- Memo to men in Sudan: Don’t wear makeup. Ever. Under any circumstances. If you value your freedom and well-being, then man makeup needs to be one thing you keep your distance from. I say this after a Sudanese court convicted seven men of indecency on Wednesday after police accused them of wearing makeup during a fashion show in Khartoum. Never mind that the men were all amateur models taking part in a fashion show; fashion is no excuse in Sudan. Of course, another good life rule is never participate in anything named after a reality TV show and these seven were guilty of that offense, so perhaps they got exactly what the deserved. As you may have surmised, they were competitors in the "Sudanese Next Top Model Fashion Show," which took place in June. They were busted by the public order police, a body known for its crackdowns on perceived indecent dress and drinking in the Muslim north, one defendant claimed. Not only were the seven men charged and convicted, but so was the woman who faced the same charge for applying the makeup. In terms of punishment, the eight “criminals” got off fairly light, with each fined 200 Sudanese pounds (approximately $80 U.S.) said lawyer Nabil Adib. "The court thought that they were indecently dressed ... The judge thought that wearing makeup could be offensive for men and allowing a woman to put makeup on men was against the law," Adib said. His defense during the trial was that men, including religious preachers, regularly wore makeup for appearances on Sudan's state television station. That wasn’t enough to sway the court, although perhaps it did convince the judge to scale back on the punishment from the 40 lashes and imprisonment he could have handed down. This certainly isn’t the first time that a Sudanese court has made headlines for cracking down on a seemingly benign fashion offense, as
The lawyer said he had argued in court that Sudanese U.N. official Lubna Hussein was briefly jailed for wearing trousers in public after being found guilty for the same offense in 2009. Good to see that you’re learning a growing from you mistakes, Sudan………
- If you can answer yes to two simple questions, then this next story may be of particular interest to you. First, do you have an inordinate love of sports, a love that goes beyond playing fantasy football, attending games, spending your entire weekend watching them on television and wasting ginormous chunks of your pay check on sports merchandise? Second, are you independently wealthy and able to scrounge up $2 million on short notice? Should you be able to answer in the affirmative to both of those queries, then you may want to dip into your offshore bank account, ready $2 million in funds and head to New York City immediately. Sotheby's is about to hold an auction for James Naismith’s original rules of basketball. The auction house is offering the Naismith Rules as part of a sale of historic documents and the presale estimate is $2 million. In other words, don’t come in low-balling them with $1 million bids, cheapskate. The rules may be simple and short, but they were penned by Dr. Naismith 119 years ago. These 13 rules shaped the game of basketball in its infancy and the chance to own a frail, easily damaged piece of sports memorabilia that you probably shouldn’t subject to exposure to light and can never actually touch is the opportunity of a lifetime. The rules are typed, but also come with handwritten notes. It's being sold to raise money for the Naismith International Basketball Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes sportsmanship and provides services to underprivileged children around the world. So while buying this relic might be a waste of money for the person purchasing it, at least someone will benefit from that person’s stupidity………
- It’s about freaking time. As an avowed hater of any and all Christmas music for purely musical reasons, I have been waiting for someone - anyone - to have the kahones to step up and ban these infinitely awful tunes. Maybe doing so would step on people’s First Amendment rights, but sometimes individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. So I want to commend the administration at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., for their brilliant decision to ban Christmas carols from being played from the university’s Pulliam Hall bell tower. "We took the music off the clock tower as a result of some complaints we received that religious music was offensive to non-Christians," said SIU chancellor Rita Cheng. Whatever excuse you need to give, R. Personally, I have no umbrage with Christmas carols on account of their lyrical message. No, I have a beef with the message the notes and chords of these musical maladies: Your ears are about to be assaulted with some of the most un-listenable crap you’ve ever heard. So if the excuse you need to use is receiving complaints about the Christmas carols coming from non-Christians, then so be it. "Everybody this time of year is in the giving mood, and in high spirits. We don't want to dampen that," said Cheng. "But we want to be sensitive that there are people from all over the world on the Carbondale campus from many different religions, and we want to be more inclusive." Sounds like the typical political correctness message that every company or organization uses to defend stripping any Christian-themed symbols or references from its office, headquarters or campus. Some students, like one idiot that goes by the name John Piencak, actually miss the Christmas carols. "I miss the Christmas music," Piencak said. "It was really cold and walked out of my class to my car and I heard ("Jingle Bells"). It made me happy." That’s because you’re a moron, John. For now, you and your fellow SIU students can enjoy secular holiday songs until a more multi-cultural mix is put together that includes songs from other faiths playing alongside Christian holiday favorites. I’m not sure what traditional Kwanzaa and Hanukkah tunes SIU officials will be able to find on short notice, but it should be a fun and eclectic mix……..
