The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: Panic

Americans Heart Surveillance Cameras

Eli Sanders — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:00:00 -0700

The other day, Dominic asked whether the Boston bombings would cause Americans to love their security cameras harder than ever. Looks like the answer is yes:

Americans overwhelmingly favor installing video surveillance cameras in public places, judging the infringement on their privacy as an acceptable trade-off for greater security from terrorist attacks, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

A week after the Boston Marathon attack, which was unraveled after the release of video footage of the two suspects flushed them out of hiding, 78 percent of people said surveillance cameras were a good idea, the poll found.

But that's what the people of America think. What do the people of Slog think?

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Don't Watch This Video Unless You Want To Watch a 747 Fall Out of the Sky

Goldy — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:28:48 -0700

A 747 cargo plane crashed yesterday at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, shortly after takeoff, killing seven crew members. Warning: Don't watch this video unless you want to watch video of a 747 falling out of the sky and exploding on impact.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility, but there's no sign of a missile or anything. Instead, this has more of a look of a catastrophic failure due to cargo shifting on takeoff.

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Elvis Has Left the Building!

Goldy — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:02:24 -0700

Oops...

The Mississippi man charged with sending poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a state judge was released from jail on Tuesday, federal official said, though the reason for the release wasn’t immediately clear.

Jeff Woodfin, chief deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Oxford, Miss., said Paul Kevin Curtis has been released from custody.

A search of Curtis's belongings reportedly turned up no trace of ricin or ricin processing. Curtis, an Elvis impersonator, claims that he was framed.

UPDATE: The AP now reports that charges have been dropped against Curtis.

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Scary Headline of the Day: "North Korea Approves Nuclear Strike on US"

Goldy — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:11:03 -0700

Looks like somebody's watched The Mouse That Roared a few too many times:

The North Korean army said Thursday it had final approval to launch “merciless” military strikes on the United States, involving the possible use of “cutting-edge” nuclear weapons.

In a statement published by the official KCNA news agency, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) said it was formally informing Washington that reckless US threats would be “smashed by ... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means”.

We surrender!

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"It's Unsinkable!"

Goldy — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:17:39 -0700

I sure hope it's true that Boeing has engineered a fail-safe solution to the Dreamliner's self-immolating battery problem, but their confident claims have that disturbing famous last words ring to it:

Two top Boeing executives delivered an unflinching defense of the 787 Dreamliner in a Friday morning news conference in Japan... “We’ve been able to demonstrate that no fire is possible,” [Boeing VP Mike] Sinnett concluded.

Not that it'll keep me from flying in a 787, and this is probably more of a PR issue than a technical one. But if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that the gods hate hubris and love irony.

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Here Come the Superbugs

Eli Sanders — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:00:00 -0700

Eeeek:

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections pose "a catastrophic threat" to the population, the chief medical officer for Britain warns in a report calling for urgent action worldwide.

Also: "The problem of microbes becoming increasingly resistant to the most powerful drugs should be ranked alongside terrorism and climate change on the list of critical risks." One root of the problem: doctors over-prescribing, and scared patients over-demanding, antibiotics for every little thing.

Meanwhile, the CDC is warning that a new SARS-like virus has popped up in the Middle East.

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Al-Qaeda's Advice on Avoiding Drones

Eli Sanders — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:00:00 -0800

With the Washington State Legislature now being warned about problems with a bill intended to protect people from aerial drones, perhaps it's time for the drone-fearing masses to consider how they might dodge drones without government help. From the experts:

Al-Qaeda's list of 22 tips for dodging drone attacks—including at least one believed to originate with Osama bin Laden—has been found hidden inside a manila envelope in a building abandoned by Islamists in Mali.

The document includes advice such as "hide under thick trees" (believed to be bin Laden's contribution), and instructions for setting up a "fake gathering" using dolls to "mislead the enemy."

And if there don't seem to be enough thick trees in this Evergreen State to offer sufficient protection, there's always the anti-drone scarf.

