The Morning Blog

It's a pretty slow day if I have to deal with...Sigh...Again with the pirates. Actually, I guess this is a bit significant: They're now operating as far away as the Indian coast. Apparently, their latest haul will take at least four days to steam back to Somalia.

I find it a bit ironic that people touring a desert country have been killed by sea creatures.

I'd read something about this before but apparently it's becoming a bit of a trend: Mexican drug cartels are taking over rehab centers. Must be difficult to get clean when your former dealer is now running your group therapy.

Wal-Mart sells a lot of stuff to a lot of people and is now being sued by a lot of people over a lot of stuff. It's the largest employment discrimination class action suit in the nations history and has gone up to the Supreme Court. At issue is whether or not such a large class (hundreds of thousands of women in this case, representing many different stores and many different job descriptions), can actually claim to have suffered the same discrimination.

Speaking of discrimination: A new study shows that gay teens are are substantially more likely to receive harsh punishments from schools and juvenile courts. For some reason, lesbians and bisexual girls have it the worst. Personally, I think listening to the Indigo Girls should be a criminal offense so I'm with them on that.

Here's a look at the seedy underbelly of cardiology. Unfortunately, I think that this is the sort of abuse that's always going to be very difficult to control. 9 out of 10 times, doctors are going to have different amounts of information than patients will when proposing procedures. Even in egregious events like this example, I imagine that there would still be some disconnect between what reviewers might see and what the primary physician might truly believe were justifying issues for a stent. I should note that my father is a cardiologist. Da? Are you there Da? On the off chance that you're reading what I write instead of looking at my pretty pictures, could you sound off on this?

Very weird First Amendment Watch: Kentucky is offering tax breaks to a company building a Noah's Ark theme park. Amongst other things, children will learn how Noah handled waste management for EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL ON EARTH CRAMMED ONTO A GODDAMN WOODEN BOAT. Additionally, I see that there will be Bible themed ziplines for the little nippers to play on. For the record, I never expected to write "Bible themed ziplines". Ever. At any rate, it's just super that Kentucky is sacrificing tax revenue in order to support this sort of folderol. Way to combat stereotypes about inbred mountain people!

Terrorist terrier!

Watch the Steelers game last night? It was pretty rough. And frankly, pretty revealing of the double standard the league has for penalties and fines leveled against the Steelers vs. the rest of the NFL. Anyone know if Jameel McClains flagrant and un-flagged, helmet-to-helmet hit on Steeler Heath Miller will at least be fined?

China needs to figure out what it's going to do about North Korea. For real. So far, their policy seems to be to ignore provocations out of Pyongyang. And it looks as though if they keep it up, they might get left out of the decision making process.

Amongst the more interesting and significantly less important Wikileaks cables: Burma tried to buy Manchester United. It might have helped the team. Would have given them a "win or die" attitude. At any rate, the ruler of Burma reconsidered the $1bn purchase after deciding that buying a soccer team might "look bad" during a devastating cyclone.

At this point, I must respectfully maintain, that soccer fans are clearly insane.

Here are the past 24 hours in pictures.

And finally...

It's cold as hell here! As a service to my local readers, I'd like share: How to Build an Igloo.

Important Note: Avoid the yellow snow.