Critical Mass

Police said Gaetan Roy had just lost his job, so he came up with a plan: Rob a bank, hang around, then get taken to jail to be "supported."

You've heard the story before; now here's the proof.

According to Reuters Entertainment, Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" will be released in packaging made completely from recycled materials:

The DVD packaging consists entirely of waste products that have been recycled, including paper, inks and coatings formulated to emit virtually no volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere. That means no plastics and no laminates.

All well and good.  I support recycling, though perhaps not as much as I should.  However, there seems to be a bit of a problem here.  According to DVD FAQ, "DVDs are molded from polycarbonate;" and, according to Wikipedia, polycarbonate is merely one of many thermoplastics.  Plastics, we know, are often derived from oil - and are specifically mentioned in the story for their absence from the packing material. 

So let me get this straight, the packaging is nice and fancy, but the product itself is contrary to the message?  Sounds like a metaphor for a lot of other things Gore's been involved with.

Again, it's not enslavement, forced prostitution, or even being famous and (horror of horrors) revealing that you, too, can perspire.

"Being obese and female is as bad as it gets," Berit Heitmann, a nutritional and medical research advisor to the Danish government, told a meeting of world obesity experts gathered in Sydney Wednesday.

Ah, to live life as a woman.  What it must be like.  Read the rest of the story here.

As many of you are no doubt aware, Facebook implemented some changes to the website, adding some new features. To say these features have not been well received is an understatement of gigantic proportions. I have a couple points to make.

Many Facebookers are upset that certain information is so readily accessible with the new feeds. Okay, fine. But let's get one thing straight: this is all information that a) was already available according to the privacy policy we all agreed to when we signed up, and b) you can turn off the feeds at any moment.

The idea that Facebok has been malicious or deceitful is ridiculous. Certain Facebook users are simply making up reasons to complain: one user wants to boycott Facebook because (among other reasons) it hasn't listened to users' complaints. By noon the next day Facebook's head honcho had responded. That seems like pretty quick customer service to me. Ever called Dell?

Are we so rights-oriented and impatient that this little Facebook fiasco merits such a response? 

The Secretary of Defense is getting a lot of heat for remarks he made recently, where he characterized jihadism as being, "...a new form of fascism."

He's exactly correct: jihadists have welded theology with ideology to create a new form of fascism: Let's call it, 'Theofascism,' and then verify the Secretary's remarks by reading Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. 

BTW - The German word, "kampf," in Hitler's book title translates into English as, "struggle." In Arabic, "kampf" translates as, "jihad," which may help explain why Mein Kampf is currently a best-seller in the Arab world.  

From Reuters:

Israel and the Palestinians have reached an agreement to swap the Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza with imprisoned Palestinians, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted on Tuesday as saying. [. . .] 

"An agreement has been reached about exchanging prisoners that is based on Egypt taking the soldier as a deposit, and after that the number of Palestinian prisoners-of-war would be announced," Abbas said in the interview.
Israeli media quoted Israeli officials as saying they "know nothing of such a breakthrough".

Read the rest of the story (though there's not much more) here.  Hopefully this will work out and peace will prevail for a while, though I seriously doubt it.

Apparently priests working in the Vatican during the reign of Pope John Paul II spied on him in order to aid Communist bloc countries.  From the story:

Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the primate of Poland, was quoted by Italian news agency ANSA as saying John Paul was monitored on orders from Moscow by clergymen who collaborated with the feared security forces who kept tabs on Poles' daily lives under the Communists.

Read the full story here. 

Only Keith Olbermann could equate Neville Chamberlain's policies with the Bush administration's rather than the Democrats' terrorist appeasement strategy. From what I'd heard about Rumsfeld's statements (go decide for yourself if they're out of line), I expected a decent criticism of them, but I never saw this idiocy coming. I suppose I underestimated Olbermann.

P.S. Is it just me, or does Olbermann look like a doofus when he tries to be serious and solemn?

UPDATE: Rumsfeld responds to his critics here. His full speech (from DefenseLink, not YouTube) is here.

Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, was captured north of Baghdad a few days ago "along with another group of his aides and followers," Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.

He was the second most important al-Qaida in Iraq leader after Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who took over the group after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad on June 7, al-Rubaie said.

Read the full story here.