Starting next year, California will set aside a day to honor former President Ronald Reagan, who also served as governor.

American troops now operating in 75 countries. President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world. The dramatic expansion in the use of special forces, which in their global span go far beyond the covert missions authorized by George W. Bush, reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy.

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A Gun for Girls

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. The Spot and Shoot system – officially known as Sentry Tech – has mostly attracted attention because it is operated by 19- and 20-year-old female soldiers, making it the Israeli army’s only weapons system operated exclusively by women. The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred meters along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza. The women are supposed to identify anyone suspicious approaching the fence around Gaza and, if authorized by an officer, execute them using their joysticks.

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Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare

To digg the dust encloased heare.

Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones

And curst be he yt moves my bones.

The Epitaph That Appears on Shakespeare’s Tomb (He wrote it all by himself)

Dig the Dust Enclosed Here 

                       by Shawn Hamilton

To think we deified You, poacher of deer,

Poacher of Mysteries,

Barely educated businessman exalted upon the faulty altar of public opinion.

Twain called you a fraud —

And those who worship you,

“Blatherskites” and “Stratfordolaters.”

The Greatest Writer in the World,

You never left a scrap of Your holy writ —

Not a play or manuscript in the entire

Inventory of Will.

You signed legal papers though,

Willing your wanton wife your “second-best” bed.

Scholars created your Lordship, Twain tells us,

From nearly airy nothingness,

Erecting a grand Brontosaurus

From a slight shard of bone.

But Shakespeare signifies the Common Man,

Not secret son of a virgin queen and cultured earl,

Whose loves’ labours were lost upon

A nescient knavery.

We want to believe Him.

We want to believe that he, our country cousin,

Could stroll courts with lords,

Speak divinely with gods,

Having never graduated

From a recognised School.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus,

Shakespeare.

You’re a mask, a disguise,

A bought bard,

Paid well to welter forth

Teachings of The Invisible College.

We bear you no malice

That you sold your name,

But you should have asked your patrons

(You were in a good position)

To write for you

A decent

Epitaph.

 

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adumbration: “to vaguely foreshadow”

casuistry: “the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry”

concrescence: “the coalescence or growing together of parts originally separate”

fardow “the embarrassment you feel when someone else fucks up” (Terence coined this term. Alternate spelling: “fartao”)

gurus geisheis, roshis and rishis: “refers to traditional spiritual authority”

malarky @Erik ”meaningless talk; nonsense”

neoteny: “the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal”

yawning grave: “death, stretching its mouth wide, consumes everyone”