Gadabout, the Details mag blog for the modern man-about-town, says Facebook is for pansies in general, but if you’re “pokin’” you’re dead to them: In a few short years, Facebook has leaked out of the college dormitory like some rare tropical disease and has begun infecting grown men in disturbingly vast numbers. The fastest-growing demographic among Facebook’s 64 million users is those over 25. More than half of MySpace’s 110 million users are older than 35. The hosts, once infected, exhibit a tendency to “superpoke” each other, hyperventilate over friend counts, and share their thoughts about the latest episode of […]
RIP: Albert Hofmann, Father Of LSD, Dead At 102
EROWID: Albert Hofmann passed away at his home at 9am on Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 102. He will be missed. Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland in 1906. He graduated from the University of Zürich with a degree in chemistry in 1929 and went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland. With the laboratory goal of working towards isolation of the active principles of known medicinal plants, Hofmann worked with Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima) for several years, before moving on to the study of Claviceps purpurea (ergot) and ergot alkaloids.Over […]
CONFESSIONAL: Pope Regrets Misspent Hitler Youth
BBC: Speaking at a youth rally in New York, he said his teenage years had been “marred by a sinister regime”. The Pope was a Hitler Youth member as a teen, usual for young Germans at the time, and was conscripted by the German army near the end of World War II. As a teenager, the pope was forced to join the Hitler Youth and he was conscripted into the German army towards the end of World War II, serving briefly in an anti-aircraft corps. He deserted the German army towards the end of the war and was briefly held […]
PENANCE: Pope Lays Hands On Abuse Survivors
CNN: Bernie McDaid was an 11-year-old altar boy when his priest began molesting him, one of some 50 boys who have said they were molested by the same man. Like so many victims of abuse, McDaid’s young life spiraled. He turned to drugs and alcohol in his teen years, struggling to cope with what “Father B” had done to him. On Thursday, he finally got a chance to do something he’d hoped for decades: He met with the Holy Father and told him about the abuse he had suffered.”I basically told him that I was an altar boy … a […]
HERE COMES THE JUDGE: The Pope Takes Manhattan
NEW YORK TIMES: Let me say at the outset that I am your classic stumbling, grumbling, trying-to-sort-it-all-out American Catholic. I consider myself a practicing Catholic because I dearly need the practice. My family and I attend Sunday Mass with some regularity, though not always at the same parish — in case anyone is taking attendance. Our older child goes to catechism class, as will our younger child when she is of age. I have eaten enough stale crumb cake at after-Mass socials to earn penance for at least a few of my many venial sins. Pope Benedict XVI plans to […]
NEWS CLUES: ‘Two-Heads Better Than None’ Edition
STRANGER THAN FICTION: Two-Headed Baby Worshiped As A God In India A BABY born with two faces is doing well one month on from her birth. Tot Lali was born in a northern Indian village with two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes – but only two ears. Hundreds of pilgrims have visited Lali, worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, and her impoverished parents to touch her feet out of respect and receive blessings. The baby has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini, 25 miles from New Delhi. When she left […]
CHINESE DEMOCRACY: Just Do It
Boy on his father’s shoulders, Paris, earlier today. [Photo by VESPA RIDING GRANNY] NPR: Police in the French capital said Monday that the last part of the Olympic torch relay in the city had been cancelled after they were forced to douse the symbolic flame several times and carry it in a bus to avoid anti-China protesters. The announcement followed a day in which the police were forced to play a game of cat-and-mouse with protesters in an effort to keep them at bay as the relay took place. Security officials in Paris extinguished the Olympic torch five separate times […]
You Can Kill A Man, But You Cannot Kill His Dreams
BBC: To many, 40 years after his death, Martin Luther King has become a sort of secular saint. In 1968, many whites in Tennessee saw things differently. He was a rabble-rouser, an agitator, possibly a Communist. In a society built on open racial divisions, his arrival in Memphis in support of striking black sanitation workers was a source of white anger and resentment. In that very different America, not everyone was saddened by his death. Dr King died of a bullet wound to the throat just after 6pm on 4 April. He had been standing on the balcony of the […]
THE FLINTSTONES: Thank You For Smoking
Sure, we know what you’re thinking: It is OBSCENE that the cigarette companies used to be allowed to advertise on kid’s cartoons! But let’s all just take a breath here. Fact is, the science is inconclusive. Archaeologists have YET to offer even a shred of scientific evidence to counter Fred’s claim that nothing took the edge off another nerve-jangling day in pre-historic times like a smooth-filtered Winston. That’s a fact, Jack.
STUDY: The Drugs Don’t Work Anymore
THE INDEPENDENT: They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the “happiness pills” that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year. But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don’t work. The finding will send shock waves through the medical profession and patients and raises serious questions about the regulation of the multinational pharmaceutical industry, which was accused yesterday of withholding data on the drugs. The publication in 1994 of […]
CONFETTI BETTY: Saint John Gets His Monica On
BY AMY Z. QUINN Cindy McCain totally just had a Hillary Clinton moment. There she was, wearing that same expression, eyes locked on her husband as he denied having an affair with a different (though, not dissimilar-looking?) blond and trashing those who would besmirch his honor, in this case, The New York Times. We’ve seen that look before, just as we’ve all watched this entire drama before, even down to the part where his staff tries to make the woman buzz off. Monica Lewinsky was shipped over to the Pentagon, supposedly Vicki Iseman got a stern talking-to at Union Station. […]
BEYOND THE GRASSY KNOLL: Dallas D.A. Finds Alleged Smoking Gun Proof Of JFK Conspiracy In A Safe
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: The Dallas County district attorney’s office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse. It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald […]