Here's What Real Theocracy Looks Like

A man named Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri was beheaded in Saudi Arabia this week after being found in possession of spell books and talismans. Beheading is "God's punishment" for "sorcerers and charlatans," according to a statement that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued in March.

Al-Asiri's execution was the latest accomplishment of Saudi Arabia's Anti-Witchcraft Unit, an elite police force specifically trained to track down and arrest practitioners of magic. The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was part of a larger campaign to exterminate sorcery from the kingdom which began in 2009 and has included a hotline for reporting witch sightings, raids on suspected houses, and lectures to inform the public about the dangers of magicians -- "key causers of religious and social instability in the country," according to the Commission's statement.  
(Foreign Policy, 6/26/2012)

Leap into the Unknown

Another one for the Courage file:

Later this summer, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner will ascend to 120,000 feet in a pressurized capsule and, wearing only a spacesuit, jump.


As he plummets 23 miles in the highest skydive ever, Baumgartner will become the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall. That’s the plan, anyway. To even attempt this will expose him to many challenges, including the risk that water in his body could vaporize. 


But one challenge in particular is foremost in everyone’s mind: What happens when Baumgartner encounters the shock waves that invariably occur when something exceeds the speed of sound?

No one really knows.

"Until you do it, it's still an unknown," says Jonathan Clark, the medical director for Red Bull Stratos, the team assembled to help Baumgartner reach his lofty goal.

American Fury

MAN INGESTS DRUG, TURNS INTO RAGING CANNIBAL.  Who could have imagined such a thing?

"On Saturday, May 26, Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man, was attacked allegedly by 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, also homeless, in Miami, Fla.  The attack has been dubbed the "naked zombie attack" and "zombie apocalypse" because Eugene reportedly pounced on Poppo while naked and began eating his face, to the shock of several passerby and vehicles.

"Eugene reportedly continued to eat Poppo's face until police arrived 18 minutes later. All that was left of Poppo's face was his beard and mustache, reports indicate.  Eugene is suspected to have been taking a new drug called "bath salts," and although it was not immediately clear if the properties of the drug are linked to the household item of the same name, there have been other violent cases involving the drug." (The Christian Post)

Bean Queen

"A sculptor has created what is believed to be the world's smallest portrait of the Queen - on a 2mm coffee bean.  ...British micro-sculptor Willard Wigan created the commemorative tribute by slowing his heartbeat and working between beats to avoid hand tremors.  He used tiny homemade tools and painted with a hair plucked from a housefly's back to carve the microscopic figures."

Truth

"There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science and the second is art."
--Raymond Chandler

The Last Nabokov

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece"
--Vladimir Nabokov

Dmitri Nabokov, the only son of Vladimir Nabokov and Vera Slonim, died in Switzerland aged 77 on February 22.