Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax

A lot of little articles about a dead horse and celebrities running afoul of the law appeared today. One wonders if the White House did anything over the weekend and if the Congress is still meeting. There’s always tomorrow’s news.

• A program that exposed the institution of women being used as sex slaves by the Japanese during World War II was altered by pressure from politicians. In its unedited form, the NHK documentary found the late Emperor Hirohito guilty of war crimes. A court ruled in favor of victims of the policy.
• The 2005 winner of a ride into space had to give up the prize because he could not afford to pay the taxes.
• Casino Royale became the first James Bond film to be shown in China.
• The latest oldest person in the world died in the US at the age of 114 years of age. She enjoyed the title for less than a week.
• Microbial Martians may exist beneath the surface of the frozen Elysium Sea. The trouble is that future unmanned expeditions will not be able to drill deep enough in their search for life.
• Liposuction is no cure for obesity say doctors. In Great Britain: “The operation, in which fat cells are sucked from under the skin, has jumped from the eighth most popular cosmetic procedure in 2005 to third in 2006, behind breast and eyelid surgery.
• Julie Bindel writes: “…lesbians crop up in soap operas, movies, dramas such as Shameless and Bad Girls, and are often there as characters who happen to be lesbians, not because of it. Many are nice, well-rounded folk, some are not. But even if they are not very nice, why should I care? Why can’t I just enjoy a film without recognising myself in it? Did heterosexuals worry they were being portrayed as flesh-eating serial killers when they saw The Silence of the Lambs?”
• A fundamentalist woman is challenging a California restraining order that prohibits her from speaking out against a bar located only a few doors down from her Balboa Island cottage. Anne Lemen has gone beyond this, however, by videotaping patrons of the watering hole and telling people that the Village Inn “makes sex videos, dabbles in child pornography, distributes illegal drugs, encourages lesbian activities, has mafia links, is a whorehouse or sells tainted food — all false statements, the court said, that Lemen had made.” The owners of the bar, she insists, are members of the mafia just like her ex-husband and security guards at her church. Too bad that the bar can’t just electronically bar her from appearing in front of the restaurant.
• Personal life coaches seem to be a way that some people use to get around licensing requirements for mental health professionals.
• Kathryn Kramer has a bone to pick with Wickipedia.
• Bruce Schneir reflects on the way that U.S. prosecutors put Islam on trial. “I was struck with the eliminationist rhetoric coming out of the Christian Right in the U.S. today, and how it would fare under the same level of scrutiny.” Maybe it is time that we investigate how Christian fundamentalists finance genocide and terrorism.

If you find any articles worthy of mention in these roundups, send the URL to gazissax at best dot com. And feel free to comment!