"Good morning," the Prayer Warrior began today at the Microsoft annual shareholders' meeting. "We have been here many times together..."

Yes, we have.

This time the Prayer Warrior—aka Ken Hutcherson—had shown up to demand more transparency about the company's charitable donations, and to warn the leaders of Microsoft that supporting gay rights was hurting the company's bottom line. Among his concerns:

Google is kicking our natural... Am I saying that's God? No, I am not saying it's God. I am saying that the fact speaks for itself.

Audio of Hutcherson's entire address, which also speaks for itself, below:

From Hanna Arendt's Introduction to Politics: "...Thaumadzein [is] the wonder at that which is as it is.. As far as philosophy is concerned, if it is true it begins with wonder, with thaumadzein." With that in mind, and it should never leave the mind, watch this YouTube video, which appeared on Ezra Klein's blog:

Thursday, 19 November 2009

Dear Prayer Warrior,

This morning I spoke at the Microsoft stockholders meeting. Chris Liddell, CFO; Bill Gates, Chairman; Steve Ballmer, CEO; and Brad Smith, General Council were there. I talked about their Charitable Giving in support of gay marriage and the intolerance that the gay’s have shown to Christians and anyone that opposes them. Please pray for the stockholders that were there that they heard the message and will understand the truth.

Pastor Hutch

I'm sorry, black truck, but days like this require drugs.

Take it away, ABC:

Ged Galvin keeps a cell phone-sized remote control in his pocket at all times. But it doesn't power his TV or DVD player. It helps him control his bowels.

In a devastating motorcycle accident two years ago, the 55-year-old from South Yorkshire, England, suffered major internal injuries. Though doctors initially thought he might not live, they miraculously restored broken wrists, a shattered leg, a fractured pelvic bone, a detached retina and more.

To Galvin's dismay, however, they couldn't repair the muscles in his bottom responsible for controlling bowel movements. He underwent a colostomy—a procedure that allows patients to pass fecal matter through an opening in the abdomen, instead of the rectum, but he said he dreaded living forever with a colostomy bag outside his body.

But an innovative medical technique that allows him to defecate normally, with a pacemaker-like device and remote control, he said, has given him a new lease on life. "I've been through immense pain and suffering," Galvin said. "And here I am with this bionic bottom now. I feel great. I feel fantastic."

Congratulations, Ged Galvin, and good work, medical science!

Time to name it, the New York Times points out.

Proposed in the story:
The Era of Misplaced Anxiety
The Decade of Disruptions
When the North Went South
The Decade of the Unthinkable
Decade of Overshoot
The Noughty-Oughts
Bob

This is not a name but it's good:

“Without a doubt, we’re seven billion people driving at light speed down a dark and foggy highway and we can’t see past the windshield.”

Or this:

“On the grand scale of things, our descendants will look at us as a bunch of crybabies.”

How about just: Fail! (The exclamation point is intended to indicate that we did not mean to fail, and are worked up about it, and may just be worked up enough about it to try to make it right, but maybe not, because an exclamation point is kind of childish, and so is an internet meme, and so is making a name for a decade in the first place.)

Just got back from Crystal. It was an amazing day—no lines, lots of great snow (that got slushy later in the day), the Snorting Elk wasn't packed—but look what I had with lunch...

Jesus, what a hypocrite. There was so much beer in my system that even my iPhone was impaired.

A grizzled old man in a ripped green raincoat talking to a rosy-cheeked young lady who looked like she was losing her patience:

My parents didn't drink. So how did I get here?

Or maybe just in health:

When Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a Seattle oncologist, was treating his brain cancer patients, he noticed an alarming pattern. His male patients were typically receiving much-needed support from their wives. But a number of his female patients were going it alone, ending up separated or divorced after receiving a brain tumor diagnosis. Dr. Chamberlain, chief of the neuro-oncology division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, had heard similar stories from his colleagues. To find out if these observations were based in fact, he embarked on a study with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute.... The results were surprising. Women in the study who were told they had a serious illness were seven times as likely to become separated or divorced as men with similar health problems, according to the report published in the journal Cancer.

Over all, about 12 percent of the patients in the study ended up separated or divorced.... But the pattern changed when the researchers looked at the patient-divorce breakdown by sex. When the man became ill, only 3 percent experienced the end of a marriage. But among women, about 21 percent ended up separated or divorced [after a cancer diagnoses].

If homosexuality were a choice, like conservative Christians insist, wouldn't most women have chosen it by now?

Thanks to Slog tippers Not Me and Ida Know.

As Break.com user ssproair explains:

This fourth grade girl thinks she is about to give a school report on where her Dad is stationed in Iraq and is surprised when he shows up for her report.

What that sentence looks like in real life:

Sniff and hurrah. Thanks for the heads-up, MetaFilter.

Except us.

For these trick-or-treaters—older kids who aren't in costumes—we lay in a few bags of peeled-and-wrapped garlic cloves. We mix 'em into the bowl with the rest of the candy so they're handy, but we're careful to only give 'em to older kids who don't come in costume. The garlic says, "My, you're getting up there," and, "Gee, you could at least make an effort." We think everybody should do it.

Boooooooo!

(click photo to enlarge)

The NYT reports...

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do."

In October of 2007 I did a piece for This American Life defending Alec Baldwin's infamous tirade—a piece that went down really well with NPR's audience!—that defended yelling at kids. "We can't hit 'em," I said, "volume is all we got." You can hear that piece ("Use Your Words") here.