared of the allegations and return to his leadership job.

Criminal conspiracy is a state felony punishable by six months to two years in a state jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the president still considered DeLay — a fellow Texan — a friend and an effective leader in Congress.

“Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people,” McClellan said. “I think the president’s view is that we need to let the legal process work.”

The indictment puts the Republicans — who control the White House, Senate and House — on the defensive. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also is fending off questions of ethical improprieties. And less than a week ago, a former White House official was arrested in the investigation of Jack Abramoff, a high-powered lobbyist and fundraiser.

The indictment accused DeLay of a conspiracy to “knowingly make a political contribution” in violation of Texas law outlawing corporate contributions. It alleged that DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee accepted $155,000 from companies, including Sears Roebuck, and placed the money in an account.

The PAC then wrote a $190,000 check to an arm of the Republican National Committee and provided the committee a document with the names of Texas State House candidates and the amounts they were supposed to received in donations, the indictment said.

The indictment included a copy of the check.

The charge against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury’s term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.

DeLay’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said he preferred a trial as soon as possible, at least by the end of the year. Asked when DeLay would turn himself in, DeGuerin said, “I’m going to keep from having Tom DeLay taken down in handcuffs, photographed and fingerprinted. That’s uncalled for.”

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program.

Democrats have kept up a crescendo of criticism of DeLay’s ethics, citing three times last year that the House ethics committee admonished DeLay for his conduct.

“The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom Delay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Democratic chairman Howard Dean cited the problems of DeLay, Frist and Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff at the center of questions about the leak of a CIA operative’s name.

“The Republican leadership in Washington is now spending more time answering questions about ethical misconduct than doing the people’s business,” Dean said.

At the White House, McClellan bristled at a question about Democratic claims that Republicans have grown arrogant in their use of power after years of controlling the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

McClellan said the Republican Party has made policy that has improved the lives of Americans, and the White House stands by that record.

DeLay retains his seat representing Texas’ 22nd congressional district, suburbs southwest of Houston.

As a sign of loyalty to DeLay after the grand jury returned indictments against three of his associates, House Republicans last November repealed a rule requiring any of their leaders to step aside if indicted. The rule was reinstituted in January after lawmakers returned to Washington from the holidays fearing the repeal might create a backlash from voters.

Associated Press Writers Kelly Shannon and April Castro in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

Do Unnatural Acts Cause Natural Disasters? Or; Why Pat Robertson’s an Idiot

Reclaim The Swastika

on a different note, sledgehammer-operated keyboard