It would seem that the Vatican is carrying out two investigations of American nuns and whether their drive to live in the modern world is being carried too far.

At a time when the number of nuns has dropped to 60,000 from a high of 180,000 forty years ago the American nuns have started entering professions like: teaching, law, and social work. Part of that modernization as well has been the eschewing of the typical nun garments for regular clothes, which also includes blue jeans.

The pressure on nuns from the Vatican has been increasing since the launch of a Vatican ordered Apostolic Visitation, a formal inquiry into the activities of women’s religious institutions that is being lead by Mother Mary Clare Millea. Mother Mary is an American nun living in Rome. As well a doctrinal assessment has been ordered by the Vatican to look into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group of women’s religious orders in the US, for not toeing the line on issues such as the primacy of the Vatican.

Other nuns are also expressing disquiet about the new scrutiny from Rome. Sister Mary Traupman of Pittsburgh long ago left the convent but remains loyal to her faith as a lawyer. She still remembers the years of struggling with the long restrictive habits. "All this for the church," she said this week. "And now we’re being investigated."

Some nuns are refusing to cooperate. Sister Sandra Schneiders, who teaches theology at Berkeley, told The New York Times that the Vatican authorities are out of touch. "Our vision of our lives and their vision of us as a workforce are just not on the same planet," she said. And in a leaked email to colleagues she said investigators should be treated as "uninvited guests".

Source: The Independent :: US nuns on the run from Vatican inquiry

Admitting he “knows when he’s been bested,” Colbert says of Cooper, “he didn’t just scoop me… he spooned me. All night long.”

In the clip below, watch Colbert’s take on Anderson Cooper’s report on the whereabouts of Michael Jackson’s former chimp, Bubbles. He calls it Cooper’s biggest exclusive since his “2006 sit down with Saddam Hussein’s beloved pet, Khalid Sheik Mu-hamster.”

In Colbert’s words, “crank up the AC!”

Two monorails at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida collided early Sunday morning killing the driver of one monorail.

The Disney monorail crash occurred at 2 am Sunday morning (July 5) when one monorail slammed into the rear of a stationary monorail.

There are currently no reports of other injuries, although a family of six is believed to have been inside one of the monorails involved in the crash. Local reports say that the family were shaken but otherwise well.

Disney has shut down their entire monorail system and said in a statement that they would cooperate with the investigation into the cause of the crash.

The man set to take the helm of MI6 in the UK in November is doing some rapid damage control after it was discovered that his wife had posted practically every detail of their lives for all to see on Facebook.

Lady Shelley Sawers, wife of Sir John Sawers, made available copious details of their liveshaunts and habits including the location of one of their homes, favorite vacation spots, and information about friends and family- including the whereabouts of their parents and children. Her privacy controls were set so loosely that anyone in the London network could freely access her page. On the day her husband’s new position was announced, she is said to have posted scores of pictures of the family on vacation holiday.

Charmingly, friends and family congratulated Lady Sawers and her husband on the appointment, referring to Sawers as “Uncle C”- his MI6 codename. Although the Daily Mail says all traces of her Facebook fail have since been removed from the internet, the internet has a pretty long memory. And understandably, officials have commented indicating that the breach “verges on the reckless.”

Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying:

‘The Prime Minister should immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post.’

A MP is quoted in the article regarding the possible consequences of the security breach:

‘Sir John Sawers is in a very sensitive position and by revealing this sort of material his family have left him open to criticism and blackmail.

‘As a long-serving diplomat and ambassador, his whole family have been involved in his line of business for decades. I would have hoped they would have been much more sensitive to potential security compromises like this.’

Uh, perhaps… most of my friends have their profiles locked down tight because they don’t want to get blackmailed, too. They’re schoolteachers.

[Image: Daily Mail]

Former Washington D.C. mayor and current councilman Marion Barry was arrested Saturday night.

The charges aren’t clear at the time of writing, but it’s believed that Barry may have been charged with stalking. Of who though we don’t know.

According to reports, Barry was interviewed at the United States Park Police Criminal Investigation’s Branch and released on citation with a mandatory court appearance in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia.

Barry was arrested on drugs charges in 1990 while servicing as Mayor. After serving a 6 month sentence, Barry was reelected to council in 1992 and served as Mayor again from 1995-1999.

Happy plane will kill you and everyone you love. Happily.

Steve McNair and his lady friend, Sahel Kazemi, both found dead Saturday in McNair’s rented condo in Nashville, TN, were killed in an apparent murder suicide.

