Things you should read

I have some demands. Why? Because I like the mental fiction of having a supposed willing audience with which I can makes orders and demands that are carried out with brutal efficiency. What are these commands? Well, I was going to ask that someone fly a plane into an IRS building, but since someone already did that, it's just going to be reading related.

Content and demands, on a Sunday. I'm too good to you. How is this different from the Cheap Blogging Crutch? Well, it's on a weekend and this comprises articles I couldn't find a way to tack cheap dick jokes onto. More serious stuff, I guess. Onward.

For Scots, a Scourge Unleashed by a Bottle
A story of Scotland, “Wreck the Hoose Juice”, and a nation trying to come to grips with entrenched alcoholism and the specific beverage that they seem to want to blame for it: Buckfast. It may not have made me feel sympathy for Scotland, but I do want to buy a case of Buckfast.

The Substitute
Brad Plumer looks at the fading possibilities for climate change reform and how successful the EPA can be trying to regulate pollution and emissions now that it is likely to be the only entity capable of doing so, what with the Senate deciding to become irrelevant. Now you know what those lawsuits from Texas and Virginia are meant to do: pretty much make sure we don't do anything to avoid catching our death of heat and flooding.

Sticker Shock
John Cohn looks at the methods and madness of health insurance companies and why they jack rates. In addition he lays out why this means reform needs to be passed (as if you already didn't understand that) and further explains why piecemeal legislation will not work to reform the problem and stop the rate jacking.

After Summer Olympics, Empty Shells in Beijing
The New York Times looks at Beijing and the massive Olympic structures they built for the 2008 games. The verdict? They pretty much got used that week and haven't been touched since. Most striking is the status of the Bird's Nest stadium. It has no tenant, no real future events scheduled, and is right now a de facto gift shop and is packed with snow so children can sled down the aisles. The 2004 Athens games probably bankrupted Greece. I'm sure that bodes well for Vancouver, London, Sochi, and Rio.

How Christian Were the Founders?
The New York Times explores the radical, purely politically motivated attempts that the Texas education board is taking up in an attempt to rewrite textbooks to push Christianity and conservatism at the expense of science, known verifiable history, and common sense, and how they're decisions will likely affect the textbooks of around 40+ states. I bet you didn't know that Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, and the Contract With America were some of the most integral events in American history. Well now they are. Just one of the great ways in which this country is being destroyed from the inside in the name of cheap politics.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
Esquire magazine's story about the life of film critic Roger Ebert now that he has lost most of his jaw, the ability to eat, the ability to speak thanks to cancer, and how his outlook and life have changed since. One of the best profile pieces you're likely to read this year.

Roger Ebert's Last Words, con't.
Roger Ebert responds to the article on his own blog, musing on the tone, the shock of seeing the photo they used, how he doesn't want people to get the idea that he's dying, and what he wants people to take away from the article.

McDonald's Has a Chef?
TIME follows around McDonald's head chef, Daniel Coudreaut, and looks at just what exactly it is he does in a job that most people expect is an attempt at irony. It's an interesting portrait at just what a man who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and ran the kitchen at the Four Seasons does at McDonald's and the arduous, creatively crushing nature, and logistical nightmare coming up with food ideas for Mickey D's is when the sheer size and food production timetables, schedules, and production lines of an organization with as many restaurants as McDonald's has have to be taken into account.

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Matt Taibbi comes back for one more shot at Wall Street and the financial wizards who destroyed the economy. This time he focuses on all the various cons, grifts, scams, and outright thefts the financial and banking sector has engaged in since the global meltdown and how they haven't really learned anything.

Picture of the day

As the world is still a depressing, depressing place, it is our duty to bring you happiness through primitive means. By which we mean... FIRE!!!!! Thankfully the Big Picture blog is here to inform us of the status of two fire festivals that are ongoing, the Scottish based Viking fire festival of Up Helly Aa and the Spanish based fire and horse centered Feast of Saint Anthony the Great.

We eat the pig and together we burn! Burn!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.21

Health Care Industry Throws Away Money On "Pro-Reform" Ads (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins takes a look at all those health care industry ads that they're running in "support" of reform efforts and finds them to be a completely milquetoast nothing flurry of vague statements, fluffy bunnies, and bizarre promises. Enjoy them, this is what promising to hamstring a health care bill in order for "support" gets you. Not cheaper health care, just ads about vague concepts that kinda sound good.

US Jews protest Catholic document on salvation
Apparently Jewish leaders are shocked, shocked, to learn that Catholic bishops view interfaith dialogue as a chance to convert Jews and that Jesus is the only path to salvation. My question is this: what, you haven't noticed that's pretty much been the sole modus operandi of the Catholic Church (other than getting rich and finding some good looking altar boys) for the past, oh, 2,000 years? Still though, what's the big deal? Your book is half of our book. It's just a couple extra pages to read. Plus there's this whole part in our book where the story just repeats pointlessly 4 times. So it's not even like a whole other book. Give it a thought, for the sake of interfaith dialogue.

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo
In case you needed help remembering. Committing acts of torture at Gitmo: not investigated. Documenting acts of torture at Gitmo: not investigated. Giving info to detainees about their torture and torturers: investigated. Isn't it funny how that old bitch Lady Justice works?

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall
Oh, New York Times, how I missed your stories asking us to pity the hardships of the super rich during this economic apocalypse. These poor souls are suffering the indignity of only being worth millions of dollars. How can we not all weep openly for them? I mean other than the fact that everyone has also lost money and that income inequality is at an all time high? But then I look at a man having to sell his estate and his beloved plane collection and I know who really is suffering.

Lockerbie bomber release: Anger grows over hero's welcome for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
Well done Libya, both the UK and US ask you to tone down celebrations for the return of a guy who bombed an airplane and you go out and have the dictator's son meet him in front of cheering throngs. Well done. Oh and great move Scotland, releasing a convicted terrorist who murdered 270 people just because he was sick. It's important that he's allowed to be with his family. Who could have ever foreseen this being a massive clusterfuck of stupid ideas?

The force is strong with Strathclyde

Force is strong for Jedi police

Eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest force listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms, it has emerged.

Strathclyde Police said the officers and two of its civilian staff claimed to follow the faith, which features in the Star Wars movies.

The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review.

Strathclyde was the only force in the UK to admit it had Jedi officers.

This is after 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 Census for England and Wales, and 14,000 in Scotland. I hope, for the sake of the what I assume are the good people of Strathclyde, that these men are not like most people willing to openly identify themselves as Jedi: dressing in brown bath robes, waving around broomsticks while making lightsaber noises, debating Obi-Wan v. Gandalf with the 6 police officers who identified as Hobbits, and awkwardly confronting Peter Mayhew with scripts for new movies.

Preliminary reports say there is no truth to the rumor that Hayden Christiansen was one of the officers, having taken up a new career after that whole acting thing didn't work out as well as he hoped. If you wish to join up with a religion that's only slightly more ridiculous and implausible than all the other ones, visit the Church of Jediism, the Jedi Church, or just set up all your Star Wars figures and start preaching to them from a bible of your own creation.