The Indigestible

The lat­est on the US’s mis­man­age­ment in Iraq is that its new police train­ing facil­ity is a “dis­as­ter”. The Baghdad Police College, hailed as cru­cial to U.S. efforts to pre­pare Iraqis to take con­trol of the country’s secu­rity, was so poorly con­structed that feces and urine rained from the ceil­ings in stu­dent bar­racks. Floors heaved […]

WASHINGTON — Facing an ongo­ing set of fail­ures on domes­tic and for­eign fronts, the Congress of the United States has filed for Chapter 11 pro­tec­tion under the Moral Bankruptcy Codes. “Between the clear selling-​​​​out we did a few years ago to get votes from the right-​​​​wing fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious loonies and the way we’ve sold con­ser­vatism, America […]

The TSA has relaxed some if its point­less bans. You can now carry lip gloss and hand lotion onto air­craft. Good thing, too — I was get­ting tired of the chafing.

The news about a 3.3 million-​​​​year-​​​​old ances­tor of “Lucy”, a very early human ances­tor, is break­ing all over the place, includ­ing this head­line from the Washington Post: 3.3 Million Years Later, Skeleton of Girl Found …Which led John Mark Karr to con­fess yes­ter­day to her murder.

A stone tablet has been found that’s around 3,000 years old, inscribed with a writ­ing sys­tem hereto­fore unrec­og­nized. The tablet, unearthed in Veracruz, Mexico, con­tains sym­bols that are appar­ently rem­i­nis­cent of Olmec. At first, there was lit­tle hope for trans­la­tion of the tablet’s con­tents. Experts who have exam­ined the sym­bols on the stone slab said they would […]

Oops. REGENSBURG, Germany — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday called for har­mony in his diverse and some­times frac­tious church, say­ing that like a church organ it needed to remain in tune. Do we really want to be draw­ing atten­tion to mis­be­hav­ing organs in the Catholic church?