Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
Perth woman gets arm trapped in dog poo bin – fire crew stage rescue
TO Letham park, Perth, Scotland, where a woman, 39, has her arm trapped in a dog poo bin.
Why? Was she trying to post a letter? Was she looking for food?
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Posted: 25th, July 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comments (2)
Teacher sacked for saving all the children’s lives
A DAYCARE teacher has been sacked from her job after putting out a fire, potentially saving everyone’s lives. That’s lousy isn’t it?
Michelle Hammack smelled smoke coming from the kitchen of Little Temples Childcare in Jacksonville, when she left her classroom of sleeping children to find out what was going on.
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Jane Elliott’s experiments in racism – blues eyes v brown eyes
LET’s talk about discrimination.YouTuber LudwingMedia harks back to 1970. Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. Or is it the other way around?
Ms. Jane Elliott’s “brown eyes, blue eyes” experiment in 1970 (the third one after her first in 1968). This “Eye of Storm” documentary was made by William Peters in 1970 for ABC News and later included in the documentary “A Class Divided” (1985), which included a class reunion (of 1984.)
The most telling moment is when Russell used “brown eyes” as a derogatory term to call John name, only a couple of hours through. Though, the experiment was too short to allow it to get to the point when a “brown-eyes” person does so to another fellow “brown-eyes” person.
From her website:
In 1968, in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a third grade teacher, Ms. Jane Elliott, in all-white, all-Christian, Riceville, Iowa, involved her students in an exercise in discrimination based on eye color. It was her attempt to help them to understand some of the reasons why Black people were taking to the streets and demanding equitable treatment with whites.
She went on the road:
She took the Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes exercise, and other work, out to colleges, and government, professional and community groups across the world. In these training sessions, she usually puts the brown eyed attendees in the superior position. As these groups are more likely to be mixed race, this ensures that the people feeling the discrimination are more likely to be white, who are less likely to be used to it. She uses choice of language and tone, removal of basic rights (such as being allowed to speak without permission) and a constant shifting of rules to discomfort the blue-eyed participants. At the same time she uses positive language, praise and encouragement to the brown-eyed people. Even assertive, intelligent professionals have expressed their surprise at how quickly they start to mirror the trainer’s behaviour, and how thoroughly they become affected by this technique, even at a two hour seminar. Jane Elliott then hammers home the point: people who are the subject of real discriminations cannot call a halt to the misery and frustration at the end of the afternoon. Jane Elliott started her exercise to point out racial discrimination: now she uses it to highlight sexism, ageism and homophobia too.
She has more to say:
Did the media go overboard for Trayvon Martin?
DID the British medi make too much of the Trayvon Martin story? Roger L. Simon looks at the facts:
According to Reuters, in New York a grand total of 2000 people showed up Saturday to protest in favor of Trayvon Martin in the George Zimmerman trial. That’s .00024257 of the population of our most populous city …
In our second most populous city, my hometown of Los Angeles, the results were even worse, according to the Los Angeles Times. A measly 400 people demonstrated. The totals in Miami, closest big city to the event, were 300.
In other words, the turnout was somewhere between minuscule and puny — maybe, at best, fifteen thousand people nationwide in a country of 314 million.
Had it gotten violent the media would have really gone to town…
Note: But let’s be clear: if you’re not black and can’t empathise, can’t grasp the thought that a person can be deemed suspect because they are black, you need to think harder about it. Understanding is what’s needed.
Transfer balls: Arsenal striker Higuain signs for Napoli but won’t leave Real Madrid
TRANSFER Balls: a look at the news that Arsenal have missed out on Real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain. Or have they..?
This from today’s press. And do note that the Sun said Arsenal had signed Higuain for £23m.
Daily Express: “Napoli agree £30m fee with Real Madrid for Arsenal target Gonzalo Higuain”
The 25-year-old is thought to prefer a move to the Emirates and is delaying discussing personal terms with the Naples club in the hope of buying time to allow Arsenal to return to the negotiating table.
