Ad for post-rapture pet care
This entrepreneur is offering to take care of the pets of those people who are chosen to be taken up during the Rapture.
Multiplicity photography
I assume that this would be as much fun to create as to view. Multiplicity:
is a photography technique in which the same person is photographed from different angles and directions and then the bunch of photographs are digitally re-mastered in Photoshop showing clones of the person doing different things all in one photo.And speaking of photos, here are 13 of them "that changed the world." And here's one more gallery that caught my eye tonight. It's called "Abandoned." But here's one more entertaining collection demonstrating that it's not easy being a photographer.
How the Israelis control news reporting regarding the Gaza aid flotilla
The Israelis don't trust other people to describe what really happened. Therefore, they seized the evidence. Amy Goodman reports:
Who frames the narrative? After the Israeli military raided the Gaza aid flotilla and killed nine of the activists onboard, they detained almost everyone else—700 activists and journalists—hauled them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and kept them largely out of communication with family, press and lawyers for days. The Israeli government confiscated every recording and communication device it could find, devices containing almost all the recorded evidence of the raid. The Israelis selected, edited, released footage they wanted the world to see.Here's more, including discussion by Paul McGeough, chief correspondent, Sydney Morning Herald and Kate Geraghty, photographer with the Sydney Morning Herald:
KATE GERAGHTY: Yes. I was photographing, standing right next to Paul. And I was looking over the side of the boat, as the commando came—an Israeli commando came up towards us. So I was photographing and basically got hit on the arm just above my elbow, which knocked me about a meter, about a meter and a half. And then, I was immediately sick. And then the commando came toward me and— AMY GOODMAN: Sick, you mean—you mean you were throwing up? KATE GERAGHTY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a commando wrestled my camera off me. And they had guns, so, you know, we just said basically, as Paul mentioned, that we’re Australian journalists, we’re with the Sydney Morning Herald. And that didn’t make any difference. [More . . . ]
Global warming as a market failure
At CNN, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway portray climate change as another victim of free market fundamentalism:
Since the early 1990s, there has been a sustained history of attempts to undermine any science that suggested that contemporary industrial society might be doing irreparable harm to human health and the natural environment. This included the science that demonstrated the harms of DDT, the dangers to children of second-hand smoke, the causes of acid rain, and the reality of the ozone hole. Often the same people were involved in several or even all of these attacks. The common feature in all these cases was a link to think tanks promoting free markets and opposing government regulations. One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the pattern: People are loath to admit that our free market system has created problems that the free market has proved ineffectual to solve. Nicolas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, has called global warming "the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."
Got 3 Parking Tickets, None Valid
On the heels of Tim's Messing with the stoplight thieves, we just received 3 completely contestable parking tickets in one swell foop. Parking officers are local Treasury Agents, not police. Our story is as follows:
Wife finally picks up the car that I just received from my parent's estate. I got the title last week, and insured it yesterday so we could drive it home, get it inspected and licensed. The executor had let the plates expire, and neither he nor we thought to remove them. So she drove it homewards, stopping at a friend's house for a visit. She'd parallel parked in the rain between two other cars on the quiet residential block. When she came out, there were 3 tickets. One for expired plates. One for expired inspection. And a third for parking in a handicapped zone.
Handicapped zone? Then she saw the tiny little blue signs on posts around the car behind her. The trunk of our car apparently occupied the front 2 of the 22 feet they reserve for those private parking zones. The car behind ours, the one actually in the handicapped spot, had plenty of room both in front and in back. She hadn't seen the sign in her blind spot as she parked, but I guess ignorance is no excuse.
I do wonder whether the person who got the city to carve out a private parking spot on the public street still needed it. When my brother broke his leg, he applied for a handicapped hanger. By the time it arrived, his cast was off. But at least the hangers have expiration dates requiring renewal and proof of need. The private parking spot has no expiration. 
The need might well have expired ten years ago. We don't know. But such is the law .
The other two tickets, basically both for not having current inspection or plates, can be fought on the grounds that we hadn't had time to get them. There is a grace period when one buys a car.