Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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That would be China’s solution to making the air safer to breath for the Olympic athletes in Beijing during the upcoming Olympic games. Never mind the fact that they’ve known since 2001 that they would be host to the games and that they promised the pollution levels would be down by the time of the games. They’ve had well over six years to work on their pollution, but has China done anything?

That would be a big fat NO.

So, on July 20th, 2008 all building construction will come to a halt. No construction, digging, pouring or laying concrete, and no outdoor spray-painting. Also, some 19 businesses have also been told to cut their emissions by 30% as well. So basically, they’re hoping that this 3 week halt of construction will lower the pollution levels in time for the games. A three week period to do what they could have been working on for the past couple of years. Talk about a last ditch effort combined with stupidity.

I’m still at a loss as to why Beijing is hosting the games anyway.

In 1964 a riot broke out in the 7,000+ crowd that had filled the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England after a member spat at the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Clearly this was not the band’s fault, they can hardly be held for the reactions of fans (and possibly non-fans) in an audience. But after the incident, the council of Blackpool enacted a ban on the Rolling Stones which forbade them from playing in Blackpool again. That ban has no been lifted:

After being banned for almost half-century from the English seaside resort, the Rolling Stones are free to perform there again, the local council said on Thursday. (source)

Please note, Peter Callow, the Blackpool council leader went on to say that, if the Rolling Stones would be willing to forgive them, they would forgive them. In other words, the ban is officially lifted Rolling Stones, but we want an apology and forgiveness from you first. Then we’ll officially give you one.

Never mind that the insult was dealt to the Stones first, and not Blackpool.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood - Tell them that their act of foolishness is forgiven, that incident is behind you now and then just continue on as you have been. Who needs Blackpool? Pft!

He announced that he wanted to become the boyfriend of one particular woman but would remain chaste. His love for her has never been questioned, and he has supported her and her child financially, but the ruling has come down and the Rev. Sante Sguotti has been removed from his office.

The Rev. Sante Sguotti can no longer work as pastor in his Monterosso parish and cannot hear confessions from the faithful, the diocese of Padua said in a statement. Sguotti remains a priest and can celebrate Mass, however.

Sguotti made headlines in August when he went on national television to say he was in love with a woman and wanted to be her boyfriend publicly while remaining chaste.

(full article)

Now, from a historical point of view, it wasn’t until relatively [in the history of Christianity] that the clergy were forbidden from being married and had to remain chaste. Read the bible ladies and gentlemen, no where does it say that a priest has to be celibate and unmarried in order to lead a congregation. It wasn’t until one pope came forward and changed this that this went into effect. The fact that they do allow some of priests to marry but not all based on region is rather absurd.

I have always been a big fan of Japanese cellphones. They’re light years ahead of any model you can get here in the US in terms of function, capabilities, and durability. This just proves it:

The handheld phone, equipped with various devices that can measure your pulse or the amount of steps you’ve taken in a day, dispenses heath advice after you’ve punched in statistics such as gender, age and weight.

And you can also exhale into the phone and it will tell you whether its time to reach for the breath mints.

You can read the rest of the article here. Now while I’m all for being concerned with one’s health I have to raise an eyebrow at the breath tester function bit of it. That just might be going a bit too far.

Of course, if you’re a vampire it might be nice to test people’s breath and see if they’ve eaten garlic recently.

The Iraq government has failed time and time again to hit the benchmarks that have been set for it so now President Bush is forced to call in the big guns.

July 17, 2007 - Increasingly frustrated by the Iraqi government’s failure to meet a series of defined benchmarks, President George W. Bush today proposed sending a group of giant robots known as the Transformers™ to Iraq.

When questioned about his decision, President Bush had the following to say:

“I’d like to see what would happen if Al Qaeda tried to attack one of our tanks, and instead the tank got up on its legs and turned out to be a robot and started shooting at them,” Mr. Bush said. “That would be so cool.”

(full article)