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RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/May 2010
May 2010[edit]
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11 |
On a Visit to the U.S., a Nigerian Witch-Hunter Explains Herself According to her, a school for children abandoned as witches is a "419 scam". |
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9 |
And Libservatism started so well, UK school kids are going to get a history curriculum advised by Niall Ferguson, a man who blames the deaths of 29 million Indians in the 19th Century on an "erroneous understanding of economics" rather than brutal enforcement of right wing economics. |
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Let's have a laugh. Texas cops mistake an actual weed for Marijuana. How bad was your day? |
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Canada’s teen birth & abortion rate drops by 36.9 per cent, explained by a "relaxed attitude to adolescent sexuality." |
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Well they did receive a Presidential pardon. That's better..... Sort of. |
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The only word that comes to mind is "EEEEEEEEYOUCH!!!" (please heed the warning on that page before you scroll down -- it's not a link for everyone) |
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Keep on riding, Dennis Hopper. |
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Operation "Top Kill" fails. |
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In a suburb of Portland, Oregon, a man with a concealed-carry permit for a largely defensive weapon of gun was waiting in line at an AT&T store when two shoplifters made off with four iPhones. Thinking he was in a 1930s gangster movie, he ran after them and tried to shoot out their car tires in the parking lot. (The cops haven't found where the bullets went.) Naturally, he doesn't understand why the cops arrested him. |
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No wonder the new design for RationalWiki is causing such fuss; all you creative types are insane. |
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8 |
It appears that God needs some target practice, as he's destroyed his own building with a bolt of lightning. |
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15 |
The US House of Representatives voted to allow military commanders to get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell |
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A science paper tries to explain why people don't understand science. Tautology? You decide! |
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Remember air travel? Katla's playing up. |
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14 |
Northern Irish idiot minister (of state, not religion!) Hat tip wants creationism in prize winning Ulster Museum. |
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Talk about sweet, sweet revenge! Almost exactly 20 years after Microsoft stole the idea of a graphic interface from Apple, Apple finally, finally overtakes Microsoft in market value!!! Of course, Apple stole the idea from Xerox. No revenge there, then. |
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Could it be that the influence of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement on the GOP is running out of steam? In Idaho, one of the most conservative states in America, Palin's choice for the 1st Congressional District -- who was also endorsed by Tom Tancredo, John McCain, Barry Goldwater's son Barry Jr., and Pat Buchanan's sister Bay -- was an Iraq War veteran, had been in the race for over a year, had a 6-to-1 fundraising advantage, and was designated a "Young Gun" by the National Congressional Campaign Committee. And he still lost by more than nine percentage points to an upstart candidate who entered the race a mere six months ago. |
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Republicans are having problems with trolls on their new website. In other news, we have a new conservative website to troll! |
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12 |
Roll up! Roll up! All the fun o' the fair! Come and see our tricksy-dicksy mathematicians prove that a fairground favourite was a fraud! Roll up! |
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The problem of polling firms' reliance on land-lines only is getting worse and skews results toward the Republicans. |
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Just when it seemed that the Catholic priest - child sex abuse scandal was calming down a bit, this happened. |
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The Times cedes the UK Internet news market to the Guardian and the BBC. And just to make sure, they're keeping that darned Google out. Dear Rupert, don't let the paywall hit your arse on the way out. |
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2 |
Bishop writes prayers for the World Cup |
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26 |
Andrew Wakefield (of MMR fame) is struck off the medical register after being found guilty of misconduct in his research. S'pose we have to call him Anew Wakefield now. |
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9 |
A public service announcement in relation to the Tea Party movement: Don't drunk-dial FreedomWorks (YouTube link). |
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The first proof that Israel has nuclear weapons surfaces - and they were trying to sell them to apartheid South Africa. UPDATE Shimon Peres denies the story. |
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At 95, we have lost a great man. Martin Gardner has left this mortal coil. |
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Not 24 hours after that controversy Rand Paul causes another one. |
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Not 48 hours after his landslide victory in a Republican Party primary, Teabagger candidate Rand Paul steps into controversy. |
