Final, Conclusive, Incontrovertible, Indisputable Evidence Is In

It's pretty much settled then:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk for brain tumors, a new Swedish study said on Friday, contradicting the conclusions of other researchers.....

Except for when they don't, but then they do, but you have
nothing to worry about. That is until next week when the
sure-if-you-don't-mind-a-tumor-the-size-of-a-baseball study
comes out. Whatever happened to the inconclusive research
project? How refreshing would that be, to have the the
lab-coated Big Scientist say, "Well we studied this thing
for six years and all we can really conclude is that if you
put salt on your food it will be salty and that greasy
food will have grease in it. We really don't know what we're
doing. Thanks for your time."

Nuke Test Without the Nukes

Funny the Post didn't notice:

A huge mushroom cloud of dust is expected to rise over Nevada's desert in June when the Pentagon plans to detonate a gigantic 700-ton explosive -- the biggest open-air chemical blast ever at the Nevada Test Site -- as part of the research into developing weapons that can destroy deeply buried military targets, officials said yesterday.

Sure, it's not a nuke but the test is to determine what
a nuke would do. How do you know that? Show me the plane
that could get off the ground with a 700 ton bomb. You
would have to build the bomb in place over the target.
What they're doing is studying the effects of a huge blast,
one that couldn't come from a conventional bomb dropped
from the sky.

Me, I'm cautious about anything that would make the use
of nukes more likely.

Standing Security on It's Head

Expose the Left (video) noticed. The democrat plan, or statement
of things the democrats (and everyone else) would like
to see happen, was upside-downed by Nancy Pelosi. This
visionary plan includes the revolutionary concepts of not
setting a timetable for withdrawal and getting bin Laden.
Republicans everywhere are slapping their heads and
saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Latest 411 on Harrison

Contactmusic.com reports that Harrison Ford hates the internet:

HARRISON FORD hates the internet, because it means anyone can spread malicious gossip about him. The actor, who plays a computer-security specialist in his latest film FIREWALL, sees a need to censor his words to avoid being misrepresented online. He says, "The worst thing about the internet is that anything and everything is up for grabs. How can that be, when I limit my public conversations to about once every couple of years? "Any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and it can have a f**king life of its own."

Whew, what a long article. They could have trimmed it
down a little:

Some insiders in the movie industry speculate that Harrison
Ford is referring to foot fetish sites when he says that, "any kind
of rubbish goes on the internet." He did not say which rubbish
was his favorite but, importantly, he did not rule out the foot
fetish sites -- thereby fueling further speculation.

Update: More from contactmusic.com:

LISA MINNELLI SAYS 'I'M SICK OF SEX'

Harrison Ford has yet to comment.

The Appeasement Solution

Long article, that just keeps getting more depressing as you read,
but you should read it all, from the Brussels Journal:

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed during this past year is part of a “war against the Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers from immigrant backgrounds when questioned about why they only rob native Swedes, in interviews with Petra Åkesson for her thesis in sociology. “I read a report about young robbers in Stockholm and Malmö and wanted to know why they rob other youths. It usually does not involve a lot of money,” she says. She interviewed boys between 15 and 17 years old, both individually and in groups.

Almost 90% of all robberies reported to the police were committed by gangs, not individuals. “When we are in the city and robbing we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.” The boys explain, laughingly, that “there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you’re robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you’ve succeeded, it simply feels good.” “It’s so easy to rob Swedes, so easy.” “We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to.” The immigrant youth regard the Swedes as stupid and cowardly: “The Swedes don’t do anything, they just give us the stuff. They’re so wimpy.” The young robbers do not plan their crimes: “No, we just see some Swedes that look rich or have nice mobile phones and then we rob them.”

Why do they hate the Swedes so much? “Well, they hate us,” Petra Åkesson reports them as answering. “When a Swede goes shopping, the lady behind the counter gives him the money back into his hand, looks into his eyes and laughs. When we go shopping, she puts the money on the counter and looks the other way.” Åkesson, who is adopted from Sri Lanka and hence does not look like a native Swede, says it was not difficult to get the boys to talk about their crimes. Rather they were bragging about who had committed the most robberies. Malin Åkerström,a professor in sociology, sees only one solution to the problem: “Jobs for everybody. If this entails a deregulation of the labor market to create more jobs, then we should do so.”

