Memorial Day 2004

My deepest gratitude to those who have given their lives to defend this nation.

Best. Quiz. Ever.

Created by Discoshaman:

You're a Red Stater! Your values and tastes are
those of America's Heartland. Which explains
the gunrack in your minivan.


Are You a Red or Blue Stater?
brought to you by Quizilla

In Defense of the Pope

Since I'm Lutheran, I have no special allegiance to the Pope. However, I do respect him, even if I don't always agree with him, just as I respect Catholics as fellow Christians.

When I first read this story, my reaction was a bit defensive. My thinking was, "Hah! Well if the Pope wants to see a increasingly secular, 'soulless' society, he needs to take a look at much of Europe before pointing fingers at America!"

But I overreacted. He does have a valid point, the secularization of Europe notwithstanding. Also, keep in mind he was addressing American bishops. I'm sure if he were addressing, say, German bishops, they would be hearing similar admonishments about their country.

I will say that the child abuse scandals have caused the Catholic Church to lose moral authority when weighing in on moral issues. (Similarly, that's why the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal is so destructive -- loss of moral authority.) Whenever the Pope or another Catholic leader brings up a moral issue, people who don't agree always retort with something like, "That's rich, coming from a bunch of child molesters!" Is it fair? Of course not. However, sad and unfair as it is, it's how a lot of people see the Catholic Church. It will take a long time for the Church to regain its moral authority.

(Via Dean's World.)

Some Sunday Snark

I would like to duly note that Frank Rich is a maroon. In a desperate attempt to keep pr0n from being blamed for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Rich decides to instead blame...you guessed it...The Passion of the Christ:

The hypocrisy of those pushing this line knows few bounds. They choose to ignore the reality that the most popular images of sadomasochism in American pop culture this year have been those in "The Passion of the Christ," an R-rated "religious" movie that many Americans took their children to see, at times with clerical blessings. Mel Gibson's relentlessly violent, distinctly American take on Jesus' martyrdom is a more exact fit for what's been acted out in Abu Ghraib than the flouncings of any cheesy porn-video dominatrix.

I haven't seen a single paragraph that contains so much profound stupidity in a long time.

(Via Relapsed Catholic.)

Just what we needed...

...a new National Bimbo™.

I wasn't going to post about this nasty bit of business, but the following column is simply too good to pass up:

Michelle Malkin - The skanks on Capitol Hill:

Cutler, who aspired to be a journalist, spouted: "I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: How can anybody live on $25K/year??" When I was 24 and making less than that, I did it by eating Spaghetti-O's, Ramen noodles and Swanson pot pies for dinner; driving a Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning; and sleeping on a $30 futon. I did it the way most parents teach their daughters to succeed: through hard work, thrift, faith and perseverance.

(Via The Ben File.)

Blue Roses!

It looks like blue roses may become a reality:

A chance discovery in a laboratory means that they will be able to create the blue rose "within a year" and it is expected to go on sale to the public soon after that.

If this happens, I want a blue rose bush for my garden!

(Via Ipse Dixit.)

For Christians Only...

Bene Diction links to this survey for Christians. If you're a Christian and have a few minutes to spare, go take it. It's pretty interesting.

Somebody emailed me a different survey on a similar subject a couple of months ago. I never had the time to respond and then I forgot about it. I need to fill out that one, too, if it's still available.

Little Miss Hooters Revisited

Needless to say, I'm relieved and happy that the "Little Miss Hooters" contest that I posted about earlier has been cancelled. As disheartening as it is that someone would think such a contest would be a good idea in the first place, it's very heartening to see that people won't stand for crap like this.

Joe Carter and Sara Butler have brought up some good points about this whole thing I'd like to address. Both Carter and Butler assert that if we see the objectification of women as being okay, then we should not be surprised when little girls are objectified, too.

I would like to address that point, but first, let me interject something about Hooters in general.

I have been to Hooters a couple of times. The command I worked at previously was mostly military (the current command I work at is mostly civilian). Over ten years ago, the office where I worked had a couple of after-work get-togethers at Hooters. I wasn't the only woman since there was another civilian lady who worked in the office. (I think my supervisor's wife also came to at least one of the get-togethers).

