FAITH: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

An NY Times article discusses the quandaries faced by Muslims serving in the US military with conflicting loyalties between their faith and their country. According to another article, Nidal Malik Hassan was tormented by whether it was acceptable for a Muslim in the service of infidel to take arms against another Muslim. His solution was to frag 13 of his fellow soldiers.

To recap: If you're a Muslim, you can kill other Muslims (witness the daily torrent of suicide attacks in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan). But you can't kill a fellow Muslim if you're hired by the infidel to do so.

Hassan's actions have already earned kudos from one prominent radical cleric. I also foresee a paean to Hassan in the next episode of Al-Zawahiri's Playhouse. When they put him on trial, you can bet that he'll have many fans and supporters among the Faithful.

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WACKY: Qaddafi's Surreal UN Performance

This NY Times write-up of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's address to the UN highlights some zany moments. Qaddafi believes that the General Assembly, not the Security Council, should wield the power of the UN. He also suggested that the UN should to investigate the Israeli hand in Kennedy's assassination and the military-industrial involvement in the swine flu pandemic. My favorite part is when the self-styled King of Kings of Africa refers to Obama as one of "our sons" and welcomes the prospect of an eternal Obama presidency, thus fundamentally failing to grasp the nature of our democracy. Years of unrestrained autocratic rule has evidently not improved the Colonel's grasp on reality. Indeed, Reagan's dismissal of the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution as a "flake" was not far off base. link

SCIENCE: Eagles Roc'ed Maori World

Paleontologists have found evidence that an enormous, now-extinct, New Zealand eagle may have preyed on humans as late as the Middle Ages. Needless to say, this bird rocs! link

HEALTH: Sigg, River Guide or River Cutthroat?

In the cheerful magical land of Lorwyn (Switzerland for my non-magical readers), the Sigg water bottle company prides itself on ecological awareness. The company is always looking to protect its customers and the world at large. Thus, unlike other water bottle makers, Sigg abjures the use of a dangerous, evil chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) that is known by credible scientists to cause men to grow breasts, women to weep excessively and children to become feckless changelings.

But in the dark mirror world of Shadowmoor, the Sigg company was secretly using BPA in its products all along and only recently disclosed this fact to an outraged public. It seems that Sigg has cut its own throat with this public relations disaster, since their brand has been championed by the most sanctimonious of eco-zealots and the most panicky of suburban moms. I wonder how hypocrisy affects the flavor of drinking water?

The irony is that despite alarming animal studies and high levels of BPA in human urine, the compound has yet to be proven to increase risk of endocrine disorders or birth defects in humans. The Food and Drug Administration still considers BPA to be safe for use in food containers.

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WEIRD: God Man Needs Underage Girls

The 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard has suddenly been solved. Dugard walked into a police station in Concord along with her alleged kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, who had imprisoned her in a shed in his backyard for 18 years. During this time, Garrido fathered 2 children by Dugard with the complicity of Garrido's wife. The children had never been to school. The so-called family's reasons for coming forward are not yet clear, but there's a great deal of religious wackjobbery involved. Like George W. Bush, Garrido talks to God, who bade him to spread the gospel of "God's Desire" on the UC Berkeley campus. Until now, I had thought such things were only possible in Utah and Austria. link

HEALTH CARE: Eschew Obfuscation

I hate the booklet describing the terms of my health insurance. It's written in a deliberately opaque manner designed to confuse and demoralize. The complexity of the coverage terms and payment procedures can dissuade slow-witted or impatient policy holders from seeking medical services or reimbursements.

An Op-Ed piece in the NY Times spells out efforts by the Rhode Island health insurance commission to simplify the language of insurance policies. link

HEALTH CARE: Godwin's Law Writ Large

W.B. Yeast can no longer sit in the sideline's of our nation's healthcare debate. For now until he becomes too despondent to lay finger to keyboard, he will strive to provide his readers with the day's choicest idiocy on the topic over which our nation has abandoned its powers of reason.

The NY Times today attempts to dispel rumors from highly credible news sources that the wicked Democrats are organizing Nazi-like "death panels" to off troublesome seniors not on board with the President's scheme for forced collectivization of medicine.

In short, the national debate on healthcare is already over, as per Godwin's Law.

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