I kill a lot of time on Wikipedia. Ancient and Medieval history is usually my thing. I just love how one one quick search can just spider into a multi-hour smorgasborg of topics.

I was reading about the Catholic church’s Medieval inquisitions a few days ago and found myself kind of slack-jawed at the correlations between the process back then and what is happening now.

According to the wiki entry:
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I was reading a Wired article about the statistics of death in the United States compared to the “Politics of Fear” type shit you see on the news left and right. To believe the news, I’d be insane to not flee New York for the hills because Al Qaeda’s going to kill my skinny, white ass any second now and if I was smart enough to head for the mountains, I should probably dig a bunker because they’re going to nuke that shit too. However, Wired points out the actual statistical reality of mortality in the States, complete with a nice little color-coded chart á la Dept. of Homeland Security’s absolutely retarded threat advisory chart.

Sanely speaking, death by terrorism ranks second to lowest (lowest being that radical, extremist, Jihad-freak: Carbon Monoxide). The flu, a hernia, driving and just about everything else you might prefer to die of all rank much, much higher.

What caught my eye, was the fact that you’re more likely to be shot by law enforcement (3949) than killed by a terrorist (3147). I wonder what the numbers might rise to if being killed by the government, such as being shipped off to Iraq or being neglected in New Orleans after Katrina were to be factored in. Who would be the bigger killer of American citizens? Al Qaeda or the Bush administration?

I fired up my usual slew of news sites this morning and just about spewed coffee everywhere when I saw this gem (highlights and “D’Oh” are mine):

My first mental picture was the eight Canadian citizens being slaughtered, Aztec-style as penance for George Bush’s inability to reign in the foul language when on the microphone. Hail Satan!

Anyway, what was obviously an editorial screw-up was fixed in a matter of minutes, but not before I had the presence of mind to take a screengrab.

I’d have to say that the funniest, balls-out, career-making/destroying thing I’ve seen all year was Stephen Colbert’s monologue at the White House Press Corps dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I downloaded a BitTorrent of the speech he gave and was locked to my monitor, slack-jawed, incredulous and laughing my ass off at lines like:

“Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center.”
“And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It’s a mallomar is what I’m describing, a seasonal cookie. Joe Wilson is here, the most famous husband since Desi Arnez. And of course he brought along his lovely wife Valerie Plame. Oh, my god!
Oh, what have I said. I am sorry, Mr. President, I meant to say he brought along his lovely wife, Joe Wilsons wife. Pat Fitzgerald is not here tonight? Dodged a bullet. And we can’t forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq.”

The insults and and cracks go on and on and leave the President and First Lady red-faced and visibly offended. The audience seems fluctuates between muttering indignation and not knowing whether or not it’s too inflammatory to laugh along at Colbert’s jokes. It’s obvious that everyone in the room is extremely uncomfortable. This is one video that has to be seen. Stephen Colbert has plenty balls.

Here’s links to low-rez WMV and a slightly higher-rez QuickTime video file. For best quality, you should go for the BitTorrent file, but you’ll need to have a client installed. I recommend Azureus. Lastly, you can always try searching YouTube for clips.