Category: Commentary

– A University of Illinois professor has been fired… for teaching the Catholic Church’s view of homosexuality. Kenneth Howell was teaching a class called Introduction to Catholicism in which he discussed “how the theory of utilitarianism and natural law theory would judge the morality of homosexual acts”. One student decided that this amounted to “hate speech” and sent a complaint letter to the head of the religious studies department, who then fired Howell. So now you can’t even teach what the Church believes? The world as I understood it makes less and less sense every day.

– Say what you will about the British, but their soldiers are badass. Lance Corporal Luke Reeson was on patrol in Nad-e-Ali, Afghanistan when an insurgent took a shot at him. The bullet hit Reeson’s body armor and went into his mouth, shattering his jaw. Reeson spit out the bullet and calmly walked two miles back to his camp, where he was given immediate medical attention before being flown home for surgery. Oh, and he’s now back on duty in Afghanistan.

– Rion Harmon is a musician from New York who records under the name The Zax. When he found out that Heidi Montag’s latest album sold 658 physical copies, he decided that he could do better than that. And thus, helpmesellmorerecordsthanheidimontag.com was born.

– Speaking of music, the guys over at Funny or Die recently disguised pop star Jewel with a wig, prosthetic nose, fake butt, and frumpy clothes and sent her to a karaoke bar… to sing Jewel songs! Disguised as “Karen”, a woman in town for a frozen foods convention, and surrounded by “co-workers”, she put on a show… and the crowd’s reaction is priceless. Check it out here. The best part? When Jewel, discussing the prosthetic, points to her own nose and says “yes, this nose got bigger“.

– You ever pronounce a word incorrectly for years and years? Or carefully dissect a kiwifruit instead of just slicing it in half and eating it with a spoon? Or only figure out after 20 years of driving that the little notches on the flap of your gas tank cover are to hold your gas cap whilst fueling? You’re not alone. This thread over at Metafilter has hundreds of comments from people who were doing something wrong for years and years until someone corrected them. My own confession: it wasn’t until last year, while watching an episode of Good Eats, that I learned how to hold a chef’s knife properly.

– Less than 1% of all Windows XP installations are 64-bit. Around 11% of Windows Vista installations are 64-bit. However, it seems that a whopping 46% of all Windows 7 installations are 64-bit. The future is almost here! FWIW, Casa Cofer is 100% 64-bit, thank you very much.

– Speaking of tech, you could use an iPad or Kindle to read a book… but it seems that old fashioned “books” are faster.

– Need more proof that America’s waistline is rapidly expanding? A new study has found that Colorado, the nation’s healthiest state, has an obesity rate (19.1%) that exceeds the 1991 obesity rate of Mississippi, the nation’s fattest (15.7%). For what it’s worth, Mississippi’s current obesity rate is 33.8%. From here.

– Britain has gone nuts with the anti-terror laws. Recently, a man was threatened with arrest for taking a photograph of overcrowded trains. The man, an IT worker, was worried that the overcrowding was causing a safety issue, but train officials threatened to arrest him under anti-terror laws. This would be bad if it were an isolated case, but it’s not. People photographing police officers have been threatened under similar laws, and other photographers have been threatened with arrest for taking pictures on British streets. And here’s the thing: the terror laws allow the government to declare certain areas as “off-limits” for security reasons, but also allows the government to keep those areas secret. So no one knows whether they’re breaking the law or not. Google “Britain photographers anti-terror” for more sad stories.

– And lastly, in 1964 a British man named David Threlfall asked bookmaker William Hill to place a £10 bet on whether man would set foot on the moon before January 1970. Hill agreed to the bet and gave him 1000:1 odds. As the years passed, and it looked ever more likely that man would indeed walk on the moon, the odds dropped. Gamblers offered Threlfall thousands of pounds for his ticket, but he refused. After Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Threlfall collected his £10,000 winnings – around $185,000 in current dollars. Read more here.

– BP just can’t catch a break, can they? The oil giant was recently forced to recall sets of face paint from its stations in the UK after four boys became sick after wearing it. The paint, sold for England’s trip to the World Cup, seems to be as nauseating as the English team itself.

– Speaking of the Brits, NHS hospitals in Wales are banning sugar in tea machines because “sweetened tea and coffee offer no nutritional benefit and can have a detrimental effect on dental hygiene”. So next time you find yourself in a waiting room in a Welsh hospital, be sure to bring your own sugar if you think you might get tea out of a machine.

– The kids from Georgia Tech are at it again. This time they’ve invented a robot that can swim through sand like a lizard. It’s thought that the “lizard bot” could be used in disaster situations to locate survivors or hazards (leaking gas pipes, etc.).

– Like logic puzzles? Like drinking? Read this short piece and have a laugh.

– In 1871, a Norwegian seal hunter found a small hut on an island called Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. Inside, he found “clothing, cooking pots, a tool chest, a clock, a flute, a cooking tripod, and several pictures”. The amazing thing? The hut was built by Willem Barentsz, an explorer who passed through the area in 1597 whilst looking for a northern route to China. Even more amazing? Later investigation found some candles in the hut that still worked, despite being trapped in the Arctic tundra for almost 280 years!