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thepoliticalfreakshow: Not An Onion Article of the Day: Couple Argues Over American Idol Winner, Stab Each Other, Charged With Aggravated and Simple Assault An argument between a Pennsylvania couple over which American Idol finalist deserved to win the contest escalated quickly, resulting in a knife fight that left the pair bloodied and behind bars. 48-year-old Karen Elaine Harrelson and 57-year-old Gregory Stambaugh were hanging out in the basement of Stambaugh’s West Manchester Township home last week, watching the American Idol season finale and drinking beers. An argument ensued over which contestant deserved to take home the title — Candice Glover or Kree Harrison — and the verbal altercation soon turned violent. According to Stambaugh, it was Harrelson who produced the first knife, stabbing him in the left forearm. He claims she was accidentally wounded during a subsequent struggle for the weapon. Harrelson tells a different story. In her statement to police, Harrelson said she was intending to use the knife to cut a piece of cake when Stambaugh suddenly approached her with a second knife and cut her wrist. She claims she had no choice but to stab Stambaugh in self-defense. Ultimately, both Harrelson and Stambaugh were arrested and booked on charges of both aggravated and simple assault. Though they were found by police on their porch with their clothes covered in blood, neither had sustained a serious injury. For the record, Candice Glover beat Kree Harrison. [mug shots via Fox43]
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thepoliticalfreakshow:

Not An Onion Article of the Day: Couple Argues Over American Idol Winner, Stab Each Other, Charged With Aggravated and Simple Assault

An argument between a Pennsylvania couple over which American Idol finalist deserved to win the contest escalated quickly, resulting in a knife fight that left the pair bloodied and behind bars.

48-year-old Karen Elaine Harrelson and 57-year-old Gregory Stambaugh were hanging out in the basement of Stambaugh’s West Manchester Township home last week, watching the American Idol season finale and drinking beers.

An argument ensued over which contestant deserved to take home the title — Candice Glover or Kree Harrison — and the verbal altercation soon turned violent.

According to Stambaugh, it was Harrelson who produced the first knife, stabbing him in the left forearm. He claims she was accidentally wounded during a subsequent struggle for the weapon.

Harrelson tells a different story.

In her statement to police, Harrelson said she was intending to use the knife to cut a piece of cake when Stambaugh suddenly approached her with a second knife and cut her wrist. She claims she had no choice but to stab Stambaugh in self-defense.

Ultimately, both Harrelson and Stambaugh were arrested and booked on charges of both aggravated and simple assault.

Though they were found by police on their porch with their clothes covered in blood, neither had sustained a serious injury.

For the record, Candice Glover beat Kree Harrison.

[mug shots via Fox43]

The idea that politics could or should have any input into science is anathema to skeptics. They often bring out the examples of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, or the racial science of Nazi Germany, to illustrate the dangers of allowing science to be contaminated by political ideology. They less often acknowledge that racial science was not unique to Nazi Germany, and that the same kind of racist garbage was enthusiastically pursued by scientists in the most enlightened liberal democracies of the time, and found in all the standard British and American anthropology textbooks. Eugenics, including racial eugenics, wasn’t just supported by Nazis, but by people who considered themselves among the vanguard of all that was good and progressive. Liberal democracy was no guard against the influence of political ideology on scientific thought. (On the contrary, liberal democracy is a political ideology that influences scientific thought.)

What’s more, skeptics never acknowledge that racial science was defeated by political ideology, and not by science itself. In fact, there was nothing that could have defeated it within the empirical framework of racial scientists. Their racist experiments confirmed their racist hypotheses based on their racist observations.
Stephen Bond, “Why I Am No Longer a Skeptic” (via wretchedoftheearth)

Medea Benjamin on her 'epic' Obama drones speech protest

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

WASHINGTON — Even Medea Benjamin was surprised she managed to get into President Barack Obama’s major national security address at National Defense University on Thursday. The long-time Code Pink protestor  is a fixture on Capitol Hill and well known to most D.C. reporters.

