The Exercise of Vital Powers

I’d sue, but the only have $45 left in their operating account.

Like UV rays and diesel exhaust fumes, working the graveyard shift will soon be listed as a “probable” cause of cancer.

It is a surprising step validating a concept once considered wacky. And it is based on research that finds higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose work day starts after dark.

Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen.(source)

I’ve had bad days before. I’ve had days where I’ve wondered how the f–k I manged to do something so stupid. I pray I never have this day:

A lady went to work at Coliseum Medical Center here in Macon last week and left her baby, her 6 month old, in the car. The baby was found that afternoon dead in her car seat. ….

The problem is that this was a careless act, but it was not intentional. The mother only realized something was wrong when a friend who was suppose to pick her baby up from daycare called to say the baby wasn’t there. The mother got upset quick that something had happened to her child. Only when the police took her to her car did she collapse into convulsions, throwing up, laying in her vomit. Realizing what she had done to her own child. Daylight turned to darkness and Jesus wept. | Peach Pundit

Almost seven years have passed since I shared breakfast with that New Jersey couple, yet I think about them often, and when I do, my eyes always fill with tears. I think about the little girl, now ten, living in a Chinese orphanage never knowing the life she missed. (Freakonomics Blog » Adoptive Parents May Also Face the Decision to “Abort”)

Delta Air Lines celebrated a new milestone in its journey out of bankruptcy Thursday as its stock was reissued on the New York Stock Exchange.

At the Delta Heritage Museum, a breakfast party kicked off the company’s big day as Delta executives handed out bells to its cheering and dancing employees to mark May 3, 2007 as Delta’s independence day.

Delta, based in Atlanta, went public with 400 million shares of stock. Creditors would receive 90 percent of it, employees about six percent, and the rest to the public. Delta was to start the trading day Thursday with the second-highest market value in the airline industry.
(11Alive.com – Delta Employees Celebrate New Era)

Story

In other news, the British Government will be re-attaching the head of Ann Boylin.

I’ve been noticing a trend in the life-cycle of pundits. They tend to start off with something unique and interesting to say. Maybe they film a documentary (Moore, Spurlock), maybe they write a book (Goldberg, Coulter, Friedman), maybe they get a TV show (O’Reilly, Dobbs). They begin to gain a following and some notoriety. Their book is photographed in the hands of the President. Their followers begin to worship them. Then things begin to go bad.

They start to believe the hype about themselves. They have “a brand” and publishers and producers push them capitalize on it. Unfortunately, good intellectual work takes time and publishers don’t want to wait. So they start putting out crap that is designed to appeal to the baser nature of their followers.

Take Bernard Goldberg. In February of 2001 he released his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News . It became a hit with those who felt there was a liberal bias in the media. His premise was the bias in the media was not deliberate. The bias existed because of the insular nature of the media. It was a new concept and it made more sense than a vast left-wing media conspiracy. Goldberg went on the talk-show circuit, FNC, etc. He sold a lot of books and spent 7 weeks at number 1 on the NYT bestseller list.

What is his latest book? 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America: (and Al Franken Is #37). Hardly the pinnacle of original thought and research.

So I’ve decided to classify this “Coulter-Syndrome” and the process of going from an original researcher and voice to a cheap partisan hack “Coulterize”.

I so want to pick up this house at the government auction

Found this on Neal’s Nuze

For those of you who don’t read my personal blog, I’m hosting a Scotch Cabal. View the invite here

Human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein if not worse, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said.

“People are doing the same as (in) Saddam’s time and worse,” Allawi said in an interview published in Britain on Sunday.

“It is an appropriate comparison,” Allawi told The Observer newspaper. “People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.”…

The remarks also follow the discovery of an Iraqi government facility holding 170 prisoners, including some showing signs of torture. (Full story)

“We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,” said Allawi, who was Iraq’s first prime minister of the post-Saddam Hussein era. (link)

The difference is people can talk about it openly. There will always be sadistic scumbags in the world be it Qusay Hussein or Lindsay Englund. The measure of a culture is how that culture deals with the scumbags. Qusay was living in palaces and next in line to the presidency. Englund is rotting in a federal pen.