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Posted: 23rd, July 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Watch as explosion goes off live in newsroom!
ITV and Sky are determined to make explosive news, however, neither hold a candle to KIII-TV in Texas.
Live on-air, three KIII-TV news anchors were left pie-eyed and pooing it after an explosion rocked the studio at 5.30am local time on July 12.
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In photos: a seagull kills a pigeon in Kensington Gardens
PIGEONS. Love them. But could you eat a whole one? This Eastern White pelican ate a pigeon in London’s St James’s Park. in one gulf. The seagulls we watched by the Round Pond, in London’s Kensington Gardens, preferred to peck the pigeon to death, then eat only the choicest cuts.
It’s a jungle out there.
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The best signs from today’s Justice for Trayvon Martin protests
TODAY in America, Trayvon Martin protests were held in more than 100 US cities. The protests were over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in a Florida murder trial.
These are the pick of the signs and placards:
Cynthia Gardner Williams holds up a sign with a quote from Karl Marx at the “We Shall Not Be Moved” rally Friday, July 19, 2013 in the Capitol Courtyard in Tallahassee, Fla. The rally, sponsored by the NAACP, is a show of support for Dream Defenders, who continue their sit-in at Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s office. The sit-in is their response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting death of Trayvon Martin. (AP Photo/Phil Sears)
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Political memories: Hang Nelson Mandela before it’s too late (and Saddam Hussein was a ‘friendly’ guy)
AS the mawkish and ghoulish media hover around Nelson Mandela’s hospital bed, we look back to when the aged ANC leader was not South Africa’s number one tourist attraction.
This poster was distributed by Britain’s Federation of Conservative Students during the early 1980’s.
In the interests of balance, long-serving Labour MP Tony Benn, a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, told us that Saddam Hussein was not a bad guy but “very friendly“….
Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Flashback, Politicians | Comments (2)
Conversations with my hotdog – an anti-LSD and meat film from the 1960s
ONCE upon a time, LSD was the housewife’s trip of choice. British soldiers had tested it and, well, there would be another pill along soon enough to make things better. Or worse. This warning from yesteryear also contains a profound anti-meat message:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pictured at the moment of his capture beats Rolling Stone for cool and iconic
SGT Sean Murphy was there when alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding beneath the cover of a boat. He took photos. This one shows the 19-year-old carrying the red dot of a sniper’s rifle laser sight on his forehead.
Sgt Murphy says his pictures show the “real Boston bomber, not someone fluffed and buffed”.
Surely, he means to say ‘the alleged bomber’?
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Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Vegetables of Walmart: Fukushima radiation creates ‘mutant’ fruit and veg?
HAVE your vegetables been nucleated by fall-out from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster? We feared the nuclear rabbit. America, Oxford and Glasgow were smothered by a “nuclear plume“. Australia was washed by nuclear rain. Journalists appealed to readers to help end Armageddon. Tens of thousands ‘died‘. And then they only went and banned bananas. And now mutant vegetables are coming for us.
ABC reports:
Deformed Vegetables, Fruit Reportedly Pop Up Around Japan Nuclear Plant
Images of the bizarrely deformed flora – which range from tomatoes with tumor-like growths to monstrous cabbage and conjoined peaches – turned up on the website Imgur this week, with the title, “Effects from the Fukushima radiation disaster?”
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Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Hebden Bridge couple freed from sexy times by Fire Brigade
TWO ladies were having a lovely time in Hebden Bridge. Now, that doesn’t sound remarkable, but these ladies were having some sexy times which involved handcuffs. Again, not remarkable, until you get to the part where the fire brigade get involved.
After a bit of bondage, the couple found that they’d lost the key for their handcuffs and as such, had to be cut free by firefighters.