I have to say, I wasn't really offended. I thought I might be, but I wasn't. The guys seemed more interested in proving who could eat the most "3 Mile Island" buffalo wings than ogling the waitresses. The waitresses wore short-shorts and tank tops, but I also noticed that they wore flesh-colored tights under the short-shorts. (Maybe this was because this was in the winter months -- I don't know.) Honestly, you could see as much or even more skin at the beach or at the grocery store in the summer than you would see at Hooters. Anyway, what I'm saying is that Hooters did not seem like the den of iniquity that some think it is. Some act like working at Hooters is the same as being a stripper, a pr0n "actress" or a prostitute.

Is the typical Hooters outfit immodest? Yes it is. So is running around in skimpy swimsuits on the beach. So is wearing low-rider jeans with your underwear sticking up out of the top. So is wearing tops that show off large portions of your midriff. So is wearing see-through dresses at film festivals. Do I think women should be more modest? Of course I do.

Okay, back to the point Carter and Butler were making...

I agree with what they are saying -- that when you say that anything goes in the name of "sexual freedom", it's a given that the sexualization of children will eventually follow suit.

Now, the next argument is that there is a huge difference between a child being exploited and a grown woman making her own decision -- even if it's a bad one. And I agree with that, too. You can't infantilize women and say that they don't know what they are doing. And you can't force them to be modest by rule of law. (The only thing the law can do is keep people from running around naked in public.)

But what Carter and Butler said about this still stands. We have created a culture where modesty is laughed at and ridiculed, rather than respected. Being immodest is considered cool. If you object to the increasing pornographication of our culture, you are dismissed as a prude who would like to create an American version of the Taliban.

With that in mind, should we really be surprised that someone would come up with something as appalling as a "Little Miss Hooters" contest?

Losing My Connection

My Internet connection has been down a good part of the weekend. It was down most of the day on Saturday and Sunday, but came back up again in the evenings on both days. It was down again this morning. I don't know what's going on. When it comes back up again, it's very unstable at first. The modem will connect, and then it will disconnect every minute or two. Eventually, it will stabilize and stay connected.

If this keeps up, I guess I'll have to call Cox tech support. I hate calling tech support for anything and I avoid it if at all possible.

Update (5/25/04): Yesterday followed the same pattern as the weekend. The connection was still down when I came home for lunch. By the time I came home from work, it was up but unstable. Then later in the evening, it was up and stable. I haven't turned my home computer on yet, but if the connection is down when I'm home for lunch, I'm going to call Cox when I get home this evening even if the connection is up. This is ridiculous!

Update (5/26/04): Still having connection problems! They're coming out tomorrow to look at it.

Update (5/27/04): My cable drop had gone bad, so the cable guy fixed it. My connection now zooms like it hasn't in a long time. The lower cable channels are crystal-clear, now. And I wasn't charged anything since the drop is their responsibility.

What Happened to Modesty?

Apropos to the previous post...Ryan Reynolds and Joshua Claybourn lament the disappearance of modesty.

Exploiting Children

I find the whole idea of beauty pageants for little girls exploitive and creepy. The Little Miss Hooters contest takes things to a new disgusting low. Whoever thought this up and whoever enters their child in this thing should be deeply ashamed. (Yes, I know they have no shame -- that's the whole problem.)

(Via InstaPundit.)

Welfare and Christian Charity

Mac Swift has a good post on why Christians should not look to the government to impose Christian charity via welfare programs.

Here's a past post on this same topic.

Miscellaneous Bizarre Stuff

• I was skeptical about this story when I first heard it. Actually, not just skeptical, but out and out unbelieving. Surprise...it looks to be a hoax.
• Andy Kaufman returned from the dead? Well, let's just say I'm pretty skeptical about that, too. (Via Cam Edwards.) Update: Another big surprise (not) from Snopes.
• Now, this is just a cruel, cruel thing to inflict on the world. (Via Mark Shea.)
• This is one big baby. (Via Just a Girl.)

Anti-Passion Christians

While over at Church of the Masses, I caught this nice smackdown of the sanctimonious breed of Christians who think they're better than you because they refuse to see The Passion. I think Barbara's post could also apply to Christians who saw TPOTC, hated it (for whatever reason), and look down on anyone who didn't hate it.

Christian Artists

Here are some posts I've run across lately that tackle the subject of Christians and art.

