Author: soultrance

The Catholic Church is in the news again, but this time, not because a few priests sexually abused some little boys, amazingly enough.

Two former Priests of a Catholic Church in Florida are being sent up on criminal charges for allegedly skimming close to $8.6-million in funds over the past 40 years. Both priests are being charged with grand theft and it didn’t take long for one of them to confess to everything shortly after being arrested. At least he seems to have that part of Catholisism down. Guess he missed the part about greed being a sin though. Oh well, I’m sure if he confesses to stealing from the good ole’ god-fearing people of Florida for 40-years his sins will be washed away. That is how this whole thing works, isn’t it? Don’t matter what you do, as long as you confess it and have your sins absolved you’re in the clear. No wonder they like little boys so much.

Police have yet to catch the second priest though, who allegedly used half a million dollars of the stolen cash to pay off gambling debts and go on a vacation. I’ll assume I don’t even have to mention how the Catholic Church feels about gambling.

The best part about this entire situation, you ask? The only reason the cops found out about this money laundering operation is because an anonymous parishioner sent a letter to a State Attorney informing him of his fears. Why did the parishioner send this letter instead of letting someone higher up in the Catholic Church know, you ask? Well, one big reason: he was afraid that the Diocese of Plam Beach would cover up the theft and keep it a secret. The fact that a parishioner can’t even trust the Diocese HAS to be great for the Church. Just goes to show, the corruption doesn’t stop at the church level, it goes a whole lot further up then that, not even members of the church trust the church anymore.

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Eat chicken and get cancer.

Yup, that’s right, chicken products from fast food restaraunts have been added to the long list of things that can cause cancer. As the list seems to grow almost daily, it’s no wonder we don’t all have cancer, or starve.

A US doctors group has sued seven major fast food chains like McDonalds and Burger King for their use of dangerous carcinogens in grilled chicken products, how comforting.

The group is hoping to compel fast food restaraunts into better warning their customers of the dangers involved in eating their grilled chicken products. For some reason, I don’t see that happening. The group also said that every sample of grilled chicken products taken from the seven major fast food restaraunts tested positive for a dangerous carinogen known as PhIP.

I’ve never been a fan of grilled chicken stuff from fast food restaraunts myself, so I don’t have anything to worry about on that front. I’d personally be more worried about the absurd amount of calories, fats, saturated fats and trans fats found in almost all fried chicken.

Why does the stuff that tastes oh so yummy always have to be the stuff most likely to kill you? It’s like being taunted.

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I forgot to prep the coffee maker last night for my morning coffee. What am I gonna do? I don’t wanna wait until I get to work to have a coffee and I sure as hell don’t want to spent $15 on a Starbucks coffee. To bad they aren’t still doing that free starbucks coffee promo, that’d be real nice about now. It really is a shame that they had to go and cancel it so quickly.

Oh well, that’s my whining for the morning, now I have to go chew on some coffee grounds. Bye now!

In a post I made a day or two ago I featured a video of Bill Clinton vs Fox News, from Sunday’s Fox News airing. Well, without surprise at all, this entire thing has certainly snowballed quite a bit.

It started off with former President Bill Clinton calling out a Fox News reporter and essentially calling him a biased right-wing media whore, which I’d personally say is a fairly accurate description of generally anyone over at Fox News. Mr. Clinton’s comments were sharp and to the point, accusing Fox News of being one sided, not asking the same questions to both Democrats and Republicans and essentially calling BS on everything the Fox News reporter started off saying. Clinton also admitted to failing in finding Osama Bin Laden, but admitted the fact that at least they looked for him, which is more than can be said for President George W. Bush and his crew.

It was these comments inparticular that set off retaliatory jabs from Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush. They both, of course, played the blame game and gave their usual reply of ‘nuh uh, nuh uh, nuh uh. We’re right and you’re not, so shut up poopy head,’ like any 4 year old in a sandbox would do. Both Rice and Bush said that they had done more to track down Osama Bin Laden than Clinton had done and that Billy Boy never took the threat of terrorist actions serious enough. Though, judging by the current state of affairs in the US and the general feeling of ‘Osama Who?’ running through the Republican government, I tend not to exactly agree with those points.

Now, since Georgie Boy and Condee got their shot to comment on the situation and accuse Clinton of doing a worse job than them, Senator Hillary Clinton has stepped up to defend her husband. How cool is that? For some reason this actually surprises me a little. Senator Clinton made some fairly pointed comments and did a great job defending her hubby. Good work guys! Maybe you should have teamed up a bit more when Billy was President if it works so well?

“I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team.”

Zing! This comment was made in regards to a document that was apparently presented to the Bush administration before 9/11 ever occured, which they promptly swept under the rug.

All I have to say is cheers to Hillary Clinton for standing behind her husband and cheers to Billy boy for have the steely ones to stand up to the right-wing media and cut them off at the neck.

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Felix the Cat

Now, I’m kind of on the fence on this one. It seems like a neat idea, but then again it also strikes me as being incredibly stupid and a little bit of god playing.

Scientists from Allerca in San Diego, California have apparently created the very first hypo-allergenic cat. Good news for all you hyper-allergic cat people out there. Apparently the scientists determined what gene in a cats DNA was responsible for causing allergic reactions, found a specimen with very low levels of the “Fel D1” gene and began its “breeding programme.” This is the part that makes me wonder exactly what they did, as no further details are offered on this supposed breeding pattern.

The results of the “breeding programme” were kittens that were clinically tested to apparently not induce allergic reactions in people that would otherwise be sneezing like mad.

“In times of need and passion, whether it’s depression, whether it’s something traumatic, nothing substitutes the love of a pet. You can’t put a price on it,” said May. Allerca also stated that allergic cat lovers will be willing to pay a small fortune for these hypo-allergenic cats. This brings me to my second point of contention with this whole thing.

The cats will be sold spayed or neutered (to prevent Allerca from losing their monopoly on the hypo-allergenic cat market), micro-chipped and will even be delivered right to your door. Orders are being accepted online for these super cats, which will be available for delivery in early 2007, for the low low cost of $4,000 US. HA! Good to know Allerca is obviously in it to make it possible for allergic cat lovers to have cats, as opposed to, you know, making as much money as humanly possible. Right. Now you see why they’re selling them spayed and neutered, right? Right.

I think I’ll stick with my perfectly good hyper-allergenic felix the cat. He cost $50 from the West Vancouver SPCA, who are more concerned about actually helping the animals than making assloads of money on them, and I bet he’s just as cuddly and loving, if not more so, than any hypo-allergenic genetically modified cat-like creation could be.

Tomorrow will mark the day of the very first attempt at Zero Gravity surgery. A group of French doctors will be the first to attempt the feat on a specially crafted plane usually reserved for astronaught and other Zero G training activities.

The doctors are performing this surgery in the hopes of gathering, what could be critical, information about conditions when operating in a Zero Gravity environment. Over the course of a three hour flight a total of three surgeons, two anaesthetists and a team of army parachutists will attempt to remove a fatty tumor from a willing volunteers arm through the use of specially designed tools. Due to the small area of the operating room on the plane and the effects of a Zero G environments, all tools will be magnetically attached to the operating table.

The doctors involved hope to futher develop technologies involved in Zero G surgery in order to create satellite controlled surgical robots. These robots, which will be controlled on earth via satellite links with Dr’s, will perform surgeries on patients in Zero G environments in the event of an emergency.

The Drs and crew involved have been practicing for the mission since February on both the plane and on ground and they said “it is all crystal-clear in our heads.”

Good luck to the willing patient. I hope that everything goes well and look forward to hearing about the operation. How cool is that?

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