When news of Steve McNair’s death was breaking earlier, there were very few details available, but now that the police have had a chance to investigate further, it appears that McNair and his lady friend, Sahel Kazemi were killed in a murder suicide.

The Tennessean is reporting that McNair was found on the sofa in his rented Nashville condo with several gunshot wounds to his head and body. Kazemi was found near him with a single, apparently self-inflicted gunshot to the head. There was also a pistol found next to her body.

McNair, a married man, met Kazemi while she was working as a waitress at a restaurantat a few months ago and had been dating up until the time of their deaths.

A few days ago, Kazemi was pulled over in a black Cadillac Escalade and was charged for drunk driving as well as refusing to submit to a breath test. McNair was in the vehicle with her. McNair also bailed her out of jail later that day.

So far, this situation has all the earmarks of of a love triangle gone bad, but it’s still too early to determine what actually happened.

Autopsies will be performed on the bodies of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi Sunday and more concrete details will be released by the Coroner and police afterwards.

AOL has shut CompuServe, the first major commercial online service in the United States.

The company had its origins in 1969 and started offering limited dial-in services in the mid-1970’s. The year it first offered “online services” was 1979, and by the by the mid-1980s CompuServe was one of the largest information and networking services companies in existence, and it was the largest consumer information service in the world.

CompuServe remained popular as a stand alone service until the mid-1990’s, when the rise of the World Wide Web and widespread internet access slowly killed its core business. An attempt in 1995 to offer users internet access along with CompuServe services failed by 1997, despite the company being the first to offer fixed rate monthly access for the service. Having been owned by H&R Block since the early 80’s, Compuserve changed hands several times until eventually ending up at AOL by the end of the 1990’s.

At AOL, CompuServe became nothing more than a not well loved subsidiary (AOL having been CompuServe’s biggest competitor for many years), until finally all but fading away.

Basex notes that CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software has been shut down.

Success: for a business to be successful you have to have a catchy product name.

F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has often been called a nazi, but little did we know that his idolatry went as far as praising Hitler.

In an interview with The Times, Ecclestone said that Hitler was a great dictator that “got things done,” and who’s mistakes were caused by the persuasion of others.

“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done” Ecclestone told the paper.

“In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn’t a dictator.”

Besides the comments being offensive, WWII historians and students know very well that the opposite was true; the fall of the Third Reich was not due to Hitler being persuaded to make bad decisions, but by Hitler imposing his will and ignoring those around him. The list is long (and these are but a few examples): at Stalingrad the General’s on the ground knew that the exposed flanks manned by the minor Axis powers were a great risk, but Hitler ignored advice to reinforce the flanks and Stalingrad was encircled. Over Britain, Hitler ignored the advice of his generals and switched to bombing cities instead of critical defense infrastructure (after the British had bombed Berlin), turning the tide of the Battle of Britain by giving the RAF a break. That decision also resulted in the cancellation of Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain. Even as Germany switched to the defensive, Hitler ignored time and time again the advice of those around him, causing enormous losses.

The comments should really come as a great surprise though: Ecclestone’s friend and head of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) is a noted fascist, not only because he is the son of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, but because he likes dressing up as a Nazi in sex play. Double bonus: Ecclestone believes Mosley would make a great Prime Minister of Britain.

(img: The Daily Mail)

July 4th, Independence Day, is winding down in the United States so we thought we’d show you some people who take patriotism to the next level. Here are some ladies who bare it all for the American Flag.

God Bless America!

From the site Historical Tweets, a glimpse at history as seen through the eyes of Twitter. Another funny one:

We couldn’t pick between these three, so we’ll run them all instead.

Details are scant at present, but local Nashville press is reporting that Titans ex-QB Steve McNair has been killed in an apparent double homicide.

McNair was found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head alongside an unidentified woman. No further information has been released either about the crime or a possible motive.

McNair played eleven seasons for the Tennessee Titans, starting when the team was still known as the Houston Oilers. McNair played two seasons for the Baltimore Ravens before retiring after the 2007 season. He was 36.

A Latvian finance company is asking customers to sign over their souls as collateral on new loans.

The Kontora loan company insists clients have to sign a contract that agrees to the collateral, “that is, my immortal soul.” Reuters reports that the company has promised not to employ debt collectors to collect souls in the case of loans going bad.

“If they don’t give it back, what can you do? They won’t have a soul, that’s all,” a company spokesman said. The company primarily acts as a pay day loan firm, lending small amounts at high interest rates.

If journalists don’t write about it does that mean that news doesn’t happen and if they do does that mean they have some sort of copyright over the reporting of that news?