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What's Being Done About Substantial Meteors that Could One Day Hit the Planet

Grant Brissey — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:52:51 -0800

Wikipedia Commons
Tunguska, 1927

"Asteroids hit the earth all the time," said former astronaut Dr. Ed Lu, in a CNN interview that aired Sunday. "Really small ones are just the shooting stars you see when you look up in the sky." And this is basic Astronomy 101. But what you don't hear people talk about are the medium-sized rocks, like that kind that landed in Siberia in 1908. This was known as the Tunguska Event, or the Great Siberian Explosion.

When the meteor exploded above the Tunguska River in Siberia it detonated with an "estimated power 1,000 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima [...] leveled trees over 40 kilometers away and shook the ground in a tremendous earthquake."

Wikipedia Commons
Click to Enlarge

Lu said asteroids that size hit about every couple of hundred years. "So, there's about a 50 percent chance that in your lifetime, another explosion of that size is going to happen somewhere on Earth.

But don't start panicking just yet. According to Lu, "We actually have the technology to deflect an asteroid, if we have adequate warning, and by adequate warning, I mean decades in advance. And the problem now is that no one is doing a comprehensive map of all the threatening asteroids."

Lu said that less than one percent of asteroids larger than the one that leveled Tunguska (itself about 40 meters wide) have been tracked to date. The B612 Foundation, of which Lu is CEO, is an NGO dedicated to completing the the B612 Foundation Sentinel Space Telescope, which is expected to be launched in 2018 and meant to orbit the sun. Lu writes that the Sentinel will provide a comprehensive map ot the locations and trajectories of threatening asteroids. "By the end of its planned lifetime, Sentinel will have discovered well over 90 [percent] of the asteroids that could destroy entire regions of Earth on impact (those larger than 350ft in diameter) and more than 50 [percent] of the currently unknown DA14-like near-Earth asteroids."

That planned lifetime is 6.5 years. Here's Lu giving a TED talk about how to deflect an asteroid and further explanation on the space telescope.

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Russia Hit by Meteorite Fragments

Charles Mudede — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:41:17 -0800

BBC:

Brightly burning rocks could be seen for hundreds of kilometres as they crashed into the Ural region.

Chelyabinsk residents reported the ground shook, windows shattered and car alarms were set off during the shower.

"A meteorite exploded above the Chelyabinsk region," an emergencies ministry spokesman told Interfax, while one report spoke of several injuries.

Right out of the sky...

Does this have anything to do with the asteroid that's not supposed to hit us? You can check out more videos here.

Update: Phil Plait at Slate says asteroid and Russian meteor shower appear to be unrelated.

I’m trying to piece together what happened from the videos. First of all, I do not think this is related in any way to the asteroid 2102 DA14! For one thing, this occurred about 16 hours before DA14 passes. At 8 kilometers per second that’s nearly half a million kilometers away from DA14. That puts it on a totally different orbit.

For another, from the lighting, time of day, and videos showing the rising Sun, it looks like this was moving mostly east-to-west. I may be off, but that’s how it looks. DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, so any fragment of that rock would also appear to move south-to-north.

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Asteroid to Almost Hit Earth In 10 Days

Charles Mudede — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 07:57:48 -0800

Time:

What’s got a lot of cosmic worriers glancing skyward this month was the announcement that on Feb. 15, a 148-ft. (45 m) long asteroid known as 2012 DA 14 will pass just 17,200 mi. (27,7000 km) above the Earth. And if 17,200 miles sounds like a lot, consider that it’s only one-thirteenth of the distance to the moon and actually below the 22,000 mi. (35,800 km) altitude at which some of our satellites orbit. That leaves awfully little margin for error in NASA’s cosmic calculations. So there’s plenty of reason to worry, yes? Well, no, actually. But making that call for any one object—knowing which space bullets are likely to hit us and which ones we’re likely to dodge—can be a complicated business.

In this case, a miss is not as good as mile. A miss is much more unsettling than a mile. And if you want to be unsettled even more, visit NASA‘s Near-Earth Object Program website. It lists all of the known objects that, in the near future, will come near to our one and only world.

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Beyonce Lip-Synched the National Anthem

Dan Savage — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:51:58 -0800

A stunned nation mourns.