“I had my head down for about two hours and was talking on the phone for about two hours. I tried to be inconspicuous. I think sometimes I must be invisible,” Benjamin said. “There were a couple of journalists that came over to talk to me, but that’s about it.”

Benjamin, 60, was escorted out of the the hall after she repeatedly interrupted Obama’s address, pressing the president on the use of drone strikes overseas, including the killing of a 16-year-old U.S. citizen.

In an interview with The Huffington Post afterward, at a Starbucks near National Defense University, Benjamin said someone had given her an invite to the speech.

“I had an invitation, somebody gave me an invitation who I’m not at liberty to disclose,” Benjamin said, calling her protest “epic” when compared to her other demonstrations.

adamthenorman: Pankration (παγκράτιον) is a Greek mixed martial art meaning “all powers”.  It was introduced to the Olympic Games in 648 BC as a combination of boxing and wrestling.  It is mentioned in mythology, with Theseus using pankration to defeat the Minotaur, and Herakles using it to subdue the Nemean Lion.  Aside from athletic competition, it was also a staple in the arsenal of the Greek warriors, from Spartan hoplites to the phalanx of Alexander and the Macedonians.  It is said that when Alexander and the Greeks forged their empire up to the borders of India, the techniques of his soldiers were learned by the Indians, who then transmitted it to China.  This could mean that pankration is not only one of the oldest martial arts, but also a parent of such famous Asian martial arts such as Kung Fu and Jujitsu.  Though the art fell into obscurity during by the Byzantine era, pankration was reconstructed in the 20th century by martial artists using literary sources and visual examples (vase paintings and ancient Greek sculptures) to analyze what techniques were specifically used.  An interesting story of pankration:“In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent’s toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion’s hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero.”Leave it to the Greeks to invent a martial art that allows you to kick ass from beyond the grave!
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adamthenorman:

Pankration (παγκράτιον) is a Greek mixed martial art meaning “all powers”.  It was introduced to the Olympic Games in 648 BC as a combination of boxing and wrestling.  It is mentioned in mythology, with Theseus using pankration to defeat the Minotaur, and Herakles using it to subdue the Nemean Lion.  Aside from athletic competition, it was also a staple in the arsenal of the Greek warriors, from Spartan hoplites to the phalanx of Alexander and the Macedonians.  It is said that when Alexander and the Greeks forged their empire up to the borders of India, the techniques of his soldiers were learned by the Indians, who then transmitted it to China.  This could mean that pankration is not only one of the oldest martial arts, but also a parent of such famous Asian martial arts such as Kung Fu and Jujitsu.  Though the art fell into obscurity during by the Byzantine era, pankration was reconstructed in the 20th century by martial artists using literary sources and visual examples (vase paintings and ancient Greek sculptures) to analyze what techniques were specifically used.  An interesting story of pankration:

“In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion (Ἀρριχίων) of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent’s toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion’s hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero.”

Leave it to the Greeks to invent a martial art that allows you to kick ass from beyond the grave!

penthesileas: MYTHOLOGY MEME: three locations - troy [3/3] One prophesied that Troy would be burnt by Paris’s fire …I was happy to leave, right away, for Aegean waters,but father and mother stopped me, asking for my prayers and delaying my going by their pious intent: and my sister Cassandra, just as she was, with hair unbound, cried out, as our ships were ready to sail: ‘Where are you rushing to? You’ll bring fire back with you!You don’t know how great the flames are you seek in those waters!’ (x)
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penthesileas:

MYTHOLOGY MEME: three locations - troy [3/3]

One prophesied that Troy would be burnt by Paris’s fire …
I was happy to leave, right away, for Aegean waters,
but father and mother stopped me, asking for my prayers
and delaying my going by their pious intent:
and my sister Cassandra, just as she was, with hair unbound,
cried out, as our ships were ready to sail:
‘Where are you rushing to? You’ll bring fire back with you!
You don’t know how great the flames are you seek in those waters!’ (x)
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