(get it? Like Live Aid?)

Live 8 is a series of concerts and events across the world which are being staged to highlight the problem of global poverty. It’s a chance for ordinary people to call on world leaders at this year’s G8 summit and tell them to put a stop to the needless deaths of 30,000 children every single day.

On 6th July 2005, the leaders of Great Britain, the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia will meet at Gleneagles in Scotland to talk about world affairs, including Africa. They will be presented with a workable plan to double aid, drop the debt and make trade laws fair.

The G8 summit is our opportunity to demand that the world’s most influential leaders take action now.

Live 8 has organised concerts in Philadelpia, Berlin, London, Rome, Paris and Edinburgh, with 100 artists, a million spectators, two billion viewers and one message: Make Poverty History. link

BoingBoing has picked up my post at Geektronica on Blogspot spam blogs:

Spam blogs are phony weblogs designed to game Google’s pagerank system. They are automatically updated by scripts.

Justin Baeder says: “Blogspot spam blogs have gotten a lot more clever in recent weeks. Today I found a one that purports to be maintained by a real person, but upon further examination appears to be run by a bot that posts links to actual news articles (complete with excerpts). The spammy links are hidden using CSS, so you can only see them when you try to leave a comment or view the source of the page.” Link

Watch my bandwidth crash and burn…awesome.

(cross-posted from Geektronica)

Note the not-so-subtle message: Eat more. Spend more. You are a sucker for ordering a normal-sized portion (medium). Nota bene: There is no small on the menu at BK.

Burger King is giving away Amazon.com cash cards. You can order an obscenely large portion of fries or onion rings and get a card (valued from $1 to $10,000), or you can send a self-addressed stamped envelope (2 stamps = 2 x $.37 = $0.74 + 2 envelopes) to the address below and they’ll send you one. There’s no limit on how many requests you can send, but they have to be handwritten and in separate outer envelopes. The address is:
Official Cash Card Request
PO Box 1286
Elmhurst, IL 60126-1286
Deadline is 7/31. There’s a slightly better than 1/2000 chance that you’ll get more than $1 on your card, which means you’re probably only going to be netting $0.25 for each offer you send in (assuming the cost of envelopes is negligible).

SCOTUS justices are starting to get a little taste of their own medicine:

A private developer contacted the local government in Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s hometown in New Hampshire yesterday asking that the property of the judge – who voted in favor of a controversial decision allowing a city to take residents’ homes for private development – be seized to make room for a new hotel. link

Apparently, the developer is completely serious. Via Waxy

Harare shantytown, uploaded by tos1010.

These satellite photos show the destruction of a shantytown in Harare, Zimbabwe (previously blogged here) at the order of dictator Mugabe. It’s happening. We have to do something. Via, via

A little more from Amnesty:

As the human rights situation in Zimbabwe steadily deteriorates, with more than 300,000 now evicted from their homes by the government and a UN Special Envoy appointed to investigate the destruction and evictions, a coalition of more than 200 African and international NGOs today issued an unprecedented Joint Appeal to the United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) to help the people of Zimbabwe.

Strongly condemning the mass forced evictions, the coalition of organizations urged Nigerian President Obasanjo, as Chair of the AU, to put the crisis in Zimbabwe on the agenda of the upcoming AU Assembly — scheduled to take place in Libya on 4 - 5 July.

The coalition also called on relevant bodies at the UN, including the Secretary-General, to publicly condemn the ongoing mass violations and take effective action to stop them. link

And from Google News. Let’s make some noise.

This is what happens at 11:30 when you have five shots of espresso between 5PM and 8PM…

Flying Saucer Soteriology:
Flying saucer = Church*
Space alien = God
Abductees = Christians
Tractor beam = baptism
Getting whisked away from planet earth = salvation

Chicken Christology:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” Matthew 23:37

Chicken = Jesus
Wings = Church/Kingdom of God*
Chicks = Christians
Protection under wings = salvation

* I am aware that the Church and the Kingdom of God are not the same thing. Hopefully the fact that Jesus is a chicken in this post alerted you to the fact that, say, Wayne Grudem wouldn’t be happy with every jot and tittle I’ve cast into cyberspace here.

What implications do these two images of Christ and salvation have for us? Have we bought into the picture of God-as-abducting-alien, while ignoring Jesus’ own metaphor of himself as a mother hen trying to gather up her chicks?

Simply awesome.

I think the picture pretty much sums it up. But just to be clear, this is a mirror array that concentrates sunlight on a small area, sufficient to burn paper and other household substances and objects. The author of the site is quite funny, too.

In the comments, tell me your favorite burnination target that’s listed there. If you dare.

Cross-posted at Republic of Geektronica

Tigger and Piglet have died. Or, at least, the actors who did their voices (Paul Winchell and John Fiedler, respectively) have passed away - strangely, within a day of each other:

Winchell provided the pipes for dozens of other ‘toons, including Spider-Man in the 1980s TV version, the Hanna-Barbera heavy Dick Dastardly and Smurf nemesis Gargamel. He died in his sleep early Friday at his home in Moorpark, California, according to a Website operated by his daughter, actress April Winchell. He was 82.

Fiedler, meanwhile, died of undisclosed causes on Saturday in New York, per the New York Times. He was 80. link

I guess the most wonderful thing about Tiggers and Piglets can be celebrated even more now that the unique actors who brought them to life are no longer with us.