The bible is a collection of fairytales

Just in case you missed this:

Camels appear in stories of early Jewish patriarchs in the Bible, even though it was before the animals’ time, evidence that writing or editing of the book happened long after the events it narrates. 

(Ahem.)

Merry Xmas, yada yada yada

You've opened all your presents by now, and you're eating pastry and coffee as you wait hungrily for your meal. Good for you. Try not to have a heart attack, okay?

Moving right along, there was a wildly inaccurate press notice from the EPA just before Xmas. Here's an AP article about it.

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. (AP) — For more than a month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that the recent superstorm didn't cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it's monitoring in New York and New Jersey. 

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspections.

I'm sure the EPA's announcement came as a shock to the people who live by the Gowanus Canal. The article notes that the Gowanus Canal is "heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, volatile organics and coal tar wastes." People, it's the most disgusting site in America. Trust me on this.

When the Canal was flooded by Hurricane Sandy, its "water" flooded into homes and basements in all the surrounding areas. Can you imagine having that kind of toxic sludge in your house?

But rest assured. The EPA says it never happened. Everything is safe, pink and fuzzy. Heck, you could eat your Xmas dinner off the floor in any of those homes. Isn't it great to have a government that takes care of things like this? Ho, ho, ho. Merry Xmas!

Update: Don't believe me about how toxic the Canal is? A dolphin entered the Gowanus Canal and died. The rescuers wouldn't go in the "water" to save it. Too dangerous.

You just don't know what to say

The Vatican has brought in the Fox News correspondent in Rome to help improve its communications strategy as it tries to cope with one of its most serious scandals in decades, The Associated Press learned Saturday.

Is that perfect, or what? The AP article ends with something that seems to be a slap in the Vatican's face:

The Vatican has been bedeviled by communications blunders ever since Pope Benedict XVI's 2005 election, and is currently dealing with a scandal over leaked documents. 

They have to be making fun of him, right? This comes right after a Vatican spokesman said all their problems were the work of the devil. Gotta be a jibe. Gotta.

The New York Times conundrum

Sadly, there are quite a few New York Times links in my posts. I say sadly because the NYT is about to go pay-only (or pay-mostly, as they want to paint it), which means a lot of visitors won't be able to follow the links in my posts. That's not good. From now on, I'm going to try to use alternate links for my posts. The heck with the Times.

This also raises the question of whether to subscribe to the New York Times online or simply sneer at its paywall. I think the upcoming subscription is supposed to cost $20 a month. Like Apple's 99 cents per song, it's the highest price they think we'll cough up without choking.

I could just subscribe and be done with it but it would set a precedent. And when you play that precedent forward it doesn't make sense. Will we end up paying twenty dollars for each online news site we rely on? I like the LA Times and the Boston Herald too, and quite a few other "papers". This pay scale won't work for a serious news reader who doesn't have a lot of money to spread around.

And of course, I haven't even mentioned the elephant in the room: what the New York Times prints is not always the truth. See, I read Glenn Greenwald and Dean Baker every day, so I know the Times peddles nonsense to solidify the positions of its overlords, especially the government. And this is the "paper of record". It's despicable.

I'll pay for the Times online when they begin to call torture torture and terrorism terrorism, and the latter no matter who the perpetrator, including the United States government or assorted rightwing nitwits. They'll also have to start calling nonsense nonsense. Is that really so hard to do? They present wingnut views as if they make sense. That's not what I want from a newspaper, especially when the facts are so easy to check. Anyone can do it -- but the reporters don't? What's wrong with this picture?

I won't pay for the Times until they start printing the truth. But if they did, if they returned to actual journalism, I'd rush back and subscribe -- and the hell with the bad precedent I mentioned earlier. We need an accurate news source that doesn't cower before government and business. If the New York Times could fill that bill, yes, I'd pay. Happily.

We will develop other news-gathering sources over time to fill the gap that the Times leaves in its wake. And we will always remember that the NYT didn't come through when it counted -- not on the Iraq war, not on the economy, not in the Bush election cycles, and not now, when nonsense is never called by its true name. The New York Times hasn't committed an act of journalism in the past ten years, with the exception of publishing the truth about the widespread surveillance and wiretapping-without-warrants by the Bush administration -- but let us recall that it also hid this information for a year, choosing not to publish it until after Bush was re-elected. 

The New York Times let the people of America down and they're still letting the people down. That's the bottom line. So no more NYT links unless there's absolutely no alternative.