Jared at Mysterium Tremendum is rethinking what it means to "engage the culture":

That is the real reason, I think, why more Christians aren’t found in the world’s marketplace. It is because they aren’t welcome...And we could definitely use more Christian art in the world’s marketplace. But the reason it’s not there, I think, has more to do with the world’s marketplace than the Christian artist. The sad truth is, they don’t want to hear it. And when it comes to professional artistry – where money and promotion is involved – such a transition in ministry cannot be forced. It makes no sense to tell lambs to roar in a world where they are necessarily mute.

Here is part of one of the comments I posted to that thread (with misspellings and such corrected):

I do agree that Christians should not shoulder all the blame for ghettoization and "holy huddles". Those who control the arts and the entertainment industry really are prejudiced against Christianity. Vague spirituality is fine, but if you mention the name of Jesus in a reverent way, they seethe and go nuts. (Did the furor over The Passion not teach us anything?) It's pretty hard to get your foot in the door with that kind of hatred stacked against you.

Another point made in the comments -- Christian art doesn't have to be evangelical in nature. It doesn't have to be concerned with trying to save souls. Just offering another viewpoint -- one that goes against the grain of mainstream popular culture -- can make a huge difference.

Next up, Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses has an exhaustive post on why there is reason for hope in 21st century Hollywood. She hits on several subjects here.

On how "Beauty is not Pretty":

Religious people have responded to the excesses of sex and violence in mainstream cinema, by clamoring for an art that is “non-offensive.” They want happy stories, with no challenging ideas and images that will be “safe.” Hence, Christian parents are embracing really bad movies – in terms of their lack of artistry - like Cheaper By The Dozen, Walk to Remember – which are, in fact, over-sentimentalized G-rated lies.

[...]Essentially, many good Christian people have convinced themselves that the arts are optional, and even dangerous. They certainly deny that the place of the arts in society is, as the Pope has said, “a prophetic role.” Prophets in the Biblical sense are supposed to shake people out of their complacency by reminding them who they are. We need our artists to help us see and hear. To make us feel. To break up our stony hearts and give us fleshy hearts.

On the importance of The Passion:

Beyond the power of the film itself, The Passion brought God out of our churches and into the center of mainstream culture. He was front and center, in His most compelling posture as Lamb of God, and many millions of His sheep heard His voice – some for the first time. Undeniably, this has been an opportunity for dialogue and evangelization that the Church has rarely experienced before.

On the portrayal of violence in movies:

What we are learning from all this is that the problem is not with violence on the screen. It is meaningless violence that is wrong in entertainment. The Passion reconnects violence to its source in rebellion against God. It never objectifies the subject of the violence, nor does it dehumanize the perpetrators of violence. It shows the effects of violence in all its horror.

Finally, both Andrea Harris and Amy Welborn link to this article comparing the Harry Potter books to the Left Behind series. I haven't read any of those books, but I think the posts and their comments make some interesting points.

New Skin: Lady in Blue

This latest skin is my first 3-column layout. A while back, I had to change some things around in my templates so I could do this. (A completely transparent change -- betcha didn't even notice!) The background texture is from Eos Development. The separator and bullet are from House of Lime. The title font is "Chocolate Box", which can be found at DaFont. The Harrison Fisher illustration in the title comes from a PSP tube I downloaded from somewhere a long time ago. I can't find where I downloaded it from -- it's probably from a site that is no longer in service.

As usual, it's in the drop-down box under "Site Extras". It will be added to the gallery soon.

Movable Type Annoyance

While I'm on the subject of MT, allow me a moment to complain about something I find very annoying.

MT has "Trackback Auto-Discovery", where it automatically finds trackback links for the links in your post. It works with MT blogs, of course. It also works with WordPress blogs. Most other types of blogs require that you cut and paste the trackback link.

Here's the annoying part. Sometimes you will get an error on a ping, but yet it shows up on the other blog. However, MT thinks that it's still an outstanding trackback. So, when you update a post, you keep adding excess pings to the other blog's post.

The only way to stop this is to turn auto-discovery off, and then clear the "URLs to Ping" box before updating a post. But what if you add more links that need pinging to the post? Either you have to cut and paste all the new trackback URLs, or you have to turn auto-discovery back on. The problem with turning auto-discovery back on is that it "rediscovers" those previous links that came back with an error and pings them yet again.

