MEGA-BRAIN DUMP

File this under: Too much good stuff to share in one day and no time to write a response to any of it.

Here's what I've found interesting online or in my inbox today that I would like to share with my faithful readers...both of you...and you too Mom.

MASSIVE NEWS BRAIN-DUMP:
"Christian hackers attack MySpace page"
What wouldn't Jesus do?
By Iain Thompson

Radical Christian hackers have been waging an online war against atheism.
The hackers repeatedly attacked MySpace's Atheist and Agnostics Group page, deleting groups and members and renaming the site 'Jesus is Love'.

MySpace shut down the group last month despite having promised to keep it up after earlier hack attacks.

The site was put back up in February, but some members are still being barred and some discussions are lost. MySpace has yet to comment on the issue.

MySpace was acquired last year by News International, which is owned by born again Christian Rupert Murdoch.

READ MORE HERE
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WHAT DO YOU EAT IN ONE WEEK? (And How Much Do You Spend?)


Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW

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DAN WARD'S GREAT IDEA: "GIVE AWAY YOUR REFUND CHECK TO HELP THE POOR"

My friend Dan Ward had a great idea about how to spend his upcoming tax refund check from George W. Bush- GIVE IT AWAY TO HELP THE POOR!

Dan says: "Maybe this makes me a communist, but I'm not sure economic stimulation is all it's cracked up to be (I think economies work best when they're left alone, and allowed to self-correct). Or maybe that makes me a free market capitalist? In any case, what's more economically stimulating than helping those at the bottom of the spectrum? More to the point, I think serving the poor, hungry and needy is more important than boosting middle class economic fortunes. I hope others will join in."

READ DAN'S BLOG HERE
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WAL-MART RESPONSIBLE FOR BRINGING 38,000 PEOPLE PER MONTH OUT OF POVERTY…IN CHINA!

Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month.[1] With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports),[2] Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.

There are estimates that 70 percent of Wal-Mart's products are made in China.[3] One writer vividly suggests that "One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market." [4] Even without considering the $263 billion in consumer savings that Wal-Mart provides for low-income Americans, or the millions lifted out of poverty by Wal-Mart in other developing nations, it is unlikely that there is any single organization on the planet that alleviates poverty so effectively for so many people.[5] Moreover, insofar as China's rapid manufacturing growth has been associated with a decline in its status as a global arms dealer, Wal-Mart has also done more than its share in contributing to global peace.[6]

How can this be, given the vast and growing literature documenting Wal-Mart's faults?

IS IT TRUE?

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IS GLOBAL WARMING MAN'S GREATEST GLOBAL CRISIS?
OR IS IT POVERTY?

"Finally, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can know the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the third world. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it.

What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken this phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and antihuman doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world.

And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now.

Thank you very much.
-Micheal Crichton

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE
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