In "New York City Council approves ban on racial slur."

Tracy: I don't post on message boards which censor or require self-censorship since any such editing necessarily results in confusion of the writer's beliefs and the editor's. I even try to avoid having my nic associated with such boards lest it be taken as a sign I regard them as allowing free speech. Since you evidently regard my thoughts to be too "incorrect" to be tolerated without your helpful revision, I have no recourse but to resign from MoFi. Please remove my name from your membership list. Libertarian

Did they outlaw the word or the euphemism? These "unspeakable crimes" leave me as confused as anthropomorphic deities with ineffable names. And a legislatress in Florida is trying to forbid the use of the nasty "al*en" term except in its proper context referring to people from "out of space". She also prefers "undocumented" to "illegal": another indication women should be barefoot,pregnant and in the kitchen

In "Dead baby comes back to life ... "

The "miracle" in juxtaposition to another news story about a poor black kid who, despite prayers, died from an untreated decayed tooth, makes me wonder how God could be so prejudiced against poor people, whose medical outcomes consistently are worse than those of more affluent folks. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17372104/

In "Ewe must be kidding."

Somebody's trying to pull the wool over our eyes! The link works fine.

In ""John is our god," declares village chief Isaac Wan, who beats his fists into the ground to emphasise his words."

"A Christian youth worker told me how he thought the cult was childish. "It's like a baby playing games," he insisted. "Those people are holding on to a dream that will never come true," he said."

In "China state TV bans pig images"

It's sounding like another year of the jackass.

In "It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love."

Considering they had both been killed, it looks like the guy got caught in somebody else's bed. Those weren't Cupid's arrows that did them in.

In "The Briefcase That Changed the World"

Did Sir Henry get any royalties from all the speeding tickets issued as a result of his cavity magnetron doppler echo recognition and frequency variation measurement gun?

In "Court Martial"

He's taking the king's shilling but wants to decide for himself what chores he will perform to earn it? Where can I go to sign up for some of that?

In "Moonites Paralyze Boston "

I can think of only a single case of a "suspicious object" proving to be an actual bomb and that one, the Atlanta Olympic knapsack bomb, was so unusual that the authorities immediately arrested the bomb's discoverer on the assumption that Richard Jewell must have place it there in order to discover it. The hoax is the claim that the tax dollars and freedoms we give up are protecting us from anything.

In "Oh no!"

In ten thousand years not a single mutation has occurred allowing its possessor to resist the dread black Sigatoka disease? Do the evolutionists know about this?

In "Do You Believe in Magic?"

"...wonder why parents encourage magical thinking for their young children." Maybe they have some intuitions about what classmates, schoolteachers, police, and the rest of society does to kiddies who announce that common rituals are superstitious nonsense and who subsequently attempt to defend themselves from assaults by those who are offended. Until a child has learned hypocrisy, any contempt he has for the rituals of Mohammedans, "Christians", psychotics, psychologists, and other groups regarded as inherently holier than he will be revealed and punished.

In "If a Boeing 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet what do you have? Answer: A 132 ton glider."

" 1.77 pounds/liter as the specific gravity factor. This was the factor written on the refueler's slip and used on all of the other planes in Air Canada's fleet. The factor the refuelers and the crew should have used on the brand new, all-metric 767 was .8 kg/liter of kerosene." How is 1.77 pounds different from .8 kg? Mathematically Challenged

In "Sick Little Monkey."

and who needs a "preview" function for comments, anyway?

Medusa, gogol "tonsilloliths" and see if it sounds like your problem.

In "Tom, may I borrow your Holy Book? No, the other one ..."

Does the Koran have any passages similar the the Bible's Matthew 5 which forbids swearing or can a person swear by it without proving he hasn't actually read the thing? Matthew 5:34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: 35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. 37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

In "Just another meteor shower, you say?"

I think I saved the Ozarks from the perils of the Northern Lights once again. Based on the Scientific theory that they result from an interaction of the solar magnetosphere and the Earth's, I tape magnets around my waist and go outside, nude, and pray to St. Pareidolia, asking her to suppress the magnetic radiations. This has worked 99.99% of the time. Only once in the past thirty years have the lights appeared after one of my prayers and the one manifestation was, obviously, the famous "exception which proves the rule". (I also have been 100% successful if preventing the dragon from eating the moon during eclipses by doing my self-explanatory moon prayer.)

Can we observe with our naked eyeballs or do we have to practice telescopophilia in order to watch the sun's nocturnal emissions?

In "In the Womb: Animals"

????? We've always had the means of visualizing animal fetuses in the womb. They're called "knives" or "scalpels" and have been used by uncounted generations of biology students and butchers. In the case of poultry, it's even easier. Just incubate eggs and crack them as often as desired.

In "Comedian Michael Richards loses it."

It won't hurt his flagging career at all. In fact, the publicity and subsequent public penitence will endear him with his audience. After his outburst has been forgotten, his condemnation of "crap" such as racist hate speech will be remembered and he will become a leader in the crusade to stamp out those "racists" and their foul language. With luck, he will ghostwrite a book on his search for the real hate speakers and will earn beaucoup bucks.

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