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On Charles Darwin’s passing in 1882, influential friends intervened to thwart his wish to be buried in a humble coffin in his parish. Such an interment, they felt, would deprive England of the privilege of honouring one of its great men. So it was that the professed agnostic was buried with high ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Canon Frederic Farrar’s eulogy assured his countrymen that the views of the deceased did not menace the Crown with the boisterous materialism promoted in the free thought press. Darwin’s life-long service to his parish, and his occasional acknowledgement of the Creator, proved his loyalty...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Johnny-Damon-Soul_W0QQitemZ5648873584QQcategoryZ2022QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Once a huge piece to the puzzle in the Red Sox triumphant 2004 World Series Championship, this 32 year old leadoff hitter has decided to sell his soul to the highest bidder. This package includes his wife (NY bidders please remember the Anna Benson Deal) Michelle. This Package is very marketable and loves the media. Winner will acquire very hard worker, with little league arm. Soul is defined as "the actuating cause of an individual life", in this case $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Please be advised when purchasing, honor is not available. THERE IS NO RETURN ON THIS SALE. this is not...

What's left once all of Canada's faux national myths have been invalidated? Nothing but jealousy ------------------------------------------ Seventeen ordinary people shared the $54-million Lotto 6/49 payout last month. Those 15 men and two women were co- workers at a small-town gas plant in Alberta. They are the dictionary definition of "working class"; most wore blue jeans, ball caps and T-shirts when they claimed their millions, and they stopped off at a Tim Hortons on the way. What a great human interest story--salt of the earth working folks splitting up the big prize. Nice. But not according to Canada's largest news syndicate,...

Get in, get out, get the next deal. That's the code of the ''flipper." Flipping -- buying and quickly reselling houses -- has helped some investors make a killing in booming markets like Boston's western suburbs. But with concerns rising about a slowing housing market, has the world flipped on flippers? Some analysts and brokers think so. * * * Real estate investing by buyers who don't plan on living in their properties is arguably at historically unprecedented levels, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said last month in a speech to the American Bankers Association. This suggests that speculative activity...

There are three great articles at the URL. I think the last one is fittingly put first for this forum. Stop Chewing Lanna Perry 4th April 2005 Sydney Australia Chosenwarriorprincess@yahoo.com.au My precious children, My precious possessions, My precious branches, heed the word I am to speak for My heart is grieved. My heart is grieved My children, because as each of you are connected to me the One and Only true Vine, yet many of you are doing things that I am not pleased with. My precious branches, you know what I see? I see some of you chewing at...

January 5, 2005 | Recently Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez gave Aljazeera TV an interview in which he openly disclosed his plans to lead a global "offensive war" against U.S. "colonialism and imperialism." The interview was one of those prepared events in which the questions are carefully designed to invite the answers. Not journalism but impudent advertisement. The presenter, Mr. Faysal Al-Quaim, starts by telling Chávez that he is so popular in the Arab world that, if he ran in an Arab presidential election he would "win by more than 90% of the votes" and hastened to add: "I mean a...

With two months left in a term truncated by scandal, Gov. James E. McGreevey is planning his post-government future, hunting for office space in the friendly confines of Middlesex County and for a home along the Hudson River waterfront. === First lady Dina Matos McGreevey, meanwhile, has been house-hunting in Cranford and nearby towns, indicating the couple's four-year marriage is unlikely to survive the governor's bombshell announcement last month that he is gay and had an adulterous affair with a man. McGreevey, who set Nov. 15 as his resignation date, will be helped in his passage from public official to...

Alyn Libman won a $15,000-a-year scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley with a resume that showed more than just Libman's athletic achievement and academic potential. It also showed years of ridicule, beatings and threats, along with Libman's decision to become a boy in 11th grade. "It felt amazing to actually be embraced by someone who didn't just dismiss me for being different," said Libman, a 19-year-old aspiring civil rights lawyer and the first transgendered person to win a scholarship from The Point Foundation, a Chicago nonprofit organization that has awarded more than $1 million to college-bound gays since...

Gov. McGreevey Is Gay, And Still Popular A month after he shocked the nation by announcing he had had a gay extramarital affair and would resign, Gov. James E. McGreevey's approval ratings have remained steady, according to a new poll. In the latest Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll, 46 percent of voters surveyed approved of McGreevey's performance in office, while 42 percent disapproved.

