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RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/January 2012
January 2012[edit]
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13 |
So, you caused one of the biggest losses in the financial history of the UK, almost destroyed a bank, undermined the financial security of the entire UK and the international financial scene and walked away with a fat pension expecting no repercussions did you? Well take that! No knighthood MR Fred Goodwin! Aha! ...wait, what? [1] |
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Indiana Senate Bill 89 has been amended to explictly demand equal time for the creation myth... of Scientology. (Along with every other one under the Sun.) |
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So Virginia wants to pass a bill which would require ultrasounds before abortions, said bill now had a proposed amendment to include rectal exams for men getting erectile dysfunction meds. |
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So some Americans and the Taliban walk into a building in Qatar... and start peace negotiations.. |
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Yet another psychological study on political beliefs. And the same result: conservatives appear to be more fearful of negative images than liberals. |
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*swims around* Wait, don't hurt us! Nooooooo! Just don't show to this to the Catholics. |
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Rick Santorum suspends presidential campaign events to spend time with his hospitalized daughter. We at RationalWiki express our condolences and best wishes for her health. |
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Yes. Foxconn? This is RationalWiki. We suggest you give your workers the full right to unionize. |
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And we shall finally see if all this Iran hype is bullshit or not. Why not bring Hans Blix along? |
   | 7 | "The kiss of death." |
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Florida's fundies: We don't want gays to die. We just hate them a little bit less. |
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"Allowing gay marriage is what dictators do," says Archbishop John Sentamu, former prisoner of dictator Idi Amin. |
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The beginning of the end? In the midst of yet another bailout, Germany wants Greece to cede its entire budgetary power to the EU. |
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It takes a Democrat to talk sense in New Jersey: "...dear God, we should not be putting civil rights issues to a popular vote subject to the sentiments of the day. No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and sentiments of the majority." |
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North Carolina joins in the crazy. Want to scare those "abortionists, rapists and kidnappers?" Bring back public executions! |
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The Wall Street Journal publishes climate change denialist garbage but not the letter with the evidence. What else is new? |
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Two recent stories from the world of sex -- 1. Abortion is now safer than childbirth; and 2. Oral sex can increase your chances of getting mouth and throat cancer. |
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Twitter digs that censorship thing. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,”. |
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How can we best train recruits into the NYPD? I know, show them anti-Muslim propaganda videos! |
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Newt's lesbian half-sister says he probably doesn't believe his own anti-gay rhetoric. |
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Thanks to climate change, the USDA has changed the planting zone map for the first time since 1990. The next round of global warming denialism shall commence in 5...4...3... |
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It's OK to feel sad about Steve Jobs' death if you're a Muslim, but for Allah's sake, don't pray for him. |
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Newt Gingrich, for the love of god, please stop talking. |
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Next time you're in Oklahoma, avoid the baby back ribs. |
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According to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the Year of the Bible is upon us. |
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She turned |
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In following up their climate change denial, George Monbiot busts the Daily Mail using apparent mail order brides as weather forecasters. |
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So, I see from your resume that you're about to graduate from Penn State, mind telling us a little about your views on child molestation? Update: Uhh, well... |
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So how was your Australia Day, Prime Minister? |
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"Secular elite promoting radical Islam." With Newt the hits just keep coming. |
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Newt's crazy continues: Having affairs makes him more normal than people who only have sex with their wife. You listenin', Romney? |
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Florida is rapidly running out of irony meters: Rick Santorum states that Barack Obama's college reforms are part of a dangerous liberal indoctrination plot. |
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What NASA calls The Most Amazing Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever. [Note: Earth = North America] It's the only Earth we have, folks. Take care of it. |
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Oklahoma legislator wants to crack down on cannibalism. Not that it's been a problem, mind you. |
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Come along, boys and girls; let's all cross the street, go into the shcool, and learn how to spell. |
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Don't like us banning books? Clean some fucking toilets and learn your place, Mexican! |
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The Oscar nominations are out. No truth to the rumour that Romney's tax returns are up for a Best Editing award, however. |
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The Girl Scouts are faced with a major dilemma about their famous cookies: Bake them with unhealthy trans-fats and have them labeled "Disks of Death," or use palm-oil and be denounced by two of their own for complicity in destroying rainforests? Tricky, tricky. |
| 29 | Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum launches C.U.M. |
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Fox News Shrink: Newt "open marriage" Gingrich's infidelity might make for a better President. |
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75% probability of another high-magnitude earthquake to hit Tokyo in four years. |
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Let's sing: I was not a Nazi Polka! |
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Holy shit. DELETE FUCKING EVERYTHING. Anonymous does it again ladies and gentlemen! |
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This is what Canada has to deal with for the next three years. |
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In the wake of the Wikipedia-induced SOPA backlash, ex-Senator turned MPAA lobbyist Chris Dodd, upset that his former colleagues aren't staying bought, directly threatens them. A White House petition to investigate this blatant statement of bribery gets over 10,000 signatures in its first 24 hours. |
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Congresswoman Giffords announces her decision to step down from office. |
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And Mr. Family Values wins! Update: These comments say it all. |
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Britain's hate crime laws aren't just about Neo-Nazis |