For as long as there has been a news industry what is considered important enough to take up so-called valuable space on a printed collection of paper or take up valuable airtime has been limited to a select few. It is the people in editorial boardroom or producer’s offices who decide what they think we need to see or read each day. The majority of the time it is the news that is most likely aimed to promote our most visceral responses – hence the popularity of “bad news” being the good news.

It’s good news for the news gatekeepers because it is almost guaranteed to bring in the most readers or viewers. The worst the disaster, the juicier the scandal, or the more heart-wrenching the story, the better. Sure we every once in a while go through our angst ridden worrying that the news is too negative and that there isn’t enough good news. The problem is good news isn’t profitable news and what is important to the news industry is the stuff that keeps the shareholders happy and the management bonuses flowing.

As Jeff Jarvis points out today

The realization of that myth – the myth of necessity – hit me head-on when I read an unselfconsciously narcissistic feature in The New York Times this week about the room where the 4 p.m. news meeting is held. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has likened that meeting to a “religious ceremony.” The Times feature certainly acted as if it were taking us inside the Pope’s chapel: “The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world.”

Behold the hubris of that: They decide what is important. Because we can’t. That’s what it says. That’s what they believe.

I was trained to accept that myth: that journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: news judgment. I worked hard to gain and exercise that judgment. The myth further holds that no judgment of importance is more important than The Times’; that’s why, every night, it sends out to the rest of newspaperdom its choices. News isn’t news until it’s reported and it’s not important until The Times says so.

Our supply of news is dictated to us minute by minute, day by day. That doesn’t mean though that it is the only news out there. An incredible amount of new worthy things are going on everyday – from the bad to the good. Just because the large majority of it doesn’t make it through the editorial “money” filter doesn’t change the fact that those events or information isn’t news.

The news isn’t about the reporting of it. It isn’t about the people writing about it. News is about the event, the happening, the information. It is about the people who were involved with the event. It is about the people who made the happening happen. It is about the people who created the information.

What the new media, blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook (to a lesser degree) did was to allow the people responsible for creating the news to be the ones that distributed the news. Or as Dave Winer put it - “The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman”. No longer is our flow of news being dictated to us by the select few and what they think is important. We are getting to make those decisions now.

However being entrenched as our sole providers of what is important in the world isn’t something that the news industry will give up without a fight. Rather than try and find their way in a new world of news and information distribution that doesn’t flow through their gates, the industry is trying to bend and manipulate this new media into their way of doing business.

The news industry of the past is locked into the believing that if they aren’t the ones reporting the ‘news’ then it doesn’t exist. It is because of this belief that they then turn around and try and claim ownership of the ‘news’. Because they are the ones that paid someone to write about something that happened the industry figures that they have an ownership – a copyright – over it all even right down to barring online linking to that news or information.

In their effort to bend this new media way of getting our news the only thing the news industry is doing is hastening the breaking of their stranglehold on the distribution of the news. They still have all the same abilities to reports the news and the people who are a part of that news. All they are losing is the exclusive rights to distribute it – as they should.

News isn’t distribution and who controls it, news is what is happening in and around our lives except now we are the ones who can distribute it – as it should be.

Is the answer a: shit b: wine or c: piss. Use the photo for a clue.

Police in Clare, Michigan have decided that rather than just eat doughnuts, they should sell them as well.

The decision to buy the local doughnut shop came after the local police department heard that the shop was closing down. Given the possible rift in the space time continuum that would occur if they didn’t have a ready supply of doughnuts, they wrote a check and bought the store on the spot.

Of course a freshly purchased store needs to be staffed, and who better to staff it than their best customers…the police themselves. But it gets better according to local media, because not only are the police working in the store, they’re volunteering to do so without pay

They’ve also changed the name of the store to (wait for it)…..Cops & Doughnuts. You can even buy t-shirts from their website here.

Rumors are swirling that long-time Sesame Street star, resident and known numerophile The Count may have a secret jones for something besides digits…

A German man weeding his garden with a flame thrower managed to burn his house down Friday.

Things started to go wrong for the 54 year old man when he managed to set his hedge alight. The flames spread to his garden shed, before eventually finding some excellent fuel in the form of his house.

If this story isn’t bizarre enough, AFP reports that in Germany flame-throwers are used widely in agriculture and also in gardening, but “generally only for removing weeds from between cracks in paving in driveways and patios.” Remind me to be very, very careful the next time I’m visiting Germany then, because turns out they still take eradicating perceived problems very seriously.