Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Via the New York Daily News, with minor alterations on my part: A group representing the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is accusing the NYPD of religious discrimination. Pastafarians, speaking from their Manhattan headquarters, alleged yesterday that the NYPD barred FSM worshipers from the department because they don’t allow them to wear colanders in place of police-issued hats. Read more
If you rate every county in the United States for factors like life expectancy, income, and education, you can eventually pinpoint the country’s toughest places — as well as the locales where life is, by and large, pretty damn good. New York Times writer David Leonhardt did just that. Then, using Google data, he compared the Internet search terms that were most prevalent in those two polar opposites — a proxy for what’s foremost on residents’ minds. “The [search terms offer] a glimpse into the id of our national inequality,” Leonhardt says, “a portrait of the very different subjects that occupy the thoughts of richer America and poorer America.” Read more
On May 28, a group of five Jesus-besotted proselytizers walked into a McDonald’s restaurant in Zhaoyuan, China and began asking customers for their phone numbers. When a 37-year-old woman declined to provide that information, the five, deciding on the spot that she was an “evil spirit,” beat her to death with chairs and a metal broom handle — in front of her seven-year-old son. Other customers caught the attack on cell-phone cameras. Read more
