An Amish Hair-Cutting Gang, the End of the World and Other News

 In which I read the news and tell you what made me giggle.




Hair-Cutting Attacks Stir Fear in Amish Ohio

Mr. Miller, 45, a stocky construction worker and an Amish bishop in the peaceful farmlands of eastern Ohio, found five or six men waiting. Some grabbed him and wrestled him outside as others hacked at his long black beard with scissors, clipping off six inches. As Mr. Miller kept struggling, his wife screamed at the children to call 911, and the attackers fled.

Some things don't need commentary; they just need pictures.  


The Unhappy Hipsters on Their New Book - Q&A

This week, more than a year and a half later, the Unhappy Hipsters have 74,000 regular blog followers and nearly 43,000 Facebook “likes.” Their book is out, and so are they: Ms. Talbott is now designing alumni magazines for Boston University; Ms. Quinn is unemployed, having followed her fiancé to Portland, Ore.

Followed?  They couldn't have put "moved with"? Sick burn, NYT.


Cornel West, others arrested at Supreme Court won't be prosecuted

 The arrest of West, a former Harvard University professor now teaching at Princeton, may have had added symbolism because it occurred on the day the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial was dedicated on the National Mall. West participated in that ceremony before joining the anti-corporate-greed protest.

I love how they identify Cornel West first and foremost as a "former Harvard professor."  

The Marriage of Sid and Mercedes Bass, Now Broken
Peculiar as the grounds for divorce may sound, the story is that Mr. Bass, 69 and a resident of Fort Worth, had taken up painting and had tired of the social circuit, the longtime domain of Mrs. Bass, 67, who is the vice chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera and one of its biggest financial supporters. Mr. Bass, it is said by friends of the couple, never really liked opera.


This entire article just reads like a spoof of the New York Times by its most conservative critics.

Coming Clean on 'dirty DUIs' in Contra Costa County
 Woods said in an interview that the brunet was so aggressive he twice pushed her off his lap. Calm yourself, calm yourself, he remembered telling her. Looking back, he said, he should have realized something was wrong.

"Things like that don't happen to blokes like me," said the British-born Woods. "But the alcohol kicks in, you are having a good time, and you think, what the hell."

Even funnier from this angle.

California Christian group recalculates biblical math; now says Rapture and end of the world is Friday
 Camping, who suffered a mild stroke three weeks after his prediction failed to materialize in May, still spreads the word through his Family Radio International website. God’s judgment and salvation were completed on May 21, Camping says in a message explaining the mix-up in his biblical math.
“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on Oct. 21,” he says on the website.

Which basically means that if you're reading this, you are doomed.

Occupy Wall Street: Fighting Capitalism, One Food Cart at a Time
But although she said the destitution in the square reminded her of the Third World, the occupation didn’t strike her as another Tahrir. “We were fighting for a big, big thing: for life, to eat, against a giant snake that would kill us.” Unsurprisingly, she employs a smart breakfast metaphor: “Here, they’re not fighting to eat, say, regular bread, but … special bagels or something.”

Let them eat special bagels...or something.