(…*To Inspire You To Hide Under Your Bed Until Jan. 21, 2009)

 This must-read report just in from the New Yorker’s “This Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t So Fucking Scary” Department: “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush administration steps up its secret moves against Iran” by the ever-vigilant Seymour Hersh.

 Hersch writes:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.

This may sound like generically scary Bush warmongering, but it’s actually so much more. (more…)

First the gays… and now this! Can it really be the 25th anniversary of this nightmare fuel? Seems like just yesterday I was saying “Get that thing away from me.” Fans and collectors will meet again today at the RI Convention Center for the My Little Pony Convention.

the horror…. the horror

Remember Y6B, the year when the global population hit 6 billion? Wasn’t that, like, a month ago?

Turns out it was actually 9 years ago, in 1999. So, according to the J-Curve, we’re about due for another billion.

The world’s population will reach 7 billion in 2012, even as the global community struggles to satisfy its appetite for natural resources, according to a new government projection. There are 6.7 billion people in the world today.

The world’s population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.

By comparison, the number of people didn’t reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn’t reach 2 billion until 130 years later.

Meanwhile, some oversexed Massachusetts 15 year olds have entered a “pregnancy or bust” pact, which is totally not helping. (more…)

Who doesn’t remember faking a sick day from school? Somehow, I think my Mom always knew, but she let me stay home anyway.

Now, though, if your kid is faking sick, you can give him/her a dose of Obecalp (get it?) and push ‘em out the door to school. Obecalp is a chery-flavored miracle pill that is “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or illness.” Jennifer Buettner, the “Mommy” who invented Obecalp, told the Times that the pill “is designed to have the texture and taste of actual medicine so it will trick kids into thinking that they’re taking something. Then their brain takes over, and they say, ‘Oh, I feel better.’ ”

The use of placebos has a long and decorated history in medicine. Still, some experts question whether using a placebo on children is appropriate. You know, because deliberately deceiving children is not always the best move. “I don’t like the idea of parents lying to their kids,” said Dr. Steven Joffe, a pediatrician and bioethicist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “It makes me squeamish.”

No word yet on whether they are working on a pill that cures the inevitable rift that might develop between mendacious parents and their hoodwinked children.

from the Times .

80% take the gun. Wouldn’t you?

I was never as scared of clowns as my little sister was — I have this especially vivid memory of Fourth of July in Rockville, MD circa 1987. I was a mumbler even then, and shocked that the fireworks illuminated the clouds in the night sky. “You can see the clouds! You can see the clouds!” My little sister heard ‘clowns,’ freaked out, and ran over to my mom. Who told me to shut the heck up.

So it wasn’t a surprise to me — nor, do I imagine, to the rest of the planet — when Harper’s printed this in its Findings a month back:

“British researchers determined that children universally dislike clowns, finding them “unknowable“

It’s true, and from a study on prospective hospital wallpaper designs. The clowns — in typical form not knowing when to chill out — are fighting back:

(more…)