The dog ate my ballot
: Australia requires voters to vote. But some make excuses:
A woman claimed she was having group sex with 30 men in Nimbin, NSW, and could not get to a polling booth in Queensland on time to vote.
That is the all-time best excuse, according to electoral commissioner Bob Longland.
Coincidence?
: Does that image look familiar? It looks quite like a storyboard for Mel Gibson’s Passion, perhaps? Nope. It’s part of the story of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein as told by Hammorabi in a long and illuminating post. I said below that I saw eerie similarity between the blood lust of Passion (and, as a commenter points out, Christian self-flagellation) and the self-flagellation we’ve seen in religious processions in Iraq.
See also Zeyad’s story of his amazement at seeing a procession of the faithful beating themselves on their backs in perfect rhythm. “The most comic incident was that my Christian friend got a bit dizzy and almost threw up while he was witnessing the scene. He was really freaked. ‘You’d better get used to it’ I told him later that night. ‘Expect a lot of this stuff every year from now on.”
Everywhere
: There’s a robust free weblog service in Romania. [via Blogalization]
Stern
: More from Maher’s show this week: Maher says he no longer does Stern’s show and doesn’t much like him but defends him against Clear Channel. Speaking from his own experience being yanked off a network, Maher, says, it seems it’s the people who don’t hear you who get you yanked. Christie Todd Whitman is on the panel and says she doesn’t listen to Stern but his endorsement did make a big difference in her election victory in New Jersey and she said Clear Channel will come to regret the decision economically.
Teaching blogs
: An Austrian university is giving a course in weblogs and online journalism. (auf Deutsch)
