Your Fellow Humans

• In the Creepy and Probably Lying department,"a man who wants to obtain information about 70 licensed strippers in his town so he can 'pray for them'" has been blocked by temporary injunction and he is, of course, squealing:
  

  "He essentially silenced 7 million people in the state of Washington to protect 70 people's so-called right to privacy who dance on a stage naked," he said.

  Now, I'm pretty sure that if he really wanted to pray for them, he could just do that.  God knows precisely whom one is praying for, even if one doesn't know the name.  God actually doesn't need "their full names, addresses, photos and dates of birth." God has a fuller and more detailed database than either the NSA or Google (although they're trying).  I'm also pretty sure that 7 million people in the state of Washington don't feel themselves silenced and could not care less (stalker-and-psychopath population excepted).  I'm not seeing any possible benign purpose here.
• I couldn't find that story at seattlepi.com, but there was a charming photo gallery of musicians who are still performing though they are *gasp* 70 or older, both current and historical pictures, although one of their examples has a throat infection and has had to cancel the Melbourne, Australia performance.
• (Why yes, I was disappointed Tuesday.  Little by little, I'm approaching the mindset that the universe is malign and that withdrawal from society would be the smartest thing I could do.  And I have to wonder what version of the Gospels the people of Fort Lauderdale have read.  But the library has a book on hold for me, so total hermitting will not happen just yet.)
  
  (Yes, this will be crossposted.  Deal.)
• Back 98 years ago, people wanted to know what was happening in the war.  It's not that people don't still want to know.  It's that news sources have airbrushed the war(s) almost to invisibility and the politicians don't make a point of it.
• Oh, and Mikhail Gorbachev says we're on the brink of a new Cold War.  We missed the old one so much...