insignificant thoughts

“Nobody should be made to feel like a freak or a weirdo,” Weir said, “of course unless you want that.”

During the telecast of Weir’s long program from Pacific Coliseum last week, commentator Alain Goldberg from the French-language RDS network suggested Weir sets a “bad example” for other male skaters because “they’ll think all the boys who skate will end up like him.” Goldberg and fellow commentator Claude Mailhot also said “we should make him pass a gender test.”

Australia’s Channel Nine received complaints from viewers about similar comments.

Both stations have issued apologies. The Quebec council of gays and lesbians has said they aren’t sufficient and plans to file a formal grievance with Canadian broadcast authorities.

Weir said he is not interested in apologies or mea culpas.

“I’m totally for freedom on speech and voicing your opinion, so I can’t, like, have them fired,” said Weir, 25, who finished fifth at the 2006 Olympics and sixth here. “I’ve heard worse in bathrooms about me. It’s not a big issue for me that they said it. I just didn’t want other kids to have that same issue.

“I want them to think before they speak. I want them to think about not only the person they’re talking about but also the other people like that person. I want them to think about the other generations of people that they’re affecting by talking like that. … These two men were not criticizing my skating. It was them criticizing me as a person.”

Wow…

I guess it makes sense, though. Canada is still bitter that their “own the podium” initiative is falling flat on its face faster than Sidney Crosby fell into the net in Sunday’s game, and Australia hasn’t had much to cheer about except for Torah Bright and Lassila winning the only two golds the country has brought home in the entire competition thus far (that’s 2 out of their big total of 3 medals).

Weir’s an easy target. He’s out there, flamboyant, and unapologetic, so I’m not at all impressed with anyone who can find things to insult about him. In the end, he lets his skating do the talking.

Speaking of skating, how many medals did Canada earn on the ice?

1.

In ice-dancing.

And Australia, for all their shit-talking?

0.

Yeah, exactly.

Say what you want about Weir, but he handled his critics with a lot more class than his critics exhibited.

Let’s face it, if the New York Times or the Washington Post broke the Edwards story no one would be asking if the paper should be in the running for the Pulitzer.  It’s only a question because it’s the Enquirer.

For the record, I’m not saying the Enquirer deserves to win.  But I am glad it’s in contention.  The Enquirer humiliated all those newspapers that consider themselves Pulitzer-worthy – the ones that treated the true-blue liberal Edwards as a serious candidate and a serious political force in the campaign while the “trashy” Enquirer knew better.

Brilliant, yet again.

Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner was supposed to be executed tomorrow, but last Tuesday a Gray County, Texas, District Court judge pushed the date back one month, to March 24. Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993, awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the Northwestern University Journalism School’s Medill Innocence Project have shot numerous holes in the prosecution’s case. But Texas officials refuse to conduct a simple DNA test that could point to the condemned man’s innocence or cement his guilt.

They won’t even run the test. Why? Because they probably know what it’ll find.

There’s enough meat in this case to at least re-examine it. Yet again, we stand on the doorway of an innocent man being executed and instead of doing all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen, Texas is doing all it can to make sure it does.

Go read the story so you can be as outraged as I am right now.

This, my friends, is why I do not and cannot support capital punishment.

According to James Hirsen of Examiner.com, Susan Sarandon had an odd night recently:

Sarandon attended the third anniversary of The Box in New York’s Lower East Side.  A transsexual cabaret performer named Rose Wood engaged in projectile vomiting on stage and hit Sarandon with it. Standing nearby were Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. According to Wood it was not intended as an affront to the actress and she didn’t take it that way. “Apparently [Sarandon] got a big kick out of it. She squealed with surprise and loved it when several handsome gentlemen wiped it off of her. She had a ball! I saw her assistant downstairs afterward, and he was moved by it! She was in great spirits,” Wood told the New York Press. 

Nothing says fun like vomit. 

Wow. Just. Wow.

It’s funny how the same people who deride Apple’s marketshare in the personal computing space are the ones that don’t see an issue with Apple smashing them in the mobile space.

Next up? RIM, and I don’t see it being too long before they overtake them either.

Incidentally, I still don’t count Symbian because no one buys a phone because it has the Symbian OS; they buy a phone that happens to run Symbian (like the Nokia N-series).

Last night, “ABC Evening News” aired a report that showed a Southern Illinois University assistant professor causing unintended acceleration in a Toyota Avalon. Rather than focusing on sticky accelerator pedals or floormats — the impetus for Toyota’s two major recalls — professor David Gilbert used an electrical short to create an error in the electronic throttle, leading to uncontrollable acceleration that also was not noted as an error by the onboard computer.

It’s a vivid report that raises more questions. Most glaring to us, the report doesn’t say exactly what type of electrical short is sent through the car. It only says it is the type of short caused by moisture or corrosion. The video also shows the car being brought to a controlled stop using brakes and shifting the transmission into Neutral. The big revelation is that the diagnostic tools never record an error at all. Toyota continues to deny — even this morning — that there is any problem with its electronic throttle.

That’s gonna leave a mark, right Toyota?

Seriously, Toyotas have issues and Toyota has been doing a masterful job of diminishing them. That minimizing is getting harder to do as people are coming forward more and more.

This isn’t a left-wing conspiracy that’s bringing Toyota down, it’s Toyota.

Barack Obama admitted in 2008, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” (Video).  Obama also admitted in 2008 that cap and trade would bankrupt the coal industry. (Video) In 2009 he urged the US Senate not to believe his own misinformation on higher energy costs and pass cap and trade legislation anyway. And despite all of the evidence that the global warming hoax was manufactured, Barack Obama still wants to ram the democrat’s destructive cap and trade legislation through Congress.

In the age of the internet, political lies are easily debunked.

RICHMOND — State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

Marshall was among more than 20 people, mostly Christian pastors and clergy, who gathered for the press conference in the General Assembly Building.

*facepalm*

I swear, there are a lot of people who need to be smited in this world, and this guy just jumped to the front of the line. What people will say and fight for and advocate while waving around a cross and a bible never ceases to amaze me.

Now granted, I’m a believer myself, but if I ever said something this idiotic, I’d shoot myself strictly on principle.

In San Francisco, of course, because only in a completely shallow shithole could you think that everyone who lost something in Haiti is just dying to align their Shakras and practice the lotus position.

No red carpet, just a garbage-lined walkway.

I’m so embarrassed.

I reckon you were probably way more offended at my headline than you are at the photo accompanying this post. I expected that.

The idiot in the photo above is a fine example of the kind of stereotype shattering that went on at CPAC. This stunningly beautiful young lady believes that real men marry women (the clear implication, of course, is that gay men aren’t real men).

Well, that’s fine. I say real women don’t go to conferences and hand out stupid offensive bumperstickers with bad makeup and ugly faces.

Lady Gaga’s Cell Phone Hairdo

Spotted on New York’s Daily News, this strange hairdo, even for Lady Gaga. She’s filming a video for a track called “Telephone”.

emily | 4:48 PM | Cell Phone Fashion |

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When people ask why I love Lady Gaga so much, I just have to point them to pictures like this.

She’s nucking futs, and I love it.