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The Fun Stops for TSA Employees

Dominic Holden — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:18:32 -0800

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing...

The agency removed 76 of the machines from busier U.S. airports last year. It will now get rid of the remaining 174 Rapiscan machines, with the company absorbing the cost, said Karen Shelton Waters, the agency’s assistant administrator for acquisitions.

The scanner-manufacturing company couldn't meet a congressional requirement to make the images more generic—which would presumably have shown everything except details of your swimsuit area. Working for TSA just isn't what it used to be. (Via Gizmodo.)

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Two Posts About a Football Game? And Not a Single Post About the Golden Globes?

Dan Savage — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:12:31 -0800

It's like I hardly know you anymore, Slog. It's like you're a different blog now.

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Putting the Dreamliner's Problems In Perspective

Dan Savage — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:31:35 -0800

Patrick "Ask the Pilot" Smith:

The 787 is the world’s newest and most sophisticated commercial jet. It entered service with Japan’s All Nippon Airways in October, 2011. JAL’s Boston-Narita service, introduced last spring, was the first 787 route in North America. The plane’s composite construction, along with much of its systems architecture, is for now unique among commercial jets. Teething problems, let’s call them, are common when new models are introduced. Jetliners undergo rigorous pre-delivery testing, and but they are large and highly complicated machines. Not everything works perfectly right from the blocks....

This is the third serious incident involving the 787′s aft equipment bay. The first two resulted in emergency landings—one by a pre-delivery 787 on a test flight in 2010; the other two months ago by a United 787 in New Orleans. Testing and certification criteria have come a long way since the days of the DC-10 and the Comet, and I am by no means calling the 787 unsafe, but still this trend is a worrying one. It could potentially affect the plane’s certification for overwater flying (so-called ETOPS restrictions dictate how far from diversion airports a twin-engine plane like the 787 is allowed to fly). Nevertheless, it’s important to keep in mind that not every technical problem involving a 787 is indicative of a design flaw. From this point on, we can expect the growing fleet of 787s to be under rather intense scrutiny. That’s good for obvious reasons, but also bad because the media, which goes bonkers over almost anything involving airplanes, is liable to overhype even minor malfunctions that have nothing to do with the plane’s engineering.

I'm a nervous flyer... so, yeah, I'm kindasorta invested in the whole notion that new airplane models should work perfectly "right from the blocks." But I will somehow find the inner strength—or the outer Xanax—to defer Patrick's expertise on this one. (Via BalloonJuice.)

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Today in Right-Wing Paranoia

Goldy — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:41:58 -0800

While I've been shamelessly exploiting the tragedy in Newtown, responsible patriots like the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation have been responsibly inundating their email lists with responsible appeals for money:

I write this with the upmost urgency. The gun haters have stepped up their time table and are pulling out all the stops - on multiple fronts - to strip us of our guns, our right to protect our families and forfeit any shred of our Second Amendment rights over to the full control of the anti-gun United Nations.

Unless you and I act today, the anti-gun extremists could get away with undermining the Second Amendment.

Oh no! The gun haters are coming to take away our guns! If only we had some sort of weapon to defend our guns from these dangerous unarmed radicals! Better send $29.95 to this guy in Bellevue before it's too late!

And via another email, I just learned this frightening tidbit from Damien Campbell of the Liberty Alliance:

P.S. I found this interesting... Off-The-Grid-News is reporting that FEMA recently made a request for 420 Million more emergency food rations. What's so strange about that? FEMA normally maintains around 6 Million food reserves. Why go from 6 Million to 420 Million so fast? What is FEMA planning for?

I dunno, what is the Federal Emergency Management Agency planning for? An emergency? What does FEMA know that we don't know? *

I'm so scared!

* [And no, I couldn't actually find a reputable source to confirm that FEMA is actually stockpiling 420 million meals... unless you consider the Messianic Times a reputable source.]

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The ACLU and CIA Done Got Me!!!

Dominic Holden — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:30:22 -0800

It's a sheep in wolf's clothing and a law-enforcement sting in plain sight!