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The hits just keep on coming. "Limiting child farm labor promotes obesity." |
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So, you've worked as a public employee for years and are now retired. Instead of a golden watch, you get Orrin Hatch calling you "a crisis plaguing our nation." |
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Memory a bit rusty? Better get rid of that iron nail. |
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Occupy Wall Street, to protest high foreclosure rates, decides to occupy foreclosed houses and move homeless families in. They get off to a great start by occupying a house that has not yet been foreclosed on. |
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Just when you thought supermodels couldn't get any dumber... |
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Indonesian man faces jail time for posting on an atheist Facebook page. |
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Anonymous does what Anonymous does best; attack the US Department of Justice's website and Universal Music's too. CNET calls it "the equivalent of thermonuclear cyber war." |
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I'm just glad I didn't live to see this day... *checks pulse* Noooooooooooooo! |
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Republicans sure do like to surge. I, for one, enjoy my serger and miss Surge. |
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Fox News: The most and least trusted name in news. Simultaneously. Update: the original poll data shows greater polarity than the TPM article. |
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"This here is South Carolina. A Christian state. Don't you be quoting that goddam librul Jesus" |
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Here's a bright idea: steal $28K in change, use it to buy lottery tickets. Oh, and wear your police uniform at the lottery outlet. |
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Rick Perry drops out, and endorses Newt. |
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Remember when we said that if you oppose same-sex marriage, you're contributing to the shortened lives of gay men? Now we can say it with the anti-abortion lobby. |
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Lamar Smith, author of SOPA, found to be practicing the very same type of piracy that SOPA and PIPA were designed to prosecute. |
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Marabu stalk nightmares ended. The Marabu, an introduced invasive weed in Cuba, has finally a use - its burnt remains make some of the finest activated carbon. |
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Why do South Carolina evangelicals hate Mitt Romney? Because he's not homophobic enough. |
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A laid-off Wall Street worker, being distraught over the death of her dog, pays $50,000 to have the mutt cloned. They used to write horror stories about this kind of thing. |
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Scott Walker, Gov. of Wisconsin who tried to ban collective bargaining rights, now faces a recall election, with almost double the number of votes required in the petition having been presented. |
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Scientists create a multicellular variety of Brewer's Yeast in the laboratory. The Question Evolution! Campaign could not be reached for comment |
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Big Brother's big brother expects the Kim dynasty to fall soon. |
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Private Eye editor Ian Hislop says the UK does not need new laws to stop the press bribing police officers and hacking phones because those things are already illegal. (Sounds familiar, actually) |
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In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, a contaminated golf club takes the power company to court to try and get them to pay cleanup costs. The power company claims that the radioactive waste in question now belongs to the golf club. |
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Sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree. |
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Persecution complex in full effect here. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. |
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Titan, you sexy beast. |
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Tea Party speaker invokes both Godwin's Law and Poe's Paradox in a speech which criticizes Barack Obama and modestly proposes to disobey minimum wage laws and force illegal immigrants to build a border fence and undocumented immigrant detention center before expelling said immigrants from the country. |
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Late to the meme, a Labour MP's 'downfall'. |
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So you think it's bad in the US that corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to political campaign SuperPACs? Well, imagine if drug dealers got involved. Bienvenido a México! |
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Want to teach intelligent design in public school science classes? No problem! You just want to teach the controversy. Want to run a music workshop where third graders write songs "about the holidays, laughter, daffodils, best friends — and the divisive Occupy protests that have spread across the country"? Then you're indoctrinating helpless children and you must be stopped! |
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Wikipedia considering a blackout to protest SOPA. (But you knew that.) Vote there, |
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Mitt Romney -- serial killer. |
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10 years since the ousting of the Taliban and virtually no progress on women's rights. |
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Where's your god now? The Reign of |
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Good news, everyone! Mohamed ElBaradei, maybe the last rational politician in Egypt right now, is opting out of the upcoming presidential race. |
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Christian Voice: Tesco share drop is divine intervention due to a gay pride event. |
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US Congress backpedals on SOPA. Update: The White House expresses objections to SOPA and PIPA. |
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President Obama asks for the power to merge federal departments in aid of making the government more efficient and saving money. Republicans are not overly enthusiastic about the plan. |
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For you, the funeral is over! North Koreans face 6 months in labour camps, for not mourning Dear Leader's demise. |
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In order to keep out ethnic studies, an Arizona school district decides to toss out The Tempest, by well known |
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It seems we all have a moral compass... and magnets can fuck it up too. |
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In the most insane bout of anti-intellectualism in the Republican nomination yet, Mitt Romney is attacked for speaking French by a guy who wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on educational policy in colonial Belgian Congo. Guess what language the guys who created those policies wrote them in. Here's a hint: The archives are in Brussels. |
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Ben Stein of Expelled fame is now suing a printer company because of his global warming denialism. To quote: "as a matter of religious belief, he believed that God, and not man, controlled the weather." |
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Pancreatic cancer and eggs. Breakfast of champions. Reports of jihad against health officials are unconfirmed. |
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Rick Santorum's family in Italy are a pack of communists who are largely embarrassed by him. How do you like them family values? |