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Same sex love in Malawi - fourteen years jail time |
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A child-minder, who allowed 3 men into her employers' house, whereupon they attacked her and the one-year-old child in her care, putting the child in intensive care, is sacked. Then sues for unfair dismissal. |
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Not content to let the Catholics have all the fun, Scientologists in Australia face sexual abuse charges. |
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Idiotic judge is rebuked... nine months later. Awfully long bollocking. |
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South Korea officially blames North Korea for an attack on their warship. This is Captain Obvious signing off. |
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The British Medical Association say that Homeopathy is witchcraft. |
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More incumbent Republicans take a whuppin' at the hands of the Teabaggers. |
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Another Republican politician is caught with his pants down. Unlike previous philanderers, he made it a point to leave his wife at home when he went public. (And then he called attention to her absence at his press conference. What a guy!) And in the "you can't make this shit up" department, last year he and his mistress made a series of videos touting abstinence-only sex education. |
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Look out! Here comes the Spider-goat! |
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Apparently, "I got knocked up as a teenager" qualifies you to earn $15-30K per speaking engagement. Well, it helps if your last name is "Palin" and your Mom's name is "Sarah". |
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Portugal runs the risk of suffering from earthquakes, tidal waves and collective boils on the botty as their President prepares to sign into power the law legalising same-sex marriage. |
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Billy Joel's daughter attempted to OD on homeopathic pills. |
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Brit Hume, of the ever accurate Faux News, asks: where the oil in the Gulf is? |
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The Catholic Church has come up with a rather inspired (but not very inspirational) defense in its child sexual abuse scandal. As of 17 May 2010, the Vatican's official position regarding all local priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals will be as follows: "You can't sue us because they aren't our employees." |
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Attention fundies (and rest of the world) this is what real religious persecution looks like. |
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Being a disgusting beast is natural. Monkeys will pay valuable juice for pictures of female monkey butts. |
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Do you take the to be thy lawfully wedded ERROR! ERROR! DESTROY! |
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Maine Republicans hold a meeting in a school classroom over the weekend, and decide to search it and remove any "anti-American" items they found. Pure class. |
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Evolution continues to happen. Observing speciation happening in real time. |
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Not even Confucius is safe from commercialism in China. |
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Virginia Attorney General doesn't believe in Global Warming and doesn't like that a University of Virginia scientist does. UVA fights back |
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Some people just don't get it. |
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Sony drops PS3 support for alternative operating systems. US Air Force is unhappy. |
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Contrary to popular belief, weather can get too hot for lizards. And weather that is too hot for too long can kill lizards. Thanks to global warming, many species of lizards are now indeed going extinct. (But, that can't be true! Global waring is just a librul commie myth and scare tactic!) |
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A candidate in the Gubernatorial Primary in Alabama is attacked for possibly believing in evolution and not swallowing Genesis hook, line and sinker. The candidate is forced to respond and affirms he believes in every word in the Bible. This is what passes for politics today in the US. |
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After being deluged with requests from Birthers for Obama's birth certificate, Hawaii enacts a law to allow officials to ignore repeated requests for public records. Crazy - ass response from the Birther movement in 3... 2... 1... |
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Turns out Laura Bush is pro-choice and for gay marriage. Another kick in the nuts for the Republican Party. |
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Indian yogi hasn't been eating for 70 years (aside from all the food he sneaks when nobody is looking). |
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Arizonan school kids are no longer allowed to take "ethnic studies" classes. |
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Hysterical Teabaggers please take note - Americans are paying the lowest level of tax since 1950. |
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Cameron is PM, Clegg is Deputy - now we can all get the fuck on with our lives and watch a new and original government bugger it all up in a new and original way! |
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Pope admits that perhaps internal bad behaviour has something to do with the Catholic Church's current problems. Maybe a little bit. |
