Armed neo-Nazis patroling Sanford, FL:
Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are "prepared" for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect "white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety" in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. "We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it," he says. "We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over."
Because nothing diffuses racial tension like gun-toting racial separatists patrolling an already on-edge community.
Some pro-equality activists don't like what other pro-equality activists do with their money.
A survey for your mothers. (HT: Joe.My.God.)
Only dubiously witty, but unexpectedly fun: Nicholas Cage does John Cage.
Apparently, Los Angeles isn't superficial, New York drives aren't that bad, and Miami isn't full of fit people.
PinkIsTheNewBlog has a pic of Zac Efron's bum.
Andrew Sullivan on America's bad religion:
"When I go and see young people, their image of Christianity these days is one of judgment, intolerance and to some extent bigotry and politics," Sullivan said. "They associate it with one political party in this country, because of the fusion of evangelical and ultra-orthodox Catholics with the Republican Party. They don't see it as the message of Jesus, they don't see it any more as a message of love and forgiveness. They see it as a bunch of people trying to control their lives through political mechanisms.
Gallup probes American religiosity:
… it’s no surprise that all of the “top” ten [religious] states are in the south save Utah and Oklahoma, which, as Abbie Smith will attest, may as well be in the south. It’s also no surprise that the least religious states are in New England, with the proportion of “very religious” being 23% in New Hampshire and Vermont, 25% in Maine, and 28% in Massachusetts …
What did surprise me was the 32% of Americans who see themselves as “nonreligious" … Since roughly 10% of Americans don’t believe in God, and only about 1.5% go so far as to describe themselves as “atheists” or “agnostics,” I wonder how many of these 32% of “nonreligious” Americans are secret atheists who just don’t like the label, or are unwilling to confess to an interviewer that—horrors!—they don’t believe in God.
Teen sells kidney for Apple products:
He received 220,000 yuan ($35,000) for the transplant, gave the student 22,000 yuan ($3,500) and shared the remaining money with the other defendants and several medical staff involved in the operation, Xinhua said.
When the student returned home, he was asked how he could afford a new iPhone and an iPad and he told his mother that he sold one of his kidneys
High up in Chile's Atacama desert — at almost 17,000 feet above sea level, where heads ache, noses bleed, and "dizziness overcomes the researchers toiling in the shadow of the Licancabur volcano" — scientists are turning Chile into one of the world's elite destinations for astronomical research. But for how long? From the Times:
At the same time, the financial crisis in rich industrialized countries has raised concerns that funding for some ambitious astronomy projects could face constraints. In the United States, a Congressional panel last year proposed killing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope before a compromise spending plan saved the project.
“It would be very sad for humankind if we were so spiritually decadent to forgo the pleasures of consciousness and of knowledge,” said Mr. Mosterín, reflecting on the funding choices political leaders need to make. “These things make human beings a very interesting animal indeed.”
