Fucking Religious Idiots: Jewish Edition

Can Breast-Feeding Hurt Your Marriage? Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Thinks So in His New Book, 'Kosher Adultery' -- Beliefnet.com

How fucking twisted and stupid do you have to be to write something like this:

Obviously, breast-feeding is not the same as carrying on an extramarital affair. But when a mother gives her breasts to her son and takes them away from her husband, the effect on the marriage can feel the same.

Yes, ladies, don't use those breasts to feed your babies. Only a radical feminist would do that! God put them there so adult men could fondle them! Also, Shmuley, is it not also a problem when a woman gives her breasts to a daughter? Does this schmuck suffer from imagined infantile Oedipal Complex paranoia?

Here's more anti-survival advice from Suckin' Shmuley:

I told the mother that in being so devoted to her son, she had committed the cardinal sin of marriage, which is to put someone else before her spouse, even if that someone is your child.

Can someone prevent this man from giving advice? I doubt he's qualified to provide marriage counseling to a pair of cockroaches.

Another Day, Another Bomb Scare

Another bomb scare in Midtown. Gettin' kinda tedious.

Here's the Bomb Squad at work:


Update: Not a bomb. All clear.

Fess!

Professor Longhair - Tipitina

Capped

Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported - New York Times

Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the human skeleton of what they conclude is the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World.

Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball.

Ceramics and other artifacts in the 72 examined graves established the approximate time of the burials, archaeologists said, and this indicated that these were casualties of combat between Inca warriors and Spanish invaders, who seized the Andean empire in 1532. Spanish chronicles describe a pitched battle, a last stand of the Incas that was fought in the vicinity in 1536.

Faith-based Crooks

Religion: The First Resort of the Dishonest

U.S. Grant Winds Up as 2 Ships Gone Awry - New York Times

In reality, the ships never got any closer to the South Pacific islands than the San Francisco Bay. The mission group quickly sold one to a maritime equipment company, which sold it for substantially more to a pig farmer who uses it as a commercial ferry off Nicaragua. The group sold the other ship to a Bay Area couple who rent it for eco-tours and marine research.

The gift of the two cutters was one of almost 900 grants Congress has made to faith-based organizations since 1987 through the use of provisions, called earmarks, that are tucked into bills to bypass normal government review and bidding procedures.

Skipping those safeguards can generate more than accusations of political favoritism. As the case of the Coast Guard cutters shows, it also can give rise to grants that never achieve their intended purpose, with the government never even realizing it.

Morning in New York: Coffee, Bagels and Terrorism

A suspicious package has prompted the police to close down my block in Manhattan. I got in before the fun started, so I'm alone on my floor. None of my co-workers were able to enter. If they knew I was here, the police would probably kick me out.

Update: No bomb. All is well.

The Good Old Days?

Onetime Mob Stronghold Hears Echo of the Old Days - New York Times

Last week, the past of Bath Beach and Bensonhurst burst into the present with what the police described as two mob-related shootings. On Tuesday, Robert DeCicco, 56, whose father is a high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family and who was indicted along with his father and 11 others on federal racketeering and extortion charges in January, was shot while sitting in his parked car on Bath Avenue. He survived.

On Thursday, Rudolph Izzi, 74, who the authorities said had been a soldier with the Genovese crime family, was found shot to death in his Shore Parkway home, about a mile and a half from where Mr. DeCicco was shot.

Bensonhurst changed a lot from when I lived there. I think that the overall ethnicity of the neighborhood was maintained at an artificially pure level for several decades, but that couldn't last forever. Now Bensonhurst serves again as the entry point for newly arrived ethnic groups, as most other Brooklyn and Queens 'hoods do. The Colonial Mansion, the cheesy catering hall next to the 62nd Precinct where wife and I were married, is now a Muslim Youth Center.

Fearsome Guard Llamas

In Tennessee, Goats Eat the ‘Vine That Ate the South’ - New York Times

Enter the goats. Mr. Jeansonne, after reading an article on the subject, persuaded city officials to hire a local farmer to graze his herd over the tunnel. When the farmer released the herd last fall, the experiment took some unexpected turns. Pranksters put up “goats working” signs. City officials took them down, with some stern words.

Guard donkeys accompanying the herd earned more guffaws and proved ineffective when dogs attacked, killing two goats and mauling a third. This year, llamas replaced the donkeys.

There have been the logistical problems of goat-proof fences, gawkers and the live electric wire. Mr. Jeansonne himself roped an escapee and hauled it back to the pen.

But the headaches have been worth it, he said. Walking a fence line, he held one hand high to show the height of the kudzu before the herd was released. The vines are gone now from the tunnel and the hillside above, some areas newly planted with grass.

Muzzling the Bluenoses

Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency - New York Times

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio.

Finally, a sensible decision. Of course, the New Dynamic Duo of Justice Fuckers on the Supreme Court will trash it as soon as they get their greasy little theocratic hands on it.

Gehenna

Perhaps the most terrifying spectacle is the unquenched fire itself: many blazes smoldered quietly in old underground tunnels until recently, when modern strip pits exposed them to air. The revitalized flames erupted, engulfing the region in a haze of soot, carbon monoxide and compounds of sulfur and nitrogen.

-from "Fire in the Hole," by Kevin Krajick

How messed up does a town have to be to have its Zip Code revoked? As messed up as Centralia, Pennsylvania. The town is cursed with an underground coal fire as old as I am (it was started in 1962), and could easily burn for another 250 years. This particular coal fire was caused by man, but nature has always been happy to start coal fires, as well. The perilous conditions chased off almost all the town's residents and it now qualifies as a ghost town.

Coal fires are a true global environmental catastrophe, with major problems existing in India and China. It's a significant contributor to atmospheric pollution. Land collapses, buildings disappear, toxic gases vent through dead tree stumps, sinkholes open to swallow unsuspecting pedestrians; it's a creepy little taste of hell.

One silver lining for Centralia: The Yuengling Brewery is not too far away along Route 61 in Pottsville.

Goodbye, Steve

I'll miss you.

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