This stock super-villain line from the Silver Age (used any time some criminal rips off a charity event) came to mind reading this story about fraudulent charities and the complete ineffectiveness of regulations against them. Shut down a charity in one state, it starts up in another, or the brains behind it sets up a new boiler-room operation.
•A woman looks back at a Satanic sex abuse case in Britain. Unsurprisingly, there were no Satanists.
•If you’re still in doubt, here are multiple intelligence professionals saying torture doesn’t work.
•A few hundred dollars in back property taxes let tax-lien investors in Washington DC foreclose on properties worth much more. By adding legal fees and expenses to the bill, they could either collect a nice paycheck or make it impossible for homeowners to save their houses. Meanwhile, Illinois sues a company that changes locks or bashes in doors on vacant properties pre-foreclosure. Only there’s no foreclosure and they’re not vacant.
•I’ve complained in past posts (don’t have links handy) about companies that stiff their workers on promised pensions. Governments can be just as bad.
•Jellyfish are becoming more powerful, more invincible than ever before.
•I’m familiar with the idea embraced by some religious conservatives that dating is bad, and that a carefully-controlled (by family and church) courtship process is better for finding true love. Here’s one blogger’s story.
•When right-wingers discuss Benghazi, feel free to mention multiple terrorist attacks under W.
•An electric company wants to charge customers with bad credit scores higher rates. Slacktivist looks at the insane conviction credit scores are a metric for everything.
•An amateur marathoner grumbles that kids in marathons today aren’t competitive enough. Why? Communism subverting our competitive spirit! No, I’m not making that up.
As several people point out in the comments (it’s not a direct link), Communist nations are often viciously competitive at sports, as much as any town with a high-school football team. And that anyone who finishes a marathon and tries again is hardly lacking in drive. And that a lot of this is just statistical white noise (with more people running, it’s not surprising a smaller percentage is hard-core) and economics—the cost of shoes and other running equipment is more than it was a few decades back.
•Changing the shape of chocolate can change the melt rate which can change the taste.
•The Archdiocese covering the US military chaplain corps has forbidden Catholic chaplains from presiding over funerals if the soldier was gay and married. They have also been told not to counsel soldiers in same-sex relationships.
You know how anti-gay activists like to whine about how unfair it is to criticize them as bigots? Sorry, Archdiocesians, in this case it’s totally fair.
•In 1969, President Nixon came up with a plan to end the Vietnam War: convince the USSR he was so crazy, he might launches a nuclear attack at any second.
•Bills to fight revenge porn. And here’s a profile of one sleazeball who makes money off revenge porn. More here. I’m particularly appalled by the psychiatrist in the last link who dismisses the issue as the equivalent of legislating against heartbreak (that’s like arguing banning stalking is like banning crushes). But some people love nuances like that.
•Ralph Nader and Washington DC’s libraries. Apparently his library group is fighting multiple library projects despite the support they have from people who would be using them.
•Do black parents really give their kids weird names? Weirder than, say, Tagg Romney?
•The problem of non-existent controversies.
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