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The Tea Party movement continues to shift the Republican Party ever more to the Right, as Senator Bob Bennett, longstanding senator from Utah, is ousted in Republican Primary by Teabaggers. |
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Bye bye Brown. Or not. UPDATE: Bye bye Brown! |
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Elena Kagan is nominated to the Supreme Court. Let the culture wars begin. |
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Newton's apple tree to |
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Welcome to liberal atheist Europe! A Polish pop star faces two years in jail for blasphemy. |
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After the "landslide victory" (hat tip to Andrew Schlafly), the UK Conservative Party grandees aren't exactly happy at what they see as a failure to achieve. |
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Make your own solar water heater from empty Coke bottles.Plans (in Portugese) here. |
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Apple gets mighty touchy. |
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The good news is Tim Geithner did not ask for another emergency bailout today. |
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Non-African humans have some Neanderthal DNA |
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Fox refused to air an advert from VoteVets, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, asking for clean energy development to reduce dependence upon Middle Eastern oil. |
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Go ahead mock my big ears but they are a life-saver. |
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BNP candidate starts a fight in the street while on camera |
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The world-wide web goes truly global with the first, fully non-latin URLs. |
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Today we're worried about volcanic ash clouds, but 24 years ago, there was an even scarier cloud. How soon we forget. |
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Disneyland Paris, Europe's number one tourist attraction, is of course a great place to go, where a splendid time is guaranteed for all. Unless you work there. |
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Fifteen years into her career, country singer Chely Wright has come out of the closet. She is considered the most successful closeted country artist to come out. Wright now admits that because of the need to please her mostly right wing fans and colleagues, she stuck a 9mm in her mouth and almost blew her brains out. |
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Jerry Falwell Jr's attempt to turn Lynchburg, VA into a fiefdom of Liberty University faltered at the ballot box. |
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The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die by 2011. Maybe now the fundies will sit up and take note. |
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Now here's a surprise: "Brain shuts off in response to healer's prayer" |
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And with a regularity that would be boring, if it weren't so sad, another anti-gay crusader is found to be not as anti as he wanted us to believe. This time it's George Alan Rekers, co-founder of the Family Research Council, and his rentboy. |
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At least the Greeks don't take it lying down. |
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Amid allegations of vote fraud, an investigating journalist is attacked and beaten. Not in Afghanistan or Iraq or Zimbabwae, but east London. |
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The Hutaree terrorism suspects get bail. Why are we not surprised? |
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Life is like a |
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Not as inbred as Cain and Eve, but Charles Darwin was sure pushing it. |
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Drunk man has eel inserted into his rectum (by so-called friends), dies 10 days later |
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A British judge has declared that Christian beliefs have no standing under secular law because they lack evidence and cannot be proven. |
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The latest attempt by conservatives to enshrine President Ronald Reagan on the US currency falls flat. |
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If BP makes the mess, then BP's damn well going to pay to clean it up. |
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Barack Obama... President... Statesman... stand-up comedian? |
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The difference between US and UK conservatives might be less than you think, as it emerges that a "rising star" in the Tory party held prayer sessions to cure gay people. |
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You want more proof right-ringers and TV aren't a good mix? Ok, here's one from your side of the pond. |
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Never a dull moment when you have right-wing fuckheads on live TV. |
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Time Magazine announces their lists of the 100 most and least influential people of 2010. |
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Are full body scanners any use at airports? Nope, says Israeli expert. |
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Old actors never die, they appear on CNN, talking about alien abductions. |
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Triumph of the spirit - Afghanistan are playing India in the 20/20 Cricket World Cup. Not bad, when you consider 2 short years ago, they were grouped with such cricketing giants as Botswana, Jersey and Japan. |
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The latest threat to US national security? Kids that are too fat to fight. |