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In 1929 Jean-Paul Sartre took mescaline – that’s when the crabs started to follow him
IN 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre met Simone De Beauvoir and took some mescaline. These two events were not linked. He recalled the experience in conversation with political science professor, John Gerassi:
Sartre: … I ended up having a nervous breakdown.
Gerassi: You mean the crabs?
Satre: Yeah, after I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time. I would say, “O.K., guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and quiet,” and they would be there, around my desk, absolutely still, until the bell rang.
Gerassi: A lot of them?
Sartre: Actually, no, just three or four.
Grassi: But you knew they were imaginary?
Sartre: Oh, yes. But after I finished school, I began to think I was going crazy, so I went to see a shrink, a young guy then with whom I have been good friends ever since, Jacques Lacan. We concluded that it was fear of being alone, fear of losing the camaraderie of the group. You know, my life changed radically from my being one of a group, which included peasants and workers, as well as bourgeois intellectuals, to it being just me and Castor. The crabs really began when my adolescence ended. At first, I avoided them by writing about them — in effect, by defining life as nausea — but then as soon as I tried to objectify it, the crabs appeared. And then they appeared whenever I walked somewhere. Not when I was writing, just when I was going someplace. … The crabs stayed with me until the day I simply decided that they bored me and that I just wouldn’t pay attention to them. And then the war came, the stalag, the Resistance, and the big political battles after the war.
From the book Talking With Sartre: Conversations and Debates.
Posted: 18th, July 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
The Chinese police don’t fight crime – they fight each other (video)
TWO traffic cops in China decided that directing cars wasn’t for them, as they preferred to direct their fists toward each other in the middle of the street.
Luckily, someone was on-hand to film and laugh.
The incident happened in Tangshan and involved two police assistants who decided to knock seven bells out of each other, for everyone’s amusement but their superiors.
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Rolling Stones Boston Bomber Cover inspires NME: ‘Pol Pot – The Sultry Misunderstood Genius Behind Cambodia’s Summer of Love’
YES. Rolling Stone magazine still exists. Sure, it had to go some lengths to remind us that it is alive by featuring Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover. You do what you need to get noticed.
The alleged killer looks dreamy, a kind of celebrity and a martyr. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick says the rock magazine’s moves are cover “out of taste”. The Establishment hate it. Rock on, Rolling Stone.
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The Left wing hates Israel because it despises the Western way of life
TODAY I took part in a debate about the left’s attitude to Israel at the Jewish Free School in London. My opening remarks are published below.
For me, the most striking thing about the left’s attitude to Israel is how much it has changed, how sweepingly it has been transformed over the past couple of generations. I don’t think there’s any other issue on which the left has so dramatically changed its thinking. In a nutshell, the mainstream Western left has gone from loving Israel to loathing it, from singing its praises to blaming it for all the world’s ills and accusing it of being a uniquely barbaric state.
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Posted: 17th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (61)
1980 snapshot: Lady Diana Spencer stalls her Mini Metro outside her Earl’s Court flat
FLASHBACK snapshot: 1980 – “Lady Diana Spencer’s look of astonishment as she stalls her car – a new Mini Metro – outside her Earl’s Court flat when leaving for her job as a teacher at a kindergarten in Pimlico, London. Speculation continues that she may have a romantic involvement with the Prince of Wales.”
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Posted: 17th, July 2013 | In: Flashback, Royal Family | Comment
The Trayvon Martin verdict: a great chance to pump up your Facebook stats
SOMETHING darkling that’s been simmering on Facebook for a long time now boiled over last weekend, once news broke that George Zimmerman was deemed legally blameless for killing Trayvon Martin. So I’ll say it if nobody else will: these passive-aggressive like-whoring posts (similar to link-whoring, only with thrice the obnoxiousness) need to stop.
You’ve surely seen the kind of posts I’m talking about. “Hitler and the Nazis were evil racist bastards. ‘Like’ this post if you agree!” Or, even worse: “’Share’ if you agree!” The implication, of course, is: “If you don’t like or share my post you clearly oppose its premise, you goose-stepping Nazi scum you.”
