“We discourage people from walking over hot coals,” San Jose Fire Department Capt. Reggie Williams told the San Jose Mercury-News, after more than 20 people had to go to the hospital with second and third-degree burns during a Tony Robbins event.

[Merc: 21 People Treated for Burns After Firewalk]

In today’s lesson on how to be a dick, we examine a technique that the Roman rhetorician Tacitus referred to as Homo non potest ferre cantus, and which consists of running an attack ad against your opponent that features critical factoids displayed onscreen while a soundtrack plays in the background consisting of your opponent’s tortured, midnight-feline-mating-call, massacre of a beloved patriotic tune:

(VIA: The New York Times)

It sounds like a story lifted from the pages of everyone’s favorite defunct tabloid. But it isn’t. Instead it’s the New York Times today reporting that authorities in Paupa, New Guinea have arrested 29 members of a cannibal cult, who they say murdered seven supected witch doctors, then ate their brains and penises in the belief that doing so would, literally, make them bullet proof:

“It’s prevalent cult activity,” [Police Chief Anthony] Wagambie said. He said he believes there could be between 700 and 1,000 cult members in several villages in Papua New Guinea’s remote northeast interior. All of them might have eaten human flesh, he said…

He expected police would make around 100 arrests over the weekend for cult-related crimes.

Four of the seven victims were murdered last week, Wagambie said, adding that no remains had been recovered.

“They’re probably all eaten up,” he said.

That sound you are now hearing is me, scratching Papua New Guinea off my vacation bucket list…

Very VERY Loud – turn down your speakers before you play it.

Some of the interpretation is rough but these kids have great taste in repertoire. Dang. And the ensemble just executes.

Read more »

If you’d flipped though the pages of the Washington Post earlier today, you might have stumbled upon an article concerning the firing of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan. And if you’d read through the article you might have learned that Sullivan was ousted by a cadre of plutocrats appointed to the Board of Regents by the governor and tasked with the mission of cutting the University’s budget to the bone. And in the budgetary battle that pits academic excellence and integrity against a philosophy of Government that sees no room for public spending outside the Defense Department, Ms. Sullivan was seen as favoring the former at the expense of the latter. And if you’d scanned the aforementioned article for an example of Ms. Sullivan’s profligacy you would have come upon the following paragraphs:

The campaign to remove Sullivan began around October, the sources said. The Dragas group coalesced around a consensus that Sullivan was moving too slowly. Besides broad philosophical differences, they had at least one specific quibble: They felt Sullivan lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.

And for a moment you’d scratch your head and wonder “obscure academic departments in classics and German?” And then it would dawn on you: My God.. The Washington Post actually seems to think I’m dumber than a bag of bricks, and what’s more, they seem to believe that even that’s too smart.

But you didn’t of course. Because, I mean, fuck’s sake: who reads so pathetic an excuse for a newspaper as the Washington Post? If you wanted to give yourself a lobotomy, you’d shove an ice-pick through the roof of your mouth and wiggle it around, back and forth and side to side, a few times. Much less painful and frustrating an experience than flipping through the pages of the fucking Washington Post.

Rodney King, whose videotaped savage beating by the LAPD in 1991 sparked riots across the city, was found dead this morning in his pool in his Southern California home. Cause of death unknown.

Sadly, some things never change. LAPD’s response this May at a march for immigrants’ rights: