Unsurprisingly, these old texts can be pretty misogynistic. But The Kama Sutra starts to seem downright feminist when it argues against those who would deny women access to its pages. According to Vatsyayana, even “young maidens” should study up. They should also spend their time developing skills in: tattooing, “the art of making beds,” fashioning earrings, magic/sorcery, “making parrots [etc.] out of yarn or thread,” “teaching [real] parrots to speak,” and practicing “sentences difficult to pronounce” i.e. tongue twisters. Character building! Even more awesomely, it is also advised that girls study up on sword-fighting, gambling, carpentry, chemistry, and cock, quail, and ram fighting. Throw cigar smoking in there, and you got yourself a private school education.
A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies-and they expect first responders to be listening.
The online survey asked 1,058 adults about their use of social media sites in emergency situations. It found that if they needed help and couldn’t reach 9-1-1, one in five would try to contact responders through a digital means such as e-mail, websites or social media. If web users knew of someone else who needed help, 44 percent would ask other people in their social network to contact authorities, 35 percent would post a request for help directly on a response agency’s Facebook page and 28 percent would send a direct Twitter message to responders.
Web users also have clear expectations about how first responders should be answering their requests. The survey showed that 69 percent said that emergency responders should be monitoring social media sites in order to quickly send help-and nearly half believe a response agency is probably already responding to any urgent request they might see.
And the survey respondents expected quick response to an online appeal for help-74 percent expected help to come less than an hour after their tweet or Facebook post.
The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.
The Democratic comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.
"If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we'd certainly consider it," Sieber told Reuters.
Not so fast there, Vladimir Ilyich. They just might be donating it gratis:
These are not just your garden-variety Muslim Brotherhood operatives. The CCMO officers include leading national and international figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, settled in the Washington DC suburbs to enjoy “direct access” to the Administration and Congress. CCMO is a major U.S. node in the loosely coordinated Muslim Brotherhood network. Just the fellows to give your tax dollars as stimulus money!
CCMO appears to have started as an umbrella organization in the late 1980s, when so many Muslim Brotherhood organizations were expanding. According to this 2005 article at Washington, DC’s Muslim Link Newspaper, CCMO was 18 years old in that year, making the start date around 1987.
Who are these CCMO officers? We could write a book on each of them; their personal biographies are the tale of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ongoing “Project” to bring Shariah Law to America
Coming in to pour oil on troubled waters, Obama's double-plus secret Imam likens America/al Qaeda's contentious relationship to a stormy marriage:
Ed Driscoll was so kind as to present a partial transcript:
In the aftermath of 9/11, when you try to bridge relationships between any two sides where there has been tensions reaching such a level, one of the things you have to do is to explain to each side why the other side feels angry. Whether it’s, you know, marital counseling between the husband and the wife, you have to explain to the husband, actions that he has done, which in the perception of the wife has offended her, and vice-versa. When there is pain on each side, you have to explain to each side what has caused the pain of the other. And part of my role has been to explain to the each side, you know, the position of the other, so that people can understand it. That is how you are able to bring about an understanding to change the reality. [Heavy sigh.] I have taken upon myself the role of bridge-builder. To be a bridge-builder, Joseph, you have to have a foot on each side of the divide if you are going to become a bridge.
When reached for comment everyone's favorite TV psychologist Dr. Phil sagely chuckled "Is this guy off his fuckin' gourd, or what?"
Not content with wrecking my own songs, I was determined to destroy others'.
The Beat (or as they were named in North America, The English Beat, due to an agreement with an American band that previously had The Beat as its name) was one of the finest ska or 2 Tone bands that sprang up in England in the late '70s. I don't recall them getting a lot of radio play here, apart from a couple of minor hits like "Mirror In The Bathroom" or maybe some of their (very good) covers of stuff like "Tears Of A Clown" or "Can't Get Used To Losing You."
Their third and final album, though, had a song on it I loved enough to the point that I took my guitar out and tried to learn it. So here I am on acoustic guitar and bass:
All in all, not bad; but it's such a pretty little pop song that it'd be difficult to mess it up too much. Not that I didn't try, of course: There's a second vocal on the original, contributed by Ranking Roger (the stage name of Roger Charlery). Trying to duplicate it caused me a few problems. Then there's the bass line that wanders off to la-la land before (miraculously) returning to the proper place. And the volume is too low in a couple of places. But apart from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Two dozen other dirty lovers
Must be a sucker for it
Cry cry but I don't need my mother
Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it.
Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later don't run away and let me down.
Sooner or later you hit the deck you get found out
Save it for later don't run away and let me down, you let me down.
Black air and seven seas all rotten through
But what can you do?
I don't know how I'm meant to act with all of you lot
Sometimes I don't try
I just now now now now now now now now now now now
Now now now now now now now now now now now
Soomer or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later don't run away and let me down.