Also, it's legal at midnight to possess and smoke marijuana.

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Our Worsening World

Charles Mudede — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:50:33 -0800

All the bad news from Science Daily:

Sea levels are rising 60 per cent faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) central projections, new research suggests.

And...

The shells of marine snails — known as pteropods — living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle.

And...

Permafrost covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon, twice that currently in the atmosphere, and could significantly amplify global warming should thawing accelerate as expected, according to a new report released November 27 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

It's not Earth that's in trouble. This planet is doing just fine and will continue to do just fine. What's seriously (and most likely irrevocably) fucked is our little world.

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Real-Life Mayans Tell Doomsday Fetishists to Shut Up About the End of the World Already

Brendan Kiley — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:06:42 -0700

Once the media cycle has stopped obsessing over and vomiting up words about November 6, it can resume freaking out about December 21, the so-called end of the Mayan calendar. (Remember that?)

Meanwhile, currently existing Mayans are calling bullshit on the authors, filmmakers, and gurus cashing in on the doomsday fetish:

"We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles," charged Felipe Gomez, leader of the Maya alliance Oxlaljuj Ajpop.

But end-of-the-worlders will not be deterred! The hot action on the big day will be in two tiny towns, one in France and one in Turkey, that will supposedly survive the eschatological crisis because aliens (or something) are slumbering in nearby mountains and will wake up to save the chosen few. The hordes have already begun to descend:

A tourism manager in the village, Engin Vatan, said the village had not received foreign guests between Dec. 15 and 31 in past years but this year was different. “Reservations have been continuing since the beginning of the year. We have never had foreign guests during the Christmas holiday, but this year we have guests from all around the world. Almost all the rooms in the village have been sold,” he said.

The towns' mayors seem split between enjoying the tourist attention and worrying about crazies, chaos, and mass suicides. "I don't want to tell anyone how to live," the French mayor said to a German newspaper, "but when hundreds of people storm our village, we won't be able to guarantee public safety anymore."

Hopefully, some publication with means will send a kick-ass feature writer to one of those villages for a few weeks of anthropological journalism about what happens when a tiny town becomes a global magnet for doomsday zanies. I want to know what that looks, sounds, and smells like on the days before, the day of, and (most importantly) the day after.

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NYC Without Subways Isn't NYC

Goldy — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:05:45 -0700

Having lived in Brooklyn for four years (near Carroll Street station, a few blocks in on the F train), it is hard to imagine New York City functioning without its subway system, yet transit authority officials have no idea when they'll have it running again:

The giant storm Sandy wreaked havoc on the New York City subway system, flooding tunnels, garages and rail yards and threatening to paralyze the nation's largest mass-transit system for days.

[...] All seven subway tunnels running under the East River from Manhattan to Queens and Brooklyn took in water, and any resulting saltwater damage to the system's electrical components will have to be cleaned - in some cases off-site - before the system can be restored, MTA spokeswoman Diedre Parker said on Tuesday.

[...] About 5.3 million people use the city's subway system on weekdays. The system, which runs around the clock, comprises 21 subway routes linked by 468 stations, and stretches across 660 miles (1,050 km) of track.

For many of these 5.3 million daily riders, the subway is the only way for them to get to and from work. I didn't know anybody in the city who owned a car, and there's no way the bus system could even begin to pick up the slack.

You know how when it snows in Seattle, sometimes some buses don't run? Multiply that by infinity and you've got an idea of what's going on in New York.

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Sandy: Deaths, Power Outages, and Flooding in the New York City Subway

Dominic Holden — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:08:14 -0700

Along the eastern seaboard, Sandy has killed 13 people and stranded 6.5 million people without power. In New York City, a statement from MTA Chairman Joseph J.Lhota:

The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots. As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water. We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery. Our employees have shown remarkable dedication over the past few days, and I thank them on behalf of every New Yorker. In 108 years, our employees have never faced a challenge like the one that confronts us now. All of us at the MTA are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal.

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It Can't Happen Here

Goldy — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:54:58 -0700

Oops...