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Posted: 17th, July 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Trayvon Martin: hooded black Howard University School of Medicine students ‘kill’ in Chelsea and Millwall ‘kits’
IN reaction to the news that Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman will not be punished by the US judiciary. (His family are in hiding and his name is mud, however.) The Howard University School of Medicine, makes a point. Which looks the more suspect – the black men in white coats or the black men in hoods?
The question might be: Trayvon Martin or Howard Shipman? The hooded executioner or His Excellency, Generalissimo Dr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, Honorable Chief of State, Benefactor of the Nation, President and Dictator of the Dominican Republic? Tough choice.
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Journalists who revealed alleged rape victim’s address wrongly relied on the police
THE job of a journalist is surely to question everything officialdom tells you. Thumbs down, then, to the south London News Shopper which published enough details to ensure that an alleged rape victim could be identified.
The online paper let down the alleged victim by publishing a picture and video of police entering the crime scene, which happened to be the woman’s home. To avoid any doubt, the footage also featured nearby shop fronts.
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Egotism, ‘female disease’ and other ways to get locked inside the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (photos)
THE Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is shown in Weston, W.Va. is a former psychiatric hospital now being marketed as a historic and paranormal tourist attraction.
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Trayvon Martin: Juror B37 and her book’s agent crawl back under their rocks
JUROR B37 sat on the George Zimmerman trial that questioned how Trayvon Martin came to be shot dead. She and her five colleagues cleared Zimmerman of murder. And then B37 got to thinking about her career. How about a book? She got an agent, named Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management LLC, notable for her work shilling for Amanda Knox’s ex Raffaele Sollecito.
Martin hoped Juror B37’s book would help the great unwashed…
“…understand the commitment it takes to serve and be sequestered on a jury in a highly publicized murder trial …. It could open a whole new dialogue about laws that may need to be revised and revamped to suit a 21st century way of life.”
Juror B37 went on CNN to for some marketing for her public service tome:
“I think both were responsible for the situation they had gotten themselves into. I think they both could have walked away.”
And then Juror B37 had second thoughts. The market (via Twitter and a peptition on Change.org) had told her that her project was reprehensible:
“I realize it was necessary for our jury to be sequestered in order to protest our verdict from unfair outside influence, but that isolation shielded me from the depth of pain that exists among the general public over every aspect of this case. The potential book was always intended to be a respectful observation of the trial from my and my husband’s perspectives solely and it was to be an observation that our ‘system’ of justice can get so complicated that it creates a conflict with our ‘spirit’ of justice.
“Now that I am returned to my family and to society in general, I have realized that the best direction for me to go is away from writing any sort of book and return instead to my life as it was before I was called to sit on this jury.”
Martin did a reverse ferret:
“After careful consideration regarding the proposed book project with Zimmerman Juror B37, I have decided to rescind my offer of representation in the exploration of a book based upon this case.”
Says B37:
“I have realized that the best direction for me to go is away from writing any sort of book and return instead to my life as it was before …”
And that’s a woman seen as a peer of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman deemed fit to judge them…
Posted: 16th, July 2013 | In: Books, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Free ice-cream for every gay marriage
THE debate on gay marriage just got sugary. In the Anorak post bag:
“BEN & JERRY’S and lesbian, gay and bisexual equality organisation Stonewall joined forces today to celebrate the final parliamentary stage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in the House of Lords, with hundreds of supporters cutting a one metre tall rainbow cake in London. Gathering outside the House of Lords, supporters of marriage equality enjoyed taking a bite out of the rainbow cake… Ben & Jerry’s also announced that they will supply the same cake design used today and provide ice cream for the first same sex marriage in the U.K.”
If Ben & Jerry are gay, are Holland & Barrett, Fortnum and Mason, Marks & Spencer…
Posted: 16th, July 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
