Jon Stewart on the Arizona Shootings

Asking for the Grownups To Take Charge?

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart reacted to the Arizona shootings, the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the massacre in Tucson. Mr. Stewart is Mr. Civility, and so with serious-comedy, more serious than comic, serious because the Arizona tragedy calls for serious reflection, and a little comedy, because comedy and satire is what he does. In so many words, he calls on America to remain calm,  and to not point to each other looking for ones to blame, but to point to the direction where there may be a way out of the toxic world that American politics has become.

We do need a way out. We do need to put more emphasis on communicating with each other in a civil way than in blaming each other. The Tucson Massacre could be just the beginning of a long series of horrible events, if we don't find a way out of this toxic swamp. But we should not give a pass to those who got us into this swamp. Shutting our eyes to evil is no way to overcome evil. If American politics is to be mended, the offenders must quit denying their offense and must accept responsibility for what they say.

 

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Kevin Bacon to Present at Golden Globes

It has been reported that actor Kevin Bacon will be one out of the five new presenters at this years 2011 Golden Globe Awards which will take place Sunday, January 16. Other actors will include (but are not limited to) Robert Pattinson, Julie Bowen, Sandra Bullock, Kaley Cuoco, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Jimmy Fallon (my secret crush), Garrett Hedlund, Chris Hemsworth, LL Cool J, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lopez, Leighton Meester and Bruce Willis.

Shift of Earth's Magnetic Pole

Well, a whole weird lot of stuff has been happening lately. The birth of a two head calf, the millions of dead fish washing ashore, thousands of dead bird falling from the sky. If there is a connection, I don't know what it is. The experts, who are folks paid to tell the public that everything is alright, and that the sky isn't falling, are telling us that this is all normal, has happened before, and are not things about which we should be worrying.

Oh, yes, the North Pole is moving too. Now, I heard years ago that this was normal. But in the past, the North Pole didn't move as fast as it is now.

From the NBC Nightly News -- "The magnetic north is moving. aviators know it has always moved but not like this. It's just skipping along, on the move about 40 miles a year now along the polar cap toward Russia. It's a natural, unstoppable occurrence, but because of it, some airport runways calibrated by compass are now three or four degrees off." See the video.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Bulls' Revenge: 48 Idiots

The Score: Bulls 48, Zero Humans, 0.

Some people are just out of their minds loco sick. They find amusement in the torturing of innocent animals. These are dumb human jackasses, who somehow think that bullfighting is a manly sport..

Item from the Associated Press --"Forty eight people have been injured by bulls during a week long bullfighting festival in Colombia. Warning: Graphic video." See the video.

Where should I begin? Bullfighting? The taunting and the torturing of animals! And for what? For what good reason? No good or sane reason. Forty eight very inhumane human beings, pure idiots all, went into the bull ring to fight? Fight? The bulls had a couple of spears stuck in their backs? Those forty eight injured men went into the ring to torment the bulls! Those forty eight stupid people got their sick and stupid butts kicked and slammed around by the bulls.

God save the bulls.

Bullfighting is no sport, no test of manly courage. It is animal cruelty. The bulls in that Columbia arena got a little pay back

Again: God save the bulls.

DNA Clears Another Innocent Texas Man

Last night, the PBS News Hour did another of its stories about "justice." A man wrongly convicted in Texas has been cleared by DNA testing, after spending thirty years in a Texas prison.

From the PBS News Hour -- "Cornelius Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison after being convicted of rape and robbery at age 19 in 1980. After 30 years behind bars, new DNA testing proved his innocence and a Texas judge overturned the conviction and cleared his name." See the video.

Thirty years of a man's life wasted because somebody in law enforcement got the wrong man. A man's youth spent locked up because some some judge presided over a trial that convicted an innocent man.

Sure the "great" state of Texas will be offering up a "little" cash. The man is eligible under Texas compensation laws for the wrongly imprisoned to receive $80,000 for each year he was behind bars, plus a lifetime annuity. He could receive $2.4 million in a lump sum that is not subject to federal income tax. So two million four for thirty years of his life, for the time the state took from him, and for the time the state took from his family. Two million four lousy dollars.