Rising water threatened the cooling system at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, in Toms River, N.J., on Monday night. The plant declared an alert at 8:45 PM, which is the second-lowest level of the four-tier emergency scale established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The water level was more than six feet above normal. At seven feet, the plant would lose the ability to cool its spent fuel pool in the normal fashion, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The plant would probably have to switch to using fire hoses to pump in extra water to make up for evaporation, Mr. Sheehan said, because it could no longer pull water out of Barnegat Bay and circulate it through a heat exchanger, to cool the water in the pool.

Having first come online in 1969, Oyster Creek is the nation's oldest operating nuclear reactor, and is of the same design as those that failed at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The reactor is located 50 miles east of Philadelphia and 75 miles south of New York City; 4.5 million people live within its 50-mile radius.

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Sandy and Humans

Charles Mudede — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:05:16 -0700

The market will be closed for a second day. Politics is at a standstill. Nature makes its return...

As many as 300,000 customers in seven states are without power, CNN reported.

The Hudson and East rivers in New York City have begun overflowing their banks.

Officials warned that flooding in lower Manhattan could inundate the city's underground electric and communications lines and subway system.

Trading on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will stay suspended for a second day on Tuesday. The United Nations headquarters in New York has also been closed.

We can do nothing but wait—wait for it to end, wait for something normal to return, wait for the market's profit-reaping machines to roar again...

...and politics to go through another bout of Romnesia:

By the way, the world will not end like this...

NASA

As the UW professor and science writer Peter Ward pointed out to me once, the day there is no wind at all is the first day of the end.

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Earthquake Drill! Now!

Goldy — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:18:29 -0700

The largest coordinated regional earthquake drill ever is happening right now, 10/18 at 10:18 a.m., which is why at this very moment I am preparing for what would happen in the event a major earthquake were to hit the aging masonry building that houses The Stranger, by simulating being crushed to death under tons of rubble.

Ow.

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Yet Another Reason Why I Hate the Airline Industry

Goldy — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 08:20:44 -0700

Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport was shut down for three hours early Sunday morning, leaving evacuated travelers shivering outside in the cold, all because soon to be jobless hockey referee Peter Friesema of Colorado made an awkward, stupid joke:

"But my friend's bag has a bomb in it," the agent remembers him saying, according to a charging document. He recounted it to authorities slightly differently, more to the effect of "what if my friend's bag has a bomb in it?"

And so poor Mr. Friesema found himself in shackles, standing before a judge, potentially facing felony terrorism charge. And even though the FBI has determined the threat was not credible, the judge found Friesema to be a flight risk, and ordered him not to leave Alaska, likely costing him his job.

Yeah, sure, it was a stupid thing to say, particularly in this era when the flight crew or security personnel can have you arrested simply for looking at them funny, but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, DOESN'T ANYBODY HAVE ANY COMMON SENSE ANYMORE?! Give the the guy a stern talking to, or possibly a citation if you have to, but shutting down the airport and sending him to jail for saying something that, stupid as it may have been, clearly wasn't intended as a threat?

Somewhere in Hell, Osama bin Laden is having a good laugh right about now.

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Beautiful Weather Sparks Statewide Burn Ban

Goldy — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:51:05 -0700

I blackened some eggplant and bell peppers on the grill last night, which was apparently a violation of the outdoor burn ban Governor Gregoire extended yesterday to all 39 counties. The proclamation prohibits campfires, bonfires, debris fires, fireworks, etc., statewide through October 15. There is an exemption for backyard grills, but...

Liquid fueled or gas-fueled stoves are permitted provided that use is conducted over a non-flammable surface and is at least five feet from flammable vegetation. Charcoal grills are permitted at private residences under the same conditions.

My grill is currently nestled in a foot-high stand of dead grass—one stray spark and the whole city burns! Better get out the weed wacker before I light it up again.

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Little Smokies

Dan Savage — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:20:13 -0700

So, yeah, there I was, innocently flipping through yesterday's NYT, just catching up on the Dead Tree News, when I encountered this photo. No disrespect to anyone's religious beliefs... but... um... ugh.

