Honolulu Lite
Lucky you live Hawaii. For the rest of the world today is unlucky Friday the 13th. In Hawaii it's AloHa! Friday the 13th: The surf is pumping on the South Shore, the sun is shining and it's just about time for a couple of pau hana cold ones. Happy lucky Aloha
Friday the 13th!Life hasn't been so lucky though for City Councilman Andy Mirikitani, convicted of federal bribery charges. But you have to wonder if a little bachi isn't in play. Mirikitani's moralizing about strip clubs and hostess bars - places where consenting adults engage in perfectly legal activities - may have cosmically come back to bite him in the okole. Bertrand Russell said, "We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and the other which we practice but seldom preach." Mirikitani talked a good morality game when it came to the soft sex trade, but he wasn't so tough or righteous when it came to the immorality of engaging in public corruption.
And now the news:
Commercializing Hitler
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) >> Taiwan's ruling party has launched a television advertisement that features Adolf Hitler. The commercial opens with a 10-second clip from a Nazi propaganda film then cuts to President Kennedy's inaugural address, Cuba's Fidel Castro giving a speech and former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui talking to reporters.Juan Chao-hsiung, director of the Democratic Progressive Party's youth department, said the commercial was meant to encourage young people to share their ideas.
"Hitler was chosen as one of the four leaders because he dared to speak his own mind," Juan said.
(Juan, buddy, there are times when speaking one's mind is not a good thing, especially when one's mind is on genocide.)
Goddess stripped of title
KATHMADU (Reuters) >> A four-year-old girl has been installed as Nepal's new living goddess or Kumari, a deity revered by thousands of Hindus and Buddhists in the Himalayan kingdom. Reshmila Shakya replaces the old Kumari, or virgin goddess, who retired after she reached puberty.(Boy, that's a tough gig. First you're a goddess and then you hit puberty and, bam!, they don't even give you a chance to prove you won't fool around!)
Weird Web Site: Ever wonder the amount of destruction 25 megaton nuke would do if exploded over Yellowstone? Or a one meg surface blast in Kaneohe? Me neither. But some people apparently do. Blast Mapper (www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/blastmap.html) let's you input any address in the country and then shows you a map of how much destruction various nukes would cause.
Honolulu Lite on Sunday: Life's a beach and free access to the beach is a fundamental right. Except in Hawaii.
Quote Me On This: "No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged." Montaigne
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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