It's a good question.

Why Some Churches Have Ejector Pews

Little girl to priest: Why is it called 'Good Friday' if that's when they killed Jesus?

Homestead, Florida

via Overheard Everywhere, Feb 16, 2008

The Round Mound of Rebound Smacks Down Conservative Fake Christians.

I love me some Charles Barkley.

"Charles Barkley, former NBA great, appears with Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room, and slams conservative "fake" christians. He also states he plans a future run for Governor of Alabama."

Japan still equal parts awesomely cute and slightly creepy.

Japan’s Hottest Schoolgirl Moms : Japan Probe:

"Earlier this week, Let’s Go to School aired the “I Wore My Daughter’s Uniform Contest,” a beauty competition in which mothers of junior high and high school girls wore their daughter’s school uniforms. All of the women were in their 30’s or 40’s, and a few shocked the audience with how they could pass for actual schoolgirls!"

Joshiko-moms-jpnprbedotcom
by jpnvideos

Legal system is kinda broken.

FOXNews.com - Straight Talk: DNA Testing and the Legal System - Opinion:

"...Garret found that a variety of factors contributed to the initial wrongful convictions.

False eyewitness testimony was the overwhelming factor (79 percent of the cases), followed by faulty forensic science (55 percent), and false testimony from informants working for the police (18 percent).

In 16 percent of the cases, the defendant actually falsely confessed to the crime. False confessions are common among young and mentally ill suspects, particularly when subjected to harsh interrogation from police.

...Garret found that of the 200 people convicted for crimes for which they were later exonerated, just eighteen were granted reversals by the appellate courts.

Of the rest, 67 had their appeals denied with no written ruling at all. In 63 cases, the appellate court's opinion referred to the defendant's guilt. In 12 other cases, it referred to the "overwhelming" evidence of guilt.

...Keep in mind, these are all cases in which the defendant was later determined to be actually innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. More alarmingly, Garret found in his research of these 200 cases that "even after DNA testing became available, courts and law enforcement also posed obstacles to conducting DNA testing, and then denied relief even after DNA proved innocence."

...The same overeager prosecutors, corrupt or incompetent forensics experts and cops, mistaken eyewitnesses, and indifferent courts that prosecute and oversee these cases also move thousands of cases through the system for which there's no safety net of DNA testing.

If it's this difficult for an innocent person to clear his name in cases where there's science available to deliver a definitive answer, imagine the people now wrongly sitting in a jail cell for drug offenses, theft, or for violent crimes for which there was no available biological evidence—people for whom science offers little hope for relief."

The creeping loss of civil liberties and privacy...

For example... drug testing.

Reason Magazine - The Golden Age:

"...How did we get to this strange land, where anyone who dreams of working a cash register at Burger King must consent to high-tech bio-seizures so unreasonable they would have made James Madison irrigate his breeches in outrage?

...In that bygone era [1986], the idea of a suspicionless bio-seizure was still controversial. The American Federation of Government Employees decried the commission’s “witch-hunt mentality.” Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) called the idea “idiotic.” Jay Miller, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Illinois affiliate, said it was “like using an elephant gun to shoot a mouse.”

So the government took baby steps. In September 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order mandating testing for federal employees... Two years later, Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. While the Act didn’t specifically mandate testing, it required every company doing business with the federal government to maintain a drug-free workplace. Those that didn’t would lose their contracts. “We get an overwhelming number of calls a day,” a director at one drug-testing lab told the Tulsa World after the law went into effect. “More than 90 percent say, ‘I’ve got to do something, but I don’t understand what. Can you help?’ Most of them are not pleased. It’s just another cost, a significant cost to a small company.”

While many employers resented their conscription into the War on Drugs, the policy had a domino effect. As soon as some companies started making prospective employees submit biological résumés, no organization wanted to end up as the preferred haven of the pharmacologically incorrect. So even companies that weren’t doing business with the government felt compelled to break out the tiny plastic cups. By 1996, 81 percent of the large businesses surveyed by the American Management Association said they were doing drug testing of some kind.

Today, workplace drug testing is a billion-dollar industry...

...Had the federal government started knocking on our front doors in 1988, cup in hand, demanding compulsory urinalysis, there would have been widespread outrage. Instead, in a move akin to Tom Sawyer convincing his pals to give him their marbles for the opportunity to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence, the government outsourced its soaking of the Fourth Amendment to the private sector. It was one of the most ingenious policy decisions of the last 20 years."

Cop Douchebaggery and Jackassery.

Deputy dumps quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US wheelchair-dump deputy charged:

"A US sheriff's deputy who dumped a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair has been charged with felony abuse.