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An Email From Ira

Dan Savage — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 13:21:25 -0700

DJ Savage vs. DJ Glass. Tomorrow night. The Showbox. Don't miss it.

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Japan on Mothra Alert After Scientists Find "Severe Abnormalities" in Fukushima Butterflies

Goldy — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:16:57 -0700

Seventeen months after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, Japanese scientists have found severe genetic abnormalities in butterflies exposed to radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Lead researcher Joji Otaki of the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, told BBC News that the results were unexpected:

"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.

The only question remaining is whether the Japanese people will prove resistant to the dangerous mutant insects the radiation creates:

[Slogtip Charles]

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Drill Breaks Major Natural Gas Line on Capitol Hill

Dominic Holden — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:20:45 -0700

Mike Gore
BLOCKED STREETS Passed gas.

By the time you read this, The Stranger offices may have already been vaporized.

A drill digging part of the First Hill streetcar line has stuck a natural gas line, releasing gas and its distinct aroma to waft across the Pike/Pine neighborhood. Police have cordoned off the radial blocks around Broadway and East Pike Street, where the rupture occurred.

"Our concern is that we don't want a spark to ignite the gas," Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore tells news intern Joseph Staten. However, he adds, "the chance of that occurring is not great."

So, to be clear, there is a "not great" chance The Stranger office is about to be detonated.

Intrepid news intern Mike Gore is at the scene, inside the QFC. When he tried to leave the store, fire fighters said nobody could use the main entrance, and they set up a "barricade of shopping carts," he says. "Police are asking people to leave the area right now." From his vantage, Mike says it looks like the drill is still in the ground.

Also, he is leaving the area.

UPDATE at 1:25 PM: We're not dead yet! But it still reeks of natural gas . Puget Sound Energy personnel have arrived, and these signs are around the perimeter:

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The Slippery Slope from Louise Bourgeois to Jerry Sandusky

David Schmader — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:34:24 -0700

An email sent from an inflamed man in Issaquah. Enjoy! (Sic throughout.)

Sir:

I am a Penn State graduate so forgive me if I am a little "sensitive" to child molesters and pedohiles these days. This has been a trying time for us all. So therefore I take great offense every time I take my family to the Park and have to see THIS damn monstrosity which is an open invitation to child molestation (just like the article says).

Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!!! In all seriousness have you people no shame? HUH? I mean, you got your marriage, you got your "president" who says to hell with all tradition and values, nobody is bothering you, hell you're even in the **** ARMY now!!! Aren't you PROUD??? But there are LIMITS. Read the article. The "benefacotr" was "proudly gay" and wanted a statue with a naked GROWN man and a little boy, both of them showing their p*nis to denote some kind of "gay love" and "diversity". How young is enough, Dave? HUH? And don't give me any crap. YOU in the gay community are the ones who need to speak out. If you don't denounce this GARBAGE then you are endorsing it, and the overly gay tendencies of "The Stranger" (even the name is like an advertisement for "gay") show what side of things you are on. WRITE AN EDITORIAL SAYING EVEN WE HAVE SOME SHAME AND PEDO STATUES ARE TO MUCH! Or don't wonder when the local MORAL and CHRISTIAN values coalition take matters into our own hands. Your "rights" have come at a great cost. And enough children have suffered because you won't "out" gay-doms dirty little secret: half of all gays show interest in CHILDREN, and this is now when you're going to see people GET ANGRY. SINCERELY [Name redacted because this idiot asshole's relatives have clearly suffered enough.]

P.S. And what I MEANT to say was that when all values go out the window, then predators like Sandusky can feel innobled and think "well if it's ok for a could of "guys" to get married, why not me?" You need to think about what your "rights" have done t a larger population. You create a climate of perversion. "Without GOD all is permitted" remember??? You better believe I'm ticked off over this, buddy, and if you think you can just say "HATE SPEECH" and have me harass, then go for it buddy A MAN DIED ON THE CROSS 2000 YEARS AGO BECAUSE HE WAS NOT AFRAID TO SPEAK THE TRUTH!!! I WILL DO NO LESS NO MATTER WHAT IT COST!!!!

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