This is something that I hope MT 3.0 will fix, or at least make easier to manage. For example, it could allow you to remove URLs that you know you already pinged without "rediscovering" them upon saving the post. It also could let you turn off auto-discovery on the posting page. I'm not going to get my hopes up, though.

My apologies to anyone who gets multiple pings from me on a post. Feel free to delete the excess pings.

Exodus from Movable Type?

I've noticed a lot of former MT users have recently switched to WordPress and other products. Now it looks like there may be even more who are going to do so in the future, since there's now a bit of a controversy over MT 3.0's pricing. I have to agree with some of the complaints -- for example, I think it's a bit severe for the free version to only allow one author.

I don't see myself switching to another package anytime soon. However, I'm going to wait a bit before upgrading to 3.0. I want to see what others think of it, first.

Update: Fritz has some additional thoughts in my comments. Dean Peters also has a good post on this subject. Both Fritz and Dean are saying that Six Apart needs to understand their user-base better -- they need to understand how their customers use their product. I agree with this assessment. Here is yet another example that makes this point.

Also, Six Apart has modified their pricing scheme some since I initially posted this. They have posted a clarification in an attempt to quell the furor.

In the meantime, Kevin McGehee has had a very regrettable experience with upgrading to MT 3.0.

Brain cells are kaput...

I just read something that blew out the last functioning brain cell in my brain. (Insomnia and allergies are really hard on brain cells.) So I'll leave you with a quiz that comes from one of my favorite movies. The result:

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

Actually, I feel more like this woman tonight:

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

(Via Michael Williams.)

Update: Evidence of my dead brain cells -- I couldn't even spell "kaput" properly. This has been corrected.

Men Who Play God

Here are two examples of this kind of arrogance and what it leads to:

• Dawn Eden confronts Dr. James D. Watson, the man who helped discover DNA. Dr. Watson is also an advocate of eugenics -- he believes that those who aren't "perfect" should not be allowed to be born. He even feels this way about his own son. (Via the Thinklings.)
• David Reimer was born a boy. After a botched circumcision, a doctor told David's parents that he could be turned into a girl. The belief was that gender was just a social construct. The doctor behind the attempt to transform David into a girl was Dr. John Money. I saw a documentary about David years ago and thought his story was so sad. He was put through so much misery, as was his family. I was relieved that it looked like he was finally putting his life together. But the story has a sad ending. David Reimer committed suicide recently.

Losing Heart

Bryan Preston at JunkYardBlog is starting to doubt that we have what it takes to win this war:

Abu Ghraib is that wound, or threatens to be. It will lead to exposure of other "atrocities," real and imagined. It will draw a line from a prison in Iraq to prisons here in America, and will lead to an airing of our worst side in the middle of a war in which our moral authority is indispensible to victory. The world already hates and fears us; seeing us as a truly abusive power, in living color, will dash whatever sympathy the world may have still held for us. Abu Ghraib will also paint us into a corner in which we will no longer be able to use serious methods to interrogate dangerous terrorists who may have information on future attacks. It will give a hostile press and our political opposition something to exploit, and will give the anti-war movement renewed energy. As the war has heated up, fringe leftist rhetoric has gone mainstream, with Democrats spouting "Bush knew!" and accusing him of plotting the war for purely political purposes. There is even a returned US soldier from Iraq playing Kerry's latter day mini-me. The Vietnam-era anti-war movement is back in force, ready to turn America once again from sure victory to catastrophic defeat.

Is the cultural rot too deep? Are Americans still strong and decent enough to see this thing through? Or are we weak and decadent like our enemies say we are?

Cultural Rot and Abu Ghraib

Via Mark Shea comes this column:

Rebecca Hagelin - Prisoner abuse and the rot of American culture

In this column, Hagelin makes a very good case for linking the mainstream acceptance of pr0n in our culture to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Update: Here's an earlier take on this subject from Donna M. Hughes on NRO. (Via Bunnie Diehl.)

Fruits of Evil

I haven't had the mental energy to blog the past few days. I wanted to say some things about the Abu Gharib prison situation. But now I feel like everything I wanted to say has been eclipsed by the horror of Nicholas Berg's beheading at the hands of Islamist terrorists.

