Does the world really need a 131-foot-tall statue of Genghis Khan?
Apparently some wealthy folks in Mongolia (apparently a private company rather than the government, though I don’t know how sharp that distinction is) think so; see details here and here.
Another version of this video has already been pulled on copyright grounds, so watch it while you can:
As a teacher, I find the first part of this video depressing and the later part encouraging.
My grandmother always referred to FDR as “that man who killed all the little pigs.” (If you don’t know what she was referring to, click here.) Now there was a man who got warm fuzzies from seeing windows broken.
And now of course he’s back.
A year ago this blog was hosted on Yahoo, and I was having major problems with hackers inserting hidden spam ads and messing up my code. Yahoo customer service was massively unresponsive to my complaints – until Brandon helpfully switched my data to his server and I was happily quit of Yahoo.
Now today I get an email from Yahoo informing me:
We will soon upgrade your WordPress blog. …
We have become aware of security vulnerabilities in WordPress version 2.0.2. To prevent hackers from exploiting these vulnerabilities and potentially damaging your blog or web site, we will soon upgrade all Yahoo! Small Business WordPress blogs running version 2.0.2 to the more secure version 2.8. …
We regret that we are unable to provide the precise day and time at which your blog will be upgraded, so we encourage you to review your blog regularly during the upgrade process, from August 31 to September 14.
Gee, thanks, guys. You’ve finally acknowledged the existence of the problem. Talk about too little, too late.
Dermot Ahern, Ireland’s Minister for Justice (sic), is calling for a law whereby anyone who intentionally utters or publishes material “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion,” would be penalised by a “fine not exceeding €100,000.”
In the event that the law passes, I look forward to seeing Ahern prosecuted under his own law, which is clearly insulting to the libertarian beliefs of the Universal Life Church.
OK, Michael Jackson is dead, very sad – but Jesus Christ! Last night virtually every single news program was entirely devoted to hours and hours and hours of what was essentially, given the relative paucity of details, a five-minute story. Endless footage of people milling around outside Jackson’s home with nothing happening, combined with endless footage of the outside of the medical center containing his body, as overvoices intoned endlessly that yes, he is dead, and no, we don’t yet know much about why he died or who found him or whether there were drugs involved or who will get custody of his kids, and yes, he is still dead – all while a big red sign declares, hour after hour, “BREAKING NEWS,” a phrase which has long since lost all meaning.
Why has this story pushed all other news aside? I mean, they’re treating it like it’s 9/11 or something. (I’ll bet Mark Sanford wishes that Jackson had died a few days earlier ….) I couldn’t find a single reference to events in Iran, for example, on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CNN-HL, PBS, or FOX. And with my home computer currently on the fritz I was stuck with tv. Thank God for BBC News, which finally provided me with some actual news.