Enjoy your Saturday Night Live…

 

                     Black & White Photo                                            color photo

More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010

For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn't vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.

"If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, "because we don't know what it is."  Story Here

Check out this amazing time lapse video of Milky Way

Terje Sorgjerd, the photographer behind the viral video The Aurora, has done it again. Sogjerd captures the Milky Way over El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain.

Filmed between April 4 and April 11, 2011, the individual frames were shot using a Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 17mm TSE, Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 24/1.4II, and Sigma 12-24mm.

GO HERE TO SEE VIDEO    Image via Vimeo screengrab

A poem by Ogen Nash…

The centipede was happy quite

Until a toad, in fun,

Said, "Pray, which leg goes after which When you begin to run?

That worked her mind to such a pitch,

She lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run.

15 Bizarre Mental Delusions other than the ‘Birthers!’

When you are delusional, you lose the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. You know, like the “Birthers” right now. Sufferers stumble through life, constricted by pseudo-worlds of their own making. Although the term was first coined in 1977, symptoms of delusion have been recorded for over 150 years.

1. Capgras Delusion

In the heat of an argument it’s normal to want to disown your parents or kids, but for the sufferer of Capgras delusions that feeling never goes away. It’s commonly caused when the “wire” that connects the visual section of the brain to the emotional section is damaged. As a result, the sufferer sees their loved ones but no emotional response is triggered; they truly believe that the person in front of them is nothing more than an imposter.

source

Read about the other fourteen mental delusions here.

'Birther' claims force GOP leaders to take a stand – fact or fiction?

It's the conspiracy theory that won't go away. And it's forcing Republican officials and presidential contenders to pick sides: Do they think Barack Obama was born outside the United States and disqualified to be president? Story Here

Donald Duck Trump is talking like a presidential candidate and is actually leading top Republicans like Mitt Romney and former Gov. Mike Huckabee in the polls. OMG!

I think the Republican Party better get their collective heads out of their asses and ignore the “Birther” mania coming from the extremists. If they want to maintain any credibility in the upcoming 2012 elections they should cut the ties with the wackaloons who ignore facts and reality. Some Republicans frontrunners are admitting they know the president was born in Hawaii. Even Tea Party favorite, Michele Bachmann, grudgingly let go of the myth on TV recently: 

“When ABC's George Stephanopoulos showed a copy of Obama's birth certificate to Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who was ambivalent at first, she said: "Well, then, that should settle it. ... I take the president at his word."

But that’s not going to stop those who simply hate Obama. The Republican Party is at a crossroads of credibility with the American public. Those who rise to the top and become viable contenders will have to cut ties to the vicious myths surrounding the president’s birthplace, unless they want to alienate Independent voters who don’t play the “Birther” game.

Meanwhile, oh what a circus this is shaping up to be! When you have clowns like “The Donald” in the main ring it’s going to be a show to remember. 

As It Stands, I recommend not sitting in the front row when the fun starts because there will be much fecal matter being thrown about during that three-ring  performance.

Guest Opinion: Class Warfarin: Dosage

Why Americans are not upset by the steady siphoning of wealth from the many to the very few is a question that confounds, more confounding than probing into America's love affair with the automobile because class and conflict are words, like Lord Voldemort, that cannot be uttered. Unfortunately, we are gladly feasting on what makes this silence possible.

by Joseph Natoli

“It’s crazy, but when I hear talk of “class warfare” in these Obama days we are in, I think of the rat poison Warfarin and the insidious way it kills.

Warfarin, according to our Delphic Oracle – Wikipedia – is the most widely prescribed anticoagulant drug in North America. Some thirty five years ago, I used it on my Oxley Holl’er West Virginia farm to poison a swarm of rats that had settled under the house for the winter. It’s got some persuasive talking points: one, the rats don’t eat it, croak and rot in place – under the house – but feed on it for days, wander away from the house seeking water, drink and die, and two, wise and closely observing rats can’t connect eating the poison and eventual death. They go on munching away while observing in the distance the death throes of their buddies. Maybe the expression “die like a rat” in some kind of loathsome, dark and mysterious way derives from this.”  Story Here 

The idea of class struggle and class conflict is foreign to American culture. We are all brought up to think we are one big, happy family.
—Howard Zinn

Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.
—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.
-Ram Dass

Kobe and Pau = KaPow! Lakers swat Hornets 100-86, take series lead

I just found out that Pau Gasol has been playing with a chest cold. Tonight he must have been feeling better because he scored 17 points and hauled down 10 rebounds in the Laker’s win.

Bynum continued to be a big factor, scoring 14 points and pulling down 11 rebounds. Kobe was Kobe and scored 30 points. That’s the 80th playoff game he’s done that in now. Wow! Only one other player in NBA history exceeds that number. Can you guess who? I’ll give the answer tomorrow with a short update on this post.

Go Lakers!

(4/23) The answer to the question is: Michael Jordan (who else?)

photo source

Ira Einhorn: Earth Day co-founder killed, composted girlfriend

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name translates to "one horn"  —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day. Story Here

Austrians hail a 'fairy-tale find' of medieval riches

A man turning dirt in his backyard stumbled onto buried treasure — hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.

Austria's department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments. It said the objects are about 650 years old and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth. Story Here