Seriously, it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Some giant obese man literally sat in a chair and waited for God to heal him, until he finally died. Here’s some stuff from the news article:
Obese man dies after 8 months in recliner, believed God would heal him
Posted: Nov 19, 2009 2:56 PM
Updated: Nov 20, [...]

With all of the talk of Wall Street bonuses in the news lately, there’s a pretty interesting article in today’s Globe and Mail. Here’s an excerpt:
In 2008, Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational, led a series of experiments to determine exactly how people respond to [...]

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the most unusual method of mail delivery ever attempted: mail delivery via guided missile.
On June 8 1959, a missile was installed into the USS Barbero (which had been temporarily established to be a “postal branch”) and 3000 letters were stamped and inserted as the payload. The missile was [...]

You can file in the “that’s obvious” folder if you want, but it’s interesting to see it confirmed through scientific study. It seems that the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine published some studies on childhood obesity, including the following:
At age three, the children took part in a test of their [...]

Is it time to retire all of those old “a drink a day is good for you” studies yet? Especially since they were generally funded by associations of brewers and wineries?
According to this CBC article:
Downing as little as one alcoholic drink a day seems to increase a woman’s risk for developing cancer, according to a [...]

Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom struggled mightily against backward-thinking reactionaries in their respective spheres of influence.
We all know the political controversies surrounding Darwin’s evolution theory (note that there is no scientific controversy, only a political one), and it may come as no surprise that Pope [...]

Seriously, the more I look at Catholic feast days, the more perplexed I am. Did you know that they actually have an official patron saint of banking?
It may be amusing at this point in time, with all of the bad news about the US banking system, to recall what some of the early American presidents [...]

Believe it or not, the Catholics actually have an official patroness saint of bell-ringers. Luckily, loud bell-ringing is not quite as prevalent today as it once was, but it’s still damned annoying.
From America Revisited (1883) by George Augustus Sala:
“The bell-ringing nuisance is nearly as offensive in England as it is in America, and in both [...]

From Josiah Quincy III (1772-1864), mayor of Boston:
“The journey to New York took up a week. The carriages were old and shackling, and much of the harness made of ropes. We generally reached our resting place for the night, if no accident intervened, at ten o’clock, and after a frugal supper went to bed with [...]

On this day in 1709, the Scotsman Alexander Selkirk was rescued after being stranded for 5 years on a deserted island. After returning to civilization, he became friends with Daniel Defoe, who would eventually write the novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
Apparently, the real inspiration for Robinson Crusoe went a little [...]

From the British Museum’s Harleian Manuscript 247:
“In the night, 130 men were disguised and well-mounted on horseback to go mumming, riding from Newgate through Cheapside, where many people could see them, with great noise of minstrelsy, trumpets, cornets, and shawms, and a great many wax torches lighted. The first 48 rode like esquires, 2-and-2 together, [...]

Today is the Catholic feast day of Saint Paula the Bearded. According to legend, in the fourth century, the widow Paula was pursued into a church by a lustful young Roman man, where she prayed for a miracle to save her virtue. God supposedly responded so that “a beard and moustache quickly grew” on her [...]

London’s official morgue death toll for a week of January 1665:
Abortive: 6
Aged: 52
Cancer: 2
Childbed: 40
Chrisomes (unbaptized): 19
Dropsie: 34
Flux: 1
Feaver: 383
Flox and Smallpox: 5
Gowt: 1
Griping in the Guts: 65
Jaundies: 4
Impostume (abscess): 13
Kingevil: 3
Meagrome (migraines): 1
Plannet: 3
Purples: 3
Quinsie: 2
Rising of the Lights: 18
Scowring: 3
Scurvy: 3
Stopping of the Stomach: 7
Suddenly: 2
Tissick (tickling faint cough): 3
Tympany (intestinal bloating): 1
Winde: [...]

I hear on the news that a lot of parents are having difficulty with the concept of discussing homosexuality with their children. As Robb and Robin Wirthlin in California complained: “Our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys. He’s in second grade” and tried to sue [...]

I think I finally figured out what bugs me about people who talk about being proud of their countries. I feel like I can’t disagree with them because to do so means I’m ashamed of my country, and that’s not the way I feel. But pride is something that I associate with personal accomplishments, not [...]

Well, it’s been roughly 36 hours since my beloved dog Fuzzy died. He suffered a cardiac arrest yesterday around noon, after fighting both cancer and heart disease for the last six months. But he was surprisingly strong for most of it, didn’t suffer, and only experienced a serious decline in the last couple of weeks. [...]

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that we all think we know what’s right and what’s wrong. Even people who claim to subscribe to some sort of cultural relativism tend to admit they have a few pretty rigid ideas of what’s right and wrong if you push them hard enough. And [...]

Is there some reason why womens’ jackets don’t seem to have the inside chest-level pocket where men normally keep their wallets? Rebecca has several jackets, none of which have that pocket on the inside. I guess it’s assumed that they’ll use a purse, but how silly is this? Meanwhile, every single one of my jackets [...]

Rebecca was talking about something she heard on the radio about how Rudy Giuliani is surprisingly popular even among people who oppose his views on abortion and marriage, and it’s pretty much widely accepted that it’s because he was the mayor of New York on 9/11. But do people ever stop to ask why this [...]

Holy Christ, I can’t believe how much salt the city is throwing down on the streets and sidewalks. The blacktop is white. There are literally piles of salt at corners and around posts.
I know they need to limit ice accumulation for safety reasons, but this is ridiculous. They’re burning dogs’ feet and corroding cars into [...]

Yesterday was Friday, February 16, 2007. The day I discovered that my 8 year old son David is on the American Homeland Security Department’s “No Fly” list.
Luckily for us, we ran into Customs agents who recognized the inherent absurdity of my little boy being identified as a possible terrorist, so they let us go through. [...]