Note the (predictable) Swedish solution. May God
bless and protect their confused little heads.

The SUV Jihadist

From Frontpage mag:

Before he drove a rented SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina and tried to run down and kill as many people as he could on March 3, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar left a letter of explanation in his apartment. It is chillingly detached, almost clinical: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate. To whom it may concern: I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah.”

Lucky then that Allah decided the boy should end up
looking like an ineffectual idiot. Of course the kid's
connection to Islam was from reading the Qur'an "15 times"
on his own. Does an abortion clinic bomber have a connection
to Christianity if, in formulating his fevered ideology, he
reads the bible 15 times? I've long thought that the people
who murder abortion providers are just defective humans who
would be murdering someone anyway; they only latch on to the
right-to-life movement in order to feel better about their
sick obsession. Same with this miserable little cur. The
only difference between him and the "zombie rave killer" was
that he had a more elaborate, though invalid, rationalization
for what he did.

Did it ever occur to Mr. Taheri-Azar that he could have taken his
talents and education and put them to good use in rebuilding
Iraq? Why didn't he day-dream about being one of Iraq's Founding
Fathers? Nah, he came to this country at the age of two. He
doesn't care about Iraq. He didn't have the courage get his
finger purple, he had exactly enough commitment to rent a car
with his father's money and steer it towards the innocent and
unsuspecting. Give him the cell next to Eric Rudolph.

tag Taheri-Azar

Rahman Escapes, Other Christians Under the Gun

Michelle Malkin reports the good news that Abdul Rahman appears to
have made it to Italy. The bad news is that frustrated Islamists
may be taking it out on Christians still in Afghanistan.
Here's hoping the "Moderate Muslims" come back from vacation
soon; their country needs them.

Does the Muslim faith really want coerced members? If you have
to threaten death in order to keep people in the faith, how
"devout" are they going to be?

Rahman on the Move? Hope so

From the AP via Yahoo:

KABUL, Afghanistan -
Afghanistan's parliament demanded Wednesday that the government prevent a man who faced the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity from being able to flee the country. Italy granted asylum to Abdul Rahman, 41, and the Foreign Ministry said he would arrive there "soon," maybe within the day.

Rahman was released from prison Monday after a court dropped charges of apostasy against him because of a lack of evidence and suspicions he may be mentally ill. President Hamid Karzai had been under heavy international pressure to drop the case.

I hope this is true. My next wish is that one day he'll
be able to return safely. How many years off is that?

Food Stories

Found on BoingBoing:

I'm producing a series of short spots for the Food Network called "The Power of Food". They're basically little 60-second mini-documentaries that tell the story of real people whose lives were changed by food. They can be funny, touching, or both. For instance:

* How being part of cooperative garden in the middle of the inner city changed a kid's perspective on his future
* Someone trying to track down a certain ingredient met a future spouse in the one store they found the ingredient in.
* A woman quit her job to go home and take care of her cancer-stricken mother. She started researching nutritional treatments and ended up starting an organic farm business.

I'm pretty much looking for anything with a strong, tangible hook, where food has really affected someone's life. They need to be more than just "I love food, therefore I became a chef or opened a bakery" (even though that's a great thing)....

I checked, and they're not interested in the story
of how a couple of drinks, the family pet, and the barbeque
pit came together to test the limits of "forgive and forget"
at our house.

Outstanding

"I can confirm that he was released," Justice Minister Sarwar Danish said yesterday. "He is not in detention. I do not know if he is with his family or where, but he has been acquitted."

BTW- I'm not concerned that we don't know where he has gone. I
don't want to know. I don't want anyone to know. Why tell the
hotheads where to look for him? Sad that his family is lost to
him but they were lost long ago it seems.