Boobies!

A death row inmate in Texas just walks out of prison by posing as a lawyer. I have to admit, he’s so brazen that I’m sort of rooting for him. Hey, it’s Texas, after all. He’s probably on death row for a parking violation!

In an earlier blog post, I talked about a discussion I had with a lawyer ex-girlfriend many years ago about the lack of guarantees of anonymity and responsibility for sperm donors. Here is the latest amazing story to add fuel to that fire: A teenage boy tracked down his sperm donor father by sampling his own DNA. The father ought to be proud that his kid is a super genius.

Here’s a unique twist on the blogger phenomenon. I had posted some months ago about a blogger noting his final moments of life before an intruder murdered him in his home. And of course, brave bloggers around the world are being murdered for political reasons, like Steven Vincent. Now comes this tale of a Japanese girl slowly poisoning her mother, and blogging about her progress. This is a dangerous and twisted business I’m in!

Speaking of blogs, here’s an excellent one which provides dishy insider information on the Canadian media scene. You’d have to be a media nerd to really appreciate it, though.

My friends will attest that over the past few years I’ve been harping on about a specific biological/sociological observation that no one else takes seriously: that women’s breasts are getting bigger. I had no data to support this conclusion, but I suspected my observations were due to both better bra design and to hormonal changes in the female population, the latter perhaps due to earlier use of the contraceptive pill, earlier puberty (a global phenomenon, it seems) and maybe even hormones in our food. I’m relieved to see that I was not imagining things. This article suggests that the phenomenon is real. And, of course, like everything else fun, the Grim Patrol is lining up to tell us all what a horrible, unhealthy development this is. Poopers.

I want to end today with a mini-rant. You know what bugs me these days? Empty adages. You know the type: “everything happens for a reason”, “somewhere, someone is thinking about you” –that crap. Like everyone else, I’ve taken solace in one or two of these adages over the years, particularly last year when I was having a particularly rough time. But ultimately, I find them insulting, unproductive and dangerous, inasmuch as they prevent us from accepting the true gravity of a situation.

“Everything happens for a reason”? Tell it to the mother whose child has been raped and murdered by a paedophile. “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle”? Tell it to the thousands of people who commit suicide every year. “Every cloud has a silver lining”? What’s the up-side of millions murdered in Rwanda?

You get the picture.