Update: didn’t mean to bigfoot Anne Laurie. Read below as well as here, y’all.
With a hat tip to my science writing friend, the inimitable Steve Silberman, here’s a story about a Czech citizen who has won the right to wear a colander on his head in the photo on his government ID.
The reason? He’s a pastafarian, which makes the issue the Czech equivalent of a first amendment issue:*
Czech officials ruled that the nation’s religious liberty laws required this result. According to a government spokesperson, Novy’s request “complies with the laws of the Czech Republic where headgear for religious or medical reasons is permitted if it does not hide the face.”
In today’s image — a pasta/founding father lagniappe:
Got some more substantive stuff going for this space, but couldn’t resist this little niblet.
What’s saucing your spaghetti today?
*Full disclosure: the Think Progress piece at the link connects back to the Daily Mail, and I have presumption of distrust at anything from that particular source. But there is a category of journalistic endeavor known as the “too good to check” story — and in my view, this is one of those. You’ve been warned.
Image: Thomas Jefferson, Design for a maccaroni (sic) making machine, c. 1787.
gogol's wife
Czechs are so cool. I say that as a Slovak.
Socoolsofresh
So the NSA-DEA cover up story, a nothingburger or a major nothingburger? Or are you guys waiting for the correct messenger to demonize?
Tom Levenson
@Socoolsofresh: Don’t look at me. As an admirer of Adam Smith, I bow to the division of labor, and I’m just not up on the NSA stuff enough to write anything about it that someone else won’t do better and with both more information and thought.
Socoolsofresh
@Tom Levenson: I’m not, I just saw that this was an open thread.
jeffreyw
It’s Monday so it’s red beans and rice.
ranchandsyrup
@jeffreyw: black beans and rice in my house. That reminds me that I need some apple cider vinegar.
PsiFighter37
Amazon’s CEO just bought WaPo. I don’t know Bezos’ political leanings, but I hope his first move is to fire Jennifer Rubin and/or Charles SauerKrauthammer.
Dexter
Bloomberg app on my iPhone tells me that Washington Post’s newspaper assets will be bought by Jeff Bezos for $250 million. Don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.
Kevin the Hen
@PsiFighter37: won’t be able to call them Kaplan anymore…what will be the new name?
Dexter
@Kevin the Hen:
Amazon perhaps as Bezos is Amazon’s CEO.
jeffreyw
Real Clear Politics says he gives to the Dems but shies away from political activism. He is a long term thinker and give MattY the heebie jeebies so that may bode well.
jeffreyw
Bezos donated $2.5 million to marriage equality cause.
NickT
What on earth does Bezos want with the wreckage of a once decent paper?
ranchandsyrup
@PsiFighter37: Wapo sold for 1/4 of the price of instagram. Or Bezos could have bought 1/2 of Jay Z.
piratedan
@NickT: maybe he’ll actually use it to report the news, might be a market for that still.
BGinCHI
@PsiFighter37: Bezos bought it himself, outright.
It won’t be called the WaPo anymore either. I expect the Washington Amazon Hard Copy or something.
And yeah, I hope to sweet Jayzus he fires all of the idiots on the op-ed page, which should leave him with almost no one.
I do hope Greg Sargent stays and gets promoted to El Jefe. He’s a great reporter and a very, very good dude.
BGinCHI
@ranchandsyrup: You mean Beyonce?
Pricey.
BGinCHI
Linky:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html?hpid=z1
PeakVT
Reporting at the WaPo says that it was Bezos personally, not Amazon, that bought the company. Certainly an interesting development. The Globe was sold a few days ago, too, for a lot less.
At least the Kochs didn’t buy them.
ranchandsyrup
@BGinCHI: Heh. Well done.
NickT
@piratedan:
Not much sign of that over the last 10 years. Anyway, Bezos apparently promised not to change the WaPo’s “values” so news reporting is right out.
EthylEster
@Dexter: Hey, I just saw that in my Seattle paper and came here to find out what DougJ had to say. Evidently Bezos just bought the newspaper, not the Kaplan stuff.
fuckwit
@jeffreyw: He’s a California Galtian Glibertarian, of the Peter Thiel variety, AFAICT. I’d expect him to be socially progressive (pro marriage-equality, pro-choice, pro-marijuana, etc.) and financially deeply embedded with the corporate 1% elite, of which his is a member in very good standing.
Can’t say it’d be any worse than it is already for Pravda on the Potomac.
NickT
@fuckwit:
Maybe we should start a campaign to get the Dread Pirate Bezos to hire Tina Brown Destroyer Of Newsrooms?
Anoniminous
@PsiFighter37:
The Religious Right hates his guts so he’s OK by my book.
MazeDancer
Thought maybe Bezos wanted a nice lobbying front. 250 million to control what all of Washington reads isn’t really that bad for a pretty useful opinion generating tool.
Violet
Jeff Bezos buying the WaPo is just another sign of our return to the Robber Baron days. Rich people want or need news organizations to be the mouthpiece for their beliefs. They either buy them or create them. Bezos saw an opportunity.
beltane
@Violet: The major news organizations have always been the mouthpiece of the upper class. At least now we can drop the pretense that they are anything other than the propaganda organ’s of the 1%.
PeakVT
@Violet: that’s probably right, unfortunately.
Roger Moore
@jeffreyw:
Wait, wait. You’re talking about food and not linking to a picture of it. What did you do with the real jeffreyw?
Bill Arnold
@Violet:
Name a member of the “rich enough to buy the WP cash” class, who you’d prefer. I’m happy it didn’t go to Murdoch, or one of the Koch brothers.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
“Amazon Dead Tree Edition”
Violet
@Bill Arnold: I didn’t say Bezos wasn’t one of the better options in the 1%; just pointed out that it was a 1%-er purchase of a news organization, a la Robber Baron Days. I’d rather our news organizations not be mouthpieces of the 1%, but if that’s the only option, then I’d rather Bezos (I guess, based only on what people in this thread say he’s donated to), than Murdoch or the Kochs or their ilk.
I think being forced to choose among the very rich as to which one would be the least odious owner for a news mouthpiece is very much the wrong way to frame the issue.
jeffreyw
@Roger Moore: OMGerd! I fix!
Cliff in NH
Today it’s Yet more cherry tomatoes and basil and green beans (really, rattlesnake beans and purple podded pole beans)
Yesterdays tomatoes, todays dinner:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64725711@N07/9440464598/
The Moar You Know
@Violet: Our local San Diego billionaire, Doug Manchester, a real-life Montgomery Burns, bought every single newspaper within a fifty-mile radius of the city – with two exceptions, both too small to matter, he bought out every single paper in the county. All because the city council dared to vote down his waterfront “redevelopment” plan, and then as a final insult, the electorate refused to install his handpicked version of Smithers as mayor.
All reporters were fired, the main U/T newsroom had all the desks and computers torn out and his vintage car collection was moved in. Orders went out that “business-friendly” news only will be reported.
Robber baron days indeed.
Bill Arnold
@The Moar You Know:
That’s a scary story. Were the sales voluntary, i.e. did he apply an coercion other than a good price?
sparrow
@The Moar You Know: Holy Crap. Is this widely known in San Diego?