Mr Dupree had at least two chances to make parole and be set free – if only he would commit perjury and confess to the crime.. He refused to do so,  maintaining his innocence.

From the Huffington Post --"The Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represent Dupree. ... His exoneration hearing was delayed until Tuesday (yesterday) while authorities retested the DNA and made sure it was a match to the victim. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins supported Dupree's innocence claim.

Dallas County's record of DNA exonerations – Dupree is No. 21 – is unmatched nationally because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test. In addition, Watkins, the DA, has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing. (Texas has freed 41 wrongly accused people since 2001 as a result of DNA testing).

Watkins, the first black district attorney in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls "a convict-at-all-costs mentality" that he says permeated his office before he arrived in 2007."

Maybe some of the rottenness in Texas is beginning to clear out, slowly.

Guess How Many Facebook Users Changed Their Relationship Statuses Last Year?

This little factoid about Facebook is absolutely weirdest statistic that I have read so far this year. 

 From Gawker:

“43,869,800 people changed their relationship status to "single" on Facebook in 2010. But just 28,460,516 people changed their status to "in a relationship."

 

Only a little more than 3,000,000 Facebook users changed their relationship statuses to “It’s complicated.” Which is more than slightly odd since there’s a movie of the same name and most relationships are by their very nature complicated.

I’m not exactly sure what truthfully this particular set of Facebook statistics represents. Are most of the people changing their relationship status(es) to single high school students who don’t typically have all that many long-term relationships? Are some of the relationship-status changers just changing their statuses just to piss off their respective others in a really weird effort to seek reconciliation?

Is it obligatory to announce your relationship status to the world (or at least the all-important and deeply-meaningful “World of Facebook”) the exact second your relationship changes or is it just a good idea to let potential partners know that you are once again available? Do your friends from elementary school really need to know that your relationship has just become more complicated or that your boyfriend just ditched you?

From the looks of these statistics from Mashable, it looks like the answer is YES. (The Mashable site is well-worth a look-see as it has all sorts of other fun statistics about Facebook users and what they do on the site.)

It’s sort of like Facebook has become an unofficial census, only it’s not exactly representative of the entire population and still doesn’t have enough boxes to check. If Facebook users are expected to state our relationship status the moment they have an argument, shouldn’t they be required to state our sexual orientation as well?

I’m sorry to repeat myself, but the whole idea of broadcasting the ups and downs of your entire relationship on Facebook is truthfully weird.  Facebook users are also changing their Facebook statuses after they’ve gotten laid—again, I’m not sure if this is indicative of really young users who aren’t getting much or maybe just people who lied to the surveyers in order to fuck with them, but information like that should be on a need-to-know basis and I don’t need to know.

What do you think? Should people change their Facebook statuses immediately after something in their relationships change?

Everyone Should Have the Right to De-Friend Anyone

Best Facebook Rule of Thumb I Ever Heard:

 

“I only have Facebook friends that I would feel comfortable having over to dinner.”

 

I’m thinking about Facebook and de-friending today for a few reasons.

1.     A friend’s triumphant Facebook status pronouncing what may be her first ever Facebook de-friending EVER.

2.     My recent de-friending of someone.

3.     My past of Facebook friend culling after feeling weird about certain individuals.

Do you accept every single friendship request you get from people or do you choose to ignore certain Facebook friend requests?

I ignore some, and honestly send friendship requests to a few people from my past that I may not know all that well if I’m curious about their lives. I try not to cry if people don't accept my Friend requests.

Is it a cardinal sin to drop Facebook friends?

I don’t think so.

On occasion, I de-friend people. It’s gotten me into trouble, but I think it’s my personal right to choose who is my Facebook friend and who is not. I recently had a 50-year-old woman freak out that I de-friended her---she didn’t ask me directly about it, but did through someone else. I had to hear all about how terrible I was for de-friending her, how awful I was because I hurt her feelings, and so on…….all of this just made me glad that I de-friended her. She is not an awful person or a terrible person at all; I just wasn’t comfortable having her read and see my every Facebook move.