Today the morning conservative talk-show host Bill Carroll was doing a bit on evolution. Interestingly enough, I counted 8 people in a row who called in against evolution. I tried calling in myself, and instead of getting put in the queue to go on the air, as soon as I made it clear I was [...]

You know what I hate about cell-phones? The fact that you can’t look up the owner in a directory listing. There’s some asshole that’s been periodically calling my cell-phone for weeks. His phone number is 416-919-5435. I never pick it up because I don’t know the number. But I finally decided I’d better find out [...]

Am I the only one who’s sick of seeing people on TV (and in real-life) telling you that they know more about relationships than you because they’ve been divorced three times?
Maybe I’ve only had one marriage, but I didn’t fuck it up. So don’t talk down to me because I had one success, compared to [...]

Even though I had no idea who Glenn Beck was, I had a feeling I would hate his show as soon as CNN started advertising for it. Call it a bad vibe, or a premonition, or just the fact that something about the short clips in the ads struck me as worthless. But it would [...]

Imagine a headline in the newspaper that said “Arsonist sentenced to 18 months for fatal fire”. Imagine if the accompanying article indicated that this arsonist had been convicted several times before for setting fires that didn’t kill anyone. Imagine if he asked for clemency based on the fact that he didn’t know anyone was home, [...]

Seriously, how sickening are these people?
“But wait Mike, what the hell are pop culture geniuses”, you say? Well, I freely admit that I just made up this term, because I couldn’t find an already-existing term for people who think that their choice of entertainment somehow makes them smarter. Still don’t understand what I mean? Maybe [...]

Is it just me, or are bathroom fans weak and pathetic? Listen to the pitiful, apologetic whirring sound that a typical bathroom fan makes: it’s quieter than a woman’s vibrator. Now compare this to one of those good high-powered fans that you find above a large stove or better yet, one of those Japanese places [...]

Have you seen those residential room air cleaners that are increasingly popular? The air cleaner on a home furnace is OK, but it’s nowhere near as efficient as these specialized room air cleaner units. And have you seen how there are several types, such as HEPA filters and electrostatic air cleaners? Did you know that [...]

Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up, and as you go about your daily routine it suddenly strikes you how very, very lucky you are?
Today was one of those days. Nothing special happened; I dropped off Matthew at school, had to go to work, etc. But as I kissed Rebecca [...]

Allow me to take this opportunity to say that I’m sick of people out there (such as local radio talk-show host Bill Carroll, although he is by no means the only one) attacking Toronto as Canada’s Murder Capital. This is a complete falsehood, and it is based upon the apparent inability of radio talk show [...]

I think it’s high time that people who keep their mouths shut are charged as accessories to a crime. From the Toronto Sun:
Catholic Children’s Aid Society investigator Osiris Villalobos wiped away tears of his painful memory of the 5-year-old boy at the Hospital for Sick Children on Nov. 30, 2002.
Villalobos was testifying at the trial [...]

Do you remember how, after 9/11, Pat Robertson got in trouble for saying that it was God’s divine retribution upon America for her sins? Well, I guess it’s deja vu time; fundies all across the nation, before the city’s corpses have even been recovered, are already blaming “sin” for causing the disaster.
There is, of course, [...]

For years, I’ve been hearing about how Louisiana has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. According to Eric Johnson, testifying before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means in May 2002, the region of Orleans and Jefferson Parish has a staggeringly high poverty rate of 54%!
But after [...]

Holy shit. That’s all I can say about this. It’s fucking unbelievable. Everything about it is unbelievable.

Here’s a piece of advice for you all: don’t buy Sonic MyDVD, and don’t listen to those fuckers on PC Magazine and ZDNet who recommend it (PCMag even gave it an “Editor’s Choice” award). I made the mistake of buying based on those reviews, and naturally, I got burned.
Well, it’s only a hundred bucks, right? [...]

What the fuck is wrong with people? Seriously? Look at an excerpt from the article “Religion can trump medical advice, docs say“:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many US doctors believe that the religious convictions of their patients should outweigh their own professional advice when it comes to making certain medical decisions. When the patient is [...]

I just heard this on the radio a while ago. I know you’ve heard it before. It goes like this: “and we saw these wonderful people in <insert name of shithole country here>, who live such a simple lifestyle and were so thankful for the aid we were giving, and so warm, and so friendly, [...]

Well, I just got back from a little party where they had some Arabian dancing going on, and I have to say: their dancing is a helluva lot better than ours. North American dancing is klunky and disjointed. At its best, it’s more gymnastic than sensual. At its worst, it’s utterly ridiculous, and wanders perilously [...]

Arrggh!! I was at the coffee shop today getting a sandwich, and somebody came in with that stinkboy smell. You know that smell certain people have when they sweat? It’s a foul, acrid, nose-curling smell that a normal person will never emanate even after a sweaty workout, but which certain people emit as a matter [...]

Yet another frightening development in America’s journey to eternal FatAssitude. This weekend, I was on a trip and ran out of clean clothes, so I skipped out to the nearest store (which happened to be a Wal-Mart) in search of a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Lo and behold, I found what I was [...]

Did you ever notice that every political extremist, no matter how predictably he hews to a party line, makes sure that the first thing to come out of his mouth is “I’m not partisan?” When Bill O’Reilly (yes, the same idiot who likened a refusal to teach creationism in school to “fascism”) came on Jon [...]

Oh joy. My sister-in-law is learning to drive, and her driving-school instructor told her that when she’s in a lane on the highway that’s about to end, she should accelerate to the very end of the lane and then cut back in just as the lane ends.
Of course, I’ve known about people who drive like [...]