As Rachel Lucas and Jared say better than I can, what happened at Abu Gharib was wrong. It's shameful and embarrassing. Those responsible should be punished and I don't think any excuses should be made for this sort of behavior. I think it's preposterous to blame Rumsfeld or Bush for this. But this scandal makes all of us look bad, and we are better than this. These few soldiers with their pictures have made better propaganda for the Bush-haters and America-haters than ten Michael Moore flicks and a hundred Tell Rall cartoons.

I haven't seen the video of Nicholas Berg's beheading and I won't because I don't think I could bear it. On another blog, I accidentally ran across a still picture of them holding his severed head, and that was too much for me. Just reading the description was too much.

As Mark Shea says here, the Islamists have inadvertently provided moral clarity:

But let's not do the moral equivalence thing and imagine that this [Abu Gharib] aberration, condemned by virtually all Americans, is the same thing as the revolting policy of cold-blooded murder which Al-Quaeda exists for no other purpose than to promote.

But Mark also warns us not to let a great evil cause us to excuse lesser evils. This is something I'm struggling with right now:

It makes atrocities so much easier to commit if we can console ourselves that we're not as bad as the Bad Guys...We *must* not allow ourselves to be remade in the image of our enemies.

To people who still babble about "root causes", who think "they hate us" because we don't give enough foreign aid, who want to blame Bush for everything, whose thinking is steeped in political correctness, who suffer from pacifist delusions, I have this to say: Pull your head out of your nether regions, clean your eyes and ears and get a clue! The Islamists hate us because we're not Muslims -- we are the Dar al-harb, the "House of War". The hate us because they don't see us as human, we are "things" to them, things that need to be conquered or destroyed.

As they murdered Nick Berg, these savages shouted, "God is great!" Well, whatever god they worship is not the God I worship. Look at the fruit that radical Islam bears -- it is evil, poisonous fruit. It is not from God.

Some people seem to be losing heart because of recent events. That is exactly what the Islamists are relying on. They think we are weak and decadent. Some of us are one or both of those things. But we can't be. We have to be a strong and decent people. We have to "suck it up" as INDC Journal says. The alternative is unthinkable.

Update: I think it's important to point out that Nick Berg wasn't just an American, but a Jewish American, like Daniel Pearl. (Via Ilyka Damen.)

If you're interested...

I finally got around to changing the songs in the radio blog. I left the last two I added but I got rid of the others and uploaded new ones. It's on the sidebar...check it out if you want.

In light of my previous post...

This is sort of amusing:

(Via Accidental Verbosity.)

It's the Pollen, Stupid!

This sickness and semi-cold that I've had for going on two weeks is allergies. Duh...I should have realized that. It's just that I've had colds and bronchitis so many times that I didn't even think of allergies. I have taken Zyrtec off and on for allergies, but usually allergies make my hands and feet itch, rather than giving me all this congestion and head pain. So I'm taking the Zyrtec again regularly as well as some NasacortAQ spray. I'm not the only one in this area having this problem. The pollen levels here are very high right now.

Wow!

Rachel Lucas is back! I'm looking forward to reading her "Ranty McRants" again.

(Via Accidental Verbosity.)

A different kind of trolling...

I have to comment on this little excerpt from Lileks today. Why? Because a similar thing happened to me recently:

Today I was trying to sign on to a newspaper that required registration; it wouldn’t take my password. Odd. I have a format for passwords that allows me to use different ones everywhere but instantly remember what they are, based on – well, never mind. So I clicked the “send me my password” button and checked my mail for the response. Turns out I hadn’t signed up under that email account – but someone else had. Said the newspaper website robot:

Username: Hate Your Guts
Password: Hate Your Guts

Wow. So someone planted a registration bomb lord knows when, and got all hot & fancy imagining the look on my face when I discovered what he’d done.

How pathetic is that?

Pretty pathetic! Here's my story...

A while back, and I'm not sure how long ago, I started getting email updates from some left-leaning website. I won't identify the website, because I don't think they are the ones responsible for this incident.

Anyway, these updates came to my blog email address that you see there on the sidebar. The email address is obfuscated to hide it from spambots, so someone would have to either click it or enter it by hand to send email to it.

