Word: factly
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...They stumble around half mad and constantly drunk. They wall off the horror, but it oozes through the cracks. The work of destruction is feeding back into them, destroying them in turn. "What if murder weren't a definitive solution," Max says. "What if on the contrary this new fact, even less reparable than the ones before it, opened in turn onto new abysses? Then, what way out was left?" The answer is none. But The Kindly Ones gives these lost souls all they could possibly expect: understanding, without pity or forgiveness...
Unlike many of my colleagues in the mass media, I am suffering from outrage-deficit disorder. It's not that I'm not angry. I am, in fact, frustrated that we've civilized ourselves out of really satisfying scapegoat rituals: The ancients would have staged a mass immolation of the AIG casino pigs in their private jets or crucified Bernie Madoff on the 18th hole at the Palm Beach Country Club, preceded by a public show trial with Jon Stewart as chief magistrate. You probably need an over-the-top catharsis or two like that to get the popular rage...
That is outrageous. But it's not any more outrageous than the even bigger bonuses paid out in past years to the masterminds of the AIG FP mess who no longer happen to work there. Slightly less so, in fact: the remaining AIG FP employees are being paid essentially to work themselves out of jobs by winding down all the unit's contracts. It's an awkward situation that means at least some of them probably would have gotten retention pay even in bankruptcy...
...Activists on both the right and the left have happily stepped forward to claim credit for the developments. Conservatives see lower rates of sexual activity as a direct result of abstinence education. Meanwhile, liberals attribute greater use of birth control to better education about and access to contraceptives. (In fact, researchers think fear of STIs--especially HIV--and a natural correction from high rates of sexual activity during the sexual revolution explain much of the change...
Even so--and despite the fact that the women in Burdette's group include both Republicans and Democrats--Burdette says "there was never a question" that they would back a comprehensive sex program in the public schools. She pitched the idea to each of the county's five school districts. Burdette purposely stayed away from moral arguments and instead emphasized the social and economic costs of teen pregnancy. Researchers working with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy have calculated that in 2004 alone, teen pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers more than $9 billion in health care, foster care...