Sooner or later you hit the deck you get found out
Save it for later don't run away and let me down
You runaway runaway and let me down.
Two dozen other stupid reasons
Why we should suffer for this
Don't bother trying to explain them
Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it.
Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later don't run away and let me down.
Sooner or later you'll hit the deck you'll get found out
Save it for later don't runaway and let me down, you let me down.
You run away run away runaway runaway runaway runaway
And let me down.
Actually, I had forgotten altogether recording this. It sounded pretty good, but I don't think I've heard the song for twenty years, so I did a search for it, thinking I might have missed an important part of it. Surprisingly, I turned up the original video. I say "surprisingly" because this was in late 1983, pretty well in the infancy of videos, and not every band was putting them out automatically. MTV was about two years old by then; Muchmusic wouldn't arrive for another year.
Singer-guitarist Dave Wakeling kicks things off -- RR is the black dude with the tamborine (not to mention the snappy fedora and white gloves). Fun video for a fun song.
Others have recorded it -- Pete Townshend does a version of it in his concerts, and Harvey Danger (who did the insanely-catchy "Flagpole Sitta") has a video of it too. And I've heard it on TV for about the last month, in a commercial for the upcoming (Sept. 3) release of Going The Distance with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long. Oddly, the song isn't included (yet) on the official soundtrack, but I assume it's one of those last-minute lawyer squabbles.
Dave Wakeling is living in California these days and tours as The English Beat. Seems like a genuinely nice guy, too -- I can't find anything negative written about him anywhere.
Many Hollywood locals have called the move long overdue.
"The way things have been, even an A-lister can wait 45 minutes for a table," said Tracey Spillane, manager of Spago Beverly Hills. "And from the table chatter we overhear, there just aren't enough projects in the pipeline for the glut of celebrities that exist right now. Believe me, this is a much more compassionate approach than leaving Anson Williams to root in the Dumpster for scraps."
A third terrorism suspect- one who moonwalked across a Montreal stage during an audition for Canadian Idol - was detained early Thursday, the Star has learned.
Khuram Sher was arrested as part of an RCMP national security investigation, as police continue to investigate a possible cell allegedly plotting to attack targets at home.
Sher told judges on the popular reality show in 2008 that he hailed from Pakistan and was a fan of "hockey, music and acting."
He sings an off-tune rendition of Avril Lavigne’s "Complicated" with - as the show’s website describes - some "nifty" dance moves.
"Have you ever thought of being a comedian?" asks one of the judges of the 26-year-old.
Another remarks: "The dance moves were good, the singing, bad."
Non-Muslim nations continue to bear the brunt of demonstrating the compassion and generosity that the petrodollar-glutted Gulf nations won't. Meanwhile, in Pakistan: aid from non-Muslims? Bring it on! Send more! (Well, maybe not you, India.) Aid to non-Muslims? If you're lucky. And it's not the first time. Muslims in Pakistan have attempted to coerce non-Muslims to convert by blackmailing them with hunger and the withholding of life's most basic essentials.
Quid pro quo, kuffar. "The politics of relief: Aliens in their own land," by Abdul Manan for the Express Tribune, August 18 (thanks to GS):
The government and local clerics refused to shelter around 500 flood-affected families belonging to the Ahmadiya community in South Punjab's relief camps. Not only that, the government also did not send relief goods to the flood-hit areas belonging to the Ahmadiya community, The Express Tribune has learnt during a visit to the devastated Punjab districts of Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur.
For its part, the government claims that all relief goods are being distributed among survivors without discrimination. And that all survivors have been sheltered in relief camps without distinction. The flood-devastated families from the Ahmadiya community have strongly criticised the government's "discriminatory attitude" even at a time when the entire country is reeling from the ravages of the worst flooding in living memory.
. . . if the United Nations gets its way, we might all soon be adding creepy-crawlies to our weekly shopping lists. The UN is considering strategies to cut levels of meat consumption worldwide as part of its commitment to stamp out famine and cut global warming.
And it claims livestock, such as cows and pigs, requires too much space and fodder to be an energy-efficient source of food for the everexpanding population.
Ultimately, it argues, there’s simply not enough land for us all to eat roast beef.
And so the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation is urging us to try other alternatives, including insects.
No problemo. Get back to me the day after your new multi-limbed (and no, lobsters don't qualify) cuisine hits the UN cafeteria.
A mashup of the Jackson 5's "Rockin' Robin" with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Amazingly, this works on some level. In other news, Kurt Cobain just phoned to let me know that he'll be killing himself again.
"This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism," said Daisy Khan, wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. "That's what we feel right now . . . And we are deeply concerned."
You know, I never would have picked her out as a vile Jewess (I'll bet the Imam is plenty surprised, too), but now we have it from her own filthy semitic lips.
And it's working! I've grown to hate her and the rest of her smelly tribe quite passionately!
