Hey, teachers: this one's for you. (This stuns me. And in a public school, no less.)

Colleen Leduc already had a lot going against her. The Barrie woman was holding down a job while struggling to raise her autistic 11-year-old daughter.

. . .

Leduc's weird tale began on May 30, when she dropped young Victoria off for class at Terry Fox Elementary and headed in to work, only to receive a frantic phone call from the school telling her it was urgent she come back right away.

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack.'

There's more. It's

For those who have not seen it: WikiMapia: "Let's describe the whole world!"

(Via supergee...)

"Somewhere a Fox News editor's history teacher is weeping."

(Via firinel.)

HS Principal Outs Gay Student Couple

That principal needs my foot up her ass. (Just to loosen it up a little for the reaming I *hope* she receives from the ACLU). It really, really irks me that one of the boys might not be able to volunteer in New Orleans, now. It just strikes me as particularly disgusting to deny him the right to do good because he *might* do something that a vicious little subset of humanity thinks of as bad. Vile. Vile!

Celibacy screws Irish Catholics.

And I quote...

[N]ew figures revealed the extent of the drop in clergy numbers in the Irish Catholic Church that is now reaching catastrophic proportions.

Last year 160 priests died while only nine men were ordained, and 228 nuns passed away with only two newcomers taking religious vows.

Under current trends of ageing clerics and few recruits, the number of priests will halve from 4,752 to 1,500 over the next two decades. Convents could become an antiquarian rarity.

Ralph Nader has announced that he is joining the presidential race.

Do I really need to mention party affiliation...?

I thought not.

Call me over-cautious, but I'm taking this (and all the other incidents of blog-entry-fallout) as a sign that I should be locking a lot more posts.

Anything could be a screening tool--interests lists, photos, groups, the (fucking) company one keeps... "Oh, look--this one's queer *AND* has multiple partners! We can charge him a fortune and then deny him coverage if he ever gets sick!"

(Via supergee.)

I don't think so. And neither does the AAP.

Since the airing of an anti-vaccination themed episode of Eli Stone, the anti-vaccination crowd has been riding the wave of the show's thinly-veiled assertion that vaccination with Thimerosal causes Autism. Indeed, one of the most common tactics of the antivaccination movement is to present heart-rending stories of "vaccine-damaged" children. Indeed, this is a key strategy designed to obtain "compensation" through lawsuits and the autism omnibus. In response, the AAP has been circulating an e-mail seeking to fight fire with fire[...]

In short, if you're the parent of an autistic child, or the parent of a child who contracted an illness that could have been prevented by vaccination (it's not safe to vaccinate some children), consider contacting the AAP and contributing to their campaign to encourage vaccination.

I'm not saying that vaccination carries -0-risk. It is, however, both effective and socially responsible.

Baby traveling to US for heart surgery dies after being held in Honolulu airport.

This is disgusting. Why, WHY did they detain all three of them instead of releasing the two legal travelers and just holding the mother? (Who, as it turns out, was also here legally.) I can understand paperwork--I can understand rules and regulations, but if we've sunk so far in the mire of bureaucracy that we can't be compassionate (or even practice common sense, in this case, and release the legal visitors) we don't deserve to call ourselves "civilized". There's no excuse for this.

But wait, I forgot--this is a Christian nation. We only care about babies *before* they're born.

(Via supergee.)

One noticed, as the address began, that it wasn't a matter of Bush waiting for the applause to *stop* before he continued speaking so much as a rather obvious refusal to speak until applause had begun in the first place.

So, not only will male monkeys pay for porn, they'll pay for sex, too.


(And regarding the monkey porn, perhaps we're misreading things. It's possible that the photos of monkey butts are *not*, in fact, monkey porn, but rather monkey High Art. So of *course* they're willing to pay for it--what monkey wouldn't part with some prune juice for the primate equivalent of a Picasso?)

Unfortunately, the Iowa caucus has correctly predicted the Republican presidential candidate every stinking year save 1980 & 1988.

Apparently, the FaceBook folks are blocking a single, solitary word (with regard to gender or sexual preference) from appearing in their adverts.

"Lesbian."

(Via mutster101.)

EDIT: marnanel points out that FaceBook almost certainly blocks words considered to be obscene or indicative of inappropriate or illegal activities, and that "lesbian" has likely fallen in with other banned words because the admins associate it with porn. (Because really, who *doesn't* think of porn when they think of lesbians? Hell, who doesn't think of porn when they think of gay cowboys eating pudding?)

Have you been wondering what that bunch of bent wingnuts at Westboro Baptist Church have been up to, lately? Well, it seems that in a fit of creativity, they've written and recorded a song! Oh, happy day! It's entitled God Hates the World, and it's a bastardization of We Are the World. It's about the most disgusting thing I've heard in a long time.

Warren Ellis was quite correct about the last bit of the video--it's particularly awful. Even if you manage to sit through the first 5 minutes, the last 30 seconds will probably push you over the edge. It's almost enough to make me believe that there is, in fact, an anti-Christ, and he is working directly through these miserable bastards.




You know, these yobs have always defended their ugly public protests by claiming that they're only trying to "save" the world from God's angry wrath, but in the next breath (and in this video) they clearly state that it's already too late for all us "proud sinners" and we're all doomed to a fiery hell. If that's the case, why are they wasting their time? It's because they *enjoy* it. It makes them feel good, and smug, and superior. Did you see how they were laughing and smiling toward the end of the song? They aren't *warning* anyone. They're gloating, and they're glorying in it.

And I would like nothing better than to take that child from her parents and raise her as an atheist.

I watched a BBC show about the Westboro Baptist crew earlier, but it's not on YouTube. However, I found this unaired excerpt--just in case if you've never seen them in action. Kudos to the gentleman managing the documentary. His self-control is stunning.



What people do in the name of religion makes me ill.

Six Apart jettisons LiveJournal by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- Six Apart announced a “new home” for LiveJournal (LJ), the blogging and social networking tools and community it acquired in January 2005. The new home is Russian-based online media company SUP. Another way of describing what’s happening with LiveJournal is that it was sold because it’s not strategic to Six Apart’s future. The company is focusing [...]

Other articles (containing essentially the same info) can be found at SFGate.com, TechCrunch and Business Week.

(Thanks to scarcrest for the heads-up!)

(EDIT: And thanks to theldara for pointing out the relevant info on LJ News.)

John Edwards' statement regarding Karl Rove's resignation.

(Via yesthattom.)