- Can NBC find another pint-sized, rage-filled personal trainer to fill out its dynamic duo of weight-loss gurus on its hit reality series The Biggest Loser? As odd as it might seem to associate anyone but trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels with the show, NBC is going to make a change because Michaels’ contract is up after Season 11 and she apparently made it clear to the network that once her deal expired, she was gone. She tweeted on Dec. 7 that, “Season 11 of Biggest Loser will be my last have to finish out my contract.” However, NBC has already found her female replacement and will use Michaels’ final season to help introduce her. So why is Michaels leaving? Did she find a better gig or is she simply tired of screaming down FAT people while sitting two feet away from their face and on the hand rails of a treadmill as they run? Nope. “I want to take a year off TV and focus on becoming a mommy and doing more charity work,” Michaels tweeted. “Shooting Losing It also had a big impact on me. Living with kids I saw first hand what I was missing.” Wow…..props on doing what’s in your heart, but isn’t taking a year off to “become a mommy” putting a lot of pressure on yourself and any potential partner? Michaels isn’t married, so she’s going to have to find someone quick and get busy if she wants to have a child within the time frame she’s allotted herself. Coincidentally, the finale for Season 10 of The Biggest Loser airs Tuesday. Tune in then and see which of this season’s collection of über-FATties Michaels and Harper have managed to transform into the leanest, meanest competitor………
- Damn you, WikiLeaks. You’re dominating every conversation at every office water cooler this past week and now you’ve got the U.S. military so paranoid that, in its efforts to stop your site from publishing thousands more classified documents, it has banned all its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media -- or risk a court martial. That edict came down from Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations, who issued the Dec. 3 "Cyber Control Order." The directive orders service members to "immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET," the Defense Department's secret network. The other branches of the military have issued similar directives to their troops and there is no gray area on this one. "Unauthorized data transfers routinely occur on classified networks using removable media and are a method the insider threat uses to exploit classified information. To mitigate the activity, all Air Force organizations must immediately suspend all SIPRNET data transfer activities on removable media," the order adds. Banning anything that could be used to download and transport secret documents (digital cameras and cell phone cameras next, perhaps?) is just one of many moves the Defense Department is making to prevent further disclosures of secret information like the WikiLeaks document dumps that have put a lot of egg on a lot of faces around the world. Of course, chief leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning claimed that he downloaded hundreds of thousands of files from SIPRNET to a CD marked "Lady Gaga" before giving the files to WikiLeaks. Honestly, I’m more alarmed that no one seized a CD marked "Lady Gaga" from him and snapped it in half out of sheer horror that one of their platoon mates was listening to that garbage, but I digress. The directives to ban removable media should go nicely with the recommendation of an August internal review that the Pentagon disable all classified computers' ability to write to such media. Additionally, nearly 60 percent of military machines are now connected to a Host Based Security System, which looks for anomalous behavior. In banning removable media, the military will not only make life harder on those looking to leak classified documents, but also on service members looking to do their jobs. Because classified computers are often disconnected from the network, or are in low-bandwidth areas, a flash drive or CD-R is often the easiest way to move information from one machine to the next. One military source likened it to be being asked to build a home and then “taking away our hammers.” The order actually acknowledges those issues but warns that "military personnel who do not comply ... may be punished under Article 92 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice." For those not familiar with the U.S. military’s rules and regulations, Article 92 is the armed forces' regulation covering failure to obey orders and dereliction of duty, and it stipulates that violators "shall be punished as a court-martial may direct." However, some within the chain of command have quietly questioned the true commitment to changing the system, what with tape and disk backups, as well as hard drive removals, continuing as normal in the military's Secure Compartmented Information Facilities, where top-secret information is discussed and handled. Something tells me that even these steps aren’t going to stop someone who is truly determined to leak classified data. Time and patience will still rule the day…………
No comments:
Post a Comment