New Music and Bad Science

Today is the day that Radiohead is attempting to turn the music industry on its head. The influential band is releasing their new album "In Rainbows" on the Web, allowing users to pay whatever they want for their latest release, and the song "Jigsaw Falling into Place" is making everybody who paid for Britney Spears' "Gimme More" feel stupid for doing so.

A debate has broken out in the White House over the Israeli response to policy regarding North Korea and Syria. Cheney is on one side, Rice is on another, and Rush Limbaugh is still a fuckwit.

The Los Angeles Police Department is under fire for another controversial bout of violence, this time involving journalists and immigration rights protesters. Why can't the LAPD beat somebody who deserves it (like Lindsay Lohan, Stephen Baldwin or Kwame Brown) rather than their arbitrary pattern of nightsticking the wrong people?

New York is up in arms about the noose found on the door of a professor at Columbia University. While NYC would like to believe that they are ahead of everybody in the world, this incident demonstrates that the city is in fact about one year behind Jena, Louisiana. If they are going to lynch somebody at Columbia, perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have been a more fitting target for this kind of misguided aggression.

The battle between the Western world and people who practice goofy folkloric religions is coming to a head in Holland, where Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of gender discrimination in Islam, faces an uncertain future from extremists because of her comments about Dutch Muslims. When you need violence to prove your point, as is often the case with religious fundamentalists, you probably have no point at all. Hopefully a fundamentalist somewhere can focus their aggression against that tramp Ann Coulter and allow Hirsi Ali to demonstrate what life is like for a Muslim in the 21st century.

Finally, in off-beat news, on the heels of the Nobel Prizes being awarded, the Ig Nobel Awards are given to discoveries that make people laugh before they make them think. This year's winners include studies about the side effects of sword swallowing, Viagra as a cure for jet lag in hamsters, the "gay bomb," making vanilla scents from cow dung, and determining if rats can differentiate between languages spoken backward. Once again, science has proven that no avenue of research is too obscure to garner recognition

Slam Dunk News Day

Big man Greg Oden may be done for the season after he had microfracture surgery on his knee. The first pick in the draft should have plenty of time left to work on his dance moves with the women of Portland while the team is traveling and playing basketball games.

What would the day's news be without a pile of Iraq reports? The Dems are trying to attract moderate Republicans to join the Anti-War efforts in order to prevent a filibuster. A compromise passed regarding oil in Iraq has collapsed. Reports about the deaths of the soldiers who authored a piece that was critical of the military efforts in Iraq continue to pour in. A key U.S. ally in Iraq was killed today by a bomb planted outside his house. The best possible option for the country would be to allow Iraq to be governed by a reality television show where viewers in the country could vote on what steps should be taken next in the glorious enterprise that is democracy. That is, if they can get enough electricity to run "Iraqi Idol."

In other parts of the Middle East, tensions are flaring in Syria after Israel's air strike on mysterious targets within Syrian borders. The strikes were thought to be on nuclear targets. Both sides are tense, and whatever happened, at least the efforts didn't involve a bomb that was as big as the Cleveland Browns performance against Pittsburgh on Sunday.

The presidential debate has gone Web 2.0, with Democratic candidates communicating with the voting public in an online forum that goes by the name of the Presidential mashup. Each candidate offers their views on a series of predetermined questions, and then a few questions are generated by the audience. I'm into the health care issue, and nobody with a real chance of winning has a working plan for guaranteeing health care for all that addresses the issues I'm interested in. Until Hillary quits taking money from the insurance lobby, I'm still supporting somebody else.

Finally, vegetarianism is good for the environment. Scientists have determined that meat production is a significant contributor to global warming. Just keep eating your steaks, Earth killer. You should be able to chase your favorite piece of carcass down with a heaping helping of methane gas. Mmm mmm. Tastes like the apocalypse.

I Have Tyson in my Corner

There are many situations in life that lead one to ask, "What would Jesus Do?" It hasn't gotten there for me yet, but with guidance like this photograph that makes up part of Slate's report on Church signs, I can tell what he would do while I'm driving by. Isn't that convenient?

If daily events don't tell you wjwd, they can at least let the immigrants' judiciary explain how they make decisions. According to a study covering more than 140,000 cases, the whole process is a crap shoot. At least the study determined that justice is completely blind to reason.

The Middle East will get an opportunity to enjoy its first tribunal as the United Nations moves in on those who assassinated Lebanon's prime minister. Nobody wants to tell Syria to start betting on international politics, but if they did such a thing, common logic would dictate that they bet against themselves.

Turkey did its best to validate the fact that every topic covered in this blog comes to fruition the next day by moving troops over to the Iraqi border and threatening to invade Iraq in order to eliminate Kurdish rebels raiding over the border. They are aiming to attack the Kurds in a move that would alienate the United States' biggest supporter in Iraq. The only support Bush would be left with after a move like this would be Bill O'Reilly and Mrs. Bush. Hopefully his aggressive worldwide public relations campaign nets some results.

In order to increase support for the new version of the Seven Wonders of the World, China is urging all of its citizens to vote for the Great Wall of China. This confirms my suspicion of why Yao Ming keeps winning NBA All-Star votes by a landslide. Apparently the Chinese vote with a greater passion then their American counterparts.

Finally, if job prospects are keeping you down, you can at least take faith in Mike Tyson's application to work in the corner of Sultan Ibragimov in his WBO heavyweight title bout. If rape, drug convictions and face tattoos can't keep you from getting a job, this really is the greatest country in the world.