January 9, 2003
OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM AT ITS BEST
With all the early holiday
deadlines and end of the year reviews I didn't get a chance to
run this cover from the Dec. 19, 2002 edition of England's Daily
Mirror. So here's to another year of good ol-fashioned
Dubya-bashing.
SICK CORPORATE BASTARDS GO TO COURT
We begin 2003 with the most
sickening display of corporate insensitivity I've come across in
quite some time. Dow Chemical, the world's largest chemical
company, and proud new owners of Union Carbide, is suing
survivors of the 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal, India. This, after
a Dec. 2 march by 200 of the survivors of that disaster, who
delivered toxic waste from the abandoned Carbide factory in
Bhopal to Dow Chemical's Indian headquarters in Bombay. The
protesters demanded that Dow take responsibility for the
disaster area, clean up the site, and help survivors who are
struggling with continuing health problems caused by the deadly
pollution still on the site. Instead, Dow Chemical has slapped
the protesters with a US$10,000 lawsuit due to "loss of work" on
the day of the protest, plus is asking the courts to ban
survivors from protesting within 100 metres of Dow office in
India. (Greenpeace.org)
IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, SAY SOMETHING
INCOMPREHENSIBLE
Ever since Ronald Reagan called a tragic
airplane crash an "uncontrolled flight into terrain" I've loved
to laugh at euphemisms created by the pinheads in power. Now
there's an excellent website tracking the continuing increase of
Orwellian Doublespeak into the English language by government
and corporations. Head on over to
AmericanNewspeak.org for the
Great American Newspeak Quiz, where you'll learn that a neutron
bomb is now called a "radiation enhancement device", and that
workers at AT&T are no longer fired, but are "unassigned by the
force management program."
ONE WIN, TWO LOSSES, TWO HALF-EATEN HOOLIGANS
A fourth division
Romanian football club is considering building a
crocodile-filled moat around their soccer field in order to keep
hooligans off the playing area during and after games. The club
is facing expulsion from the league after several incidences of
violent outbreaks from fans storming onto the playing surface.
Club chairman Alexandra Cringus has proposed building a moat
around the entire field filled with fully-grown crocodiles to
solve the problem. "This is not a joke. We can get crocodiles
easy enough and feed them on meat from the local abattoir," he
explained, "I think that the problem of fans running onto the
pitch will be solved once and for all."
(orange-today.com)
FATTER, DRUNKER AMERICANS
It's official. According to a survey
of over 200,000 Americans carried out by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, Americans are fatter and drunker
than ever. Figures from 2001 showed that one in five Americans
is obese, up about six per cent from the previous year. As well,
one in four Americans engage in bouts of binge drinking, up 35
per cent from 1995.
(MSNBC)
SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE CHIMP
A chimp who has grown up around
humans at Georgia State University seems to be the first animal
to develop the ability to talk. Kanzi, an adult pygmy chimp, can
communicate by pointing at symbols like some other primates, but
he also seems to have created a few significant words.
Researchers at the University have noticed that Kanzi makes
specific noises when interacting with humans, and makes distinct
sounds even in different contexts, leading researchers to
believe that he has created words for these things. Among the
words Kanzi has created are sounds for "banana," "grapes,",
"juice," and "yes." (BBC)
ONE MORE STEP TOWARDS VEGETARIANISM
There's just no end to the
"messing with Mother Nature" stories. The next Frankenfood
monstrosity we have to look forward to is cuts of meat grown in
a laboratory. NASA has funded a team from Touro College in New
York to figure out a way to grow meat in a petri dish in order
to feed future astronauts and space travellers. But, when they
succeed, you can be sure that lab-grown meat will be in the
supermarket aisles and stuffed between the stale bun of a future
McBurger. So far, the researchers have succeeded in taking live
chunks of muscle tissue from goldfish and growing them by 14 per
cent in a cell-culture fluid. Growing larger chunks of meat is
proving challenging, but eventually they will succeed. Vladimir
Mironov, director of a lab at the Medical University of South
Carolina, says the future of lab-grown meat lies in processed
food such as sausages and hamburgers, but his grand dream is of
growing a perfect filet mignon. Eventually, he says, we will be
able to grow fresh sausage overnight at home in a special
machine just like a home bread maker. Yum!!!
(New Scientist)
IT TAKES BALLS TO HAVE CHILDREN
According to the United Daily
News out of Taiwan, the newest craze for couples wishing to
conceive is to eat mouse testicles. The urban legend has spread
after several couples claimed success despite being diagnosed as
infertile. One couple claimed to have conceived their baby less
than one month after eating six kilos of raw mouse testicles.
(Ananova)
FIVE THUMBS DOWN
The South China Morning Post reports that a
Hong Kong movie may officially be the biggest flop of all time
after it's one-week theatre run attracted a total of 10 viewers.
The film, Psychedelic Cop, earned about 50 bucks. The second
worst-performing film in 2002 was Colour of Pain, which earned
about 300 bucks over its two-week run.
(Ananova)