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Friday, February 10, 2012

News Good Morning, News!

Posted by Denis C. Theriault on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 9:29 AM

Holy crap! Outcry by the medieval-inflected Roman Catholic Church has Barack Obama promising an "accommodation" over new a rule requiring insurance plans, even those provided by people who genuflect to unelected old men in fancy robes, to offer free birth control to women.

Greece's two largest unions have embarked on a flash 48-hour general strike to protest austerity budget-cutting measures meant to keep the government from defaulting on its debts. Trains and ferries are sitting idle, but not police, naturally, who are gassing protesters.

Here's another story, like most of them over the past several months, about how violence in Syria—a pair of suicide bomb strikes, this time—is "escalating" and putting the country on the "brink of civil war."

One day soon, the water you use to dissolve your Kool-Aid powder will have been excreted from someone's disease-riddled bladder.

The Alabama Republican in charge of the House committee that oversees the nation's banking and finance industries is under an ethics investigation for "possible violation of insider-trading laws."

Proving that even animals can't just tolerate insufferable morning shows, a rescued dog annoyed at being paraded in front of cameras bit an anchorwoman in the face.

Argentina has crawled into its time machine and aimed it for the United Nations, where it plans to protest Britain's "militarisation" [sic] of the Falklands.

Equating Occupy protesters with violent gangsters, Oakland is employing the same kind of exclusion-zone "stay-away" orders it normally uses to (controversially) keep hoodlums from hanging out together in their favorite places.

After a run of police shootings in Washington, DC, the Washington Post interviews four officers who've killed someone at some point in their careers about the toll it's taken on them.

The FBI figured out that Steve Jobs was an asshole who enjoyed drugs.

Los Angeles officials say we're all stupid for thinking county officials just made it illegal (and expensive if caught) to throw volleyballs around at the beach. A new law, they said, just made doing all that stuff more legal.

FRISBEES REALLY ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER. THEY CAN HURT YOU VERY BADLY.


 

Comments (6) RSS

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1
Little details about Steve Jobs's high school grades and the pot and LSD he tried in the early '70s are nobody else's business, not to mention being irrelevant to anyone save possibly his biographers. But of course CBS plays up the importance of this because this is what takes the place of real journalism. Oh and a called-in bomb threat aimed at Apple in 1985, which resulted in absolutely nothing? "News," ha ha.
Posted by geyser on February 10, 2012 at 9:48 AM · Report
2
Let me just put on my Apple fanboy hat for one second:

If even 10% of Americans were half the man Steve Jobs was, the world would be a miraculous and wonderful place.

/fanboy

Posted by Fruit Cup on February 10, 2012 at 10:24 AM · Report
3
So if the entire population of the U.S. was made up of five Steve Jobss, the world would be a miraculous and wonderful place, Cup? You realize that the Canadians would invade, don't you? Even five mighty Steves couldn't hold off endless waves of poutine-gulping, steel-thighed curlers.
Posted by Todd Mecklem on February 10, 2012 at 10:40 AM · Report
4
@Fruit Cup: I like Apple products and all, but couldn't Steve Jobs have taken 1% of the company's profits and done some good with it? Set up a charitable foundation like Bill Gates has done? I wish more wealthy folks felt some responsibility to help make the world a miraculous and wonderful place.
Posted by cat & beard on February 10, 2012 at 12:26 PM · Report
5
To crib off of WSH, stupid, stupid dog.
Posted by ujfoyt on February 10, 2012 at 12:45 PM · Report
6
Charity is un-American. Duh.

Seriously though, and while not wearing my Apple fan boy hat, I do think the lack of giving is a major flaw with Steve. But I'm not prepared to hand Bill Gates kudos on the matter, either. The situations are similar but different:

1) The two achieved different levels of success at different points. Steve also continued working up until he died. Bill started his charitable foundation after stepping down from major roles at Microsoft. A person can only do so much with their time.

1) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not just a Bill Gates creation. Bill totes had to give his trophy wife a project (okay, okay! I’ll be ending my sarcasm on the topic at some time in the near future).

2) Mr. Gates was in a much worse off customer situation when they started their foundation. Steve Jobs died before people had a chance to be upset by his lack of giving.

I’ve never really trusted the Gates foundation. It always seemed to me like buying good press. But as the years go on, I’ve softened up on Mr. Gates (the money is working). I’ve always admired his statement that he didn’t intend to leave his money to his children, but only time will tell if Mr. Gates actually does this.

I really, really, really hope that, at the very least, a Steve Jobs cancer research foundation is put together with a generous grant from his estate.

But to be clear: what I admire about Mr. Jobs was his directness, drive and pride in his work. Those are the qualities I was linking when I constructed my first statement. I also had my fan boy hat on.
Posted by Fruit Cup on February 10, 2012 at 1:55 PM · Report

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