The email updates from the lefty site became part of the ambient noise of spam in my inbox that I put up with for quite some time. (Most spam I get is sent to one of my ISP email addresses; very rarely do I get it on my other addresses.) The obvious spam would get deleted unread. The email update from the lefty site would get a quick look, I might think, "Why the heck am I getting this?" or "How lame -- spamming to get people to read their site!", and then I would delete it.

Recently, I've decided to take steps to reduce the noise in my inbox. The emails from this site had instructions for unsubscribing from their update list. Since I had never subscribed in the first place, I was reluctant to do this. After all, you should never respond to spam.

I took a closer look at one of these email updates and it mentioned that I could access my account by going to such-and-such link. Account? I've never signed up for an account at this site. So I clicked on the link. It wanted a password. I didn't know it, of course, so I clicked the "email my password" link.

Guess what the password was?

rightwingcretin

Right-wing cretin? Sure I'm right-wing, I'll admit that. But cretin? That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

Now I get it...somebody signed my blog email address up with this site. It was not the site spamming me like I thought. So I unsubscribed from their list. And I changed the password and email address on the account. I couldn't find a way to delete the account, or I would have done it. Instead, I will leave that account to gather dust.

So what did the person who did this accomplish? Not much, really. Just a little irritation at getting what I considered spam, and a little amusement at the revelation of the password. And I got a blog post out of it.

Second Blogiversary!

I started this blog two years ago today. Its name was originally "Thorns and All" (but not for long). The first blog to blogroll me (at my request) was Martin Roth Online, which once maintained the Christian blog list. (That list would later become the starting point for blogs4God.) As I remember it, the second blog to blogroll me was Midwest Conservative Journal and the third was Joshua Claybourn. If I remember correctly, Joshua was also the first blogger to link to one of my posts. (If I'm wrong about any of this, my apologies!)

I started out using Blogger at this location. At first, I used one of the standard templates with the colors and fonts tweaked. Then a few months later, I learned enough to create my own design, which is still the default for this blog. On December 31, 2002, I switched to Movable Type and moved to the current domain.

This site started as just a little place for me to express myself, learn to write better and learn web design stuff. It still does serve those purposes, and I hope I have improved some over the past two years. I know I still have much to learn. For everyone who has linked me, who reads this site and who has left comments or emailed me (excluding trolls), I would like to offer a heartfelt thank you!

More on the March

From bloggers coming from two different viewpoints:

• Times Against Humanity -- The "Unwoman", The True Face of Evil, Their Silence Was Deafening
• INDC Journal -- INDC Protests: "March for Women's Lives," Part One, INDC Protests: "March for Women's Lives," Part Two, INDC Protests: "March for Women's Lives," Part Three - My Thoughts

For other links on this subject, see this post.

Mocking a Mocker

Dale Price takes on the now infamous Rene Gonzalez.

(Via MCJ.)

Sometimes Things Are Not As They Seem - Part 2

Everybody is talking about Micah Wright, an anti-war lefty who backed up his pacifist credentials by saying he was a former Army Ranger who saw the error of his ways. This turns out to be a lie, but like many in his position, he seems sorrier that he got caught than that he lied in the first place.

After reading this account from someone who knew him well enough to easily debunk his lies, I am reminded of the pathetic story of Mike Warnke, the Christian comedian who claimed he was once a "satanic high priest".

Sometimes Things Are Not As They Seem - Part 1

• Remember when I linked to the Subservient Chicken website? Well, Old Oligarch mentioned that someone told him the site wasn't real, so I took a look at Snopes and found this explanation:

  Actually, the chicken has a repertoire of about 300 different actions, each triggered by the entry of one of the combinations of nouns, verbs and other parts of speech programmed into its "vocabulary." A complete list of trigger words and the clips they invoke has already been posted to the Internet, although it appears the clips can no longer be viewed directly from external web links. (That is, if you want to see the chicken jump, you have to go to subservientchicken.com and enter the command "jump" — if you try to go directly to the URL for the "jump" clip, all you'll see is the chicken waving an accusatory finger at you.) A Subservient Chicken Request List has also been established to chronicle the actions the chicken will or will not perform.

  After I linked this site, I later wondered if it might be some kind of program that just looked like a live webcam. I feel kind of foolish that I thought it was a live webcam at first, but at least I wasn't the only one.

• When I first read about this, I was pretty disgusted. But, as it turns out, the site in question (which will not be directly linked here) is a hoax. Thank God for small mercies...