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Stephen Colbert transfers his Super PAC powers to Jon Stewart and is officially running for President of the United States. Again. |
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Fiji's military dictator calls the Wahmbulance after failing to win a television text message competition for personality of the year. |
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Stephen Harper bans the marriages of thousands of gay couples currently not living in Canada. Discuss the legality of this here. Update: Dan Savage has lost his marriage. |
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While one Republican governor seems intent on executing everybody, another is granting pardons to murderers. |
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One allows for free and fair elections, the other is an authoritarian single party quasi-police state. And the latter is upset when survey results say that Hong Kongers don't really see themselves as Chinese. |
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Churches have a new group to discriminate against, the disabled. |
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Right wing "journalist" James O'Keefe tries to prove voter fraud exists by having lackeys actually commit voter fraud, said lackeys could go to jail. |
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Crazy conservative widowed in the Arizona tragedy blames Gabrielle Gifford's husband for Jared Loughner's actions. |
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Not the US. Seriously, not the US. |
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Starting during the Nixon Administration, federal health officials have repeatedly claimed that smoking one joint does the same amount of damage to one's health as smoking 16-20 tobacco cigarettes. (That number has gone up and down several times over the past four decades, so you can probably guess where this is leading.) |
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The Doomsday clock moves from six down to five minutes to midnight. |
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The best way to get sweatshop owners to listen? Threaten factory-wide suicide. |
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If Israel wants to remain the most progressive country in the Middle East, it has to stop doing stuff like this. |
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Gallup poll finds record-"high" percentage (just over 50%) of Americans now support legalization of marijuana. |
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Well, that puts the blocks on teaching creationism and I.D. in British schools. (Shame! snorkle!) |
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Where do I start with this one? Psychic powers? Monkeys? Bananas? The primary/caucus polls? Newt Gingrich? |
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Here's a nice little statistic on renewable energy in Germany. |
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If you missed Stephen Colbert running last election cycle, here's another prankster "candidate" one-upping the crazy. |
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Only in the South.... |
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And here we were, thinking it couldn't get much worse than birtherism... |
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...is there any chance that this woman can get elected in this day and age? |
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WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!! P.S. Evolution works! |
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FBI updates its rape law definition to include males, a move made thanks in part by pro-feminist Joe Biden. Happy now, men's rights activists? |
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Santorum compares (not for the first time) homosexual marriage to polygamy, gets booed. |
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iPads, so simple a monkey could use them. |
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After bullshitting that "Islamism is the greatest threat to Canada," Legohead has to condemn the fourth hate crime in six months at a Gatineau, Quebec mosque. |
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With crap like this in bookstores, one has to wonder why there isn't more anti-American sentiment around the world; |
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While Iran postures in the Strait of Hormuz, United States naval forces rescue an Iranian fishing boat from pirates. Expect more global warming. |
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Archie Comics features an inter-racial same-sex military wedding. |
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So farewell then, Bob Holness, you didn't play the sax on Baker Street but you always gave a 'P' when asked. |
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6 Mayan apocalypse myths debunked by National Geographic. |
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Mitt Romney: Well since the poor have so little money, lets give them more taxes!. |
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A file-sharing religion called the Missionary Church of Kopimism has been recognized by the Swedish government. |
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Montana tells Citizens United exactly where to stick it. Not that it will make a difference unless Antonin Scalia has a fatal heart attack in the near future... |
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Peter Duesberg unfortunately gets his denialism of the AIDS-HIV link published in a peer reviewed journal (on the fourth or fifth try). |
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Republicans complain about the US' lack of "rags to riches" economic mobility, then ironically cite Canada, Norway, Finland, and Denmark as countries to envy. |
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Geneticist James F. Crow |
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Andrew Wakefield rears his scaly head once more and sues the British Medical Journal, its editor and a journalist. Update: The suit (PDF). |
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Um, isn't this what Scientology is for? |
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Google - ever watchful in the fight against paid links and other search engine cheating. Such as, erm, this one pushing Google Chrome. |
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After doing badly in the Iowa caucus, Michele Bachmann backs out of the runnings. |
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Romney wins by only 8 votes in the Iowa caucus. His challenger? Rick Santorum. The Internet rejoices. |
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God reveals to Pat Robertson who the new President will be. |
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Zombees? Update: And hybrid sharks. |
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The end is nigh! #1 in a series (expect a lot more before 2012 is done). |
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After 18 years, the killers of Stephen Lawrence finally brought to justice |
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Faux News apologizes to Juicy Santorum for actually telling the facts for once: that playing around with a dead baby is NOT normal behaviour. Update: Well, the frothy mixture isn't going away any time soon. |
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If there are any RationalWikians in Iowa right now, we pity you. A Globe and Mail commenter: "That sound you hear coming from Washington is Obama's reelection team rolling on the floor laughing hysterically." |
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Canada's batch of Tories get nuttier and nuttier everyday: Harper wants to create an "Office of Religious Freedom," its purposes hazy at best. |
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Welcome to Israel, land of the |
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Japan gets a New Year's wake-up call. No major complications, but watch out for the conspiracy theorists. |