Just a reminder.

You can peep the schedule for New England’s 2nd largest pride celebration in full here. As Matthew noted previously, the Saturday headliner is 80’s teen pop sensation and current mid-lifer Tiffany. Woot woot!

Well, I’ve been waiting for a story ridiculous enough to make me come out of hiding, and here it is. An Illinois man, for some reason deemed ‘artist’ by the AP, has legally changed his name to “In God we Trust.” The New Haven Register reports:

A school bus driver and amateur artist from the Chicago suburb of Zion has legally changed his name to “In God We Trust.” A Lake County circuit court judge approved Steve Kreuscher’s (CROY’-shirz) name change petition on Friday. The 57-year-old’s first name was changed to “In God,” while his last name was changed to “We Trust.” He says the new name symbolizes the help God gave him during tough times and says he can’t wait to begin signing his artwork with the new moniker.

In other news, I’m changing my name to “Barack Obama.”

In legal news, velvet-tongued hook-master R Kelly was acquitted on 14 counts of child sex crimes by a jury in his native Chicago after 6 years of courtroom drama. While a grainy video tape did show a man giving a young girl a golden shower, spawning the Dave Chappelle spoof “Piss on You (Remix)”, jurors were unable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that this man was Mr. Kelly.

Big ups to the legal system on this one. In celebration, let’s all watch this video from Jay-Z and R Kelly, released before all this brouhaha started, in which Kells croons: “You can’t touch me, no you can’t touch me/ Jigga, Kelly, not guilty.” Or, if you want to relive the classics, peep this:

In case you missed it, the media is very, very fascinated with the “fistbump” that Barack and Michelle Obama shared last week. Also known as a “closed-fisted high five,” “daps,” or “a pound,” this gesture is common among African-Americans, young people, athletes and the fingerless. Also, it is not news.

Sharon Stone, who believes the Dalai Lama to be one of her friends, was quoted as saying of China, “I am not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans … then this earthquake and all this stuff happened and I thought, ‘Is that karma, when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?’”

Now, let’s do a little exercise.  Replace the words “the Chinese,” “the Tibetans,” and “earthquake” with “Sharon Stone,” “the Chinese,” and “karma snafu ruining her career.”  The whole thing is far timelier and less offensive that way, don’t you think?

Then again, as many bloggers are saying, “She hasn’t made a good movie in years.  I don’t even know why we’re listening to her.”

Awesomely enough, this dude may actually beat out the front runner in today’s Oregon Senate primary. If he wins, and beats sitting GOP Senator Gordon Smith in November, Novick is automatically Captain Hook in the Senate’s annual production of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

In other news about politicians’ hands, RI Congressman Patrick Kennedy broke his doing karate a month ago. F’real.

Whoa.

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds—that is, until he steps into an “exoskeleton” of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that local global defense contractor Raytheon, having purchased Jameson’s company, is producing these puppies. (more…)

In case you were wondering, honesty is not dead in the digital age. Today on craigslist, the best men seeking women personal of the day:

The headline reads: “ I just want to get laid.”

Who doesn’t?

The text of the ad reads:

“I don’t want to meet your mother or father. I don’t care about your personal life, your history or your dreams and aspirations. I just want to fuck you. It’s natural, I’ve got the penis and you’ve got the vagina. Hopefully they fit together. The rest of these guys are just yanking on your chain to get down your pants after some cheap pizza and beer. All men are scumbags and I am the only honest scumbag left on the planet. You read this far so obviously you are not all that disgusted so send me a photo and Ill send you one of mine.”

The honesty of this ad is refreshing. Why more people don’t just put it right out there like this astounds me. I’d like to shake this guy’s hand.

What’s crazier than a ten-year old giving birth?

A single human giving birth 18 times!

The Duggars’ oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children—whose names start with the letter J—are home-schooled.

Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.

While some people might try to stereotype a family in Arkansas with 18 kids, all of whose names start with the letter J, presumably in honor of their father, Jim Bob, I have to say that the couple seem happy, sane and wholesome on the youtubez:

(more…)

First, if you haven’t heard about the Mental Health Parity bill, it’s an incredibly important measure that insurance companies are fighting tooth and nail, and that would stop insurers from shirking payment for mental health issues. Kennedy, who has suffered from addiction and depression, got a little play in the Times’ Week in Review, and the piece is worth a read.

Second, while not exactly a staunch defense of immigrant’s rights writ large, PK’s recent HuffPo piece is pretty interesting. It turns out he’s a sponsoring a bill “exempt anyone receiving a Ph.D. from an American university from numerical immigration limits.” Called the New American Innovators act, PK touts it as an economic growth strategy. The idea:

Well-known Stanford economist Paul Romer has discussed a “prospector theory” of high-skill immigration. As Mr. Romer describes it, “the more people you have prospecting, the more you will be stumbling on rich veins of gold.”

American universities regularly graduate American students of the highest quality, and our economy has reaped the benefits for decades. But American universities also produce foreign graduates of equally high quality. Our economy has benefited from their talents as well. In fact, between 1995 and 2005 one quarter of all start-up engineering and technology firms in the United States had at least one foreign-born founder. By 2005, these companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers.

There’s gold in them thar hills!

From Boston Globe, and improved upon by Richard Florida:

The article claims that out of all major metro areas in the U.S., Boston and surrounding areas have the most even single male-to-single female ration.

Hmmm, I wonder how Providence measures up.

Projo has the details:

Human-rights violations around the world, from the ongoing genocide in Darfur to human trafficking in Eastern Europe, will be the focus of the third annual Brown University Human Rights Film Festival, running Thursday through Sunday.

The Devil Came on Horseback, a first-person account by a former U.S. Marine of Sudanese government-backed attacks on black Africans living in the Darfur region, will be the first film in the program at 6:45 p.m. Thursday in Sayles Hall. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who wrote about events he witnessed in Darfur on several visits, will speak.

Opposition claims Zimbabwe election victory; Robert Mugabe mum with the “official count” still secret.

Keith Richards is too high to write autobiography, remember life.

Saudi Prince plans mile-high tower in Jeddah. Tower-of-Babel jokes not OK. Penis jokes inevitable.

Russia wants to build a tunnel from Siberia to Alaska, mostly to export their cave-dwelling, anti-credit card and processed food doomsday cult.

As the Olympic torch sets off from Tiananmen Square, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she’ll boycott the Beijing Games.

Turkish Supreme Court to hear case “to ban the President, Prime Minister and the country’s ruling party on grounds that they’re threatening the constitutionally-mandated secular basis of the state.” Now that’s separation of church and state.

Ouch. Definitely some cheering too, and definitely a well thrown pitch. Still, ouch.

Big ups to the lovely and brilliant Ariel Werner, Brown junior, criminal justice reformer, Dose blogger and Rhode Island’s own and only 2008 Truman Scholar. Her bio on truman.gov:

Ariel Werner is a student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she works to understand and mitigate the effects of mass incarceration. In 2006, she served as Student Coordinator of the RI Right to Vote Campaign, a ballot initiative that restored voting rights to 15,000 individuals on parole and probation. She received a C. V. Starr Public Service Fellowship in 2007 to work at the RI Family Life Center for ex-offenders and an Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Fellowship in 2008. She currently coordinates Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE), a Brown student group that works to provide a forum for creativity within the RI Adult Correctional Institution.

Kim beat me to the punch on RIFuture, but all of us at the Dose are proud of Ariel. Especially me. Way to rep the Ocean State!

Seriously. I know its somewhat painful to watch. Is it for real?