Indeed.In a hillside villa above Kyoto's ancient palaces and temples, guests reclined on cushions in a cedar-paneled room. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, gardens gleamed in the starlight. At the front of the room, geishas swayed to a shamisen's mournful twang.
"They show only a little bit of skin," a Japanese businessman sighed. "So erotic!"
Via Aaron's e-clips.
NEWARK, N.J. - Baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport spotted — and then lost — a fake bomb planted in luggage by a supervisor during a training exercise.
Despite an hours-long search Tuesday night, the bag, containing a fake bomb complete with wires, a detonator and a clock, made it onto an Amsterdam-bound flight. It was recovered by airport security officials in Amsterdam when the flight landed several hours later.
HONOLULU - Strong winds in the northwest Pacific Ocean sent towering waves crashing along Hawaii’s coast, prompting officials to close beaches amid fears that some waves could reach as high as 50 feet.Via MSNBC
The National Weather Service put high surf warnings in effect for the north-facing shores of all the islands except Lanai until Wednesday night...
The agency advised residents to avoid the beaches and stay out of the water, but city lifeguards said they expect some of the largest crowds of the season to attend a seldom-held big wave surfing contest. The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational is held only when the waves reach at least 20 feet; it has been held only six times in 19 years.
To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas — any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs — is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness — and the other represents oppression.
Under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, which will have its second reading in the Commons today, anyone judged to have stirred up religious hatred through threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, would be liable to a maximum of seven years in prison.Yeah, because by criminalizing insults you’ll make folks be nice and tolerant and happy.
Et tu, Vicky?
Apparently Victoria's secret is that she's a flaming Republican. Blue Christmas lists the political contributions of major retail chains, so you can stop putting money into their deformed, oil-soaked claws. Calvin, Anne, Donna, Tommy are all good guys. Even preppy old Ralph's playin' for the blue team.
And yes, I'm aware that this Vicky's business was an opportunity for a swell Bush pun. But I'm not going there.
Sweet Fancy Moses! Who knew that these Seinfeldisms were out there?
Via Wacky Neighbor
I don't understand our national obsession with the War on Terrorism, either.
I'm 29 years old and I've been cancer-free for 15 months. I'd never even heard of kidney cancer before my doctor spoke those horrible words. I'll never know what caused it or how to keep from getting it again. And it kills me that so little money is being put into medical research when the fact is that one in four people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
The federal government actually declared war on cancer in 1970. To date, they've spent less on that than they did in the first phase of the second War on Iraq. It's time to start funding the war on disease and providing healthcare for everyone inside our borders.
We CAN and MUST fight both wars. Too many lives are at stake.
That was my comment on this most eloquent post, from The Thin Blue Line.
563,700 people will die of cancer this year. Between now and sunrise Friday we will lose more Americans to cancer than we lost on 9/11. We will have 187 Cancer-9/11’s this year. In the next 14 months, more Americans will die from cancer than have died in every single American war in history…combined.
We as a country have become singularly obsessed with the issue of terrorism. Why don’t politicians ever base their campaigns on which candidate would do the best job fighting (insert your most hated disease here)?
Perhaps it is just because bombs are far more exciting to watch on television. Let’s face it: pretty explosions on the 6:00 news offer better entertainment value than watching a patient get his/her chemotherapy treatment.
Last week I attended a conference that addressed progress in the fight for cures against a particular form of cancer. I can not tell you how many times the doctors said “If we had more money, we could do x, y, and z.” How many American lives could we save, and how much suffering could we alleviate, if we fought disease with the same passion with which we fight terrorism? What could the medical community accomplish with an additional $200 billion a year? I’m not saying we should divert money from fighting terrorism for the sake of fighting disease. We can do both.
What if that money were put entirely in to preventive medicine so we could detect cancer early or prevent heart disease from ever occurring? How much additional money would the American economy save if we could pre-empt just a small portion of the ungodly medical bills that accompany ungodly diseases?
How many Americans would suffer less if they had access to basic healthcare?
Sure, we already put some money in to disease prevention/cures and healthcare. Yet we don't even come close to providing the resources that the gravity of the situation demands.
And this isn’t just about money. It’s about ideas. We need to have a national discussion on how government can be most effective in fighting the war on (insert your most hated disease here). We need to develop a national strategy to fight disease as urgently as we need to develop a national strategy to fight terror.
I have always been a foreign policy guy. But can we stop pretending that terrorism is the only threat to our daily lives? It is far more likely that our lives will be altered by a cell gone bad than by a Muslim gone bad.
It's Bush, dusted in glitter, and ready to compliment your christmas decor.
Finally, George W. Bush is where he belongs: strung up in a tree. Okay, that was maybe a little harsh.
And it's only fifty bucks.
I never realized how much Bush looks like Liberace.
Via PlanetDan
The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize accepted her award Friday to the beat of drums and dancers that broke with the usual stodgy ceremony, and urged her audience "to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder."
But Kenyan Wangar Maathai warned that if the environment is not protected, peace would forever remain endangered.
Atheism is career suicide for U.S. politicians. A moratorium on God talk might level the playing field, prevent religion from being used as a political tool, and get them to stop hating on my boy Howard Dean. So which one is it: politics or propaganda? God does not endorse your political party. Nevertheless, there are many Christians who believe putting God-professing lawmakers in political power will bring about radical social change. They must have forgotten that this method has already tried and failed. It was called the Dark Ages. And that is how the Protestant movement began.Via Dorian
Tibetan prayer flags are inscribed with auspicious symbols, invocations, prayers, and mantras. For centuries, Tibetan Buddhists have planted these flags outside their homes and places of spiritual practice for the wind to carry the beneficent vibrations across the countryside. Prayer flags are said to bring happiness, long life and prosperity to the flag planter and those in the vicinity.
Dharma prints bear traditional Buddhist symbols, protectors and enlightened beings. As the Buddhist spiritual approach is non-theistic, the elements of Tantric iconography represent aspects of enlightened mind, i.e., compassion, perfect action, fearlessness, etc.
Dharma flags may be placed either inside of a building to increase the spiritual atmosphere or outdoors where the wind can carry their prayers. Traditionally, they are fastened to eaves or sewn onto ropes to be displayed horizontally or they are fastened to wooden poles for vertical display. Sets of five color flags should be put in the order: yellow, green, red, white, blue (from left to right or from bottom to top.) The colors represent the elements: earth, water, fire, cloud, sky.
The color of a prayer flag and the symbols printed on it create a prayer or offering that the wind distributes to the world each time it brushes against the flag. The Tibetan word for a horizontal prayer flag is Lung ta, which translates literally as "wind horse." The prayers of a flag become a permanent part of the universe as the images fade from wind and sun. Just as life moves on and is replaced by new life, Tibetans renew their hopes for the world by continually mounting new flags alongside of the old.
before | 
after |
Via DDTB
Not enough safety data exists to OK patch, officials say
NEW YORK - A hormone patch that works to restore a woman’s sex drive should not win government approval until more studies are completed to determine the drug’s risks, federal health advisers recommended Thursday.
Several members of the Food and Drug Administration’s advisory committee said they were not satisfied with the number of women studied so far, the length of the studies and the modest benefits of the drug.
Procter & Gamble sought to market the testosterone patch Intrinsa to women who lost their libido after their ovaries were removed. The company told the committee that significant safety concerns had not come up in clinical trials and that there was no reason to delay approval of the first drug for female sexual dysfunction.
