• NO but only if South Korea’s President isn’t wrong source

• We are not afraid.Everyone on the boat is very calm.
• Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire • Aboard the Rachel Corrie, an aid ship headed to Gaza, not long before it was intercepted. Unlike the prior flotilla act a week ago, there was no violence this time. In fact, Israeli authorities boarded with the activists’ permission this time. source

• Here’s that mural. What do you think? Radio host and Prescott, Ariz. city council member Steve Blair, whose comments on this mural have sparked a growing controversy about race in Arizona, was fired by KYCA, the station where he was a host. Blair has more thoughts on the controversy, and he seems to stumble around the issue a bit – oh, it’s defacing a public building, it’s graffiti,  I don’t understand what it means, so on and so forth. Fact of matter: He’s going to become nationally-known for being the jerk who called out this mural for its diversity. source

• We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars. We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).
• Prescott, Ariz. Downtown Mural Project director R.E. Wall • Regarding the ridiculous chain of events that led to the group lightening the skin of children depicted on a local elementary school’s mural. The mural, by the way, is trying to promote green transportation, and features pictures of KIDS AT THE SCHOOL. Wall says that he and others were depicted to racial slurs on a regular basis while painting the mural. While the school claimed it was only to fix shading, the controversy got so bad that a city councilman who hosts a radio show was trying to get the mural taken down. Real quote from Steve Blair: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?” Holy crap. This is 2010. (Hat tip Carissa Wright) source

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• Who is this guy?James Clapper, currently working as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, spent 32 years in the Air Force, then later joined Robert Gates in the Bush administration. Like Gates, he stuck around with Obama.

  Early complaintsDemocrats and Republicans have criticized the choice because Clapper isn’t an outsider and has deep ties to the Defense Department. Oh, and they like complaining. source

• The guy is synonymous with college basketball. The former UCLA coach, who won ten titles helming the Bruins over 27 years, died today at 99. Some other key stats about the dude:

• 19 number of conference titles Wooden won over his tenure
• 88 number of games Wooden won in a row over four seasons
• three number of All-American honors he earned as a player source

Off-the-court pride

• I think that’s the factor from which i have received the greatest satisfaction and pleasure. The fact that practically all of my players did get their degrees and practically all of them have done well in whatever their chosen profession might be.
• John Wooden • Regarding what he was most proud of in his basketball coaching career. He’s from a different era – an era where players went to school the whole term. Wooden might as well be chiseled out of history. The legend earned his place in basketball history the old-fashioned way. Through hard work. source

• 
  limber
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  shimmery
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  slayer
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  intimate
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  energized

• We may not be giving this guy enough credit, but after he and his sons got arrested for getting in a fight with some dude over RELIGION (in that shirt!!!!), something tells us our first instincts are the right ones. source

• Two new reports suggest they did. Last year, swine flu, or H1N1, was treated as the second coming of the black plague. A couple of new reports suggest the people making the recommendations to WHO had ties to the drug industry, and those recommendations led to governments wasting millions of dollars on H1N1 vaccines that would never actually get used. “We are left wondering whether major public health organizations are able to effectively manage the conflicts of interest that are inherent in medical science,” one report says. So, who’s the swine now? source

• Certainly he had a backpack with some tupperware containers so when people weren’t looking, he was stocking up.
• Harbour City (New Zealand) Funeral Home director Danny Langstraa • Regarding a man who had apparently been going to as many as four funerals a week just to nosh on the food. The man, in his 40s, clearly did not know any of the deceased whose funerals he showed up for in March and April. If this sounds like a subject ripe for a movie parody, Will Ferrell has already done it in “Wedding Crashers” – as an wedding-crash expert who had recently started crashing funerals. source