When I first started writing a little about sex, I was hesitant to add my Mom as my Facebook friend. I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. That changed altogether when my family banded together to give me the riot act for not accepting her friendship request. I finally added her, but I’m sure she’s not going to like, appreciate, or even understand everything on my profile.

I’ve also de-friended some people from my past for much the same reason. I don’t necessarily think that keeping in touch with everyone I’ve ever known is a good thing. I don’t collect Facebook friends like souvenirs---there are quite a few people that do, and I’m not sure why. As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is not a competitive sport—it’s a fun way to keep in touch with the people you want to keep in touch with. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been de-friended before, too. Since I’m an adult, I didn’t really take it all that personally and respected the person’s decision.

Have you ever de-friended anybody?

Facebook Image Credit Flckr Link.

Discovery Cancels Ghoulish Autopsy Show

The head line: "Discovery cancels Michael Jackson autopsy TV show."

Good. One for a little decency and respect for a family's memory of a love one.

Reuters reports -- "The Discovery television network on Friday said it canceled plans to air a reenactment of the autopsy on Michael Jackson's body, citing an upcoming court hearing and concern by the late pop star's estate. The show, Michael Jackson's Autopsy: What Really Killed Michael Jackson, had been set to air in several countries of western Europe and in the United Kingdom on January 13. The Discovery's show, which was not scheduled to air in the United States, was an unofficial, fictional account of what the autopsy must have been like and its results. "

Unofficial? Fiction? Yeah?

Well, this time the ghouls didn't win. If the Discovery Channels wants to make a few more dollars off of the legacy of Michael Jackson, they can do a special on his music, or a special that celebrates his life.

No Pardon for the 'Kid'

Item from the Associated Press -- "Billy the Kid, the Old West outlaw who killed at least three lawmen and tried to cut a deal from jail with territorial authorities, won't be pardoned, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said." See the video.

The issue drew international attention from the fans of Western fact, and mostly, from the fans of Western fiction. The issue, was whether or not Billy the Kid should be given a pardon, because he was allegedly promised a pardon by the New Mexico territorial governor, in return for testimony, which he gave about killings he had witnessed. The pro-pardon crowd wanted to put aside the fact that the "kid,' who was killed a few months after breaking out of jail, was in jail, convicted of killing a county sheriff. He killed two deputies while escaping. The pardon petition did not include those two killings.

My take on this? Good for Bill Richardson.

Billy the kid was a real person who has become a myth, The myth makes him out to have been not all that bad, and a range of Hollywood stars have played him -- Dennis Hopper, Paul Newman; Marlon Brando, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Mack Brown, Robert Taylor, Buster Crabbe, Joel McCrea; Audie Murphy, Nick Adams. And even Roy Rogers! Some people are so quick to believe the popular bio and not the real one.

The real Bill the kid, William Bonney , was a killer. One mustn't never let the myth over take the man, though it almost, always does. See the video.

The New Year is Here Already

Some wag might wonder out loud, why does man celebrate the coming of every new year? Why hasn't man figured out by now that every year, the 'new year' is no improvement over the one that is leaving, and that folks are glad to see the back of? Well, the answer is obvious: man is a race of optimists. And that is a good thing.

From the Associated Press --"Sydney touted its claim to be the New Year's Eve capital of the world with a spectacular display over the iconic Harbour Bridge using 7 tons of fireworks, its largest since 2000."

The year begins in the East and heads West. Every hour,  the new year comes in, and people celebrate, until the new year has come into every part of the earth.

1.5 million people welcomed in 2011in Sidney. Hundreds of thousands gathered and welcomed in the New Year in Hong Kong, in Japan, in New Zealand in Vietnam.

In New Zealand's main city of Auckland, one of the first cities to see in the new year. Hundred of thousands of people watched a huge display of fire works in that city's harbor.

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