Right now Bill Maher (Sp?) is saying that President Bush sat for 7 minutes after being informed of 9/11 and that is proof positive that he is not a good President (deal breaker were his words).Hannity agreed - then said but I judge him on the whole of his performance since that moment. If Hannitty had any brains he would probably have done some research and known that there are very sophisticated plans in place for the President's movements in the event of an attack against America. Not having lose lips, I think it is safe to say that the...

Let's cut right to the chase: Are you going to lose your overtime pay under the new Labor Department rules? While lawyers, labor leaders and policy wonks pore through the 536 pages of regulations the government released Tuesday, a few clear winners and losers have emerged. If some of the critics are right, millions of U.S. workers are in danger of losing their overtime pay. And don't think the issue doesn't apply to you. If you are suddenly no longer eligible for overtime, what's to stop your boss from working you 60 hours a week? Or 80? So, let's get...

<p>SANAA, Yemen, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A purported statement by al-Qaida in Yemen warned Saturday of a "major strike" soon in the United States.</p> <p>The statement, distributed by the Yemeni Tagamoo Party for Reforms, said: "A major strike, a big event will take place in America soon," reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attacks.</p>

'The bigger they are, the harder they fall" is an accurate adage, especially as it applies to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, of course, once claimed to be the brightest and the most well-informed where the American body politic is concerned, a conservative political pundit whose views on right, wrong and morality once served as a watermark for the values that helped make this nation great. Now, he has been reduced to asserting before a court of law that he is a victim of blackmail. I find it downright insulting that his attorney, Roy Black, has claimed before the 15th Circuit Court...

Ann Coulter might want to steal an advance copy of Joe Conason's "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," due out next week. The mini-skirted mouthpiece is skewered for 23 pages as Conason, the New York Observer national correspondent, barbecues her and Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Bernard Goldberg and other angry-for-the-airwaves pundits. Conason notes that while the 41-year-old blond may idolize anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, she isn't exactly a "model for her 'abstinence education' campaign. ... Sexual abstinence ... is for the poor rubes who stay home watching 'The 700 Club,' not for urbane young Republicans...

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all. Sloth may not seem that enjoyable, nor anger either, but giving way to deep laziness has its pleasures, and the expression of anger entails a release that is not without its small delights. In recompense, envy may be the subtlest--perhaps I should say the most insidious--of the seven deadly sins. Surely it is the one that people are least likely to want to own up to, for to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, small-hearted. It may also be the most endemic. Apart...

... The average Frenchman listening to state-run France Inter radio or Antenne 2 television during the first week of the war in Iraq saw the United States spiraling toward a humiliating defeat, and Bush, the "cowboy" president, headed for ignominy if not impeachment. In tones that mixed elation and awe, newsmen and pundits began speculating on how the Middle East would look the day after the United States lost the war against Saddam. Wouldn't this dramatic display of U.S. vulnerability encourage other nations and terrorist groups to challenge overrated U.S. military might?...

Just got off the phone with my 6th grade, 12 yr old daughter "B__"'s dad. Seems at school lunch Monday, she sat down at the table with her usual group of friends and one of them said "Why is B__ here?" My daughter B__ said "because I have friends here?", at which point they all got up and moved to another table, telling her she wasn't welcome in "the group" anymore. She didn't tell me or her father this until last night at dinner when he took her out just the two of them, breaking into tears three times hysterically....

<p>Granted, there is upheaval in the world and there are battles where a great deal is at stake -- life itself. All the more precious, then, the minor skirmishes on the home front that mean a great deal in a small way and remind us of how lucky we are to feel innocent hatreds, from summer to summer, at the ballpark.</p>

BERLIN - America's ears must be burning. On German television, a theater director sniffs that the only U.S. creation worth mentioning is chewing gum. A book doubting that al-Qaida terrorists launched the Sept. 11 attacks is selling 10,000 copies a week. In the German magazine Der Spiegel, an essay on "sprouting anti-Americanism" describes the United States as the people who "eliminated the Indians, bombed Dresden, burned Hiroshima (and) didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol." And this is a piece defending America. Gary Smith, the director of the American Academy in Berlin, a nonprofit center that promotes closer ties between Germans and...

It is a well known fact that there are scores of computer professionals who have been laid off and are out of work in this country. Those positions include software engineers, network engineers, and electrical engineers. Those who have lost their jobs in the past 24 months know what I am talking about. We all know WHY we've been laid off. It is because indentured servants from other lands have overrun our country with the help of Congress due to the false premise of a labor shortage by IT industry lobbyists. Here we have an opportunity to "layoff" those who...