Charlette Marshall-Jones was booked at the same police station where the incident happened - in Tampa, Florida."

FOXNews.com - Baltimore Officer Suspended After Video Surfaces of Him Berating Skateboarder:

"The Baltimore Police Department suspended a police officer after a video surfaced on the Internet showing the officer berating two kids for skateboarding, putting one of them in a headlock and pushing the boy on the concrete.



..."You back-talk me, I'm not your father," Rivieri says. "You hear me? I'm not your father. You give that attitude to your father. You give it to me, I'll smack you upside the head. Shut your mouth, I'm talking."

...In the video, after Rivieri pushes the kid on the ground, he takes his skateboard and puts it in his patrol vehicle.

When he returns, he points his finger in the kid's face.

"Obviously your parents don't put a foot in your butt quite enough because you don't understand the meaning of respect," Rivieri says. "First of all, you better learn how to speak. I'm not 'man,' I'm not 'dude.' I am Officer Rivieri. The sooner you learn that, the longer you're going to live in this world. Because you go around doing this kind of stuff, somebody's going to kill you..."

Skateboard hating cop caught on video for 2nd temper tantrum - Boing Boing:

"Salvatore Rivieri, the Baltimore police officer who can be seen in a YouTube video wearing cute shorts and knocking a skinny 14-year-old skateboarder to the ground (David posted about it yesterday) is the star of another video that's recently surfaced.

This time he confronts Billy Friebele, an artist from Washington D.C., who was videotaping at the Harbor last summer.

Friebele told ABC2 [a Baltimore TV station] he was taping the reactions of passersby to a box he was moving with a remote controlled car. Officer Friebele is seen on tape kicking the box off of the car and then kicking the car. The officer then orders Friebele to leave the area."

Redbelt.

A martial arts flick with a great cast [Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay] and an outstanding director [David Mamet]?

S-O-L-D.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue? Eh, not so much.

But this rocks.

They should make all models box. You know, in my humble opinion.

Marisa Miller [SI Cover Girl '08] Boxing Training.

Oh, they're real.

Deadly with a ruler, too.

Decent, Churchgoing Wednesday One-Liners

Black dude: Nigga, nuns ain't real.

--Union Square

Overheard by: Gabriel

via Overheard in New York, Feb 13, 2008

Hitler Rap - from the sketch comedy stylings of The Whitest Kids U' Know.

You'd think Hitler couldn't be funny.

You'd be wrong.

[But shoot, Mel Brooks taught us that years ago.]

Apartment in a Box = Awesome.

Ridiculously cool.

Casulo: Complete Furniture in a Crate - Boing Boing Gadgets:

"when I saw 'Casulo'—a small crate filled with all the furniture one needs to live a modest life—unfolded by its designers in the video below. While it's an admirable bit of prototype engineering, like a thesis project for a Doctorate of Ikea, it's the clear tone its connotive portent sends ringing in my head that makes it most laudable. To be able to cast out all one's things, step into a pregnant room, and unfold a new home in a few minutes? That's a seductive fantasy."

Truth.

Fightlinker » Blog Archive » Jews go to Hell:

"...it’s always nice when someone wishes you to have eternal happiness. But it’s not so fucking nice when it’s a conditional eternal happiness, and if you don’t meet that condition you don’t get salvation. And hey … if you’re not saved, where do you go? Fucking hell. And you burn forever like the goddamn heathen Jew sinner you are.

That’s always been a big rub for me and religion … how can anyone support something that condemns so many people to something as horrific as hell? I’d like to think that any God out there isn’t going to give a shit if I’m a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim or a Pastafarian for that matter. I figure when I die I’m gonna meet him up at the gates of wherever and he’s gonna say “Well Ryan, you were a good guy and you did a lot of good things. Since I’m not an egotistical asshole, I don’t mind that you didn’t believe in me, because you followed the tenets of what I was all about. Actually the fact that you did this on your own and not because of the whole bullshit heaven/hell reward/punishment thing makes you even better than everyone else.”

And then we’d high-five, drink some beers, and hit the strip club."

Accepting Reality.

Counterfeit Wednesday One-Liners

Restaurant manager to two underage chicks drinking wine: Can I see your fake IDs?

--Parigot, Grand & Lafayette

Overheard by: yoni

via Overheard in New York, Feb 13, 2008

john.he.is

The John McCain response to the "Obama - Yes, We Can" viral video.

[Okay, not really, but this is damn funny.]

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES.

A million times, yes.



Via xkcd.